The children were visiting Bill's family and Alfonso had left . (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? Dec 8, 2020 TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. 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. Though Harkness took those nasty testosterone injections to strengthen her body for dance, the medicine actually had the opposite effect. 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. Salvador Dali put one touchingand classically narcissisticdetail into The Chalice of Life. The urn spun on its base so that Harkness could always be dancing, even beyond the grave. The gargantuan house itself was partially demolished, then sold to a family that remodeled it and renamed it High Watch. New York: William Morrow & Company. 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. 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. (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. $19.95. The end came swift, fast, and brutal for Harkness. Rarely does singer and songstress Taylor Swift write songs about someone outside her immediate circle. According to one story, Harknesss adoration for her grandchild vanished almost overnight. Our editors are instructed to fact check thoroughly, including finding at least three references for each fact. ''How should she do it?'' Rebekah Harkness spent much of the Standard Oil fortune she inherited on the ballet. [1] Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. The Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls; they also got very rowdy at these gatherings. Iyengar[4] and Salvador Dal, who would design her urn upon her death. 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. Edith spent her life in and out of mental institutions, finally committing suicide in 1982. So in 1977 she checked into Silver Hill, a rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn. No clan is left untouched, and even families that seem happy and normal on. All of the work and much of the music was original. Rebekahs daughter Edith was clinically depressed and suicidal for much of her life (wonder why), and spent scores of years in and out of mental institutions following near fatal attempts at self-harm. Wade, teaches a dance school for children and directs 2 dance companies, one providing performing opportunities for children and one for adults. William fathered two children with Edith Hale: [9] Louise Hale Harkness (1898-1978) who married David Sinton Ingalls, and William Hale Harkness. [24] It explores the Harkness' legacy and her company, Harkness Ballet.[25]. She retaliated by dying a neighbors cat green. Please let us know if a fact weve published is inaccurate (or even if you just suspect its inaccurate) by reaching out to us at contribute@factinate.com. [2][4] During her final days, Harkness began to reconcile with her children. She had a marvelous time ruining everything, Swift crooned. The Harkness Foundation for Dance still exists. She married her second husband, Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, in 1947. Heiress, Socialite, Model, Edith was the only child of William Hale Harkness and Rebekah West. People already thought she had betrayed Joffrey, but they now watched in horror as she ran her ballet into the ground. In October 1948, Harkness gave birth to her first child with her second husband, a daughter Edith. He appears to have been an embarrassing sort of man; he wrote and privately published a book called ''Totem and Topees,'' which he described as a ''conglomeration of uninteresting misinformation,'' and followed that with a book called ''Ho hum, the Fisherman,'' which, he said, did not ''have the excuse even of literary merit.'' . P.O. [4], On October 1, 1947, Harkness married William Hale Harkness (19001954), the son of William Lamon Harkness, both Standard Oil heirs. But behind her perfect faade lies a chilling history. Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. [10] In 1947, William Hale married Rebekah Semple West, [11] who was previously married to Dickson Pierce. 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]. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. 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. We want our readers to trust us. See the article in its original context from. Catherine of Aragon was King Henry VIIIs first wife and longest-lasting Queen of England. 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. 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.) AboutPressCopyrightContact. So what did she do? She filled a pool with Champagne. After her husband passed away in 1954, Harkness poured more money into her Watch Hill compound, installing 8 kitchens and 21 baths. Latest News on Rebekah Harkness . 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. She dyed chocolate mousse blue. Now she has one more posthumous title: muse. However Jamie has since. The rich socialite whose judgment sometimes lapsed was just too good a target. 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, An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). The Harkness family had a reputation for its philanthropy. Her parents packed Rebekah off to finishing school. The resulting damages to herself, her companies and her children were heartbreaking. Or, at least, a leg, half of . Shutterstock Advertisement 17. The Holiday House property was divided into three lots, according to Watch Hill Through Time. If you hear oil and think Russian Oligarch rich, youd be pretty much right. ''She's escaped. 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. For one, her emotionally frigid parents wanted absolutely nothing to do with raising her. They bought Eolia from Mary's sister and her brother-in-law, Jessie Stillman and William Taylor in 1907. 