Noble Blood - The Eviction of the Texas Princess

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi lived many lives—as political researcher, congressional wife, Playboy model, and actress. But it would be her role as wife of an Italian prince that would eventually lead her into the battle of her life: an inheritance fight for a $500 million villa. [The archive mentioned in the episode epilogue here] Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Quote, in the entryway, the princess, a 72-year-old Texan with blonde hair, unwrinkled porcelain skin and pearls dripping onto her black overcoat, noted that the crimson cloth baldachan hanging over pictures of her late husband was found only in homes that descended from popes, end quote. This is one of the first sentences of a 2002 New York Times article

written by reporter Jason Horowitz. The subject, Prince Pesariti, Bon Campani Ludovici, widowed wife of Italian prince, Niccolo Bon Campani Ludovici. She was formerly known as Rita Genrette and Rita Carpenter before that. Americans marrying into European aristocracy, even royalty, is of course statistically rare, but not without plenty of examples. long before Megan Markle, Grace Kelly will pop into mind for some,

and of course there was the cultural wave of the American dollar princesses during the Gilded Age, the women whose marriages supplied struggling European houses with cash and new money American families with fancy titles in return. Rita's story, however, is a little different than the one you might be imagining. chances are you don't know many ranchers daughters turned political researchers turned congressional wives turned playboy models turned authors turned actors turned actors turned real estate agents turned princesses still despite a life with that many twists Rita claimed she had quote never seen anything like the inheritance battle that followed the death of her husband, which she was embroiled in for years,

a battle that only ended this April. It's a scale of an inheritance battle that would make succession fans drool. But instead of Roman Roy, we have Roman princes, along with the Italian government and the ghost of Caravaggio. Rita married her prince, but it turns out, happily ever after in the real world, can involve a lot more bureaucracy than fairy tales might have prepared us for. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Born in 1949 in San Antonio and raised in Austin, Rita may not have been born a princess, but she was the closest thing. America has to royalty. She was the daughter of a millionaire. Her father was C. Hunt Carpenter, the founder of the Shamrock Insurance Company in San Antonio, who came into major wealth after discovering natural gas on one of his ranches. Rita's mother, Riva Garlington, was described by Rita as a,

quote, Blue Blood, who was pleased with the eventual match between her daughter. and a prince, as she felt that Rita had, quote, finally married someone like her. By this, Reba meant that her ancestors had settled in Virginia in the early 1600s, where they owned tobacco plantations. The aggressive Gone with the Windian style of the names Seahunt Carpenter and Reba Garlington might have been a clue that this story would eventually have a plantation money cameo. In the early 1800s, the Garlington family relocated to Texas and established Garlington Ranch in Jasper. A 1955 Times Magazine National Affairs blurb about Texas, under the delightfully

Southern Gothic headline, The Deer Slayers, describes the Garlingtons as, quote, a tough, aloof clan of ranchers who have prospered as breeders of Brahmin cattle." Growing up, Rita was a self-described tomboy who spent her days climbing trees and reading. Her carefree nature shifted when she skipped two grades and was suddenly an 11-year-old with 13-year-old peers. I felt like an alien being, she reflected, remembering her attempts at wearing makeup, as she realized everyone around her had grown up. She describes every day from seventh to ninth grade as hell, absolute hell,

often eating lunch alone in the bathroom, or sitting on her glasses so she could get sent home early. The summer before 10th grade was Rita's The Summer I Turned Pretty, puberty turning her unrecognizable to her peers. She remembers, one boy came up to me and said, Hi, do you want to go out? I'll never forget it. I said, no, I don't want to go out with you.

You were so cruel to me when I was in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. I cried every single night. Things would only get better for Rita following those school years. In 1971, Rita graduated cum laude from the University of Texas with honors and with a degree in history. and a minor in political science. Do you think she listens to this show? In 1973, Rita married a U.S. Army pilot named Edward Coleman, but the couple would split only a little over a year later.

The same year she was married, she secured her first position out of school as director of research for the Texas Republican Party, and in 1975, she was appointed opposition research director of the Republican National Party. Life in D.C., however, ended up taking a different path than Rita could have imagined. The same day Rita interviewed for the job, she met John Genrette, a first-term Democratic congressman from South Carolina, who was making a name for himself, not for his politics, but for a very messy divorce in which his wife named

23, quote, correspondence, and he was reportedly surprised that she could name only 23. John asked Rita out that day, proposing he'd fly her to the Virgin Islands where they'd sunbathe naked together. She turned him down. Smooth he was not, she wrote years later, but she did accept a date the next time they met. He showed her the glamorous side of D.C. and And though Rita had come from wealth, she considered the environment like nothing she had seen in Texas, and she was decidedly wooed. The two fell in love, moved in together, and when her boss at the RNC told her she either had to dump her democratic boyfriend or quit her job, she quit. A year later, in 1976, the couple were married.

