Ryan O’Neal can keep an Andy Warhol painting of his late, long-time love Farrah Fawcett, an LA jury ruled Thursday night.
The artwork’s ownership had been hotly contested during a three-week trial in which O’Neal – who’d taken the painting from Fawcett’s home after her death – had to relive the ups and downs of his years-long, on-again, off-again romance with the blonde Charlie’s Angels” icon.
The ruling was a loss for Fawcett’s alma mater, the University of Texas, which had argued unsuccessfully that Fawcett had left the painting to them.
“I talk to it,” O’Neal had told jurors of the painting, which he called one of his strongest reminders of his nearly three-decade romance with Fawcett. O’Neal admitted that he had taken the painting from her condominium within days of the TV star’s death in June, 2009.
“I talk to her. It’s her presence. Her presence in my life. In her son’s life,” O’Neal had testified, referring to his and Fawcett’s kid, Redmond O’Neal.
Warhol had created the portrait in 1980. Jurors were told is worth anywhere from $800,000 to $12 million. O’Neal has insisted he won’t sell it, but will instead keep it in his beachside home and pass it down someday to Redmond.
The trial took an emotional toll on O’Neal.
Texas lawyers hassled O’Neal about an embarrassing 1997 incident when Farrah dropped by his Malibu pad unannounced and caught him him in the arms of Leslie Ann Stefanson, star of “The General’s Daughter,” who was 25 at the time of their tryst.
At that time, O’Neal was hanging the disputed Warhol piece at his place and UT claimed Farrah immediately took it back from him.
But O’Neal said he asked Fawcett, the next year, to keep the work for him because it was mood killer for women he was romancing at home. The paintings then traveled back and forth for years between their places, O’Neal said.
Warhol had painted multiple portraits of Fawcett, and O’Neal insisted to jurors that the artist had given the disputed work as a gift for his arranging the portrait session.
Texas lawyers showed jurors footage from a “20/20” segment which they said proved O’Neal was nowhere to be seen when the portraits were painted. The lawyers also showed jurors footage Fawcett’s reality show in which the actress told an auction house owner that she had two Warhol portraits and was thinking of selling one.
With Post Wire Services