The rich socialite whose judgment sometimes lapsed was just too good a target. [1] Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. Rebekah Semple West was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915. Rebekah also loaded up on art and real estate. Shed had a brief, unhappy marriage to a doctor in the early 1960s. In 1915, Rebekah West was born in St. Louis to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Tarwater West. Dancy Mason is the Editor-in-Chief at Factinate. 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. Following the death of her second husband, William Hale Harkness, she inherited his fortune. All of the work and much of the music was original. When Rebekah decided to renovate her Rhode Island mansion, she demanded that it have a whopping eight kitchens and 21 baths. She applied herself with a rigid, frightening discipline that would become her trademark later in life. While at her fancy finishing school, Harkness didnt seem to care that her classmates were people with last names like Roosevelt. Instead, she scrawled in her scrapbook that she wanted to do everything bad. Well, she certainly achieved her goal. 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? 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. Surprise, surprise, this phase didnt last long. Eolia was one of their seven homes and reputed . ''Money can buy anything.'' Rebekah Harkness. Though her children Edith and Terry rushed to her bedside along with her lover Bobby Scevers, the scene was anything but heart-warming. She brought in top choreographers, Jerome Robbins and Brian Macdonald to teach 16 and 17 year olds. Franklin Pierces three children died before reaching adulthood. Harkness was surprisingly generous when it suited her, but also unpredictably bizarre. And she gave Alvin Ailey his first commission. (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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The Harkness Theater opened in 1974, but by then Rebekah had started to run out of money. According to one story, Harknesss adoration for her grandchild vanished almost overnight. Craig Unger tries to stipulate that Rebekah, who died in 1982 at the age of 67, was an interesting person. William Hale Harkness Her 1955 tone poem, Safari Suite, was performed at Carnegie Hall, and in 1957 she released an album titled Music With a Heartbeat. Like this story? The resulting damages to herself, her companies and her children were heartbreaking. In the eyes of many, she had betrayed him. The best new culture, style, and beauty stories from Vogue, delivered to you daily. They bought Eolia from Mary's sister and her brother-in-law, Jessie Stillman and William Taylor in 1907. Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company, ensuring she grew up comfortably. Rebekahs son Allen once confessed how truly disturbing and sycophantic his mothers social circle was, describing the blackmailing lawyers, the weirdos, the people in the trances. Harkness also knew how to keep all of her adoring public in competition with each other, with each one of her lackies vying to become the favorite. Before her passing, she picked up her most dedicatedand most heartlessfan yet. For all her money, Harkness did not have good taste. Save money. Nine servants and three cooks kept the place running. Harkness started acting out early in her adolescence, and her antics would put any other mean girl to shame. This introduction developed into a deep love for the art form and created a desire to impact the dance community in several different facets. Little Betty had a horrific childhood. Rebekah Harkness's height Unknown & weight Not Available right. Romance and heartbreak (and revenge) ballads make up the primary focus of most albums; however, her newest album, Folklore, which debuted today, features a song, titled "The Last Great American Dynasty," about a New England philanthropist and patron of the arts, Rebekah West Harkness. (Harkness reportedly cleaned her pool with Dom Prignon.) View Full Details. (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.'' Tras la muerte de William, Rebekah hered la propiedad y desde el 2013 forma parte del patrimonio de Taylor Swift, quien pag $ 17.5 millones de dlares por la lujosa e histrica mansin. Aerial view the former Holiday House. He died just seven years later, left her around $75 million, and like the song says, she became "the maddest woman [the] town has ever seen." In the most fabulous way possible, of course. Harkness' obsession with dance began when she first took ballet classes as a teenager. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. ''Costumes, sets, musical scores,'' Mr. Unger writes, ''many of the best dancers, the entire repertory - even the works choreographed by Joffrey himself - were owned by her foundation.''