empty mansions the mysterious life of huguette clark

She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder and founder of Las Vegas. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W.A.

Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Although she owned palatial homes in California, New York and Connecticut, why had she lived for 20 years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?ĭedman collaborated with Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. At its heart is the reclusive heiress Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. It started when Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, and he subsequently stumbled through a surprising portal into American history.Įmpty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st century battle over a $300 million inheritance. Murphy had optioned the book back in 2014, a year after it was published.Įmpty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune was written by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr. Di Loreto, in fact, previously worked closely with Ryan Murphy, exec producing series including Glee and American Horror Story. At the RTL-owned producer and distributor, the project comes from Dante Di Loreto, President of Scripted Programming in the U.S.

Empty mansions the mysterious life of huguette clark