CHILDREN WHO WILL BE MILLIONAIRES

Southland Times, Issue 22993, 12 September 1936, Page 13

CHILDREN WHO WILL BE MILLIONAIRES

Wealth That Does Not Always Mean Happiness

BY

ROBERT READE

13,7 HAT is She effect on a child to *» be rich and powerful, and even famous in his own right? That is a fairly extensive modem problem, for there are many children to-day who are wealthy either by inheritance or their own earnings on the screen or in the concert hall. To judge from the case of that poor rich little girl, Gloria Vanderbilt, the violin prodigy, Ruggiero Ricci, and the young movie star, Freddy Bartholomew, or Little Lord Fauntleroy, as he has become known to millions, it means that the child will be the centre of legal battles and will have a precocious acquaintance with lawsuits and intense family feuds and squabbles. No child specialist would recommend for any child the pomp and splendour with which the grandson of the Nizam of Hyderabad is certain to be surrounded. He is potentially the richest little boy in the world, for his grandfather is the world’s richest man with a fortune estimated at £400,000,000. The Nizam is said to possess precious jewels to the value of £100,000,000. He has a state coach of solid gold and owns 300 motor cars. Last year Fascha Begum, who ranks number one of his four wives, made a pilgrimage to Mecca at the cost of £2,000,000, and carried with her, as she crossed the desert by camel train, her own private electric light plant. The grandson of the Hyderabad billions, bom not with a silver- but with a diamond-encrusted spoon in his mouth, has 24 private detectives, 12 from France and 12 from England, to guard him in his cradle. When he grows old enough to make a tour of his grandfather’s dominions, he will have hundreds of servants and courtiers around him. It is impossible for a child like that to grow up without being publicity conscious. When one thinks of the guards that surround him, it is impossible not to pity the Lindbergh baby number two, or the recent infant son of Barbara Hutton, the Wool worth heiress, ex-Princess Mdvani and now Countess Haugwitz Reventlow, of Hardenberg, Denmark. At the age of five, Barbara inherited £5,200,000 and immediately became a poor rich little girl whose property the the courts had to look after. At the age of six, she was given an income of £l5OO a year, and at sixteen an income of £12,000. This later was made £BO,OOO and, at the age of twenty-one, she secured control of a fortune of £8,000,000. It is said that her wealth has been considerably diminished by her extravagances, matrimonial and otherwise. She is still rich enough, however, to establish what is perhaps a world record in the matter of bringing a child into the world. The birth of her son a few months ago entailed an expense of £121,000, a fee of £l2OO to the doctor and a £120,000 gift to the London hospital in which he was born. An unemployed Englishman sent a ransom note that was almost an insult to the Hutton millions, for it demanded only £2OO. It might be thought that this wealthy household would not have hesitated a minute in paying a trifling amount like that. On the contrary, a trap was laid. The would-be kidnapper was apprehended and sent to prison. At present, little Count Haugwitz Reventlow, who, enjoying the peculiar prerogative of his father’s family in Denmark, though not of royal blood, will have the right to wear a prince’s crown, is too young to be conscious of the covetous eyes cast upon him, of the kidnap perils around him, and of the prospect of his personality being warped and marred by great wealth. And' it is too early to say that he will never be the storm centre of litigation. Legal Squabbles Diana Duff Frazier is an American who was left £1,000,000 by her maternal grandmother. The will stipulated that the parent with whom the child resided should have the right to spend the income. The result was a long series of court battles between her father and mother for the right to have sole control of little Diana. Each endeavoured to prove the unfitness of the other to ( act as guardian. ( The mother, on the whole, had the ( best of the legal disputes, but her father, dying, endeavoured to have the last word in the quarrel by willing his own ; fortune to his daughter on condition that she should not reside with her mother. Diana is now fourteen and the 1 courts have ordered that the fortune be . held in trust for her until she is of age, ] and in the meantime her mother re- j ceives an allowance which is far short . of the annual income. Somewhat similar are the misfor- ; tunes of another poor rich American ; girl, Lucette Thomas, who is now eleven 1 years of age. She inherited, at the age of five, from her father and grandfather ] a fortune of the same size as Diana ] Frazier’s, namely, £1,000,000. The courts ; as usual, had to decide just how much ■ a five-year-old girl needs for frocks , and dolls. The decision at first was that ( the mother ought to be able to bring up the child on £6OO a month, but the 1 court yielding to further pleadings now ] allows £9OOO a year. ] Another rich infant who got into the ( law courts before he could even crawl j out of his crib is the infant son of ] Libby Holman Reynolds, born six < months after the death of his father, j whom his mother was accused of mur- I dering. Though she was vindicated of j that charge, she was not spared un- , pleasant litigation over the disposition 3 of a £3,000,000 estate. Nearly a million . pounds was settled on the child, and it ] is now a ward of the court and one more ■, instance of the fact that a silver spoon < may leave an unpleasant taste in the ] mouth.

