", Others insist that Heffner's growing involvement with Burns created new tensions and was the root cause of Duke's disenchantment with her adopted daughter. She had received another $10 million of her inheritance in 1937, and would receive at least as much in 1942. One of the first things she did was to caution Duke, on the advice of Nelson Peltz, against an investment proposed by her then business manager, Patrick Mahn. Duke last made news in 1988, when she posted the $5.3 million bail for her close friend Imelda Marcos, the former Philippines First Lady. ", A few days before I interviewed Heffner, an item had appeared in Cindy Adams's gossip column: Robert Ibrahim Farrah, an instructor of Middle Eastern dance, who says he introduced Heffner to Duke in 1984, claimed that Duke had come to fear Heffner. She was wearing a dark-blue turtleneck, old Levi's, cotton socks, and scruffy moccasins. She told me that her parents did not approve of her lifestyle, and that they'd cut her off from everything. I feel unsure of myself physically. Although polo and horse jumping are her favorite equestrian activities, Chandi Heffner currently spends the majority of her time overseeing CDHIF USA and CDHIFI. That evening, I sent up dinner and Chandi came downstairs and said, 'Tom, Bernard just dropped the entire tray.' ", Dr. Demopoulos told me, "I spoke to her in early January. In a peculiar arrangement, in 1988, the 76-year-old Duke legally adopted the 35-year-old Heffner and bought her a $1 million ranch in Hawaii, where the two lived together as mother and daughter. He made a comment that Doris had a fair number of complications as a result of the surgery. This was at 11 in the morning. It would come back. For Industry Professionals. We had a nice dinner with appropriate toasts, and Franco entertained us with anecdotes and imitations. The press decided she had become an eccentric recluse. I thought she was really nice, genuine.". Heffner also said that as next of kin she would have requested an autopsy, but she was never officially notified of Duke's death, and by the time she learned of the cremation, it was too late. A member of the Duke family, who requested anonymity, said yesterday, "I think Doris will turn it over to her lawyer and say, 'Crush her.' ChatGPT who? She had had several leg operations, after a riding accident, but she participated in the seminar. And all around him were all these liquor bottlesGrand Marnier and sherry. . Sources at Duke's estates, however, portrayed Heffner in a different light. Irwin Bloom had made the arrangements and then Duke called Protas from Los Angeles and joked, ''For God's sake, try to pay it back," Protas recalled. . Menu. Chandi Heffner choked back tears as she talked about Doris Duke, the worldly and restless tobacco heiress who legally adopted her in 1988, when Heffner was 35 and Duke was 75, and cast her out less than three years later. This should be some rehearsal dinner! Some questioned Reubens sexuality at the time until in 1989 when Reubens engaged in a "mock wedding" with Chandi Heffner, the adopted daughter of tobacco heiress Doris Duke. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. He named both his private Pullman car and his 80-foot yacht after her, and surrounded her with bodyguards. Learn how your comment data is processed. "I couldn't quite keep up, so I was in the back of the class. "Her legs were almost starting to atrophy from lack of exercise." He has an alcohol problem, but he's a basically good person. Phyllis Saretta says, "Chandi told me that her sister had a butler and a chauffeur and the whole thing. (1940 - 1940) Photos: 19. Chandi Duke Heffner, age 60s, lives in Kamuela, HI. Duke." He's standing on a street corner in New York right now and needs a place to go. "It was shocking," Heffner told me. And the whispers about Duke's last years continue. I know a lot of bull dykes. . And then the wine was $1,000 a bottle; it came from her father's cellars. They would helicopter over to Somerville from their estate in Bedford, New York.". Let them kill each other over it.' "She told me she was bored silly, and the palace was so froufrou. Then she became pregnant and had a premature daughter named Arden, who lived only 24 hours. Heffner had asked him to have dinner with her and Gordon Damon, and he had told her to pick him up at Duke's front gate. That's the same as around $125 million in today's dollars. "Cromwell was quite nice," says Nelson Seabra, a rich Brazilian friend of Duke's. Enzo Natale says, "Chandi had accused me of trying to rape her in Honolulu. Chandi was into environmental concerns. also assured Chandi that she would be the heir to Doris's estate in return for Chandi devoting herself to Doris and to the running of her affairs. They all of a sudden just totally cut me off, and I can't believe that was Doris. "We kept it to ourselves for months, until around July 1990. . Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our. She was so distressed about losing the baby. We wouldn't sit in the main dining room. She was alarmingly fragile." . She has completely wired the small house on her own, and she boards horses and cows for neighbors for $15 a head per month. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. Marcos has said that she and Duke were friends of almost 20 years, but others say that they met in the late 1970s through Franco Rossellini. Things escalated. You can live in the manner that I live and have this lifestyle. I think she did it to make James jealous. Lafferty also may pay fees to and divide commissions among the trustees as he sees fit. Virtually inseparable, the two women shuttled back and forth between Duke Farms, Duke's Newport estate "Rough Point" and her palatial Indo-Persian "Shangri-La" in the exclusive Diamond Head section of Oahu. Nelson Peltz is financing Chandi Heffner's legal battle. "They did not meet in dance class," he insists. One of Chandi's doctors thought that pregnancy might help her conditions, and Chandi was discussing this with Doris one evening in Newport while I was sitting there. (Duke had a similar fascination with spiritualism: she gave $100,000 to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 60s; fell under the spell of Norbu Chen, a pseudo-Tibetan lama, in the 70s; and left $500,000 to the Self-Realization Fellowship.). "O.K., I'm not going to see her, but. Banks never saw her again. Nine months earlier, she had sued her adoptive mother for breach of contract, claiming that she had promised to maintain her in the Duke lifestyle for the rest of Heffner's life and to make her the principal heir of her estate. And along about March, I sent flowers and candy to her California home. "He was obviously unhappy. Brooklyn Beckham, whos 21, has announced hes marrying Nicola Peltz, 25. He received nothing. She was ahead of her time. Heffner has a sister named Charlene Gail Heffner aka Chandi Duke Heffner. Although she was constantly compared to Hutton from the time they both had fairy-tale coming-out parties the year after the stock market crashed, Duke always hated the comparison to the much-married Woolworth heiress, who died penniless. Yet it is the underlying misconception of almost everything ever written about her, including Stephanie Mansfield's 1992 biography, The Richest Girl in the World. As a young girl, she wrote him love notes, which he pored over again and again. One time we were performing at an Arab party at this catering hall in Brooklyn called the Venetian Manor, and Doris and I were partners. To this day he maintains, "A lot of injustice was done to me. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. The gate had obviously been left open. "At the beginning of 1991, she placed an increasing reliance on me and Bernard," Demopoulos told me. As she spoke, she leaned forward like a child who is eager to please, but when she sat back and let her lawyers take over, her face lost its animation and she seemed older, harder, drained. She continued to give him money, and friends say that their sexual relationship never really ended. Meanwhile, Heffner is holed up on her Hawaiian ranch. Chandi Duke Heffner has 24 books on Goodreads, and is currently reading Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis by Ilia Delio, Free Your Mind by . She never married again, and from then on the men in her life, whether they were lovers or not, were considerably younger and came from the creative world. ", Heffner blamed Duke's altered feelings on the steroids she claims Duke was taking then. . The incredibly eccentric Duke who used to throw lawn birthday parties for her llamas complete with cake and funny hats adopted adult Chandi, after being convinced she was the reincarnation of her dead baby. While Lafferty was hospitalized, Rybak says, "Doris said to me, 'Tom, we are going to leave this up to you. In 1968, she established the Newport Restoration Foundation, with Jacqueline Onassis as vice president. . A few hours later, when Heffner returned from a show-jumping lesson, she was informed that Doris had flown to Los Angeles. (Burns dismisses reports that he was once a Chippendales dancer: "Not that I haven't been asked. After Tirella's death, she seemed consumed with the idea of actually becoming a performer. All. Her lawyer, David Keyko, said yesterday that in. Inspired by this trip, they bought the most spectacular piece of property near Diamond Head in Honolulu, on which they built a Mogul-style fortress and named it Shangri La. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. It wasn't until the following winter, however, Burns told me, that he became romantically involved with Heffner. Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. . ", The day after the adoption, the economist Woody Brock went to lunch at Duke Farms with Duke's New Jersey neighbor Jane Engelhard. She was taking so many pills at the end and, knowingly or not, killed herself. Although Duke was determined to produce his own heir, Nanaline was as surprised as everyone else when she became pregnant at the age of 42, and she always favored her son, Walker Inman, over Doris. Chandi Heffner In 1984, Doris met a woman named Chandi Heffner in Hawaii. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. I took her to six or seven dinner parties. ", Heffner denies that she had had any previous association with Imelda Marcos. His mother was a teacher, while his father fought as a pilot during WWII. (Von Blow is referring to a 1982 dinner party Duke gave at '21' in New York for his friends shortly after he had been convicted of attempting to murder his wife, Sunny. One night at dinner, Heffner told me, "Doris said to me, 'You're my daughter reincarnated. (Marcos was eventually acquitted, and returned to the Philippines.). She had several indiscreet affairs of her own, with Errol Flynn, Hawaiian swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku, and British M.P. Imelda stayed for a week, I think. Born on 1940 to James Henry Roberts Cromwell and Doris Duke. Claudia Heffner's Sister Has A Weird Story. Newport police declared it an accident, and her friends still swear that it was. John Warnecke was told by Johnny Gomez, Duke's elderly caretaker in Honolulu, that "she was so full of beans, she decided to have both knees done at one time, and one knee got infected and she had to have another operation. Heffner told me that "even back in high school I began kind of a quest to see if there was more to life," and that after a trip around the world, she ended up in Hawaii, meditating, surfing, and exercising polo ponies. I came back clean as a whistle. Nelson Seabra told me, "A very close friend of Doris's said that she committed suicide. Like all of her houses, it was guarded by fierce Dobermans or German shepherds. 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