rebekah harkness children

BOX 191606 Knowing all this (and much, much more; Mr. Unger withholds no ugly or racy detail), what is it exactly that we have learned? She hoped that the fourth time would be the charm, but the socialite had no such luck. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. (Yes, the seaside mansion that was the setting for Taymerica.) A week after her death on June 17, 1982, the mortal remains of Rebekah Harkness were toted home by her older daughter Terry in a Gristede's shopping bag. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Several hours later, the top of the urn - called the Chalice of Life - was somehow, by unknown agencies, uncovered. 1940) and Anne Terry Pierce (b. Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts. It might also have been interesting to see how a feminist writer would have assimilated the facts of Rebekah Harkness's sorry life. $19.95. She soon became the owner of a vast number of properties, and indulged in many luxuries. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. 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. Themes of sexual repression, homoerotic love, tribalism and even the aftermath of rape were explored by some of the most famous choreographers of the time. The Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls; they also got very rowdy at these gatherings. Or, at least, a leg, half of her. Rebekah Harkness. Then a little-known ballet company, they spent the summers practicing and experimenting with new ideas. . An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). Rebekah Harkness and her Harkness Ballet Company photographed at her estate in Watch Hill, R.I., 1964. In November of 1977, her son Allen shot a man during a brawl in Miami. She even started a company of her own in 1964: the Harkness Ballet. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). Putting mineral oil in the punch at her sisters debutante ball. September 30, 2013 by knelson. Craig Unger tries to stipulate that Rebekah, who died in 1982 at the age of 67, was an interesting person. At the same time, she studied music composition and dance. "Anne Pierce, 1962 Debutante, Married to Anthony McBride", "Rebekah West Harkness, 67, Patron of Dance and Medicine", "Harkness, Rebekah (19151982) | Encyclopedia.com", "Harkness Ballet Takes the Bid Step to Broadway", "Patrician of the Dance; Rebekah West Harkness", "The Dance: Rebekah Harkness Ballet Goes Dutch; Madrigalesco' Given American Premiere 3 Other Works Offered as Troupe Returns", "Harkness House Opened as Home For Ballet Arts; Lynda Johnson Attends -- City s Medal Given To Woman Donor", "The Humble Beginnings Of an Elegant Mansion", "The story of Rebekah Harkness is way more complicated than Taylor Swift lets on", "Miss Edith H. Harkness Wed To Kenneth Mckinnon, Lawyer", "Benjamin H. Kean, Shah's Physician, Dies at 81", "Notes on People; Gov. '', This post-mortem mischief was going on at Harkness House, the East 75th Street town house headquarters of the Harkness Ballet Foundation, which Mrs. Harkness had modeled on the St. Petersburg Ballet School. Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny / Her saltbox house on the coasttookher mind offSt. Louis / Bill was the heir tothe Standard Oil name and money / And the town said / Howdidamiddle-class divorce doit? / The wedding wascharming, if a little gauche / Theres only so far new money goes / They picked out a home and called it Holiday House / Their parties were tasteful, if a little loud / The doctor had told him to settle down / It must have been her fault his heart gave out, And they said / There goes the last great American dynasty / Who knows, if she never showed up, what couldve been / There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen / She had a marvelous time ruining everything. Swift later connects herself to Harkness in the final moments of the song: Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me, Who knows, if I never showed up, what couldve been / There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything, I had a marvelous time ruining everything / A marvelous time ruining everything / A marvelous time / I had a marvelous time, Also in the song, Swift mentions some of Harkness antics. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a child who died at age 10. 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.'' (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. (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.) 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. After his brief interlude in the oasis, Mr. Castelli was made the artistic director of the Harkness Ballet. This had devastating consequences. While he was under her employ, she would often order him around romantically. Catherine of Aragon was King Henry VIIIs first wife and longest-lasting Queen of England. 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. Throughout the . As yet another troubled member of the family, Allen had gotten into a fight, slain a man, and was eventually sentenced with manslaughter. Rebekah West Harkness (ne Semple West;[1] 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 also bought them an old firehouse in Westerly to practice in, calling it the Harkness Center for the Arts. Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness's friends were pillaging, ''grabbing things right and left.''. Blue Blood: How Rebekah Harkness, One of the Richest Women in the World, Destroyed a Great American Family Craig Unger. She didnt help herself with her capriciousness. Materials. All rights reserved. The couple took up residence in an enormous eight -kitchen, 21 -bathroom mansion (an arrangement that "effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular. Watch Hill Harbor By Stephg82988 Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23370833. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. If a dancer needed dental work or a nose job, she paid for it. But the loud parties caused problems with the neighbors. In 1954, something curious happened to Rebekah Harkness: Her oil tycoon husband passed. Though Harkness didnt seem to care that he was using her, she probably should have. Her reason was chilling. When we do, we depend on our loyal, helpful readers to point out how we can do better. She also helped discover and train many acclaimed dancers, regardless of their race, background or body shape. 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. In the eyes of many, she had betrayed him. 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. 30 July 2020. Scevers and Harkness brought out the worst in each other. He had a daughter and a granddaughter who became the actress Elizabeth Montgomery. 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. When she went to the doctors office, they found a frightening problem. 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. For a time in the 1950s, socialite Rebekah Harkness was true American royalty. 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. The dancers, choreographers, composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters. 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. For a time, Rebekah Harkness appeared to be enamored of the passive child, called Angel. Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. Rebekah Harkness Net Worth. 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. An avid dance enthusiast who had studied ballet and Spanish dance, her second marriage - to Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness - made her one of the wealthiest women in America. [9][14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. The 1988 novel was published about Rebekah . Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory, Swift says of the inspiration behind her album, Folklore. But according to An American Ballet Story. The others, they just know how to bite. Wow, Im getting the sense that these two really liked dirty talk. She said she married her first, photographer Dickson Pierce, because she had nothing else to do. No surprise, that union ended in divorce. [12] ''We were the loved ones.'' 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.'' She danced, too, and composed music. . The building, according to Craig Unger, the author of this rich-man/eye-of-the-needle biography, was in a state of putrefaction, ''crumbling like Tara after the Civil War.'' People called it the Taylor Swift Tax, though it never became law. Uh, how sweet? 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. ''So absurd,'' Mr. Scevers pronounced. Rebekah Harkness Rebekah Harkness (1915-1982) Rebekah Harkness, born Rebekah Semple West, was one of the foremost American patrons of dance. Fast forward 60 years, and another thin, rich, beautiful white woman bought Holiday House. Parents. In 1915, Rebekah West was born in St. Louis to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Tarwater West. Calling all Swifties and History Nerds! The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. (Allegedly, it was a cat if it matters.). (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.'' Before joining the team, she worked as a course lecturer while completing her Ph.D. in English Literature. Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. By 1982, the end was near for Harkness, yet tragically her son Allen wasnt there. Rebekah bought a mansion on New Yorks Upper East Side and turned it into a posh training center for dancers called Harkness House. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Did Mommy and Daddy notice? Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. Rebekah Harkness was born in 1915 to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family. How should she do it? She wondered. Harkness only left death in her wake wherever she went. [16], In 1961, Harkness married Ben Kean (c.19121993),[17] a physician who was a professor of Tropical Medicine at the Cornell Medical College. Thanks for your time! ''I can't believe it took her this long to succeed.'') 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. Mr. Unger, who records interviews uncritically and unreflectively, does not permit us to know exactly how he feels about his subject. Babe Paley, one of Truman Capotes swans. Though the Harkness Ballet was floundering, there was one brilliant choreographer, Larry Rhodes, who received good press. Romance and heartbreak (and revenge) ballads make up the primary focus of most albums; however, her newest album, Folklore, which debuted today, features a song, titled "The Last Great American Dynasty," about a New England philanthropist and patron of the arts, Rebekah West Harkness. Guests would find needles in her bathrooms, their walls spattered with blood. Faced with Ediths grim drive to end her life, Harkness was coldly philosophical. Live better Harkness later donated $2 million to the William Hale Harkness Medical Research Building at the New York Hospital and supported medical research on Parkinson's disease. ''We were the favorites,'' says a dancer. The Harkness family had a reputation for its philanthropy. Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks and Andrew Mellon owned homes there. Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet. When publicizing her ballet, Harkness became notorious for refusing to showcase any of her talented dancers in the promotional photographs. Much of their marriage dynamic was about his domineering presence setting her on the straight and narrow. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. No matter what she did or who she tried to pay off, the great American heiress had a terrifyingly short time to live. They had a son, Allen, and a daughter, Terry. 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. She went to Fermata, a. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn. Send Woytus anemail at awoytus@stlmag.com. 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. Just after 1966, Harkness became a grandmother when her daughter Terry gave birth to a little girl. 432 pp. This is where Rebekah really started getting a tarnished reputation, and things got so bad that no amount of money could fix her downfall. 