In this documentary, we explore the life of Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress who danced with the Prince of Wales, married three times, filled museum storerooms with couture and then, in her late forties, left New York society for an adobe ranch beneath Taos Mountain, where she designed jewelry, championed her Pueblo neighbors and asked to be buried under the wide sky.

-------------------

Gain FREE access to secret full-length documentaries on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury

-------------------

Mary Millicent Abigail Rogers was born in New York City on February 1, 1902, the elder of two children of Henry Huttleston Rogers Jr. and Mary Benjamin Rogers. Her grandfather, Henry Huttleston Rogers, was one of the men who built Standard Oil. At about eight she caught rheumatic fever. The illness weakened her heart for the rest of her life, but the long months in bed turned her into a reader, an artist and a gifted linguist.

She made her debut in November 1919, the season the Prince of Wales toured North America, and she danced with him. In January 1924, at twenty-one, she eloped with Count Ludwig von Salm-Hoogstraeten, an Austrian nobleman nearly twice her age, in a New York courtroom. The marriage collapsed, and their son Peter was born after the couple separated. The divorce became final in April 1927, and the count was paid 250,000 dollars.

That November she married the Argentine sportsman Arturo Peralta-Ramos. Her father gave them a 500,000-dollar trust fund on condition that he never claim the Rogers fortune, estimated at forty million dollars. They had two sons, Arturo and Paul, before he filed for divorce in December 1935. Her third husband was the American stockbroker and champion skier Ronald Balcom, whom she married in Vienna. They lived in the chalet she had built at St. Anton am Arlberg, where she wore Tyrolean costume until the Nazi annexation of 1938 cost her the house. She divorced Balcom in February 1941.

By then she was one of the most important private clients in fashion. Charles James made much of her wardrobe. She wore Mainbocher, Valentina, Madame Grès and Schiaparelli, and bold jewels by Suzanne Belperron, Fulco di Verdura and Paul Flato. Schiaparelli wrote that if Millicent had not been so terribly rich, she might have become a great artist. Today the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds about five hundred pieces from her wardrobe, including some two hundred by Schiaparelli.

During the war she bought Claremont Manor on the James River in Virginia, turned it into a working farm and offered it as a rehabilitation center for Navy pilots. Her romances in those years included the naval official James Forrestal, the future James Bond author Ian Fleming and the young Roald Dahl. She also bought Wharf House near Montego Bay in Jamaica. After the war she moved to Los Angeles, rented Rudolph Valentino's former mansion, Falcon Lair, and began planning a house for herself and Clark Gable. The romance ended, and the house was never built.

Heartbroken, she accepted an invitation from the designer Adrian and his wife, the actress Janet Gaynor, to visit New Mexico. In Taos she found the place she had been looking for. In 1948 she settled on an eighty-acre property with an old adobe house facing Taos Mountain and named it Turtle Walk. Her friend Dorothy Brett painted the vigas. Her broomstick skirts, velvet and concho belts helped make Southwestern style fashionable. Inspired by Hopi, Apache, Navajo and Pueblo art, she modeled jewelry in wax for Pueblo silversmiths to finish, sometimes polishing pieces herself with pumice and nail files.

In 1951 she helped members of Taos Pueblo travel to Washington to lay the groundwork for a health center, and she paid its operating costs. She backed the Pueblo's claim before the Indian Claims Commission, which included the return of sacred Blue Lake, finally restored in 1970. That January she wrote to her son Paul that passing Taos Mountain she had felt part of the earth, and that all fear had gone out of her.

Millicent Rogers died in Albuquerque on January 1, 1953, after surgery for an aneurysm, a month before her fifty-first birthday. She was buried near the entrance to Taos Pueblo, wrapped in a Navajo blanket, facing the mountain. She left about three million dollars in debt but a collection worth far more. In 1956 Paul founded the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, and in September 2026 it opened Where Silver Meets the Sky, pairing contemporary Indigenous artists with her collection.

Subscribe to Old Money Allure for documentaries exploring heiresses, muses, aristocratic families, and the women behind history's most glamorous fortunes. Tell us in the comments: did Millicent Rogers waste her gifts on fashion and romance, or did she simply need fifty years to find where she belonged?

#OldMoneyAllure #MillicentRogers #Taos