Many were women and one of the most talked about was undoubtedly Barbara Hutton. Finished example of a flapper from the twenties, she was the grand daughter of the millionaire of cheap utility stores Woolworth, a kind of chain store in the three hundred, today called Foot Locker and Inc.
Born in 1912, a year before another famous female figure of European and American society at that time, Panonica Rothschild, who in turn became involved in the area of Music hall and jazz with names like Thelonious Monk or Charlie Parker, also Barbara had a singular journey through an eclectic succession of weddings and divorces with european nobleman or sportsman that made her one of the most fashionable and elegant women of her time.
After the suicide of her mother, Edna Woolworth, heir to the family fortune, the management and growth of the family business was developed in her name by her father, who, however, kept her away from her grandparents' inheritance until she was 21 years old.
Unlike other glamorous figures, Barbara Hutton's paths led, through different walks of life, to post-World War II motor sports. For this reason, this short investigation that seeks to find those intersections, coincidences or not, that arose since his debutante ball, held in New York at the Ritz Carlton Hotel on December 21, 1930, comes to mind.
It was exactly at this ball that he began his love affair with the American playboy Phil Plant, of his name, who was his first boyfriend and at the same time a lover of sports cars as was very usual at this time.
In 1933, at the age of 21, she took possession of his inheritance hitherto administered by his father and at that time became one of the three richest women in the world, attracting the attention of the world's newspapers, American and European high society and hunters of fortunes.
In the same year she fell in love with a Georgian aristocrat, Alexis Mdivani, whom she divorced just two years later, in May 1935, three months before he suffered a fatal accident in Spain, near Figueras, behind his Rolls Royce. when traveling alongside another figure in European society, Baroness Maud Von Thyssen who survived the disaster.
Already at this time married to the Danish count, Kurt Reventlow of him would be born his first and only son Lance Reventlow, in February 1936. Lance, we know, would be the builder of the Scarab Formula 1 sports cars and single-seaters that ventured into the panorama of the European tracks in the late 1950s.
But his intimate life remained hectic. She divorced Count Reventlow in 1938, involved in family scandals and drug use by marrying Cary Grant in 1942, the person with whom her only son, Lance, had a very good relationship.
Unfortunately the very hectic artistic life and always surrounded by female stars brought to divorce again in 1945, when Barbara started a tour of Europe which led her to a new exotic wedding in 1947, with a Russian prince Igor Troubetzkoy. This was the first driver to drive a Ferrari in race in Monaco. Passionate about racing and cars, Troubetzkoy will have left a strong influence on young Lance Reventlow who was still accompanying his mother on this roller coaster of weddings and divorces. Married to Barbara until 1951, in that period Troubetzkoy became the owner of a team, in partnership with the Italian count Bruno Sterzi, the Scuderia Inter, made up of three Ferrari 166, having even won with Clemente Biondetti, the 1948 Targa Florio. Sterzi abandoned racing after an accident in Albi that same year and Scuderia Inter's adventure ended the same year after a disagreement with Count Sterzi, but Lance, now a 12-year-old teenager, was strongly influenced by his sports life and career automobile company of his stepfather.
Barbara Hutton continued to suffer from the consumption problems that affected her health and again the divorce with the Russian prince took place, in 1951, in this marriage that lasted two years more than the three previous marriages.
In December 1953, Barbara Hutton married yet another notable high society figure of the time, the Dominican Porfírio Rubirosa, a former diplomat, sportsman and man of many abilities and a sure charm near ladies, and he, too, linked to motor sports. Rubirosa got to line up in important races like Sebring and Le Mans in 1954, continuing irregularly until 1958 to drive Ferrari sports cars. This was Barbara's shortest wedding, just enough for her to realize that Porfírio was still attracted to Zsa Zsa Gabor, his previous girlfriend but enough to see Barbara rewarding Porfirio with huge amounts of elegant clothes, a private B 25 "WW Bomber plane and $ 3.5 million in compensation at the time of the divorce, 53 days after the wedding.
Lance Reventlow, his only son born in a very risky birth in 1936, then a young adult, was starting a short career in motor sport at this time, lining up in several important races in the USA and Europe while introducing himself in the Hollywood environment of the west coast becoming close of figures like James Dean and being one of the last people the actor talked to minutes before his deadly accident. Lining up in Mercedes sports cars, Cooper and Maserati, he started from 1957 the construction of sports cars, an undertaking he abandoned until selling his team to John Mecom in 1964 and then dedicating himself to real estate business.
Barbara's next marriage, this time with an old friend of hers and also a character from the aristocracy but this time German, Baron Gottfried Von Cramm lasted between 1955 and 1959 ending up with yet another disappointment after meeting him one day in bed with her boyfriend. Cramm, an ex tenis player died in a car crash at Cairo at the seventies.
It was during this period that she and her son Lance suffered from a dramatic cut in relations following disagreements whose origin is likely to have been in the unstable love life that Barbara continued to live. Her last marriage took place in 1964 and again Barbara falls into a chest trap set up by two Vietnamese brothers who insinuated themselves with her, consummating Barbara's marriage to Raymond Doan, aka Raymond Doan Vinh at Champassak, in 1969 after him. extort a noble title purchased in Laos and another $ 2 million in compensation for the divorce.
Entering drug use again, due to several disagreements between which strained relations with his son Lance, the last years of his life were spent in an unstable balance between addiction and illness mainly after Lance's death in an aviation disaster in July 1972.
He died in Los Angeles on May 11, 1979 at the age of 66 in a state of near poverty.
Among his assets auctioned in recent years are a 1969 Ferrari 365 GTC, demonstrating his longstanding attraction for fast cars as he had always had for European aristocrats and high-value jewelry.
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