He was 40 and she was 26. Things were okay at first, but a year in, Rita realized she was in another unhappy marriage. John continued to build his repertoire of correspondence, apparently near constantly flirting or going much further with other women, and all of that was exacerbated by his serious drinking problem. However, Rita didn't love the idea of being twice divorced, by 27, and John and his team didn't love the optics of being a twice-divorced congressman, so they tried to stay together. Rita was also grappling with the career change from

congressional researcher to congressional wife. Quite bluntly, I hated my life as congressional wife, she wrote in the Washington Post in 1980. I have played that game long enough. I'm fed up with people trying to paint me as a dumb blonde and a gold digger because I'm an attractive woman who happened to marry a congressman. I'm tired of having to smile and be polite, while constituents and lobbyists elbow me out of the way so they can rub shoulders with my husband. I've had it with small-town reporters who never bother to check the facts

and then accuse me of being publicity-hungry when I try to set the record straight. Well said Rita. At the time of writing that piece, Rita was no longer a congressional wife, not because the couple was divorced, but because John was no longer a congressman. He had been implicated in the FBI Sting operation known as Ab-Skam, where seven members of Congress were caught on tape accepting bribes from a fake Arabian company, ab scam, aka Arab scam.

I've got larceny in my blood, John was recorded, saying, I'd take it in a goddamn minute. You can say a lot about Rita and John, but they did not mince words when it came to public statements. They finally separated the following year, and Rita's next move would both put her on a national stage and define much of her public life to this different, In 1981, she appeared in a Playboy spread, photographed with a feather boa, a brandy sniffter, and

that's about it. Why did she choose to do it? John, known serial cheater, had apparently told her no one wanted to see a 31-year-old woman with her clothes off. I just thought, I'll show you, she reflected years later, also once admitting that the money was needed. With John about to be convicted, she was the sole breadwinner in the family. The photos were accompanied by an article, she wrote, entitled The Liberation of a Congressional Wife, in which she expressed many of the same feelings of isolation and diminishment that she would recount in the post piece, but with an additional playboy twist.

The article's bombshell came in the form of Rita, writing that one, One night, she and her husband made love on the marble steps that overlooked the monuments. She published a tell-all, My Capital Secrets, that same year, promising details of, quote, The endless parties, drop your clothes at the door orgies, alcoholic bashes, the cocaine, the call girls, and call boys, from, quote, The Lady Who Blew the Lid Off Washington. It was a Best Seller. Listeners of the podcast you're wrong about will be familiar with the knowledge that the media in the 80s loved a few things, women behaving, quote, badly, political scandals and sex scandals. And Rita served up all three on a silver platter. A 1986 article referred to her public image as a racy curiosity, a one-woman freak show. She did the talk show circuits and the big interviews, and defended her book's legitimacy.

When a man like Daniel Ellsberg writes an expose, he's applauded. When a woman does it, suddenly it's a kiss and tell, she told the Washington Post in 81. When the interviewer countered with the reminder that Daniel Ellsberg did not pose for Playboy, nor did he reveal that he made love with his partner on the Capitol steps, She responded, quote, I don't see what taking off my clothes has to do with what I wrote. She openly declared herself a feminist in the same interview. The thing is, however, that Rita now claims that the story about the capital steps was never true. I think part of me said, okay, this is the image you think of me now.

I'm this sexy playboy femme fatale, and I'm here to take over and marry rich and famous men. That's what you think of me, so that's what I'll be. give you somehow, she said. She further clarified that what actually happened was a, quote, romantic moment, but not a salacious one, just some good, clean, above the waist kissing between two married people. Rita has never said she regrets Playboy, but in 2011, she reflected on that time of her life, saying, quote, I'm a serious person and I read a lot. I have a 139 IQ. So to have this other image, which was just like another person, was so traumatic for me. I was lost.

