Thursday 24 November 2022 01:26 AM Armie Hammer seen for first time since oil baron father Michael's death trends now

Disgraced actor Armie Hammer was seen for the first time following his businessman father Michael’s passing at age 67 after a prolonged battle with cancer.

The Call Me By Your Name star, 36, looked somber while making his way through his Venice neighborhood on foot Wednesday.

Armie has yet to comment publicly on Michael's death, though a family rep did confirm the news Tuesday. 

Armie's hair looked unkempt and he had a noticeable handlebar mustache.

He sported a stained and tattered graphic tee which he styled with slim pants and white Birkenstock sandals.

Armie was captured wearing the exact same outfit on October 25. 

The Man From Uncle actor strolled solo through the desolate seaside community, with just a single female jogger passing by him.

Hammer's father, who worked in investment banking before taking over family firm Occidental Petroleum, passed away on Sunday.

A family representative confirmed the news Tuesday, saying in a statement: 'Michael Hammer has passed away after a long, hard fight with cancer.'

The spokesperson added the millionaire oil mogul 'is now at peace.'

Aside from his 36-year-old son Armie, Michael is survived by his wife Misty and younger son Viktor, 34. He also leaves behind an ex-wife in Dru Ann Mobley, Armie's and Viktor's mother. The pair divorced in 2012 after 27 years of marriage.

Best known for his ties to Occidental, Michael reportedly inherited a $40million dollar fortune from his late grandfather, industrialist Armand Hammer, who ran the company until his death in 1990.

His death comes just months after his actor son - once among Hollywood's A-list elite but now a struggling addict at the center of several scandals - traveled back to LA from the Cayman Islands, where he was spotted selling timeshares at a resort in July.

A source at the time said Armie was working the gig because he 'needs the money' because his father 'won't help him anymore and he's been cut off.'

That decision came shortly after Armie found himself at the center of a LAPD investigation, when a woman claimed the actor 'violently raped' her.

It has since been revealed that his late father also led a checkered life, being embroiled in one New York City 's biggest art fraud scandals and reportedly keeping a sex dungeon in the Armand Hammer Foundation headquarters in Carpinteria.

Insiders have also claimed the businessman had 'the mindset of a teenage boy', as well as a twisted sex drive that echoes similar allegations surrounding his embattled son - who, if not for his recent trouble, would likely inherit his family's empire.

Michael is the son of Julian Hammer - a hotheaded Hammer scion who killed a man over a gambling debt in the 50s - and wife Sue Kane, who was from Texas.

Julian allegedly sexually abused his daughter Casey, and did not follow in his industrialist father's footsteps like his son eventually would.

The family also had roots to the old Russian empire, with Michael's paternal grandmother, Russian-born actress Baroness Olga von Root, being the daughter of a czarist general.

The strange past of the Hammer family was unearthed in a Vanity Fair exposé last year which claimed many of the men in the well-to-do family, going back as far as five generations, had a unmistakable 'dark side.'

It provided a backdrop to Armie's life and upbringing, and sheds light on why the actor's recent scandals - including recently leaked text messages from the actor to a woman he was trying to woo in which he aired twisted fantasies of cannibalism and BDSM with his would-be lover.

Several women have since spoke out accusing the Lone Ranger star of emotional abuse and similar violent sexual escapades.

One of those accusers, 22-year-old Paige Lorenze, told the magazine Armie had confided in her about the 'dark stuff' in his family and was 'proud' of it.

Lorenze claimed Armie's mother Dru - who reportedly helped tame MIchael's playboy lifestyle during their marriage - confided in her that she was fearful her son was lost to 'the devil'.

Michael, meanwhile, inherited the family business empire from his grandfather Armand, who made his fortune investing his third wife's money in Occidental starting in the late 50s.

According to Vanity Fair, cash also came from 'wide-ranging grifts, including laundering money, using artwork to fund Soviet espionage, bribing his way into the oil business and knocking off Fabergé eggs'.

Armand would then leave most of his family members high and dry when he died in 1990, apart from apple of his eye Michael, who took the lion's share of his grandfather's fortune.

