05:51

[Music – These Foolish Things by Benny Carter, Album Perfect Blues]

Section 2 – History & Historiography

[Music fade out]

06:03

This whole podcast journey into the lives of a select group of heirs and heiresses began with an article detailing one summer’s events in Newport.  It was a little gossip piece using pseudonyms and vague fairly happy and some salacious descriptions of activities.  A wealthy son was caught making out with a maid, an incident saving a poodle, and a daughter running off with the chauffeur.  The only clear detail was that reigning society queen Alice Vanderbilt had returned to Newport after being away for at least a season.

The month of publication was August 1929 – two months before the Crash.  I dug and dug for details.  I located a few more general articles about young love and deceptions and the problems and social responsibilities with being a millionaire.  Clearly, there were situations that could feel relevant and modern with a hint of a not too distant era.

06:56

But where I really struck gold is when I found that Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton had spent parts of their teen years there.  I already knew about both of them from being a long time fan of historical tv miniseries and having seen one on each of them.  Their individual lives are fascinating, however they are barely mentioned in the other’s stories despite the fact they were constantly compared throughout their lives from the moment of birth.  Seriously they were born barely two weeks apart in November 1912.  Every triumph and faux pas compared by the press and amongst their set.  They could understand each other in a way few of us could, but their friendship was complicated.   When I realized they were similar in age as my time there and how their disastrous first marriages started during this summer, I was immediately hooked into learning so much more.

07:43

And if their stories were so intertwined, who else’s might be too?  Who were their contemporaries, what were their struggles, and did someone lose their fortune?  What were the specifics when so much told was vague?

At first, it seemed difficult.  I found the older traditional fortunes, and people living their separate lives.  Yet the Great Depression affected each of them in different ways, or so it seems when the stories are told apart as solo journeys.  Their choices didn’t always make sense, until I lined up the various timelines in comparison.  There weren’t diaries or journals to give elaborate explanations, often a newspaper date or a photograph fleshed out untold link.

08:25

Then what really got me was the overlap of so many other people.  Someone like Louise would barely be mentioned once or twice in another’s story, and those were fairly dismissive.  Then there were others who kept popping up everywhere.  Jakey constantly appears in the background as well as in the newspapers, even in his own family history he’s only gets a few paragraphs.  I had to keep looking up new people and continuously connecting the dots and put two and two together over and over.  Someone who seemed relatively unimportant overlaps multiple stories, and digging into their background opened up a whole other set of stories.  Family friends and siblings like Louise’s brothers might be periphery, but the shades and dimensions grew.  It’s like stitching together a quilt.  People lost in time, with parts of their stories submerged, overlooked, and misdirected.  Over time I got a pretty accurate picture of a whole world before and after the Crash and even all the way to the end of their lives.  How the course of their lives was set from such an early age and the situations they found themselves in during the summer of 1929.

09:38

The story of friendships turned frenemies.  A love triangle with a beginning far more complicated than most then ever realized.  Secrets uncovered.  Lies and scandals compounding.  And real life dangers that keep popping up.  Then there’s the who’s who making cameo appearances from time to time, including U.S. presidents and European royalty.  Along with several near misses that might have changed parts of history or actually did.

It is a real historic soap opera. 

Originally, I intended to turn this material into a television series and as such have been developing continuously over 7 years.  Hence I have a plethora of stories and multiple retellings of certain events and situations.  These stories both delight and plague me.  I can’t get them out of my head and move on.  I have been endlessly telling my findings to anyone who will listen.  And I feel compelled to tell them because each highlights so well the complications and frailties of human life.  They are for the most part cautionary tales.

10:42

I strive for accuracy and my historian sensibilities often kick into overdrive, but I also want to make things cohesive and digestible.  Thus why I decided to divide each story into several sections.  A narrative section allows me to illustrate the dynamics and explore how a situation might feel or naturally evolve, and a historical section so I can always set straight any confusion and explain details that I feel give a larger emphasis to the story at hand.  And because I like to be thorough, the last section allows me the freedom to point out the ongoing bleed into our modern lives. 

11:16

Forewarning – there’s a complication.  Because so many people have the same first names, I sometimes might need to use or give them an alternate name or occasionally their full names to help keep the storylines clear.  We have barely started, and already I have about 4 Frank or Franklyn’s, at least 3 Jimmy’s, and 2 Alice’s straight off the bat.  And don’t get me started on families who keep replicating the same names over and over.  I will favor the primary long term characters and adjust as needed.

In line with this, I have opted to refer to the Prince as Russian since that will be more familiar.  In particular, he is from the former Soviet state now independent country of Georgia, more famously known as the birthplace of Stalin.  Stalin was part of overthrowing the Russian imperial dynasty the Romanovs.  However if I did refer to the Prince as Georgian that would likely be confusing and more commonly associated with the American state from which Nanaline Duke hails.  I wouldn’t want the Prince to be considered the Prince of Peaches.

12:19

I will do my best to always make a note in this section of the podcast of any liberties or changes made.  I am quite a stickler for history, but in the first section I don’t want to be bogged down with heavy details or information dumps that might lead to confusion.  I want to explore the emotional connections hidden behind facts.  Parental and peer rejection are not one time events, but ongoing situations that have larger impacts than a factual sentence can convey.

I could neatly summarize their individual stories, and we would miss half the story.  The part that shows that every choice a person makes is based on the world around them.  And hindsight is 20 / 20, but even then there are butterfly effects happening we didn’t realize had influence or were connected until years even decades later. 

13:06

Our primary heirs and heiresses Barbara, Doris, Jakey, and Louise are only 16 – 19 years old.  All in the prime of youth, missing a parent, and waiting for their inheritances.  During the summer of 1929, they were all present in Newport with hopes and dreams of what will lie ahead.   They see bright futures on the horizon, and why shouldn’t they?  All they need to focus is making a good marriage, and all will be good.

If only life was so simple. 

We have lots of layers to uncover, so let’s have fun on this journey.  There’s so much to play with, and we have only just begun.