Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

The Astor Case Goes to the Jury | After 19 weeks of testimony (or 20 weeks, according to the Daily News), jurors in the trial of Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, and lawyer, Francis X. Morrissey Jr. are expected to begin their deliberations later this afternoon. How long will it take to reach a verdict? Not all that long, since the 19 (or 20) weeks of testimony appears to have sorely tested jurors' patience. "I think there will be a lot of internal peer pressure to quickly reach a verdict so that they can all go home," says one law professor. [NYT, NYDN]

The Astor Trial Winds Down | After 19 weeks and 74 witnesses for prosecution, it looks like the Brooke Astor trial may be near its end. The defense began its closing arguments yesterday, and they continue today. The approach that Frederick P. Hafetz, Anthony Marshall's lawyer, is taking as he wraps up his case: Exploit the idea that jurors were needlessly forced to endure the painfully long trial. Instructing jurors to ignore the "diversionary evidence" and "keep their eye on the ball," Hafetz offered up a very simple approach for jurors to take: "You could say, 'Case closed, what were we doing here for all these weeks?'" [NYT, NYP]

Out With the Old | The junior committees at major cultural institutions around town are designed for younger—or youngish—people, right? Well, it seems some old-timers have been trying to slip by at the Museum of Modern Art, according to the WSJ's Speakeasy blog, and the museum isn't taking it anymore: More

The Astor Trial Drags On | The Brooke Astor trial started sometime in late 2005, didn't it? Or does it just feel like it's been going on forever? The Times reports today that the society trial, which was supposed to take 8-10 weeks, is now grinding into its fourth month and probably won't conclude until after Labor Day, primarily because prosecutors seem intent on calling to the witness stand every person on the planet who encountered Brooke Astor during the last few years of her life. The lengthy proceedings haven't been easy on the man accused of bilking his mom, Anthony Marshall. Not only has the stress of the trial caused him to collapse every other day or so, his defense is costing him about $100,000 a week. The jurors, however, seem to have adjusted just fine: "Members have taken to rolling their eyes when a lawyer draws out his line of questioning, napped during the dullest testimony or chewed sunflower seeds to pass the time." [NYT]

Astor Trial Goes Low-Glam | There's a reason why you haven't heard much about the Brooke Astor trial in recent weeks, according to the New York Times' A.G. Sulzberger: "[T]he parade of celebrity witnesses has come and gone, and as the testimony has narrowed to the observations of her hired help, the gallery has mostly thinned out to the usual suspects: reporters, lawyers and court employees." Celebrity witnesses may have left the building, but celebrity newspaper reporters are still on the scene, apparently. [NYT]

More Astor Drama | The Brooke Astor trial has been delayed. Again. Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, had to be rushed to the hospital today after he fell in the men's room, hit his head, and reported feeling dizzy. The bad news is that the trial has been suspended indefinitely. The good: Once his trial is over, Marshall will get to come back as the plaintiff in a slip-and-fall personal injury suit against the city. [NYDN, previously]

Astor Case Very 'Confusing' | A man who spent 10 weeks as an alternate juror in the trial of Brooke Astor's son but was removed last week for unknown reasons, is now speaking out. If you were thinking the parade of famous faces on the witness stand would have had an influence the jury, well, that doesn't seem to be the case. Frank Waring, a retired maintenance worker, says the whole thing has been bewildering more than anything else: "Mr. Waring said he was sure of two things: The trial was confusing, and it was exhausting. 'You don't know who's doing what or who's telling the truth,' he said. 'To me, it's a very confusing trial.' [NYT]

David Patrick Columbia: Now Tweeting From the 10021 | Big news from David Patrick Columbia today: The society chronicler and proprietor of New York Social Diary reports that he's now using Facebook and Twitter! "Twitter. I couldn't think of what to write. I'm a person who is rarely without a thought or consideration in his head, no matter where I am, no matter where I go. Yet with that little dumb distraction of a cell phone screen before me, I couldn't think of a damned thing to Twitter. Or Tweet." So what did he come up with? "Having Skippy's creamy peanut butter on an English muffin." This is going to be big. So please follow him here and please do it now. [NYSD]

