Helen Hope Montgomery Scott

Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (April 8, 1904 – January 9, 1995)[1] was a socialite and philanthropist who Vanity Fair labeled "the unofficial queen of Philadelphia's WASP oligarchy."

[2] Scott was a longtime chairman and executive director of the Devon Horse Show and sponsored other events to raise money for the Bryn Mawr Hospital, her favorite charity.

Scott became famous for hosting lavish parties at Ardrossan, the Montgomerys' 750-acre (3.0 km2) estate in Radnor, Pennsylvania, where she entertained notables of society, government, and the arts, including W. Averell Harriman, Cole Porter, and Katharine Hepburn.

Her son, Robert Montgomery Scott was also a philanthropist, and after a long legal career served as president of the Academy of Music, and even more visibly, the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The newlyweds moved into Orchard Lodge, a circa 1720 fieldstone house given to Scott by her father as a wedding present, which is on the Ardrossan estate in Radnor Township.

In addition to acquiring right-of-way for its rail lines, the railroad also purchased farmland for suburban development and marketed properties as vacation homes, allowing Philadelphia's wealthy urbanites to escape the city's notoriously humid summers.

Wealthy Philadelphians purchased nearby farms, and upon hiring leading architects such as Horace Trumbauer and Frank Furness to design mansions, created a facsimile of aristocratic English country life.

Upon becoming wealthy (as a result of his firm's handling the financing and initial public offering of the Baldwin Locomotive Works), he acquired several adjacent farms on the Main Line and developed them in 1909, naming the property Ardrossan.

Her insouciance was to make her indirectly responsible for James Stewart's only Oscar, Katharine Hepburn's development into a major film star, and it is said, the popularity of "Tracy" as a girl's first name.

The result was The Philadelphia Story, a comedy of manners about a tabloid's invasion of a society girl's second wedding, which appeared on Broadway in 1939 starring Katharine Hepburn.

The motion-picture rights were purchased by Hepburn's then-paramour, Howard Hughes, and her reprise of the role in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film is said to have jump-started her stalled movie career.

A principal organizer of the Devon Horse Show after the Second World War, Scott was elected chairman and executive director of the annual event, which raises money to support the Bryn Mawr Hospital.