The Gilded Age Beauties Who Faded Away (Documentary)

This in-depth, full-length Gilded Age documentary features five tragic heiresses who inherited vast fortunes then faded into historical obscurity.

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
1:25 1. Hugette Clark
19:28 2. Barbara Hutton
37:49 3. Gladys Deacon
56:48 4. Catherine Tylney-Long
1:16:08 5. Helen Clay Frick

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Huguette Clark was born in 1906 as the daughter of Senator William A. Clark whose copper mining fortune was estimated at $300 million, making him one of America's wealthiest men.

She grew up in a 121-room Manhattan mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue with a art collection rivaling major museums, attended private schools, and showed talent as a painter and musician.

In 1928 she married William MacDonald Gower but divorced after just one year, and for the next eight decades she retreated from society into near-total seclusion.

From 1988 until her death in 2011 at age 104, Huguette lived in doctors' hospitals in New York despite owning a $100 million Fifth Avenue apartment, a $24 million Connecticut estate, and a $85 million California beach house—all sitting empty while she paid millions in maintenance.

Barbara Hutton was born in 1912 as the Woolworth five-and-dime heiress inheriting $50 million at age five—approximately $900 million in today's currency—earning the nickname "poor little rich girl."

She married seven times including actor Cary Grant, Georgian Prince Alexis Mdivani, playboy Porfirio Rubiosa, and Baron Gottfried von Cramm, with each husband systematically draining her fortune through divorce settlements.

By her death in 1979 at age 66 she had been reduced to near poverty, weighing just 85 pounds and living in her suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on $3,500 monthly stipend.

Gladys Deacon was born in 1881 to a wealthy American family and became one of the great beauties of the Gilded Age, traveling through European high society and conducting affairs with royalty.

She married Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1921 after he divorced Consuelo Vanderbilt, moving into Blenheim Palace as the Duchess of Marlborough.

In her youth she had wax injected into her nose bridge to raise it, which eventually migrated and disfigured her face, contributing to the Duke evicting her from Blenheim in 1933.

She lived in squalor for decades before being committed to a psychiatric hospital where she died in 1977 at age 96, having outlived her beauty, her title, and her fortune.

Catherine Tylney-Long inherited one of England's largest fortunes in the early 19th century before her husband William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley systematically squandered the entire estate through gambling and mistresses.

Helen Clay Frick was born in 1888 as the daughter of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick whose $3 billion fortune built the family's Fifth Avenue mansion filled with Rembrandts, Vermeers, and Gainsboroughs.

She never married, dedicated her life to art collecting and philanthropy, and died in 1984 at age 96 having transformed the family mansion into The Frick Collection museum.

These five women inherited or married into vast fortunes but spent their final decades in isolation, poverty, psychiatric hospitals, or surrounded only by art—proving that Gilded Age wealth offered no protection against loneliness, exploitation, or eventual irrelevance.