Barbara Woolworth Hutton (November 14, 1912 - May 11, 1979) was an American debutante, socialite, heiress and philanthropist. She was dubbed the "Poor Little Rich Girl," first when she was given a lavish and expensive debutante ball in 1930, amid the Great Depression, and later due to a notoriously troubled private life.
Heiress to the retail tycoon Frank Winfield Woolworth, Hutton was one of the wealthiest women in the world. She endured a childhood marked by the early loss of her mother at age five to suicide and the neglect of her father, setting the stage for a life of difficulty forming relationships. Married and divorced seven times, she acquired grand foreign titles but was maliciously treated and often exploited by several of her husbands. While publicly she was much envied for her possessions, her beauty and her apparent life of leisure, privately she remained deeply insecure, often taking refuge in drink, drugs, and playboys.
Hutton had one child, Lance Reventlow, with her second husband, but was an inconsistent and insecure parent and the subsequent divorce ended in a bitter custody battle. She later developed anorexia nervosa and perhaps therefore prevented further childbirth. Her son died in a plane crash in 1972 at the age of 36, leaving her devastated. She lived another seven years, dying of a heart attack at age 66. At her death, the formerly wealthy Hutton was on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of exploitation, as well as her compulsive generosity and spendthrift ways.
Video Barbara Hutton
Early life
Born in New York City, Barbara Hutton was the only child of Edna Woolworth (1883-1917), a daughter of Frank W. Woolworth, the founder of the successful Woolworth five-and-dime stores. Barbara's father was Franklyn Laws Hutton (1877-1940), a wealthy co-founder of E. F. Hutton & Company (owned by Franklyn's brother Edward Francis Hutton), a respected New York investment banking and stock brokerage firm. She was a niece by marriage of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who was for a time (1920-1935) married to E.F. Hutton; thus their daughter, actress-heiress Dina Merrill (born Nedenia Hutton), was a first cousin to Barbara Hutton. Dina Merrill related on A&E's Biography of the Woolworths, that for a time Barbara lived with them following the death of her mother and abandonment by her father.
Edna Hutton reportedly died on May 2, 1917, age 33, from suffocation due to mastoiditis, but rumor persists that she committed suicide by poison in despair over her husband's philandering, especially as the coroner decided that no autopsy was necessary. Four year old Barbara discovered her mother's body. After her mother's death, she lived with various relatives, and was raised by a governess. Hutton attended Miss Hewitt's Classes, now The Hewitt School in New York's Lenox Hill neighborhood and Miss Porter's School for Girls in Farmington, Connecticut. She became an introverted child who had limited interaction with other children of her own age. Her closest friend and only confidante was her cousin Jimmy Donahue, the son of her mother's sister. Jimmy Donahue inherited a portion of the Woolworth estate with Barbara and also grew up to have notorious, and public, drug, alcohol and relationship problems.
In 1924, Barbara Hutton's grandmother Jennie (Creighton) Woolworth died, leaving $26.1 million to Barbara in a trust fund. Another $2.1 million in stock from Edna's inheritance was placed in a separate trust both of which were administered by Franklyn Hutton. By the time of her 21st birthday in 1933, her father had increased the amount to about $42 million (Over $1 billion in 2017), not including the additional $28 million from her mother's estate, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world.
In accordance with New York's high society traditions, Barbara Hutton was given a lavish débutante ball in 1930 on her 18th birthday, where guests from the Astor and Rockefeller families, amongst other elites, were entertained by stars such as Rudy Vallee and Maurice Chevalier. The ball cost $60,000, a veritable fortune in the days of the Depression. Public criticism was so severe that she was sent on a tour of Europe to escape the onslaught of the press.
Maps Barbara Hutton
Marriages
Though Barbara Hutton was portrayed in the press as the "lucky" young woman who had it all, the public had no idea of the psychological problems she lived with that led to a life of victimization and abuse.
