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Barbara Hutton
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Barbara Woolworth Hutton (November 14, 1912 – May 11, 1979) was an American socialite dubbed by the media as the "Poor Little Rich Girl" because of her troubled life. She donated Winfield House to the United States government, to be used as the residence of the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in a symbolic $1 transaction following World War II.
in New York City, Barbara Hutton was the only child of Edna Woolworth (1883-1918), who was a daughter of Frank W. Woolworth, the founder of the successful Woolworth five and dime stores.
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Encyclopedia
Barbara Woolworth Hutton (November 14, 1912 – May 11, 1979) was an American socialite dubbed by the media as the "Poor Little Rich Girl" because of her troubled life. She donated Winfield House to the United States government, to be used as the residence of the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in a symbolic $1 transaction following World War II.
Early life
Born in New York City, Barbara Hutton was the only child of Edna Woolworth (1883-1918), who was 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), 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 committed suicide when Barbara was six years old. Young Barbara discovered her mother's body. After her mother's death, she lived with various relatives, and was raised by a governess. 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.
In accordance with New York's high society traditions, Barbara Hutton was given a lavish débutante ball 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. Three years later, on her 21st birthday, Barbara Hutton inherited close to $50 million from her mother's estate. Her inheritance, which is the equivalent of over $1 billion today, made her one of the wealthiest women in the world.
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. Barbara Hutton married seven times:
- 1933 - Alexis Mdivani, a soi-disant Georgian prince, divorced 1935
- 1935 - Count Curt 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 - Prince Pierre Raymond Doan, divorced 1966
Three of these later died in automoble accidents - Alexis, Porfirio, and Gottfried.
Mdivani and Reventlow
Her first two husbands used her great wealth to their advantage, especially the extremely abusive Curt Haugwitz-Reventlow, with whom she had her only child, a son named Lance.
Reventlow dominated her through verbal and physical abuse, which escalated to a savage beating that left her hospitalized and 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.
Hutton's divorce from Reventlow gave her custody of their son, and, like her father had done to her, she left the raising of Lance to a governess and private boarding schools.
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?"
"You'll have to ask some other person."
Said Barbara Hutton to Aimee McPherson
(Reference is to then-popular female evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who was also known to have a few marital difficulties.)
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, one of the biggest movie stars of the day. Grant did not need her money nor to benefit from her name, and appeared to genuinely care for her. Nevertheless, this marriage failed as well. Grant did not seek, or receive, any money from Barbara 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, another 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 attempted suicide made headlines around the world. Labeled by the press as the "Poor Little Rich Girl," her life nevertheless made great copy and the media exploited her for consumption by a fascinated public.
Porfirio Rubirosa "La crema y nata".
Her next marriage to playboy Dominican Porfirio Rubirosa lasted only 53 days (December 30, 1953 - February 20, 1954). During the brief marriage, Rubirosa continued his affair with the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Hutton then spent time with Americans James Douglas and Philip Van Rensselaer. However, her lavish spending continued, and although she was 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, she met her seventh husband, Raymond Doan. This marriage, too, was short-lived.
Hutton frequently appeared drunk in public and her spending continued unabated. Over the years, she had acquired a large collection of valuable jewelry, including elaborate historic pieces that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette and Empress Eugénie of France. She began spending time with numerous younger men, total strangers to whom she gave money, diamond bracelets, and other pieces of expensive jewelry.
Final years
The 1972 death of her son in an aircraft crash sent Hutton into a state of despair. Her fortune had diminished, due to her extreme generosity and alleged questionable business deals by her long-time lawyer, Graham Mattison, to the point where she began liquidating assets in order to raise funds to live. Nonetheless, she continued to spend money on strangers willing to pay a little attention to her. She spent her final years living at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where she died from a heart attack in May 1979, aged 66. At her death, it is said that $4,000 was all that remained of her fortune. She was interred in the Woolworth family mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
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
Further reading
- Eldridge, Mona. In Search of a Prince: My Life with Barbara Hutton. (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988, 210pp.)
- Heymann, C. David. Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton. (L. Stuart, 1984, 390pp.)
- Jennings, Dean. Barbara Hutton: A Candid Biography. (F. Fell, 1968, 301pp.)
- Van Rensselaer, Philip. Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton. (Putnam, 1979, 285pp.)
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