She would pose for Playboy one more time in 1984, this time on the cover, but she also pivoted toward different career pursuits. First acting, appearing on Fantasy Island in 1982, and in a 1984 film called Zombie Island massacre. Lots of island-related projects on her resume. She then worked for some time as an on-air journalist for Fox's A Current Affair, described by the Times as, quote, the salacious television news weekly. Rita then pivoted in a different direction, real estate. Her biggest deal? The sale of the General Motors Building to none other than Donald Trump in 1990. He will be the first of two,

huh, inducing cameos in this story. Rita's real estate era also finally brings us to her meeting with one Prince Niccolo Bon Campani Ludovici. Rita and the Prince had mutual friends who connected them for work in 2003. They called me and said, We have this prince who would like to develop a hotel on his property, she recalled. I said,

Oh, for heaven's sake, everyone in New York calls themselves Count or Prince or whatever. They're not. Despite the Prince already being married to his second wife, he claimed their meeting was, quote, probably written in the stars. He described their first encounter to the New Yorker in the couple's joint 2011 profile. I said in the clumsiest way one can even imagine, well, you are not ugly. She's beautiful, of course, but she's as beautiful inside. She's candid like a child, but trueed like a fox.

The prince invited Rita to his property in Rome, which she agreed to, likely in part because of her degree which was studying Italian history. There they fell in love and married in 2009. This is probably a good time to figure out exactly who the Bon Campani Ludovices are, So let's run through a few names and dates. They were, of course, not always the Bon Campani Ludovices, but once the Bon Campanis and the Ludovices, two powerful noble families with papal titles. The Ludovices are known as an ancient noble family, originating from Bologna,

while the Bon Campanis settled there in the 1400s, likely coming from Umbria. A Bon Campani was Pope Gregory the 13th, while a Ludovici was Pope Gregory the 15th. In 1634, the Ludovicys acquired the principality of Pionbino in Tuscany, and after the 1681 marriage between Gregorio El Bon Campani and Ippolita Ludovici, the families merged in 1708, ruling together as the Bon Campani Ludovicis, which was a strategic move. to keep the Ludovici name in power after the princess had no sons. No one has actually ruled Piumbino since 1801, but the title of Prince is still held by sons of the family.

The Ludovici family had acquired the property that would be called the Casino de Villa Bon Campi Ludovici in 1621, which is the villa that will focus on today. The property was originally. established by Cardinal Francesca Maria Del Monte, who beyond his religious duties, was an intellectual and a connoisseur of the arts. He's best known today for his early patronage of Caravaggio, as well as Galileo. The Cardinal's support resulted in the villa becoming home to the only painting Carvaggio did on a ceiling, 1597's Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto,

its symbolism reflecting the Cardinal's interest in alchemy. The writer Henry James once stayed at the villa, writing in 1883, certainly there is nothing better in Rome and perhaps nothing so beautiful. Inside there is everything, dark avenues shaped for centuries with scissors, valleys, clearings, groves.

The same year that James visited, the Bon Campani-Lunovici princes sold and divided much of the property. They kept in the family the former hunting lodge, known today as Villa Aurora, where one can find the Caravaggio along with works from Gertino, Pomeranchino, and Michelangelo,

among others. Quote, from my perspective, the whole history of the West is in that building. T. Corey Brennan, professor at the American Academy in Rome, told the New Yorker. This is the home Rita would come to live in with her husband, and the home she would dedicate herself to restoring and archiving. In that same article, Rita gave a tour to the writer and guests. This is my husband's coat of arms, our coat of arms now, she explained.

She showed them the statue of four. pan by Michelangelo in the garden, the marble trough near the front gates that dated back to Hadrian, the Roman Emperor's time. She pointed out the tunnel in the kitchen that she believed used to connect the villa to the Medici Palace. She put on a pair of white gloves and read to the guests the letters from Marie Antoinette and King Louis X15th, she and her husband found in a storage room. She never said let them eat cake, Rita told the guests as she showed off the queen's signature. She got a bad rap. Again, Princess, I feel like she would enjoy this show.

Arriving at the Caravaggio, a guest remarked that it was quite obscene, in-your-faced sexuality, Rita replied, something she had been familiar with. His penis and everything else. He was courageous. You were talking about post-Reformation when they were still burnt. burning people at the stake." Years after this article, she would claim she spotted the ghost of Caravaggio,

quote, in a loincloth like Tarzan, hunting the grounds. And if you're thinking, Dana, tell me more, I am so sorry to report that that is the extent of the story that we get. Rita and Niccolo's renovation project was both costly and slow,

partly thanks to the villa's designation as a national monument, meaning the government had to be consulted on many tasks. Water damage, diseased trees, the kind of things that have been known to bankrupt noble families in charge of massive estates. The family had apparently neglected the villa for many years, and when Niccolo inherited it after his father's death, it was abandoned, with birds flying through it. We gave up everything, Rita said. I didn't go out shopping and buy burkin bags and shoes and the latest fashion or anything else at all. And Rita began to give tours to support the renovation costs.

