THE MARRYING MDIVANIS.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19052, 16 September 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE MARRYING MDIVANIS.

THEIR LIVES, LOVES & ADVENTURES (By an intimate friend.) With the lavish marriage of Alexis Mdivani to Barbara Hutton, the richest girl, and the reported estrangements between David ..and Serge and their wives, ail in ihe past few days, the three romantic Georgian Princes have become the talk of the world. Below, in the first of a series of intimate artie'es, a close friend of the brothers tells for the first time their full amazing story. I am going to tell the story of the love adventures of three Princes. Between them they have married two famous film stars, one famous opera singer, and two beautiful heiresses, one of them the richest woman in the world. These three modern Young Lochinvars, unlike the hero of the poem, canjie out of the mysterious East to conquer the hearts of the fairest and most richly endowed damosels of the West. They are Serge, David, and Alexis Mdivani, the most-married brothers of international society. The Secret of their Fascination. If these three brothers, who have picked their wives from the cream of the world’s beauty, youth and wealth, have drawn the attention of all and sundry to thejr love lives it has not been because of any desire on their part to shine in the limelight of publicity.

Their sole fault—if It can be called a fault —is that they are gifted with a super-abundance of "It,’’ or what we used to call simply sex appeal. Pola Negri, soon after her fairy-tale-like wedding to Serge at her chateau outside Paris, told me: "He has that indefinable suggestion of mastery and possessiveness whloh finds something responsive- In the feminine heart.

"I don’t know what It is, but you can’t help loving him." Mae Murray, the lovely film star, wife af David, the second son, has said: "He has personality and everything that a woman looks for in a man.. He has charm and appeal.”

But one woman knows the brothers better than any other in the world, and until now she has remained completely silent about the secrets of the hearts and minds of the three Princes. She is their" eldest sister, Princess Nina, who married a famous international lawyer. Convincing Sincerity. On the day when Alexis—or Aliolc, as the family call him—was to lead

Barbara Hutton to the altar In the Russian Cathedral in Paris, I talked with her in her sumptuous suite looking down on Napoleon s column in the Palace Vendome. ,

Princess Nina has the feminine counterpart of her brothers’ charm. Tall and stately, she retains the bearing which made her a much-sought-after young Princess at the Court of the Czar Nicholas 11.

“Tell me," I asked, “what is the magic charm your brothers wield to enslave all the women they meet?" She leaned back opposite me. Beside her stood a photograph of the Czar in military uniform reviewing troops before the Kremlin.

Beside this photograph was another, of an elderly man, tall, handsome and aristocratic —the Prince Zachariah, father of the Mdivani children.

She smiled, speaking in English with an attractive. Russian accent which not even Alexis, in spite of his Cambridge education, lias been able to lose.

Women say that that accent is part of their charm. “I suppose all one can say about their charm is that it is as mysterious as the Orient whence we came.” she said. “But they have much else that can be defined—good looks, culture, and, above all, a strange, convincing sincerity. “I Will Tell You a Story. “It was years ago, in Georgia. Serge was nine or ten. He was. terribly in love, or he imagined himself to be. She was two years younger—both babies. “They went together in a palace garden. He told her how much he loved her, tout the little maid did not quite believe him. “ ‘Prove it I’ she said. “Serge looked around him. He must find a way. “He, seized a grasshopper and plumped It Into his mouth. He would have swallowed It had not the little girl, more than convinced, screamed and forced him to spit it out.” Nina, Serge, David, Roussadana, Alexis / Mdivani—to name them In order of age—are the children of General Zachariah and Elizabeth Mdivani, who were born In Tiflls, capital of Georgia. The General’s father owned property in Tiflls and immense oil properties' 'at Baku and Batoum, where Alexis was born just 25 years ago. Their mother was of Polish nationality, and a Catholic, but the Mdivanis are Greek Orthodox. Of a pure Circassian strain, noted for their physical beauty, they lived in European style, both in their home and in their dress. The Veiled Sisters. k The two girls, however, never appeared in public unveiled, and only

when, several years later, they went to the Czar’s Court, after their father had been appointed aide-de-camp, did they reveal their faces. Alexis, who has most of the wit of the family, once summed up his native province in these words: “In Georgia the men sit and talk for three months, fight for three months, give parties for three months, then get tired and fight again for another three months."

It will: come as a surprise to most people to learn that the real love romance of the Mdivani boys owed its origin to a stay in England on the part of Alexis. If he had not gone there he would not have become acquainted with the beautiful Louise van Alen, (granddaughter of John Jacob Astor, and once described as the most beautiful heiress in the United States.

Alexis swept her off her feet, and even now, although they are divorced, she still admits that she loves him.

(A further part of the story of the Mdivanis will toe published on Wednesday next.)