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

Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Southern aristocrat Nanaline Holt Inman, widow of Dr. William Patterson Inman. Her 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 $1.25 billion in 2008 dollars), to Doris.

Doris spent her early childhood at Duke Farms, James Buchanan Duke's 2,700 acre (11 km²) estate in [[Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. At the age of 14, Doris took her mother to court and successfully prevented the sale of this property^[1].

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 (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 had private security guards to protect her from kidnapping-for-ransom. She also spent time at her family's Rough Point mansionhttp://www.newportrestoration.com/roughPOINT/estate.html, 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.

Nanaline Holt Inman died in 1962, leaving only some jewelry to her daughter Doris.^[2]

Adult life

Duke created the Italian Garden to showcase sculpture that her father had collected, such as this replica of Canova's Three Graces

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. 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.

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.

At the age of 46 Doris started to create Duke Gardens, exotic public display gardens that honored her beloved father James Buchanan Duke^[3]. She extended new greenhouses from the Horace Trumbauer conservatory ^[4] at her home in Duke Farms^[5], 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 ^[6]. She also labored on their installation, sometimes working 16 hour days^[7]. Display construction began in 1958; a rediscovered image of the stunning nightlighting of the French Gardens in the 1970s http://www.flickr.com/photos/femme_makita/2513492712/ 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 domicilehttp://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/newsmakers/wills/duke.html was Duke Farms, her father's 2,700 acre (11 km²) estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Here she created Duke Gardens, public Display Gardens that were among the largest in America ^[8].

Doris Duke's other residences were private during her lifetime: she spent summer weekends working on her Newport Restoration Foundation projects while staying at Rough Point, the 115-room English manor-style mansion that she inherited in Newport, Rhode Island. Winters were spent at an estate she built in the 1930s 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 9-room penthouse with a 1000 square foot verandah at 475 Park Avenue that is currently owned by journalist Cindy Adams ^[9]; and another apartment near Times Square that she used exclusively as an office for the management of her financial affairs. She purchased her own Boeing 737 jet and redecorated the interior to travel between homes and on her trips to collect art and plants. Duke was a hands-on homeowner, climbing a ladder to a three-story scaffolding to clean tile murals in the courtyard of Shangri La^[10], and working side by side with her gardeners at Duke Farms.

Three of her residences are currently managed by subsidiaries of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and have some public access. Duke Farmshttp://www.dukefarms.org in New Jersey is managed by the Duke Farms Foundation; a video tour of former Duke Gardens is available http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElQRVebAMtk. Rough Pointhttp://www.newportrestoration.com was deeded to the Newport Restoration Foundation in 1999 and opened to the public in 2000. Tours are limited to 12 people each. Shangri-Lahttp://www.shangrilahawaii.org/ is operated by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art; small personal tours and an online virtual tour are availablehttp://www.shangrilahawaii.org/page.asp?pageId=5.

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.)

Doris Duke (on right), shown with her first husband James H. R. Cromwell

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 a 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^[11].

Philanthropy

Duke?s first major philanthropic act was to establish of the Duke Gardens Foundation to endow the public display gardens she started to create at Duke Farms in 1958. Her Foundation stated that 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."^[12]. Duke Gardens were the center of a controversy http://www.savedukegardens.org over the decision by the Trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to close them on May 25, 2008^[13].

In 1968 Duke created 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.

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^[14].

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 http://www.ddcf.org.

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. In January 1993, she underwent surgery for a knee replacement. She was hospitalized from February 2 to April 15. She underwent a second knee surgery in July of that year. A day after returning home from this second surgery, she suffered a severe stroke. Doris Duke died at home on October 28, 1993, at the age of 80. 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 Willhttp://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/newsmakers/wills/duke.html, who was with her at her death^[15]. Although Duke was cremated 24 hours after her death and her ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean as her Last Will specifiedhttp://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/newsmakers/wills/duke.html, 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 ^[16]. The two women had a falling out, and the final version of Doris Duke's will http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/newsmakers/wills/duke.html 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 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 ^[17]. However a number of lawsuits were filed by those eager to seize a piece of the estate, estimated at US$1.3 billion. The most notorious lawsuit^[18] was initiated by Harry Demopoulos, whose company 'Health Maintenance Programs' owed the Duke Estate $600,000^[19]. Demopoulos found out that he had been named co-executor in an earlier will and challenged Lafferty's appointment. Demopoulos also hired a psychiatrist to assist the credibility of convicted felon Tammy Payette, who alleged that Lafferty killed Duke^[20]. A suit was also filed by Duke University, claiming entitlement to a larger share of the Duke assets than the $10 million provided in the Will (although Duke's Will also stated that any beneficiary who disputed its provisions should receive nothing ^[21]).

Litigation involving 40 lawyers at 10 different law firms tied up the Duke estate for nearly three years. Lafferty, who was close to death, ultimately agreed to stand down as a Trustee. The Surrogate Court of Manhattan overrode Duke's Will and appointed new Trustees from among those who had challenged it: Harry Demopolous; J. Carter Brown (later also involved in overturning the Will of Dr. Albert C. Barnes http://www.barneswatch.org/menu_matisse.html); Marion Oates Charles, the sole trustee from Duke's last will; James Gill, a lawyer; Nannerl O. Keohane, president of Duke University, and John J. Mack, president of Morgan Stanley^[22]. The fees for their lawsuits exceeded $10 million, and were paid by the Duke estate. These Trustees now control all assets of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundationhttp://www.ddcf.org, which Doris Duke directed should support medical research, anti-vivisectionism, prevention of cruelty to children or animals, performance arts, wildlife and ecology^[23]. The DDCF also controls funding for the three separate Foundations created to operate Miss Duke's former homes: the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arthttp://www.shangrilahawaii.org, Duke Farmshttp://www.dukefarms.org and Newport Restoration Foundationhttp://www.newportrestoration.com. The Trustees have progressively reduced funding for these Foundations, stating that Doris Duke's own works are "perpetuating the Duke family history of personal passions and conspicuous consumption."^[24]. Recently these Foundations have been forced to sell assets to meet their expenses ^[25], and in the case of Duke Gardens, to close entirely.

Doris Duke in popular culture

Several biographies of Doris Duke have been published. 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

See also

• Duke Gardens
• James Buchanan Duke

External links

• Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
• Duke Farms - Hillsborough, New Jersey
• Newport Restoration Foundation
• Doris Duke's "Shangri La" Islamic art museum
• Doris Duke biography at the Diva Site
• Information on closure of Duke Gardens, New Jersey
• Image of Doris Duke's nightlighting of her French Gardens
• Images of Duke Gardens, created by Doris Duke at Duke Farms, New Jersey

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