After her mother's death, Barbara Hutton, now five years old, went to live with her grandfather F. W. Woolworth, first at his Fifth Avenue mansion, and later at Winfield Hall, his new estate located on Crescent Beach Road in Glen Cove on the North Shore of Long Island. Completed in 1917, the Italian Renaissance-style mansion cost $9 million and had 62 rooms including a large music room with Aeolian pipe organ, 18 bedrooms, a grand ballroom, a pink marble staircase, tennis courts, stables, four caretakers' cottages, three greenhouses, swimming pool, formal Italian gardens, a nine-hole golf course and a 16-car garage. Winfield Hall required dozens of servants for its upkeep and services, and there were 24 full-time gardeners for the estate's 18 acres. (View recent photographs of Winfield Hall taken by photographer James Robertson.) F. W. Woolworth lived in his Gold Coast mansion for only two years until he died from a severe dental infection on April 8, 1919, at age sixty-six. Barbara's grandmother Jennie Woolworth was in declining health during her last years, and she had difficulty adjusting to servants replacing her in the role of caretaker for her husband, family and home, and living in large mansions, rather than modest farms or small-town homes. In her old age, Jennie Woolworth became increasingly isolated, psychotic and was mentally incompetent. When F. W. Woolworth died in 1919, his wife Jennie Woolworth became the sole beneficiary of his vast estate, but due to her premature senility (advanced Alzheimer's disease), the estate was administered by a committee that consisted of their two daughters, Lena (Mrs. Charles McCann) and Jessie (Mrs. James Paul Donahue, Sr.), and Hubert Parson, the president of Woolworth's from 1919 to 1932. After Jennie Woolworth's death on May 21, 1924, her $76 million estate was divided into equal thirds among the two surviving daughters, Jessie and Lena, and Edna Woolworth Hutton's only child, Barbara Woolworth Hutton. Barbara's $28 million share of the estate was to be held in trust and administered by her father until she reached the age of twenty-one.

After the death of F. W. Woolworth, in 1919, his young granddaughter Barbara was shuffled between various relatives in Burlingame, California, New York and Pleasantville, New Jersey, since she was basically abandoned by her father Franklyn, who treated his daughter coolly. In March 1926 Franklyn Hutton married Irene Curley Bodde, a divorcee he had met in California. Barbara Hutton once had to spend a Christmas by herself at Miss Porter's School, where she was snubbed and ridiculed by classmates, who had gone home to be with their families, because her father Franklyn and stepmother Irene could not be bothered having her home for the holidays. In 1926, Barbara's father decided that his daughter should have her own 26-room duplex in the same building as he and his wife at 1020 Fifth Avenue, at 83rd Street. Throughout her mid-to-late teenage years Barbara made regular summer trips to Europe.

Barbara Hutton was raised by nannies and Tiki (Germaine Toquet), her French governess, and she required bodyguards for protection. Hutton was educated at exclusive boarding schools: the Santa Barbara School for Girls in California; Miss Hewitt's School in New York City; and Miss Porter's School for Girls in Farmington, Connecticut. Barbara Hutton knew Doris Duke, another famous, even richer young heiress, and children from other prominent families. Hutton was regularly taunted for being a spoiled rich teenager who had personal bodyguards and a chauffeur to take her to school. One of Hutton's closest teenage friends and a confidante was her fun-loving first cousin, Jimmy Donahue (James Paul Donahue, Jr.), who later inherited some of the Woolworth millions from his mother, Barbara's Aunt Jessie Donahue, one of F. W. Woolworth's three daughters. Jimmy Donahue was also a lifelong friend of Libby Holman, whom he had first met in 1934 in Palm Beach, and also another of Jane Bowles' friends, the Du Pont heiress Louisa Carpenter. After Libby Holman Reynolds was acquitted of the charge of the shotgun murder of her husband Smith Reynolds, Jimmy Donahue lived for a short time with Libby, Louisa, Louisa's adopted daughter Sunny and Libby's young son Christopher. Barbara Hutton's family maintained homes in New York, in Palm Beach, Florida, and a shooting plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. When not travelling abroad, the Huttons spent summers in Newport, Rhode Island.

Aside from Barbara Hutton's grandfather, her most notable family member was an aunt, Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton. It is worth elaborating in detail about her extraordinary life to illustrate the lavish style of living and great wealth which Barbara Hutton's favorite aunt and extended family also possessed. Marjorie Merriweather Post was born in Springfield, Illinois on March 15, 1887. Post was, for most of her life, a grande dame of American high society―a regal and gracious socialite and hostess, known for her philanthropies and hospitality, and she was one of the richest women in the world. In 1914, when Marjorie Merriweather Post was twenty-seven years old, she inherited the rapidly growing Postum Cereal Company from her father Charles William Post (C. W. Post). Charles W. Post was a foresighted inventor who virtually established the breakfast cereal industry. As a young man he explored the Wild West and later he patented and manufactured agricultural farm machines that included the seed planter, the hay stacker, the harrow plow and several cultivators. After suffering from nervous exhaustion and a serious decline in his health in early 1891, the frail C. W. Post moved his family to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he entered the sanitarium run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. After making an amazing recovery, C. W. came to believe that regularly eating nourishing foods would make anyone feel better and improve overall health. In 1894, C. W. Post invented and began to sell Postum, a coffee substitute drink made from wheat berries, bran and molasses. In 1897, his company introduced the world's first packaged breakfast cereal, "Grape-Nuts". In 1904, Post invented and produced another cereal," Elijah's Mannah", whose name was changed in 1908 to "Post Toasties". To market his cereals, C. W. Post implemented America's first national newspaper advertising campaigns, and his company's products were now being sold in Canada, England and South America. In 1887, doctors advised the hard-working Post to move to a warmer and dryer area of the country, so he and his family moved temporarily to a ranch outside of Fort Worth, Texas, where he had established business ventures. Eventually, in 1907, Post acquired 213,000 acres of West Texas Panhandle land and founded his "dream" or model city, Post, Texas, located about 40 miles southeast of Lubbock, in Garza County. Despite achieving great wealth, his health remained precarious, and C. W. Post died at his home in Santa Barbara, California on May 9, 1914, at the age of fifty-nine. His death was a suicide―a self-inflicted gunshot wound―after suffering depression and recurring stomach problems. Beforehand, Post had a written note to Marjorie and his second wife Leila Young, whom Marjorie despised. After her father's death, Marjorie Merriweather Post inherited the overwhelming majority of shares of common and preferred stock in the Postum Cereal Company.

In 1904, Marjorie Merriweather Post graduated from Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington, D.C., originally housed in brownstones on M Street. In 1945, the school moved from Nebraska Avenue to its current 26-acre campus on Foxhall Road―one of the most coveted residential streets in the Northwest area of Washington, D.C. Mrs. Post was generous in her financial support of her alma mater, and she donated Post Hall in 1956, and Merriweather House in 1969, in memory of her father, Charles William Post and her mother, Ella Letitia Merriweather, respectively. She also endowed Ames Hall and the President's House. In 1969, the school was renamed Mount Vernon Junior College, and since 1998 it has been affiliated with and a campus of The George Washington University.