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.. She was 67.) And then there were herthree children. Want to share other feedback? Harkness only left death in her wake wherever she went. She danced, too, and composed music. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. 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. Rebekah Harkness keeps his personal and love life private. The Joffrey dancers who spent the summer at Holiday House loved it. Upon the albums release, much of the Internet was thrown into a Who Is Rebekah West Harkness? madness. She went to Fermata, a South Carolina finishing school that had sheltered Roosevelts, Biddles and Auchinclosses. Harkness had to do everything in styleeven when it came to moving on to the next life. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Rebekah Harkness's height Unknown & weight Not Available right. When we do, we depend on our loyal, helpful readers to point out how we can do better. I don't want this screaming baby over my room! That money can't buy happiness? Though Rebekah grew up in a wealthy St. Louis family, her social status was elevated when, after her first divorce, she married William. When she was 10 years old, she did. Rebekah Harkness. (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. In addition to . However, the connection between the two women, despite being eras apart, may go beyond mere real estate. ''When they started talking about putting the nursery over my room . 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. 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. Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. I want to look away, but I just cant. 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. [12] But why? Though Rebekah channeled Marie Antoinette, her patronage of the Joffrey brought the company international fame. In its day, the Harkness would train more professional dancers than any other company. 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. Harkness had quite the life according to The New York Times (opens in new tab) . Swift gave all her friends matching red-white-and-blue onesies. Taylor Swift bought the former Holiday House in 2013 for a reported $17.75 million in cash. Although Catherine's successor Queen Anne Boleyn suffered an infamously dark fate, Aragon's own life was somehow even more tragic. Historys most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily. When she was still desperately clinging to her ballet dreams, Harkness decided to install an enormous, blue plastic Geodesic dome right smack dab in the middle of her front lawn as a formal practice space for her failing dancers. Rebekahs parents hired one nanny specifically because the woman had worked in an insane asylum before. Rebekah was previously married to Niels H. Lauersen, Benjamin Harrison Kean, William Hale Harkness and Dickson W. Pierce. Soon Clive Barnes was writing that the Harkness Ballet had ''descended beyond the necessity of serious consideration,'' and in 1975 it folded. She had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of money in her bank account. St. Louis, MO 63119
Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks and Andrew Mellon owned homes there. All Rights Reserved. But Rebekah made the most of it. Their wedding took place at 730 Park Avenue, which was Williams apartment. She traveled a lot. 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 . [18], In 1974, she married Niels H. Lauersen, another physician, who was 20 years her junior. 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. (Actually, it was a private My Favorite Murder crossover group, if you care.) Rebekah Vardy has five children in total. Or, at least, a leg, half of her. Harkness was jealous to an absolute fault, and even to her own detriment. In 1954, something curious happened to Rebekah Harkness: Her oil tycoon husband passed. [14] They divorced in 1965. Meanwhile, the booze and the pills caught up with her. Your suggestions can be as general or specific as you like, from Life to Compact Cars and Trucks to A Subspecies of Capybara Called Hydrochoerus Isthmius. Well get our writers on it because we want to create articles on the topics youre interested in. Illustrated. Please reach out to us to let us know what youre interested in reading. 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. Around this time, Harkness fancied herself a composer. And she gave Alvin Ailey his first commission. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. 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. (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.'' 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. The parties continued when she brought the entire Joffrey to Watch Hill in 1962 and 1963. Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. In 1961, Harkness gave love another shot, marrying the prominent celebrity doctor Benjamin Harrison Kean. When she got out, she sold her Palisades mansion to the Isley Brothers. After his brief interlude in the oasis, Mr. Castelli was made the artistic director of the Harkness Ballet. She even started a company of her own in 1964: the Harkness Ballet. Design her urn upon her death story, Harknesss adoration for her grandchild vanished almost overnight just cant fact! Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls ; they also got very at., fast, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for grandchild... The Harkness family had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of in. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our fact of Day! Of Aragon was King Henry VIIIs first wife and longest-lasting Queen of England a company of her,. 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