Behind the Façade: The Dark Descent of Barbara Daly Baekeland and her Son

Oct 16, 2024
6 min read

Vintage collage of Barbara Daly Baekeland, her son, and a baby amid newspaper headlines, with a guitar-playing man in the background

Barbara Daly Baekeland’s life seemed like something out of a glamorous movie in the 1940s. She had it all: stunning beauty, a prominent marriage, and a place among New York’s elite. Married to Brooks Baekeland, the grandson of Leo Baekeland (who invented Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic) Barbara was a socialite who graced the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. But behind the glamorous façade, Barbara’s life was deeply troubled, marred by mental illness, dysfunctional relationships, and ultimately, tragedy.

Leo Baekeland, the Belgian chemist who had emigrated to the United States in 1889, invented Bakelite in 1907. It was the world's first fully synthetic plastic, a hard, heat-resistant material that could be moulded into almost any shape and didn't conduct electricity, making it ideal for everything from electrical insulators to telephones, radios, and jewellery. By the time Barbara married into the family in 1942, the Baekeland name was synonymous with one of the defining materials of the 20th century. The fortune it generated was substantial, and the expectation of ease and entitlement that came with it was, as this story makes clear, anything but straightforward to live inside.

A Promising Start

Barbara was born in 1922 into a life of wealth, though it didn’t come without hardship. When she was just 10, her father, Frank Daly, committed suicide in 1932. He made it look like an accident so his family could claim the insurance money, which would keep them financially stable through the tough times of the Great Depression. This early exposure to loss and deception left a mark on Barbara. Her mother, Nini Daly, had already been through a mental breakdown years before Barbara was born, and it seemed that mental illness ran in the family. This dark history would follow Barbara throughout her life.

Despite the turmoil in her family, Barbara was a star in New York society. Known for her striking beauty, she became one of the most admired socialites in the city. She found her way into the fashion world, modelling for top magazines and earning a reputation as one of New York’s most beautiful women.

The Marriage to Brooks Baekeland

In 1942, Barbara married Brooks Baekeland, a wealthy, handsome, and charming man from one of the most prominent families in America. His grandfather, Leo Baekeland, had made a fortune from Bakelite, revolutionising the plastics industry. Barbara, with her beauty and Brooks with his family's wealth, seemed like the perfect couple. But their marriage was built on shaky ground from the start. Barbara had tricked Brooks into marrying her by claiming she was pregnant when she wasn't. The deception worked, but it established a dynamic of manipulation and dishonesty that ran through the marriage from the beginning. Once they were married, the cracks started to show almost immediately.

In 1946, they had a son, Antony "Tony" Baekeland. From the beginning, Tony was the centre of Barbara's world. She doted on him obsessively, and the Baekelands portrayed Tony as a brilliant, charming child. But Tony's relationship with his parents, particularly with his mother, would become more complicated and troubling over time.

A woman in a wide-brimmed hat and a man in a suit smile at each other while holding drinks. The setting is a vintage-style scene. — Barbara and Brooks

A Family in Crisis

The Baekeland family may have looked glamorous from the outside, but inside, things were far from perfect. The family lived a peripatetic jet-set life, moving between New York, Paris, Spain, and London, surrounded by artists, writers, and socialites. Tony grew up in this world of wealth and instability, increasingly struggling with his identity and mental health.

When Tony came out as gay, it collided violently with what Barbara wanted for him. Her response was not acceptance but a determined, increasingly desperate attempt to change him. She hired prostitutes to sleep with him, hoping to alter his sexual orientation. When that didn't work, she reportedly went further, suggesting at various points that she could 'cure' him herself. Her psychiatrist and close friends had warned Barbara repeatedly that Tony's behaviour was becoming dangerous and that she should distance herself from him. She refused. The co-dependent dynamic between them only deepened.

Meanwhile, Barbara's marriage to Brooks was disintegrating. Brooks had an affair with one of Tony's female friends, which was the final blow to an already fractured relationship. By the mid-1960s, the couple divorced, and Brooks moved on, eventually fathering another child with a new wife, Sylvie. Barbara and Tony were left to fend for themselves.

Black and white photo of a woman with curled hair and a neutral expression. Patterned background with geometric designs adds contrast.

