We all dream about the security money will provide us. Only in a world where money is primarily inherited, it is the very factor that could most endanger one’s life. An ailing Buck Duke warns his daughter Doris about dangers of inheriting wealth. Come explore the history behind the Duke fortune, and how the loss of a father relates to our current pandemic lives. Other people and subjects include: Duke family wealth, Washington Duke, Ben Duke, Angiers Duke, Walker Inman, Duke University, Tobacco Wars, post Civil War rise & fall of southern fortunes, estate wills, daddy’s girls, and losing your person. Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.
We all dream about the security money will provide us. Only in a world where money is primarily inherited, it is the very factor that could most endanger one’s life.
An ailing Buck Duke warns his daughter Doris about dangers of inheriting wealth. Come explore the history behind the Duke fortune, and how the loss of a father relates to our current pandemic lives.
Other people and subjects include: Duke family wealth, Washington Duke, Ben Duke, Angiers Duke, Walker Inman, Duke University, Tobacco Wars, post Civil War rise & fall of southern fortunes, estate wills, daddy’s girls, and losing your person.
--
Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.
Opening Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 1 Music: Nightfall by Benny Carter & His Orchestra, Album Nightfall – Sophisticated Jazz Classics
Section 2 Music: These Foolish Things by Benny Carter, Album Perfect Blues
Section 3 Music: Top Hat, White Tie and Tails by Carroll Gibbons & Boy Friends, Album Sophistication – Songs of the Thirties
End Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
AS THE MONEY BURNS
Podcast by Nicki Woodard
Episode 01 – Trust No One
Series Tag
00:00
[Music – My Heart Belongs To Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
AS THE MONEY BURNS is an original podcast written & produced by Nicki Woodard, based on historical research. This is a deep exploration into the lives of actual heirs and heiresses to some of America’s most famous fortunes and what happens when the Great Depression hits.
Each episode is comprised into three primary sections. Section 1 is a narrative story told with some creative license to enhance the emotional and psychological situations. Section 2 goes into the historical facts behind the scenario with occasional historiography to analyze sources and any biasness. Section 3 focuses on contemporary emotional and personal connections that help make the story relevant to the current day.
Welcome to AS THE MONEY BURNS
00:44
Title
Trust No One
[Music fade out]
Episode Tag
00:47
The desire for wealth is based on two core things – the desire for luxury but more importantly security. For the most part, money ensures survival, and hopefully a comfortable one. However too much money can endanger one in failing health.
Health after all is one good fortune all its own, money or not.
01:08
[Music – Nightfall by Benny Carter & His Orchestra, Album Nightfall – Sophisticated Jazz Classics]
Section 1 - Story
01:12
[Music fade out]
An unseasonably early cold front engulfs New York City in October 1925. In his large mahogany bed, a sickly Buck Duke (nearly 70) suffers from pneumonia. The tobacco baron and industrial tycoon was once robust and full of energy now withered and frail. Next to him, his young 12 year old daughter Doris stands faithfully by his side. Gasping for air, he shifts from side to side when he glances at her.
She grabs his hand for comfort, and that she does well.
04:46
He looks at this ray of sunshine and nods his head. Out of everything he has ever done, it is Doris who is his greatest joy. From the moment of her conception and birth, he excitedly made sure she had the best of everything. NO EXPENSE SPARED. Rounds of nurses and the most hygienic sterile environment for the next three years. As she grew older, he showered her with gifts, praise, and most of all love. She is daddy’s little girl, and that love is mutual.
Now bedridden and struggling to breathe, a sorrowness surrounds him. Had he done enough? He had hoped his nephew Angier would have taken over the family reigns and protected her, but Angier had died in a tragic accident just 2 years earlier. In these last few weeks, fearing for the worst, Buck hastily made plans to ensure her future.
02:38
He pulls his daughter to him. Tears stream down from her ice blue eyes. She hugs and kisses him. He strokes her bright blonde hair.
In her small childlike voice, she whispers, “I love you, Daddy.”
He clenches his large powerful fist. Buck smiles then turns sullen, “Be careful who you trust. You cannot always trust the people who say they love you. Do you understand me?” She nods her head.
Emotional, he clears his throat. She squeezes him tighter. He whispers those ominous last words, “Trust no one.”
03:18
He takes another harsh breath and closes his eyes.
Doris stands up confused but unwilling to leave her father’s side. Then she feels another presence and turns around to see her mother glaring at her in silence.
Nanaline steps aside the door, and Doris obediently leaves the room. Followed by servants, Nanaline makes preparations.
