Tag Archives: Rebekah Harkness. Franklin Pierces three children died before reaching adulthood. Swift explains it briefly in a verseHarkness once owned Holiday House, the singers current Watch Hill, Rhode Island, home. One of Harknesss final acts in her role as ballet maestro was also her most embarrassing. The ashes were placed in a $250,000 jeweled urn made by Salvador Dali. Mr. Unger, who records interviews uncritically and unreflectively, does not permit us to know exactly how he feels about his subject. For one, her emotionally frigid parents wanted absolutely nothing to do with raising her. Discover Rebekah Harkness, the extravagant woman who inspired Taylor Swifts song the last great american dynasty.. She was 67.) Let the little creature die!'' Were always looking for your input! She brought in top choreographers, Jerome Robbins and Brian Macdonald to teach 16 and 17 year olds. Lets just, The Truth Always Comes Out: Dark Family Secrets Exposed, Entrancing Facts About Madame de Pompadour, France's Most Powerful Mistress, Fortunate Facts About Nepo Babies, The Stars Of The Silver Spoon, Flamboyant Facts About Bugsy Siegel, The Wiseguy Who Built Vegas, Licentious Facts About Marie-Louise OMurphy, King Louis XVs Little Mistress, Explosive Facts About Aaron Carter, The Doomed Child Star. Rebekah Harkness was born in 1915 to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family. As well see, Rebekahs love only devolved from there. Doctors told Harkness that she had one ailment that no amount of money could cure: She was dying of stomach cancer. She would also fill her lavish fish tanks with Scotch, even as living goldfish swam in them. She dyed a cat green. 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. 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. Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny / Her saltbox house on the coasttookher mind offSt. Louis / Bill was the heir tothe Standard Oil name and money / And the town said / Howdidamiddle-class divorce doit? / The wedding wascharming, if a little gauche / Theres only so far new money goes / They picked out a home and called it Holiday House / Their parties were tasteful, if a little loud / The doctor had told him to settle down / It must have been her fault his heart gave out, And they said / There goes the last great American dynasty / Who knows, if she never showed up, what couldve been / There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen / She had a marvelous time ruining everything. Not long after Rebekahs passing, her daughter Edith finally managed to succeed in her attempts. [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. But Rebekah made the most of it. The Joffrey dancers who spent the summer at Holiday House loved it. In 1971, she married a fourth time, to another doctor, but one 20 years her junior. One could almost feel sorry for her. She had spent the 1987 equivalent of $38 million on a failed enterprise. Her 1955 tone poem, Safari Suite, was performed at Carnegie Hall, and in 1957 she released an album titled Music With a Heartbeat. It bought her the services of George Skibine, Marjorie Tallchief, Alvin Ailey, Erik Bruhn and Andy Warhol, but it did not guarantee her success. See, Rebekah thought that notoriously reclusive writer J.D. [4], On June 10, 1939, Harkness married Dickson W. Pierce, the son of Thomas M. Christians have a tendency to do two things when exploring Jesus' death: downplay the role of the state, and interpret Jesus' feud with the Pharisees, in very anti-Semitic terms. 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. 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. That marriage lasted three years. 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. (Getty) When Taylor Swift released her latest album Folklore, fans were left wondering about the subject of her song 'The Last Great American Dynasty' - Rebekah Harkness.. Was she a fictional character drawn from the depths of Taylor's imagination, or had she once been a living woman with a tale to tell? Madame de Pompadour didn't just share King Louis XV's bed, she also shared his power. 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.'' Who Is Rebekah Harkness? In addition to the three kids she has with Jamie, Rebekah has two children, Megan and Taylor, from previous relationships. For example, he liked to vanity-publish nonsensical books that even he admitted were awful. Unfit for mothering, unfit for ordinary love, unfit - untrained - to be the caretaker of a great fortune, was she altogether silly or altogether bad? If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it really was. Harkness had to do everything in styleeven when it came to moving on to the next life. Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness's friends were pillaging, ''grabbing things right and left.''. August 22, 1982 (33) Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States (Suicide ) Place of Burial: New York, Bronx, NY, United States. She was also a composer. Instead, she was reared by a series of nanniesand thats not even the worst part. rebekah harkness children. Not just going to performances, but sponsoring entire ballet companies, buying up real estate for them and sending them on world tours. Mary and Edward Harkness - The Harknesses at Eolia. She went to Fermata, a. Rebekah West Harkness also known as Betty Harkness, was an American composer, sculptor, dance patron, and philanthropist who founded the Harkness Ballet. In 1954, something curious happened to Rebekah Harkness: Her oil tycoon husband passed. A New York Times article described Harkness's unusual upbringing. Family Members. While Bill Harkness was alive, he and Rebekah threw raucous parties every weekend. The Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls; they also got very rowdy at these gatherings. (Mr. Scevers has a stunning way of placing himself squarely in the center of every sentence he utters; he appears to believe that Rebekah Harkness's death happened more to him than to her.) Rebekah Harkness' antics annoyed her neighbors, while Jesus' antics got him murdered by the state and by some religious leaders. In addition to her marriage, Harkness also became well known for her personal eccentricities, as well as her contributions to the arts. Rebekah Harkness was one of the world's richest women, the Standard Oil heiress and founding patron of the Harkness Ballet. Anyone can read what you share. William Hale Harkness Her parents did care that she looked good, according to Unger. (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.'' Taylor Swift has once . She used much of her inheritance to become a patron of the ballet, as well as to compose music. She died June 17, 1982. As it turned out, this was the beginning of her ignominious end. 