Popular poet Ogden Nash then took note of Hutton's public private life in the following light verse:
Said Aimee McPherson to Barbara Hutton,
"How do you get a marriage to button?"
Said Barbara Hutton to Aimee McPherson
"You'll have to ask some other person."
Barbara Hutton habitually married:
- 1933: Alexis Mdivani, a self-styled Georgian prince, divorced 1935
- 1935: Count Kurt Heinrich Eberhard Erdmann Georg von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, divorced 1938
- 1942: Cary Grant, divorced 1945
- 1947: Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, divorced 1951
- 1953: Porfirio Rubirosa, divorced 1954
- 1955: Baron Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt von Cramm, divorced 1959
- 1964: Pierre Raymond Doan, divorced 1966
Alexis Mdivani
Her first husband, Alexis Mdivani, used her great wealth to his advantage. They were married on June 22, 1933, in the Russian Orthodox Church in Paris, France. Barbara's father provided a $1 million dowry. Alexis and Barbara divorced in March 1935.
Alexis Mdivani had previously married Louise Astor Van Alen, a member of the Astor family, on May 15, 1931. They divorced on December 1, 1932. Louise was the great-granddaughter of William Backhouse Astor, Jr.
Kurt Haugwitz-Reventlow
Count Kurt Haugwitz-Reventlow, with whom she had her only child, a son named Lance, was her second husband. Reventlow dominated her through verbal and physical abuse, which escalated to a savage beating that left her hospitalized and put him in jail. He also persuaded her to give up her American citizenship, and to take his native Danish citizenship for tax purposes, which she did in December 1937 in a New York federal court. At this point she lapsed into drug abuse. Hutton then developed anorexia, which would plague her for the rest of her life and would leave her unable to have further children. Lance Reventlow, the son, became a race car driver and builder of his own well respected sports car, the Scarab, in the golden age of American sports car racing.
Hutton's divorce from Reventlow gave her custody of their son after a bitter court dispute. As her father had done, she left the raising of her child to a governess and private boarding schools.
In 1938, Hutton had a brief affair with Howard Hughes in London at the Savoy Hotel, where Hughes spent several afternoons in Hutton's round satin bed. Hughes, at the time, was engaged to Katharine Hepburn and had come to London to meet with government officials and arrange permission to overfly Europe as part of a plan to circumnavigate the globe by air. Hutton later recalled that "he saw I had difficulty reaching orgasm and tried desperately to make me do so the first time . . . thereafter pleasing himself and saying that I would not have one anyway. If I touched myself, he angrily brushed my hand away. He could not take it when a woman lost herself in pleasure because he felt he must absolutely be in control of a situation."
Hughes had met Hepburn on the set of one of Cary Grant's movies, while visiting with Grant. Howard Hughes and Cary Grant were close, long-time friends.
Cary Grant
As World War II threatened in 1939, Hutton moved to California. She was active during the war, giving money to assist the Free French Forces and donating her yacht to the Royal Navy. Using her high-profile image to sell war bonds, she received positive publicity after being derided by the press as a result of her marriage scandals. In Hollywood, she met and married Cary Grant, on July 8, 1942, one of the biggest movie stars of the day. The married couple was dubbed "Cash and Cary". Grant did not need her money nor did he need to benefit from her name, and he appeared to genuinely care for Hutton. Nevertheless, this marriage also failed. Grant did not seek or receive any money from Hutton in their divorce settlement.
Igor Troubetzkoy
Hutton left California and moved to Paris, France, before acquiring a palace in Tangier. Hutton then began dating Igor Troubetzkoy, an expatriate Russian prince of very limited means but world renown. In the spring of 1948 in Zurich, Switzerland, she married him. That year, he was the driver of the first Ferrari to ever compete in Grand Prix motor racing when he raced in the Monaco Grand Prix, and later won the Targa Florio. He ultimately filed for divorce. Hutton's subsequent attempted suicide made headlines around the world. Labeled by the press as the "Poor Little Rich Girl", her life made great copy and the media exploited her for consumption by a fascinated public.