The princess wanted the villa to once again become a haven for artists and intellectuals, as it had been in the days of Cardinal Del Monte. She hosted a dinner for, And here is your second, huh, cameo? Woody Allen, of all people, who she once auditioned for, and Annie Leibovitz attended one of her tours. Rita also found a team of scholars with whom she worked on archiving the 150,000 pages of historical documents found in home storage, including the letters from Marie Antoinette. Rita and the prince did not have children together, but Niccolo had three sons from his previous marriage.

When they were small, you would have eaten them up, he said in the New Yorker. When they grow up, you sort of regret that you didn't. Perhaps Caravaggio should have chosen for his painting the myth of Saturn devouring his son. Niccolo's children were not eaten, and so the sons would become important players in our story. In 2018, Prince Niccolo died at 77 years old, setting off an inheritance. Britain's battle between Rita and the prince's children from his earlier marriage over the state of the villa. In the legal nitty-gritty, Niccolo's will gave his wife the right to stay in the property for the rest of her life, and if sold, the proceeds were to be split between Rita and his

sons. The dispute was best summed up in an article from Tadler, explaining, quote, Rita claimed that Prince Nicola's will gives her the right to stay in the mansion for the rest of her life. However, his three sons dispute this, arguing that their grandfather, Prince Gregorio, had intended for them to one day inherit the historic building and that their father had mismanaged his fortune, end quote. On a personal level,

the brothers argued that Rita was a gold digger who did not have their father's longevity at heart. Rita, in turn, pointed to the brothers' respective legal troubles. Rita and the family weren't able to reach any form of agreement, so a judge ordered in 2022 that the villa was simply to be sold. The asking price upon auction? $471 million, or $533 million. The number of bidders, zero.

The professor at the University of Rome, who was tasked with establishing the monetary value of the villa, regarded that it was priceless from a cultural standpoint, but imagined an estimated 10 million euros would be required for necessary restoration work. Not many people would be up to that task. For the duration of the legal battle, Rita was allowed to live in the villa's third floor, apartment, which her stepson, Prince Bonte, referred to, disparagingly as the peasant quarters. Rita lived with her four Bichon-Frize dogs, George Washington, Jolla, Milord, and Henry James, after the once visitor.

Rita also lived with her Ukrainian maid and her maid's daughter and grandchildren, who fled Kiev last year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, all of that ended this January. when a judge ruled that Rita was to be evicted on the ground that she had not been properly maintaining the building after the collapse of a wall led to the closure of an adjacent street. She was additionally accused of organizing unauthorized tours. In April, Rita and her Bichon frisers were escorted out of the villa as the eviction was finalized and a locksmith changed the locks on the front door.

Prince Bonte waited outside to watch, quote, being liberated from that woman. Princess is not her title, he shouted. Because she is American, she cannot do whatever she wants, he told reporters who had gathered. He later told the New York Post, this is our country, we have our police, we have our judges, and you need to respect our countries. Otherwise, you can go back to, where the hell? Texas, or the place she's from. The Post takes this time to, you know,

to note that Prince Bonte is wanted in the U.S. for his conviction in a domestic assault case against his American wife in Newport, Rhode Island. His brother, Francesco, was jailed in the early 90s for a scheme to counterfeit 250,000 credit cards, and in 2017, he served an additional jail term in Austria for tax evasion. But what did Rita have to be? to say, as another era in her very full life of twists and turns, came to a close. Quote, I feel like I'm in a surreal movie. Like Sarcha's no exit, she told reporters on the street. I see no logic in this. I was a good custodian for the villa. I love Italy, and I'm so sorry to have

such a brutal ending to what has been a labor of love for 20 years. That labor of love is apparently culminating in a book about the villa, which she told those reporters she would release later this year. It's dedicated to my husband, Niccolo, she said, before getting in a taxi with her dogs, waving out the window to reporters, and speeding away. That's the story of the stranded princess, Rita Bon Campani Ludovici, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about Rita's work and how you can find it for yourself. What's up, everyone?

I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.

I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come. Look for up and come. becoming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an

inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore,

it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Rita's work in the villa not only included archiving the documents that she and her husband

found, but digitizing them as well. The extensive collection, the archivo digital bon combe, Ludovici, is classified as a collaboration between T. Corey Brennan, the professor mentioned earlier, the prince, and the principessa. It's full of posts documenting the family history from the 10th century to the present. And if you're a history nerd, which I imagine if you're here, you might be, it's something you might want to check out for free online. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio, and Grim and Mies, from Aaron Manky.

Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noamie Griffin and Rima Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky,

Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.