WORLD’S RICHEST GIRL

Evening Star, Issue 22085, 19 July 1935, Page 9

WORLD’S RICHEST GIRL

COULD NOT BUY LOVE She lay basking on the strip of hot sand fringing the calm, blue waters of the Lido, the strip which is the preserve for the patrons of the opulent Excelsior Hotel. Even in bathing costume she looked incredibly expensive. It may have been her exquisitely groomed and tended hair—it requires money. and a highly-paid French maid to have hair like that. Or it may have been her sunbathing suit, obviously from the highest-priced Paris shop. It may have been her large, jewelled ■ earrings, or the flat, jewel-encrusted platinum bracelets she wore on her arm, or the long, solid gold diamond-mono-grammed case from which she drew a, flat Egyptian cigarette (writes Michael Borisotf in the Melbourne ‘Argus’).

My friend, who knew Princess Mdivani (formerly Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, who had just married Prince Alexis Mdivani), sighed: “Ah, me! I?ifty million dollars worth of love. I wonder if it is a marriage that will stand the test of time.”

I then made the wager which I have now lost. I said: “ You’re a pessimist. I know these Mdivani boys are always in and out of divorce courts, but this marriage of Alexis and Barbara Hutton may last. They may find something in common—enough, anyway, to keep them together and make their marriage a success. Why not?” But my friend shook her head and laughed. “ I bet you a fiver they’re arranging a divorce by this time next yeari” I covered the bet and' I have lost. Princess Mdivani has divorced her husband and has married Count Haugwitz Reventlow, a Danish nobleman. .

I had not then met Princess Mdiyani more than half a dozen times, and then only casually. She seemed to me to be a contentedlooking girl, very generously ornamented, even to the finger-nails, lacquered black and silver. Alexis Mdivani, divorced in 1932 from Louise Van Alen, of the multi-millionaire Astor family, also looked very well satisfied with life and himself. Why not? Barbara Hutton had fallen in love with Alexis, and he could give' her the title of princess—a Georgian title—if that—but, still, the title of princess is worth having. When Alexis became the husband of one of the world’s richest girls, a chic, pretty, highly ornamental, and very generous dollar princess, his wife, besides bestowing on him a handsome marriage settlement, presented him with a string of valuable polo ponies, and celebrated the wedding festivities which she herself announced would cost at least £20,000. VAST FORTUNE FROM PENNIES. Whence came that £10,000,000 which enabled Barbara' Hutton to gratify her every whim, to pay 1,000,000 francs in Paris for a black pearl ring, 10,000,000 francs for a pearl necklace, and to adopt a general money-no-obiect attitude toward life? It came from the five and ten cent stores in the United States, from the pennies of the people, and especially the girls and women who throng the Wool worth stores, buying. The growth of the American fixedprice chain store business may. be

gauged by reference to the growth of the British off-shoot —a _ minor concern compared with its giant American parent. Begun in 1909 with a capital of £IOO,-500, the British enterprise grew in size and prosperity until, when the American interests wanted to sell out in 1931, the business could be conservatively capitalised and sold to the eager public for the colossal sum of £35,000.000, each of the 5s shares being offered at 40s. The people who eagerly bought the business offered them for cash did wonderfully well. The market value is now more than £8Q,000,000. The ordinary shares have risen to more than £5 a piece. The business last year made £4,879,950, paid an 80 per cent, dividend and carried -forward more than £5,000,000 cash. The American Wool worth business is five times the size of the British business.

But the cynic who said that money is the most important thing in the world was not quite right. The Woolworth heiress and her Georgian prince had, one would have thought, everything. But they found that they had so little that, after less than two years together, the marriage has been dissolved. The former Barbara Hutton, who spent so lavishly on the man she loved, travelled the well-worn trail to Reno, in the easy-divorce State of Nevada. NO REAL HOME. Barbara Hutton had no real home. That was one of her disadvantages. Always on the move from one playground to another, she had no roots anywhere. “ A ship that passes in the night,” sighed a sentimental woman, having said good-bye to the little dollar princess, wrapped in sables, as she prepared to go down the gangplank at the docks at New York. “ You mean a diamond bracelet that flits from hotel to hotel,” retorted a ship’s reporter. He was nearer the mark. Now she would he on her wav to San Francisco ; now riding a rickshaw through the sun-bathed, dusty streets of old Peking. Then she was on her way to the West Indies.

Not long after she was in the Rita in Paris, giving orders for the transformation of its foyer into a Montmartre street, summoning out-of-sea-son delicacies by air from all parts for hundreds of guests, waving the magic wand of money and getting—for a fee of £2,000 —Jack Harris’s band by air from the Cafe de Paris, London, for she preferred it to any band in Paris. Then away again, her dainty shoes tripping across the old cobbled streets trod by the Medici in Venice. Curly-headed gondoliers propelled her private barge under the moon on the Grand Canal, while a troubadour sang sweetly, because the dollar princess tipper! in a princely way—and, besides, she had lovely eyes. But did he sing to her eyes or to her money? That question is symbolic of the misgivings that must besot Barbara Hutton throughout her life.