[4], On June 10, 1939, Harkness married Dickson W. Pierce, the son of Thomas M. [4], In the 1960s, Harkness became well known as a philanthropist and patron of the arts. The end came swift, fast, and brutal for Harkness. . The story of Rebekah Harkness is way more complicated than Taylor Swift lets on. And that wasnt the only ill-advised thing she did. She thirsted for acclaim as a composer, a dancer and an arts patron, but her thirst for booze and pills undid her. It is possible to write an edifying biography about an unedifying life. 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.'' She was born Rebekah Semple West in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. She had a salon of sorts. [6] When the Joffrey Ballet refused to rename their company in Harkness' honor, she withdrew funding and hired most of the Joffrey dancers to her new company, the Harkness Ballet. ''We were the favorites,'' says a dancer. . William Hale died of a heart attack in 1954. $ 25.93. [14] They divorced in 1965. Rebekahs parents might not have cared a whit about loving their daughter, but they sure as heck cared about what she looked like. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). 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. Harkness was friends with a young Potter Stewart, whom she affectionately called "Potsie," and their relationship was written about by her biographer Craig Unger. In addition to the three kids she has with Jamie, Rebekah has two children, Megan and Taylor, from previous relationships. First, a brief biography: Born Rebekah Semple West in St. Louis in 1915, Harkness was a divorce whose second marriage was to Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness. People already thought she had betrayed Joffrey, but they now watched in horror as she ran her ballet into the ground. Please submit feedback to contribute@factinate.com. Guests would find needles in her bathrooms, their walls spattered with blood. Dancy Mason is the Editor-in-Chief at Factinate. Putting mineral oil in the punch at her sisters debutante ball. The two purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which they nicknamed Holiday House. After she was widowed, Mrs. Harkness renovated her Rhode Island house; she installed 8 kitchens and 21 baths. She retaliated by dying a neighbors cat green. (Actually, it was a private My Favorite Murder crossover group, if you care.) Rebekah was born in 1915 to Allen and Rebekah West in St. Louis, Missouri. 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]. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. But it is clear that as a spoiled young woman growing up in St. Louis between the wars,. Her 1955 tone poem, Safari Suite, was performed at Carnegie Hall, and in 1957 she released an album titled Music With a Heartbeat. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. Only his other flaws were far darker than this silly hobby. Though Rebekah grew up in a wealthy St. Louis family, her social status was elevated when, after her first divorce, she married William. In its day, the Harkness would train more professional dancers than any other company. Who is Rebekah Harkness Dating? Rebekah Harkness keeps his personal and love life private. The reason behind this is pure cruelty. Generous, wasteful, willful, demanding and delusional, she broke with Joffrey to form the Harkness Ballet when he refused to perform the compositions she insisted on writing. My association with Rebekah Harkness was based on creating a business venture that would make a profit. Rebekah Semple West was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1915. She and her friends called themselves the Bitch Pack and disrupted debutante parties. By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. She developed an addiction to injections of B-vitamins, painkillers and testosterone. As it turned out, this was the beginning of her ignominious end. Salinger, hoping to convince him his stories should be set to her music. Rebekah Harkness's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. In addition to her marriage, Harkness also became well known for her personal eccentricities, as well as her contributions to the arts. Her marriage to William Hale Bill Harkness, an attorney and heir to the Standard Oil fortune of William L. Hark Because of her misused muscles and her extravagant dependence on testosterone, Harkness began to lose her dancers elegance. She gave the dancers everything they needed and then some. But the loud parties caused problems with the neighbors. Besides despising Rebekahs children, Scevers also hated her disabled granddaughter Angel. This introduction developed into a deep love for the art form and created a desire to impact the dance community in several different facets. In 1961, Harkness decided she wanted to become the next great ballet master, so she sponsored actual master Robert Joffreys artisanal ballet troupe. After Rebekah Harkness died in 1982, her daughter Terry took her mother's remains home in a Gristede's shopping bag, according to a story in the New York Times. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. 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. [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. She shoved $5 million into building the Harkness Theater, a lavish studio complete with marble staircases and a chandelier, and it was all for nothing: The company collapsed in 1975. Before she passed, the socialite spent $250,000 to commission a bedazzled urn from none other than Salvador Dali. (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.'' And about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon, dyed the neighbors cat green and filled her fish tank with scotch. Though Kean consulted with multiple US presidents, he also had big-time mafia ties. Rebekah Harkness' antics annoyed her neighbors, while Jesus' antics got him murdered by the state and by some religious leaders. 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 all but fired him from his own company, then twisted the knife by taking most of his dancers with her to form her new, solo Harkness Ballet. 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, St. Louis, MO 63119 44 Rebekah Harkness Pictures Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO 44 Rebekah Harkness Pictures Premium High Res Photos Browse 44 rebekah harkness pictures stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. First, a brief biography: Born Rebekah Semple West in St. Louis in 1915, Harkness was a divorce whose second marriage was to Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness. When they criticized her for getting pudgy, she took up skating and dance, practicing with a fierce discipline. Rebekah Harkness. Her children, not so much. When publicizing her ballet, Harkness became notorious for refusing to showcase any of her talented dancers in the promotional photographs. In 2020, Swift then penned the song the last great american dynasty, which tells Harknesss twisted story for the world. rebekah harkness children. [24] It explores the Harkness' legacy and her company, Harkness Ballet.[25]. (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.) Or, at least, a leg, half of her. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it really was. When I first saw someone bring up Blue Blood (The story of Rebekah Harkness and how one of the richest families in America descended into drugs, madness, suicide and violence), I was lurking in a Taylor Swift Facebook group. He was not convinced. Her daughter Terry hired Roy Cohn in a (failed) attempt to have her will invalidated. . 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. The Harknesses were married for a brief periodjust seven years. Harkness started acting out early in her adolescence, and her antics would put any other mean girl to shame. Watch Hill Harbor By Stephg82988 Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23370833. 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. 1944). 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. $ 18.79. She said she married her first, photographer Dickson Pierce, because she had nothing else to do. No surprise, that union ended in divorce. Although Catherine's successor Queen Anne Boleyn suffered an infamously dark fate, Aragon's own life was somehow even more tragic. It had hand-carved Louis XIV chairs and a huge mural that featured the companys dancers as well as Rebekah Harkness in the nude. Convicted of murder in the second degree, he was behind the bars of a Florida jail. A philanthropist. She started by bringing the company to Watch Hill (despite the neighbors) in the summer for instruction, practice and choreography. 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. She filled her fish tank with goldfish and Scotch. Hey, all publicity is good publicityand Rebekahs need to be in the spotlight soon grew to disturbing proportions. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. We were in heaven, said Danish ballerina Lone Isaksen. 432 pp. Rarely does singer and songstress Taylor Swift write songs about someone outside her immediate circle. In 1939 she married Dickson Pierce because, she said, she didnt have anything better to do. Then in 1947, she married Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, who brought her into the serious money class. . It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. Even Harkness, who had been a somewhat disinterested mother, began spending time with the children. Immediate Family: Daughter of Bill Harkness and Rebekah Semple Harkness. ''Kiss me,'' she commanded. My mom never told me how her best friend died. Reportedly, the rest of her remains were placed in a Gristedes bag. Although she came from a well-off Midwest family, William and his fortune put Rebekah into a different social stratosphere. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Equipped with a ludicrous amount of self-confidence, she did something supremely stupid. A terrible story is told here. She once dressed as a waitress at one of them so she could eavesdrop on the guests. Harkness, born Rebekah Semple West, grew up amidst splendor in St. Louis as the third and youngest child of Allen Tarwater West, heir to a banking fortune, and Rebekah Semple, daughter of a wealthy merchant. She danced, too, and composed music. But Rebekah made the most of it. So in 1977 she checked into Silver Hill, a rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn. Her passion, such as it was, burned itself out quickly, coincidentally with the baby's pulling a ribbon out of her hair. Today its pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it. Well, Harkness couldnt bear to be upstaged, so she unceremoniously fired Rhodes and doomed her own precious ballet company in the process. Rebekah had always been well-off as a childas you might guess from the string of nannies who raised herbut marrying William Harkness thrust her into an entirely different tier of high society. 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. At the same time, she studied music composition and dance. It makes no sense - and no sense is made of it. Like this story? New York: William Morrow & 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. We want our readers to trust us. Iyengar[4] and Salvador Dal, who would design her urn upon her death. 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. Then she stole most of the Joffrey dancers for her own ballet company the Harkness. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Swift wrote and recorded a new album called Folklore. Harrison notes some of the same lighter-hearted factoids about Harkness from Ungers biography: She was allegedly once kicked off a cruise ship for swimming nude, for example. 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. It was the second marriage for both of them. All of the work and much of the music was original. [2][4] During her final days, Harkness began to reconcile with her children. [3] Edith married Kenneth Perry McKinnon in 1971,[15] and was in and out of mental institutions before eventually completing suicide after many attempts, just months following her mother's death. 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. An artist (a descriptor she bestowed upon herself). The train wreck was now chugging along, and it wouldnt stop until Harkness took her last breath. In 1954, something curious happened to Rebekah Harkness: Her oil tycoon husband passed. Lets start from the beginning. Sep 27, 2021 David Rubenstein Donates $10 Million to Expand Arts and Civic Engagement Initiatives at Lincoln Center. Culture Taylor Swift Folk Albums Oil. A New York Times article described Harkness's unusual upbringing. After her husband passed away in 1954, Harkness poured more money into her Watch Hill compound, installing 8 kitchens and 21 baths. 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. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack. One sometimes wonders if the point of all these poor-little-rich-girl/boy biographies is to lull the rest of us into a false sense of security: She is so unlike us that we are not encouraged to reflect upon our own mortality, the contemplation of which is a healthy and necessary exercise. [12] ''So absurd,'' Mr. Scevers pronounced. However Jamie has since. [9][14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. The children were visiting Bill's family and Alfonso had left . TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. The most tragic detail? 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. The New York Times described him as an embarrassing sort of man, and his hobbies completely back this up. (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. Taylor Swift's, new song titled 'The Last Great American Dynasty' is about Rebekah Harkness, the scandal-ridden socialite who once owned the Watch Hill, Rhode Island mansion Swift purchased in 2013 He had a daughter and a granddaughter who became the actress Elizabeth Montgomery. 1944). 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. [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. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn. The 16-track album, Swifts eighth, features a song titled The Last Great American Dynasty, about the late St. Louisbornsocialite Rebekah West Harkness, whom Swift paints as an eccentric. Hale died of a Florida jail a fierce discipline great american dynasty seven years [ 24 it. Said Danish ballerina Lone Isaksen Scevers also hated her disabled granddaughter Angel been a somewhat disinterested mother, spending. Wrote and recorded a New album called Folklore everything they needed and then some the punch her! Marriage for both of them publicity is good publicityand Rebekahs need to be,... 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