Margaret Rockefeller Strong Cuevas (1897-1985) was an American activist.
Cuevas was the daughter of Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong (1866–1906) and her husband Dr. Charles Augustus Strong (1862–1940). Her maternal grandfather was Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937). She married Jorge Cuevas Bartholín, a Chilean ballet businessman around 1929; they had two children. After his death, she married Raymundo de Larraín Valdés (1935-1988) in 1977.
Cuevas saved a row of Neo-Federal townhouses on Park Avenue designed by McKim, Mead & White from destruction by purchasing the property and giving one of the townhouses to the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in 1965. She then donated the corner townhouse to her cousin, David Rockefeller, who founded the Center for Inter-American Relations there. In December 1979, Margaret donated her father's estate, Villa Le Balze in Fiesole, Tuscany, Italy to Georgetown University which operates an overseas campus there.
The Marques de Cuevas's life can be read at "El Inútil de la Familia", book written by Jorge Edwards, a Chilean writer.
“The most interesting person in this story is the late possessor of the now disputed millions, Margaret Strong de Cuevas de Larrain, who died in Madrid on December 2, 1985, at the age of eighty-eight, and the key name to keep in mind is the magical one of Rockefeller. Margaret de Larrain had two children, Elizabeth and John, from her first marriage, to the Marquis George de Cuevas. The children do not know the whereabouts of her remains, or even whether she was, as a member of the family put it, incinerated in Madrid. What they do know is that during the eight years of their octogenarian mother’s marriage to Raymundo de Larrain, her enormous real-estate holdings, which included adjoining town houses in New York, an apartment in Paris, a country house in France, a villa in Tuscany, and a resort home in Palm Beach, were given away or sold, although she had been known throughout her life to hate parting with any of her belongings, even the most insubstantial things. At the time of her second marriage, in 1977, she had assets of approximately $30 million (some estimates go as high as $60 million), including 350,00 shares of Exxon stock in a custodian account at the Chase Manhattan Bank. The location of the Exxon shares is currently unknown, and the documents presented by her widower show that his late wife’s assets amount to only $400,000. Although these sums may seem modest in terms of today’s billion-dollar fortunes, Margaret, at the time of her inheritance, was considered one of the richest women in the world. There are two wills in question: a 1968 will leaving the fortune to the children and a 1980 will leaving it to the widower. In the upcoming court case, the children, who are fifty-eight and fifty-six years old, are charging that the will submitted by de Larrain, who is fifty-two, represents “a massive fraud on an aging, physically ill, trusting lady.”
In The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys February 1987 by Dominick Dunne
Vanity Fair
“Her father was eager for her to marry, and toward that end Margaret went to Paris to live, although she had few prospects in sight. Following the Russian Revolution there was an influx of Russian émigrés into Paris, and Margaret Strong developed a fascination for them that remained with her all her life. She was most excited to meet the tall and elegant Prince Felix Yusupov, the assassin of Rasputin, who was said to have used his beautiful wife, Princess Irina, as a lure to attract the womanizing Rasputin to his palace on the night of the murder. In Paris, Prince Yusupov had taken to wearing pink rouge and green eye shadow, and he supported himself by heading up a house of couture called Irfé, a combination of the first syllables of his and his wife’s names. Into this hothouse of fashion, one day in 1927, walked the thirty-year-old prim, studious, and unfashionable Rockefeller heiress. At that time Prince Yusupov had working for him an epicene and penniless young Chilean named George de Cuevas, who was, according to friends who remember him from that period, “extremely amusing and lively.” He spoke with a strong Spanish accent and expressed himself in a wildly camp manner hitherto totally unknown to the sheltered young lady. The story goes that at first Margaret mistook George de Cuevas for the prince. “What do you do at the couture?” she asked. “I’m the saleslady,” he replied. The plain, timid heiress was enchanted with him, and promptly fell in love, thereby establishing what would be a lifelong predilection for flamboyant, effete men. The improbable pair were married in 1928.”
In The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys February 1987 by Dominick Dunne
Vanity Fair
George de Cuevas (born Jorge Cuevas Bartholín, 1885 – February 22, 1961) was a Chilean-born ballet impresario and choreographer who was best known for the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas that he formed in 1944.
