OSTERVILLE — In the movies, a
handsome, bored millionaire would wreck his yacht on shore. Wandering around a
deserted estate, he would meet a beautiful woman, fall in love, and only later
learn that his true love was a ghost. He paid millions for her estate just to
live out his life near her.
The real-life story is also
about love, money and real estate.
When she died in 1991, movie
star Lee Remick left her waterfront Osterville estate overlooking North Bay to
her two children and husband of 21 years, producer William “Kip” Gowans.
Seventeen years later, her
husband is trying to sell the house, worth millions, and the two grown children
are in court trying to find out how much the house and furnishings are worth.
The three heirs now stand to
split millions when somebody buys the 1934 landmark and deepwater 100-foot
dock, one of only two houses on Pine Island, connected to Osterville by a
bridge and causeway.
There’s interest but “no check
yet,” real estate agent Jack Largay said about the one-of-kind house with
unobstructed 360-degree views of Osterville Harbor and Nantucket Sound.
The view “from the third level
is “probably as good as you can find anywhere on Cape Cod, “ Largay said.
Remick was no stranger to the
Cape. Her first acting job was at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis when she was
just 16. She grew up in Quincy where her family owned Remick’s Department
Store. By the time she bought the 1934 Osterville property in 1979, she was the
Hollywood star of such films as “The Days of Wine and Roses” with Jack Lemmon
and “The Omen” with Gregory Peck.
Remick and her family enjoyed
12 years off and on in Osterville before she died in 1991 of cancer at age 55.
Since her death, the
six-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom Colonial on two acres exploded in value from $2
million in 1995 to its current price of $8.8 million.
The property’s value soared as
Gowans continued to live in Osterville after his wife’s death. Under Remick’s
will, he could stay on in their home until he died or left.
“She died in 1991, and he’s
been there on his own all that time,” said Edward Kirk of Osterville, Gowans’
lawyer. “He was quite content there.”
But Gowans, now in his 70s,
moved out of the country a year or so ago to live with a daughter, Kirk said.
Gowans’ departure triggered marketing of the house, listed for $9.9 million
early last year.
“It’s in the best interests of
all three (heirs) that the house be sold, because it’s very expensive to
maintain,” said John Conathan II, the Yarmouthport lawyer representing Matthew Colleran
and Kate Minelian, Remick’s children from her first marriage. The tax
bill alone is $36,000 a year for the property, which is assessed at $4.82
million.
Early this year, the two
children asked Barnstable Probate Court to order an inventory of the estate.
When nothing happened by an April deadline, they asked the court to appoint
Conathan as trustee in place of their stepfather and their mother’s former
business adviser, Patricia Black.
“They haven’t properly
accounted to the beneficiaries or kept them informed of financial matters,”
said Conathan, who met Remick through mutual friends and regarded her as a
friend.
By last week’s deadline, there
were no objections to the children’s request, awaiting a hearing in Barnstable
Probate Court. Black’s lawyer, Pamela Veasey of Boston, didn’t return a call
for comment.
Gowans “didn’t really object to
the request for a new trustee,” Kirk said, adding, “We were trying to sell the
house anyway.”
The Osterville house is the
last unknown in Remick’s overall estate, once estimated at $3.4 million.
But with the Osterville home
will go a place of many memories.
Remick’s daughter, Kate Minelian,
told the Boston Business Journal this spring that she spent 12 summers and two
full winters at the Osterville house, and “it will always be in my soul.”
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