By Robert Heide
From 1925 through 1967 the legendary San Remo Tavern was open day and night for business on the northwest corner of MacDougal and Bleecker Streets in the Village – across the street on the southeast corner was another Café, the Figaro, which – after being closed for several decades and gaining a certain kind of legend status itself (Sam Shepard and Sally Kirkland were waiters there in the 60s) – is open again. From the middle of Prohibition through the Great Depression and WWII, and on into the 50s and 60s the San Remo thrived, attracting a crowd of poets, painters, playwrights, musicians and actors. Some of these luminaries were Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, William S.Burroughs, Miles Davis, Frank O’Hara, Jackson Pollock, Judith Malina and Julian Beck and so many others. One night the actor Warren Finnerty (The Connection) slipped a magic mushroom (psilocybin cubensis) in a glass of apricot nectar and insisted I drink it – but that’s another story. Another night, the Saturday night after the mid-week opening and the unanimous rave reviews had come in for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the crowd at the bar included several of the above as well as Simone Signoret and Leonard Bernstein there to see the new wunderkind of the American theater, Edward Albee, who wandered in fashionably late in a white cable knit turtleneck sweater, an outfit vaguely reminiscent of Eugene O’Neill. Which is also another story. The story here however, and one I have never told before, is the amazing adventure I had with some pals which started out at the San Remo and ended up at the largest private estate on the east coast where we all spent the night under the same roof with Doris Duke, who when she was young was called the world’s richest girl, then the world’s wealthiest woman – and then in an unauthorized biography written by her accountants, “…shall we say the world’s richest person?”
TRUST NO ONE – The Glamorous Life and Bizarre Death of Doris Duke, one of several bios of Doris Duke. This one by Ted Schwarz published four years after her death in 1993. Photo courtesy: Robert Heide
It began at a table at the San Remo Tavern late one night after the four of us had consumed a number of Black Russians when Eduardo Tirella leaned across the table and confidentially whispered to me and Jack Dowling and Anthony Towne, “How would you guys like to take a ride to New Jersey with me to Doris Duke’s estate in Somerville?” All responded, “sounds like fun – let’s go!” We knew he wasn’t kidding – it was well known the dashingly handsome, charismatic Eduardo, a few years older than we three, was Ms. Duke’s ‘charge-d’affairs’, art and antiques decorator extraordinaire, a curator of her collections, and her houses, a confidante and all-round constant companion. Eduardo, a poor boy from a large family in Dover, New Jersey had been recommended to Doris by Peggy Lee – in Hollywood and Las Vegas he had worked as a backup dancer with both Peggy and Mae West and he was an intimate friend of Elizabeth Taylor. He appeared in a movie with Taylor and Burton called The Sandpipers. After about an hour driving west through the night, Eduardo behind the wheel, we turned off route 22 at Somerville and drove south to the Duke Parkway. A short while later we pulled up to the fanciful wrought iron gates of the estate where a guard spoke briefly to Eduardo, and we drove on in. Friendly, sexy, and debonair man-about-town Anthony; Jack who in later years became the curator of the art galleries at Westbeth; and I – all instantly felt that very special feeling of quietude and grace usually experienced only by the very wealthy and privileged members of society. In the darkness it seemed we went up a long hill, then began zigzagging left and right and up and down; the road surrounded on both sides by dark, deep groves of great trees until finally the brightly lit portico of a very large house came into view.
Eduardo Tirella and Doris Duke. Photo courtesy: Robert Heide
This lavish 100 room house included a movie theatre, indoor tennis courts and swimming pool and over a dozen rooms just for the servants. In the house, situated in the middle of Doris’ 2,750 acre private estate, we felt completely removed from the outside world. When Doris, was thirteen James Buchanan Duke bought the land and an adjoining 5,000 acres of farmland as a weekend getaway for ‘Dee Dee’ his only daughter. He spent $10 million in the days when a dollar went a long way, creating a magnificent series of waterways using the Raritan River water forming the boundary of the north and west of the estate to supply the lakes, ponds, lagoons, waterfalls and streams and elaborate fountains; 25 miles of scenic roads meander through rolling hills and fields and groves of trees, past marble staircases and pavilions and Greek statuary, gazebos, by historic buildings, cottages, stables, and greenhouses growing rare orchids. When we went through a miniature version of the Black Forest of Germany I thought of the contrast between Doris’ and my father who was named Ludwig and was from the real Black Forest of Germany, emigrated to New Jersey, worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, bought a house in Irvington and a couple of bungalows in Seaside Heights. ‘Buck Duke’- the Durham, North Carolina tobacco (Ligget and Myers) and electric-power billionaire mogul, Doris’ father, would today be a gazillionaire.
We all gasped as we entered the house, seeing a great vaulted manor room with a reflecting pool down the middle, stretching up to a giant Buddha, on either side of which were large glazed ceramic jars which Eduardo pointed out contained marijuana. Settling ourselves in the ‘game room,’ with murals of cards and other gaming subjects, a room decorated by Doris herself, Eduardo asked a maid to bring a snack and some drinks and apologized for Doris explaining she had gone to bed early but that we would see her in the morning. When I awoke after a deep, dream-filled sleep, a maid entered my room and asked what I would like for breakfast. I said, “What do you have?” and she replied, “Sir, in this house we have everything.” So I ordered peaches and cream and champagne. We were all gathered in the drawing room when we met the tall, slim, exquisitely dressed, slightly Oriental looking, definitely highly unusual, strikingly glamorous and regal Doris Duke. We chatted for a bit and then she left for a previous engagement in the City. As she stepped into the waiting Rolls Royce she waved goodbye and said she hoped we would connect again when she returned and her chauffeur drove her off.
