It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. . 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. Instead, she was reared by a series of nanniesand thats not even the worst part. They featured fireworks, boat rides and a giant inflatable water slide. Taylor Swift has once . September 30, 2013 by knelson. Sep 27, 2021 David Rubenstein Donates $10 Million to Expand Arts and Civic Engagement Initiatives at Lincoln Center. Today its pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it. 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. 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. Franklin Pierces three children died before reaching adulthood. Though her children Edith and Terry rushed to her bedside along with her lover Bobby Scevers, the scene was anything but heart-warming. Send Woytus anemail at [email protected]. Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company, ensuring she grew up comfortably. Ugh. In addition to her marriage, Harkness also became well known for her personal eccentricities, as well as her contributions to the arts. He was in prison. 11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Rebekah Harkness, American composer, sculptor, and. Harkness died of cancer at 67 in 1982. She went to Fermata, a. Image courtesy Holiday House, Courtesy Google, Maxar Technologies. The pair was horribly mismatched, with Lauersen a whopping 20 years younger than his bride. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. She was born Rebekah Semple West in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. Allen Pierce, Rebekah's son by the first of her four husbands, was unable to be present. 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. Taylor Swift bought the former Holiday House in 2013 for a reported $17.75 million in cash. This arrangement effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular basis, theNew York Timescommented. 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. 1944). As yet another troubled member of the family, Allen had gotten into a fight, slain a man, and was eventually sentenced with manslaughter. I tried to get my ex-wife served with divorce papers. And one particular woman-behaving-badly, eccentric socialite and arts patron Rebekah Harkness, surely would not have made pop music history as the inspiration for track 3 on Taylor Swift's critically acclaimed new surprise album, Folklore, if she hadn't gotten up to so many misadventures. 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. People reported that Harknesss lavish marble bathrooms were often splattered with blood, and that her muscles had begun to calcify. She applied herself with a rigid, frightening discipline that would become her trademark later in life. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). 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. Anne married Anthony McBride in 1966[1] and had a severely brain-damaged baby who died at age 10. 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 . 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. The St. Louisborn socialite is the subject of the singer-songwriter's "The Last Great American Dynasty.". Aw, how sweet. Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet Company photographed at her estate in Watch Hill, R.I., 1964. ''You see,'' she said. She went to Fermata, a South Carolina finishing school that had sheltered Roosevelts, Biddles and Auchinclosses. 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. Donning a black chiffon Mainbocher dress with a white silk back-tied apron, she flashed a wry smile at the camera. She had a marvelous time ruining everything, Swift crooned. She is from USA. Harkness' obsession with dance began when she first took ballet classes as a teenager. 314-918-3000. In its day, the Harkness would train more professional dancers than any other company. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. In her obituary, shes credited with supporting the Joffrey and Jerome Robbins ballet companies. Images: Harkness Tower Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653891. Rebekah Harkness. Do you question the accuracy of a fact you just read? The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. Anyone can read what you share. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. By Elise Taylor. (Harkness reportedly cleaned her pool with Dom Prignon.) 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. This week, Taylor Swift showed the world what shes been working on during quarantine: a new album, Folklore, which the singer-songwriter released late Thursday evening. BOX 191606 I just hit the ceiling. [3] Harkness would also continue to study dance and piano, and studied ballet with Victoria Cassau, who was a student of Anna Pavlova. The ashes were placed in a $250,000 jeweled urn made by Salvador Dali. And then there were herthree children. She got thrown off a cruise for swimming nude in the pool and swearing at the crew. In the art world, the shade International Klein Blue is famous, and was custom-mixed by renowned artist Yves Klein in 1960. 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 material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. ''So absurd,'' Mr. Scevers pronounced. Rebekah Harkness's Net Worth: $1-5 Million Age, Height & Body Measurements Rebekah Harkness has been died on 17 June 1982. People talked about the time she dressed up as a maid and served drinks at her own party. She attended finishing school at Fermata in Aiken, South Carolina, from 1929 to 1932, before pursuing advanced instruction in harmonic . It is possible to write an edifying biography about an unedifying life. 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? Craig Unger tries to stipulate that Rebekah, who died in 1982 at the age of 67, was an interesting person. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a severely retarded and disabled child. Scevers and Harkness brought out the worst in each other. The couple divorced in 1977but Rebekahs life was about to take a much darker turn. Little Betty had a horrific childhood. [24] It explores the Harkness' legacy and her company, Harkness Ballet.[25]. The end came swift, fast, and brutal for Harkness. Pierce claimed to be a descendant of President Franklin Pierce, though that would have been quite a feat. And the dysfunction didnt end there. Her son Allen says the years he spent in prison were the happiest of his life. Mary and Edward Harkness were married in 1904. Bobby Scevers, Mr. Unger writes, ''had no sympathy'' for the child. [10][11], Later in life, she studied in Fontainebleau, France, with Nadia Boulanger, at the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva, and the Mannes College of Music, New York. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. Her parents packed Rebekah off to finishing school. All Rights Reserved. After that, Rebekah really let it all hang out. 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. When publicizing her ballet, Harkness became notorious for refusing to showcase any of her talented dancers in the promotional photographs. 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. Jean Stein and George Plimpton did that brilliantly in ''Edie,'' the biography of poor Edie Sedgwick. It was shaping up to be a white-picket fence brooduntil, that is, Rebekah proved herself to be an utterly horrific mother. 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. St. Louis, MO 63119 This introduction developed into a deep love for the art form and created a desire to impact the dance community in several different facets. Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet. Obviously, Rebekah was completely out touch with realityso her next move makes sense. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. Her children, not so much. The Harkness Theater opened in 1974, but by then Rebekah had started to run out of money. Though the Harkness Ballet was floundering, there was one brilliant choreographer, Larry Rhodes, who received good press. As the saying goes, well-behaved women seldom make history. 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. 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? Please reach out to us to let us know what youre interested in reading. From . The resulting damages to herself, her companies and her children were heartbreaking. Her daughter Edith killed herself. Rebekah Harkness, composer, sculptor, dance patron, and philanthropist who founded the Harkness Ballet, photographed in her office in 1964. They had a son, Allen, and a daughter, Terry. [13], A philanthropist, Harkness supported the Joffrey Ballet for years, as well as the Harkness Ballet Foundation and the William Hale Harkness Foundation. Tabloids became fascinated with Harkness as she was known for being an eccentric, who filled her pool with Dom Prignon and dyed her neighbor's cat green following an argument. Mary took a portion of the estate to start Camp Harkness in 1920 for children with polio. Please submit feedback to [email protected]. I want to look away, but I just cant. 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." (Allegedly, it was a cat if it matters.). All of the work and much of the music was original. 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. '', 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. Harkness started acting out early in her adolescence, and her antics would put any other mean girl to shame. 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. 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. Around this time, Harkness fancied herself a composer. And then in 2020, the houses owner, Taylor Swift, wrote a song about Rebekah Harkness, called The Last Great American Dynasty. 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. Her net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. [1] Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. She soon became the owner of a vast number of properties, and indulged in many luxuries. [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. Knowing all this (and much, much more; Mr. Unger withholds no ugly or racy detail), what is it exactly that we have learned? Harkness definitely wasnt the most fiscally-responsible business woman, but she does have the distinction of being the strangest girl-boss in history. 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