From the outside, Rebekah and William Harknesss marriage looked immaculate. 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. Salinger, hoping to convince him his stories should be set to her music. The last great American dynasty, indeed. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). Her daughter Terry gave birth to a severely retarded and disabled child. Immediate Family: Daughter of Bill Harkness and Rebekah Semple Harkness. After that, Rebekah really let it all hang out. The Harknesses were married for a brief periodjust seven years. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a child who died at age 10. 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. To zero peoples surprise, the Harkness family was utterly dysfunctional. '', 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. 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. Today its pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it. Her reason was chilling. She went to Fermata, a. Or, at least, a leg, half of her. A patron of dance and medicine. It donated Harkness Tower at Yale, Harkness Commons at Harvard and Harkness Pavilion at New York Hospital. Though the Harkness Ballet was floundering, there was one brilliant choreographer, Larry Rhodes, who received good press. Well, Harkness couldnt bear to be upstaged, so she unceremoniously fired Rhodes and doomed her own precious ballet company in the process. [9] [14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. Once she pretended to be a cleaning woman and approached the reclusive J.D. Several hours later, the top of the urn - called the Chalice of Life - was somehow, by unknown agencies, uncovered. He had a daughter and a granddaughter who became the actress Elizabeth Montgomery. Wife of Private. 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. Her daughter Terry hired Roy Cohn in a (failed) attempt to have her will invalidated. 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. She is the inspiration behind Taylor Swift's 2020 song "The Last Great American Dynasty". 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.'' Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. She hoped that the fourth time would be the charm, but the socialite had no such luck. (Actually, it was a private My Favorite Murder crossover group, if you care.) Parents. She would pay for dancers nose jobs at the drop of a hat, and buy office desks for her administrators that cost months worth of New York rent, a generosity that often made her middle-class secretaries supremely uncomfortablenot that Harkness noticed. Her marriage to William Hale Bill Harkness, an attorney and heir to the Standard Oil fortune of William L. Hark $ 12.19. While he was under her employ, she would often order him around romantically. [23], An American Ballet Story is an upcoming documentary film directed by Leslie Strait and sponsored by the International Documentary Association. Or, at least, a leg, half of . Rebekah Harkness & Salvador Dali holding a press conference, Bacelona Spain, 1966. Live better Did Mommy and Daddy notice? So in 1977 she checked into Silver Hill, a rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn. Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. The resulting damages to herself, her companies and her children were heartbreaking. According to one story, Harknesss adoration for her grandchild vanished almost overnight. She had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of money in her bank account. Her parents packed Rebekah off to finishing school. 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.'' In 1915, Rebekah West was born in St. Louis to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Tarwater West. She used much of her inheritance to become a patron of the ballet, as well as to compose music. Near the end of her life, one friend noted that she walked like Frankenstein.. People reported that Harknesss lavish marble bathrooms were often splattered with blood, and that her muscles had begun to calcify. . [9] Through the William Hale Harkness Foundation, she sponsored construction of a medical research building at the New York Hospital and supported a number of medical research projects. But according to An American Ballet Story. (Harkness reportedly cleaned her pool with Dom Prignon.) But beneath the elegant surface lurked a driven woman tormented by personal demons. [1] Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. An awning saved her life. 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. I want to look away, but I just cant. She got thrown off a cruise for swimming nude in the pool and swearing at the crew. Scevers, as it turned out, was a self-identified gay man, and couldnt have been in the relationship for romance. The others, they just know how to bite. Wow, Im getting the sense that these two really liked dirty talk. Rebekah was previously married to Niels H. Lauersen, Benjamin Harrison Kean, William Hale Harkness and Dickson W. Pierce. 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. Rebekah Harkness was born on 17 April 1915 in St Louis, Missouri, USA. As yet another troubled member of the family, Allen had gotten into a fight, slain a man, and was eventually sentenced with manslaughter. She brought her Squad musician, actor and model friends to the mansion for Fourth of July Taymerica parties. Her net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. She gave them weekends off and charge accounts to the shops in town. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. Rebekahs parents hired one nanny specifically because the woman had worked in an insane asylum before. The only problem was that the urn was too small. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn. All of the work and much of the music was original. 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. 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? Their wedding took place at 730 Park Avenue, which was Williams apartment. ''The others, they just know how to bite.'') Harkness' passions for dance and music followed her into adulthood. That money can't buy happiness? Rebekah Harkness Net Worth. And how in the world did she get that way? 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. She and her friends called themselves the Bitch Pack and disrupted debutante parties. The caption read: "A young woman with a surprising range of interests, Mrs. Harkness is a sculptor, a musician of professional standing (she's a member of ASCAP), a skier (she'll soon off to her. Might Mrs. Harkness be seen as a casualty of her own doomed and defiled expectations? They bought Eolia from Mary's sister and her brother-in-law, Jessie Stillman and William Taylor in 1907. You won't want to miss this episode about the muse for Last Great American Dynasty by Taylor Swift. Rebekah Harkness asked. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. When Rebekah decided to renovate her Rhode Island mansion, she demanded that it have a whopping eight kitchens and 21 baths. 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. She believed in reincarnation. 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. After she was widowed, Mrs. Harkness renovated her Rhode Island house; she installed 8 kitchens and 21 baths. Harkness was surprisingly generous when it suited her, but also unpredictably bizarre. 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. Mr. Unger, who records interviews uncritically and unreflectively, does not permit us to know exactly how he feels about his subject. '', 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. Copyright 2022 SLM Media Group. William Hale died of a heart attack in 1954. Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts. All Rights Reserved. Madame de Pompadour didn't just share King Louis XV's bed, she also shared his power. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/books/is-there-a-chic-way-to-go.html. The Holiday House property was divided into three lots, according to Watch Hill Through Time. 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 erected a giant blue geodesic dome on her lawn, they sued her for zoning violations. But most people dont know the most chilling part. (Watch it here.). ''How should she do it?'' Little Betty had a horrific childhood. 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. 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. Craig Unger tries to stipulate that Rebekah, who died in 1982 at the age of 67, was an interesting person. She said she married her first, photographer Dickson Pierce, because she had nothing else to do. No surprise, that union ended in divorce. One work, Dreams of Glory, had an insipid story about a little boy who dreams of becoming John F. Kennedy. The most tragic detail? She would also fill her lavish fish tanks with Scotch, even as living goldfish swam in them. William was rolling in money, which made him the perfect candidate for Rebekahs expensive tastes. I just cant Rebekah Semple Harkness fortune of William L. Hark $ 12.19 brother-in-law, Jessie Stillman and William in... Bed, she also shared his power to be upstaged, so she unceremoniously Rhodes... Getting the sense that these two really liked dirty talk woman had in... 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