Pee Wee Herman, aka Paul Reubens, died this past July 30 at age 70 after making a successful comeback from his sex scandal. T-shirt photo by John Gilman. Photo courtesy: Robert Heide
With Eduardo as our guide we spent the day admiring and being awe-struck and breathing in the rarefied air. It took us over an hour just to walk through the huge enclosed glass Victorian hothouses themselves – these were the formal greenhouses – fourteen distinct botanical gardens in all. The first garden we entered was a very romantic Italian one filled with rare statuary and fountains and included birds of paradise, bougainvillea, and mimosa. Stepping through an archway we found ourselves in the American Colonial garden featuring clipped hedges, camellia bushes and magnolias, all in an early-American setting. The Edwardian garden beyond housed a vast assortment of rare palm trees, and rubber plants with extra humidity pumped into the atmosphere. The other gardens that followed included the formal French garden which was the tobacco heiresses favorite, a desert garden featuring giant cacti from the southwest, a traditional Chinese garden with a mysterious grotto among the stones, landscaped Japanese gardens, an Indo-Persian garden that had the atmospheric beauty of the Taj Mahal and its gardens, an African rain forest and finally, the Mediterranean semitropical garden. Eduardo told us that during the winter if Doris had a cold, a maid would be sent out to pluck a ripe papaya from the Indo-Persian garden; another tale he told us about Doris was that one day after some cattle had destroyed one of her outdoor gardens she promptly ordered them shipped to an Indian tribe out west, believing herself to be the reincarnation of a Native American princess. Doris was a decisive individualist in her philanthropy and for the sanctuary she offered many well known people who had fallen from grace – among them were the incendiary blonde Betty Hutton, a 1940s screen comedienne who had been hired to work on antiques inventories but after she remarked upon seeing a complete Thai village, bought in Bangkok by Doris, shipped to New Jersey and re-assembled in one of her indoor tennis courts, “So this is what rich people spend their money on” was fired. Doris became good friends with Imelda Marcos – the first lady of the Philippines, paying for her criminal racketeering trials in New York, and inviting her to the estate to stay during her scandals (of course Imelda brought at least a couple hundred pairs of her famous shoe collection along) and Paul Ruebens, aka Pee Wee Herman, who was given sanctuary by Doris after he was indicted and publicly condemned for an incident in a Sarasota adult cinema. About twenty miles north of Duke Farms is Far Hills, Gladstone, Peapack and Bedminster (where a former president bought yet another fancy golf club), stomping grounds of the rich and famous horsy set – including Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Charlotte Ford, Jane Engelhard (the richest woman in New Jersey) whose husband Charles was the prototype for James Bond’s nemesis portrayed in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger. It was at the Engelhard’s spread at Cragwood, a fantastic Rhine-like turreted castle on a 172 acre estate overlooking the lush hunt country where, as a young girl, Caroline Kennedy was taught the symbolic meaning of the traditional and bloody foxhunt. Newcomers to the sport are smeared with the blood of the dead and mangled fox and that is supposed to imbue them with a lifelong understanding and appreciation of the “excitement of the kill.”
Glamour shot of Doris, ca.1950s. Photo courtesy: Robert Heide
A few years before her death in 1993 – and that is yet another story – Doris and some friends threw a no-holds-barred party for King Farouk at a Far Hills estate, for high-posh society invites only, complete with outdoor tents and pavilions and a real live elephant. Doris also was the proprietress at Rough Point, a gilded age mansion on Newport’s Gold Coast – which is where in 1962 she killed Eduardo Tirella – he had stepped out of the car to open the gates. Doris slipped across the drivers seat and mistakenly stepping on the gas pedal caused the car to spurt forward, crushing Eduardo and crashing into a tree. Wrapped around the rear axle, Eduardo died on the spot. Doris also built an immense and elaborate beach castle in Honolulu called Shangri-La –which is the repository of her priceless Oriental and Islamic art collection; she also purchased Falcon Lair Rudolph Valentino’s spectacular spread overlooking Beverly Hills where she lavishly entertained movie stars and the rest of the rich and famous.
BOOKS ABOUT DORIS
DADDY’S DUCHESS – An Unauthorized Biography of Doris Duke, The World’s Wealthiest Woman by Tom Valentine and Patrick Mahn – Doris’s accountants.
THE SILVER SWAN – In search of Doris Duke by Sallie Bingham
THE RICHEST GIRL IN THE WORLD – The Extravagant Life and Fast Times of Doris Duke by Stephanie Mansfield
TRUST NO ONE – The Glamorous Life and Bizarre Death of Doris Duke by Ted Schwarz with Tom Rybak
DORIS DUKE’S SHANGRI LA– a House in Paradise by Donald Albrecht
TOO RICH – The Family Secrets of Doris Duke by Pony Duke and Jason Thomas
ROUGH POINT – The Newport Home of Doris Duke by Robert Foley and Bruce MacLeish
HOMICIDE AT ROUGH POINT – The Untold Story of How Doris Duke, The Richest Woman in America Got Away with Murder by Peter Lance