03:40
Nanaline commands the butler, “There are to be no more visitors, not even doctors.”
She continues barking orders, “Open the windows, turn off the heat, bring me my sables.”
Doris stands in the hallway wanting to go back to her father.
Bewildered and confused, the servants hesitate as the bitter winds howl outside.
Nanaline snaps, “I said open the windows. In the South, fresh air is the best medicine.”
04:10
[Sound effect Howling Winds]
The servants obey as Doris watches from the door. Two maids return with bundles of furs in their arms. Nanaline motions to pile them onto the sofa chair.
When the preparations are suitable to Nanaline’s desires, she motions everyone to leave. Hurriedly, the servants get away from the cold that already creeps in.
Nanaline orders, “No doctors, and no one opens this door until I say so.” Before Doris can protest, Nanaline shuts the door on her child.
04:41
[Sound effect ends]
Hearing the click of the lock, Doris crumples at the door refusing to leave.
04:48
[Sound effect Howling Winds]
Inside the bedroom, Nanaline walks over to Buck. A gust of wind brings in another draft of freezing cold air along with a few snow flurries. He shivers but is too weak to protest. This former bear of a man is no longer a match against his petite raven haired wife.
She yanks off his sheets leaving him exposed in his thin sleep shirt. She goes to the chair and burrows herself under the furs.
05:14
Two vigils last throughout the night. Nanaline in the bedroom under her furs, and Doris at the door not daring to leave until she can see her father again.
Later the next evening, Nanaline looks over at Buck. She glances down at her watch and gets up to look at him. The bluish gray skin of death says everything. Satisfied, she stays wrapped up in her thick sable fur.
She opens the door and stares at her child to heartlessly announce, “Your father is dead.” Doris does not react, shocked and terrified.
To the butler, Nanaline orders, “Close the windows, turn on the heat, and call the doctor.”
05:56
[Sound effect ends]
Nanaline heads off towards her enormous closet to go pick out her widow’s threads.
Now twice a widow, Nanaline thinks she has won the game, but in two weeks Buck has one last surprise for her.
06:09
[Music – These Foolish Things by Benny Carter, Album Perfect Blues]
Section 2 – History & Historiography
06:19
[Music fade out]
James Buchanan Duke, aka Buck, was a powerhouse of a man. His legendary start came when his father Washington Duke (aka Wash) returned to North Carolina after the Civil War. After release from a POW prison, a Yankee soldier gave Wash 50 cents and a word of encouragement to go back home. Wash made his way back to the remains of his tattered dirt farm. Barren and stripped, he found an untouched stash of tobacco. Pre-war Wash was twice widowed and lost his oldest son, now he gathered up his surviving children and set out to make a living off the tobacco. Young Buck at the age 9 along with his siblings did the back breaking work of making tobacco consumable. With nearly two carts of product, Wash went off to sell what he could on the market. Tobacco crops had been wiped out by the war.
07:12
For the next two decades, the Dukes would expand their business and come to dominate the trade. Older brother Ben would go to supervise the factories, sister Mary helped cultivate the plant and flavors, and Wash served as the consciousness ensuring the success was channeled into charities like nearby Trinity College and restoring Durham. As for Buck, well he was the gung-ho businessman intent on expansion and taking out any rivals.
07:37
When Buck and Ben bought the license for an automated cigarette making machine, they immediately cornered 40% of the market in rolled tobacco. Then they formed the American Tobacco Company, forcibly combining 5 other independent companies into one – many quipped better to work with Buck than be beaten and driven out by him. After much protest, the last holdout J Reynolds near ruins finally succumbed.
08:04
Buck worked tirelessly, he hardly would finish late at night only to return early the next morning, often commenting he never needed other diversions, a vacation, or any other time off because he liked working so much. His goal was to be the Rockefeller of tobacco. He alone picked up and moved to New York City to establish more connections while the rest of the family focused on the details back in Durham.
The move paid off. Despite being mocked for his simplistic homegrown ways and mannerisms, the company grew rapidly joining the New York Stock Exchange in 1890 and became one of the original 12 founding members of the Dow Industrial Average in 1896.
08:44
With their abundant wealth, Wash donated money to Trinity College, even paying for it to relocate to Durham. Wash was heavily Methodist and worried about his younger son’s indiscretions. The only two things Buck like other than work was whiskey and women. Voluptuous, bawdy women. Wash ordered Buck to get married. So Buck did - to his nearly decade long live-in mistress Lillian. The former wannabe singer was a great lover but had little else to recommend, which was fine for Buck as he had never intended to marry or have children of his own. But to please his father, Buck agreed make an honest woman of her in 1904.