In 1905, Marjorie Merriweather Post married Edward Bennett Close, a Columbia Law School graduate, a lawyer, stockbroker and son of one of Greenwich, Connecticut's founding families. She and her first husband lived at The Boulders, their house in Greenwich which was built as a gift by her father and where her first two daughters were born: Adelaide Brevoort Close (July 26, 1908―Adelaide Close Riggs died December 31, 1999) and Eleanor Post Close (December 12, 1909―Eleanor Close Barzin died on November 27, 2006 in Paris, France). The house had an enormous front porch and was situated on fifteen acres of land, and there was a staff of thirteen. The Closes and two daughters lived in The Boulders until 1917 when it was severely damaged in a fire. In 1909, Marjorie and Edward Close made their first visit to Palm Beach and for the next five or six winters, they rented a seaside cottage and shared it with friends. In 1915, Edward B. Close and Marjorie acquired one of the finest mansions in New York on Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street― the five-storey mansion that had been built in 1904 for I. Townsend Burden, who had originally bought the parcel of land from steel industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. While Ed Close was fulfilling his military service in Europe during the First World War, Marjorie was growing increasingly independent, and in 1919 she asked him for a divorce.

On July 7, 1920, Marjorie married her second husband, Barbara's uncle, Edward F. Hutton, already a legendary Wall Street broker and financier. His first wife, Blanche Horton, had died in the influenza epidemic of 1917, and his only son, Halcourt Horton Hutton, would later die in September 1920 from a riding accident at E. F.'s hunting lodge in Bay Shore, Long Island. Marjorie and E. F. Hutton lived and entertained in New York City's largest apartment―the top three floors of 1107 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street. While the building's residents entered from Fifth Avenue, the Hutton's address was 2 East 92nd Street, the same as their former town home. Mrs. E. F. Hutton had decided to sell her palatial mansion to a developer for construction of a new luxury apartment building―1107 Fifth Avenue―on the condition that the firm replicate her mansion on the top three floors. The fourteen-story building was erected by the George F. Fuller Construction Company to designs by architects William L. Rouse and Lafayette A. Goldstone of the firm Rouse & Goldstone and was completed in 1925. This apartment was later described by architect Andrew Alpern as "certainly the largest and very likely the most luxurious apartment ever created anywhere." The 54-room triplex had its own porte cochere drive-in entrance at 2 East Ninety-second Street, an entrance hall with fireplace, a separate concierge's apartment, a private elevator, and the 44 feet by 44 feet entrance foyer in the shape of a Greek cross doubled as a ballroom. Additionally, the apartment had two laundry rooms, an indoor swimming pool, a gymnasium, bakery, silver room, wine room, cold-storage rooms for flowers, gowns and furs, a sun porch, rooftop gardens and play areas for Nedenia, and the dining room was capable of seating 125 guests. E. F. and Marjorie Hutton's triplex penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue―Manhattan's largest apartment―had additional rooms for the staff of 18 servants. Edward Francis Hutton also owned Barnhill, a 16,000-acre shooting plantation and preserve on the Combahee River in South Carolina.

Together, E. F. and Marjorie Hutton greatly expanded her company, Postum Cereal, and in 1922, the common stock was offered to the public. In 1923, E. F. Hutton was made president of the company. In 1929, the Postum Cereal Company was renamed the General Foods Corporation and on July 24, 1929 its shares began trading on The New York Stock Exchange. E. F. Hutton served as the chairman of the board of General Foods until he resigned in December 1935 and remained a director. After an aggressive campaign of acquisitions, General Foods became the world's largest food business whose well-known brands included Birds Eye frozen foods, Maxwell House coffee, Kool-Aid, Jell-O and many other products. Marjorie was a shrewd businesswoman, and in 1936 she joined the board of directors of General Foods, becoming one of the first women to sit on the board of a major American corporation. Her third daughter, Nedenia Marjorie Hutton (nicknamed "Deenie"), was born in New York City on December 29, 1923.

E. F. Hutton was an avid fisherman and yachtsman who built a total of five cutters, schooners and sailing yachts or barques, each bearing the name Hussar. In 1923, during the early years of his marriage to Marjorie, E. F. Hutton commissioned the first yacht they both used: the Hussar IV, a 202-foot, three-masted schooner designed by Cox & Stevens and constructed at the Burmeister & Wain shipyards in Copenhagen, Denmark. (When E. F. Hutton built an even larger yacht in 1931, he sold the Hussar IV to George Vettlesen who rechristened her Vema. Later it was used by Columbia University as a research vessel, and it eventually was known as Mandalay.) But without a doubt the Huttons most famous yacht was Hussar V, a 356-foot long four-masted barque with diesel-powered engines and refrigeration equipment to hold the huge quantities of foods required for long voyages. Marjorie rented a large warehouse in Brooklyn to carefully plan the interior layout for each of the two owner's staterooms and eight other cabins, indicating precisely where her antique furniture would be placed. The cabins had working fireplaces, marble bathrooms, fine wood paneling, rare carpets, paintings and Louis XVI and other furnishings. Hussar V was built in 1930–1931 at the Krupp Germania Werft shipyard in Kiel, Germany to designs by the prestigious naval architectural firm Cox & Stevens. When the Hussar V was launched in late 1931, it was the world's largest sailing yacht and had a crew of 72. During 1932 to 1934, Edward, Marjorie and their young daughter Nedenia spent at least six months of each year sailing around the world to places that included the Galápagos islands, Tahiti and Hawaii in the Pacific and many islands in the Caribbean, and later trips included Alaska and various destinations in Europe. To provide Nedenia with her education while at sea, a tutor and governess were onboard the Hussar V. Upon her divorce from E. F. Hutton in 1935, Marjorie took possession of the Hussar V and rechristened her yacht Sea Cloud. At the beginning of World War II, Marjorie offered her yacht to the U. S. government for “one dollar per year by the Navy for use of the Coast Guard” and it was converted to a weather observation vessel. In 1944, Sea Cloud was decommissioned and returned to Marjorie and restored for her personal use. By 1953, with soaring costs of maintenance and staff expenses for the vessel, Marjorie Post decided to sell the Sea Cloud, and potential buyers included Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and the governments of Iran, Portugal and Argentina. The yacht was eventually sold to Florida ship-owner George W. Gibbs, who soon resold Sea Cloud at a profit to Dominican Republican dictator Rafael Trujillo who renamed it Angelita. After his assassination in 1961, the legendary barque was sold, used and renamed several times, and eventually it languished for years in Panama. In the late 1970s Sea Cloud was bought and restored by the German-based Hansa Treuhand group, Sea Cloud Cruises fleet, and today it is enjoyed by a discriminating clientele. (Read more about the history of Sea Cloud and view photos of her interior rooms.)

