Family Feud : Orange County Heiress Denies Son’s Contention That She Shunned His Wedding Last Month Because of Bride’s Working-Class Roots

To hear Morton Irvine Smith tell the story, he gave up $100 million for love.

The young Huntington Beach mutual funds salesman, a presumed heir to one of Southern California’s wealthiest founding clans, would not be denied the “love of my life” even if Mom could not deal with his fiancee’s working-class Boston roots.

So, when young Morton would not cancel his date at the altar with Marianne Campbell two weeks ago, Orange County’s Joan Irvine Smith--as told by Morton--simply voided her son’s inheritance.

The story, according to Morton, mirrors King Edward VIII’s celebrated abdication of power and wealth to marry the love of his life, Wallis Warfield Simpson.

But behind the very private walls of his parents’ estates in San Juan Capistrano and Middleburg, Va., they are telling a much different story.

In a rare interview, Joan Irvine Smith confirmed only one element of the story: “that (the marriage) will be a continuing cause of estrangement of Morton from the rest of the family.”

“The fact that she comes from a middle-class family has nothing to do with it,” said Smith, comfortably sunk in a living-room chair with bare feet propped up on a puffy ottoman. “It was how she conducted herself over the 10 years I’ve known her. She was very antagonistic toward my relationship with my son.”

As for the remainder of the tale, she said, “I trust that many will put as much credence in this story as in the periodic rumors that Elvis lives.”

And she takes particular umbrage at the fact that Morton invited the National Enquirer to cover his wedding.

“Morton’s actions have now created the public spectacle of talk show debate and continued media attention, which have caused even greater strain on family relationships than his marriage to Marianne Campbell,” she said.

According to Morton’s father, Morton Whister (Cappy) Smith, the real story could be taken straight from the script of the movie “Arthur,” with young Morton playing the lead role of a care-free, carousing party animal who has done his best to embarrass the family.

It is a role, his dad suggested, that Morton has played better than Dudley Moore did on the big screen.

“The kid is nothing more than a bum,” the elder Smith said, adding that “the boy” struck a fatal blow in their father-son relationship when a wedding guest told the National Enquirer that Cappy Smith did not attend because he feared being cut off from his ex-wife’s payroll.

“When you act common, you are a commoner,” said the legendary 79-year-old horseman who runs his own horse breeding operation. “Nobody with an ounce of sense would do that to his family. As far as I’m concerned he’s not my son. I don’t love him. I think he’s a s---.” For a family whose members closely guard their privacy, the public airing of such personal matters is unusual but far from unprecedented.

For decades, Joan Irvine Smith has fought very public battles with the Irvine Co.--the vast barony founded by her great-grandfather--in attempts to protect her inheritance. In her last legal bout with the company, she won a $149 million judgment for the family’s share of the real estate empire sold in 1983.

Perhaps the family’s most intriguing drama, however, played out in 1959 but still remains a mystery in some quarters. In what is known as the “double-bullet suicide,” Myford Plum Irvine, then president of the Irvine Co., was found dead in the family ranch house after suffering shotgun blasts in the abdomen and head.

Thirty-five years after the fact, rumors continue to circulate that Irvine had rung up large Las Vegas gambling debts and that they may have been somehow related to his death. Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), a former Irvine Co. executive, said the prominent executive’s death became the subject of national speculation, particularly after a coroner ruled it a suicide.

“You’re talking about a family who owned one-fifth of an entire county,” Ferguson said. “No one’s ever written the real story about them. If it were, it would be one of the most interesting stories ever written about life in California.”

This is a family whose patriarchs and matriarchs have schmoozed with presidents, foreign dignitaries and movie stars, while largely avoiding the glitz and other trappings of celebrity. Not to mention the unflattering focus of the tabloid press.

But all that concern for discretion and decorum appeared to go out the window last month, when Morton, 29, set off a full-scale family feud by proceeding down the aisle with Campbell, a Long Beach nurse, trailed by Enquirer photographers and reporters.

Morton said he does not regret the decision to allow the tabloid to cover the event. He said he received no payment for the story, which Enquirer reporter Dani Cestaro described as having “romance and everything our readers are interested in.”

“I thought it would be fun to have them there,” Morton said of the paper. “I wasn’t looking for the cheap shot. . . . I thought middle-class America would eat this up.”

What has “sickened” him, however, in the days since his Sept. 16 nuptials is the article’s reference to his father and the purported reason that he, like Morton’s mother, did not attend the ceremony.

“My father is like a god to me,” Morton said. “He is the definition of a gentleman. He is the finest rider who ever lived and the world knows it. I had no idea about the severity with which (the Enquirer) was approaching this thing. I told them that my dad was not to be discussed. . . . I wonder whether my kids will ever get to know my father now.”

Mother and father, however, contend that the Enquirer’s presence was invited out of sheer spite, a reflection of her youngest child’s “immaturity.”

“He has no conception of what marriage and commitment means,” said Joan Irvine Smith, 61, herself four times divorced. “He likes to throw his weight and name around, and he really has never done anything on his own. And some of this would become embarrassing to us.

“Morton doesn’t listen to anyone,” she said. “I’ve worked hard in my life. I didn’t sleep until noon and go out and drink all night. I was not in favor of any marriage for him right now, particularly not this marriage.”

