. It bought her the services of George Skibine, Marjorie Tallchief, Alvin Ailey, Erik Bruhn and Andy Warhol, but it did not guarantee her success. One of Harknesss final acts in her role as ballet maestro was also her most embarrassing. One of her administrators described how Harkness would come to the office in pink and blue leotards, literally stand on her head, and demand to have serious conversations while she performed her acrobatic work. Send Woytus anemail at awoytus@stlmag.com. Reviewers agreed he was one of the companys only shining lights. Knowing all this (and much, much more; Mr. Unger withholds no ugly or racy detail), what is it exactly that we have learned? Born Rebekah Semple West on April 17, 1915, in St. Louis, Missouri; died on June 17, 1982, in New York City, second daughter and one of three children of Allen Tarwater (a stockbroker) and Rebekah Cook (Semple) West; attended Rossman and John Burroughs schools in St. Louis; graduated from Fermata, a finishing school in Aiken, South Carolina, Extravagant Facts About Barbara Hutton, The Poor Little Rich Girl, Tragic Facts About Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIIIs First Wife, Wild Facts About Howard Hughes, The Most Eccentric Man In Hollywood, These Cruel Teachers Are The Stuff Of Student Nightmares, These Bad Dates Are Straight Out Of Our Nightmares. She would also fill her lavish fish tanks with Scotch, even as living goldfish swam in them. Blue Blood: How Rebekah Harkness, One of the Richest Women in the World, Destroyed a Great American Family Craig Unger. Shutterstock Advertisement 17. 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. (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? She dyed chocolate mousse blue. After her husband passed away in 1954, Harkness poured more money into her Watch Hill compound, installing 8 kitchens and 21 baths. She developed an addiction to injections of B-vitamins, painkillers and testosterone. Madame de Pompadour didn't just share King Louis XV's bed, she also shared his power. As the saying goes, well-behaved women seldom make history. In 1961, Harkness gave love another shot, marrying the prominent celebrity doctor Benjamin Harrison Kean. Upon the albums release, much of the Internet was thrown into a Who Is Rebekah West Harkness? madness. 11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Rebekah Harkness, American composer, sculptor, and. From petty paybacks to insane acts of karma, these bitter people somehow found the most ingenious ways. He later said his time in prison was the happiest of his life. The caption read: "A young woman with a surprising range of interests, Mrs. Harkness is a sculptor, a musician of professional standing (she's a member of ASCAP), a skier (she'll soon off to her. The resulting damages to herself, her companies and her children were heartbreaking. William Hale died of a heart attack in 1954. 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. View Rebekah Harkness results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. She danced, too, and composed music. Her first major contributions were helping to fund the early . As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. ''We were the favorites,'' says a dancer. But most people dont know the most chilling part. In a matter of years, her life would go from classy to just plain messy. The Robert Joffrey Company summer workshop at Rebekah Harkness' Watch Hill estate in Rhode Island, July 1962. The Holiday House property was divided into three lots, according to Watch Hill Through Time. Nonetheless, Harkness actually doted on the babe, and for a time it seemed like she was going to be a better granny than she was a mommy. 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. Though Rebekah channeled Marie Antoinette, her patronage of the Joffrey brought the company international fame. In 1974, Harkness married again, this time to another doctor named Niels H. Lauersen. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. The others, they just know how to bite. Wow, Im getting the sense that these two really liked dirty talk. Reportedly, the rest of her remains were placed in a Gristedes bag. Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts. She hoped that the fourth time would be the charm, but the socialite had no such luck. St. Louis, MO 63119 But behind her perfect faade lies a chilling history. One work, Dreams of Glory, had an insipid story about a little boy who dreams of becoming John F. Kennedy. Pierce claimed to be a descendant of President Franklin Pierce, though that would have been quite a feat. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. She retaliated by dying a neighbors cat green. The dancers, choreographers, composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters. Not just going to performances, but sponsoring entire ballet companies, buying up real estate for them and sending them on world tours. Wade, teaches a dance school for children and directs 2 dance companies, one providing performing opportunities for children and one for adults. William Hale Harkness Rebekah Harkness's height Unknown & weight Not Available right. The reason behind this is pure cruelty. Harkness later admitted that she married the poor schmuck because she had nothing else to do. In fact, Rebekah had a much loftierand extravagantdestiny in mind for herself. Harkness had three husbands. 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. The socialite was born in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. . She also bought them an old firehouse in Westerly to practice in, calling it the Harkness Center for the Arts. A patron of dance and medicine. By 1980, many of Harknesss old friends had dropped off, and she was left with only her most sycophantic hangers-on. Harkness pulled this prank at her own sisters debutante ball. They dubbed themselves the [W]itch Pack and, after graduating in 1932, set about trying to wreak havoc on the socialite scene, one gala at a time. In December 1956, she even appeared in the pages of Vogue. They performed a strip tease at a social event and put mineral oil into the punch bowl at a coming-out party. 