How Brooke lived: "Die with your boots on"

The following script is of "Brooke Astor," which aired on May 10, 1987. Mike Wallace is the correspondent.

Brooke is Brooke Astor and in a sense she is the first lady of New York. For the past 25 years she has lavished her attention, her affection and a great deal of money on the five boroughs of New York City, money that comes from the Astor Foundation that she oversees. It has permitted this remarkable dynamo, now in her 80s, to give over $150 million to New York's museums and libraries, its zoos and parks and hospitals, its shelters for the homeless. Founder of that fortune was the legendary John Jacob Astor, once the richest man in America. His great-great-grandson, Vincent Astor, married Brooke, and Vincent Astor told Brooke that when he died, she was going to have a hell of a lot of fun running the foundation. He was right.

Her fun comes in deciding whether this learning center for immigrants on the Lower East Side deserves a $25,000 grant from the foundation. They got it. Her fun comes in kicking off a $300 million fundraising campaign for the New York Public Library, one of her favorite causes. In looking at some buildings that are being transformed into apartments for homeless families with help from the Astor Foundation.

Brooke Astor: How much does it cost to do a building like this over?

Woman: This one cost $900,000.

Mike Wallace: You work so darn hard, I mean, really, hardly bankers' hours. You work morning till night.

Brooke Astor: Yes, I do.

Mike Wallace: Every lunch, every dinner.

Brooke Astor: Yes.

Mike Wallace: Why?

Brooke Astor: Because I like it.

Mike Wallace: Well, I know, but, come on.

Brooke Astor: It's a little bit much, I do get exhausted, but I can't help it. I mean, for instance-

Mike Wallace: What you're saying is, there's so much to do and so little time?

Brooke Astor: Yes, yes, that's it. And so that I just feel as long as I'm healthy, I would rather die- as father used to say, "Die with your boots on," that's what I would rather do.

Mike Wallace: Your mother said, "Don't die guessing."

Brooke Astor: No, well, I'm not.

Brooke brings her fabled energy and the Astor money to her philanthropic career but she also brings warmth and elegance to the New York social scene. Her publisher last summer gave a tea dance at the Plaza to celebrate the publication of her book, The Last Blossom on the Plum Tree, and her friends flocked to her side. Nancy Kissinger was there and Barbara Walters, Mayor Koch, William Paley; her old friend, former secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon, came to dance with her; John Chancellor says what everyone seems to feel about Brooke.

John Chancellor: She wants, I think, good things for New York more than good things for her reputation. I think that's intoxicating in somebody in New York. She's not feathering her own nest, she has rather a lot of feathers in the nest already.

Brooke was born Roberta Brooke Russell; her father a Marine officer, later Commandant of the Marine Corps. Her mother and he took her with them all across the world -- they lived in Europe, in China, in Haiti. The family was comfortable, but hardly rich. Real money came to this young innocent at the tender age of 16, when she married a very wealthy young man named Dryden Kuser.

Mike Wallace: He drank?

Brooke Astor: Drank.

Mike Wallace: And-

Brooke Astor: I didn't know it then, though.

Mike Wallace: And he was unfaithful.

Brooke Astor: Yes, very.

Mike Wallace: And he was physically cruel to you.

Brooke Astor: Cruel to me, yes, he was.

The only joy she had from that marriage was the birth of her son, Tony, who is now 62. Though the marriage was a disaster, she stayed with it for 10 years. The next time around she married wealthy stockbroker Buddy Marshall, the man she calls the love of her life. They travelled the world and were gloriously happy for 20 years, she says, but in 1952 Buddy died suddenly. A year later she married money once again, big money, Vincent Astor.

Mike Wallace: How rich was he?

Brooke Astor: Well, I suppose he had $100 million, $120 million, something like that, which was enormous then. Today it's, there are billionaires, as you know by Forbes magazine.

Mike Wallace: I know. But $100 million...

Brooke Astor: Was nothing in those--today, but in those days and he felt very much that people were after him for his money.

Vincent was a loner, chary of others. There was nothing he enjoyed more than just staying at home with Brooke.

Brooke Astor: He was really very funny and I really had a lot of fun with him, but we went nowhere. We never went out at all when I was married to him.

Mike Wallace: Apparently he was jealous of you, jealous of Tony, jealous of your friends-

Brooke Astor: Yes, yes, yes.

Mike Wallace: -jealous even of telephone conversations.

