Both of her parents had actually been married to other people beforeDuke had divorced his first wife after two years, while Holt Inman was . A Peltz-family friend told me that, contrary to reports in the press, "there was never any rivalry of any kind at any time between Claudia and Chandi. Duke may have been infatuated, but friends of Tirella's told me that he was unabashedly gay. Only heirs of Doris Duke, teens describe horrific childhood. October 7, 1966. He also pointed to the two-day delay between the incident and Duke being questioned, and to the fact that she hired the state medical examiner as her personal physician once she entered hospital: "In effect," Lance wrote, "the man legally charged with determining the official cause of death had gone on Doris Dukes payroll.". You can live in the manner that I live and have this lifestyle. Early in their relationship, says Karen, Jack told her he was a descendant of the Dukesthe legendary North Carolina clan that helped launch the American tobacco industry. "She got baby doses for a few weeks and that was it. They would helicopter over to Somerville from their estate in Bedford, New York.". Meanwhile, Bernard said he wasn't feeling well and went back up to his room. ". Around Christmas, Duke rented a house in Honolulu for Martha Graham and Ron Protas. She was a cool lady. Doris loved animals. On February 13, 1935, Cromwell married Doris Duke. Stay up to date with the latest trends that matter to you most. It will be wonderful.' He published books to present his economic ideas and advocated tighter control of the Federal Reserve. She served with an intelligence agency during World War II, had a short-lived career as a foreign correspondent, wrote about fashion for Harper's Bazaar, played jazz piano in nightclubs, became the world's first female competitive surfer and counted everyone from Elvis Presley to Truman Capote among her friends. When he died in 1925, he bequeathed his only child 12-year-old Doris more than US$50 million of his fortune (equivalent to roughly AU$1bn today). "Doris had gone surfing," explains Nancy Cooke de Herrera, an old friend from Hawaii. According to The New York Times, Duke spent most of her teen years living at her three-story, 54-room mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side (which she successfully sued her mother for owenership of at the age of 14), and travelled everywhere under the guard of private detectives. An Inheritance With a Double Edge At that stage of her life, Miss Duke, then between marriages and working as a foreign correspondent based in Rome, was known and liked by other American. Franco Rossellini assured everyone that he was all for it. (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. He came over here, and she died. Chandi was into Eastern cultures and all that stuff, and so was Doris. I turned and saw her on the floor. "An extraordinary case" An autopsy reportedly showed that Tirella died from a brain hemorrhage, multiple fractures and internal injuries. . The first one, in Hawaii, didn't work out: she wanted to make a museum out of a Thai temple that she had saved from destruction on one of her many trips to Southeast Asia. Everything good I could say about Bernard, I do. After a two-week rejuvenation cure in Romania with the controversial Dr. Anna Aslan, they stopped in London. The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. She had received another $10 million of her inheritance in 1937, and would receive at least as much in 1942. Duke was spending the spring, as usual, at her 2,700-acre Duke Farms, in Somerville, New Jersey. Woody Brock, who visited her with Oatsie Charles that summer, says, "It must have been 85 degrees outside, and she had on a white sweater and a roaring fire in every room. Vanity Fair today broke an exclusive story from journalist Peter Lance that makes the case tobacco heiress Doris Duke used her vast wealth to get away . [2], A CD coupling I'm a Loser and A Legend in Her Own Time, with several non-album tracks, was released by Ace Records in 2005. "Bernard got out of the hospital. "It was shocking," Heffner told me. One time we were performing at an Arab party at this catering hall in Brooklyn called the Venetian Manor, and Doris and I were partners. ". He's a sweet human being, and he seemed to be honest and fiercely defensive of Doris. The power that this will gives Bernard Lafferty is "awesome," says one attorney. By 1963 she was having Castro trailed by a private investigator. "She told me she was bored silly, and the palace was so froufrou. Furthermore, Jack had denied Sean's birthright to the Trust by refusing to add his name to the affidavit that appeared with the yearly payments for the express purpose of bringing aboard new descendants. Lafferty also may pay fees to and divide commissions among the trustees as he sees fit. But she got up again, and we did our steps. Doris Duke's grandfather, Washington Duke, created a cartel with other local farmers at the end of the Civil War.. Duke's name was uttered in the same breath as the likes of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, though once she debuted into society, she stood out as one of the more colourful figures of America's elite. Rather than offering the chance to wander through gilded parlors, with all the glamor and excess of the "Robber Baron" era, Rough Point exists as it did in the last days of Doris Duke (1912-1993), the sole heir to a family whose fortune was made in mainly in tobacco . American tobacco heiress and socialite Doris Duke checks in for a flight from New York to Buenos Aires where her second husband Porfirio Rubirosa, is. She was very happy doing that.". Doris Duke (November 22, 1912 - October 28, 1993) was an American billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist, art collector, horticulturalist, and socialite. We wouldn't sit in the main dining room. You don't have to go back. It would be her last trip to Europe, and she also visited Poland with Brazilian grande dame Aime de