Lance Reventlow - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1959, Lance Reventlow visited the mother he barely knew at her new mansion in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She had just divorced her sixth husband. Reventlow confronted her over his upbringing, and after a heated argument, the two parted company. Already reluctantly in the media spotlight because of his mother and the family wealth, shortly after the confrontation with his mother, Reventlow married actress Jill St. John. The glamorous couple were the focus of much media attention and his racing team was much talked about for having built the first Formula One race car in America. Shifting operations overseas to Britain, Reventlow's team raced the Scarab cars in Formula One with little success against the new rear-engine race cars. Lance went back to the drawing board and built a very competitive prototype Scarab rear-engined car, but had become less interested in racing before its testing was complete. In 1962 he shut down the operation, leased the California facilities to Carroll Shelby, and quit auto racing altogether.

Reventlow's organization constructed a total of eight Scarabs during its existence. In a 1971 interview, Reventlow confirmed that three front-engined Chevy powered sports cars, three front-engined formula cars, one rear-engined formula car and one rear-engined sports car were built. Two of the front-engined formula cars were powered by Reventlow-commissioned engines drawn up by American racing engine designer Leo Goossen to Reventlow's specifications, while the third car was powered by a Goossen designed and engineered Offenhauser engine. The rear-engined formula was powered by a modified Buick powerplant; this engine and the suspension/brake package were taken from this car and used on the rear-engined sports car, the last Scarab built.

Reventlow's marriage to Jill St. John ended in divorce in 1963. In 1964, he married ex-Mouseketeer Cheryl Holdridge, introduced to him by close friend, singer Jimmy Boyd. The couple mostly remained out of the glare of publicity for several years. An avid Alpine skier, hiker, sailor and pilot, Reventlow maintained a home in Aspen, Colorado. It was there in 1972 while looking at an area to build a ski resort with real estate brokers, that, according to the NTSB report, Reventlow was a passenger in a Cessna 206. Although Reventlow was a fully rated instrument, multi-engine, commercial pilot with thousands of hours, the Cessna pilot was an inexperienced 27-year-old student pilot who flew into a blind canyon and stalled the aircraft while trying to turn around. The small plane plunged to the ground, killing Lance Reventlow and the others aboard. Cary Grant took some of Lance's closest friends along with him in his plane to Aspen for Reventlow's memorial service, given by his widow Cheryl. His widow later married Manning J. Post, a major figure in the Democratic Party in California.