Brooke Astor: Yes, yes, he was. But, you know, we played backgammon and I took music lessons every day. I played the piano and I had a sort of a nightclub voice, and I'd sing to him.

Mike Wallace: How long did this business of backgammon, music lessons and only Vincent go on?

Brooke Astor: Well, it went on until he died.

Mike Wallace: Which was how many years?

Brooke Astor: Seven years. And I think those years were like years lying fallow, you know what I mean?

Mike Wallace: Yes.

Brooke Astor: Gave me, I mean, I was-

Mike Wallace: You were getting ready for something.

Brooke Astor: I was not exhausted, physically, anyway. I was really fit, I was in great form.

And ready, at Vincent's bidding, to take over the Astor Foundation. But there was resistance from members of the Astor family and from Vincent's business associates.

Brooke Astor: Well, I mean, I was told, you know, "Now you've got all this money, you're going to be very attractive to men, and why don't you just take a cruise and go around and have some fun?" Well, that was not my idea at all.

Brooke Astor: How long is it going to take?

Her idea was the hands-on running of the foundation, working with its board of trustees to decide just how every dollar was to be given away.

Anthony (Kuser) Marshall: You see that we've given over a million dollars in the past.

Her son Tony, is a regular at those meetings.

Brooke Astor: We only give, as you know, to New York City.

Mike Wallace: Yes.

Brooke Astor: Because old John Jacob Astor, really, they talk about his fur trade and they talk about his ships going around, cornering the sandalwood market and whatnot, but he really made his money out of Manhattan real estate, and so I think-- we thought that money should be given--but we give to the five boroughs, we don't give just to Manhattan.

Man: Lower your blood pressure, have a pet.

And that money has made its mark in big ways and small all around New York City. The ASPCA received money for a travelling adoption van; a synagogue on the Lower East Side is getting a new stained glass window; the Astor Place subway station was restored to the way it looked at the turn of the century. Those are the small sums. Much grander sums have gone to New York's cultural hallmarks: over $2 million to the Pierpont Morgan Library; $17 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; $11 million more to the Bronx Zoo, where animals live in a natural habitat. But the institution that stands at the top of the Astor list, both in affection and dollars, is the New York Public Library. Vartan Gregorian is president.

Vartan Gregorian: Totally I would say she has given to the library, through her foundation as well as personally, almost $25 million.

Mike Wallace: Over a period of-

Gregorian: Over a period of the last 20 years.

He says that she gives from conviction, not to show off, but beyond giving through the foundation, Brooke is generous with her own private wealth.

Brooke Astor: I was brought up that you should give away about 15% of your income.

Mike Wallace: You're suggesting that a wealthy individual should give 15% of his or her income?

Brooke Astor: Yes, yes, I think they should.

In New York City it seems that Brooke is on the town every night of the week, and often at money-raising galas. In November she and her fellow patrons of the New York Public Library sponsored an evening that honored a covey of authors dubbed the "Literary Lions." It was a typical Brooke Astor affair, combining glitter and warmth with good works.

Brooke Astor: I have to go around and ask people for money, of course, quite a lot. And it's quite an art to ask people for money. But I think that you- I have to ask them for money because I'm- for the things that I'm interested in, and the fact, of course, money breeds money.

Mike Wallace: What do they tell you when people turn you down?

Brooke Astor: What, do I-

Mike Wallace: People that you know are perfectly capable of giving millions.

Brooke Astor: They just say, "I'm overcommitted, I've got too much on my plate."

Mike Wallace: And you slink quietly-

Brooke Astor: Yes, yes, I do. Yes, I don't keep on hounding them. I wouldn't have any friends left if I did that.

Many of Brooke's friends are among the mighty and the powerful, and she keeps track of them in a special place in her country house, a place she calls the "Memory Room." Among them are presidents and cardinals, ambassadors, and more presidents.

Mike Wallace: It seems that you are a good friend of Nancy Reagan; at least there are lots of pictures of her and of President Reagan.

Brooke Astor: Yes, I have some over there, and there are a lot of them in the other room. And I have a lot more pictures in the other room, but I know we can't get in there, it's too small.

Mike Wallace: Well, no, we can get in there, and it's not- it's small, but it's the bathroom, and you have the picture of the President of the United States in the bathroom?

Brooke Astor: Yes, I know. Well, see, the trouble is I didn't have enough room.

Mike Wallace: There's a snapshot here that I would like you to tell me about.

Brooke Astor: Yes. Adlai. I was great friends with Adlai. He would have liked to have married me, I think, but I couldn't marry anybody at that time. I can't marry anybody. But there, I...

