LUCAS, Ohio: I was surprised to find the Doris Duke Trail at 917-acre Malabar Farm State Park.
The blue-blazed trail is short, a loop of about one mile through a 180-acre wooded tract at the state park near Mansfield in north-central Ohio. It winds past sandstone cliffs and outcroppings. It is a pretty little trail.
It starts not far from the country farmhouse, the Big House, where author and conservationist Louis Bromfield and his family once lived.
And that connection to Bromfield is why Duke, a colorful, independent-minded character and one of the richest women in the world, is memorialized in a small Ohio woodland in Richland County.
She used $60,000 of her own money to save Bromfield’s land from being timbered after his death in 1956. The woods were saved and given back to his daughters.
Duke had visited Malabar Farm in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Bromfield had visited Duke’s farms and properties. Some sources describe them as friends. Others say the two shared an intimate relationship for nearly a decade. The state park acknowledges a friendship.
Duke (1912-1993) was tall, athletic, curious and confident. She was twice married and twice divorced.
She was the daughter of tobacco-energy magnate James Duke and was hailed as the “richest little girl in the world” when she was born. She inherited $300 million and over her lifetime donated $400 million to charities. When she died, she left an estate of $1.2 billion.
She had homes in Newport, R.I.; Hawaii; New Jersey; Beverly Hills and New York City. She roamed the world, collected art and decorative projects and studied spiritual practices. She tried to avoid publicity.
She was a trained jazz pianist and studied dance under Martha Graham; competed in surfing and outrigger canoe races; and sang in a black church choir.
She kept two pet camels on her estate, 105-room Rough Point, in Newport, R.I. It was filled with museum-quality art and furnishings. She founded her own record company. She started the Newport Restoration Foundation to save the city’s 18th and 19th-century buildings.
She communed with African witch doctors and Indian mystics. She consulted psychics to communicate with her infant daughter who died in 1940. In 1985, she came to believe that a 32-year-old Hari Krishna devotee, Chandi Heffner, was the reincarnation of her dead daughter.
When Duke died, her estate was left to her butler.
She had a long list of lovers that included Gen. George Patton, actor Errol Flynn, Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and Alec Cunningham-Reid, a member of the British Parliament.
Bromfield (1896-1956) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for his novel Early Autumn. He authored 34 best-selling novels and books. He and his wife, Mary, had three daughters. She died in 1952.
He was an ambulance driver with the American Field Service in World War I and returned to be a reporter in New York City. His first novel, The Green Bay Tree, was published in 1924 and won instant acclaim.
In 1925, Bromfield, who was born in Mansfield, and his family left to vacation in France. They stayed for 13 years. His literary friends there included Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney.
In 1939, the family returned to the United States and he bought nearly 1,000 acres that became Malabar Farm. The dairy farm was his major passion for the rest of his life, and nearly all of his money from his writing was funneled into it.
He was a strong proponent of ecology and self-sustaining farming, and his farm was among the first to use very little pesticide. It was a test site for soil conservation practices.
His writing changed from fiction to nonfiction and his reputation and influence as a conservationist-farmer grew. He had his own radio show and traveled the lecture circuit frequently.
He also wrote screenplays. Bromfield enjoyed strong Hollywood and Broadway ties as filmmakers turned his novels into movies.
Many celebrities came to Malabar Farm: Tyrone Power, Carole Lombard, Kay Francis, Ann Harding, Jimmy Cagney, Joan Fontana, Shirley Temple, Dorothy Lamour, Myrna Loy, Fay Wray and Errol Flynn. He made them work on his farm.
In fact, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married in Bromfield’s Big House in 1945.
Bromfield had a bawdy sense of humor and a hot temper, loved scotch and his boxer dogs. He was charismatic and flamboyant, tall, rugged and handsome, called the “Sinatra of the soil.” Public television hailed him as the man who had it all, and his staff called him The Boss.
Bromfield and Duke met as equals, according to the book Too Rich: The Family Secrets of Doris Duke by Pony Duke (her godson and nephew) and Jason Thomas (Harper Collins, $25).
The two appeared to love each other, but Bromfield was reluctant to marry Duke after his wife died for fear that he would appear to be chasing her money. She spent significant money hiring doctors trying to find a cure to keep Bromfield alive, but he died of bone cancer.
After Bromfield’s death, the farm and its furnishings were sold to the Friends of the Land for $140,000. That group organized the Louis Bromfield Malabar Farm Foundation that managed the farm for 14 years. It was acquired by the state of Ohio in 1972. Summit County teachers and students spearheaded the grass-roots push for state ownership.
The big attraction at Malabar Farm is the 32-room Big House and the farm buildings with animals. The house is filled with antiques, art objects, 6,000 books and French furnishings.
Tours lasting 40 minutes are offered from May through October. The park is at 4050 Bromfield Road, Lucas, (park office) 419-892-2784, www.ohiostateparks.org and (reservations) 866-644-6727. It is about 75 minutes from Akron.
The park still has a bit of that Hollywood flair: Scenes from the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption were filmed at Malabar Farm. Much of the cult-favorite film was filmed in and around Mansfield.
The Pugh Cabin, seen in the opening scenes, is a day-use facility in the park, a log house built by the Jim Pugh family in the 1940s.
Across the street from the state park entrance is what’s left of the Shawshank Tree. The oak in the middle of a farm field off Pleasant Valley Road is on the Shawshank Trail, 12 stops in three counties that were featured in the movie. The oak is on private property and has lost major branches in recent years.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.