I admit, I never knew much if anything about heiress Doris Duke (1912-93) until I very recently read an article in Vanity Fair about how she likely murdered her friend and designer/curator Eduardo Tirella. I promptly had to google her to know more about her, and then I found it, that shining beacon of happiness: a made–for–TV biopic — Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke (1999)!
Unfortunately, the film draaaaaagggggs because they were far too invested in having hired Lauren Bacall to play elderly Duke, and there are Endless Scenes involving Richard Chamberlain as her butler who is setting her up to die while he swindles her estate.
Nonetheless, I watched this bullshit (okay half), so I’ve gotta review it! Unfortunately there’s very few stills published, so I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to give you any decent images. So, you’re going to have to work with me when I tell you that:
Lauren Bacall plays the elderly Duke. Her health is tanking, and she’s just out of the hospital. All friends and family are gone, and all that’s left is her butler Bernard Lafferty, who is drugging her up to here, hiring private nurses to not care for her, and getting a drugged Duke to make him executor of his will. (PS: yes I know there is a quality movie about Duke and her butler called Bernard and Doris and starring Susan Sarandon. I wasn’t going for high-quality here! Maybe someday I will watch that?)
Bacall spends most of her time in bed, while Chamberlain’s eyebrows crawl up to his hairline and threaten to just start floating somewhere over his head:
In flashbacks, we see young Doris, who is pampered and spoiled by her father (tobacco tycoon James Buchanan Duke) and loathed by her mother (Nanaline Holt Inman). It’s the 1920s and the family is living in a mansion in New York:
Dad has a heart attack, and mom kills him off by ordering the servants to leave the windows open while she hangs out in her furs.
Adult Doris is played by Lindsay Frost, and they did a good job casting someone who looks like the real Doris:
Doris marries a bounder, James H. R. Cromwell:
Has a brief interlude with Alec Cunningham-Reid, a former World War I pilot and now politician — played by Liam Cunningham of Game of Thrones, Domina, and Northanger Abbey:
During which she’s out-dressed by this extra:
Divorces her lame husband and wears a lot of cute hats:
Has a relationship with Hawaiian surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku, including allegedly getting pregnant and then losing the baby in a ridiculous scene that implies that she goes swimming in the ocean in order to miscarry?
Nurses and writes some magazine articles through World War II (in an uninteresting wardrobe), then befriends fellow heiress Barbara Hutton:
Meets and falls in love with her second husband, Porfirio Rubirosa:
Aaaaand as I can’t take any more Bacall/Chamberlain, so I’ll just have to trust that Mare Winningham (St. Elmo’s Fire) plays Duke’s adopted-as-an-adult daughter, who then Duke cuts ties with:
And then more stuff appears to happen in episode two, but I’m too bored, and it’s mostly Bacall!
Got any better made-for-TV or otherwise shlocky biopics we should watch instead?
Find this frock flick at:
It is extremely small of me to say so, but it amuses me to note how little the grown up Ms. Hayden Panettiere looks like Ms. Lauren Bacall – I wonder which of them looked more like the late Ms. Duke?
In terms of biopics about fabulously wealthy but fabulously unhappy women, I prefer Poor Little Rich Girl with Farrah Fawcett as Barbara Hutton. A classic!