09:21
Immediately, Buck realized he made his mistake. For while Lillian was hell of a lot of fun in the sack, and even as many have remarked from the chandeliers, her wifely transformation was a disaster. Their European honeymoon was interrupted by an attack of gout on Buck from an old foot injury. Lillian was not sympathetic in the least, and furthermore she kept lovers on the side including one former captain being her regular favorite. Worst off, Wash died shortly after the marriage in May 1905. If Buck had known that fate, he would never have married. Now he had to wait and fight it out in a long drawn out bitter and very public divorce by 1906.
10:04
Never skipping a beat over personal matters, aggressive and powerful Buck swiftly acquired over 200 rival companies including the brands Lucky Strike in 1905 and Pall Mall in 1907. Buck’s ruthless tactics led to the company being referred as the Tobacco Trust, and his takeovers were referred as the Black Patch Tobacco Wars in 1906-1908. His robber baron tactics led the American Tobacco Company to come under fire of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court ordering a dissolution of the monopoly in 1911, thereby breaking the company up into 4 separate competing companies. Well aware since 1880s and more so by 1917 about the deteriorating health of his tobacco customers, Buck would switch business interests into hydroelectric power forming Duke Energy as well as other companies.
10:56
In the meantime, Ben’s wife was making headway into that illustrious capital S Society set, and they didn’t want the return of Buck’s more salacious escapades to tarnish the improving Duke name. Thus Sarah encouraged Buck towards another more reputable widow Nanaline Holt Inman, whom Buck married in 1907.
11:16
Nanaline Holt held from Macon, Georgia and was the descendant of a now impoverished aristocratic family that once owned a slave cotton plantation pre-Civil War. She also had the seemingly prerequisite overly entitled snobbery of such an ill-illustrious lineage. Seriously, it never fails to amaze me when people think that being a descendant of former plantation owners long dead (and nowhere near their current lifestyles) means anything at all to justify an extreme superiority complex.
11:46
Well, as modern psychology would point out, that means they feel inferior deep inside. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. However the past family glories, her childhood was essentially humiliating poverty. That nice plantation house turned into a boarding house, that was eventually sold to creditors. Her mother sewed pretty dresses for the newly and currently rich girls, for whom Nanaline had to deliver and model those dresses for.
12:11
Considered a beauty, Nanaline worked her wiles to marry up to William Inman, a wealthy cotton merchant from a prominent Atlanta family. They had a son Walker, and everything was going well until William died from complications of diabetes (or so that was the official story, but there are hints that it was due to alcoholism). William left his widow just enough money to help her snag another wealthy husband.
12:38
Some suspect she had set her sights on Ben Duke, Buck’s brother, despite his already socially advantageous marriage. Of course, marrying Buck was the biggest fish of all. Only she actually loathed Buck and his family for their lower and working class ways. Her snobbery often rubbed Buck the wrong way. However as he was without an heir and seemed unlikely to want a child, she was hoping he would adopt her son Walker as his own.
13:04
That didn’t work. Walker had internalized his mother’s snobbery and refused to give up the Inman name for Duke. Further complicating matters, Walker reminded Buck of his other older brother Brodie. Sound unfamiliar in the prior tale of the tobacco dynasty rise? Brodie was in the background but a wastrel and a drunk, he caused more harm to the Duke business than helped and so Buck and Ben stayed far away refusing to pander to his demise. Brodie would die an early death. In Walker, Buck must have seen much of Brodie’s traits.
13:36
After a few years of marriage and growing tired of his wife’s more frigid ways, Buck began to long for an heir. Realizing Walker and she could be out on the streets, Nanaline mustered up her strength and performed her wifely duties until at age 43 she finally gave birth to the much anticipated Duke heir.
In what promised to be a difficult birth, Buck had 24 medical staff in waiting and ordered the baby to be saved over the mother. On November 22, 1912, Doris was born. Buck delightedly told the reporters outside the 5th Avenue mansion, while inside Nanaline was relieved a girl meant Walker could still be in line for the inheritance as a male.
14:15
This was Nanaline’s blindspot. Anything to do with Walker. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Buck and his family believed in equal rights. In fact, their large endowment to Trinity College which later became Duke University was under the condition the college admitted both females and blacks at a time long before anywhere else would remotely make such a requirement – this after all was the heart of the Jim Crow era and in North Carolina.
