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Doris Duke had it all -- and now her foundation is giving a lot back

By SCOTT MacKAY and JODY McPHILLIPS
Journal Staff Writers

Doris Duke had a ton of money and she lived a long time. But she was so tight-fisted and suspicious that her greatest legacy -- so far, anyway -- remains a collection of beautifully restored Colonial homes in Newport.

Duke was the richest woman in America when she died in 1993 at the age of 80. Born the sole heir to a vast tobacco fortune in 1912, she was raised to believe people would always be after her money.

Mostly, they were.

From the time she was a young girl, she received stacks of mail each day, asking for money; many included marriage proposals. She called them her ``gimme letters.''

Journal files SPIRITUAL SUSTENANCE: Doris Duke sings with the Angelic Gospel Choir in 1972; she was a jazz enthusiast as well.

For most of her life, she was equal to the challenge. True, she married two fortune hunters -- including Porfirio Rubirosa, the allegedly well-endowed ``Ding Dong Daddy of Santo Domingo,'' also called ``the last of the big dame hunters'' -- but she disposed of both briskly when her interest waned.

Late in her life, however, she grew increasingly vulnerable to scam artists and bottom-feeders, including a manipulative Hare Krishna devotee and a drunken butler.

Duke was a tall, slender blonde with a large chin who felt ugly and gawky all her life, although she in fact became a skilled surfer, a decent dancer, and appears rather lovely in many photographs.

Rich as she was, she suffered some real losses. Her adored father died when she was 13; she was never close to her cold, demanding mother. She seems to have been deeply in love only twice: with a young British officer who was killed during World War II; and with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Louis Bromfield, who died in 1956.

She was pregnant once but lost the baby, a daughter she named Arden. Years later she would patronize psychics who helped her ``communicate'' with Arden.

She was full of contradictions.

Her enthusiasms included Eastern religions and odd nutritional fads; she was also devoted to self-improvement, studying jazz piano, modern dance, and voice. In the early 1970s, she sang with the mostly black Angelic Gospel Choir; she sometimes donned disguises and performed with jazz musicians.

And yet she indulged in various drugs, particularly during the 1960s; in later years, she drank heavily. Sometimes she wore Parisian couture; at other times she looked like a bag lady.

She learned a great deal about art and antiques -- particularly Islamic art -- and was said to have a fine eye. She spent millions on rugs, furniture, and objets d'art; then let her dogs destroy her couches and soil her carpets.

She was often astonishingly cheap, schlepping her belongings around in paper bags and hectoring those close to her over piddling expenditures like postage. She was mean to the help, yet could be extremely generous as well.

She lived on an Olympian scale, with estates in Newport, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Hawaii, and a reportedly hideous pink-and-black Park Avenue penthouse during her disco period in New York.

Few around her ever dared to tell her when she was wrong. In 1963, as her relationship with jazz pianist Joey Castro was disintegrating, she stabbed him in the arm.

``I suppose you're going to the police about this,'' she said to him. ``I said, `Don't be so corny,' '' he told a biographer. ``We never talked about it again.''

By 1966, Duke had doubled her inheritance by shrewd investing; the only women richer were Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. She decided to restore the family's rundown Newport mansion, Rough Point, with the help of a gay friend, a handsome interior and set designer named Eduardo Tirella.

They also worked together to set up the Newport Restoration Foundation to restore historic houses in Newport. Jacqueline Kennedy, of nearby Hammersmith Farm, was the first vice president.

Tirella, however, was tiring of dancing attendance on the demanding Duke and felt his career as a set designer was being stymied. Duke didn't like the idea of his leaving her employ.

On Oct. 7, 1966, Tirella and Duke were leaving Rough Point about 5 p.m. in her station wagon. Tirella drove to the huge iron gates, put the car into park, and got out to open the gates.

Usually, Duke slid over to the driver's seat and drove the car through, while Tirella closed the gates. This time, the car surged forward and blasted through the gates, crushing him to death.

Duke told a witness she had ``started to go forward and put her foot on the gas instead of the brake.'' It was a rental car she had only driven once, with a new style of automatic transmission.

Was she drunk? Witnesses said she was dazed and incoherent. She was never tested for drugs or alcohol, and police later found nothing wrong with the car.

Was it intentional? Police said they had no reason to think so, calling it a ``freak accident.'' Duke herself blamed the car. Tirella's family sued; four years later, Duke was found negligent and ordered to pay $75,000.

In her last years, she was engulfed by golddiggers and opportunists, including Chandi Duke Heffner, the former Hare Krishna devotee she adopted (and with whom she may have had an affair).

She eventually quarreled with Heffner and disinherited her. Next up was the alcoholic butler, Bernard Lafferty, who was running the show when Duke died in 1993 and whom she named as executor.

Her $1.2-billion estate was tied up for years as Heffner challenged the will. She eventually dropped her claims in exchange for $65 million and a promise never to talk or write about Duke.

Duke's will left almost all her money to the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, to benefit environmental conservation, medical research, and the performing arts.

Lafferty died in late 1996; some say he drank himself to death. In 1997 the foundation finally began making grants; it will award about $55 million, or 5 percent of its assets, annually.