Doris Duke

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For the singer, see Doris Duke (soul singer)

Doris Duke (November 22, 1912 – October 28, 1993) was an American heiress, horticulturalist, art collector and philanthropist.

Family and Early life

Born in New York City, Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Southern aristocrat Nanaline Holt Inman. Her father, a major benefactor of Duke University, named for his father, died in 1925 when she was twelve. His will left approximately half of his huge estate to The Duke Endowment with the remainder, estimated at $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005 dollars), to Doris.

Following the death of her father, Doris Duke was raised in a Horace Trumbauer-designed townhouse at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 78th Street by her widowed mother (today, the building is the home of New York University's Institute of Fine Arts). Doris was driven daily to a private school in a chauffeured limousine, and the maids who cared for her maintained photograph books of all her clothing so as to plan her wardrobe. She also had private security guards to protect her from kidnapping-for-ransom. She also spent time her family's Rough Point mansion , a former Vanderbilt summer mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, where many of America's wealthy élite spent summers. Her debutante party was held at Rough Point.

However the home closest to her heart was Duke Farms, her father's 2,700 acre (11 km²) estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey where she spent her early childhood. Following the death of James Buchanan Duke, Doris took her mother to court and successfully prevented the sale of the property. Nanaline Holt Inman died in 1962, leaving only some jewelry to Doris.

Adult life

When Duke came of age, she used her wealth to pursue a variety of interests, including extensive world travel and the arts, and she lived for a time in Paris, France. Always a lover of animals, in particular her dogs, in her later years she became a wildlife refuge supporter, an environmental conservationist, and a patron of historic preservation. While living in Hawaii, she became the first woman to take up competition surfing under the tutelage of a surfing champion and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and his brothers. Her interest in horticulture led to a friendship with Pulitzer Prize winning author and renowned scientific farmer Louis Bromfield, who operated Malabar Farm, his country home in Lucas, Ohio in Richland County. Today, his farm is part of Malabar Farm State Park, made possible by a donation from Duke that helped purchase the property after Bromfield's death. A section of woods there is dedicated to her and bears her name to this day.

Doris Duke's own horticultural legacy, Duke Gardens, was the center of a controversy over its removal on May 25th, 2008. Miss Duke developed these exotic display gardens in honor of her beloved father James Buchanan Duke. She extended new greenhouses from the Horace Trumbauer conservatory at her home in Duke Farms, New Jersey. Each of the eleven interconnected gardens was a full-scale re-creation of a garden theme, country or period, inspired by DuPont's Longwood Gardens. Miss Duke, who spoke nine languages, designed the architectural, artistic and botanical elements of the displays based on observations from her extensive international travels . She also labored on their installation, sometimes working 16 hour days. Display construction began in 1958; a rediscovered image of the stunning nightlighting of the French Gardens in the 1970s is an example of the attention to detail that Doris Duke continued to lavish on the Gardens throughout her life.

Homes

Doris Duke acquired a number of homes. Her principal residence and official domicile

was Duke Farms, her father's 2,700 acre (11 km²) estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Here she created Duke Gardens, 60,000 square foot public Display Gardens that were among the largest in America .

Doris Duke's other residences were private during her lifetime: she spent summer weekends at Rough Point, the 115-room Victorian manor-style mansion that she inherited in Newport, Rhode Island . Winters were spent at an estate she built and named "Shangri La" in Honolulu, Hawaii; and at "Falcon's Lair" in Beverly Hills, California, once the home of Rudolph Valentino. She also maintained two apartments in Manhattan: a luxury coop apartment on Park Avenue in a building where many celebrities lived; and another apartment near Times Square that she used exclusively as an office for the management of her financial affairs. At one point, she purchased her own Boeing 737 jet and redecorated the interior to travel between homes and on trips.

Three of her residences are currently managed by subsidiaries of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and have some public access. Duke Farms in New Jersey is managed by the Duke Farms Foundation; a video tour of former Duke Gardens is available Rough Point was deeded to the Newport Restoration Foundation in 1999 and opened to the public in 2000. No more than 96 people are permitted to tour the house per day, and tours are limited to 12 people each. Shangri-La is operated by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art; small personal tours and an online virtual tour are available

Marriages

Duke married twice, the first time in 1935 to James H. R. Cromwell, the son of Palm Beach, Florida society doyenne Eva Stotesbury. Cromwell, a New Deal advocate, used his wife's fortune to enter the political arena, becoming U.S. Ambassador to Canada in 1940. The couple had a daughter, Arden, who lived for only a day. They divorced in 1943. (James Cromwell's sister was Louise Cromwell Brooks, the first wife of Douglas MacArthur and third wife of actor Lionel Atwill.)

On September 1, 1947, while in Paris, France, Duke became the third wife of Porfirio Rubirosa, a diplomat from the Dominican Republic and notorious playboy. She reportedly paid his wife, Danielle Darrieux, $1 million to agree to an uncontested divorce. Because of her great wealth, Duke's marriage to Rubirosa attracted the attention of the U.S. State Department, which cautioned her against using her money to promote political agendas in this alliance. Although her lawyers had protected her financial interests with a pre-nuptial agreement, she still gave Rubirosa several million dollars in gifts, including a stable of polo ponies, sports cars, a converted B-25 bomber, and, finally, a 17th-century house in Paris in the divorce settlement. While she subsequently had a number of relationships, Duke never remarried.