In 1921, Marjorie and E. F. Hutton bought Warburton Hall, a country house in Brookville, Long Island, New York, originally designed by Addison Mizner for Mr. and Mrs. William A. Prime. The Huttons had most of that house demolished and architect Charles M. Hart of the firm Hart & Shape transformed the structure into a 70-room English Tudor-Elizabethan revival manor house which they named Hillwood. The landscape design for the estate's 177 acres was by Marian C. Coffin and included English, rose and water gardens, greenhouses, and a 20 by 80 foot swimming pool. Mrs. E. F. Hutton built a 26-room house nearby for her eldest daughter Adelaide and her first husband Thomas ("Tim") Durant. After her youngest daughter Nedenia's marriage to Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr., Marjorie decided to sell Hillwood in 1947 to Long Island University. However, because of local opposition in the community, the university actually did not take possession of her estate until January 1951, when the first day classes began. In 1955, the school was named the the C .W. Post College, in honor of Marjorie's father, and the school is now known as The C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University. In 1965 and 1966 Riggs Residence Hall was constructed on the campus, named in honor of Marjorie Merriweather Post's eldest daughter Adelaide Close Riggs. In 1922, when married to E. F. Hutton, Marjorie built a luxurious private railcar named Hussar, complete with formal dining room, observation lounge and four bedroom suites. The rail car enabled them to travel in comfort and style for business and pleasure on railroad lines between New York, Palm Beach and the Adirondacks. In 1937, when Marjorie and Joseph E. Davies went to the Soviet Union, the Hussar was sold to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Still in use today, the railcar is known as the Chapel Hill.

Also in 1921, E. F. Hutton commissioned the fashionable architect Marion Sims Wyeth to design a house in Palm Beach, Florida for his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton, who was increasingly involved in the town's social life. But Hutton's first Palm Beach home, Hogarcito, a Spanish-style house on Golfview Road directly overlooking the Everglades Club golf course, even with its three-storey tower and ocean views, still could not rival the grander mansions of established hostesses in Palm Beach, among them El Mirasol, the winter home of Philadelphia financier Edward T. Stotesbury and his wife Eva. In 1924, the Huttons decided to sell Hogarcito to Barbara's father Franklyn Hutton and build a far larger house, suitable for grand entertaining, that would awe Palm Beach residents. After three years of construction, Mar-a-Lago was finally completed in January 1927. Mrs. Hutton employed over 600 construction workers and artisans on the Hispano-Moresque house that was co-designed by the architects Marion Sims Wyeth and Joseph Urban. The crescent-shaped house at 1100 South Ocean Boulevard featured a 75-foot high tower, a 34-feet tall living room with gold-leaf ceiling, and thirty-six thousand 15th-century Spanish decorative tiles, and antique Cuban roof tiles and marble floors also adorned the house. The grounds had immaculately manicured lawns with Royal Palms and citrus groves, four greenhouses, guest houses, staff quarters and a nine-hole golf course. An underground tunnel led directly to the private beach with a private cabana and swimming pool, adjacent to the Bath and Tennis Club. Upon its completion, Mar-a-Lago became the fifth largest private residence in the United States with 115 rooms that included 33 bathrooms, 58 bedrooms and 12 fireplaces (eventually three bomb shelters were added). The estate had a staff of up to 75 and was situated on nearly 18 acres of land that stretched from Lake Worth to the Atlantic Ocean. During each winter season in Palm Beach she entertained guests at Mar-a-Lago, and she reigned for decades as the undisputed queen of Palm Beach society. Mrs. E. F. Hutton once hired the entire Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus to entertain her friends and guests. In 1957, she established The American Red Cross International Ball in Palm Beach to support the humanitarian efforts of the Red Cross, and the ball she founded remains a major charitable event in Palm Beach during the winter season. In 1964, Marjorie Merriweather Post offered to give Mar-a-Lago to the State of Florida but the plan fizzled out because it would have been expensive to maintain. In 1969, she persuaded Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall to designate Mar-a-Lago as a National Historic Landmark. In November 1972, President Richard Nixon accepted Mrs. Post's generous gift of Mar-a-Lago to the U.S. Government for use as a winter White House, yet no president ever slept in the house. In 1980, the Federal government decided to return the house to the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation because the maintenance costs were exorbitant. In December 1985, Mrs. Post's former Palm Beach winter home was finally preserved when real estate businessman Donald Trump purchased the entire property and remaining furnishings of Mar-a-Lago for a mere $10 million, eventually turning Palm Beach's grandest estate into the private Mar-a-Lago Club.

In 1923, Barbara Hutton's Aunt Marjorie Hutton bought Camp Hutridge, which had been built in the 1880s for the Lothrop family, cofounders of the Washington, D.C. department store Woodward & Lothrop. With the help of local contractor–architect, Ben Muncil and architect Theodore Blake, Marjorie redesigned and enlarged the 207-acre rustic compound which had a total of sixty-eight buildings. Her camp was located in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, on Upper St. Regis Lake, about twelve miles northwest of Saranac Lake. In 1936, she renamed her retreat Camp Topridge. Family and guests would arrive via chauffeured limousine or fly there, beginning in the late 1950s, on Merriweather, her Vickers Viscount turboprop airplane. Once at the dock at one end of the lake, they boarded a 26-passenger yacht to the boathouse where they were transported on a funicular up to the top ridge and the grand lodge. Its main room was 65 feet long and had a twenty-five foot high ceiling, and a massive stone fireplace stood at each end. Topridge had eighteen cottages for her guests and a total staff of 85 servants catered to their every whim and need. Each cottage had its own butler and maid, and guests were expected to dress formally for dinners. Topridge was one of the most impressive of the great camps of the Adirondacks and was filled with American Indian artifacts, and swimming, canoeing, fishing, hiking, films and square dancing were regular activities during each summer season which lasted from late-July through Labor Day. (Mrs. Post bequeathed Topridge to the State of New York and her former retreat is now privately owned.)

