Porgy, Bess and Ira Gershwin's Executor

According to this article, the only existing Technicolor road-show print of Porgy and Bess is being shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday.  This story has a probate connection because of comments previously made by Ira Gershwin's executor:

The Gershwin family never liked the film because they felt it was too "Hollywood." In a 1993 interview with The Times, Michael Strunksy, trustee and executor of Ira Gershwin's estate, raised eyebrows and the ire of film historians and preservationists when he stated "we [the estate] now acquire any prints we find and destroy them."

This raises an interesting question about an executor's job.  Usually the executor is charged with maximizing the value of an estate's assets.  How do Mr. Strunksy's comments accomplish this?  Is it more important to maximize asset values, or to be "true" to what the decedent wanted?  This reminds me of Franz Kafka as well, since Mr. Kafka asked his literary executor (Max Brod) to destroy all of his manuscripts upon his death.  (Mr. Brod obviously disobeyed this order.)

Comments

[Darby Bowman]

Your questions bring to my mind a case some years ago (in Texas?) where a decedent wanted to be buried in his cadillac and a court refused to permit that, on grounds that the Personal Representative has no authority to deliberately destroy assets that have a value.