Brooke Astor Supported Her Son, The Pharmaceutical Industry | Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, wasn't the only one profiting from his mother's poor health. The neighborhood pharmacist was doing quite nicely, too. According to papers filed in court this week, Astor gobbled down two dozen pills a day, including the medications Bextra, Tenormin, Prevacid, Alphagan, Sonata, Neurontin, Zoloft, Aricept, Detrol, Rhinocort, Xalatan, Antivert, Percocet, and Procrit. Describing her list of meds it as "Brooke Astor's socialite diet," the Daily News suggests "it's a wonder she had room for food." Considering Astor was a svelte 91 pounds when she died, whatever she was taking was working pretty well, wasn't it? [NYDN]

Living on Park Avenue has its perks, and existing in a paparazzi free-zone is supposed to be one of them. Alas, life is full of disappointments, and so certain Park Avenue residents have spent the past three years contending with photographers, limos, traffic, and noise thanks to a catering company that has taken to throwing fabulous parties in the hood, including Oscar de la Renta's Resort show this month. That event was the latest salvo in an ongoing battle between residents and The Rose Group, the caterers who lease the Christian Science church on the corner of 63rd Street and have turned the locale into a successful party space that hosts multiple society events a week.More

Summer's here (supposedly) and that means television's gone bad. But while you wait for the next season of your favorite show to begin again next fall, there's always the ongoing, glorious, convoluted Astor trial, now rolling into its eighth week, to feed your drama fix. But just in case you haven't been reading all the stories about the case in the papers, we've gone ahead and recapped what you missed. This week's installment: "The Codicil." Join us after the jump, won't you?More

Yesterday was "Take Your Butler to Court" day over at the ongoing Astor trial, where 85-year old Anthony Marshall stands accused of bilking his Alzheimer's riddled mother, Brooke Astor, out of millions. Astor's butler, Chris Ely—who once worked for Queen Elizabeth (a coincidence Joanna Malloy has magically massaged into a strange column about the similarities between ne'er-do-well mamas' boys Marshall and Prince Charles)—testified, explaining, among other things, why you really don't want to be a butler: Being forced to go on emergency runs for "nighties, underwear and bedwetting pads."More

Plenty of reality programs promise to show us how the rich and powerful live their lives. Very few actually end up doing that, of course. The women featured on the Real Housewives of NYC weren't part of the city's social elite before they humiliated themselves on national television—nor were they all housewives either—so they had little to lose in the end. That will change, though, when Bravo's NYC Prep, or the "real-life Gossip Girl," as Bravo has been billing it, debuts on June 23. One of the obnoxious, over-privileged teens featured on the show—the one who comes off in the worst possible light, in fact—hails from one of the city's richest and most respected families. Meet Peter Carey ("PC") Peterson, the grandson of Pete Peterson.  More

We knew Michael Gross's exposé of the Metropolitan Museum of Art would ruffle feathers. It's juicy stuff, clearly. But we didn't expect it would be banned. But that's what seems to be happening. The Independent reports that Amazon's British arm has stopped selling Gross's Rogues' Gallery "for fear of action from a libel tourist," namely Annette de la Renta, the museum vice chair and wife of designer Oscar de la Renta, who has threatened Gross with a libel suit. The ban isn't limited to foreign retail outlets, however.More

Graydon Carter appeared as a witness yesterday at the trial of Anthony Marshall, the son of Brooke Astor who stands accused of swindling his mother when she was suffering from Alzheimer's. The Vanity Fair editor recalled the three articles he asked her to write for the magazine in the late '90s (she was paid $1,000 for her efforts). And he described their regular lunches at the Knickerbocker Club and the Four Seasons, and the time when he even managed to convince her to travel downtown to dine at Da Silvano.  More