On December 15, 1935, Marjorie married Joseph E. Davies, a prominent Washington lawyer, and in 1936 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Davies to serve as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, at the height of Josef Stalin's reign of terror. For two years, from 1936 to 1938, Joseph Davies and his wife Marjorie lived in Moscow and Leningrad, often entertaining aboard her luxurious yacht Sea Cloud. From 1938 to 1939 Davies served concurrently as the Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg. When the Davies returned to Washington in the fall of 1939, they rented the 17-acre Elinor Ryan Brady estate known as Valley View, located at 1801 Foxhall Road, bordering the Glover-Archbold Park on two sides. Here she began to entertain on a lavish scale in Washington in its brick Georgian mansion. In 1940, she became a member of The Sulgrave Club, an exclusive, private women's club and bastion of the Old Guard elite in Washington. Also in 1940, Joseph and Marjorie Davies purchased The Causeway, the historic, former Washington, D.C. estate of Alice and James Parmelee, a banker originally from Ohio. The Parmalees had purchased the site from Alexander Graham Bell and his wife who had lived during the 1890s in a previous house on the property. Joseph Davies and his wife Marjorie renamed their estate Tregaron, after Davies’ mother’s small ancestral village in Wales. The three-storey, neo-Georgian mansion had been designed by architect Charles Adams Platt and built in 1912–1914. Tregaron was situated on 20 wooded acres and had two long and winding driveway entrances: one on Klingle Road and the other on Macomb Street. Tregaron was a country estate in Washington, D.C., bordering both the Cleveland Park area and Rock Creek Park and overlooking the Klingle Valley. The Davies completely redesigned the interior of Tregaron, utilizing the skills of New York interior designer Fred Vogel to better display their collections of Russian Imperial antiques. At this time, Marjorie sold her enormous New York apartment and incorporated its antique French furniture into the rooms at Tregaron. They made a few minor architectural changes to the exterior of the house and gardens, and Joseph Davies reconstructed the Dacha that he had shipped over from Russia in pieces, and used it as his working office. The grounds had been originally laid out and planned by pioneer woman landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman and included formal English and wildflower gardens, brick pathways, statues, stone bridges, marble fountains, meadows and secluded areas. The hilltop property also had a carriage house, a large greenhouse, two streams, a bridle path and its own two-engine fire department. Ambassador Davies and his wife entertained often (including three presidents). Although purchased in 1940, the Davies did not move into Tregaron until the spring of 1942 when renovations were finished. The Davies opened their estate to the public for special events that included concerts by the National Symphony, and each spring garden parties were held when the flowers were in full bloom. During the 1940s, Joe Davies developed increasing health problems and tensions developed in their marriage. In March 1955 she divorced Mr. Davies, giving him Tregaron and dividing up the Russian objects (many were purchased by Marjorie after Davies' death). After the divorce she legally restored her maiden name and was known as Marjorie Merriweather Post for the rest of her life. Joseph E. Davies died at Tregaron on May 9, 1958, at age 81, from bronchial pneumonia following a stroke. Three days later, Davies was entombed in the Washington National Cathedral.

In 1955, Marjorie Merriweather Post acquired another extraordinary property in the Nation's Capital originally called Arbramont. The house had been designed in 1926 by architect John Deibert for Mrs. Henry Parsons Erwin. Marjorie Merriweather Post renamed her Washington estate Hillwood, after her former Long Island residence. Using architect Alexander McIlvaine from the New York firm Delano and Aldrich, she spent two years redesigning and expanding the 36-room Georgian-style mansion to showcase her priceless collections and to make the property viable for use as a future museum. Hillwood was the largest privately-held residential property in Washington, D.C., situated on 25 acres. Her estate had 12 acres of well-manicured French, English and Japanese gardens, with greenhouses for orchids and other flowers, and an additional 13 acres of tranquil woodlands bordering Rock Creek Park. (Hillwood has more land than The White House's 18 acres.) From the entrance hall and library there are perfectly-framed views of the Washington Monument. Mrs. Post often held lavish dinner parties and there were usually two liveried footmen for each guest. The house was filled with important collections of French and Russian art works, tapestries, Russian Imperial porcelains and crystal, solid gold dinner place settings for 100 people, icons, antique furniture, Sèvres porcelain, rare and historic jewelry and other objects d'arts. Marjorie Merriweather Post amassed the largest collections of 18th- and 19th-century Russian Imperial art outside of the former Soviet Union, including over 80 works by Carl Fabergé and two of his Imperial Easter Eggs, and the historic 1884 diamond crown worn by Empress Alexandra at her marriage to Czar Nicholas II. She had begun collecting the Russian items during the two years she lived in Moscow.

On June 18, 1958, she married her fourth and last husband Herbert A. May, a department store heir and businessman from Pittsburgh, but she divorced him in 1964. Throughout her life, Post formally entertained heads of state―kings, queens, presidents and first ladies―and ambassadors and diplomats, Supreme Court justices, politicians, family and friends in her opulent homes. So regal was Marjorie Merriweather Post's style of living and appearance that Queen Maud of Norway once remarked while onboard the Sea Cloud , "Why, you live like a Queen, don't you?" A life-long devotee of the Christian Science faith, Marjorie was not tolerant of the excessive use of alcohol, allowing her guests only half an hour for cocktails before dinner parties where limited amounts of wine were offered. She firmly believed in the importance of eating three meals a day and getting eight hours of sleep, and she promptly retired at 11 P.M.

In 1969, Marjorie Merriweather Post donated Hillwood to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. on condition that she could still live there, but in 1976 the property reverted to the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation, then directed by her eldest daughter Adelaide Close Riggs. (From 1939, Adelaide and her sportsman husband Augustus Riggs IV, lived at Happy Retreat Farm, situated on 540 acres near Woodbine, in Howard County, Maryland. The Riggs were very active in thoroughbred horse racing, breeding and foxchasing circles.) Marjorie Merriweather Post gave generous amounts of money throughout her life to help those less fortunate, and she actively supported Mount Vernon College, C. W. Post College, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington Ballet, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and other worthy causes. Marjorie Merriweather Post's fabulous Washington estate―now the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens―is open to the public by appointment. The museum's entrance is located at 4155 Linnean Avenue, N.W.

In the summer of 1971, Marjorie Merriweather Post's health began to fail and over the next two years she became somewhat frail and developed increasing hearing loss. On September 12, 1973, Marjorie Merriweather Post died peacefully at Hillwood, at the age of eighty-six. The news of her death was reported internationally with obituaries in many newspapers. On September 17, 1973, a short funeral service was held at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, presided over by the United States Senate Chaplain and attended by Mamie Eisenhower, ambassadors from various countries and about 1,200 other people, many from New York and Palm Beach. That same day, at three o'clock in afternoon, family members gathered in the drawing room at Hillwood for a a simple private service conducted by a Christian Science reader. One year after Post's death, her family returned to Hillwood for a private ceremony to dedicate a memorial in the rose garden and to install the urn containing her ashes on a pink granite pedestal.

Throughout her teenage years Barbara Hutton was often invited on trips by Marjorie and E. F. Hutton, and when in Palm Beach, Barbara preferred to stay with her Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Ned at Mar-a-Lago rather than with her father and stepmother at Hogarcito. Marjorie would carefully listen to her sensitive, unhappy and confused young niece, providing much-needed guidance, but she was unsuccessful in getting Barbara to control her extravagant spending sprees. Barbara looked up to and greatly admired her kind, beautiful and intelligent aunt. Nancy Rubin Stuart wrote in her book American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post: "Years later, long after Barbara was grown and rushing from one unhappy marriage to another, she continued to hunger after Marjorie's love and advice. At Christmas and Easter she sent her aunt lavish bouquets of roses, orchids, and other exotic blossoms. Often she telegrammed Marjorie in gratitude for a phone call, a visit, or a present, praising her as 'the kindest and dearest person in all the world' or reassuring her that she was 'taking her advice.'"

During the fall of 1930 Barbara Woolworth Hutton attended forty separate balls, receptions, teas and brunches, including heiress Doris Duke's debut in Newport, Rhode Island. Aunt Marjorie gave a tea for five hundred people at her Fifth Avenue triplex, with the Meyer Davis orchestra providing entertainment. Barbara Hutton's own debutante ball was held on December 21, 1930, at Manhattan's first Ritz-Carlton Hotel (opened in 1910 and demolished in 1951), then located at Madison Avenue and 46th Street. Her debutante extravaganza was attended by one thousand people from New York's upper-crust Social Register families, and included other debutantes and their male escorts. Entertainment was provided by four orchestras, and the singer-actor Maurice Chevalier, dressed in a Santa Claus suit, handed out expensive gifts to the guests. The high-society bandleader Lester Lanin began his long and distinguished career at Barbara Hutton's coming-out party; and two hundred waiters served dinners and breakfasts, and thousands of bottles of Champagnes were consumed. The famous New York socialite Brooke Astor described this event as: "...to die from―the epitome of the big money deb affair."

