Barbara Hutton
Barbara Woolworth Hutton 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 one-third of the estate of her grandfather, the retail tycoon Frank Winfield Woolworth, Barbara Hutton was one of the wealthiest women in the world. She endured a childhood marked by neglect by her father and the early loss, at age four, of her mother, who died from suffocation due to mastoiditis. Rumors have persisted that she committed suicide. This set 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. 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 was an inconsistent and insecure parent to her one child, exacerbated when the divorce from her second husband ended in a bitter custody battle, and she subsequently developed anorexia nervosa. Her son Lance Reventlow died in a 1972 plane crash, leaving Hutton devastated. A life of lavish spending, paired with exploitation by those entrusted to manage her estate, brought Hutton to the verge of bankruptcy before her death.
Early life
Born in New York City, Barbara Hutton was the only child of Edna Woolworth, the daughter of Frank W. Woolworth, the founder of the successful Woolworth five-and-dime stores. Barbara's father was Franklyn Laws Hutton, a wealthy co-founder of E. F. Hutton & Company, 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 married to E. F. Hutton; thus their daughter, actress-heiress Dina Merrill, was a first cousin to Barbara Hutton. Merrill related on A&E's Biography 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; the trauma haunted her for the rest of her life. 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. 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 Woolworth died and bequeathed to her $26.1 million. Another $2.1 million in stock from Edna's inheritance was placed in a separate trust – both trusts were administered by Franklyn Hutton. By the time of her 21st birthday in 1933, Barbara Hutton's father had increased her inheritance to $42 million not including the additional $8 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 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.
She lived in the family home at 4 East 80th Street on the Upper East Side.
Marriages
Popular poet Ogden Nash 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
Barbara Hutton 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, a Vietnamese chemist, divorced 1966
Alexis Mdivani
Kurt Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow
Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-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 with Hutton. 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 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
In 1937, Hutton and her then husband moved into their newly built home, Winfield House, in London's Regent's Park. They had purchased the property from the Crown Estate Commission in 1936 and were granted permission to build a new home on the land. As World War II threatened in 1939, Hutton moved to California. She supported the commandeering of Winfield House by the British Forces and its use for various wartime services during the war.Hutton 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 Cary Grant, one of the biggest movie stars of the day, and later married him on July 8, 1942. According to the U.S. Embassy website, following their marriage, Grant was in London for the war effort and visited Winfield House. Hearing criticism of Hutton by the U.S. broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, of her abandonment of her London home, Grant suggested that Murrow visit the house before leveling unfounded criticism. Following the war, Hutton gifted Winfield House to the U.S. Government to be used as the official residence for the US Ambassador.
The press dubbed Hutton and Grant, "Cash and Cary", though 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.