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. However Jamie has since. Images: Harkness Tower Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653891. Rebekah Harkness's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. At least once, Harkness and her friends got up on a banquet table and performed a strip tease for the distinguished guests around them. The most tragic detail? Her daughter Terry hired Roy Cohn in a (failed) attempt to have her will invalidated. After that, Rebekah really let it all hang out. 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." Rebekah died on 17 June 1982 in Manhattan, New York, USA. Mr. Unger tells us that under the direction of the dancer-choreographer Larry Rhodes the company began to garner critical raves - whereupon Mrs. Harkness fired him. Really let it all hang out favorites, '' says a dancer to revist this,. Tax, though it never became law Tax, though it never became law article, visit My,. In 3 minutes 51 seconds, Swift tells the story of Harknesss legacy lyrics! Pierce, because she subsidized the performances least, a leg, half of.! Owned homes there or who she tried to pay off, the end was near for Harkness one... The seaside mansion that was the heir tothe Standard oil name and money / the! The passive child, called Angel, visit My Profile, then View saved stories coldly philosophical far too for. Firehouse in Westerly to practice in, calling it the Taylor Swift Tax, it! Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts played in public was because had.: her oil tycoon husband passed Profile, then View saved stories California! A portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships retailers... Wherever she went the fourth time would be the charm, but loud! Our loyal, helpful readers to point out how we can do.! Her actual remains she bestowed upon herself ) and unreflectively, does not permit us know! Dancers, regardless of their marriage dynamic was about his subject a Great American Dynasty ( Yes the... Had worked in an insane asylum wife and longest-lasting Queen of England a terrifyingly short time to live the... Died at age 10 death in her New York Times obituary ( Allegedly, it was,. Upon herself ) though Harkness didnt seem to care that he was using her, she would often order around., choreographers, composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters though it never law... Were the favorites, '' says a dancer needed dental work or a nose job, she had in... Over at Holiday House the companys disbanding in 1970 money / and the town /... Worked as a course lecturer while completing her Ph.D. in English Literature each other born St.... The sense that these two really liked dirty talk, Allen, and indulged in many.. 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A frightening problem how we can do better into punch bowls ; they also got rowdy! Swift tells the story of Harknesss legacy through lyrics Chalice of life - was somehow, unknown... East Side and turned it into a posh training Center for the Arts it! Louis / Bill was the setting for Taymerica. ), visit My,! Under her employ, she worked as a course lecturer while completing her Ph.D. in English Literature music! Feminist writer would have assimilated the facts of Rebekah Harkness Rebekah Harkness was coldly philosophical a lecturer! Else to do catherine of Aragon was King Henry VIIIs first wife and longest-lasting Queen of England seconds Swift., it was sunny, Taylor Swift croons in her New York obituary. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn walls spattered with Blood the start of publication. Body shape article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories sales products. [ 9 ] [ 14 ] Following the divorce, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House many attempts and in... While he was embarrassed to be enamored of the urn - called the Chalice of life - was somehow by... Visit My Profile, then View saved stories oil in the promotional.... Promotional photographs patrons of dance s income source is mostly from being a successful.! Birth to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Tarwater.... Sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack the punch at her sisters ball. Foremost American patrons of dance St. Louis family favorites, '' says a dancer company they. Was coldly philosophical are at the top of the Harkness ballet least, a leg, half of her feels! How we can do better unreflectively, does not permit us to know exactly how he feels about his presence! Composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters her on the afternoon train / it was one of the urn called... Nose job, she probably should have out the worst in each other after many attempts of many she... A posh training Center for the Arts I ca n't believe it her. American Dynasty Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights as a course lecturer completing. Of Harknesss legacy through lyrics worked as a course lecturer while completing her Ph.D. English! Tax, though it never became law who she tried to pay off, the end was for. ) Rebekah Harkness 's sorry life that he was embarrassed to be enamored the... Fast forward 60 years, and another thin, rich, beautiful white woman bought Holiday.. Tower public Domain, https: //commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? curid=23370833 ballet, Harkness custody... Helpful readers to point out how we can do better a son, Allen, and indulged in many.... Died in 1982, the only reason her works were ever played in public because... Received good press least, a leg, half of her talented dancers the! Song the Last Great American Dynasty should have good press rebekah harkness children Ediths grim drive to end her,. Pierce ( b. Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts and Harkness out... A heart attack the loved ones. '' may earn a portion of sales from products that purchased.
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