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. 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. By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. The children were visiting Bill's family and Alfonso had left . She dyed a cat green. 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. Our credibility is the turbo-charged engine of our success. She had spent the 1987 equivalent of $38 million on a failed enterprise. At the same time, she studied music composition and dance. $ 25.93. Rebekah Harkness & Salvador Dali holding a press conference, Bacelona Spain, 1966. By Elise Taylor. Rebekah Harkness Rebekah Harkness (1915-1982) Rebekah Harkness, born Rebekah Semple West, was one of the foremost American patrons of dance. The train wreck was now chugging along, and it wouldnt stop until Harkness took her last breath. She once served them a cake with $10 bills baked into it. Today its pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it. Or, at least, a leg, half of her. She spent a small fortune buying her way into the dance world, surrounding herself with dancers, musicians and choreographers. Live better Her passion, such as it was, burned itself out quickly, coincidentally with the baby's pulling a ribbon out of her hair. She filled her fish tank with goldfish and Scotch. Shop for Rebekah Harkness at Walmart.com. 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. The celebrities brought paparazzi and, echoes of the Rebekah Harkness era, complaints from the neighbors. Aerial view the former Holiday House. They didn't fit: ''Just a leg is in there, or maybe half of her head, and an arm,'' said one of Rebekah's friends. Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train / It was sunny, Taylor Swift croons in her new song The Last Great American Dynasty. In 3 minutes 51 seconds, Swift tells the story of Harknesss legacy through lyrics. All rights reserved. Were always looking for your input! 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. Harkness started acting out early in her adolescence, and her antics would put any other mean girl to shame. She danced, too, and composed music. By James Crowley On 7/24/20 at 12:22 PM EDT. A philanthropist. [9] [14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. Her youngest daughter, Edith, had tried to commit suicide at the age of 15 by flinging herself out of a high rise in front of her. 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. (Allegedly, it was a cat if it matters.). She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. Calling all Swifties and History Nerds! She went to Fermata, a. She did this in grand - if occasionally Marie Antoinette-ish -style. 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 . Rebekah Harkness. I am beginning to think that biography, especially the biography of such a chaotic personality as Rebekah Harkness, needs to be molded and informed by a novelist's ordering imagination. She is the inspiration behind Taylor Swift's 2020 song "The Last Great American Dynasty". And how in the world did she get that way? In October 1948, Harkness gave birth to her first child with her second husband, a daughter Edith. [12] Sheesh, its not wonder Rebekah turned out to be a nightmare when she grew up. Allen Pierce, Rebekah's son by the first of her four husbands, was unable to be present. Based on "The Last Great American Dynasty's" lyrics, it's clear that Swift feels a palpable connection with Harkness, despite the decades between them. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a severely retarded and disabled child. Was she power or pawn? In 1961, Harkness gave love another shot, marrying the prominent celebrity doctor Benjamin Harrison Kean. They had a son, Allen, and a daughter, Terry. Throughout the . Heiress, Socialite, Model, Edith was the only child of William Hale Harkness and Rebekah West. She began to cut back and look for public funding. The two purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which they nicknamed Holiday House. It bought her the services of George Skibine, Marjorie Tallchief, Alvin Ailey, Erik Bruhn and Andy Warhol, but it did not guarantee her success. 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. [20], Harkness died of stomach cancer in her Manhattan home on June 17, 1982 at the age of 67. Suddenly, Rebekah was a rich widowone of the wealthiest women in America, in fact. Watch the video for "The Last Great American Dynasty": Woytus is St. Louis Magazine's deputy editor, coveringnews and culture. '', 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. In her obituary, shes credited with supporting the Joffrey and Jerome Robbins ballet companies. I want to look away, but I just cant. In its day, the Harkness would train more professional dancers than any other company. How should she do it? She wondered. When she died in 1982, Harkness had demanded her ashes be put in a $250,000 jeweled Salvador Dal urn. Her marriage to William Hale Bill Harkness, an attorney and heir to the Standard Oil fortune of William L. Hark Madame de Pompadour didn't just share King Louis XV's bed, she also shared his power. She ended up selling the theater at a huge loss, and the Harkness Ballet company folded in 1975. 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. Rebekah Harkness's height Unknown & weight Not Available right. Its estimated she spent the 2020 equivalent of $86 million on the endeavor. The last great American dynasty, indeed. William Hale Harkness One day, Harknesss antics were so extreme that they got her kicked off a cruise ship. Copyright 2022 SLM Media Group. New York: William Morrow & Company. She stole a neighbors dog and dyed it key lime green. And that wasnt the only ill-advised thing she did. REBEKAH HARKNESS earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in social work from the University of Utah. She believed in reincarnation. The dancers, choreographers, composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters. Harkness, fittingly, belonged to an American dynasty. He later said his time in prison was the happiest of his life. Rebekah Harkness was born on 17 April 1915 in St Louis, Missouri, USA. As the most commanding mistress in the French court, she bettered the lives of many and became a beloved figure. Her net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. There's something about the family structure that encourages secrets. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. It had hand-carved Louis XIV chairs and a huge mural that featured the companys dancers as well as Rebekah Harkness in the nude. [1] Before their divorce in 1946, they had two children; Allen Pierce (b. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it really was. .more Get A Copy 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." 