The Untold TRUTH About Taylor Swift's RI House I Painting and The Past

[@Lotus1111]

I live for rabbit holes! Thank you for this. All the best to you and your channel✨

[@gabypaternoart]

Me too lol!! Thank you so much!

[@christopherutter7966]

Interesting recounting of the history of Holiday House and by default Rebecca Harkness. I grew up in Westerly/Watch Hill and had friends who were very close to Rebecca and Terry. (By the way Terry did not throw herself off of a high rise in NYC but rather a low rise hotel on upper Madison Avenue on NYC upper Eastside.) In fact on more than one occasion I was invited to Rebecca’s house at Snedens Landing on the northern Hudson River. I don’t recall a LOT of outrageous parties at Holiday House, but do recall quite a bit of activity as one of her husbands was bundled up as he was thrown out of the nest. Much of the expansion of the house was to provide accommodations for her ballet. Following the debacle of her company dancing on the lawn and then under a dome, Rebecca purchased the former Fire Station on Bay Street as a dance studio. Rebecca was not alone in throwing large parties - some of which were outlandish - in Watch Hill. On more than one occasion, the Yacht Club lashed the docks together that during the day held small boats and dinghy’s and moved the floating docks into the bayside of the Yacht Club upon which an orchestra would set up for their dinner dances. Watch Hill had many celebrities over the years including Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford who were married there and also shot first movie filmed on location as opposed to in a studio. Other ‘celebrities’ included Jean Harlow, Albert Einstein, Emily Kimbrough, Cornelia Otis Skinner. Today Watch Hill is a community of the 1%. Rebecca also had a home in Nassau that she provided for Lucy Baines Johnson and her husband for their Honeymoon. To include Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol as your friends was and still is not unusual for those interested in the arts and are able to be patrons. When I first moved to NYC in my early 20s, I was invited to have dinner with Buckminster Fuller and Willheim De Kooning’s daughter; for some nothing unusual. For me being so young, I was terrified. Rebecca’s NYC mansion was a limestone Beaux Arts relic of a bygone era. Her birthday party was held at Studio 54. What I am trying to do is reduce some of the mystique surrounding Rebecca Harkness and Watch Hill. While Rebecca was notorious, her notoriety was not so different from many others from a certain not so small sector of American Society. The same can be said about Watch Hill, whose evolution is another story.

[@gabypaternoart]

That's so cool! Thank you for sharing!!

[@ultravioletpisces3666]

Thank you for sharing!!! I noticed a lot of the “crazy” things she did were like… so? She practiced ballet in her yard. She built something on her property that the neighbors didn’t like. Wow. It’s like… they didn’t like her so they made out like everything she did was scandalous. Also I kind of object to the phrase “need for attention,” like maybe they were just audacious and fearless and not afraid to enjoy themselves in ways that more repressed people deemed unacceptable. “Oh her parties were so tacky,” sounds like jealousy. And a snooty cliquey community that doesn’t like outsiders. “How does a middle class divorcè do it?” Aka… how does some outsider bag OUR most eligible bachelor. Just my opinion. I’m eccentric myself so… sure she did cross the line sometimes but a lot of stuff is made out to be that she’s a nut job because she doesn’t follow societies standard for how to live her life. (Read “The Myth of Normal” by Gabor Mate for more about how absolutely unhealthy normal is. “Normal” is way crazier than “crazy.” Or think of Britney and how her shaving her head (not looking how society wanted her to look) was deemed “crazy” when I’m fact she was sick and tired of being an object for everyone else to enjoy. Which is a normal reaction to a crazy situation. Everyone tried to own and control her and her wanting to control her own life was evidence that she was unfit to do so… The world is not a safe place for women.

[@funky_monk_9796]

This is a really good summary of the complex story of Rebekah Harnkness, you obviously did a lot of research. Thank you! I hope Taylor makes a movie about it, it would be amazing, and she would be uniquely placed to film it in her own home... Have you read Craig Unger's 1988 biography of Mrs Harkness? It's out of print, but I can send you a link to a scanned PDF of the whole book if you're interested. It's a harrowing but fascinating read. See also the Amazon Prime documentary An American Ballet Story about Harkness, in which you hear several clips of radio interviews with her.

[@gabypaternoart]

Thank you!! Yes a movie about this would be so cool! I haven’t read the book but I would love to! My email is [e-mail] thank you so much for the suggestions!!

[@ultravioletpisces3666]

3:50 what makes a marriage successful and who decides?

[@mikeluongo537]

great knowledge! Thanks

[@gabypaternoart]

Thank you!

[@SassyShell13]

Thank you for this! ❤

[@yukihaduki1427]

Thank you for sharing interesting history

[@evilynn333]

I did get the feeling that the story the song told was from the 40ies or 50ies, even though the music video did not depict that. Lovely song.

[@lkcullen1918]

If you're talking about the official lyric video, that's actually footage Taylor took from the terrace of Holiday House! One of my favorite details from the 'folklore' era