THE GIRL WHO BECAME THE WORLD'S RICHEST WOMAN AT 21

Barbara Hutton - Barbara Hutton (Farrah Fawcett), born in 1917, was the granddaughter of Frank W. Woolworth (Burl Ives), the legendary American business magnate who, through his successful "five-and-dime" Woolworth thrift stores, pioneered such retail standards as fixed prices for items and self-service goods on display (as opposed to the standard practice of having all merchandise behind a sales counter).

Hutton, raised in a stifling, isolated luxury, had the double misfortune of unstable parents. Her father, Franklyn Laws Hutton (Kevin McCarthy), the co-founder of the investment giant, E. F. Hutton, was a drunk and a womanizer whose behavior caused Hutton's mother, Edna Woolworth (Toria Fuller) to commit suicide - with six-year-old Barbara discovering the corpse. Her father, distant and uninterested in raising the child (Barbara overheard her father stating he never really wanted her, and that most children are born "out of a bottle of whiskey"), passed the child off to be raised by her aunts and F.W. Woolworth - a calming paternal influence on the child whom nonetheless contributed to Barbara's later neuroses by telling her that only "magic makes the soul alive," and that there is "only 'now'," and to live life accordingly. Indeed, Barbara would take this advice to heart, eventually believing in nothing but gratifying her own selfish needs, while being forever disappointed with the other people in her life who didn't constantly provide "magic" for her.

With equally eccentric cousin Jimmy Donahue (Bruce Davison) as her only close companion growing up (they both pledge a pact to "get through life as quickly as possible"), Barbara's life became increasingly sheltered from the realities of life outside the realm of her wealth. On her 21st birthday, she inherited a third of F.W. Woolworth's estate, which her father had doubled with careful investment, netting her a personal fortune of almost 50 million dollars (which in today's money would be well over a billion dollars) back when there were very few millionaires in the world, and back when a million dollars really meant something. At 21, Barbara Hutton was one of the 2 or 3 richest women in the world.