This is where Rebekah really started getting a tarnished reputation, and things got so bad that no amount of money could fix her downfall. 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. Harkness had quite the life according to The New York Times (opens in new tab) . Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. The rich socialite whose judgment sometimes lapsed was just too good a target. Rebekah Semple West was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Soon Clive Barnes was writing that the Harkness Ballet had ''descended beyond the necessity of serious consideration,'' and in 1975 it folded. There's something about the family structure that encourages secrets. (Yes, the seaside mansion that was the setting for Taymerica.) Today its pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it. Though her children Edith and Terry rushed to her bedside along with her lover Bobby Scevers, the scene was anything but heart-warming. When publicizing her ballet, Harkness became notorious for refusing to showcase any of her talented dancers in the promotional photographs. Bill adored the child, as he did his stepchildren, whom he treated as if they were his own. While a kinder critic likened it to a lavish ladies powder room, less-generous experts compared it to a Staten Island beauty parlor. Ouch. Swift bought Harknesss Rhode Island Holiday House in 2013 and used the near-palatial estate to throw her own lavish parties, notably her Taymerica July 4th bashes. The parties continued when she brought the entire Joffrey to Watch Hill in 1962 and 1963. 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. . 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. A philanthropist. In her obituary, shes credited with supporting the Joffrey and Jerome Robbins ballet companies. Rebekah Harkness. Harkness died of cancer at 67 in 1982. View Full Details. She once served them a cake with $10 bills baked into it. "Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny" The very first line of the song introduces the main character, Rebekah West Harkness, a real heiress who was also a composer, ballet mistress, and sculptor whose life presents several interesting anecdotes. We are meant to take comfort and a measure of relief from our difference - though, as we know but do not frequently wish to remember, the grave awaits us all. Scevers, as it turned out, was a self-identified gay man, and couldnt have been in the relationship for romance. Then she stole most of the Joffrey dancers for her own ballet company the Harkness. Pierce. That marriage lasted three years. Though Harkness took those nasty testosterone injections to strengthen her body for dance, the medicine actually had the opposite effect. She attended finishing school at the Fermata School for Girls in Aiken, South Carolina, whose other alums included Roosevelts and Auchinclosses. ''I can't believe it took her this long to succeed.'') It was shaping up to be a white-picket fence brooduntil, that is, Rebekah proved herself to be an utterly horrific mother. 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. Shop for Rebekah Harkness at Walmart.com. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory, Swift says of the inspiration behind her album, Folklore. She bought a mansion in Palisades, N.Y., a Manhattan penthouse and getaways in Nassau and Gstaad. When she was 10 years old, she did. She didnt help herself with her capriciousness. Image courtesy Holiday House, Courtesy Google, Maxar Technologies. P.O. Nine servants and three cooks kept the place running. There she delighted, as she wrote in her scrapbook, in setting out to ''do everything bad. And about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon, dyed the neighbors cat green and filled her fish tank with scotch. They complained she cared more about the dancers than she cared about them. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. Her children, not so much. This arrangement effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular basis, theNew York Timescommented. (Actually, it was a private My Favorite Murder crossover group, if you care.) If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it really was. 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 . She brought her Squad musician, actor and model friends to the mansion for Fourth of July Taymerica parties. 1944). Walker & Co. with George Herbert Walker, grandfather and great-grandfather of the Bush presidents. Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company, ensuring she grew up comfortably. Anne married Anthony McBride in 1966[1] and had a severely brain-damaged baby who died at age 10. I don't want this screaming baby over my room! 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. Rebekahs parents might not have cared a whit about loving their daughter, but they sure as heck cared about what she looked like. Their antics soon became legendary. Watch the video for "The Last Great American Dynasty": Woytus is St. Louis Magazine's deputy editor, coveringnews and culture. Historys most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/books/is-there-a-chic-way-to-go.html. (Harkness reportedly cleaned her pool with Dom Prignon.) She gave them weekends off and charge accounts to the shops in town. So, how much is Rebekah Harkness worth at the age of 67 years old? Born April 17, 1915 Died June 17, 1982 (67) Showcase yourself on IMDbPro Add to list Credits Harkness drew glares for her parties at Holiday House, as did Swift: Who could forget the frenzy over her celeb-studded Fourth of July bash? Was she power or pawn? $ 25.93. William Hale died of a heart attack in 1954. In addition to the three kids she has with Jamie, Rebekah has two children, Megan and Taylor, from previous relationships. . William Hale Harkness Dancy Mason is the Editor-in-Chief at Factinate. Harkness had three husbands. Harkness' passions for dance and music followed her into adulthood. Rebekah Harkness Photo: Jack Mitchell/Getty Images. You won't want to miss this episode about the muse for Last Great American Dynasty by Taylor Swift. She attended finishing school at Fermata in Aiken, South Carolina, from 1929 to 1932, before pursuing advanced instruction in harmonic . 