DON’T mess with Miss Piggy. Anthony Marshall’s wife, Charlene, was the only human who looked genuinely stunned as the guilty verdicts were read in the Manhattan courthouse.
Convicted of robbing his mother, Brooke Astor, her husband will be going away, perhaps forever. And for what? For the crime of loving too much, too slavishly, a woman he badly wanted to keep in support hose and headbands for the rest of his days.
Charlene walked into the hallway toward an uncertain future, leaning for dear life on her frail husband, who looked as if he’d prefer to lean on his stout and healthy spouse.
The woman who’s been branded Anthony’s unindicted co-conspirator, muse and inspiration for the swindle of the century — so uncharitably compared to a porcine creature — issued a kind of primal whine when someone asked her how she felt.
“I love my husband!” Charlene cried spontaneously from the bottom of her gut to the heavens.
And then she theatrically heaved herself into Anthony’s arms. A lawyer stepped in and, thankfully, avoided a domino-like crash of senior bodies.
Anthony did it for love. He did it to keep Charlene in sensible shoes and shapeless suits.
He did it to please this coarse and devoted woman on whose heaving breast he always found a comfortable home.
He did it because his rail-thin, aristocratic Mumsy for so long rejected and pitied him.
Anthony Marshall was convicted yesterday of a raft of charges that confirmed what we already knew: He robbed his sainted mother of her savings and her paintings. He swiped the baubles from her neck, while convincing this wildly wealthy, Alzheimer’s-addled woman that she was going broke.
But as the jury forewoman pronounced the word “guilty” 14 times, I looked over at Charlene, who is 64 to Anthony’s 85. You might expect a fragile doll. Instead I saw a woman of steel who would rip your throat out to protect what is hers.
In a perfect would, Anthony would have been content to sponge for life off his ma. But court has a way of revealing the true motive of a crime. He feared he might die before Brooke, leaving Charlene with the indignity of having to find a job. Or another husband.
Don’t mess with Miss Piggy. She loves Anthony so.