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.. After Rebekah Harkness' husband died in 1953, she remodeled the house with 8 kitchens and 21 bathrooms in order to 'effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a . 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. Fast forward 60 years, and another thin, rich, beautiful white woman bought Holiday House. Harkness only left death in her wake wherever she went. 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. 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. In 1961, Harkness decided she wanted to become the next great ballet master, so she sponsored actual master Robert Joffreys artisanal ballet troupe. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. But most people dont know the most chilling part. So what did she do? Hey, all publicity is good publicityand Rebekahs need to be in the spotlight soon grew to disturbing proportions. Years later, I was using her phone when I made an utterly chilling discovery. Rebekah had always been well-off as a childas you might guess from the string of nannies who raised herbut marrying William Harkness thrust her into an entirely different tier of high society. She once dressed as a waitress at one of them so she could eavesdrop on the guests. 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. The 1988 novel was published about Rebekah . Historys most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily. Dec 8, 2020 Rebekah was previously married to Niels H. Lauersen, Benjamin Harrison Kean, William Hale Harkness and Dickson W. Pierce. Rebekah Harkness spent much of the Standard Oil fortune she inherited on the ballet. Calling all Swifties and History Nerds! She had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of money in her bank account. OthersJerome Robbins and George Balanchine flatly refused to choreograph her musical compositions. 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 Robert Joffrey Company summer workshop at Rebekah Harkness' Watch Hill estate in Rhode Island, July 1962. The family spent summers at Watch Hill, then an old money, old Hollywood enclave overlooking Block Island Sound. She all but fired him from his own company, then twisted the knife by taking most of his dancers with her to form her new, solo Harkness Ballet. The lovely pair only made it four years before divorcing. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. When we do, we depend on our loyal, helpful readers to point out how we can do better. She stole a neighbors dog and dyed it key lime green. 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? An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). Her parents packed Rebekah off to finishing school. Rebekah Harkness was practically destined to become a spoiled little rich girl. No clan is left untouched, and even families that seem happy and normal on. For all her money, Harkness did not have good taste. 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 . By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Before his death in August 1954, they had one child together; Edith Hale Harkness (19481982). It donated Harkness Tower at Yale, Harkness Commons at Harvard and Harkness Pavilion at New York Hospital. Meanwhile, the booze and the pills caught up with her. P.O. Watch Hill Harbor By Stephg82988 Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23370833. One work, Dreams of Glory, had an insipid story about a little boy who dreams of becoming John F. Kennedy. Just after 1966, Harkness became a grandmother when her daughter Terry gave birth to a little girl. I myself wouldn't give the time of day to anyone who cleaned her pool out with Dom Perignon, put mineral oil in the punch at her sister's debutante ball and (all in the middle of the Great Depression) got tossed off an ocean liner for shouting obscenities, throwing dinner plates at an orchestra of Filipinos gamely playing the American national anthem, and offending the sensibilities of her fellow passengers by swimming nude - for which actions she counted herself witty. Born April 17, 1915 Died June 17, 1982 (67) Showcase yourself on IMDbPro Add to list Credits Much of their marriage dynamic was about his domineering presence setting her on the straight and narrow. In December 1956, she even appeared in the pages of Vogue. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. Live better ''So absurd,'' Mr. Scevers pronounced. And yes, diving into Harknesss outrageous, gilded life is indeed a journey through a past era. Taylor Swift tells the story of "The Last Great American Dynasty" in her Folklore track about one of the wealthiest women in America, Rebekah West Harkness. 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. 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. Save money. [2], After graduating in 1932, she and a group of female friends formed the Bitch Pack, a sub-culture of local debutantes who enjoyed subverting society events, including lacing punchbowls with mineral oil and performing stripteases on banquet tables. The two purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which they nicknamed Holiday House. Iyengar[4] and Salvador Dal, who would design her urn upon her death. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet in 1966. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). (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. 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. Parents. Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. Harkness was jealous to an absolute fault, and even to her own detriment. In 1972, she bought an old theater near Lincoln Center and refurbished it on a grand scale as the first theater devoted exclusively to ballet. Rebekah and Bill Harkness had one daughter, Edith. She also helped discover and train many acclaimed dancers, regardless of their race, background or body shape. (Watch it here.). Rebekahs parents hired one nanny specifically because the woman had worked in an insane asylum before. Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet. Now she has one more posthumous title: muse. She insisted that it perform ballets to scores she had written. The couple took up residence in an enormous eight -kitchen, 21 -bathroom mansion (an arrangement that "effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular. Allen Pierce, Rebekah's son by the first of her four husbands, was unable to be present. In November of 1977, her son Allen shot a man during a brawl in Miami. Besides despising Rebekahs children, Scevers also hated her disabled granddaughter Angel. 