Mike Wallace: You were tempted, though? You look tempted.

Brooke Astor: No, I wasn't tempted.

Mike Wallace: You weren't?

Brooke Astor: I liked him and I admired him enormously.

In her recent novel she tells the story of old love, lost love, and for us she reminisced about one of her own adventures.

Brooke Astor: Fell in love with a movie actor, and he was very good-looking, and-

Mike Wallace: Someone we know?

Brooke Astor: Yes. Brian Ahern.

Mike Wallace: Oh, really?

Brooke Astor: Yes. And he has died by now.

Mike Wallace: I take it you don't believe that it's the end of the world if people who are married wander from- dally from time to time?

Brooke Astor: No, no, I don't, certainly not. If they behave themselves, keep- as I say, don't let everybody else in on it. I think that very few people are born totally faithful. It's a- I think it's a glorious thing if it happens.

Brooke lives in Manhattan during the week. On weekends she comes back to an estate that she bought nearly 30 years ago, called Holly Hill, in Westchester County. The house overlooks the Hudson River valley, surrounded by 68 acres of manicured gardens and pools and fountains. In the summer Brooke stays in Maine in Northeast Harbor, overlooking the sea.

Mike Wallace: The establishments that you keep, Brooke, must be-

Brooke Astor: It's expensive.

Mike Wallace: I mean, expensive.

Brooke Astor: Well, I tell you what. There's two things you can do, you either live in a much smaller way - I could live in a much smaller way and have - spend a lot more on my clothes, buy a lot of fur coats and jewelry and things like that. I really love having gardens around me. I like this sort of way of living. And it's expensive, but I really, I couldn't do both. I haven't got the money to do both. I would rather live the way I live here and in Maine than spend it on myself.

Mike Wallace: How many gardeners here?

Brooke Astor: I have seven.

Mike Wallace: And in Maine?

Brooke Astor: Think about the same amount.

Mike Wallace: I'd hate to think what the annual...

Brooke Astor: It's very high. This is very high, this is twice what Maine is.

Mike Wallace: Really?

Brooke Astor: Yes.

Mike Wallace: Do you ever feel guilty about being so rich?

Brooke Astor: Yes. I do. I feel that, you know, I feel that, I feel, of course, extraordinarily lucky. I'm terribly lucky to have all this.

Mike Wallace: Why do you love Maine so?

Brooke Astor: Because it has mountains and it has the sea, both. And I can climb a mountain and sit on the top of a mountain and look out and see the sparkling sea and all the rocks and marvelous fir trees and you realize this, whether I'm here or not, you know, there was a line of Aiken, who says: Like bread that for our daily fare is broken, the eternal loveliness before us spread. And I feel here it all is, going on night and day, whether I'm here or not. Something really very extraordinary about it.

Mike Wallace: And you feel- somehow I get the sense, maybe you got it from your Chinese experience - a kind of oneness with nature.

Brooke Astor: A oneness with nature. Well, the Chinese think everything is alive, this is alive because it was a tree once. And I feel my house, for instance, when I come back to it, I have to go 'round and give it love. I say, "I love you, I love you, I love all the chairs, I love all" I go around and put my arms around the trees.

She's an Episcopalian, an occasional churchgoer and, she says, she believes in reincarnation.

Mike Wallace: You believe that you have been here before and came back as Brooke?

Brooke Astor: I think that there are such things - this sounds perhaps rather silly.

Mike Wallace: Well, this sounds like Shirley MacLaine, and she believes it with all her heart and soul.

Brooke Astor: I believe that there is something, old spirits. I think there are certain people who are born knowing more than others.

Mike Wallace: And you think you're one of them?

Brooke Astor: Yes. Doesn't that sound dreadful?

Mike Wallace: No, not at all. Who were you before?

Brooke Astor: I feel that, I often feel that I- things, I've experienced this before, such and such a thing has happened to me. And then I feel very, very close to my father and mother and to Buddy and to Vincent. I feel they are near me, I feel nothing can really harm me, if they're in there working for me, up there, wherever they are.

Mike Wallace: And you'll go to see them, and they'll be there?

Brooke Astor: Yeah, that's right.

Mike Wallace: You do believe that?

Brooke Astor: Yes.

Mike Wallace: Last thing: you seem, on the face of it, to be almost uncomplicatedly happy.

Brooke Astor: Yes. Isn't it weird?

Mike Wallace: It is a little bit weird.

Brooke Astor: I find it weird