Hereen. Although Duke was determined to produce his own heir, Nanaline was as surprised as everyone else when she became pregnant at the age of 42, and she always favored her son, Walker Inman, over Doris. Bernard Lafferty, a cook named Colin Shanley, and her longtime Tongan maid, Nuku Makasiale, were at her bedside. That was Doris. "She used to come and see me and just cry," says singer Peggy Lee, who was friendly with Tirellaand who would later employ Bernard Lafferty as a butler. According to her New York Times obituary, the cause of death was "pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest." Karen and Jack moved back in together when Sean was about a year old. One night at dinner, she told me, 'You know, my father always said no one would ever love me except for my money, and to be very careful.' [2], In 1969, former Atlantic Records producer Jerry 'Swamp Dogg' Williams Jr. signed her as a solo artist, renaming her Doris Duke and recording the album I'm a Loser at the Capricorn studio in Macon, Georgia. . She never married again, and from then on the men in her life, whether they were lovers or not, were considerably younger and came from the creative world. But the gates at one of those museums Rough Point, Rhode Island hold another. For the American actor, see, "James H. R. Cromwell Dies at 93. ", James Cromwell maintained that it was not his child, and friends assumed that it was Cunningham-Reid's. New York magazine reported after her death that she had a knee operation at U.C.L.A. Ron Protas told me that in February or March of last year Duke agreed to guarantee a loan of $1 million for the Martha Graham Dance School. For most of its history, the Trust has recognized hundreds of descendants on the strength of the affidavit (and birth certificate) alone. "She wasn't just one of those rich women who said, 'Restore me 60 houses.' This highly entertaining biography, written by Jason Thomas and culled from the recollections and family records of Duke's godson, Pony Duke, represents the only candid . Phyllis Saretta says, "Chandi told me that her sister had a butler and a chauffeur and the whole thing. Doris Duke committed suicide. Guardian Spirit: Newport Legacy of Doris Duke (After Duke's death, the trustees of her estate became defendants in this lawsuit.). He was born on June 4, 1896, in Manhattan, the son of Lucretia Bishop "Eva" Roberts and Oliver Eaton Cromwell. The Secret History of Doris Duke's Famous Hawaiian Mansion, Shangri La Quite suddenly, early in 1991, Doris called me in distress from Hawaii and said that she was leaving in an urgent way for California and she had become fearful of Chandi. I've talked to bankers who said she knew where every last nickel was. "He was devastated. "Most of them didn't want to leave. In any case, their friendship ended in tragedy that October, when Duke ran him over as he was opening the gate of Rough Point. ", In February, a few weeks after Protas returned to New York with Graham, he received a phone call from Duke at three in the morning. She had just been through three days of depositions in New Jersey, where her lawsuit was filed, and had two more days to go before she could fly back to Hawaii, where she lives on an isolated 300-acre horse ranch, which Duke had bought for her on the Big Island for about $1.5 million before their rupture, and where she keeps a loaded pistol beside her bed. ", Rybak says that Lafferty got off to a good start at Duke Farms. The Fatal Crash That Plunged Doris Duke Into Scandal - Forbes The reason it didn't last long was she didn't want them. Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! Once a day, she meditates in her "deity room," which is filled with golden statues from India. She told me during a break that she had studied reiki, a Japanese healing rite, and she said, 'Maybe I could help you with your knee.' Much to the surprise of almost everyone who knew Duke, she named her butler of six years, Bernard Lafferty, as executor of her estate and placed him in control of the newly created Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which is to receive almost her entire fortune. The father was a drummer who eventually took off; he was also a relative of Doris Duke, the eccentric scion of one of the most powerful families in America. Doris Duke (soul singer) - Wikipedia "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. She was so distressed about losing the baby. Doris told Chandi that she was happy about her having a man in her life. A Friday. There was lack of ostentation. [6] Their daughter, Maxine Hope Cromwell (later Hopkins[7]), was born in New York on November 17, 1948. A Friday. Another time, at a college in upstate New York, Bobby [Farrah] didn't have her dancehe had her completely veiled, and she sat on the stage and played finger cymbals. . In fact, it was Chandi Heffner who hired Bernard Lafferty for Doris Duke, in 1987. She also told me that Duke was much more taken with Ferdinand Marcos, who was gravely ill in Honolulu, than she was with his wife. She really had a feeling for him, and expressed annoyance with Imelda. The next morning, the day after Valentine's Day, James Burns remembers, Duke told Heffner she had a dentist's appointment and left the house with Bernard Lafferty. Karen Rich was a bank teller in her teens when she gave birth to Sean. It would come back. When he died in a car crash in 1965, she took to her bed for two days. Duke scoffed, "Oh, come on. 3.89. I said, 'Doris, do it, I think it's a good thing.' Then someone new entered the small Doris Duke family: James Burns, a 25-year-old former Marine and martial-arts enthusiast with a notably "buff" physique. Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. That evening, I sent up dinner and Chandi came downstairs and said, 'Tom, Bernard just dropped the entire tray.' Sean behind the register at Staples in Santa Monica. Married 'Richest Girl in World', https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_H._R._Cromwell&oldid=1158682569, This page was last edited on 5 June 2023, at 15:59. "It was unbelievable how hard she worked. