Holy cats! In this episode we meet the second of our Big Four, Courtney Louise Letts. Courtney was beautiful, glamorous and voted one of the world’s best dressed women. Courtney was also married four times, with some distinguished husbands including explorer John Borden and international diplomat Felipe de Espil. Her story includes way more than fashion and romantic love. Courtney was also a distinguished author of nature and diplomatic histories.

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In a departure from Newport this week, we are taking a detour to Lake Forest, Illinois to discover The Big Four. The Big Four was a Girl Gang unlike any other. These daughters of privilege are Margaret Carry, Courtney Letts, Edith Cummings, and Ginevra King, and each has her own special story.

Today, we explore the origins of this quartet of lifelong female friendship as well as the life of Margaret “Peg” Carry, daughter of the onetime president of the Pullman Company. Peg’s life was fairly conventional, but the kidnapping of her husband (Edward A. Cudahy) as a child is the real showstopper. This case, including the manhunt and criminal trail set American precedent long before the days where child kidnapping of rich men became popular.

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In this episode we continue our tour through Newport, Rhode Island, looking at the last block of Bellevue Avenue with Miramar as our focus today. Completed in 1914, Eleanor Elkins Widener finished this grand Gilded Age home to honor her husband George Widener, lost on the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912.

The Widener family is a big deal in high society, specifically Philadelphia, and although the couple never lived in their dream home together. Eleanor will keep the home in the family and marry again to Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr., living many happy days at Miramar. After passing from the Widener family, the home does serve as a school for a brief time, although it slides back into being a private residence soon enough. There is some late breaking news about this home which is great for museum loving folks – Miramar is slated in its future to become part of the Newport Preservation Society. There is tons of history in this one that will attach in the next episode. It really does all connect.

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Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Edith Wharton came by her subject matter the old-fashioned way: she was born into a prominent New York City family, and was subjected to the mores of the city's high society circle from birth. This did not suit the plain, brainy young Edith even a little bit, much to her mother's horror, but Edith did eventually submit to an extremely unhappy marriage to a diagnosed megalomaniac (!), which ended in, you guessed it, a trashy divorce. But this episode contains way more than Edith’s life, writing and love affairs. We also explore the Gilded Age society that Edith lives in, but it is her aunt who really makes that society. Mrs. Mary Mason Jones is quite the OG legend in New York City, and the entire reason for the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses”. Also included are Mrs. Paran Stevens, Oscar Wilde, a set of international locations, many love affairs, and a whole lot of Newport too.

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For this holiday episode, we take a diversion from The Gilded Age in Newport to visit the Fabulous Late 1980s in Hollywood, specifically The Platinum Triangle, the area in Los Angeles that encompasses Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills and Bel Air. Dominick Dunne’s writing is terrific here from the spring of 1989, coming back to California and revisiting his old stomping grounds, and dropping all the dish. At the time, there was big push at this time to tear down all the homes that existed to build more glorious houses. Attached into this one are so many names that fold into our investigation through time, including but not limited to: David Geffen, Merv Griffin, Eva Gabor, William and Edie Goetz, Candy and Aaron Spelling, Betsy Bloomingdale, and so many more.

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Source

⁠⁠Fatal Charms and the Mansions of Limbo⁠⁠, by Dominick Dunne (Amazon link)

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Oliver Belmont becomes quite the talk of the town when the entire first floor of this grand home is comprised of stables for his prized horses. Oliver will not stay single for long, marrying the recently divorced Alva Vanderbilt in a move that shocks society. And that is only one of the shocking moves. This home and the people who inhabited it are truly unforgettable.

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In today’s episode, we continue our tour of Bellevue Avenue to explore Champs Soliel, the last great home built in Newport in 1929, truly shitting down the Gilded Age. We get to know its owner, Lucy Wharton Drexel Dahlgren, who led quite an interesting life, with a real twist on a trashy divorce too. Other notable owners include Russell and Annie Laurie Aitken, mother of Sunny von Bulow. 

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In the continuation of tour down Bellevue Avenue in Newport. Rhode Island, this week we take a little detour to one street, packed with a whole lot of history. Ruggles Avenue is this side street, and four homes were very important when it came to fancy folks and a whole lot of spiderwebs. Today's summer cottages include Seaview Terrace, The Cloisters, Fairholme, and Anglesea.

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We continue our sleuthing in Newport in today’s episode, focusing in on a little more reporting from our man Dominick Dunne. Dunne covered the second trial of Claus von Bulow, and in so doing, uncovered a few more shady characters. Today, we investigate the two guys coming to help out Claus - David Marriott and Father Phillip Magaldi, both proven to ultimately be lying for Claus to get away with murder.

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Alicia definitely falls into a rabbit hole in this episode from the Patreon Vault. Dominick Dunne writes just one little paragraph in his reporting on the von Bulow case that was definitely worth investigating. Dunne makes a mention about Paul E. Molitor, Jr., who was kind of a big deal in Newport for a little while, for his preservation efforts and being a houseguest of Sunny and Claus. But it is really his mysterious death, just at the height of his triumph, that is the real mystery.

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