Pity the poor little rich children

Press, 8 March 1989, Page 17

Pity the poor little rich children

JUDY BYRNE, DUO, considers the fate of children who inherit fortunes from their famous parents.

Poor little rich baby, Athina Onassis, inherited one of the world’s biggest fortunes before her fourth birthday. But Athina, child of a broken home, deprived of the mother around whom her mink-lined little world had revolved, may find that money can’t buy her happiness — any more than it did her mother. Christina Onassis’s own life was a Greek tragedy that culminated in her early death. Family fortunes have proved a curse for other clans, too. Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, was only seven when she inherited S9M. In 1919, that was big money. She died alone,

skeleton-thin, a recluse who had seven husbands and lost all her money in her search for happiness. John Paul Getty 111 was kidnapped by the Mafia, who cut off his ear. He later turned to drugs and had a stroke brought on by his habit which left him partly paralysed. He is now trying hard to pull his life together. Lisa Marie Presley will inherit the fortune of her late father, Elvis, when she is 30. Meanwhile, it is growing by an estimated S9M a year.

Lisa Marie’s life is in less good shape. The 20-year-old mother-to-be left husband, musician Danny Keough, and went home

to mother just five weeks after the wedding. When she was a baby Athina Onassis had 88 Dior bibs. She has porcelain dolls worth $30,000. There are diamonds embedded in her rocking horse. She has been used to waking daily in the nursery of one of her mother’s seven homes to nursery rhymes piped in through a sound system under the watchful eye of a team of four nurses and eight detectives charged with keeping her safe and well. She even has a playroom on board the Onassis jet.

Athina, who has a specially-made Dior dressing gown, even has French designer clothes, for her dolls. For her third birthday, her mother bought her a sheepdog and a flock of 100 sheep because “she loved little Bo Peep.” She has working model replicas of her mother’s Rolls Royce and Range Rover. Christina’s obsession with turning her daughter’s world into a little paradise no doubt stemmed from her own unhappy childhood. At four, her father named his yacht Christina after her. When she was nine, her father sent her out in Manhatten to buy anything she wanted for her birthday. She bought a doll. By 14, she had a mink coat. Behind the material wealth was another story — starting with her parents’ regular globe-trot-ting absences from her life. She often knew where they were only when a postcard for her arrived. Then came the bitter divorce.

By the time she was Athina’s age, she had already been referred to a child psychiatrist who di-

agnosed her shyness and unwillingness to communicate as “attentionseeking, often associated with insecure, overprotected children.” Later, her mother, Tina killed herself and Christina found herself competing for her father’s attention with a string of women more sophisticated and beautiful than she was. It is hardly surprising that she never got on with his last wife, Jackie Kennedy.

It was because of her own experiences that Christina, who yearned for a child through three failed marriages before she had Athina with her fourth husband, rarely left her behind when she travelled. Even before the coffin lid had been nailed down on her mother, Athina was at the centre of a legal battle. Custody passed automatically to her father, Thierry Roussel.

But moves began at once to keep his hands off the Onassis fortune. Roussel left the divorce court S9OM better off than he was on his wedding day. He dotes on his daughter. And it may now depend on him whether she has a happier life than her tragic mother. Lisa Marie Presley is also destined to be seriously rich, whatever she earns for herself. But, for the moment, money rows have been driving a wedge between the mother determined not to let her fortune spoil her life, and the daughter who has been through a wild child phase. You could hardly stack the odds higher against Lisa Marie if you tried. Her parents parted when she was four and were awarded joint custody of her. Her father adored — and indulged — her.

When she lost her first tooth at five, she woke next morning to find a $5 bill under her pillow. She had a pony at six, a mink coat at seven. Only Priscilla Presley’s insistence that she would forbid her to wear it stopped Presley giving Lisa Marie a diamond ring at eight. Then, when Lisa Marie was only nine, came the bizarre end of the father bloated by food and drugs.

Both Priscilla and Lisa Marie had death threats from the fanatical fans of

the “King.” There were also fears that Lisa Marie might be kidnapped for ransom. So her childhood was shrouded in secrecy. For years, her mother would not permit her to be photographed.

But if she was hidden from the world, the world could not be kept so closed to her. Her teenage years were blighted by the constant stream of “revelations” about her father’s life. Under her father’s will, Lisa Marie comes into Elvis’s money in stages. But until she is 25, her father tied up control.

She has since voluntarily extended the age until 30, with prodding from her mother who wants to protect her from fortunehunters.

Money difference have led to public rows about how much Lisa was allowed to spend. Her mother got Lisa, now 20, into a low-paid job as part of her campaign to make her learn about money. Last year Priscilla Presley managed to wean her daughter away from the influence of rock ’n’ roll veteran Jerry Lee Lewis. He was taking a Svengalilike interest in launching Lisa’s pop career, and trying to persuade her to take legal action against Colonel Tom Parker who was her father’s manager. Much-married Lewis has a long-standing grudge against Parker.

But Lisa Marie’s marriage to Scientology devotee

Danny Keough in a Church of Scientology ceremony seemed to be on the rocks almost before the honeymoon finished. Friends said that with morning sickness, a tiny, spartan apartment provided by the Church, and the sudden change of status to wife and soon-to-be mother she was finding it difficult to adjust. Paul McCartney, whose Beatles whose royalties still pour in faster than he can count them, saw the

danger for his children in inherited money. Paul and Linda McCartney opted out of the rich life for a modest country home, and told their family there would be no legacies for them. The children are, they say, expected to get on with earning their own livings, not to sit around waiting for a fortune to fall in their laps. The result so far is a promisingly normal family of happy youngsters.