Barbara's Obsession and the Move to London

After the divorce, Barbara and Tony moved to London, where their already fraught relationship spiralled into something toxic and unhealthy. Barbara's fixation on her son's sexuality deepened, and her mental health continued to decline. She even went so far as to suggest that she could 'cure' Tony by sleeping with him herself, a disturbing and shocking reflection of her emotional instability.

This unhealthy dynamic took a severe toll on Tony, who began to unravel under the pressure. The co-dependent relationship between mother and son became increasingly volatile, and Tony's behaviour became more erratic. In the years before the murder, he had attacked her on at least one previous occasion, threatened her with knives, and tried to push her in front of cars. Barbara's psychiatrist told her directly that Tony intended to kill her. She stayed.

The Murder

By 1972, things had reached a breaking point. On November 17, 1972, in their Chelsea penthouse at Cadogan Square, Tony stabbed Barbara to death with a kitchen knife. She was 50 years old. When the police arrived, Tony was found apparently calm, in the middle of ordering Chinese food, seemingly detached from the reality of what had just happened. He later told police he had killed her to save her from descending into madness.

Tony was arrested and charged with murder. At the Old Bailey in June 1973, he pleaded diminished responsibility on the grounds of diagnosed schizophrenia. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, and Tony was committed indefinitely to Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric facility in Berkshire. By some accounts he seemed content there, working in the handicrafts shop and welcoming visitors. His grandmother Nini Daly visited regularly. A note in his hospital file, quoted in Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson's 1985 book Savage Grace, read: "She seems less disturbed by her daughter's death than by the fact that her dear little Tony is in trouble. She seems just as mad as the rest of the family."

The Release and the Attack on Nini

Tony's release from Broadmoor came in July 1980, following a campaign led by a group of supporters including the Honourable Hugo Money-Coutts, whose family controlled London's exclusive Coutts Bank, and whose influence reached as far as the US Secretary of State. Brooks Baekeland opposed the release. He had received threatening letters from Tony during his time in Broadmoor, some of which threatened to murder his new wife. Tony had also used his time in the handicrafts workshop to make a series of toys for Brooks's new baby, which were described as so grotesque and macabre that Brooks had to throw them away immediately.

Tony was released on condition that he be repatriated to the United States. He went to live in New York with his 87-year-old grandmother, Nini Daly. Six days later, on July 27, 1980, he attacked her with a knife, just as he had attacked his mother. She survived. Tony was sent to Rikers Island to await trial for attempted murder. He never stood trial. On July 27, 1981, the day of his scheduled court appearance, he was found dead in his prison cell. He had suffocated himself with a plastic bag. He was 36 years old.

His father Brooks later wrote a bitter epitaph: "an enormous failure of intelligence."

Savage Grace: The Book and the Film

The definitive account of the Baekeland story came in 1985 with Savage Grace, a book by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson. Constructed almost entirely from oral histories, letters, and interviews, it documented the family's disintegration across four decades with meticulous, sometimes harrowing detail. In 2007, it was adapted into a film directed by Tom Kalin, with Julianne Moore as Barbara and Eddie Redmayne as Tony.

The film premiered at Cannes, was shown at Sundance and the London Film Festival, and received mixed reviews for its unflinching portrayal of incest, mental illness, and privilege. Karl Lagerfeld designed one of Barbara's gowns specifically for the film after hearing Julianne Moore was starring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQgE8-2jYOE

Samuel Adams Green, one of the Baekelands' real-life friends portrayed in the film, later wrote publicly that several elements were factually inaccurate, including a key scene that the filmmakers had used to dramatise the nature of Barbara and Tony's relationship. The book, by contrast, remains the authoritative record.

A Legacy of Dysfunction

The story of Barbara Daly Baekeland and her son Tony is a haunting reminder of how wealth and privilege cannot protect against deep-seated mental illness and family dysfunction. Barbara, once a stunning socialite who had the world at her feet, became a figure trapped by her own obsessions. Her refusal to heed repeated warnings about Tony's violence, and her inability to create any kind of distance between herself and her son, made the outcome almost inevitable. Brooks Baekeland, who outlived both of them, never publicly expressed anything resembling guilt. He had, after all, left long before the end.