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. Mother of Private. 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. With her help, the Joffrey won international renownsomething she wanted for herself. Perhaps most tragically, Rebekahs little granddaughter Angel had passed just before Rebekah herself; she was just 10 years old. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. ''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.''. The New York Times described him as an embarrassing sort of man, and his hobbies completely back this up. It donated Harkness Tower at Yale, Harkness Commons at Harvard and Harkness Pavilion at New York Hospital. Harkness had no problem dropping Joffrey like a hot potato when he wouldnt support her dismal vanity projects. 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. She used much of her inheritance to become a patron of the ballet, as well as to compose music. 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. Though Harkness took those nasty testosterone injections to strengthen her body for dance, the medicine actually had the opposite effect. 11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Rebekah Harkness, American composer, sculptor, and. Though the Harkness Ballet was floundering, there was one brilliant choreographer, Larry Rhodes, who received good press. Meanwhile, the booze and the pills caught up with her. Her daughter Edith killed herself. After she was widowed, Mrs. Harkness renovated her Rhode Island house; she installed 8 kitchens and 21 baths. She married her second husband, Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, in 1947. Bobby Scevers, Rebekah's lover, 25 years younger than she and a self-declared homosexual, pronounced her children ''the most worthless, selfish, useless creatures I've ever seen.'' Harkness died of cancer in 1982 in New York City. [16], In 1961, Harkness married Ben Kean (c.19121993),[17] a physician who was a professor of Tropical Medicine at the Cornell Medical College. Wealthy, elegant, and beautiful, Harkness seemed to have it allfrom her oil baron husband to her notoriously raucous parties. . Not long after Rebekahs passing, her daughter Edith finally managed to succeed in her attempts. The Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls; they also got very rowdy at these gatherings. 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. She was notorious along the eastern seaboard for her tacky, campy, new money sensibilities, and her Harkness Theater was the epitome of her gaudy aesthetic. [4], On October 1, 1947, Harkness married William Hale Harkness (19001954), the son of William Lamon Harkness, both Standard Oil heirs. (Perhaps this is a tale that inspired the Swift lyric, She had a marvelous time ruining everything.) Fittingly, she and her finishing school friends dubbed themselves the Bitch Pack. She even started a company of her own in 1964: the Harkness Ballet. Her parents did care that she looked good, according to Unger. 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. Maybe. She loved to pour Dom Perignon into her pool and let guests swim around in the bubbly. Immediate Needs: $1,500. Is there a chic way to go? One day, Rebekah would find out that question for herself. The socialite was born in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. She would also fill her lavish fish tanks with Scotch, even as living goldfish swam in them. 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. We want our readers to trust us. Parents. It was the second marriage for both of them. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. We have estimated Rebekah Harkness's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. The Harknesses were married for a brief periodjust seven years. . In 1915, Rebekah West was born in St. Louis to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Tarwater West. The couple divorced in 1946. Bill adored the child, as he did his stepchildren, whom he treated as if they were his own. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet. Blue Blood: How Rebekah Harkness, One of the Richest Women in the World, Destroyed a Great American Family Craig Unger. Dancy Mason is the Editor-in-Chief at Factinate. So what did she do? As the saying goes, well-behaved women seldom make history. 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. 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. Convicted of murder in the second degree, he was behind the bars of a Florida jail. I don't want this screaming baby over my room! ''Money can buy anything.'' An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). One of the most surprising characters to crop up on Taylor Swift's latest album is Rebekah Harkness in "the last . 1940) and Anne Terry Pierce (b. She applied herself with a rigid, frightening discipline that would become her trademark later in life. Shutterstock Advertisement 17. The St. Louisborn socialite is the subject of the singer-songwriter's "The Last Great American Dynasty.". She also bought them an old firehouse in Westerly to practice in, calling it the Harkness Center for the Arts. Discover Rebekah Harkness, the extravagant woman who inspired Taylor Swifts song the last great american dynasty.. Rebekah Harkness asked. The parties continued when she brought the entire Joffrey to Watch Hill in 1962 and 1963. With that, Rebekahs unconditional love evaporated. She soon became the owner of a vast number of properties, and indulged in many luxuries. From petty paybacks to insane acts of karma, these bitter people somehow found the most ingenious ways. No matter what she did or who she tried to pay off, the great American heiress had a terrifyingly short time to live. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. Her 1955 tone poem, Safari Suite, was performed at Carnegie Hall, and in 1957 she released an album titled Music With a Heartbeat. 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. People talked about the time she dressed up as a maid and served drinks at her own party. Harkness pulled this prank at her own sisters debutante ball. Traduzioni in contesto per "nelle partecipazioni in" in italiano-inglese da Reverso Context: L'avviamento nelle partecipazioni in societ collegate incluso nel valore contabile di tali societ. And about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon, dyed the neighbors cat green and filled her fish tank with scotch. My association with Rebekah Harkness was based on creating a business venture that would make a profit. In, calling it the Harkness ballet about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom into. 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