Anne Moen Bullitt

Anne Moen Bullitt (February 24, 1924 – August 18, 2007) was an American socialite, philanthropist, and equine breeder.

Life Anne Moen Bullitt was born 24 February 1924 in Paris, France. Bullitt's mother was Louise Bryant, a journalist, the lover of playwright Eugene O'Neill, and wife of John Reed, the American journalist with whom Bryant covered the Russian Revolution. (Bryant and Reed are portrayed in the Warren Beatty film, Reds.) Her father was a wealthy diplomat William C. Bullitt Jr., who had been in Russia at the time of the founding of the Soviet Union, as an unofficial observer for President Woodrow Wilson. The pair married in 1924, four years after Reed died of typhus in the Soviet Union, weeks before Anne Moen's birth. Anne's middle name came from her maternal grandfather, Hugh Mohan, an Irish American, but her father changed the spelling to sound more refined.

Bullitt had almost no contact with her mother, as her father had divorced her when Anne was an infant, claiming Bryant was an alcoholic and unfit mother. Accounts state young Anne followed her father everywhere, including on his diplomatic missions, and that he allowed her to hide, and listen, when he had meetings with other VIPs. Her mother died in 1936 when her daughter was 12.

By the time Bullitt had graduated from the Foxcroft School and made her society debut in 1941 at her father's Gwynedd Valley estate, she had crossed the Atlantic thirty-two times and lived abroad in London, Moscow, and Paris. She had appeared in newspaper photographs standing beside her diplomat father since early childhood, inserting her personal affairs to public scrutiny. When Bullitt suddenly married Staff Sargent Casper W. B. Townsend in 1944 without her father's presence, her union prompted discussion among the European elite. The marriage lasted for a short time. Her next husband was perceived as more suitable, and certain newspapers extensively reported on the society union of Bullitt and heir to millions, Nicholas Biddle. When the couple began to mix with prominent international horseracing figures, Bullitt met her third husband, Roderic O'Ferrall, whose family owned one of Ireland's most famous stud farms. The two wed in 1955. In an effort to leave her third marriage, Bullitt bought her own Irish estate and stud farm, Palmerstown House. She became the first woman in Ireland to be awarded a trainer's license.

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