Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchannan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. When Doris' father died in 1925, he left roughly $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005 dollars), to Doris. This lead to her being referred to as the "richest girl in the world," a name she deeply resented.
HBO decided to take on the task of telling the story of the last six years of the tobacco heiress' life and her unconventional relationship with her butler, Bernard Lafferty. Part of the story is based on fact, the audience is told at the beginning, "some of it is not." This caveat gives the network leeway to take a story that attracted loads of headlines in real life and embellish it for art's sake. The teleplay has impressive star power with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon as Duke and Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes as Lafferty. Bernard and Doris introduces us to an aging but still feisty woman, who manages her staff and her finances with an iron hand. In the opening scene, Duke fires her current butler for serving her cantaloupe to cold.
Despite the obvious tenderness in the relationship and Doris' ability to overlook some of Lafferty shortcomings, she still remained suspicious of Bernard's motives despite his claims that "I just want to take care of you." While her lingering mistrust is obvious just by virtue of her personality, director Bob Balaban and writer Hugh Costello, fail to dig very deeply into why. The story suffers in part because we know so little about Bernard. We know he had a drinking problem and he once worked for Elizabeth Taylor and singer Peggy Lee. However, Bernard and Doris moves at such a fast clip that we never get a sense of whether Doris believed Lafferty was after her money in some way.
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