Sale Of Ring Recalls Princess’s Story

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30144, 30 May 1963, Page 2

Sale Of Ring Recalls Princess’s Story

[By

SUSAN VAUGHAN]

LONDON.

The great auction houses of the world always have an air of nostalgia about them as personal possessions, full of memories, come under the hammer.

Next month, for example, Sotheby’s, in London, will sell a diamond ring, estimated to be worth more than £20,000, which belongs to Princess Dmitri Djordjadze.

This ring could indeed tell a tale. The princess is a legend of the twentieth century, the centre of a rags-to-riches story which it would be hard to excel. She was born Sylvia, the daughter of a London stablehand. and in her youth got a job as a chorus girl in a show called “Midnight Follies.” When she was 22 she married Lord Ashley, son and heir of the Earl of Shaftesbury, in spite of Lord Shaftesbury’s fierce opposition. The marriage was dissolved after five years and two years later Sylvia married Douglas Fairbanks, sen. This marriage caused as much of a stir as her first Fairbanks was not merely an actor. He was a millionaire! and he symbolised to the! world everything that the: magic name of Hollywood 1 stood for in those days. They made a handsome couple: the good-looking dashing Fairbanks; and Sylvia, intelligent, cosmopolitan, considered one of the loveliest of her time. When Fairbanks died in 1939: his wife was grief-stricken. '

After five years as a widow she was married to Lord Stanley of Alderley. This marriage lasted four years, after which Sylvia married another hero of the screen. Clark Gable.

Her fifth marriage was to Prince Djordjadze, a White Russian living in the United States. This marriage has also broken up. Today, Sylvia lives a quiet life in Florida. "I don’t care much for the social swim nowadays," she says. “I’d rather sit at home and watch television."

And what, at 59, has she learned as a result of her experience of life?

"There can be no marriage without true love.” she says. (All Rights Reserved.)