Reclusive star leaves $11.7m Manhattan estate to butler

It was the last flourish of an erstwhile grande dame of Gotham society whose home in the Dakota Building once brimmed with the likes of Tennessee Williams, Capote and Warhol.

Upon her death, the actress Ruth Ford bequeathed the flat and everything in it not to her daughter but to her trusty butler.

Whether Ford knew it or not during her fading days we will never know, but by naming the Nepali-American Indra Tamang, her servant of several decades, as the beneficiary of her will, she has caused quite the scandal in the venerable Dakota on the western edge of Central Park in Manhattan.

As of now, Tamang, 57, who was born in a mud-hut village outside Kathmandu and, after 20 years of trying, won United States citizenship last year, is the owner of his former mistress's three-bedroom Dakota apartment and the collection of paintings by the Russian surrealist Pavel Tchelitchew that hangs inside it.

He also received a second studio apartment in the same building that was once occupied by Ford's poet-artist brother, Charles Henri Ford.

But the inheritance has come with a few kinks, not least the seven-figure tax bill he will be receiving from Uncle Sam. The impending demand has persuaded him to put the bigger of the two apartments on the market.

With neighbours like Yoko Ono - the Dakota was where husband John Lennon was shot dead in 1980 - and Lauren Bacall, it is a steal at just US$4.5 million ($6.2 million).

But the Dakota is a co-operative building where residents own shares, not bricks. A co-op building has a co-op board that sets the rules; in the case of the Dakota it is going to be conservative and pernickety. Is it about to allow a former butler to occupy either one of the apartments in the building he has come to control? Heavens, no.

Not that the modestly miened Tamang is complaining. Indeed, if he is destined to remain in his small family home in Queens with his wife and three daughters, he will have no cause to complain.

"Whenever you have a roof and clothes and food I think one should always be happy," Tamang told CBS News yesterday.

Tamang, who was brought to America by Ford's brother Charles in 1974, when he was in his 20s, avers no great surprise. "This is my second family and I think they considered me family, too. I am grateful, I am honoured, I am humbled by their generosity."

While Ford's biological daughter, Shelley Scott - whose godfather was Orson Welles - did file an objection to the will's terms, a settlement was reached and, through lawyers, she has communicated that she is "very happy" for Tamang, the Wall Street Journal reported. Only costume jewellery and clothing were not bequeathed to the butler after her death last year aged 98. The estate he received was valued at US$8.4 million ($11.7 million).

Ford worked for years as a model and drew mixed reviews starring in an adaptation of William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun at the Royal Court in London in 1957. She had a brief first marriage to actor Peter van Eyck, with whom he had Shelley. She later married a Texas actor, Zachary Scott, who adopted her daughter.

In the years after the 2002 death of her brother Charles, Ford became a virtual recluse in her apartment attended by nurses under the loyal supervision of Tamang as her own health failed.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL ...

Leona Helmsley
The late hotelier - known as New York's "Queen of Mean" - left a trust fund of US$12 million ($17 million) for her white Maltese dog, Trouble, when she died in August 2007. A court the following year reduced the payment to US$2 million for the dog that lived in Florida at a Helmsley hotel. The remainder of the US$10 million was diverted to Helmsley's charitable foundation. Helmsley, who was convicted of tax evasion in 1989, cut most of her family out of her will. Trouble became the target of many death threats and reportedly had round-the-clock security at a cost of US$100,000 a year.

Mark Gruenwald
Gruenwald, an editor of Marvel Comics who died in the US in 1996, left a will stipulating that his heirs should cremate his body and blend the ashes with ink to make a comic book. They carried out his wishes and 4000 copies of the edition of his Squadron Supreme comic book were printed.

McNair Ilgenfritz
The opera lover left most of his US$150,000 estate to the Metropolitan Opera in 1953 as long as the company staged one of his operas. The offer was declined.

- Independent