Mediate Michigan

IF you could script your life, how would it play out? Make movies, win an Academy Award, own an enormous apartment on Central Park West and then, in your declining years, marry someone half your age?

On a recent afternoon, Celeste Holm, 94, sat in her vast living room overlooking Sheep Meadow, holding hands with her husband, Frank Basile, 48, assessing how things had worked out for her.

“I don’t like it at all,” she said.

The stately apartment, where Ms. Holm has lived since 1953, reflects a full and fruitful life: mementos from her films “All About Eve” and “Gentleman’s Agreement”; sheet music on the grand piano for songs she and her husband still sing together. But it is now at the center of a bitter family battle that has poisoned her relationships with her two sons and exhausted all her other assets, including the trust fund that was supposed to pay her living expenses.

The couple have had to borrow money to stay in the apartment. They no longer have a housekeeper or a home health aide. Even now, Mr. Basile said, there is a very real chance that they could lose their home, or that Ms. Holm’s sons could force them to sell it.

via Love and Inheritance – Celeste Holm’s Family Feud – NYTimes.com.