. She had spent the 1987 equivalent of $38 million on a failed enterprise. They featured fireworks, boat rides and a giant inflatable water slide. Now she has one more posthumous title: muse. All the essentials: top fashion stories, editors picks, and celebrity style. Though Harkness didnt seem to care that he was using her, she probably should have. 314-918-3000. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Reportedly, the rest of her remains were placed in a Gristedes bag. In 2020, Swift then penned the song the last great american dynasty, which tells Harknesss twisted story for the world. 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.'' We have estimated Rebekah Harkness's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Harkness died of cancer at 67 in 1982. As well see, Rebekahs love only devolved from there. The Robert Joffrey Company summer workshop at Rebekah Harkness' Watch Hill estate in Rhode Island, July 1962. 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. If Harknesss lovers are anything to go by, she was a wildcat in the bedroom. It was shaping up to be a white-picket fence brooduntil, that is, Rebekah proved herself to be an utterly horrific mother. Her daughter Edith jumped off roofs, swallowed pills and managed not to kill herself. Rebekah Semple West was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915. 1944). "Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny" The very first line of the song introduces the main character, Rebekah West Harkness, a real heiress who was also a composer, ballet mistress, and sculptor whose life presents several interesting anecdotes. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. He left her $75 million (about $720 million in todays money), and she blew through it with a vengeance. 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? . She once demanded Castelli to, Kiss me. Edith often used her mothers many, many pills to perform these attemptsand Rebekah was anything but empathetic. She stole a neighbors dog and dyed it key lime green. Let the little creature die!'' Her ego, however, overrode common sense and proportion. Yet this came with great tragedy: The baby, named Angel, was severely brain-damaged. She was notorious along the eastern seaboard for her tacky, campy, new money sensibilities, and her Harkness Theater was the epitome of her gaudy aesthetic. Immediate Needs: $1,500. Suddenly, Rebekah was a rich widowone of the wealthiest women in America, in fact. Illustrated. A patron of dance and medicine. Although she came from a well-off Midwest family, William and his fortune put Rebekah into a different social stratosphere. Rebekah had already had two children with her first husband, Allen and Anne "Terry" Pierce, and she then had one more child with William, a daughter named Edith. (You can see a video clip of Salvador Dali and Rebekah Harkness here.). Unfortunately for Rebekah, the endeavour ended in national embarrassment and disaster. 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]. She brought in top choreographers, Jerome Robbins and Brian Macdonald to teach 16 and 17 year olds. Jack Mitchell. The ashes were placed in a $250,000 jeweled urn made by Salvador Dali. [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. Oh, but they had more tricks up their perfectly-tailored sleeves. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. Reportedly, the baby Angel innocently pulled a ribbon from Harknesss perfectly coifed hair. [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. [4], In the 1960s, Harkness became well known as a philanthropist and patron of the arts. For what its worth, Allen called the years he spent in the clinkerand away from his motherthe happiest of his life.. Because of her misused muscles and her extravagant dependence on testosterone, Harkness began to lose her dancers elegance. Yet like so much of Harknesss life, what seemed beautiful on the outside was rotting on the inside. Rebekah Vardy has five children in total. When Joffrey refused to perform the schlock, Rebekahs revenge was brutal. Soon Clive Barnes was writing that the Harkness Ballet had ''descended beyond the necessity of serious consideration,'' and in 1975 it folded. With her help, the Joffrey won international renownsomething she wanted for herself. Though Kean consulted with multiple US presidents, he also had big-time mafia ties. William Hale Harkness This arrangement effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular basis, theNew York Timescommented. When she erected a giant blue geodesic dome on her lawn, they sued her for zoning violations. After she was widowed, Mrs. Harkness renovated her Rhode Island house; she installed 8 kitchens and 21 baths. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The Harkness family had a reputation for its philanthropy. $ 25.93. She believed in reincarnation. While Bill Harkness was alive, he and Rebekah threw raucous parties every weekend. Her body had been slowly falling into disrepairthose injections hurt far more than they helpedand she started complaining of a mysterious stomach ailment. Yet its also impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Swift and Harkness. With that, Rebekahs unconditional love evaporated. And she gave Alvin Ailey his first commission. The celebrities brought paparazzi and, echoes of the Rebekah Harkness era, complaints from the neighbors. Rebekah Harkness. Only his other flaws were far darker than this silly hobby. Her wealthy neighbors had other ideas, and scornfully forced her to remove the unsightly object. (Watch it here.). Rebekah Harkness Photo: Jack Mitchell/Getty Images. In 1961, Rebekah Harkness became the sponsor of the late Robert Joffrey's small ballet troupe. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). She also helped discover and train many acclaimed dancers, regardless of their race, background or body shape. 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. Aw, how sweet. [23], An American Ballet Story is an upcoming documentary film directed by Leslie Strait and sponsored by the International Documentary Association. But the book also states Harkness was "brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum." The children were visiting Bill's family and Alfonso had left . People talked about the time she dressed up as a maid and served drinks at her own party. 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. Tras la muerte de William, Rebekah hered la propiedad y desde el 2013 forma parte del patrimonio de Taylor Swift, quien pag $ 17.5 millones de dlares por la lujosa e histrica mansin. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. She supported the arts in general, ballet in particular, and she had the wealth with which to do it. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. As she aged, Rebekah started to live off of champagne and injections, including testosterone and an assortment of pain medications. In 1972, she bought an old theater near Lincoln Center and refurbished it on a grand scale as the first theater devoted exclusively to ballet. 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. Faced with Ediths grim drive to end her life, Harkness was coldly philosophical. 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? 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. Our editors are instructed to fact check thoroughly, including finding at least three references for each fact. Around this time, Harkness fancied herself a composer. In the art world, the shade International Klein Blue is famous, and was custom-mixed by renowned artist Yves Klein in 1960. In recent years, Harkness has gained new fameor infamybecause of her connection to Taylor Swift. While at her fancy finishing school, Harkness didnt seem to care that her classmates were people with last names like Roosevelt. Instead, she scrawled in her scrapbook that she wanted to do everything bad. Well, she certainly achieved her goal. The gargantuan house itself was partially demolished, then sold to a family that remodeled it and renamed it High Watch. In December 1956, she even appeared in the pages of Vogue. He received a prison sentence of 15 years, but didnt bother to get in touch with his mother. 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. Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. 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. 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. 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