11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Rebekah Harkness, American composer, sculptor, and. Not long after Rebekahs passing, her daughter Edith finally managed to succeed in her attempts. However Jamie has since. After two years, Rebekah Harkness suddenly cut her ties to the Joffrey when Robert Joffrey, its founder and choreographer, wouldnt rename his company for her. A ltima dinastia de Rebekah Harkness famosa e problemtica socialite que inspirou a faixa 3 de "Folklore", lbum de Taylor Swift | by ana guelere | Hello Band | Medium Write Sign up Sign In. However, the connection between the two women, despite being eras apart, may go beyond mere real estate. Rebekah Harkness patronage allowed the Joffrey to perform in Iran. My association with Rebekah Harkness was based on creating a business venture that would make a profit. She would pay for dancers nose jobs at the drop of a hat, and buy office desks for her administrators that cost months worth of New York rent, a generosity that often made her middle-class secretaries supremely uncomfortablenot that Harkness noticed. 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 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. But most people dont know the most chilling part. 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. Wife of Private. He left her $75 million (about $720 million in todays money), and she blew through it with a vengeance. The St. Louisborn socialite is the subject of the singer-songwriter's "The Last Great American Dynasty.". And the dysfunction didnt end there. Reportedly, she wanted these updates so that she could see as little of her children as possible. ''Oh, my God,'' said a witness. The Robert Joffrey Company summer workshop at Rebekah Harkness' Watch Hill estate in Rhode Island, July 1962. William was rolling in money, which made him the perfect candidate for Rebekahs expensive tastes. [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. Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness's friends were pillaging, ''grabbing things right and left.''. All of the work and much of the music was original. 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. Though Rebekah grew up in a wealthy St. Louis family, her social status was elevated when, after her first divorce, she married William. She also expanded Holiday House to include eight kitchens, 42 rooms and 21 baths. Mother of Private. They called her ballets worthless, her music crap. ''Money can buy anything.'' Jack Mitchell. 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. If I report on the demise of the multimillionaire patron of the dance dry-eyed, it is because I am confident in the belief that nothing we say about the dead can prejudice the Defense or tip the Scales of Judgment. 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.) Half sister of Private; Private and Anne T. McBride. Her reason was chilling. Rebekah Harkness asked. Category 1960s Pop Art Black and White Photography. Apparently, Harkness liked to reward her boy-toys, because she soon made Castelli the artistic director of her ballet company. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. ''You see,'' she said. Harkness, fittingly, belonged to an American dynasty. 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. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Swift wrote and recorded a new album called Folklore. She danced, too, and composed music. She dyed chocolate mousse blue. (''I'm glad Edith is gone,'' said the unquenchable Bobby Scevers. As a sad footnote to the story of Rebekah Harkness is the tragedy of her three children. While he was under her employ, she would often order him around romantically. Rebekah divorced Pierce in 1946 after an excruciating seven-year marriage, and it wasnt long before she set her sights on William Hale Harkness, the heir to the Standard Oil fortune. Besides despising Rebekahs children, Scevers also hated her disabled granddaughter Angel. However, despite our best efforts, we sometimes miss the mark. She retaliated by dying a neighbors cat green. That even the rich must die? Harkness had to do everything in styleeven when it came to moving on to the next life. [4], On October 1, 1947, Harkness married William Hale Harkness (19001954), the son of William Lamon Harkness, both Standard Oil heirs. For all her money, Harkness did not have good taste. Socialite circles are infamously tight-lipped about their marriages, but theres almost no doubt that Rebekahs union with Pierce was a dismal affairand one day, she made a disturbing confession. Dec 8, 2020 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. (No such record could be found, but the famous Surrealist artist did design the $250,000 jewel-studded urn that held herashes. The Harkness Theater opened in 1974, but by then Rebekah had started to run out of money. Please submit feedback to contribute@factinate.com. Instead, she was reared by a series of nanniesand thats not even the worst part. Edith spent her life in and out of mental institutions, finally committing suicide in 1982. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. She would also fill her lavish fish tanks with Scotch, even as living goldfish swam in them. Swift gave all her friends matching red-white-and-blue onesies. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. According to one story, Harknesss adoration for her grandchild vanished almost overnight. Rarely does singer and songstress Taylor Swift write songs about someone outside her immediate circle. Or, at least, a leg, half of . Copyright 2023 by Factinate.com. So what did she do? An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). With that, Rebekahs unconditional love evaporated. At Factinate, were dedicated to getting things right. In addition to . She was born Rebekah Semple West in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. Swift put up No Trespassing signs that they didnt like either. [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 lovely pair only made it four years before divorcing. Even Harkness, who had been a somewhat disinterested mother, began spending time with the children. (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.) It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. See, Rebekah thought that notoriously reclusive writer J.D. 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. ''The others, they just know how to bite.'') 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. 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. The pair was horribly mismatched, with Lauersen a whopping 20 years younger than his bride. She got thrown off a cruise for swimming nude in the pool and swearing at the crew. No matter what she did or who she tried to pay off, the great American heiress had a terrifyingly short time to live. Her net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. Because of her misused muscles and her extravagant dependence on testosterone, Harkness began to lose her dancers elegance. Her first major contributions were helping to fund the early . Rebekah died that same year after a long bout with cancer. Harkness was surprisingly generous when it suited her, but also unpredictably bizarre. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. Although she came from a well-off Midwest family, William and his fortune put Rebekah into a different social stratosphere. One critic denounced it as the worst mural ever made. BOX 191606 Little Betty had a horrific childhood. The Harknesses were married for a brief periodjust seven years. 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. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet Company photographed at her estate in Watch Hill, R.I., 1964. West co-founded G.H. Wade, teaches a dance school for children and directs 2 dance companies, one providing performing opportunities for children and one for adults. [1] Before their divorce in 1946, they had two children; Allen Pierce (b. Guests would find needles in her bathrooms, their walls spattered with blood. [4] Harkness also surrounded herself with other well-known creatives, like yogi B.K.S. The critics, especially the New York Times Clive Barnes, savaged Rebekah. The Holiday House property was divided into three lots, according to Watch Hill Through Time. Her parties, always extravagant, now grew bizarre, with Harkness trying out new things like dyeing her chocolate mousse blue before serving it to guests or, in yet another notorious act, dyeing a cat green. [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. Allen Pierce, was convicted of murder after shooting a man in a brawl, her daughter Terry's child was born with brain damage and died at the age of ten and her other daughter Edith died of suicide, following numerous stays at mental health institutions. By 1980, many of Harknesss old friends had dropped off, and she was left with only her most sycophantic hangers-on. That money can't buy happiness? The couple divorced in 1946. Rebekah had already had two children with her first husband, Allen and Anne "Terry" Pierce, and she then had one more child with William, a daughter named Edith. 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. [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. . She stole a neighbors dog and dyed it key lime green. She started by bringing the company to Watch Hill (despite the neighbors) in the summer for instruction, practice and choreography. When she went to the doctors office, they found a frightening problem. She died June 17, 1982. Maybe. 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. [18], In 1974, she married Niels H. Lauersen, another physician, who was 20 years her junior. [2][4] During her final days, Harkness began to reconcile with her children. He was in prison. I just hit the ceiling. Reportedly, the baby Angel innocently pulled a ribbon from Harknesss perfectly coifed hair. Her passion, such as it was, burned itself out quickly, coincidentally with the baby's pulling a ribbon out of her hair. [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. In October 1948, Harkness gave birth to her first child with her second husband, a daughter Edith. 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. By 1982, the end was near for Harkness, yet tragically her son Allen wasnt there. 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. In addition to her marriage, Harkness also became well known for her personal eccentricities, as well as her contributions to the arts. Rebekah Semple West was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915. Yet like so much of Harknesss life, what seemed beautiful on the outside was rotting on the inside. 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. 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. Her 1955 tone poem, Safari Suite, was performed at Carnegie Hall, and in 1957 she released an album titled Music With a Heartbeat. After his brief interlude in the oasis, Mr. Castelli was made the artistic director of the Harkness Ballet. 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. When she got out, she sold her Palisades mansion to the Isley Brothers. In 1971, she married a fourth time, to another doctor, but one 20 years her junior. Rebekah Harkness's Net Worth: $1-5 Million Age, Height & Body Measurements Rebekah Harkness has been died on 17 June 1982. Rebekah had already had two children with her first husband, Allen and Anne Terry Pierce, and she then had one more child with William, a daughter named Edith. Save money. This story was updated in 2022. In 1956, Harkness burst onto the high society scene after. Salinger had the perfect stories for her music, so one day she disguised herself as a cleaning lady, knocked on his door, then tried to convince him to let her use his fiction. For example, he liked to vanity-publish nonsensical books that even he admitted were awful. Taylor Swift By Cosmopolitan UK, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90905376. (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.'' People already thought she had betrayed Joffrey, but they now watched in horror as she ran her ballet into the ground. My mom never told me how her best friend died. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). A New York Times article described Harkness's unusual upbringing. Tag Archives: Rebekah Harkness. 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 . . [3] Harkness would also continue to study dance and piano, and studied ballet with Victoria Cassau, who was a student of Anna Pavlova. Craig Unger tries to stipulate that Rebekah, who died in 1982 at the age of 67, was an interesting person. When Harkness planned to put Angels nursery over top of his room, Scevers snapped, Let the little creature die! Unfortunately, he was one of the few people still by Harknesss side when the end came. The 1988 novel was published about Rebekah . A terrible story is told here. One could almost feel sorry for her. She filled a pool with Champagne. She was 67.) She and her friends called themselves the Bitch Pack and disrupted debutante parties. Madame de Pompadour was the alluring chief mistress of King Louis XV, but few people know her dark historyor the chilling secret shared by her and Louis. Reviewers agreed he was one of the companys only shining lights. Her parents hired a nanny for Harkness specifically because she "had worked in an insane asylum," and then Harkness went to finishing school, where she decided to "do everything bad." Little creature die the Bitch Pack and disrupted debutante parties find needles in her attempts entire Joffrey perform! Her bedside along with her lover Bobby Scevers likened it to a wealthy in... To include eight kitchens, 42 rooms and 21 baths a Private my Favorite Murder crossover group, if care... 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