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, Harkness, fittingly, belonged to an American dynasty. When Rebekah decided to renovate her Rhode Island mansion, she demanded that it have a whopping eight kitchens and 21 baths. (You can see a video clip of Salvador Dali and Rebekah Harkness here.). Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. Born April 17, 1915 Died June 17, 1982 (67) Showcase yourself on IMDbPro Add to list Credits . Her body had been slowly falling into disrepairthose injections hurt far more than they helpedand she started complaining of a mysterious stomach ailment. She gave them weekends off and charge accounts to the shops in town. 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. Thanks for your time! Unfortunately for Rebekah, the endeavour ended in national embarrassment and disaster. Heiress, Socialite, Model, Edith was the only child of William Hale Harkness and Rebekah West. Only his other flaws were far darker than this silly hobby. St. Louis, MO 63119 She lost card game bets with Salvador Dal. In 1947, she married William Hale "Bill" Harkness, an attorney and heir to the Standard Oil fortune of William L. Harkness, which made her one of the wealthiest women in America. Live better Although she came from a well-off Midwest family, William and his fortune put Rebekah into a different social stratosphere. . 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]. Rebekah Harkness was one of the world's richest women, the Standard Oil heiress and founding patron of the Harkness Ballet. She was 67.) All rights reserved. Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks and Andrew Mellon owned homes there. The couple divorced in 1946. "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. She applied herself with a rigid, frightening discipline that would become her trademark later in life. 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. Lucky: A Novel (inspired by Taylor Swift's folklore and the incredible true story of Rebekah Harkness): Parro, Kristina: 9781736923320: Amazon.com: Books Books Literature & Fiction Genre Fiction Buy new: $18.01 Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns FREE delivery Saturday, February 4 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon In 1956, Harkness burst onto the high society scene after. She was born Rebekah Semple West in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. Latest News on Rebekah Harkness . 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. Socialite circles are infamously tight-lipped about their marriages, but theres almost no doubt that Rebekahs union with Pierce was a dismal affairand one day, she made a disturbing confession. As a sad footnote to the story of Rebekah Harkness is the tragedy of her three children. Please submit feedback to contribute@factinate.com. When she was 10 years old, she did. The only problem was that the urn was too small. William, 15 years her senior, saw Rebekah as a naughty child in need of a spanking. ''Costumes, sets, musical scores,'' Mr. Unger writes, ''many of the best dancers, the entire repertory - even the works choreographed by Joffrey himself - were owned by her foundation.''. Swift put up No Trespassing signs that they didnt like either. [13], A philanthropist, Harkness supported the Joffrey Ballet for years, as well as the Harkness Ballet Foundation and the William Hale Harkness Foundation. Sadly, the socialites seemingly bottomless cruelty would soon hit even greater lows. Her 1955 tone poem, Safari Suite, was performed at Carnegie Hall, and in 1957 she released an album titled Music With a Heartbeat. Rebekah and Bill Harkness had one daughter, Edith. Besides despising Rebekahs children, Scevers also hated her disabled granddaughter Angel. Because of her misused muscles and her extravagant dependence on testosterone, Harkness began to lose her dancers elegance. Rebekah Harkness Photo: Jack Mitchell/Getty Images. She died June 17, 1982. She had a salon of sorts. The same fate befell the popular tunes she composed. Thanks for your help! My association with Rebekah Harkness was based on creating a business venture that would make a profit. When she went to the doctors office, they found a frightening problem. (''I'm glad Edith is gone,'' said the unquenchable Bobby Scevers. 1944). In November of 1977, her son Allen shot a man during a brawl in Miami. She once served them a cake with $10 bills baked into it. She soon became the owner of a vast number of properties, and indulged in many luxuries. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The Joffrey had a price to pay for Rebekah Harknesss support. Copyright 2023 by Factinate.com. Rebekah Harkness keeps his personal and love life private. 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. [4] Harkness also surrounded herself with other well-known creatives, like yogi B.K.S. Might Mrs. Harkness be seen as a casualty of her own doomed and defiled expectations? I don't want this screaming baby over my room! The Harkness family had a reputation for its philanthropy. Eolia was one of their seven homes and reputed . 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. Though Rebekah channeled Marie Antoinette, her patronage of the Joffrey brought the company international fame. They featured fireworks, boat rides and a giant inflatable water slide. 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. Now she has one more posthumous title: muse. You won't want to miss this episode about the muse for Last Great American Dynasty by Taylor Swift. 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. 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. 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. Did Mommy and Daddy notice? Silver Gelatin. When Swift bought the house, a local writer for The Day reminded her of the time a body washed up on the beach under her Watch Hill mansion. Swift explains it briefly in a verseHarkness once owned Holiday House, the singers current Watch Hill, Rhode Island, home. But most people dont know the most chilling part. Rebekah was born in 1915 to Allen and Rebekah West in St. Louis, Missouri. View Rebekah Harkness results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Watch Hill Harbor By Stephg82988 Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23370833. Let the little creature die!'' We want our readers to trust us. The gargantuan house itself was partially demolished, then sold to a family that remodeled it and renamed it High Watch. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. But why? .more Get A Copy Before joining the team, she worked as a course lecturer while completing her Ph.D. in English Literature. Money cant buy sense, and apparently Harknesss designer urn was far too small for her actual remains. Much of their marriage dynamic was about his domineering presence setting her on the straight and narrow. She was brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum. Reportedly, she wanted these updates so that she could see as little of her children as possible. Little evidence is given in support of this thesis except that the two wrote a song together called ''Giggling With My Feet.''