Controversy

Rough Point was the backdrop for one of the controversial episodes in Duke's life. On October 7, 1966, Duke and her interior decorator, Eduardo J. Tirella, were leaving the driveway of Rough Point. As Tirella exited the driver's seat to open the manual gate, Duke slid over from the passenger seat to drive the car past the gate and gunned the car, dragging Tirella across the street and crushing him against a tree, killing him instantly. Duke was admitted to Newport Hospital for facial cuts and shock, and was not interrogated by police until few days later. Duke said the acceleration was unintended: the station wagon had a Chrysler push-button transmission on the dashboard, whereas Duke was used to a manual transmission car with a gear shifter lever on the steering column and a clutch pedal on the floor. The Newport Police ruled the death an "unfortunate accident" one week later. Police Chief Radice announced his retirement five months later after 40 years veteran with the Newport Police Department.

Philanthropy

As an adult, she created the Newport Restoration Foundation with the goal of preserving more than eighty colonial buildings in the town. Historic properties include Rough Point, Samuel Whitehorne House, Prescott Farm, the Buloid-Perry House, the King's Arms Tavern, the Baptist Meetinghouse, and the Cotton House. 71 buildings are rented to tenants. Only five function as museums. Duke did much additional philanthropic work and was a major benefactor of medical research and child welfare programs. Her foundation, Dependent Aid, created when she was twelve months old, became the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The Duke Farms Foundation states that her Indoor Display Gardens Duke Gardens "reveal the interests and philanthropic aspirations of Doris Duke, as well as an appreciation for other cultures and a yearning for global understanding.. Miss Duke's extensive travels led to an interest in a variety of cultures, and during her lifetime she amassed a considerable collection of Islamic and Southeast Asian art. After her death, numerous pieces were donated to The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore.

Death

In 1992, at the age of 79, Doris Duke had a facelift. She began trying to walk while she was still heavily medicated and fell, breaking her hip. Doris Duke died on October 28th 1993, at the age of 80, following a series of debilitating strokes. The cause was progressive pulmonary edema resulting in cardiac arrest, according to a spokesman for Bernard Lafferty, the Executor named by Miss Duke's last Will , who was with her at her death. Although Duke was cremated 24 hours after her death and her ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean as her Last Will specified , her Executor Bernard Lafferty also sent a small container of the ashes to Marshfield, Missouri, a town that Duke had grown to admire during her years as a world traveler. Duke had visited Marshfield during a large tent revival, where she enjoyed the music. She was a guest in The Dickey House, which is today a bed and breakfast. Duke's ashes were buried in a local cemetery and a stone was placed to honor her memory. She was locally known as a philanthropist, since she often sent large sums of money for various projects, typically without publicity.

Trusts and wills

Doris Duke was the life beneficiary of two trusts created by her father, James Buchanan Duke, in 1917 and 1924. The income from the trusts was payable to any children after her death. In 1988, at the age of 75, Doris Duke legally adopted a woman named Chandi Heffner, a 35-year-old Hare Krishna devotee. Duke initially maintained that Ms. Heffner was the reincarnation of her only biological child Arden, who died soon after birth in 1940. The two women had a falling out, and the final version of Doris Duke's will

specified that she did not wish Ms. Heffner to benefit from her father's trusts, and that she regretted the adoption. After Doris Duke's death, Ms. Heffner sued the trustees of the trusts created by James Buchanan Duke, which later settled with Ms. Heffner for $65 million combined.

In her final Will, Doris Duke left virtually all of her fortune (an estimated US$1.3 billion, even though she had given away a considerable amount of money throughout her life) to several existing and new charitable foundations. She appointed her Irish-born butler Bernard Lafferty as executor, and Lafferty and her friend Marion Oates Charles as her Trustees . However, a number of lawsuits ensued. One was initiated by Harry Demopoulos, a pathologist who had devised a dietary regimen for Doris and her dogs, after learning that he had been named co-executor in an earlier will. Litigation lasted over two years and Lafferty ultimately was replaced as a Trustee. The Trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation , established as the culmination of these lawsuits , now control all assets and each of Miss Duke's three former homes as separate Foundations: the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art , Duke Farms and Newport Restoration Foundation

Doris Duke in popular culture

A large number of books have been written about Duke and in 1999, a four-hour made-for-television mini-series (starring Lauren Bacall as Duke and Richard Chamberlain as Lafferty) was aired with the title, Too Rich: The Not-So-Secret Life of Doris Duke. Her life is also the subject of the 2007 HBO film Bernard and Doris, starring Susan Sarandon as Duke and Ralph Fiennes as the butler Lafferty.

American sportswear designer Michael Kors used Doris Duke as the inspiration for his Spring 2006 collection.

References

External links

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Last updated on Monday July 21, 2008 at 23:12:47 PDT (GMT -0700)
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