SHEIK MYTH EXPLODED

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 June 1936, Page 5

SHEIK MYTH EXPLODED

DESERT LOVE GROWS COLD. LOS ANGELES, April 28. Arabian sheiks, contrary to motionpicture portrayals, arc 1 not the world’s great lovers —and certainly not the world's best, husbands. Frances Allison, New Jersey heiress, who married a desert sheik, described three years of torture and cruelty with him which shattered all sentimental illusions about these glamorous figures of the burning sands when she announced at h. 1 ." Hollywood hotel that she intended leaving shortly for Arabia to obtain a divorce.

Miss Allison became the wife of Khalii Ben Ibrahime ’el Raoif, a Saudi Arab, in a Bagdad mosque in an attempt to prove her theory that inforracialism and ini cr-rcligionism are practica!.

But in:.: of proving her theory the New Jersey wife of an Arabian sheik declares she was poisoned bv her husband’s people, stoned by her retainers, robbed by his relatives, beaten into insensibility by his servants and deserted three times by her turbaned spouse. Despite her stonings and other physical cruelties which her sheik husban/1 permitted, she says she is happy and expects to live the rest of her life in the desert.

“And please, may I say that Arabian sheiks do not have harems or any of the other phases of life attributed to them in motion pictures,” she explained. "The people are fine. I sav that, and include my husband, despite the things that have happened to mo.” When she leaves Hollywood Miss Allison will take with her to Arabia a curious document written in Arabic. This gives her the right to ask for and obtain a Moslem divorce. Miss Allison was married twice before she joined the desert sheik. She is the daughter of the late William G. Allison, New' Jc-rs-ey publisher and banker, who loft his entire estate to a fuiul for beautifying ihe Palisades in Now York. ,