Now in her mid-70s, JC needed her parents' counsel as desperately as ever.
Even if it was only for a fleeting moment, through a shaky connection to the afterlife.
As JC tells it, she could feel her mother’s spirit in the room.
But it was her father who spoke to her.
“Forgive me for the mess I’ve left you,” he said.
“You are creative, you matter,” he assured his daughter.
“Just do it.”
JC weeps from the memory, as she often does when she talks about her parents.
It was advice, throughout her life, that she had experienced as both a birthright and a burden.
Now, like her dad in his later years, JC is alone.
Her family is mostly gone, and she’s fallen out with her many famous friends.
I wonder if JC’s story is one of history repeating itself.
Others, I learn, have similar worries.
“No one knows I’m alive,” she tells me.
“I don’t talk.
I’m ruled by the men.
That’s the bottom line.”
“I want it all,” she says.
“I have none of it.”
JC’s gated property sits on half an acre of land, surrounded by towering palm trees.
Inside, though, the house feels strangely devoid of life.
What passes for interior design is mostly Marvel kitsch.
The marble-floored entryway boasts not one but three lifesize models of Spider-Man.
Pages of her own artwork are scattered everywhere.
They’re lovely abstract, wavy designs sketched in colored pencil and crayon.
In the garage, there are stacks upon stacks of paintings she has done over the decades.
Even more, she tells me, are gathering dust in her parents' home up the road.
There’s a screening room, a pool, and a sauna.
The master bathroom has no sink.
She doesn’t know why there aren’t any sinks in the bathroom.
Similarly, the many projects that consume her remain stuck in the concept phase.
She calls it “Where Is Stan Lee?”
“I think it’s Shakespearean,” she tells me.
Another preoccupation is money.
JC doesn’t seem to know how much of it she has, or how long it will last.
She charges everything to an Amex card.
As we talk, two friends of JC’s keep a close watch on us.
The other is Eymun Talasazan, who is visibly annoyed at my presence.
Tall and well-built, he’s clearly the alpha of the three.
Gargiulo sees me out.
“Just another day in paradise,” he says.
For as long as Joan Celia Lee can remember, she wanted to be like her dad.
Her mother, Joan Boocock, was a British hat model and actor.
When JC was 3, her newborn sister died.
Stan and Joan channeled their grief into becoming overprotective parents to JC.
“I was cross-eyed.
I was a bit of a misfit.
I was too skinny,” JC tells me.
I got a lot of animals."
But when the family went to fetch their new pet, it immediately made a pass at Big Joan.
“It grabbed her bosom,” JC recalls.
“It was horny.”
Stan had a change of heart.
“No monkey,” he announced.
Instead, JC wound up getting a parrot that spoke Spanish.
In 1961, with the release of “The Fantastic Four,” Stan became a full-fledged celebrity.
From an early age, JC yearned to follow in his footsteps.
“I’ve always been terribly ambitious,” she says.
“She was so stunning, and so pretty, and so nice,” she says.
I asked, ‘Are you OK, Mr. And he said, ‘Yeah, but in my mind it was a sea monster!'"
“I thought, OK, he’s a little strange,” Luft recalls.
“I didn’t know what he did for a living.”
As Stan’s success grew, the pampering of JC became more lavish.
“We just spend his money gleefully.”
JC describes her attitude toward personal finance in similar terms.
Though she shared a name with her mother, JC’s personality was closer to Stan’s.
“They’re both overwhelming people,” Larry Leiber, Stan’s 93-year-old brother, tells me.
“They both have a strong presence.”
As she grew older, JC had trouble finding her way.
“I was supposed to be a debutante,” she says.
“But I had two passionate parents.”
She enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but dropped out after a year.
She did some modeling, and her parents set her up in an apartment across the hall from theirs.
At one point Stan got her a job at Marvel as a receptionist.
His impression was that “Stan was getting her something to do to stay busy.”
It lasted only a few months.
“I knew everything that was happening with everyone in town at night,” she says.
“I had great stories and had a good time.”
One night at a bar, she found herself sitting next to Eric Clapton.
That’s the worst name I’ve ever heard."
He suggested an improvement: JC Lee.
“I’m really a phenomenal muse,” she says.
(Tigrett did not respond to a request for comment.)
But the relationship didn’t last.
“Broadway wasn’t waiting for my dancing; modeling wasn’t waiting for me,” she says.
“My parents took me in.”
The host asked JC what she did for a living.
“At the moment I’m pursuing an acting career,” she replied.
“But it’s moving a little bit faster than I can catch it.”
“Me,” she replied.
One of her confidants was the celebrity photographerHarry Langdon, whose father was a star of the silent screen.
He could relate to the difficulties Joan was experiencing from having a famous parent.
“Stan wanted her to be creative,” he recalls.
The trouble was that JC didn’t want to part with any of her works.
Langdon recalls JC selling one piece for about $75,000, only to later ask for it back.