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. 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. ''We were the loved ones.'' One of Harknesss signature moves was to use vastly expensive products for everyday, mundane things. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. She bought a mansion in Palisades, N.Y., a Manhattan penthouse and getaways in Nassau and Gstaad. '', After her divorce from W. Dickson Pierce, an upper-class advertising photographer, she chose for her second husband the Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, who enjoyed a lofty social status, as her own family did not. She married her second husband, Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, in 1947. [10] In 1947, William Hale married Rebekah Semple West, [11] who was previously married to Dickson Pierce. But Rebekah made the most of it. [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. He received a prison sentence of 15 years, but didnt bother to get in touch with his mother. Our editors are instructed to fact check thoroughly, including finding at least three references for each fact. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet Company photographed at her estate in Watch Hill, R.I., 1964. But the common message was that Rebekah Harkness was a mean, jealous widow with too much money and time for her own good, and she laughed about it bad attention was still attention, and her vengeful, hurting heart nursed itself with it, and a pint of ice cream of course. However, the connection between the two women, despite being eras apart, may go beyond mere real estate. The end came swift, fast, and brutal for Harkness. 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.'' Soon Clive Barnes was writing that the Harkness Ballet had ''descended beyond the necessity of serious consideration,'' and in 1975 it folded. Then a little-known ballet company, they spent the summers practicing and experimenting with new ideas. When she got out, she sold her Palisades mansion to the Isley Brothers. Well, Rebekah Harkness was not to be outdone by anyone, and she commissioned her own Harkness Blue, which she used to upholster the velvet Louis XIV-style chairs she had placed in her dance studio. Illustrated. For all her money, Harkness did not have good taste. It was the second marriage for both of them. Materials. Swift explains it briefly in a verseHarkness once owned Holiday House, the singers current Watch Hill, Rhode Island, home. Convicted of murder in the second degree, he was behind the bars of a Florida jail. Rebekah Harkness was born in 1915 to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family. Before she passed, the socialite spent $250,000 to commission a bedazzled urn from none other than Salvador Dali. Mr. Unger tells us that under the direction of the dancer-choreographer Larry Rhodes the company began to garner critical raves - whereupon Mrs. Harkness fired him. Rocky Finds His Heart. Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. Our credibility is the turbo-charged engine of our success. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory, Swift says of the inspiration behind her album, Folklore. Her ego, however, overrode common sense and proportion. Rebekah Harkness & Salvador Dali holding a press conference, Bacelona Spain, 1966. Though Harkness took those nasty testosterone injections to strengthen her body for dance, the medicine actually had the opposite effect. The family looked immaculate from the outsidebehind closed doors, though, was another story. BLUE BLOOD By Craig Unger. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. After Rebekah Harkness died in 1982, her daughter Terry took her mother's remains home in a Gristede's shopping bag, according to a story in the New York Times. While Bill Harkness was alive, he and Rebekah threw raucous parties every weekend. In 1971, she married a fourth time, to another doctor, but one 20 years her junior. Wealthy, elegant, and beautiful, Harkness seemed to have it allfrom her oil baron husband to her notoriously raucous parties. Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. ''Blue Blood'' is edifying only insofar as it raises questions about what a biography should be. She supported the arts in general, ballet in particular, and she had the wealth with which to do it. ''Money can buy anything.'' The celebrities brought paparazzi and, echoes of the Rebekah Harkness era, complaints from the neighbors. I want to look away, but I just cant. Yet this came with great tragedy: The baby, named Angel, was severely brain-damaged. Rebekah Harkness was born on 17 April 1915 in St Louis, Missouri, USA. Her daughter Edith jumped off roofs, swallowed pills and managed not to kill herself. $ 25.93. The family spent summers at Watch Hill, then an old money, old Hollywood enclave overlooking Block Island Sound. 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. In 1962 she turned her Rhode Island estate, Holiday House, into a summer dance camp for the entire Joffrey Ballet company. 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. Unfortunately for Rebekah, the endeavour ended in national embarrassment and disaster. Her daughter Edith killed herself. Sep 27, 2021 David Rubenstein Donates $10 Million to Expand Arts and Civic Engagement Initiatives at Lincoln Center. Faced with Ediths grim drive to end her life, Harkness was coldly philosophical. However Jamie has since. And the dysfunction didnt end there. The couple divorced in 1946. All rights reserved. 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. 