On May 19, 1931, Barbara Hutton was formally presented to Queen Mary and King George V at Buckingham Palace, and the next day Edward, the Prince of Wales held a garden party on the palace's grounds. Following London, Barbara Hutton, her father and stepmother traveled to Paris, where they took a suite at the Hôtel Ritz. In Paris, Barbara Hutton first met Elsa Maxwell, noted for her parties and introductions of rich American women looking to marry into impoverished European royalty. Paris was followed by stays in Biarritz, France and Rome, Italy.

Near the end of January 1933 Barbara Hutton sailed to the Far East, with a stay in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. While in Bangkok, Siam (now Thailand), she met up with Prince Alexis Mdivani. In April 1933, an announcement of her engagement to the Georgian prince― just divorced from Louise Astor Van Alen, a Manhattan socialite and a descendant of John Jacob Astor―outraged her father, who adamantly opposed any marriage, especially since his daughter had not yet reached the age of twenty-one. Barbara Hutton immediately ordered three custom built Rolls-Royces and gave one to her father as a present. After a prenuptial agreement was finalized and signed, giving Mdivani one million dollars and a substantial annual allowance, they were married in a civil ceremony in Paris on June 20th, followed by a lavish formal wedding on June 22, 1933 at a Russian Orthodox cathedral. The international press strongly criticized Princess Mdivani (Hutton) for spending a small fortune on her wedding. With seventy pieces of luggage and trunks, the newlyweds spent their honeymoon at Lake Como, north of Milan, and the Lido in Venice. In 1934 the couple visited Japan and China, with more spending sprees, and gifts and large checks for Prince Mdivani. In Venice, Barbara bought Abbazia di San Gregorio, a palazzo and former monastery directly on the Grand Canal that dates back to the 12th century, but Mdivani had the deed registered in his name. By the autumn of 1934, their marriage seemed irreconcilably doomed, and she ultimately filed for a divorce, which was granted in Reno, Nevada on May 13, 1935.

On November 14, 1933, Barbara Hutton's twenty-first birthday, she inherited one-third of Jennie Woolworth's estate and now had a net worth of over $50 million―a sum nearly double her original inheritance due to careful investment by her father―equivalent to $2–$2.5 billion dollars in today's value of the U.S. dollar. (At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, a worker's average annual wages were $1,550, the average new house cost between $2,800 and $5,759, the average cost of a new car was $630, gasoline cost just 10 cents a gallon, a loaf of bread cost 7 cents, a U.S. postage stamp was 3 cents, and a daily newspaper cost a mere 2 cents.) Barbara Hutton was one of the richest women in the America at a time when the stock market had crashed, many banks had failed, businesses went bankrupt and millions of Americans and innumerable people in other countries found themselves struggling to make ends meet and were without jobs. Hutton's first act of generosity was a gift of $5 million to her father Franklyn, since he had nearly doubled the amount of her original inheritance when he managed her trust fund. The Hutton family emerged virtually unscathed from the Depression and they remained very rich. From the time of Hutton's inheritance the media regularly reported every detail of her extravagances and what would become a pattern of marriage and divorce throughout her life. Newspapers derided the young heiress, and Hutton was disdainfully mocked in the press and referred to as the "Poor Little Rich Girl" on the front page of the New York Post and by much of the general public. On her twenty-second birthday in 1934 Hutton held a lavish party for 2,000 guests at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris.

At age twenty-four, when Barbara Hutton was married to her second husband, Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow from Denmark, she became concerned about threats to kidnap her baby son Lance Haugwitz-Reventlow, who was born in London, after a difficult Caesarian section operation, on February 24, 1936. She decided to give up her house near Marble Arch in London and look for something bigger and more secure. Friends suggested a large, abandoned and dilapidated Regency-style house called St. Dunstan's (originally called Hertford Villa), that recently had been partially destroyed by fire. In August 1936, Barbara Hutton bought the twelve and a half acres property located adjacent to The Regent's Park, demolished St. Dunstan's, and built a brick Georgian mansion designed by Glasgow-born architect Leonard Rome Guthrie. Hutton named her new home Winfield House, in memory of her grandfather, and she furnished it with a treasury of valuable paintings, Louis XV furniture, Persian carpets, and Chinese objets d'art, and installed 18th century French paneling, oak parquet floors, and new marble bathrooms. Hutton also planted several thousand trees and hedges on the grounds along with beautiful flower gardens, and a ten-foot tall fence and modern security system were constructed around the perimeter. Ideal for grand entertaining, Barbara Hutton's estate had the second-largest private gardens in London, England, after those at Buckingham Palace. The Count and Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow and their son Lance, moved into Winfield House in 1937. Pressured by her husband, on December 16, 1937, Hutton renounced her United States citizenship―a move designed to save money on annual taxes, but one which caused a media frenzy of negative publicity in America.

Because of dangers from an impending World War II looming on the horizon, in October 1939 the couple, now legally separated and planning to divorce in America, along with Lance, left the London mansion and returned to New York. On arrival, Hutton, now the Countess Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, was greeted on the dock by union picketers from Woolworth stores with signs that read: "Babs, we live on $15.60 a week. Could you?". To bolster her public image, Barbara Hutton assisted the World War II effort by giving money to help the Free French Forces, and she donated her yacht to the U.S. government and used her image to help sell War bonds. Eventually, Barbara Hutton received some favorable media publicity after being constantly ridiculed in the press. On December 5, 1940, Barbara's sixty-three year old father, Franklyn Laws Hutton, died from cirrhosis of the liver at Myrtle Grove, his 5,500-acre shooting plantation on the Edisto River in South Carolina.

In 1946, one year after the war had ended, Barbara Hutton returned to London to inspect Winfield House and found buckled floorboards, peeling walls, broken windows and dangling wires. The following day she offered to donate her London estate to the United States government for a token sum of one American dollar. After initial hesitation, a thank you letter was sent to Hutton, personally signed by President Harry F. Truman, accepting and acknowledging the "most generous and patriotic offer". Since 1955, Winfield House has been the official residence of the U.S. ambassadors to the Court of St. James's, and visiting presidents of the United States have traditionally stayed in the residence.

