“FORTUNE HUNTRESS”

Southland Times, Issue 25385, 12 September 1935, Page 14

“FORTUNE HUNTRESS”

COUNTESS IN AMERICA. MARRIAGE TO WEALTHY MAN. Allegations that a wealthy young man had been tricked into marriage by a beautiful countess, so that she could have enough money to live in luxury, were made in an astounding case in the New York courts recently The charges against the woman were made by Special Referee Ralph Fay, when he granted a petition by Clendenn Ryan jun., for the annulment of his marriage to Countess Marie-Ann Wurmbrand-Stuppach. Referee Fay branded the woman as a “fortune huntress” and declared that she had played the principal part in a plot to secure a rich husband, aided by her mother and her sweetheart, Count Vladimir Mittrowsky, with whom she remained deeply in love. Fay based his decison largely on reports of private detectives employed by Ryan to delve into the young bride’s past. According to these Marie posed as a naive, inexperienced girl from a wealthy family of high social standing Con-vent-bn-d, she had never even been alone with a man before, and, deeply in love with Ryan, she intended to help him in his career and be the mother of his children

Actually declared Referee Fay, Marie was a penniless, but worldly beauty. Twice previously she had been engaged, and each time she had been bought off with money Her family, he added, were neither wealthy nor reputable, and her mother financed Marie’s trip to the United States to seek a wealthy husband by virtually forming a company and selling shares. Ryan heir to a £2,000,000 fortune and employed on the secretarial staff of the Mayor of New York, in his efforts to obtain annulment of the marriage, spent huge sums of money. The hiring of detectives, legal fees, and the settlement of £7OOO on Marie cost him £40,000 They were married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, in February last year, and after the ceremony, Ryan declared, Marie took the wedding presents given to him by his friends back to a jeweller’s shop and had the money refunded. With it, he alleged, she bought an expensive jewelled wrist-watch for Count Mittrowsky. Engraved on it in German were the words, “I am with you every hour” Ryan added that Marie’s attitude toward marriage was contemptuous and she showed no interest in his wok and no intention of becoming an American citizen or the mother of his children. “Gold Digging.” Justice Salvatore Cotillo of the Supreme Court, in confirming the annulment of the marriage, described it as another case of “international golddigging” In the course of his judgment, he made a slashing attack on marriages which involved American money and European titles “The records of our courts and the public press,” he declared, “afford ample proof that alliances between Americans of either sex and titled foreigners almost invariably end in disaster. “Great publicity has recently been given to the affairs of one of our American heiresses who contracted a marriage with one member of the ‘foreign nobility’—a prince—and within a short time applied to the divorce court at Reno to dissolve that alliance in order that she might immediately contract a second of the same kind. “She did not permit the ink to become dry on the divorce papers before her second foreign entanglement arrived on board ship and a second marriage was immediately entered into.”