Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait Of Barbara Hutton

Million dollar baby: An intimate portrait of Barbara Hutton

Dust jacket notes: "Million Dollar Baby is an intimate and exclusive portrait of Barbara Hutton, America's most famous heiress - a 'poor little rich girl' doomed to failure and tragedy. Philip Van Rensselaer was her companion and confidant. Here he dramatically re-creates the events of her life as she related the stories to him, in a book that captures the extravagance and glamour of the International Set. Called by Truman Capote the 'most incredible phenomenon of the century,' Barbara Hutton lived a gold-plated life. Her extravagance was fabled. She spent $25,000,000 in a decade - which would be $250,000,000 today. Her parties, clothes, jewelry and furs - all flaunted during the Depression years - made her the envy of women around the world. Her romances with royalty and celebrities were frequent, headline-making, and more often than not, disastrous. She was as famous in the '30s and '40s as Hemingway and Hitler. Though she was married to a handsome Russian prince, a dazzling Danish count, and to the most sought-after actor in the world - Cary Grant - Barbara Hutton was a vulnerable woman, haunted by loneliness. Descended from robber barons, Barbara Hutton's grandfather Frank Woolworth left her an astonishing legacy of $25 million and a Fifth Avenue palace. She casually acquired a stately English mansion, into which she poured $5 million for renovations, a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, a castle in Tangier, and a Japanese-style home in Cuernavaca. She surrounded herself with liveried servants and a host of hangers-on, who benefited from her great generosity. Despite her opulent surroundings, Barbara's life was not the stuff of fairy tales. Her mother committed suicide and her businessman father was cold and indifferent. At the age of sixteen, she got her first glimpse of European high life in Biarritz, where she met Elsa Maxwell (who played an important part in Barbara's life)..."