Soon after giving up Winfield House, Barbara Hutton heard about a palace for sale in Tangier, Morocco, and she travelled to Tangier, staying at the Hôtel El Minzah, in order to inspect the property. Sidi Hosni was situated in the upper medina, just below the kasbah, and there were panoramic views of the Bay of Tangier and the main city beach. Hutton immediately decided to purchase Sidi Hosni, offering to pay its owner, an American diplomat named Maxwell Blake, twice the amount of money which Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain had bid. During the 1800s the original site had been a prison for Moroccan debtors and it later housed a café. In 1870 it was acquired by a local Moroccan holy man or saint, Sidi Hosni. In 1925 Hosni's family sold the property to Times of London correspondent and world traveler Walter B. Harris, who combined seven houses into one large palace, embellishing Sidi Hosni with intricate Moroccan plasterwork and mosaic tiles. Harris created several large reception rooms, salons, interior courtyards, multilevel terraces and quiet, private gardens. Walter Burton Harris died in 1933, before completing his renovation project, and Sidi Hosni was then sold to Maxwell Blake, who completed work on the palace. Blake collected antique doors, windows, painted ceilings and other decorative items from palaces throughout Morocco, and he imported the finest craftsmen from Fez who worked for more than ten years to beautify the palace, creating an architectural fantasy.

Barbara Woolworth Hutton lived in Tangier, Morrocco only during the summer months, beginning in 1947, up until her final stay in 1975. Invitations to her annual ball at Sidi Hosni—always the social event of the season—were much coveted. Hutton would invite 200 guests and 1,000 gate-crashers would show up at the entrance gate, only to be turned away. With the assistance of her friend, Dan Rudd, an American-born interior designer living in Paris, several large tents would be set up on the flat roof of her palace. During these events, Moroccan belly dancers would perform and entertain while waiters and waitresses dressed in Moroccan attire would serve hors d'oeuvres, drinks and food, while three separate orchestras flown in from the Caribbean or Mexico would perform jazz and calypso music. The Hon. David Herbert, her friend and Tangier's social arbiter for decades, advised Hutton on who and whom not to invite. The invitations always read: "Mrs. Barbara Woolworth Hutton requests the pleasure of your company...", and if the party were to be held on the terraces or the roof, there was an added note: "In Case of Wind, Your Hostess Requests You To Indulge Her By Coming Another Night." At other times, Hutton would hold some of her parties in the gardens at Guitta's Restaurant at the Place de Kowéit, the Parade, a popular restaurant and bar near the Place de France on the Rue de Fès, or in large tents set up near the Caves of Hercules outside Tangier. While on a trip to India, Hutton had bought the historic "Million Dollar Tapestry" from the Maharajah of Tripura. The 15th-century tapestry and complementary floor cushions were embroidered with gold threads and encrusted with diamonds, pearls, emeralds and rubies. But there were occasional thefts of gems, and Hutton had to retain security guards during her fêtes. Additionally, every room in her Tangier home had a $10,000 clock from Van Cleef & Arpels. In her Thousand and One Nights palace in Tangier, Hutton held court each summer, inviting her friends and acquaintances from all over the world, and Hutton paid their entire travel and hotel expenses.

While Jane Bowles was closer to Barbara Hutton, Paul Bowles was not overly fond of her as she had once expressed a dislike for his novel The Sheltering Sky. Paul Bowles wrote: "One summer when she gave a party, she brought thirty Reguibat camel drivers with their racing camels from the Sahara, a good thousand miles away, merely to form a garde d'honneur through which the guests would pass at the entrance of the house. But then she couldn't get rid of them. ...for many days after the party they encamped with their camels outside the walls of Sidi Hosni. The animals produced enough fertilizer during their stay to keep the flowering trees of Tangier blooming for a decade." She once entertained the U.S. Sixth Fleet when in port, with one party for the enlisted men and another for the officers. Hutton also held occasional parties for the Tangier police department, and others for her mostly poor neighbors. The presence of such an international celebrity in Tangier was a boon to the tourist industry in the city.

In Morocco, Barbara Hutton gave generous amounts of money to support local Tangier charities, and she arranged to feed hundreds of poor people in the city on a daily basis. As a diversion from Tangier, she would travel to Marrakech, or to Taroudant in the far south, where she rented for her friends, all of the stone cottages at La Gazelle d'Or, long regarded as one of the most luxurious and private of Morocco's hideaways. When her son Lance visited Morocco in 1962, her friend David Herbert made his first visit to La Gazelle d'Or in Taroudant, along with other guests. Throughout her lifetime, Hutton had sudden whims of generosity and would, on more than a few occasions, present a friend or even a mere acquaintance with a check, a Rolls-Royce, a Patek Philippe watch, jewelry, a sable coat, an entire wardrobe of clothing, or even a house.

Barbara Hutton wearing The Pasha of Egypt Diamond ring with its fine 38.19-carat round stone which she had recut at Cartier from its original slightly octagonal shape, and one of her tiaras set with the Vladimir emeralds. In 1936, Hutton paid about $1.2 million for an historic collection of emeralds which had once been owned by Catherine the Great of Russia and later by Edith Rockefeller McCormick. In 1947 Hutton commissioned Lucien Lachassagne of Cartier to fashion the emeralds into a tiara with diamonds which could also be worn as a necklace.

During Barbara Hutton's earliest years in Tangier, Paul and Jane Bowles lived close to her palace in their small house off Place Amrah in the upper Medina. On one visit to Sidi Hosni, Barbara Hutton gave Jane Bowles a ruby the size of an egg, which she later returned to Hutton, realizing its great value and out of loyalty to her friend who was prone to drinking binges. Hutton owned large and important collections of historic gems: diamonds, emeralds and rubies, perfectly matched white, black and yellow pearl necklaces with pearls the size of cherries, and jade. One of her pearl necklaces was once owned by Marie-Antoinette, the Queen of France. Hutton's jewelry collections also included the huge emeralds formerly owned by Catherine the Great and a ruby tiara that had belonged to Empress Eugénie of France. At Sidi Hosni, Hutton sometimes greeted her invited guests while seated on a throne, and the local residents in Tangier referred to her as "The queen of the medina". In fact, the Tangier authorities readily agreed to widen or rebuild the narrow arches of the entrances to the medina to accommodate the width of her Rolls-Royces and other cars.

When not in Tangier, where she spent most of the summer months, Barbara Hutton divided her time between several homes: spring and part of the autumn in Paris at her luxurious suite (apartment 35) in the Hôtel Ritz, on the second floor overlooking the Place Vendôme; a four-bedroom suite at the Pierre in New York; and the winter at Sumiya, her 30-acre Japanese estate near Cuernavaca, Mexico, about 50 miles south of Mexico City. All materials used in the construction of Sumiya were shipped over from Japan. In early 1959 Hutton purchased an apartment in Paris on the third floor at 31, rue Octave Feuillet, near the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement. Here she could display her large collection of Asian art and Oriental porcelain and hold lavish luncheons and dinner parties. Hutton maintained a permanent, full-time staff for each of her primary residences: a butler, chef, kitchen help and maids. Her personal maid, chauffeur, bodyguard and social secretary were typically a part of her traveling entourage.

While vacationing on the Lido in Venice, Italy in the late summer of 1957, Barbara Hutton met the young and handsome James Henderson Douglas III, an American living in Paris, whose father was the U. S. Secretary of the Air Force, and whose family business, combined with two others, became the Quaker Oats Company back in 1901. Cultured and charming, Jimmy Douglas genuinely cared for Barbara, and he successfully kept her off drugs and alcohol for almost three years. James Douglas and Barbara Hutton traveled together all over the world, and he lived with her for over a year at Sumiya in Mexico. Barbara Hutton invited Jimmy Douglas to live in her apartment in Paris, and she later bought him an apartment on the Left Bank. Nevertheless, in August 1960, she returned to Tangier without him.