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. Newport police chief Joseph Radice told reporters that she. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. ", In either March or April, Demopoulos said, he received a call from Irwin Bloom, who told him that he had been fired by Duke. ", Like many of her friends, Protas is unclear about when Duke went into the hospital for the operations on her knees, or when she came out. An Irish-born orphan in his late 40s, Bernard Lafferty is recalled by guests at Duke's various houses mainly for his ponytail and gold ear stud, and for serving tea in full butler's uniform but barefoot. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. Heffner had asked him to have dinner with her and Gordon Damon, and he had told her to pick him up at Duke's front gate. Pending allocation net proceeds will be invested as part of the Foundation's endowment. She grew up near Towson, an upper-middle-class suburb of Baltimore, and graduated from Notre Dame Prep, a private Catholic girls' school, in 1971. sometimes I can't believe it's real. Chandi was into environmental concerns. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. She was also sister to Jeraldine and Joyce Curry, who recorded as The Heartstoppers for the All Platinum label in the early 1970s. Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. While Lafferty was hospitalized, Rybak says, "Doris said to me, 'Tom, we are going to leave this up to you. Heffner almost broke down again. "She designed those houses and she saw to every color," says Newport artist Richard Banks. . Irwin Bloom had made the arrangements and then Duke called Protas from Los Angeles and joked, ''For God's sake, try to pay it back," Protas recalled. Heiresses Barbara Woolworth Hutton and Doris Duke traveled in style via ", She had already been planning to divorce Cromwell, but he apparently demanded a $7 million settlement. "Elvis made whites interested in black music," she once told me, "which was very important, because race is the biggest problem we have in America.". We used to sit in the sunroom with these tiny bits of broken porcelain and she'd say, 'It's got to be fixed, and I can do it better than most people.' October 7, 1966. I know a lot of bull dykes. Only one other trustee was named in the will, Marion Oates Charles, Duke's longtime summer neighbor in Newport, Rhode Island. 9 min read young italian gay man and blond woman in hat in car Eduardo Tirella. We were joking around, because we both had bad knees. One afternoon in February, the architect John Warnecke went to Shangri La for tea. Later efforts by music fans to rediscover Duke were fruitless. Her longest relationship was with Joey Castro, the Mexican-born jazz pianist at the Mocambo nightclub in Los Angeles, whom she met in 1950, when he was 23 and she was 38. It's so hard for me still, so hard." "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". Chandi, which means "female energy personified" in Sanskrit, was born Charlene Heffner in Baltimore on August 26, 1953, the eldest of three daughters of William Heffner, a lawyer, and his wife, "Bunny," a nurse. He was cooking and she was serving. "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. O Magazine's Story of Sean Sessums Means - Heir of Doris Duke - Oprah.com After repeated requests for an interview, I received the following statement through the New York public-relations firm representing him: "My duty to Miss Duke is to maintain her privacy even though she is gone.". I feel in danger.' One of the first things she did was to caution Duke, on the advice of Nelson Peltz, against an investment proposed by her then business manager, Patrick Mahn. "Whenever she walked into your room, she made the room," recalls Mercedes Bass. Doris Duke Biography - Facts, Childhood, Family Life, Achievements Until she was 10, when she started at the Brearley School, she was tutored at home. "That was quite an event. In the car, Chandi was saying, 'Oh, she's such a nice lady, and the house is gorgeous!' Even Imelda didn't see her.". . ''Doris and I had been in the Gobi Desert together, and we found out they were becoming a threatened species." "But she thought everybody was after her money. You felt that she was going to break. ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. But by the following summer she was noticeably declining again. Her father, James Buchanan Duke, was the founder of the American Tobacco Company and a hydroelectric industrialist. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. I think she said when she came home from the hospital she began swimming out into the ocean, just swimming and swimming, not caring whether she lived or died. Nor was she a crazy eccentric. [2], Duke recorded a second album, A Legend in Her Own Time, with Swamp Dogg, issued on the Mankind label in 1971. And then Chandi said something that took me aback: 'Bobby, I can't understand why you have a friend like that and yet you're struggling to have a dance publication. There was a little alcove under the stairs, and the food would be nice but ordinary. 0. I tried repeatedly to get in contact with her. . The will provides Lafferty with an executor's fee of up to $5 million, a lifetime annuity of $500,000 a year, and commissions, which could run into the millions annually, as a trustee of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and of three other closely related new foundations: the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of Endangered Wildlife, the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of New Jersey Farmland and Farm Animals, and the Doris Duke Foundation of Islamic Art. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. I suspected that it was Bernard doing thiskeeping the food cold. I never heard from Doris again and I could never reach her again. Keep in mind, people are entitled to a change of heart.
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