. . In the eyes of many, she had betrayed him. Please reach out to us to let us know what youre interested in reading. She had a newfound freedom to do whatever she wanted with the piles of money in her bank account. Who Is Rebekah Harkness? She began to cut back and look for public funding. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Swift wrote and recorded a new album called Folklore. 1940) and Anne Terry Pierce (b. Our editors are instructed to fact check thoroughly, including finding at least three references for each fact. Rebekah Harkness was born on 17 April 1915 in St Louis, Missouri, USA. Wealthy, elegant, and beautiful, Harkness seemed to have it allfrom her oil baron husband to her notoriously raucous parties. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a child who died at age 10. Rebekah died that same year after a long bout with cancer. The couple divorced in 1977but Rebekahs life was about to take a much darker turn. Shop for Rebekah Harkness at Walmart.com. 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. Guests would find needles in her bathrooms, their walls spattered with blood. If Harknesss lovers are anything to go by, she was a wildcat in the bedroom. ''So absurd,'' Mr. Scevers pronounced. The end came swift, fast, and brutal for Harkness. [19] They divorced in 1977. Harkness started acting out early in her adolescence, and her antics would put any other mean girl to shame. (Watch it here.). Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet. These are facts of which we have already been apprised. Her children, not so much. Perhaps most tragically, Rebekahs little granddaughter Angel had passed just before Rebekah herself; she was just 10 years old. Ugh. She spent a small fortune buying her way into the dance world, surrounding herself with dancers, musicians and choreographers. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Materials. Harkness' passions for dance and music followed her into adulthood. While he was under her employ, she would often order him around romantically. Though Harkness didnt seem to care that he was using her, she probably should have. Not only did her ballet collapse, her whole family did as well. As she aged, Rebekah started to live off of champagne and injections, including testosterone and an assortment of pain medications. The Pack didnt stop at putting poisonous substances into punch bowls; they also got very rowdy at these gatherings. Throughout the . 30 July 2020. Her first major contributions were helping to fund the early . Rebekah Harkness. 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. He appears to have been an embarrassing sort of man; he wrote and privately published a book called ''Totem and Topees,'' which he described as a ''conglomeration of uninteresting misinformation,'' and followed that with a book called ''Ho hum, the Fisherman,'' which, he said, did not ''have the excuse even of literary merit.'' The question Swift would have you ask is how much of this reputation was deserved and how much was the result of gossip or judgmental peers. Rebekah Harkness, as seen in the December 1956 issue of. Were always looking for your input! This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. After Rebekah Harkness' husband died in 1953, she remodeled the house with 8 kitchens and 21 bathrooms in order to 'effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a . 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. 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. Eager to please her emotionally unavailable parents, young Rebekah worked incredibly hard at her dance and ice skating lessons. And then there were herthree children. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn. Rebekah Harkness Rebekah Harkness (1915-1982) Rebekah Harkness, born Rebekah Semple West, was one of the foremost American patrons of dance. And about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon, dyed the neighbors cat green and filled her fish tank with scotch. . 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. [9] [14] Following the divorce, Harkness gained custody of both children. One of Harknesss signature moves was to use vastly expensive products for everyday, mundane things. So what did she do? A patron of dance and medicine. . 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. With her help, the Joffrey won international renownsomething she wanted for herself. Instead, she was reared by a series of nanniesand thats not even the worst part. When she erected a giant blue geodesic dome on her lawn, they sued her for zoning violations. She insisted that it perform ballets to scores she had written. Rebekah Harkness was born in 1915 to a rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family. 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. . 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. Harkness also knew how to keep all of her adoring public in competition with each other, with each one of her lackies vying to become the favorite. Before her passing, she picked up her most dedicatedand most heartlessfan yet. 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. 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. Immediate Family: Daughter of Bill Harkness and Rebekah Semple Harkness. The Swift connection is that the superstar bought Holiday House for a reported $17 million in 2013. Scevers and Harkness brought out the worst in each other. In addition to the three kids she has with Jamie, Rebekah has two children, Megan and Taylor, from previous relationships. 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. And when she discovered one of her Joffrey dancers didnt own a suit, she sent all the Joffrey men to Saks and all the women to Bergdorfs for formalwear. As the most commanding mistress in the French court, she bettered the lives of many and became a beloved figure. Her son Allen says the years he spent in prison were the happiest of his life. Being a patron of the ballet was Rebekahs passion. She blew through her fortune on the boys and the ballet. (Harkness was an avid patron of the arts and founded her own company, Harkness Ballet. Wade, teaches a dance school for children and directs 2 dance companies, one providing performing opportunities for children and one for adults. Not long after Rebekahs passing, her daughter Edith finally managed to succeed in her attempts. Oh my God, the question here is: What didnt she do? That money can't buy happiness? Factinate is a fact website that is dedicated to finding and sharing fun facts about science, history, animals, films, people, and much more. ''We were the favorites,'' says a dancer. The socialite was born in 1915 to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. She even started a company of her own in 1964: the Harkness Ballet. Though Harkness took those nasty testosterone injections to strengthen her body for dance, the medicine actually had the opposite effect. The music video featured the beach and the waves from the house, just as Rebekah Harkness would have seen it. Then View saved stories on testosterone, Harkness began to lose her dancers elegance,. Semple West in St. Louis, Missouri Taylor, from previous relationships rejected queenbut few people know even... Now she has with Jamie, Rebekah started to live off of champagne and injections, including and. 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