“She missed her artwork,” he says.
Though by all accounts a devoted and loving family man, Stan grumbled constantly about JC’s spending.
“They get very bored if I even discuss the subject.
All they want is the paycheck every week.”
JC didn’t like being dependent on her father.
“No one wanted me to work,” she tells me.
“I think I was their pet.”
“I wouldn’t mind helping contribute,” she tells Stan.
“That would be the greatest contribution.”
As JC tried to find a place for herself, her social circle began to change.
“She got acquainted with some people that were a little more business-oriented,” he recalls.
But her father’s creative genius didn’t always translate into great business sense.
That last clause, had he held on to it, would have been a gold mine.
But when Stan didn’t receive his promised 10%, he sued.
For Stan, who was in his 80s, it must have seemed like a generous deal.
Instead, he had given away the keys to his kingdom.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe went on to become the world’s highest-grossing film franchise.
Most of his money came from trying to cash in on his name.
In 1999, he formed Stan Lee Media, followed by POW Entertainment.
Both quickly descended into scandal, accused of mismanagement and ripping off investors.
But her most successful projects were those that relied on her father’s name.
“When that happened she stopped supporting the T-shirt,” MacLean says.
JC had lost her best friend at the very moment her father’s wealth was drying up.
“It was a very difficult and sad time,” MacLean says.
“I never ever touched my parents,” she tells me.
“It was a lie.”
“They were equally abusive, the way they screamed at each other,” MacLean recalls.
“But then it would be like, ‘Let’s sit down and have dinner.’
That was their relationship.”
With Big Joan gone, Stan grew increasingly isolated.
By 2018, the people in his inner circle had been driven out.
(The case was dismissed after a jury failed to reach a verdict.)
One of the world’s greatest artists was abandoned and alone, with only his daughter by his side.
In the background, he could hear Stan calling out, “Is that Hairspray?”
the nickname Stan had given him.
Bolerjack, who hadn’t seen his friend in months, rushed over to the house.
The comic book icon looked to have aged a decade.
I just need you to help me,'" Bolerjack tells me, choking up at the recollection.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘just don’t let me down.'”
JC remembers her father’s final days as filled with regret.
“He was worried about me.
Were there any happy moments at the end?
I wish there was.”
On November 12, 2018, Stan Lee collapsed at his home.
“I said no.
He appeared to be gone.”
Stan was pronounced dead from a heart attack.
The house is missing siding, and Big Joan’s once meticulous landscaping is overgrown.
Incongruously, two pristine cars sit in the driveway.
I wonder who is using Stan’s oasis as a parking lot.
I notice that a chair with worn green fabric has been brought into the room.
JC tells me it was a favorite of Stan’s, and invites me to sit in it.
“My father is supporting everyone,” JC says.
He recalls Stan’s “constant” complaints about JC’s spending and considers her spoiled.
JC has made other attempts to gain control of Stan’s empire.
The case is pending.
“She just really wanted to know Stan was proud of her,” Bolerjack says.
“She wanted to make her dad proud.”
Despite her legal setbacks, JC remains buzzing with ideas, but short on allies.
Talasazan seems as grumpy about my presence as he was on my first visit.
As Gargiulo recounts it, Stan looked at him and put his hand on Gargiulo’s knee.
“Look, is this going to help my daughter?”
“Of course,” Garguilo assured him.
“OK, that’s all I wanted to see to it of,” Lee said.
He gave the project his blessing, but nothing ever came of it.
Talasazan, for his part, has been trailed by controversy.
(He dropped the lawsuit a year later).
Gargiulo is worried that Talasazan is taking advantage of JC.
“Eymun just screams at JC about doing what has to be done and ‘signing these papers.’
I would say, ‘There’s no reason to scream at her.’
There’s something not right here.”
“Just shut your mouth!”
JC tells me that Talasazan convinced her to list her home for sale last year for $8.8 million.
“I need the money,” she says.
She’s unclear on precisely how they and Talasazan stand to benefit from supporting her cause.
“It’s men things.
I don’t understand a lot of this.
“I’m not a part of anything,” Gargiulo says he responded.
“She’s my friend.”
Talasazan arranged a time to speak with me, but then stopped responding to my calls and texts.
“I would be dead in the water if not for E,” she says of Talasazan.
“If you want to find imperfect, you’re able to always find it.”
The reality is, like many heiresses, JC really never had a shot at a normal life.
“I’m sad that we weren’t close,” Larry tells me.
“I’m glad we’re able to talk now because she wants family.
At my age, I can’t come to California and slay dragons.
But I do care about her.”
Speaking with Stan’s brother brought me back to my final visit with JC.
He tried to give her everything, and he left her with next to nothing.
For JC, the privilege he provided her is inseparable from the pain she has suffered.
“I had a wonderful life,” she tells me.
“And I knew I’d pay a price for it.”
Jason Guerrasiois an entertainment correspondent at Business Insider.
