Respect Authority

In what could be called the series finale of the longest running soap opera in American history, Martha “Sunny” Sharp Crawford Auersperg von Bülow died yesterday, after a 28 year long coma. I know. Who the hell is that? This is the question that has shocked me for the last 24 hours when I walked around exclaiming to friends, family members, and strangers on the street “oh my god, Sunny von Bülow died today!”  and no one knew what I was talking about. Not a single person. Her story, as her death, is a tragedy, albeit her life as she knew it has been over for nearly three decades.

Born at the epicenter of Manhattan’s cultural and societal elite, Sunny (the former Martha Sharp Craford) was nicknamed by her parents, after her cheery disposition. She married young, to an Austrian tennis pro, Prince (oh yeah, also a prince) Alfred von Auersperg, had two children, and was divorced in 1965. She remarried the next year to a Danish-German noble named Claus von Bülow, the son of a Nazi collaborator (his grandmother also famously had a passionate love affair with the composer Robert Wagner). Claus and Sunny had a tumultuous marriage, and after 13 years, each spoke publicly about seeking a divorce, especially considering Claus’s public and adulterous affair with soap opera star Alexandra Isles.

After a lengthy argument heard by the couple’s maid the previous night, Sunny was found unconscious on the floor of her bathroom on the cold morning of December 22, 1980 with the window pushed open.
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