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You are here: Home / Writing / Scandal, Rumor and Innuendo: Doris Duke and Popular Imagination

Scandal, Rumor and Innuendo: Doris Duke and Popular Imagination

May 5th, 2015 by Sallie Bingham in Writing 3 Comments

From the series: Doris Duke

Find out more about my book, The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, now available in paperback.

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Doris Duke and James Cromwell - Hawaii

Doris Duke and James Cromwell – Hawaii (Doris Duke Photograph Collection, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)

One of the curious things about Doris Duke, the subject of my nearly finished biography, is the way scandal, rumor and innuendo clustered around her both during her life and after her death.

Almost the only question people asked me about her is, “Did she marry her butler?”

No, she did not. But does that question really matter, in a long, complex and accomplished life?

That is only one of the rumors—although apparently the one with the longest life—with which she has been burdened. Others hint at outlaw behavior (never defined), outrageousness—she once kicked off her shoes in a nightclub!—a terrible love of luxury (which she could well afford), and dismissing lovers, friends and employees when she no longer needed or wanted them. And a lot of money, although her fortune was small compared to what has been piled up by the top one percent today.

Almost the only question people asked me about her is, “Did Doris Duke marry her butler?” No, she did not. But does that question really matter, in a long, complex and accomplished life?

Even in its exaggerated form, this list hardly amounts to anything very surprising.

But the legends (to view them charitably) continue to circulate.

Lately I heard from an author who has not allowed me to quote her because of trouble with her family, yet this story is perfectly harmless and even quite touching.

It’s the tale of what may have been Doris Duke’s one true love (although I believe there were several other candidates): a Hawaiian man who drew her out of her over-organized, over-privileged life, taught her to surf and fish and to keep guppies for bait under her bottom lip and who suffered heartbreak when she eventually rejected him, unable, presumably, to give up the life she knew, a life in which he would never find a comfortable or even tolerable role.

My informant told me another tale so unlikely and so outrageous that I knew I could never use it, although apparently I could without causing any difficultly, because it would seem to endorse other long-lived rumors.

It’s interesting to note that something obviously untrue and even scandalous is sometimes substituted for the truth, as though there is an energy in rumor-mongering that eagerly replaces fact with something more colorful—and more detrimental.

I’m sorry not to use this story of Doris’ one true love—or at least of an important, positive relationship—because the next question I am asked, after the butler question, is whether she was ever able to love.

I doubt very much that the biographers of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson are asked this question; it would seem entirely beside the point, as of course it is.

And the newly discovered letters of Martha Washington seem to prove that she was a loving wife, which will probably weigh for more, in the public imagination, that her extraordinary partnership, on the battlefield and off, with George.

In Doris’ case, since she wrote no love letters (there are notes on other subjects), she is defined by the love letters men wrote to her.

But perhaps she is more accurately defined in this honeymoon photograph with her first husband, Jimmy Cromwell, in Hawaii, outfitted with matching flowered Hawaiian shirts, leis, and delighted smiles. Doris hasn’t even bothered to comb her hair.

So that was love, too, even if it didn’t last.

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In Writing Doris Duke Jimmy Cromwell

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Barbara says

    January 20th, 2016 at 6:29 am

    You must be referring to her daughter Arden. She lived 24 hrs.
    The father of that child was not James Cronwell. Anyone who knew Miss Duke knows that. Do you even know who the Hawaiian man is that you speak of? Do you even know of Miss Duke’s surfing accomplishments ? My guess is no. Again poor research. Get your head out of the archives and talk to people who knew and loved her for god sake!
    No big secret there

    Reply
    • Jan says

      March 23rd, 2016 at 9:04 pm

      The Hawaiian story is very well-researched and documented in places that are hard to find because it’s a very sad story. But there are people that were very close to her and To The Man Who Loved Her and taught her how to surf.

      Reply
  2. Jackie Carruthers says

    May 6th, 2017 at 7:41 am

    She was a feminist before her time a real trailblazer.

    Reply

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