Cuevas was born as Jorge Cuevas Bartholín in 1885 in Santiago, Chile, a son of Eduardo Cuevas Avaria (1821-1897), a prominent Chilean politician and former diplomat, and his third wife, the former María Manuela del Carmen Bartholín de la Guarda, who was half Danish. He had five siblings: Roberto, Luís, Enrique, Sara, and Carmela. He also had 11 half-siblings from his father's previous marriages.
Though Cuevas was apparently homosexual[1] he married Margaret Rockefeller Strong, a granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller in Paris on 3 August 1927, on which day he received, by royal decree, the title of Marqués de Piedra Blanca de la Guana. (According to Vanity Fair, the title may have been purchased for Cuevas, arguably by his millionaire bride.) Around the time of the wedding, Cuevas had been serving as a secretary at the Chilean legation in London; the bride had been raised in Italy and studied chemistry at Cambridge University. The Cuevases would have two children, John (born 1931) and Elizabeth (born 1929, aka Bessie, later sculptor Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas).
He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in July 1940 at the Ocean County Naturalization Court in Toms River, New Jersey, renouncing his title and becoming legally George de Cuevas. His title, however, continued to be used socially and in news reports. Cuevas and his wife sponsored an exhibition in 1940 at the New York World's Fair that included old masters and French moderns borrowed from private collections and valued at $30 million.
He founded a new ballet company as the Ballet International in New York City in 1944, performing at a now-destroyed theater in Columbus Circle. The company was variously called the Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo or the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, but was most commonly called the de Cuevas Ballet by theatergoers.
In 1947, Rosella Hightower accepted an invitation from Cuevas to join his new ballet company. The presence there of choreographer Bronislava Nijinska was one of the major factors in Hightower's decision. Nijinska choreographed for Hightower the "glitteringly virtuosic" Rondo Capriccioso. In addition to classic dances, Hightower's performances included Piège de Lumière by John Taras, the troupe's choreographer and balletmaster, in which she danced the role of a butterfly in a tropical forest who enchants a group of escaped convicts.
A 1953 costume party in Biarritz featured 2,000 guests, of 4,000 invitees, who wore 18th-century costumes. Cuevas, dressed in gold lamé and a headdress with towering ostrich plumes, came dressed as the "King of Nature".
At age 72, Cuevas faced off against the 52-year-old retired ballet dancer Serge Lifar in a duel on March 30, 1958. The duel was precipitated by an argument over changes to Black and White, a ballet by Lifar that was being presented by the Cuevas ballet company. Lifar had his face slapped in public after insisting that he retained the rights to Black and White. Lifar sent his seconds to Cuevas who refused to extend an apology and chose to duel with swords. As duels had been "technically outlawed" in the 17th century, the time and location of the duel were not disclosed to the public.[4] The duel was conducted in front of 50 newspaper photographers and ended with the two combatants in tears and embraces in what The New York Times called "what may well have been the most delicate encounter in the history of French dueling", with the sole injury being a cut on Lifar's right forearm in the seventh minute.
The final success of his career was a production of The Sleeping Beauty that debuted in Paris in October 1960 and was well-received by critics. His doctors allowed him to attend the ballet's premiere, with Cuevas noting that "if I am going to die, I will die backstage." He was rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair after the performance to a standing ovation from the audience. The troupe was to have opened Sleeping Beauty in Cannes the night after Cuevas died, and canceled the performance in his memory.
George de Cuevas died at age 75 on February 22, 1961 at his villa, Les Délices, in Cannes.
George de Cuevas by Dali
Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas
“The apex of the social career of George de Cuevas was reached in 1953 with a masked ball he gave in Biarritz; it vied with the Venetian masked ball given by Carlos de Beistegui in 1951 as the most elaborate fête of the decade. France at the time was paralyzed by general strike. No planes or trains were running. Undaunted, the international nomads, with their couturier-designed eighteenth-century costumes tucked into their steamer trunks, made their way across Europe like migrating birds to participate in thetableaux vivants at the Marquis de Cuevas’s ball, an event so extravagant that it was criticized by both the Vatican and the left wing. “People talked about it for months before,” remembered Josephine Hartford Bryce, the A&P heiress who recently donated her costume from that ball to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Everyone was dying to go to it. The costumes were fantastic, and people spent most of the evening just staring at each other.”
