And that wasnt the only ill-advised thing she did. Shed had a brief, unhappy marriage to a doctor in the early 1960s. It was Rebekah Harkness - whose second of four husbands, William H. Harkness, died in August 1954 in The Westerly Hospital after being stricken by a heart attack in the mansion - who patronized . She developed an addiction to injections of B-vitamins, painkillers and testosterone. The Harknesses were married for a brief periodjust seven years. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. When we do, we depend on our loyal, helpful readers to point out how we can do better. Maybe. He later said his time in prison was the happiest of his life. She died June 17, 1982. Putting mineral oil in the punch at her sisters debutante ball. For a time, Rebekah Harkness appeared to be enamored of the passive child, called Angel. In 1947, she married William Hale "Bill" Harkness, an attorney and heir to the Standard Oil fortune of William L. Harkness, which made her one of the wealthiest women in America. Little evidence is given in support of this thesis except that the two wrote a song together called ''Giggling With My Feet.''. Pierce. Rebekah Harkness's height Unknown & weight Not Available right. At least once, Harkness and her friends got up on a banquet table and performed a strip tease for the distinguished guests around them. That marriage lasted three years. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Nine servants and three cooks kept the place running. Even the governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, piled on, proposing a special tax on special homes worth more than a million dollars. One critic denounced it as the worst mural ever made. He was in prison. She was notorious along the eastern seaboard for her tacky, campy, new money sensibilities, and her Harkness Theater was the epitome of her gaudy aesthetic. Taylor Swift and Rebekah Harkness may have been born decades apart, but it seems they shared a talent for dominating the headlines. When Harkness was 24 years old, she decided it was high time to marry, and she chose Dickson W. Pierce, an upper-class photographer, as her first husband. When she died in 1982, Harkness had demanded her ashes be put in a $250,000 jeweled Salvador Dal urn. For what its worth, Allen called the years he spent in the clinkerand away from his motherthe happiest of his life.. In 2020, Swift then penned the song the last great american dynasty, which tells Harknesss twisted story for the world. I knew that she was going to take it badly, but I had no idea about the insane lengths she would go to just to get revenge and mess with my life. She dyed a cat green. The story of Rebekah Harkness is way more complicated than Taylor Swift lets on. She attended finishing school at Fermata in Aiken, South Carolina, from 1929 to 1932, before pursuing advanced instruction in harmonic . . Culture Taylor Swift Folk Albums Oil. Though Harkness didnt seem to care that he was using her, she probably should have. [1] Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. It is possible to write an edifying biography about an unedifying life. Although Catherine's successor Queen Anne Boleyn suffered an infamously dark fate, Aragon's own life was somehow even more tragic. The Harkness Foundation for Dance still exists. Did Mommy and Daddy notice? Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. When Swift bought the house, a local writer for The Day reminded her of the time a body washed up on the beach under her Watch Hill mansion. Harkness pulled this prank at her own sisters debutante ball. With that, Rebekahs unconditional love evaporated. As she aged, Rebekah started to live off of champagne and injections, including testosterone and an assortment of pain medications. As the saying goes, well-behaved women seldom make history. Unfortunately for Rebekah, the endeavour ended in national embarrassment and disaster. Oh, but they had more tricks up their perfectly-tailored sleeves. Her daughter Edith jumped off roofs, swallowed pills and managed not to kill herself. Bill adored the child, as he did his stepchildren, whom he treated as if they were his own. Rebekah Harkness was a 1900s socialite and it is a crazy story that includes the entire Harkness family from her ancestors to her four husbands to her children. The building, according to Craig Unger, the author of this rich-man/eye-of-the-needle biography, was in a state of putrefaction, ''crumbling like Tara after the Civil War.'' New York: William Morrow & Company. (You can see a video clip of Salvador Dali and Rebekah Harkness here.). Rebekah Harkness. Before joining the team, she worked as a course lecturer while completing her Ph.D. in English Literature. Being a patron of the ballet was Rebekahs passion. Before his death in August 1954, they had one child together; Edith Hale Harkness (19481982). 11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Rebekah Harkness, American composer, sculptor, and. Friends who knew Rebekah and William said that although the oil tycoon was a bit of an idiot, the new Mrs. Harkness was actually scared of himand for good reason. Taylor Swift bought the former Holiday House in 2013 for a reported $17.75 million in cash. Harkness, fittingly, belonged to an American dynasty. Please reach out to us to let us know what youre interested in reading. Salinger, hoping to convince him his stories should be set to her music. She shoved $5 million into building the Harkness Theater, a lavish studio complete with marble staircases and a chandelier, and it was all for nothing: The company collapsed in 1975. (I do admit, however, that I'd go a long way to read a sentence like this, spoken by Bertrand Castelli, the co-producer of ''Hair,'' about the time he made love to Rebekah Harkness in her office: ''It was as if we were two camels in the desert who suddenly know that the only way to make an oasis is to really talk sense.'' Obviously, Rebekah was completely out touch with realityso her next move makes sense. Lets start from the beginning. Allen Pierce, Rebekah's son by the first of her four husbands, was unable to be present. It was shaping up to be a white-picket fence brooduntil, that is, Rebekah proved herself to be an utterly horrific mother. Want to share other feedback? Historys most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily. [3] Harkness would also continue to study dance and piano, and studied ballet with Victoria Cassau, who was a student of Anna Pavlova. Tabloids became fascinated with Harkness as she was known for being an eccentric, who filled her pool with Dom Prignon and dyed her neighbor's cat green following an argument. Mr. Unger, who records interviews uncritically and unreflectively, does not permit us to know exactly how he feels about his subject. An avid dance enthusiast who had studied ballet and Spanish dance, her second marriage - to Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness - made her one of the wealthiest women in America. Rebekah Harkness patronage allowed the Joffrey to perform in Iran. Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts. Harkness definitely wasnt the most fiscally-responsible business woman, but she does have the distinction of being the strangest girl-boss in history. Styling herself as the life of the party, Harkness did things like throw plates at the ships Filipino orchestra, swim in her birthday suit in full view of other passengers, and send out strings of swears so loudly that the ocean liner eventually had no choice but to send the beautiful, foul-mouthed socialite off the boat. She thirsted for acclaim as a composer, a dancer and an arts patron, but her thirst for booze and pills undid her. The most famous Pack story from around this time is when, during one particularly boring and respectable soiree, the group decided to spike a punch bowl with laxatives. [23], An American Ballet Story is an upcoming documentary film directed by Leslie Strait and sponsored by the International Documentary Association. Her body had been slowly falling into disrepairthose injections hurt far more than they helpedand she started complaining of a mysterious stomach ailment. As well see, Rebekahs love only devolved from there. Pierce was the descendant of Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, and seemed like a good match for the ambitious girlexcept really, he was just a starter husband. From petty paybacks to insane acts of karma, these bitter people somehow found the most ingenious ways. Rebekah Harkness Net Worth. This story was updated in 2022. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet in 1966. From the outside, Rebekah and William Harknesss marriage looked immaculate. Donning a black chiffon Mainbocher dress with a white silk back-tied apron, she flashed a wry smile at the camera. Rebekah and Bill Harkness had one daughter, Edith. (Her reasoning was thus: I hope the beauty of Harkness House will persuade some of these people that ballet need not be dingy and that by their patronage they are contributing to the splendid and glamorous.) Yet disagreements over artistic direction led to the companys disbanding in 1970. (The music site NME is praising the tune as "a contender for the best Taylor Swift song ever written"; you can watch the official lyric video below.) Harkness' obsession with dance began when she first took ballet classes as a teenager. AboutPressCopyrightContact. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/books/is-there-a-chic-way-to-go.html. Pierce claimed to be a descendant of President Franklin Pierce, though that would have been quite a feat. Rebekah Harkness, who also went by Betty, was the previous owner of Taylor Swift's Rhode Island home and serves as the inspiration for the third track on her latest album. Around this time, Harkness fancied herself a composer. With thanks to Blue Blood by Craig Unger and The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company by Sasha Anawalt. Swift later connects herself to Harkness in the final moments of the song: Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me, Who knows, if I never showed up, what couldve been / There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything, I had a marvelous time ruining everything / A marvelous time ruining everything / A marvelous time / I had a marvelous time, Also in the song, Swift mentions some of Harkness antics. Copyright 2022 SLM Media Group. A week after her death on June 17, 1982, the mortal remains of Rebekah Harkness were toted home by her older daughter Terry in a Gristede's shopping bag. She blew through her fortune on the boys and the ballet. (Harkness was an avid patron of the arts and founded her own company, Harkness Ballet. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. She began to cut back and look for public funding. First, a brief biography: Born Rebekah Semple West in St. Louis in 1915, Harkness was a divorce whose second marriage was to Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness. . Her daughter Terry tried, unsuccessfully, to invalidate her will with the help of attorney Roy Cohn ( as in Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn. $ 12.19. Soon Clive Barnes was writing that the Harkness Ballet had ''descended beyond the necessity of serious consideration,'' and in 1975 it folded. . Rebekah and Bill Harkness had one daughter, Edith. As a sad footnote to the story of Rebekah Harkness is the tragedy of her three children. Her daughter Edith killed herself. Let the little creature die!'' She is from USA. For example, he liked to vanity-publish nonsensical books that even he admitted were awful. Who is Rebekah Harkness Dating? When they criticized her for getting pudgy, she took up skating and dance, practicing with a fierce discipline. Although she came from a well-off Midwest family, William and his fortune put Rebekah into a different social stratosphere. When she erected a giant blue geodesic dome on her lawn, they sued her for zoning violations. Their marriage produced one child: Edith Harkness and their marriage lasted harmoniously for 7 years when William Hale Harkness died 1 October 1954 leaving his entire fortune, that included a major share of Standard Oil, to Rebekah to do with as she pleased. The Robert Joffrey Company summer workshop at Rebekah Harkness' Watch Hill estate in Rhode Island, July 1962. Who Is Rebekah Harkness? The caption read: A young woman with a surprising range of interests, Mrs. Harkness is a sculptor, a musician of professional standing (shes a member of ASCAP), a skier (shell soon off to her chalet in Gstaad with her three children for a holiday), and an active supporter of many charities. Below her in the spread? 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