They called her ballets worthless, her music crap. ''Blue Blood'' is edifying only insofar as it raises questions about what a biography should be. By James Crowley On 7/24/20 at 12:22 PM EDT. (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. To zero peoples surprise, the Harkness family was utterly dysfunctional. 1944). 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. Jack Mitchell. So what did she do? An awning saved her life. In other words, these pieces didnt exactly do justice to their surroundings. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. Taylor Swift has once . Harkness died of cancer at 67 in 1982. As she aged, Rebekah started to live off of champagne and injections, including testosterone and an assortment of pain medications. 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. By Elise Taylor. 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. This is where Rebekah really started getting a tarnished reputation, and things got so bad that no amount of money could fix her downfall. And she was just getting started. Harkness other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts. She lived on champagne and injections - Vitamin B, testosterone, painkillers - as a result of which her bathrooms were splattered with blood and her muscles calcified. 1940) and Anne Terry Pierce (b. The story of Rebekah Harkness is way more complicated than Taylor Swift lets on. After that, Rebekah really let it all hang out. Her son, Allen Pierce, was convicted of murder. I don't want this screaming baby over my room! She hoped that the fourth time would be the charm, but the socialite had no such luck. St. Louis, MO 63119 We are told by Mr. Unger - who is an uncomfortable stranger in the world of the rich, unused to deciphering nuances of caste - that the Harknesses' seven-year marriage was a happy one. Rebekah Harkness spent much of the Standard Oil fortune she inherited on the ballet. 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. 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. Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. It had hand-carved Louis XIV chairs and a huge mural that featured the companys dancers as well as Rebekah Harkness in the nude. Rebekah Harkness was born in 1915 to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family. When she was 10 years old, she did. Taylor Swift By Cosmopolitan UK, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90905376. [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. Please reach out to us to let us know what youre interested in reading. Her youngest daughter, Edith, had tried to commit suicide at the age of 15 by flinging herself out of a high rise in front of her. Where Harkness had her Bitch Pack, Swifts group of friends had a much-scrutinized squad. But beneath the elegant surface lurked a driven woman tormented by personal demons. Throughout the . 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. Rebekah Harkness was born on 17 April 1915 in St Louis, Missouri, USA. Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet. 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. 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. It bought her the services of George Skibine, Marjorie Tallchief, Alvin Ailey, Erik Bruhn and Andy Warhol, but it did not guarantee her success. 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. But the book also states Harkness was "brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum." Yet while there, Harkness gave new meaning to the word prima donna. The socialite, fancying herself a dance expert, started writing her own ballets. He left her $75 million (about $720 million in todays money), and she blew through it with a vengeance. Heiress, Socialite, Model, Edith was the only child of William Hale Harkness and Rebekah West. In the 1960s, Harkness took Bobby Scevers, a dancer who was 25 years her junior, as her lover. Wealthy, elegant, and beautiful, Harkness seemed to have it allfrom her oil baron husband to her notoriously raucous parties. Their antics soon became legendary. Meanwhile, the booze and the pills caught up with her. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. Edith often used her mothers many, many pills to perform these attemptsand Rebekah was anything but empathetic. That money can't buy happiness? It might also have been interesting to see how a feminist writer would have assimilated the facts of Rebekah Harkness's sorry life. Rebekah Semple West was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915. 314-918-3000. She also expanded Holiday House to include eight kitchens, 42 rooms and 21 baths. And the dysfunction didnt end there. As the most commanding mistress in the French court, she bettered the lives of many and became a beloved figure. She danced, too, and composed music. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. The Swift connection is that the superstar bought Holiday House for a reported $17 million in 2013. (''She walked,'' an acquaintance said, ''like Frankenstein.'') The end came swift, fast, and brutal for Harkness. Send Woytus anemail at awoytus@stlmag.com. For one, her emotionally frigid parents wanted absolutely nothing to do with raising her. Her voice grew husky and her muscles calcified. $19.95. 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. She had a salon of sorts. Rebekah also loaded up on art and real estate. Lets start from the beginning. Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company. If a dancer needed dental work or a nose job, she paid for it. 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. 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. The couple divorced in 1977but Rebekahs life was about to take a much darker turn. Her grandfather founded the St. Louis Union Trust Company, ensuring she grew up comfortably. '', 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. But she annoyed the neighbors, alienated her children and provided a tempting target for critics. Wife of Private. 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. It was the second marriage for both of them. Meanwhile, in her apartment at the Carlyle Hotel, people who called themselves Rebekah Harkness's friends were pillaging, ''grabbing things right and left.''. Franklin Pierces three children died before reaching adulthood. Ugh. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Swift wrote and recorded a new album called Folklore. Harkness definitely wasnt the most fiscally-responsible business woman, but she does have the distinction of being the strangest girl-boss in history. Harkness' obsession with dance began when she first took ballet classes as a teenager. 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. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. Rebekah Harkness was one of the world's richest women, the Standard Oil heiress and founding patron of the Harkness Ballet. Who is Rebekah Harkness Dating? [9][14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. (Watch it here.). Scevers, as it turned out, was a self-identified gay man, and couldnt have been in the relationship for romance. Rebekah Harkness. 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. (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.) The most famous Pack story from around this time is when, during one particularly boring and respectable soiree, the group decided to spike a punch bowl with laxatives. Harkness, fittingly, belonged to an American dynasty. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. He was not convinced. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. BLUE BLOOD By Craig Unger. Doctors told Harkness that she had one ailment that no amount of money could cure: She was dying of stomach cancer. She filled a pool with Champagne. According to Blue Blood, a book by Craig Unger, Harkness wrote in her scrapbook that at Fermata, she set out do everything bad. An example of her mischievousness? 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. ''Money can buy anything.'' ''We were the loved ones.'' Taylor Swift and Rebekah Harkness may have been born decades apart, but it seems they shared a talent for dominating the headlines. Upon her death in 1982, Rebekah Harkness was called many things in her New York Times obituary. No matter what she did or who she tried to pay off, the great American heiress had a terrifyingly short time to live. Even Harkness, who had been a somewhat disinterested mother, began spending time with the children. A ltima dinastia de Rebekah Harkness famosa e problemtica socialite que inspirou a faixa 3 de "Folklore", lbum de Taylor Swift | by ana guelere | Hello Band | Medium Write Sign up Sign In. 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. [24] It explores the Harkness' legacy and her company, Harkness Ballet.[25]. 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. Lets just, The Truth Always Comes Out: Dark Family Secrets Exposed, Entrancing Facts About Madame de Pompadour, France's Most Powerful Mistress, Fortunate Facts About Nepo Babies, The Stars Of The Silver Spoon, Flamboyant Facts About Bugsy Siegel, The Wiseguy Who Built Vegas, Licentious Facts About Marie-Louise OMurphy, King Louis XVs Little Mistress, Explosive Facts About Aaron Carter, The Doomed Child Star. And that wasnt the only ill-advised thing she did. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. . It was not part of the Harkness Ballet, Harkness House or the Rebekah Harkness Foundation. Before his death in August 1954, they had one child together; Edith Hale Harkness (19481982). Harkness pulled this prank at her own sisters debutante ball. Rebekah Harkness. The only problem was that the urn was too small. Harkness, who had been a somewhat disinterested mother, began spending time with the children time to off! 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