James Douglas was followed by Lloyd Franklin, whom Hutton had first met in August 1960 at a dinner party given by David Herbert at his villa on the Mountain in Tangier. (His name at birth was Frank Franklin, and the first thing that Barbara Hutton did was to change his name to Lloyd Franklin.) Only 23 years old, the London-born Franklin had been a trumpeter in the Royal Coldstream Guards. Earlier that summer of 1960, he decided to leave the British military and travel to Spain and Morocco. He arrived in Tangier with only his backpack, an old guitar and a letter of introduction to the Hon. David Herbert. With Herbert's help, the young Franklin soon was given a job singing and playing his guitar at Dean's Bar, a popular spot in Tangier at the time, frequented by international celebrities, local residents and expatriates. Barbara Hutton went to Dean's to hear him perform, and soon Lloyd Franklin became, as some believed, the love of her life. He lived with Hutton at Sidi Hosni, though they never married, and he was plunged into a world of great riches and luxury. Hutton lavished Franklin with expensive gifts including a Rolls-Royce and a dozen polo ponies with stables and a bungalow on fifteen acres of land adjacent to the Tangier polo club. Barbara Hutton supported the polo club, which opened in 1962. When he amicably split his relationship with Barbara Hutton, Lloyd Franklin graciously returned the Tangier property she had given to him. When Lloyd Franklin married Penny Ansley, an English heiress, Barbara Hutton bought them a house on the mountain in Tangier as a wedding present. Several years later, on New Year's Day 1968, they were killed in an automobile accident while driving back to Tangier from Marrakech.

Barbara Hutton's Tangier friends included Yves Vidal, who owned York Castle, Charles Sévigny, her housekeeper Ira Belline, for whom Barbara later bought an orange farm near Marrakech, her Australian bodybuard Colin Frazer, her dressmaker Vera Medina, restaurant owner Mercedes Guitta, her personal maid Tony Gonzales, her Chinese-born social secretary Mona Yung-Ning Ho and her Tangier hairdresser Jean Mendibourne. When Hutton bought Sidi Hosni from Maxwell Blake in 1947, she inherited two caretakers, a married couple named Ruth and Reginald Hopwood, and they lived in Sidi Hosni when Hutton was not in residence. Ruth Hopwood's father Maxwell Blake had bought Sidi Hosni in 1931 from the Times of London correspondent Walter B. Harris. In the late 1950s, Hutton dismissed the Hopwoods from her employ and she refused to see them again. There were always hangers-on―predatory individuals who were mainly interested in getting something from Hutton, and some would encourage Hutton to drink too much, as then she was vulnerable and more likely to give something valuable away.

Barbara Hutton's only child Lance Haugwitz-Reventlow was raised by a nurse and nanny and he never had a close relationship with his mother, whom he seldom saw. Lance detested his Danish father who had once kidnapped him during the bitter four-year custody battle with Barbara. Lance was six years old when his mother married the actor Cary Grant, who proved to be a good stepfather and the only real father-figure in his life. In America, Lance received a formal education at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island, but because he had asthma, in 1950 he was transferred to another school in Tucson, Arizona where the climate was better. He did well academically but had no close friends among the students, and when Barbara failed to attend his graduation, Lance was hurt and disappointed and he never forgave her. She could not bear to face the crowds and publicity and sent him a new Cadillac the day after. In 1957, Lance Haugwitz-Reventlow renounced his Danish citizenship, thus giving up any future claim to use the title of count, and he became a citizen of the United States. For his twenty-first birthday, Barbara Hutton gave Lance money to build a hilltop house of his own design on Davies Drive, overlooking Bel Air and Beverly Hills. Lance disapproved of his mother's aristocratic friends, well-publicized divorces and marriages and her excessive drinking. Reventlow was a racing-car enthusiast and spent $2 million of his money to start a business which developed and produced the Scarab―America's fastest race car― to compete with European race cars. Lance Reventlow was a friend of the actor James Dean, a fellow race car fan, and he was one of the last to see and speak with Dean on the day of his sudden, tragic death on September 30, 1955. When Lance Reventlow gave up his enthusiasm for race cars, he enjoyed sailing in Hawaii, skiing in Colorado, and piloting his own airplane. In 1960 Reventlow married the actress Jill St. John, but in 1963 they divorced. In 1964 he married the actress Cheryl Holdridge (she had been one of the Mouseketeers on Walt Disney's popular television show The Mickey Mouse Club), but Barbara did not attend their wedding. Lance later bought a house in Aspen, Colorado and spent most of his time there, while his wife Cheryl preferred living at their house in California. On July 24, 1972, Lance Reventlow and several passengers were instantly killed when his airplane crashed north of Aspen, Colorado. Devastated, Barbara Hutton did not feel able to attend her son's memorial service in Aspen. (His cremated remains were later interred at the Woolworth mausoleum in New York.) Thereafter, Hutton was tormented by feelings of guilt and she sunk into a state of deep depression.

Barbara Hutton married and divorced seven times, providing generous divorce settlements to six of her husbands. They were, with the years of each marriage and subsequent divorce in parentheses: (1.) Alexis Mdivani, a Georgian prince (1933–1935); (2.) Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow (1935–1938), the Danish father of her only child, Lance Reventlow; (3.) the popular actor Cary Grant was the only husband not interested in getting any of Barbara Hutton's money (1942–1945); (4.) Prince Igor Troubetzkoy (1947–1951); (5.) Porfirio Rubirosa (1953–1954). Her shortest marriage to this notorious playboy, polo player and diplomat from the Dominican Republic lasted only 53 days. Rubirosa also had a short-lived marriage to another heiress, Doris Duke, and he had a well-publicized affair with Zsa-Zsa Gabor; (6.) Baron Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt von Cramm, a German tennis star (1955–1959); (7.) Barbara Hutton's last husband was Prince Pierre Raymond Doan Vinh Na Champassak (1964–1966). Barbara Hutton met Raymond Doan in Tangier during the summer of 1963 at an exhibition of his paintings. Doan's father was Vietnamese and his mother was French and he had lived and was educated in France. When they met, Raymond Doan was a Buddhist and still married and had been working as a chemist for a French oil company in the Guéliz area of Marrakech. Only after Barbara Hutton bought Raymond Doan a Laotian title did he use the title of "prince". When she divorced him in 1966, Barbara Hutton gave him $2 million and his brother Maurice Doan received an apartment in Paris and other generous gifts.