. While a kinder critic likened it to a lavish ladies powder room, less-generous experts compared it to a Staten Island beauty parlor. Ouch. She got thrown off a cruise for swimming nude in the pool and swearing at the crew. But why? Being a patron of the ballet was Rebekahs passion. 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. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet Company photographed at her estate in Watch Hill, R.I., 1964. A terrible story is told here. OthersJerome Robbins and George Balanchine flatly refused to choreograph her musical compositions. Meanwhile, the booze and the pills caught up with her. Blue Blood is a story of tragic proportions. Harkness took up dancing and ice skating to lose weight and was highly disciplined in both endeavors. She filled her fish tank with goldfish and Scotch. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a severely retarded and disabled child. In its day, the Harkness would train more professional dancers than any other company. We have estimated Rebekah Harkness's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. [6] When the Joffrey Ballet refused to rename their company in Harkness' honor, she withdrew funding and hired most of the Joffrey dancers to her new company, the Harkness Ballet. As the saying goes, well-behaved women seldom make history. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. Is there a chic way to go? One day, Rebekah would find out that question for herself. Well, Harkness couldnt bear to be upstaged, so she unceremoniously fired Rhodes and doomed her own precious ballet company in the process. As it turned out, this was the beginning of her ignominious end. ''The others, they just know how to bite.'') Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts. Then in 1947, she married Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, who brought her into the serious money class. Our editors are instructed to fact check thoroughly, including finding at least three references for each fact. All the essentials: top fashion stories, editors picks, and celebrity style. Harkness, born Rebekah Semple West, grew up amidst splendor in St. Louis as the third and youngest child of Allen Tarwater West, heir to a banking fortune, and Rebekah Semple, daughter of a wealthy merchant. One work, Dreams of Glory, had an insipid story about a little boy who dreams of becoming John F. Kennedy. Her son, Allen Pierce, was convicted of murder. One of her conquests, producer Bertrand Castelli, described one rendezvous they had in her office as like two camels in the desert who suddenly know that the only way to make an oasis is to really talk sense. Thisactually doesnt make sense, which probably means it was a really wild night. They featured fireworks, boat rides and a giant inflatable water slide. She once served them a cake with $10 bills baked into it. [14] They divorced in 1965. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Ad Choices, Phil Ohs Best Street Style Photos From the Fall 2023 Shows in Paris, 5 Key Signs That Indicate Youre Going Through Menopause, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Have Been Asked to Leave Their U.K. Home. [22] In 2020, Swift wrote the song "The Last Great American Dynasty" for her eighth studio album Folklore (2020), in which she tells Harkness' life story and draws parallels between Harkness highly publicized life and her own. Jack Mitchell. Copyright 2022 SLM Media Group. The children were visiting Bill's family and Alfonso had left . The book is available for purchase on Amazon for $195, but a May 1988 New York Times review by the late journalist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison clues us into the reported inner world of Harkness as published in the book. She used much of her inheritance to become a patron of the ballet, as well as to compose music. Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks and Andrew Mellon owned homes there. Reportedly, she wanted these updates so that she could see as little of her children as possible. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. He likes to talk about blowing people away. That even the rich must die? Oh, but they had more tricks up their perfectly-tailored sleeves. People talked about the time she dressed up as a maid and served drinks at her own party. I want to look away, but I just cant. [4], In the 1960s, Harkness became well known as a philanthropist and patron of the arts. When she died in 1982, Harkness had demanded her ashes be put in a $250,000 jeweled Salvador Dal urn. Did Mommy and Daddy notice? Yet this came with great tragedy: The baby, named Angel, was severely brain-damaged. The celebrities brought paparazzi and, echoes of the Rebekah Harkness era, complaints from the neighbors. 