Francis Alexander Shields, Junior., also known as Frank Shields, was an American businessman and an executive at Revlon in New York, best known as the father of the actress Brooke Shields.
Background
Shields was born in New York City, the eldest son of Francis Xavier Alexander Senior, a top-ranking American tennis player, and Italian Princess Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi. His mother"s family is descended from several Italian princely families (most notably Borgia, Medici, d"Este, di Savoia).
Education
University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Francis Alexander Shields
Marina Shields (born 1943)
Before their eventual divorce, Shields and Mortimer had three children together: Alston Shields, William Xavier Orin Hunt Shields, and Katharine Shields, all half-siblings to Frank Shields. An avid sportsman, Shields never lost his love of rowing and founded the Power Ten New York, an organization dedicated to the sport, in 1980. Shields started his career on Wall Street, working for Loeb Rhoades, after which he moved into sales and marketing for Revlon, Estee Lauder and Handy Associates, an executive recruit firm in New York City.
In 1989, Shields and his family moved to Palm Beach, Florida, where he formed his own real estate firm, Frank Shields Associates.
Together with Didi, Shields had three daughters:
Marina Shields, who married Thomas West. Purcell (former co-Chief Information Officer of Viking Global Investors) in 1997Thomas William Purcell III
Marina Torlonia Purcell
Olympia Torlonia Shields
Christina Torlonia Shields
An avid hunter and fisherman, Shields spent much of his free time at the camp he owned in rural west Florida, Canoe Creek. In 2003, Shields died in Palm Beach, Florida, of prostate cancer at the age of 61.
Membership
He attended the Buckley School in Manhattan and Saint Paul"s School in Concord, New Hampshire, before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, where he captained the crew that rowed in the Henley Royal Regatta in 1962 and was a member of Saint Anthony Hall.