DIONNE QUINTUPLETS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27093, 30 May 1949, Page 5

DIONNE QUINTUPLETS

FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY ON SATURDAY

ALL VISITORS BANNED NZPA—Copyright Rec. 9 p.m. OTTAWA, May 28. The Dionne quintuplets, who won fame and fortune just' by being born, celebrated their fifteenth birthday quietly to-day. Their father. Mr Oliva Dionne, ordered the birthday to be just a family affair for the first time m the girls’ lives. In their 15 years they have been stared at by at least 1,500,000 people, and their father decided that for to-day all reporters, photographers, and curiosity seekers would be banned from the premises. A gay two-day party was planned on the 340-acre Dionne farm bought with part of the 1,500,000 dollars the girls have earned for posing for motion picture cameras and magazine advertisements. The five dark-haired sisters, Emile Cecile, Yvonne, Annette, and Marie, to-day received presents from all parts of the world, and probably will give them to charitable institu* tions, as in previous years. The sisters, who weighed a total of 101 b at birth, now are strapping girls, sft 2in in height’, and weigh about 1301 b each. They are taking their first year at high school classes along with handpicked class-mates in a private school conducted by Catholic nuns on the Dionne farm! The quintuplets are seldom permitted to' leave the farm, because when they do people still treat them as curiosities and make them feel uncomfortable.