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. Uh, how sweet? Mary took a portion of the estate to start Camp Harkness in 1920 for children with polio. Silver Gelatin. In addition to . See the article in its original context from. That money can't buy happiness? She was 67.) Unfortunately for Rebekah, the endeavour ended in national embarrassment and disaster. In her obituary, shes credited with supporting the Joffrey and Jerome Robbins ballet companies. 1940) and Anne Terry Pierce (b. When publicizing her ballet, Harkness became notorious for refusing to showcase any of her talented dancers in the promotional photographs. It is possible to write an edifying biography about an unedifying life. From the outside, Rebekah and William Harknesss marriage looked immaculate. However, a 1988 biography of Harkness titled Blue Blood, written by former New York Magazine editor and Vanity Fair contributor Craig Unger, reveals a much sadder, tragic story. Images: Harkness Tower Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653891. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Jean Stein and George Plimpton did that brilliantly in ''Edie,'' the biography of poor Edie Sedgwick. Without any real studio space, her dancers often practiced on her front lawn. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. 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. As her own biographer put it, The only reason her works were ever played in public was because she subsidized the performances. Harsh, but true. She gave the dancers everything they needed and then some. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. Convicted of murder in the second degree, he was behind the bars of a Florida jail. In 1974, Harkness married again, this time to another doctor named Niels H. Lauersen. She married her second husband, Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, in 1947. . She lost card game bets with Salvador Dal. And then in 2020, the houses owner, Taylor Swift, wrote a song about Rebekah Harkness, called The Last Great American Dynasty. By 1982, the end was near for Harkness, yet tragically her son Allen wasnt there. She rang J. D. Salinger's bell dressed as a cleaning lady, having conceived the harebrained scheme that the reclusive writer's short stories be put to music. She was the second daughter of three children to Allen Tarwater West, a stockbroker and co-founder of G. H. Walker & Co., and Rebekah Cook (ne Semple) West. She was the second daughter of three children to Allen Tarwater West, a stockbroker and co-founder of G. H. Walker & Co., and Rebekah Cook (ne Semple) West. Craig Unger, a former editor at New York magazine, appears to be dazzled by all this, although it is sometimes hard to tell whether his breathlessness arises from approval, disapproval, sadness, awe or simple bewilderment. He was in prison. Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. Ironically nicknamed The Chalice of Life, the morbid monument stood right at the intersection between tacky and lavish, just like Rebekah herself. In November of 1977, her son Allen shot a man during a brawl in Miami. [9] Through the William Hale Harkness Foundation, she sponsored construction of a medical research building at the New York Hospital and supported a number of medical research projects. The two purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which they nicknamed Holiday House. She gave them weekends off and charge accounts to the shops in town. Though Rebekah grew up in a wealthy St. Louis family, her social status was elevated when, after her first divorce, she married William. After his brief interlude in the oasis, Mr. Castelli was made the artistic director of the Harkness Ballet. Bill adored the child, as he did his stepchildren, whom he treated as if they were his own. And she was just getting started. [13], A philanthropist, Harkness supported the Joffrey Ballet for years, as well as the Harkness Ballet Foundation and the William Hale Harkness Foundation. Please submit feedback to contribute@factinate.com. Where Harkness had her Bitch Pack, Swifts group of friends had a much-scrutinized squad. New York: William Morrow & Company. Yet while there, Harkness gave new meaning to the word prima donna. The socialite, fancying herself a dance expert, started writing her own ballets. Though Harkness didnt seem to care that he was using her, she probably should have. She moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from one bank to another for the pleasure of confusing her accountants. I knew of two other Harkness children and supposed that they belonged to the first marriage but now I know they were Rebekah's children by Allen . I don't want this screaming baby over my room! Rebekah Harkness' antics annoyed her neighbors, while Jesus' antics got him murdered by the state and by some religious leaders. He later said his time in prison was the happiest of his life. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/books/is-there-a-chic-way-to-go.html. She once dressed as a waitress at one of them so she could eavesdrop on the guests. When Joffrey refused to perform the schlock, Rebekahs revenge was brutal. Rebekah Harkness & Salvador Dali holding a press conference, Bacelona Spain, 1966. She was surrounded by a group her son Allen described as ''all the fairies flying off the floor, the blackmailing lawyers, the weirdos, the people in the trances.'' . But the book also states Harkness was "brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum." But it is clear that as a spoiled young woman growing up in St. Louis between the wars,. ''We were the loved ones.'' 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. Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness's friends were pillaging, ''grabbing things right and left.''. Shop for Rebekah Harkness at Walmart.com. Its estimated she spent the 2020 equivalent of $86 million on the endeavor. Themes of sexual repression, homoerotic love, tribalism and even the aftermath of rape were explored by some of the most famous choreographers of the time. And yes, diving into Harknesss outrageous, gilded life is indeed a journey through a past era. Their wedding took place at 730 Park Avenue, which was Williams apartment. The others, they just know how to bite. Wow, Im getting the sense that these two really liked dirty talk. The only problem was that the urn was too small. Taylor Swift has once . Wealthy, elegant, and beautiful, Harkness seemed to have it allfrom her oil baron husband to her notoriously raucous parties. Press photo of Rebekah Harkness in 1966 with two o her Harkness dancers. One of the most surprising characters to crop up on Taylor Swift's latest album is Rebekah Harkness in "the last . In 1971, she married a fourth time, to another doctor, but one 20 years her junior. Image courtesy Holiday House, Courtesy Google, Maxar Technologies. According to Scevers, It was complete chaoseverybody running around signing wills and trying on different wigs. And when Rebekah actually passed on June 17, 1982, things only got weirder from there. Not really. A patron of dance and medicine. However, despite our best efforts, we sometimes miss the mark. By 1980, many of Harknesss old friends had dropped off, and she was left with only her most sycophantic hangers-on. Fast forward 60 years, and another thin, rich, beautiful white woman bought Holiday House. But the loud parties caused problems with the neighbors. And about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon, dyed the neighbors cat green and filled her fish tank with scotch. This had devastating consequences. One day, Harknesss antics were so extreme that they got her kicked off a cruise ship. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a child who died at age 10. Harkness had to do everything in styleeven when it came to moving on to the next life. Generous, wasteful, willful, demanding and delusional, she broke with Joffrey to form the Harkness Ballet when he refused to perform the compositions she insisted on writing. 1940) and Anne Terry Pierce (b. A philanthropist. In the first verse of The Last Great American Dynasty, Swift sings that the ceremony was charming, if a little gauche / Theres only so far new money goes.. And how in the world did she get that way? Rebekah Harkness. When she got out, she sold her Palisades mansion to the Isley Brothers. The critics, especially the New York Times Clive Barnes, savaged Rebekah. [5] Through the Rebekah Harkness Foundation, Harkness sponsored Jerome Robbins and the Joffrey Ballet. Ugh. 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. ''I can't believe it took her this long to succeed.'') She thirsted for acclaim as a composer, a dancer and an arts patron, but her thirst for booze and pills undid her. Her daughter Edith killed herself. Rebekah bought a mansion on New Yorks Upper East Side and turned it into a posh training center for dancers called Harkness House. Yet like so much of Harknesss life, what seemed beautiful on the outside was rotting on the inside. A patron of dance and medicine. Rebekah's younger daughter Edith, a failed suicide who had spent many years in mental institutions, took only her mother's pills: Seconal, Nembutal, Valium, Haldol, Librium and various painkillers - 40 vials in all. Hey, all publicity is good publicityand Rebekahs need to be in the spotlight soon grew to disturbing proportions. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. In 1939 she married Dickson Pierce because, she said, she didnt have anything better to do. Watch the video for "The Last Great American Dynasty": Woytus is St. Louis Magazine's deputy editor, coveringnews and culture. William was rolling in money, which made him the perfect candidate for Rebekahs expensive tastes. The couple divorced in 1977but Rebekahs life was about to take a much darker turn. 44 Rebekah Harkness Pictures Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO 44 Rebekah Harkness Pictures Premium High Res Photos Browse 44 rebekah harkness pictures stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. [4], On October 1, 1947, Harkness married William Hale Harkness (19001954), the son of William Lamon Harkness, both Standard Oil heirs. Allen shot and killed a man in a brawl and was charged with second-degree murder, the charge eventually being reduced to manslaughter,[4] with Allen serving a total of eight years. The Remarkable Tale of Grace Kellys Two Engagement Rings, The Prince and Princess of Wales Have a Rare PDA Moment at the BAFTAs, Emma Mackey on Channelling the Spirit of Emily Bront for Frances OConnors Not-Quite-Biopic, How Carolyn Bessette-Kennedys Favorite Prada Bag Became a Forever Classic, My Surreal Years Tutoring the Children of the Super-Rich. Mother of Private. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. Almost as soon as William Harkness kicked the bucket, Rebekah turned into one of the most tasteless, gaudy eccentrics the Western hemisphere had ever seen. 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. Rebekah Harkness, composer, sculptor, dance patron, and philanthropist who founded the Harkness Ballet, photographed in her office in 1964. ''Oh, my God,'' said a witness. Swift Identifies with Harkness in her last line, There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen/ I had a marvelous time ruining everything., The music video that accompanies the song features the beach below Holiday House as Rebekah Harkness would have seen it. Reviewers agreed he was one of the companys only shining lights. It was shaping up to be a white-picket fence brooduntil, that is, Rebekah proved herself to be an utterly horrific mother. She retaliated by dying a neighbors cat green. The 16-track album, Swifts eighth, features a song titled The Last Great American Dynasty, about the late St. Louisbornsocialite Rebekah West Harkness, whom Swift paints as an eccentric. Babe Paley, one of Truman Capotes swans. All rights reserved. While he was under her employ, she would often order him around romantically. REBEKAH HARKNESS earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in social work from the University of Utah. Watch Hill Harbor By Stephg82988 Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23370833. These are facts of which we have already been apprised. Even after her husband's death in 1954 ("It must have been her fault his heart gave out," Swift muses), Harkness threw wild parties that clearly ruffled her neighbors' feathers, with guests her. Edith often used her mothers many, many pills to perform these attemptsand Rebekah was anything but empathetic. St. Louis, MO 63119 So in 1977 she checked into Silver Hill, a rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn. She began to cut back and look for public funding. By James Crowley On 7/24/20 at 12:22 PM EDT. There she delighted, as she wrote in her scrapbook, in setting out to ''do everything bad. She said she married her first, photographer Dickson Pierce, because she had nothing else to do. No surprise, that union ended in divorce. She had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of money in her bank account. Everyone advised her to get her affairs in order, but as well soon see, things didnt work out so neatly for Rebekah Harkness in the end. Walker & Co. with George Herbert Walker, grandfather and great-grandfather of the Bush presidents. Immediate Needs: $1,500. We want our readers to trust us. William, 15 years her senior, saw Rebekah as a naughty child in need of a spanking. Latest News on Rebekah Harkness . The two purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which they nicknamed Holiday House. Rebekahs parents might not have cared a whit about loving their daughter, but they sure as heck cared about what she looked like. The Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls; they also got very rowdy at these gatherings. Scevers and Harkness brought out the worst in each other. The pair was horribly mismatched, with Lauersen a whopping 20 years younger than his bride. When she was still just a young girl, the Harknesses noticed that their Betty was putting on weight, so they signed the pudgy girl up for dance and figure skating lessons to help her shed those unsightly pounds. And beautiful, Harkness married again, this time to another doctor, but only... She once served them a cake with $ 10 bills baked into it ``... Cared a whit about loving their daughter, but also unpredictably bizarre,. Disabled child, yet tragically her son Allen wasnt there parents might not cared. A severely retarded and disabled child the biography of poor Edie Sedgwick early in her New York Clive., R.I., 1964 and Alfonso had left n't want this screaming baby over my room and a. Time she dressed up as a composer, sculptor, dance patron, and her Harkness.. 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R.I., 1964 lasted seven years prima donna rebekah harkness children want to look,.