In The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys February 1987 by Dominick Dunne
Vanity Fair
Party of the Century , film by Pathé
Film & Video CouncilSummary
Party of the Century. DESCRIPTION: Over two thousand guests attended the Party of the Century, at a country-club near Biarritz. It was given by the 69-year-old Marquis de Cuevas. Estimates of the cost of the party vary from thirty to one hundred thousand pounds. SHOTLIST: Cut story - Very elaborately dressed guests arriving. Giver of the party Marquis de Cuevas dressed as God of Nature. Shots of performance of ballet dancing. GVS dancing. Renee Jeanmarie arrives on camel. SCU Merle Oberon. Elsa Maxwell on donkey as Sancho Panza. Guests ballroom dancing, eating etc.
At age 72, Cuevas faced off against the 52-year-old retired ballet dancer Serge Lifar in a duel on March 30, 1958. The duel was precipitated by an argument over changes to Black and White, a ballet by Lifar that was being presented by the Cuevas ballet company. Lifar had his face slapped in public after insisting that he retained the rights to Black and White. Lifar sent his seconds to Cuevas who refused to extend an apology and chose to duel with swords. As duels had been "technically outlawed" in the 17th century, the time and location of the duel were not disclosed to the public. The duel was conducted in front of 50 newspaper photographers and ended with the two combatants in tears and embraces in what The New York Times called "what may well have been the most delicate encounter in the history of French dueling", with the sole injury being a cut on Lifar's right forearm in the seventh minute.
"At this point in the story, Raymundo de Larrain entered the picture. “Raymundo is not just a little Chilean,” said a lady of fashion in Paris about him. “He is from one of the four greatest families in Chile. The Larrains are aristocratic people, a better family by far than the de Cuevas family.” Whatever he was, Raymundo de Larrain wanted to be something more than just another bachelor from Chile seeking extra-man status in Paris society. He was talented, brilliant, and wildly extravagant, and soon began making a name for himself designing costumes and sets for George de Cuevas’s ballet company. A protégé of the marquis’s to start with, he soon became known as his nephew. An acquaintance who knew de Larrain at the time recalled that the card on the door of his sublet apartment first read M. Larrain. Later it became M. de Larrain. Later still it became the Marquis de Larrain."
In The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys February 1987 by Dominick Dunne
Vanity Fair
"For years Margaret de Cuevas’s physical appearance had been deteriorating. Never the slightest bit interested in fashion or style, she began to assume the look of what has been described to me by some as a millionairess bag lady and by others as the Madwoman of Chaillot. “Before Fellini she was Fellini,” said Count Vega del Ren about her, but other assessments were less romantic. Her nails were uncared for. Her teeth were in a deplorable state. She had knee problems that gave her difficulty in walking. She covered her face with a white paste and white powder, and she blackened her eyes in an eccentric way that made people think she had put her thumb and fingers in a full ashtray and rubbed them around her eyes. Her hair was dyed black with reddish tinges, and around her head she always wore a black net scarf, which she tied beneath her chin. She wrapped handkerchiefs and ribbons around her wrists to hide her diamonds, and her black dresses were frequently stained with food and spilled white powder and held together with safety pins. For shoes she wore either sneakers or a pair of pink polyester bedroom slippers, which were very often on the wrong feet. Her lateness had reached a point where dinner guests would sit for several hours waiting for her to make an appearance, while Marcel, her butler of forty-five years, would pass them five or six times, carrying a martini on a silver tray to the marquesa’s room. “She drank much too much for an old lady,” one of her frequent guests told me. Finally her arrival for dinner would be heralded by the barking of her Pekingese dogs, and she would enter the dining room preceded by her favorite of them, Happy, who had a twisted neck and a glass eye and walked with a limp as the result of a stroke.
Her behavior also was increasingly eccentric. In her bedroom she had ten radios sitting on tables and chests of drawers. Each radio was set to a different music station—country-and-western, rock ’n’ roll, classical—and when she wanted to hear music she would ring for Marcel and point to the radio she wished him to turn on. For years she paid for rooms at the Westbury Hotel for a group of White Russians she had taken under her wing."
In The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys February 1987 by Dominick Dunne
Vanity Fair
Fascinating! Raymundo was my brother-in-law.
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