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.'' The 1982 case is mentioned in journalist Craig Unger's biography of Annabelle's mother, Rebekah Harkness, called "Blue Blood." The book, published in 1988, offers an unflattering snapshot . The parties continued when she brought the entire Joffrey to Watch Hill in 1962 and 1963. The Bliss Balance - Create Success, Peace, and Happiness in Your Life. A 1955 article from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that one of her works would be premiering at Carnegie Hall in New York City.) A patron of dance and medicine. This is where Rebekah really started getting a tarnished reputation, and things got so bad that no amount of money could fix her downfall. Image courtesy Holiday House, Courtesy Google, Maxar Technologies. At least once, Harkness and her friends got up on a banquet table and performed a strip tease for the distinguished guests around them. Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. Shutterstock Advertisement 17. 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. 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. For a time in the 1950s, socialite Rebekah Harkness was true American royalty. The only problem was that the urn was too small. He later said his time in prison was the happiest of his life. William Hale died of a heart attack in 1954. From the outside, Rebekah and William Harknesss marriage looked immaculate. According to her biographer, Craig Unger, Rebekah Harkness led a life littered with high Gothic tragedy. She was a poor little rich girl, and by the end of her life, she wasnt that rich. When Rebekah decided to renovate her Rhode Island mansion, she demanded that it have a whopping eight kitchens and 21 baths. [7] In addition to founding the Harkness Ballet, Harkness launched a ballet school and home for the company called Harkness House,[8] as well as a refurbished 1,250-seat theater, which presented the Harkness Ballet and other dance companies to New York audiences. People called it the Taylor Swift Tax, though it never became law. Rebekahs daughter Edith was clinically depressed and suicidal for much of her life (wonder why), and spent scores of years in and out of mental institutions following near fatal attempts at self-harm. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. William was rolling in money, which made him the perfect candidate for Rebekahs expensive tastes. Rebekah West Harkness (April 17, 1915 - June 17, 1982) also known as Betty Harkness, was an American composer, socialite, sculptor, dance patron, and philanthropist who founded the Harkness Ballet. 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. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. One critic denounced it as the worst mural ever made. Their antics soon became legendary. But it is clear that as a spoiled young woman growing up in St. Louis between the wars,. September 30, 2013 by knelson. In her obituary, shes credited with supporting the Joffrey and Jerome Robbins ballet companies. She hoped that the fourth time would be the charm, but the socialite had no such luck. People reported that Harknesss lavish marble bathrooms were often splattered with blood, and that her muscles had begun to calcify. Rocky Finds His Heart. Thomson Asks States to Sue the U.S.", "Out of Prison, Doctor Hopes to Regenerate His Lost Fame", "Taylor Swift is buying into a rich Watch Hill tradition", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rebekah_Harkness&oldid=1121521087, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 November 2022, at 18:59. The St. Louisborn socialite is the subject of the singer-songwriter's "The Last Great American Dynasty.". She thirsted for acclaim as a composer, a dancer and an arts patron, but her thirst for booze and pills undid her. De . [3] Edith married Kenneth Perry McKinnon in 1971,[15] and was in and out of mental institutions before eventually completing suicide after many attempts, just months following her mother's death. Little Betty had a horrific childhood. Our editors are instructed to fact check thoroughly, including finding at least three references for each fact. [9] [14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. Harkness took up dancing and ice skating to lose weight and was highly disciplined in both endeavors. The story of Rebekah Harkness is way more complicated than Taylor Swift lets on. She lived on champagne and injections - Vitamin B, testosterone, painkillers - as a result of which her bathrooms were splattered with blood and her muscles calcified. . He was in prison. By Elise Taylor. The Harknesses were married for a brief periodjust seven years. The same fate befell the popular tunes she composed. 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. Well, Harkness couldnt bear to be upstaged, so she unceremoniously fired Rhodes and doomed her own precious ballet company in the process. Though Kean consulted with multiple US presidents, he also had big-time mafia ties. As the saying goes, well-behaved women seldom make history. 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. 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. Following her death, a memorial was held at the family home before Harkness was cremated, and her ashes were placed in a $250,000 spinning urn designed by Salvador Dal, then placed in the Harkness Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery. Estate in Rhode Island mansion, she married a fourth time, another... Also had big-time mafia ties marriage looked immaculate putting poisonous substances into punch bowls ; they also got rowdy... During a brawl in Miami that even he admitted were awful to renovate Rhode. Purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, July 1962 designer urn was far too small for actual! Weight and was highly disciplined in both endeavors Harkness had to do everything styleeven... Who inspired Taylor Swifts song the last great American dynasty. `` Harkness the! Money, which they nicknamed Holiday House, courtesy Google, Maxar.... Be upstaged, so she unceremoniously fired Rhodes and doomed her own put! 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The family spent summers at Watch Hill Harbor by Stephg82988 own rebekah harkness children, CC BY-SA 3.0 https...