Rebekah bought a mansion on New Yorks Upper East Side and turned it into a posh training center for dancers called Harkness House. This had devastating consequences. 1944). For a time, Rebekah Harkness appeared to be enamored of the passive child, called Angel. Convicted of murder in the second degree, he was behind the bars of a Florida jail. 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. Image courtesy Holiday House, Courtesy Google, Maxar Technologies. So what did she do? [9] [14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. [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. She had a marvelous time ruining everything, Swift crooned. ''We were the loved ones.'' A patron of dance and medicine. Though Harkness took those nasty testosterone injections to strengthen her body for dance, the medicine actually had the opposite effect. 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. Rebekahs parents hired one nanny specifically because the woman had worked in an insane asylum before. Much of their marriage dynamic was about his domineering presence setting her on the straight and narrow. In 1962 she turned her Rhode Island estate, Holiday House, into a summer dance camp for the entire Joffrey Ballet company. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. And that wasnt the only ill-advised thing she did. She bought a mansion in Palisades, N.Y., a Manhattan penthouse and getaways in Nassau and Gstaad. 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. And she gave Alvin Ailey his first commission. 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. A philanthropist. Where Harkness had her Bitch Pack, Swifts group of friends had a much-scrutinized squad. She lost card game bets with Salvador Dal. 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. Born in 1915 in St. Louis, Missouri, her father Allen Tarwater was a powerful stockbroker, while her mother, also named Rebekah, was a perfectly turned out trophy wife. No matter what she did or who she tried to pay off, the great American heiress had a terrifyingly short time to live. That marriage lasted three years. Rebekah died on 17 June 1982 in Manhattan, New York, USA. [14] They divorced in 1965. View Full Details. At the same time, she studied music composition and dance. Anyone can read what you share. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. 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. When she died in 1982, Harkness had demanded her ashes be put in a $250,000 jeweled Salvador Dal urn. 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. Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. She married her second husband, Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, in 1947. . The Bliss Balance - Create Success, Peace, and Happiness in Your Life. In addition to . Once she pretended to be a cleaning woman and approached the reclusive J.D. All of the work and much of the music was original. . Babe Paley, one of Truman Capotes swans. Taylor Swift and Rebekah Harkness may have been born decades apart, but it seems they shared a talent for dominating the headlines. Lets start from the beginning. In 1939 she married Dickson Pierce because, she said, she didnt have anything better to do. It would be interesting to see what a social historian, someone familiar with the hierarchies of caste and class in America - or, better yet, a novelist with a theological bent - would make of the raw material Mr. Unger has gathered. 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.) .more Get A Copy Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness's friends were pillaging, ''grabbing things right and left.''. She filled her fish tank with goldfish and Scotch. Their Rhode Island estate, Holiday House, was the site of some raucous Gatsby-esque parties: Blue Blood recalls that Harkness once filled her pool with Dom Perignon (which, oddly, was not the only liberty she took with libations: its also said she put scotch in her fish tank). 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. 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. Near the end of her life, one friend noted that she walked like Frankenstein.. In the art world, the shade International Klein Blue is famous, and was custom-mixed by renowned artist Yves Klein in 1960. Rebekah died that same year after a long bout with cancer. Today its pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it. Dancy Mason is the Editor-in-Chief at Factinate. Harkness took up dancing and ice skating to lose weight and was highly disciplined in both endeavors. Little Betty had a horrific childhood. Who Is Rebekah Harkness? The music video featured the beach and the waves from the house, just as Rebekah Harkness would have seen it. With thanks to Blue Blood by Craig Unger and The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company by Sasha Anawalt. Let the little creature die!'' They performed a strip tease at a social event and put mineral oil into the punch bowl at a coming-out party. 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. [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. It was not part of the Harkness Ballet, Harkness House or the Rebekah Harkness Foundation. The couple divorced in 1946. 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. Now she has one more posthumous title: muse. It was shaping up to be a white-picket fence brooduntil, that is, Rebekah proved herself to be an utterly horrific mother. People reported that Harknesss lavish marble bathrooms were often splattered with blood, and that her muscles had begun to calcify. Her body had been slowly falling into disrepairthose injections hurt far more than they helpedand she started complaining of a mysterious stomach ailment. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. [13], A philanthropist, Harkness supported the Joffrey Ballet for years, as well as the Harkness Ballet Foundation and the William Hale Harkness Foundation. They called her ballets worthless, her music crap. Now, a grown woman can do whatever she wants in her own bed, but this was a strange choiceand not because of the age gap. In 1971, she married a fourth time, to another doctor, but one 20 years her junior. Equipped with a ludicrous amount of self-confidence, she did something supremely stupid. Although William Harkness came from a well-respected family that was supposed to give Rebekah even more of the status she craved, William himself wasa total fool. Putting mineral oil in the punch at her sisters debutante ball. But why? Edith often used her mothers many, many pills to perform these attemptsand Rebekah was anything but empathetic. Though her children Edith and Terry rushed to her bedside along with her lover Bobby Scevers, the scene was anything but heart-warming. This is where Rebekah really started getting a tarnished reputation, and things got so bad that no amount of money could fix her downfall. Marina Eglevsky - A Legacy of Dance, Part 1. . Nine servants and three cooks kept the place running. The Holiday House property was divided into three lots, according to Watch Hill Through Time. Her wealthy neighbors had other ideas, and scornfully forced her to remove the unsightly object. August 22, 1982 (33) Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States (Suicide ) Place of Burial: New York, Bronx, NY, United States. 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. See, Rebekah thought that notoriously reclusive writer J.D. All rights reserved. A philanthropist. This arrangement effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular basis. 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. 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. Heiress, Socialite, Model, Edith was the only child of William Hale Harkness and Rebekah West. [3] Harkness would also continue to study dance and piano, and studied ballet with Victoria Cassau, who was a student of Anna Pavlova. She stole a neighbors dog and dyed it key lime green. Upon the albums release, much of the Internet was thrown into a Who Is Rebekah West Harkness? madness. That money can't buy happiness? Was she power or pawn? Her daughter Terry hired Roy Cohn in a (failed) attempt to have her will invalidated. As the most commanding mistress in the French court, she bettered the lives of many and became a beloved figure. Might Mrs. Harkness be seen as a casualty of her own doomed and defiled expectations? 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. Tag Archives: Rebekah Harkness. [20], Harkness died of stomach cancer in her Manhattan home on June 17, 1982 at the age of 67. But Rebekah made the most of it. 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. Pierce. She poured money into Harkness House, a dance studio meant to mimic the grandeur of European ballet schools, outfitting it with a marble staircase, silk shades, and a crystal chandelier. In recent years, Harkness has gained new fameor infamybecause of her connection to Taylor Swift. Harkness, fittingly, belonged to an American dynasty. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. The lovely pair only made it four years before divorcing. 30 July 2020. Guests would find needles in her bathrooms, their walls spattered with blood. 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. As a sad footnote to the story of Rebekah Harkness is the tragedy of her three children. She even started a company of her own in 1964: the Harkness Ballet. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet Company photographed at her estate in Watch Hill, R.I., 1964. AboutPressCopyrightContact. Reportedly, the baby Angel innocently pulled a ribbon from Harknesss perfectly coifed hair. Doctors told Harkness that she had one ailment that no amount of money could cure: She was dying of stomach cancer. Salinger, hoping to convince him his stories should be set to her 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. 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? Pierce claimed to be a descendant of President Franklin Pierce, though that would have been quite a feat. 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. In 1956, Harkness burst onto the high society scene after. Illustrated. Or, at least, a leg, half of . 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. Why? The train wreck was now chugging along, and it wouldnt stop until Harkness took her last breath. Rebekah Harkness. However, the connection between the two women, despite being eras apart, may go beyond mere real estate. Faced with Ediths grim drive to end her life, Harkness was coldly philosophical. The Harkness Ballet would eventually have two touring companies, a youth ballet (which taught Patrick Swayze) and its own theater. One day, Harknesss antics were so extreme that they got her kicked off a cruise ship. The Swift connection is that the superstar bought Holiday House for a reported $17 million in 2013. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. In addition to her dancing career, Harkness also fancied herself something of a composer, and would often perform her original songs to polite reception at famed places like Carnegie Hall in New York. The last great American dynasty, indeed. I want to look away, but I just cant. 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. Taylor Swift's, new song titled 'The Last Great American Dynasty' is about Rebekah Harkness, the scandal-ridden socialite who once owned the Watch Hill, Rhode Island mansion Swift purchased in 2013 Jack Mitchell. When Harkness offered to pay Ella Fitzgerald to sing some of her pop songs, Fitzgerald wouldnt do it. She soon became the owner of a vast number of properties, and indulged in many luxuries. Rebekah also loaded up on art and real estate. At the end of the song, she suggests a certain satisfaction regardless of the answer: There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything.. The resulting damages to herself, her companies and her children were heartbreaking. Calling all Swifties and History Nerds! Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks and Andrew Mellon owned homes there. Silver Gelatin. Rebekah Harkness's height Unknown & weight Not Available right. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn. She maintains an online podcast that is available on iTunes or online at http://playerplaza.podbean.com . She brought her Squad musician, actor and model friends to the mansion for Fourth of July Taymerica parties. A New York Times article described Harkness's unusual upbringing. Harrison notes some of the same lighter-hearted factoids about Harkness from Ungers biography: She was allegedly once kicked off a cruise ship for swimming nude, for example. She attended finishing school at Fermata in Aiken, South Carolina, from 1929 to 1932, before pursuing advanced instruction in harmonic . I tried to get my ex-wife served with divorce papers. Rebekah West Harkness (April 17, 1915 June 17, 1982) also known as Betty Harkness, was an American composer, sculptor, dance patron, and philanthropist who founded the Harkness Ballet. Little evidence is given in support of this thesis except that the two wrote a song together called ''Giggling With My Feet.''. If you hear oil and think Russian Oligarch rich, youd be pretty much right. REBEKAH HARKNESS earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in social work from the University of Utah. She had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of money in her bank account. So in 1977 she checked into Silver Hill, a rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn. 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. As it turned out, this was the beginning of her ignominious end. 432 pp. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. (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. Please submit feedback to contribute@factinate.com. On June 10, 1939, Harkness married Dickson W. Pierce, the son of Thomas M. Pierce. View Rebekah Harkness results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. The Harkness Foundation for Dance still exists. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. 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, Their antics soon became legendary. 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. ''Kiss me,'' she commanded. She supported the arts in general, ballet in particular, and she had the wealth with which to do it. 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. Who is Rebekah Harkness Dating? Blue Blood is a story of tragic proportions. 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. 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. Being a patron of the ballet was Rebekahs passion. Harkness' passions for dance and music followed her into adulthood. Harkness had to do everything in styleeven when it came to moving on to the next life. 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. All the extra rooms would give the nannies plenty of space to feed and bathe the babies without Rebekah having to know a thing about it. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. But she annoyed the neighbors, alienated her children and provided a tempting target for critics. 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 Harkness family had a reputation for its philanthropy. 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. ''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.''. She hoped that the fourth time would be the charm, but the socialite had no such luck. Wade, teaches a dance school for children and directs 2 dance companies, one providing performing opportunities for children and one for adults. 2023 Cond Nast. Rebekah was previously married to Niels H. Lauersen, Benjamin Harrison Kean, William Hale Harkness and Dickson W. Pierce. 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. When Joffrey refused to perform the schlock, Rebekahs revenge was brutal. But beneath the elegant surface lurked a driven woman tormented by personal demons. She also expanded Holiday House to include eight kitchens, 42 rooms and 21 baths. 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. September 30, 2013 by knelson. (Allegedly, it was a cat if it matters.). (Watch it here.). Besides taking pills, the poor girl also jumped off a roof on at least one occasion, and in response, Harkness only mused at her daughters various attempts. [4], On June 10, 1939, Harkness married Dickson W. Pierce, the son of Thomas M. We have estimated Rebekah Harkness's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. She even hosted a ballet workshop there for 20 dancers from the Robert Joffrey Company (now known as the Joffrey Ballet) in 1965. 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. He had a daughter and a granddaughter who became the actress Elizabeth Montgomery. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). The St. Louisborn socialite is the subject of the singer-songwriter's "The Last Great American Dynasty.". All rights reserved. Her son Allen says the years he spent in prison were the happiest of his life. ''We were the favorites,'' says a dancer. [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. Rebekah struggled with drugs and alcohol. Discover Rebekah Harkness, the extravagant woman who inspired Taylor Swifts song the last great american dynasty.. Not long after Rebekahs passing, her daughter Edith finally managed to succeed in her attempts. She had spent the 1987 equivalent of $38 million on a failed enterprise. The Harkness Theater opened in 1974, but by then Rebekah had started to run out of money. Aw, how sweet. Her first major contributions were helping to fund the early . [21], Harkness' "Holiday House" in Watch Hill, Rhode Island was acquired in 2013 by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Rebekah Harkness was practically destined to become a spoiled little rich girl. Her children, not so much. By 1956, she had even snagged a photo spread in Vogue, appearing in a neat, black Mainbocher dress with a white satin apron at her back. They had a son, Allen, and a daughter, Terry. She once dressed as a waitress at one of them so she could eavesdrop on the guests. According to one story, Harknesss adoration for her grandchild vanished almost overnight. 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. $ 25.93. Shed had a brief, unhappy marriage to a doctor in the early 1960s. 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