Francis Alexander Shields
|
|
Francis Alexander Shields (16 May 1941 - 27 April 2003) was an aristocrat American Republican, important executive of Revlon in New York, and best known as the father of the actress Brooke Shields. He was born in New York City.
He was the eldest son of Francis Xavier Shields, a professional American tennis player and of the Italian Princess Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitella-Cessi, and through his mother he is a relative of such important and aristocratic Italian families like the Borgias, Medici, d'Este, di Savoia among others.
His uncle was Don Alessandro Torlonia, 5th Prince di Civitella-Cessi, the husband of the Spanish Infanta Beatrix of Bourbon-Battenberg, so his connection with King Juan Carlos of Spain sharing their cousins Torlonia-de Borbón.
He attended the Buckley School in Manhattan and St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, where he captained the crew that rowed in the Henley Royal Regatta in 1962. An avid sportsman, Shields never lost his love of rowing and founded the Power Ten New York, an organization dedicated to the sport, in 1980.
After starting his career on Wall Street, he moved to Palm Beach in 1988, forming a real-estate company. An avid hunter and fisherman, the 6-foot-5 inch Shields spent much of his free time at the camp he owned in rural west Florida, Canoe Creek.
He married firstly in 1964 (later divorced) the Californian Maria Theresia ("Teri") Schmon (better known as Brooke Shields manager like Terri Shields), and then he married again in 1970 to Diana ("Didi") Lippert, former wife of Gore Vidal's half-brother Thomas Gore Auchincloss. He had four daughters: Brooke Shields, Marina Shields, Olimpia Shields and Christina Shields.
He died in Palm Beach, Florida.
External links
- Torlonia genealogy (http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/torlonia.html)