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. [4] Harkness also surrounded herself with other well-known creatives, like yogi B.K.S. She insisted that it perform ballets to scores she had written. An awning saved her life. Rebekah Harkness, the Scorned Socialite of Watch Hill, R.I. bought them an old firehouse in Westerly to practice in, discover and train many acclaimed dancers, regardless of their race, background or body shape, Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed, would train more professional dancers than any other company, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653891, The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company. If you hear oil and think Russian Oligarch rich, youd be pretty much right. Her children, not so much. She soon became the owner of a vast number of properties, and indulged in many luxuries. One sometimes wonders if the point of all these poor-little-rich-girl/boy biographies is to lull the rest of us into a false sense of security: She is so unlike us that we are not encouraged to reflect upon our own mortality, the contemplation of which is a healthy and necessary exercise. We are told by Mr. Unger - who is an uncomfortable stranger in the world of the rich, unused to deciphering nuances of caste - that the Harknesses' seven-year marriage was a happy one. Its estimated she spent the 2020 equivalent of $86 million on the endeavor. Immediate Needs: $1,500. The lovely pair only made it four years before divorcing. ''You see,'' she said. I just hit the ceiling. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. 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.'' Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. After that, Rebekah really let it all hang out. All the essentials: top fashion stories, editors picks, and celebrity style. The Joffrey dancers who spent the summer at Holiday House loved it. These are facts of which we have already been apprised. He was not convinced. Taylor Swift and Rebekah Harkness may have been born decades apart, but it seems they shared a talent for dominating the headlines. He left her $75 million (about $720 million in todays money), and she blew through it with a vengeance. That money can't buy happiness? Equipped with a ludicrous amount of self-confidence, she did something supremely stupid. 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 . Obviously, Rebekah was completely out touch with realityso her next move makes sense. Copyright 2022 SLM Media Group. The 1988 novel was published about Rebekah . [1] Before their divorce in 1946, they had two children; Allen Pierce (b. Where Harkness had her Bitch Pack, Swifts group of friends had a much-scrutinized squad. They had a son, Allen, and a daughter, Terry. Ironically nicknamed The Chalice of Life, the morbid monument stood right at the intersection between tacky and lavish, just like Rebekah herself. (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.) Shop for Rebekah Harkness at Walmart.com. No clan is left untouched, and even families that seem happy and normal on. Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. When Harkness offered to pay Ella Fitzgerald to sing some of her pop songs, Fitzgerald wouldnt do it. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). Aw, how sweet. 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. Yet like so much of Harknesss life, what seemed beautiful on the outside was rotting on the inside. Allen Pierce, Rebekah's son by the first of her four husbands, was unable to be present. In 1915, Rebekah West was born in St. Louis to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Tarwater West. [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. And when she discovered one of her Joffrey dancers didnt own a suit, she sent all the Joffrey men to Saks and all the women to Bergdorfs for formalwear. Love and Empowerment. Harkness' passions for dance and music followed her into adulthood. In the 1960s, Harkness took Bobby Scevers, a dancer who was 25 years her junior, as her lover. In recent years, Harkness has gained new fameor infamybecause of her connection to Taylor Swift. 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. (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.'' In her obituary, shes credited with supporting the Joffrey and Jerome Robbins ballet companies. Little evidence is given in support of this thesis except that the two wrote a song together called ''Giggling With My Feet.''. From the outside, Rebekah and William Harknesss marriage looked immaculate. Rebekah West Harkness (ne Semple West;[1] 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. It donated Harkness Tower at Yale, Harkness Commons at Harvard and Harkness Pavilion at New York Hospital. 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. 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. ''Kiss me,'' she commanded. She also studied orchestration with Lee Hoiby and received a Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire, in 1968.[12]. She had a marvelous time ruining everything, Swift crooned. Who Is Rebekah Harkness? 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. As she aged, Rebekah started to live off of champagne and injections, including testosterone and an assortment of pain medications. One song, The Last Great American Dynasty, is about Rebekah Harkness. They bought Eolia from Mary's sister and her brother-in-law, Jessie Stillman and William Taylor in 1907. 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. Heiress, Socialite, Model, Edith was the only child of William Hale Harkness and Rebekah West. 21 baths signature moves was to use vastly expensive products for everyday, mundane things Eolia from Mary & x27... Going to performances, but i just cant Harkness gave love another shot marrying... Oil into the punch bowl at a social event and put mineral oil into punch! 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