Doris Duke
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doris Duke, (November 22, 1912 – October 28, 1993) was an American heiress and philanthropist.
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- For information on Doris Duke the soul singer, see Doris Duke (soul singer)
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[edit] Birth
Born in New York City, Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon, James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. Her father, a major benefactor of the university named for his father, died in 1925 just a few weeks short of her thirteenth birthday. 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.
[edit] Early years
Duke was raised in a Horace Trumbauer designed townhouse at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 78th Street by her widowed mother. Today, this house, the James B. Duke House, is the home of New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. On her age of maturity she used her wealth to pursue a variety of interests including extensive world travel and the arts, living 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 for historic preservation. 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 south of Mansfield (Richland County), Ohio. Today, his farm is part of Malabar Farm State Park, made possible by Duke's donation that helped purchase the property after Bromfield's death.
[edit] Homes
Doris Duke acquired a number of homes, including Duke Farms and Duke Gardens, a 2,700 acre (11 km²) estate in Hillsborough, New Jersey; Rough Point, a 115-room English manor-style mansion in Newport, Rhode Island (where Duke's coming-out party as a debutante was held); an estate she called "Shangri La" in Honolulu, Hawaii; and "Falcon's Lair" in Beverly Hills, California that was once the home of Rudolph Valentino.
Rough Point was the backdrop in perhaps the most controversial episode of Duke's life. On October 7, 1966, Duke and her interior decorator, Eduardo Tirella, drove to Rough Point. As Tirella opened its gates, Duke "accidentally" (she claimed later) gunned the car, dragging Tirella across the street, then crushed him against a tree, killing him instantly. The Newport Police ruled it an "unfortunate accident" one week later. The Chief of Police resigned amid the furor in the wake of the investigation. Duke later settled with Tirella's family after they filed a lawsuit.
Rough Point was opened to the public in 2000; no more than 96 people per day were allowed inside.
[edit] Marriages
Duke married twice, the first time in 1935 to James H. R. Cromwell, the son of Palm Beach, Florida grande dame 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.
On September 1, 1947, while in Paris, France, she 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. 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.
[edit] Philanthropy
Duke spent her summers in Newport, Rhode Island where many of America's wealthy élite such as the Vanderbilt family had built their summer mansions. There, she created the Newport Restoration Foundation with the purpose of preserving more than eighty colonial buildings in the town. She did a great deal of philanthropic work and was a major benefactor of medical research and child welfare. Her foundation, Independent Aid, created when she was twenty-one years of age, became The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
[edit] Death, Fortune and Will
Doris was the life beneficiary of two trusts created by her father in 1917 and 1924. The income from the trusts was payable to Doris' children after her death. In 1988, at the age of 75, Doris legally adopted a woman named Chandi Heffner, who was a 35-year-old Hare Krishna devotee whom Doris had met at a dance class. (Doris had no living natural children.) But after adopting Chandi, the two women had a falling out. Doris' will specified that she did not wish Chandi to benefit from her father's trust and that she regretted adopting Chandi. After Doris' death, Chandi sued the trustees of the trusts created by Duke's father, which settled with Chandi for $65 million combined. In 1992, at the age of 79, Doris had a facelift. She began trying to walk while she was still woozy from the surgery and fell and broke a hip.
Doris died in 1993 at the age of 80, following a series of debilitating strokes. She left virtually all of her fortune-- estimated at US$1.3 billion, even though she had given away a considerable amount of money throughout her life-- to a charitable foundation, over which she put her Irish-born butler Bernard Lafferty in charge. A lawsuit initiated by Duke's physician Harry Demopoulos resulted in Lafferty's being discharged. He soon died. Meanwhile, her foundation thrives. Her extensive travels had led to an interest in the variety of cultures she encountered and over her lifetime she acquired a considerable collection of Islamic and Southeast Asian art. Her homes all became part of her charitable foundation and the Shangri La property in Hawaii is now a museum supported by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.
[edit] Doris Duke in popular culture
A number of books have been written about her and in 1999 a four-hour made-for-television miniseries (starring Lauren Bacall as Duke and Richard Chamberlain as Lafferty) was aired with the title, Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke. Her life is also the subject of the 2006 film Bernard and Doris, starring Susan Sarandon as Duke and Ralph Fiennes as Lafferty, and was featured at the Toronto Film Festival.
[edit] References
Jesse Dukeminier et al., Wills, Trusts, and Estates (Aspen Publishers 2005), pg. 93-94.
[edit] See also
- Duke Gardens
- James "Buck" Duke
- The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