14:43
Buck was absolutely thrilled to have a daughter, and for the rest of his life he showered Doris with any and everything money could buy. He didn’t care about the finer things in life. He and his brother Ben much preferred the good old days of singing around the old beat up out of tune standup piano, but for Doris Buck wanted her to have the best o everything, including a Newport mansion. He reveled in every moment he had with her. He would even stop important business meetings anytime she entered the room.
15:12
Thus in those final months as his health was failing, Buck made provisions trying to secure Doris’s future so that she would never have a need unattended. He consulted with Ben and lawyers making preparation after preparation.
This flurry of activity of course further alarmed Nanaline as she realized Walker’s chances at good fortune were slipping further and further away. She resolved to do something about it. She was already in complete control of Buck’s diet, and some suspect she was secretly poisoning him especially since he would improve after a blood transfusion only to quickly deteriorate once back to her meal plans.
15:50
Smug, Nanaline thought she outmaneuvered Buck. In the end, he outwitted her.
Two weeks after his death, his final will and testament was read. Nanaline got a small fortune of $10 million with lifetime access to the properties, Duke University received a more sizable and substantial endowment, but the bulk of Buck’s fortune went all to Doris – estimated at either $70 or 100 million dollars (today’s equivalent of a billion). Nanaline would serve as one of three executors on Doris’s substantial trust.
Only what Doris needed most was a mother’s love. Instead the money bought her her mother’s hate.
And if her mother could kill her father for the fortune, could Doris be any safer?
16:35
[Music – Top Hat, White Tie and Tails by Carroll Gibbons & Boy Friends, Album Sophistication – Songs of the Thirties]
Section 3 – Contemporary & Personal Relevance
16:46
[Music fade out]
Doris Duke inherited an unimaginable fortune. But for her whole life, she remained deeply devoted to the memory of her father. This would be another continual sore spot with her mother Nanaline who detested all things Duke.
And why wouldn’t Doris hold on to the one man who loved her abundantly? Here’s the rub of the world of immense fortune that is passed on via inheritance. It means someone had to die, and quite possibly the one you need most to handle the situation.
17:14
There are two big emotional takeaways from the story about the death of Buck Duke. One that inheritance is always paired with loss – namely death. And quite possibly the loss of a loved one that the benefactor needs as much if not more than the money. Second that in the case of Doris and Buck, she lost her person. That person who believed in her and loved her, and that is something money can’t buy. Doris would struggle her whole life never finding that again, often due to her enormous fortune.
17:46
In one way or another, we may all relate to the fear or actual loss of that significant person in our lives. In fact, that is what has drawn me most to these stories. As I mentioned previously in the overview, it was one particular formative experience that has forever been a shadow in my life. During my senior of high school at 18, I lost my 21 year old brother to cancer. He had been sick when we were children, and it would come back over a decade later with a vengeance.
18:15
My summer in Rhode Island was my attempt to escape the potential pain of losing him. Having gone through several near death vigils, I needed a break. I did have an idyllic summer and returned to him out the hospital. Only two months later he was back in the hospital, and I lost him at the end of that holiday season.
I too am a daddy’s girl for sure. But make no mistake to all that knew us, my brother was my person and I his. He claimed me before I was born. It was also his influence that led to the media skills that are making this podcast possible in addition to the story connections. I recently read that with a death like that one doesn’t get over it but moves on from it. I miss him to this day, forever and always.
19:09
Lastly one final note, there seems to be a curse following the Duke fortune and its more direct descendants much like the Winchester rifle fortune. Doris would suffer a fate similar to her father’s. And in 2013, it was learned that the current heirs, two twins lived in squalor and horrific abuse under their paranoid drug addicted father. Upon his death, what had been anticipated to be a billion dollar fortune, was little more than 6% remaining. We might visit those tales later in the series.
Hook
19:41
[Music – My Heart Belongs To Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Next when we return to AS THE MONEY BURNS…
With that massive fortune, Doris has all the money imaginable but none of the love she needs. She must work hard to win over her mother Nanaline’s love. There might be hope if Doris can be come an accepted member in the capital S Society, and Newport seems to be the right place to start.
Until then…
20:04
Credits
AS THE MONEY BURNS is an original podcast written and produced by Nicki Woodard, based on historical research. Archival music has been provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music. Check out their amazing collection of digitally remastered music from the 1920s, 1930s, & 1940s at www.pastperfect.com
Special Thanks to my friends Lee & Diana for helping me overcome my technical issues in creating this podcast.
20:29
END