Cappy Smith said: “He grew up laying around the pool with a beer in his hand nursing a hangover and waiting to start another one. How long would you like to watch that? Every man who has a son hopes for something great. He’s been a thorn in my side. He’s the black sheep of the family all right, with a big bell hanging round his neck.”

Though Morton is the only child from Cappy Smith’s 16-year marriage to Joan, which ended in divorce in 1979, the father said he feels closer to Joan’s two other sons, born in her previous marriages to Charles Swinden and Russell S. Penniman III.

“The other boys (James Irvine Swinden and Russell S. Penniman IV) graduated from good colleges,” Cappy Smith said. “Russell went to the Naval Academy, and Jimmy went to Wharton Business School. . . . All (Morton) carried was a belly full of beer.”

Morton admits that he has long been “accused of having too much fun.”

“At the dinner table, I could always tell a good story,” he said, laughing. He said the family does not appreciate how hard he has worked to become a successful mutual fund salesman.

“There’s not a bigger kick in the teeth than them saying, ‘We don’t think enough of your character to be (at the wedding),’ ” Morton said. “If my family were there, none of this would have happened.”

For Morton’s parents, though, their son’s character was not the only consideration in their decision not to bless the wedding.

Joan Irvine Smith disputed the contention that Campbell’s middle-class roots sparked the family’s disapproval of the marriage. “You can be from (working-class) Boston and conduct yourself like a lady. It had nothing to do with her background.”

Irvine Smith and Campbell, a 30-year-old pediatric oncology nurse at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, both admit that their relationship was rocky from the start. And it did not improve even after Irvine Smith took Campbell on a chauffeur-driven shopping spree in Beverly Hills shortly after they met.

Campbell, who has likened the venture to the make-over in the movie “Pretty Woman,” said Irvine Smith wanted to buy her a new wardrobe because Morton’s mother “didn’t like the way I dressed.”

Irvine Smith said Campbell was generally ungrateful.

In the years after, Irvine Smith said, she always hoped that the relationship would somehow “go off the track” it was on. But, she said, the “last straw” came at a family Christmas dinner three years ago.

With the whole clan--including family matriarch Athalie Clarke--assembled at The Oaks ranch in San Juan Capistrano, Irvine Smith said her three sons stood--one by one--to pay tribute to her with toasts. When it was Morton’s turn, Irvine Smith said, Campbell “rose from her seat and shouted, ‘Goddammit, Morton, stop brown-nosing your mother!’ ”

After that, Irvine Smith said, the room “fell dead silent and Morton struggled to complete his toast. It was terrible.”

Morton said his mother’s version of events is inaccurate at best. At the time, Morton said, he and his wife were seated at a side table when Campbell made a private quip. Morton said that it was not disparaging in any way toward his mother and that Campbell did not stand or shout, as his mother suggests.

“God, I didn’t even know this was a big deal,” Morton said. “You’re talking about someone who is paranoid here. My mother is the type of person who thinks there are cameras everywhere and guns are pointed at her back.

“She gets her information from a network of untruths that are forming her reality about me. I have nothing against my parents. I love my parents. In a lot of ways, I think I’m just like my parents.”

In the past few days, Joan Irvine Smith has been listening as the family feud has taken wings. It has been the subject of radio talk shows, on which gossipy hosts have been trading quips at the expense of the Irvine family name.

And residents, some familiar with the family and its long history in Orange County, have been listening.

Ferguson said he was somewhat taken aback when he heard of Irvine Smith’s reaction to her son’s determination to go his own way and against her wishes, because of “her own history” as fiercely independent in personal and business affairs. “This is out of character for her.

“I would have thought she would be proud of her kid for cutting out on his own,” Ferguson said. “She certainly hasn’t lived life according to society’s established rules. There may be more to this than we need to know, or have a right to know.”

Though she has had limited contact with Joan Irvine Smith, former Irvine Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan said the story does not surprise her.

“She’s not somebody I would consider to be a warm and fuzzy person,” Sheridan said. “She wants what she wants. A lot of rich people own and disown their kids. When you parallel their lives with other wealthy people from Newport Beach or other places, I don’t think it would be much different.”

How concerned is Irvine Smith about how this is playing in Orange County society circles?

“Hopefully,” she said, “people will see this for what it is. A lot of people I have heard from don’t understand how any son could attack his mother over personal differences.”

The Orange County Dynasty

The recent marriage of Morton Irvine Smith is at the center of a controversy that has split one of Orange County’s founding families. Morton and his mother, Joan, are at the end of one of the three branches of the Irvine family, beginning with Joan Irvine Smith’s great-grandfather.

Great-grandfather: James Irvine

Great-grandmother: Nettie Rice

Grandfather and Irvine Co. founder: James (J.I.) Irvine II

Grandmother: Frances Anita Plum

Father: James (Jase) Irvine III

Mother: Athalie Anita Richardson Irvine Clarke

Only Child: Athalie Anita (Joan) Irvine Smith

Husband: Charles Swinden

Son: James Irvine Swinden (1953- )

Husband: Russell S. Penniman III

Son: Russell S. Penniman IV (1957- )

Husband: Richard Dean Burt

Husband: Morton Whister (Cappy) Smith

Son: Morton Irvine Smith (1965- )

Sources: “The Irvine Ranch: A Time for People,” by Martin A. Brower, “Bears to Briquets: A History of Irvine Park 1897-1997,” by Jim Sleeper, Times reports

Researched by CAROLINE LEMKE / Los Angeles Times