Doris Duke, who is now 23 years old, was, when she was a minor, famous as the world’s richest little girl. But there was no family unpleasantness in that situation. It is true that she did launch a lawsuit against her mother, but it was a friendly suit to protect their mutual interests. Her mother will supervise her immense fortune until she is 35 years of age. The relations of Doris Duke and her mother have been in sharp contrast to the revelations when the grandmother and mother and aunt went to court over the custody and control of little ten-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt and her fortune of £BOO,OOO. That was a family row if ever there was one. The grandmother, Mrs Helen Morgan, alleged that her own daughter was by reason of her gay life in Paris and various European resorts not a fit and proper person to train and educate her granddaughter. In fact, she maintained that the mother spent so much time at lively all-night parties that Gloria, despite her wealth, was a sad and neglected orphan. One of her daughters, Mrs Harry Payne Whitney, took her mother’s side in this litigation.

Three courts, the New York Supreme Court, the New York Appellate Division, and the United States Supreme Court heard Mrs Vanderbilt’s plea to gain complete custody of her child and refused to review the decree of the New York Court that Gloria would have a more healthy and normal life in the home of her grandmother. One of the Court’s findings was that a ten-year-old girl, even if she is a Vanderbilt, does not need to spend roughly a thousand pounds a year on cigarettes and champagne. That was one of the expenditures which the mother made out of £9600 a year received from the estate to care for the child. Still, a liberal allowance was granted for the week-ends which Gloria spends with her mother. Hotel expenses £4, flowers £l. For those two days a chauffeur and limousine cost £lO and private detectives £9. As Gloria bathes on the beach of her mother’s Long Island home, a speed boat equipped with a machine-gun patrols the shore. It is a most unusual kind of life she leads, even though the court has endeavoured to contrive for her a normal existence for a girl of her years. Commuting between two households at daggers drawn, she is still in the midst of an atmosphere electric with family discord. Shirley Can’t Have Everything If you compare the case of Shirley Temple, you are forced to the conclusion that it is far better for a child to be rich and famous by reason of talent than by birth and the notoriety of a sensational court case. Her wealth has not caused discord and litigation in her family. Her father and mother have had no law-suits over the management of her income. Her father, George Temple, still keeps his employment in the California Bank but has been promoted from cashier to branch manager. And the branch of which he is in charge has had a phennomenal increase in the number of children’s savings accounts. Her mother still devotes her whole time to her daughter and her household. The family does not live in a palace like many other Hollywood celebrities, but in a ten-roomed house in a far from expensive district. Shirley’s two brothers, Jack aged 20, and George aged 17, have not become permanently unemployed and gilded young men about town as the result of their little sister’s leading all the Hollywood stars in box office appeal, and making, from her four pictures a year, a net profit of about £BOO,OOO for the film company. Her brothers are hardworking students, Jack at Leland Stanford University and George at the New Mexico Military Institute. Shirley is a far richer little girl in

the point of income than Gloria Vanderbilt. Her income is estimated to be £BO,OOO a year, and all of it earned by herself although she is only seven years of age. She is also, it would seem, a far hap- . pier little girl than the Vanderbilt heiress. The term “poor rich girl” cannot properly be applied to her. If she at all deserves pity, it is only for the smallness of her spending money which is less than £1 a week. Young as she is, she has not been able to keep out of the law courts. There is nothing unprecedented in the action of the Ontario Government in not placing the income of the Dionne quintuplets at the disposal of the parents. In the United States, in the case of child prodigies, it seems to be the usual thing for the State to step in between parents and child for the protection of the child. Simple Home Life Although Shirley’s father and mother regulate her bed-time and meal-time and spankings, if any, her financial

affairs are supervised by the Probate Court of California, and she was recently photographed in company with a High Court judge looking over her latest contract to which he had just affixed his signature, on her behalf. From all reports, Shirley Temple’s home life is a very simple and charming one. She is said to be utterly unspoiled. She obeys her mother, although she might be thought to have some right to order her about. The child’s mother is paid £lOO a week for looking after her. Shirley lives on an exact schedule. She rises every morning at 7 o’clock sharp. The studio “lot” is her schoolroom as well as dressing-room. Every day she spends three hours at her studies and three hours before the camera. She ceases work at 5.30. It is far from true that her every whim is gratified. Like other little girls, she writes Santa Claus a letter requesting things which are beyond her means. Last year she asked for a small mechanical motor car, although she has a sixteencylinder car to drive her to and from work. Rich as she is, she did not get

the mechanical toy. She does not, however, lack toys. She has a doll from every country in the world, each of them dressed in a national costume. She also keeps rabbits and has a flock of chickens. Shirley Temple has shown as yet no unhappiness on account of work, although she has to shed tears in some of her scenes. Some of the work she has to do is extremely exacting and might well cause an adult to become flustered. The magazine Time records her extraordinary control and co-ordination of voice and movements in a difficult scene in “Captain January.” She has to walk down a 45-foot winding staircase leading from a lighthouse and at each step sing a verse from a song and do a dance step, changing from a two to a three-tap. A camera attached to a crane moved beside her to catch a line at each turn of the stairs. This required the most absolute timing on her part so that her lines and dance steps came in exactly at the turns. But little Shirley Temple performed perfectly this feat of synchronization which many an experienced adult actor might have bungled.

