Former 1960s bondage-film actress is waging legal combat for ownership of the SeaMonkeys fortune
Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut is a onetime heir to the considerable fortune still generated by her husband Harold’s iconic invention, Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys. As her lawyer told it, she was now isolated, cash-starved, often without electricity or running water on a palatial estate on the Potomac River in southern Maryland. Having retreated to a single room in the old mansion, she was prepping for her second freezing winter, barricaded by thick quilts, her bed next to a fireplace stocked with split wood. From this bunker, Signorelli von Braunhut has been waging legal combat against Sam Harwell, chief executive of a big-time toy company whose name seems straight out of a Chuck Jones cartoon: Big Time Toys. NY Times
I had SeaMonkeys as a kid in the 70s, but the pinnacle of my love for the brine shrimp was when I persuaded my then-employer, Another.com, to install a SeaMonkey cam on my desk in 2000. In 2000! What other wonders would this Internet future conceive?