Porfirio Rubirosa
Her next marriage, lasting 53 days (December 30, 1953 - February 20, 1954), was to Dominican diplomat Porfirio Rubirosa, a notorious international playboy who meanwhile continued his affair with actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was granted the Dominican citizenship in 1953.
In a scathing review of the marriage ceremony in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Phyllis Battelle coined the oft-quoted phrase: "The bride, for her fifth wedding, wore black and carried a scotch-and-soda."
Hutton then spent time with Americans James Douglas and Philip Van Rensselaer. Her lavish spending continued; already the owner of several mansions around the world, in 1959 she built a luxurious Japanese-style palace on a 30-acre (120,000 m2) estate in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Gottfried von Cramm
Her next husband was an old friend, German tennis star Baron Gottfried von Cramm. This marriage also ended in divorce. He died in an automobile crash near Cairo, Egypt, in 1976.
Raymond Doan
In Tangier, Hutton met her seventh husband, Prince Pierre Raymond Doan Vinh na Champassak. This marriage, too, was short-lived. Raymond Doan was an adopted member of the former royal family of the Kingdom of Champasak.
Other relationships
Hutton lived with Frederick McEvoy, purchasing a chalet at a ski resort in Franconia, New Hampshire, after her marriage to actor Cary Grant. The couple never married and remained friends until McEvoy's death in 1951. Hutton frequently appeared intoxicated in public and was notorious throughout her life for lavish spending. As she aged, the men she spent time with did not. She was known to make gifts to total strangers.
Titles and styles
- 14 Nov 1912 - 22 Jun 1933: Miss Barbara Woolworth Hutton
- 22 Jun 1933 - Mar 1935: Her Highness Princess Barbara Mdivani
- Mar 1935 - 1935: Princess Barbara Mdivani
- 1935 - 1938: Countess von Haugwitz-Reventlow
Art and jewelry
Over the years, apart from an important inheritance which included Old Master paintings and important sculptures, she also personally acquired a magnificent collection of her own which included the spectrum of arts, porcelain, valuable jewelry, including elaborate historic pieces that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette and Empress Eugénie of France, and important pieces by Fabergé and Cartier. Among her pieces of jewelry was the 40-carat (8.0 g) Pasha Diamond, which she purchased as an unusual octagonal brilliant-cut but had recut into a round brilliant, bringing it down to 36 carats (7.2 g).
Final years
The death of her only son Lance Reventlow in an air crash in 1972 sent Hutton into a state of despair. By this time, her fortune had diminished, due to her extreme generosity, including donating Winfield House to the United States government as a residence for its UK ambassador. Alleged questionable deals by her longtime lawyer, Graham Mattison, also ate away at her fortune. Eventually she began liquidating assets in order to raise funds to live, yet continued to spend money on strangers willing to pay a little attention to her. She spent her final years in Los Angeles, living at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where she died from a heart attack in May 1979, aged 66. One biographer wrote that, at her death, $3,500 was all that remained of her fortune, but some who actually knew her said that was not the case. She was interred in the Woolworth family mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.
See also
- Woolworths
- Lady Hutton
Notes
Further reading
Several books have been written about Barbara Hutton, the best known of which are:
- Barbara Hutton: A Candid Biography, by Dean Jennings (F. Fell, 1968, 301pp.)
- Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton, by Philip Van Rensselaer (Putnam, 1979, 285pp.)
- Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton, by C. David Heymann (L. Stuart, 1984, 390pp.)
- In Search of a Prince: My Life with Barbara Hutton, by Mona Eldridge (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988, 210pp.)
A bibliography:
- Barbara Hutton Socialite-Subject of Books
In 1987, a television motion picture titled Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story starred Farrah Fawcett in the role of Barbara Hutton.
External links
- Biography of Barbara Hutton by Kenneth Lisenbee
- Barbara Hutton on IMDb
- Barbara Hutton at Find a Grave
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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