Musical Prodigies Jackie Coogan, now 22 years old, was in his days of short trousers the world’s most famous child actor, but there was no family litigation to add to his fame. The question of the control of his wealth was amicably settled. His fortune, which is estimated at more than £200,000, is invested in Jackie Coogan Incorporated, a company managed by his mother and Arthur Bernstein. Jackie Coogan is studying law. Those violin prodigies, Ruggiero Ricci and his younger brother, Giorgio, are the sons of Pietro Ricci, of New York, and were pupils of Louis Persinger, a violin instructor in San Francisco, who was also the instructor of another violin prodigy, the famous Yehudi Menuhin. The children from their first appearance were hailed as musical geniuses, but the father was too poor to give them the necessary training and attention. He was accordingly delighted at the interest Miss Elizabeth Lackey, assistant to Louis Persinger, manifested in his remarkable offspring, and readily consented to have her appointed their guardian by a California court. She was to have 50 per cent, of their earnings until they became of age. The arrangement was satisfactory until Miss Lackey secured concert engagements for Ruggiero at £5OO a concert. He played with the New York Philharmonic Symphony and gave a solo performance in Queen’s Hall, London, for a fee of £lOOO. Giorgio, two years his junior, earned £760 in two engagements. Then Pietro Ricci declared that owing to his unfamiliarity with the English language, he had not understood the contract he had signed with Miss Lackey. He secured a writ of habeas corpus ordering the guardian to produce the children in court. There were several habeas corpus proceedings and long drawn-out litigation which drew public attention to the difficult problem of the control of wealth earned by child prodigies.

Returned to Parents A Chicago citizen, Frederick H. Bartlett, came to the help of the Ricci family and offered to finance the education of the two boys if Miss Lackey’s guardianship were terminated. Finally a short time ago Justice Valente, of the New York Supreme Court, ordered the children to be removed from the control of Miss Lackey and the California Court and returned to the custody of their parents. Yehudi Menuhin is now 19 years old and his father travels with him wherever he goes. Another musical prodigy who has expert and affectionate paternal care and is litigation-free, is the eleven-year-old pianist, Ruth Slenczynski, another product wf California. Her father is a Polish violinist and a competent director of her musical and financial affairs. It does not always follow that judges of the law necessarily become the arbiters of the destiny of musical prodigies. But it may be that Ruth and Yehudi Menuhin are only the exceptions that prove tire rule. Cynics will, of course, maintain that money is the root of the evil in the recent squabble over Freddie Bartholomew, the screen’s latest child prodigy, who has an income reputed to be £250 a week. The father, Cecil Llewellyn Bartholomew, enlisted in Toronto for the Great War and lost a leg by amputation. He received, in addition to his own pension, £3 a month from the Canadian Government in behalf of his son. One result of the trip of Freddie’s mother to Hollywood to try to take him from the care of his Aunt Myllicent was that the poor rich screen child lost that monthly pension. His father has returned £24 to the Canadian Treasury on the theory that the pension became invalid when his son signed a Hollywood contract. At the age of three the child was put in the care of his father’s sister and has been with her ever since. Two years ago she took him to Hollywood' and was appointed his guardian by the California Probate Court, which deals with the affairs of minors. Since then he has been living in a Beverley Hills mansion with watchful guardians protecting not only his person but his English accent, one of his greatest assets. Mrs Lily Mae Bartholomew’s trip to Hollywood was for the purpose of getting that guardianship rescinded. After she landed in New York she mysteriously disappeared and there were rumours that she was either kidnapped or that her journey was a publicity stunt. It seemed that husband and wife were in perfect unison in this effort to get custody of their child prodigy, for the husband in a transAtlantic ’phone call exclaimed in evidently genuine emotion, “Where is my wife? Get her for me, or I’ll go crazy.”

Preference for Aunt She arrived safe and sound in Los Angeles and maintained that Freddie Bartholomew had been taken from England by “deceit and trickery.” The launching of habeas corpus proceedings created what was declared “one of the most difficult child actor problems the studios have ever faced.” The trouble was that the studio had done business with Aunt Myllicent Bartholomew, and if the mother were given control of the child star a complete new shuffle of contract cards would be necessary. But there was a surprise at the first court hearings. Grandpa and Grandma Bartholomew had also arrived in Los Angeles, together with a lawyer having power of attorney for the father. They checkmated the mother by declaring that they all had complete confidence in Aunt Myllicent. The boy, too, appeared in court and stated that he preferred to live with his aunt, and that he was sure his parents knew all about him coming to Hollywood and approved of it. Superior Judge Archibald, in Los Angeles, has said he would revoke the guardianship of the aunt and restore Freddie to the care of his mother, but it is doubtful if the case is finished yet. Ontario, of course, has the world’s most famous children, the Dionne quintuplets, who, at the age of two, have, it is estimated, a bank balance of £20,000, and may have at least £200,000 by the time they are eighteen and the State’s control over them ceases. The quintuplets personally as yet have met only doctors and not lawyers, but the lawyers have been busy with their affairs almost since the very day they were bom, and their contracts have created almost as keen an interest as their diet