During the last few years of her life, Barbara Hutton lived in a four-bedroom penthouse suite in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. For years Hutton's health had been deteriorating, and she eventually wasted away to less than 90 pounds due to the cumulative effects of malnutrition, anorexia, chain smoking cigarettes and addictions to endless cups of black coffee, alcohol, Coca-Cola, sleeping pills, appetite suppressants and various pain medications. Over time, Hutton was forced to liquidate assets and sell most of her homes and various possessions to raise cash to live on. Hutton's dire financial predicament was attributed to her own overspending and generosity, the mismanagement of her wealth by lawyers and financial advisers, and outright theft by caretakers. In the summer of 1975, Barbara Hutton made her last visit to Morocco. Sidi Hosni in Tangier was the only remaining residence that she still owned.

On May 11, 1979, Barbara Hutton died from a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, at the age of sixty-six. On May 25, 1979, Barbara Woolworth Hutton was buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York in a crypt inside the granite Woolworth family mausoleum, a faux-Egyptian monument. The short, private funeral service was attended by ten friends and family members, but no members of the press were present, nor was there a clergyman. Among those who attended Barbara Hutton's funeral were her first cousin, the actress Dina Merrill, (Nedenia Marjorie Hutton, Marjorie Merriweather Post's youngest daughter), and her husband at the time, the actor Cliff Robertson. He read a poem by written himself and another written by Barbara Mdivani entitled The Enchanted. (Nedenia Marjorie Hutton was born on December 29, 1923, the daughter of Edward Francis Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton. In 1945, using the stage name of Dina Merrill, she made her acting début in a Broadway play, and since then the beautiful and talented Merrill has acted and appeared in many films and television shows. In March 1946, she married Stanley M. Rumbough, Jr., an heir to the Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste fortune, and they had three children; after twenty years of marriage they divorced in December 1966. Merrill's second marriage to Academy Award-winning actor Cliff Robertson ended in divorce in 1986. Since 1988, Dina Merrill (Nedenia Hutton Hartley) has been married to Ted Hartley, a former actor and producer who is now an investment banker and the chairman of the board of RKO Pictures.)

Although only a fragment of her original fortune remained at the time of her death, Barbara Hutton had made bequests to friends in her last will, and her remaining jewelry, furniture and other valuable items were privately sold or auctioned. (Years after her death, in November 1999, a single strand necklace of 41 natural and graduated pearls that had been owned by Hutton was auctioned and sold by Christie's Geneva for $1,476,400; and in 2006, a single white Imperial Qing Dynasty porcelain bowl which Hutton had once owned was sold at auction by Christie's Hong Kong for the record-breaking price of $22,240,000.) At the time of her death, Barbara Hutton was a citizen of Denmark and a legal resident of Morocco.

Two popular songs were inspired by Barbara Hutton's life, beginning with the actor and singer Bing Crosby's rendition of "I Found A Million Dollar Baby" (In a Five and Ten Cent Store), recorded in 1931. The music was composed by Harry Warren and the lyrics were by Billy Rose and Mort Dixon. The song was originally introduced in New York in May 1931 in Billy Rose's Broadway show "Crazy Quilt", starring Fannie Brice and James Barton. Additional versions of "I Found a Million Dollar Baby" were recorded by Nat King Cole, Perry Como and many others. The second song inspired by Barbara Hutton was Noël Coward's  "Poor Little Rich Girl", first performed in London, England on May 19, 1932 by the New Mayfair Orchestra, conducted by Ray Noble.

Barbara Hutton privately published two limited-edition books of her own poetry: the first, published by Barbara Mdivani, was entitled The Enchanted (Glasgow, Scotland: R. Maclehose & Co., October 1934), and a second limited edition book of 40 of her poems, many expressing her fondness for Morocco, and which was dedicated to her son Lance, was called The Wayfarer (Westerham, Kent, England: Westerham Press, 1957). Several biographies have been written about her life: Barbara Hutton: A Candid Biography of the Richest Woman in the World by Dean Jennings (London: W. H. Allen, 1968; New York: Frederick Fell, Inc., 1968); Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton by C. David Heymann (New York: Random House, 1983; the original version was recalled for inaccuracies the day it was released in bookstores). A "cleaned-up and corrected" version of this book was published the following year: (Secaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stewart, Inc., 1984); Million Dollar Baby: an Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton by Philip Van Rensselaer (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979); and In Search of a Prince: My Life with Barbara Hutton by Mona Eldridge, a former social secretary―Mona Yung-Ning Hoo (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988).

Other books of related interest are: Five and Ten: The Fabulous Life of F. W. Woolworth by John K. Winkler (New York: Bantam Books, 1957; New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1940); Nickels and Dimes: The Story of F.W. Woolworth by Nina Brown Baker, (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1954); F.W. Woolworth and the American Five and Dime: A Social History by Jean Maddern Pitrone (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, 2007); Remembering Woolworth's: A Nostalgic History of the World's Most Famous Five-and-Dime by Karen Plunkett-Powell (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2001); Winfield House, written by Maria Tuttle and Marcus Binney with photographs by James Mortimer, is the first book about the history and design of the London residence of Barbara Hutton, now the official residence the American ambassador (London and New York: Thames & Hudson Inc. / W. W. Norton, 2008); Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths by Monica Randall (New York: St. Martin's Press / Thomas Dunne Books, 2003). Randall once lived for several months at Winfield Hall and now represents historic properties on Long Island and the Hudson Valley as locations for television commercials, films and print media; New York's Fabulous Luxury Apartments by Andrew Alpern (New York: Dover Publications, 1987); Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan: An Illustrated History by Andrew Alpern (Courier Dover Publications, 1992); Heiress: the Rich Life of Marjorie Merriweather Post by William Wright (Washington, D.C.: New Republic Books, 1978; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978; New York: Pocket Books, 1979); American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post by Nancy Rubin Stuart (New York: Villard Books, a division of Random House, 1996; iUniverse Star, 2001, 2004); Long Island's Prominent North Shore Families: Their Estates and Their Country Homes by Raymond E. Spinzia and Judith A. Spinzia (New York: Virtualbookworm.com publishing, 2006); Hillwood: The Long Island Estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post by Kenneth G. Mensing and Rita Langdon (Long Island University: April 2008); Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects, 1860–1940 by Anthony K. Baker; C. W. Post―the Hour and the Man: A biography with Genealogical Supplement by Nettie Leitch Major (Washington, D.C.: Judd & Detweiler, Inc., 1963); The Woolworths by James Brough (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982); Dancing with the Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue by Christopher Wilson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000); Great Camps of the Adirondacks by Harvey H. Kaiser (Boston: David R. Godine, Inc., 1982, 2003) and Sea Cloud: A Living Legend by Kurt Grobecker and Peter Neumann (Kemble, Gloucestershire, England: Collectors' Books Limited, 1991).

In 1987, a two-part miniseries about Barbara Woolworth Hutton's life was broadcast on the A&E Television Networks' The Biography Channel entitled: Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story, starring the actress Farrah Fawcett who portrayed Hutton. It was later broadcast in the United Kingdom and in Canada. Two of the Tangier locations used in the film were York Castle and Palais Mendoub, and Hutton's friends David Herbert and Yves Vidal had minor non-speaking roles. The film won the 1988 Golden Globe Award for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. In 2008, A&E Home Video released a remastered 300-minute DVD version of the film on two discs.

Copyright © 2007 by Kenneth Lisenbee