While her brother Michael inherited two art galleries, two foundations and a sizable chunk of the multi-million dollar fortune, his sister Casey - Julian's daughter and Armie's estranged aunt - told Vanity Fair her father received just $250,000 of the fortune.

The divvying of the magnate's assets came as a shock and led to rifts that wrangled through the courts.

Last year, Casey said she had just $100 in her savings account and was holding down a job at Home Depot due to her father Julian, Arman's only son, being disinherited years before, due to out-of-control behavior that reportedly saw him abuse members of the family.

'If you would have told me in my 20s that I would end up financially challenged, single, and working at Home Depot, I would have bet you a million dollars that wouldn't have happened,' she said.

Casey detailed the dark secrets about her family’s history in a Discovery+ docuseries titled 'House of Hammer', including allegations her father would shoot guns at her and allegedly battered their mother, Glenna Hammer, leaving her covered in blood, before their divorce.

She said she thought Michael could help, given his fortune. She said just one of the family paintings he has would help her get on her feet - however, before his death Tuesday, the pair never reconciled.

Michael's mother Glenna, meanwhile previously told The Washington Post her son 'forgot about us' after he came into the money from his grandfather in the early 90s.

At the time, he also started offloading some of the family's legacy, handing the Hammer Museum to the UCLA art department in 1994 and asking the Metropolitan Museum of Art to remove Armand's name from the Hall of Arms and Armor so he didn't have to pay the remaining $1 million.

Michael then moved his family - Dru, Armie and Armie's brother Viktor - to the Cayman Islands before returning to California around a decade later.

In 2011 - at the height of Armie's stardom - Michael's galleries became embroiled in a huge art scam that went back almost two decades when the Knoedler Gallery and its former director Ann Freedman were sued for selling a fake Jackson Pollock painting.

Michael had inherited the Knoedler Gallery in New York City from his grandfather, who had bought the business in 1971 for $2.5million.

Accusations of a forgery ring surfaced in 2009 but only became public in 2011 when the gallery closed and hedge fund executive Pierre Lagrange sued the gallery and its director after he was sold the forged Pollock for $17million.

A probe into the allegations uncovered an alleged $70million fraudulent ring selling counterfeit paintings going back to 1994.

It turned out the paintings were actually the work of a relatively unknown artist in Queens.

Ten lawsuits were settled and one case went to trial in 2016 with Sotheby's chairman Domenico De Sole and his wife Eleanor accusing the gallery of selling them a fake Mark Rothko for $8.3million.

Although Michael was not personally accused of wrongdoing in the fraud ring, during court testimony it was claimed he had been using the gallery's funds for his personal expenses including two luxury cars and a trip to Paris.

But Michael never answered to the allegations as the case was settled just an hour before he was due to testify.

One source told Vanity Fair this was all part of the family's penchant for 'spending other people's money' as they called them the 'lucky sperm club.'

'We call these guys the lucky sperm club here,' the insider said. Never accomplished anything. They know a whole lot about spending other people's money.'

Other habits that allegedly run in the family include a fondness for kinky sex, with a former friend of Michael's saying he was 'not the least bit surprised' when he heard the allegations about Armie's sex life.

The friend - as well as two other sources - told Vanity Fair Michael bragged about having a sex throne inside the family business's HQ.

The chair is reportedly about 'seven feet high, features a chair with a hole in the seat, a cage underneath, and a hook' with the Hammer coat of arms painted on the seat.

According to the report, a smiling Michael is pictured in a photo sitting on top of the throne while holding the head of a smiling blonde woman, who is sitting in the cage below.

Counsel for Michael and the Armand Hammer Foundation told Vanity Fair the claims about his sex throne, drug and alcohol use, finances, and history with women were 'absurd'.

'These questions, which ask about unsolicited gag gifts sent by friends, conduct that sounds pretty typical of recently-divorced people, and entirely legal financial transactions that were properly accounted for, are absurd,' said the counsel.

But friends told the outlet he 'has the mindset of a teenage boy', would send x-rated photos to his friends and embarked on 'a string of women, illicit substances, and tattoos' after his split from Dru.

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