Episode 105: Heart Bruised
Valentine’s celebrations abound, but questions remain as to where single heiresses might be found.
#BarbaraHutton, #PrinceAlexisMidvani, #DorisDuke, #Valentines, #lovetriangle, #romance, #Capote #CapoteSwans
End of January – mid-February 1933, newspapers keep track of the romantic entanglements of multiple heirs and heiresses. Foremost, Barbara Hutton’s recent romances and the love triangle with Prince Alexis Mdivani and Louise Van Alen make her the hot topic to follow for the elites, public, and press alike.
Other people and subjects include: Doris Duke, Nanaline Duke, James HR Cromwell aka “Jimmy,” Eva Stotesbury, E.T. Stotesbury, John Jacob Astor VI aka “Jakey,” Princess Donna Cristina Torlonia, Prince Don Torlonia of Italy, Elsie Moore, Cobina Wright, Doris Duke, Huntington Hartford, Mary Lee Epling Hartford, Henrietta Hartford, Josephine Hartford Makaroff, Vadim Makaroff (Makarov), Vincent Astor, Helen Astor, Prince Serge Obolensky, Ava Alice Muriel Astor Obolensky Hofmannsthal, Raimund von Hofmannsthal, Princess Silvia Obolensky, Madeleine Talmadge Force Astor Dick, Enzo Fiermonte, Princess Roussadana “Roussie” Mdivani Sert, Jessie Woolworth Donahue, Woolworth Donahue, James “Jeem” Donahue, Aunt Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton, E.F. Hutton, Dina Hutton Merrill, Morley Kennerley, Jean Kennerley, Lili Damita, Addison Mizner, Monkey Nettie, Raymond Guest, Prince Girolamo “Jerome” Rospigliosi, Marian Snowden, Count Emanuele Borromeo d’Adda, James Blakeley, Nancy Randolph, Cholly Knickerbocker, Walter Winchell, Ed Sullivan, Princess Luba Obolensky, Princess Anna Obolensky, Prince Serge Troubetzkoy, Peppy D’Albrew, Helen Whitney Bourne, Lady Sylvia Hawkes Ashley, Baroness Maude von Thyssen, Waldorf-Astoria, Savoy Hotel, Whitemarsh Hall, El Mirasol, Mar-A-Lago, Whitehall, Chicago Art Institute, Chicago Historical Society, the Drake, The White Elephant Room, Harvard, Eiffel Tower, Bremen ocean liner, Broadway, Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, Palm Beach, Reno, Newark, Hawaii, Paris, Australia, New Zealand, Cupid, Cupid’s arrow, Foreign Legion, cardiac affairs, first American Valentine card, Esther Howland, Hulu FX’s Feud Season 2: Truman Capote vs. The Swans, Truman Capote, Leland Hayward, “Slim” Nancy Mary Raye Gross Hawkes Hayward Keith, Howard Hawks, Kenneth Keith – Baron of Castleacre, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, Winston Churchill, Randolph Churchill, William Harriman, Baron de Rothschild, President Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to France, Aly Khan, Stavros Niarchos, Winston Guest, C.Z. Guest, Cornelia Guest, Diego Rivera, Salvador Dali, Prince David – King Edward VIII – Duke of Windsor, Wallis Simpson – Duchess of Windsor, William “Bill” Paley, Barbara “Babe” Cushing Paley, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt, James Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary “Minnie” Cushing, CBS Radio & Television, Princess Caroline Lee Bouvier Radziwill, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Big Edie Beale, Lil’ Edie Beale, Grey Gardens, romance and seduction, rebuilding life after divorce and heartbreak, modern dating culture and problems, aggressive sexual fantasies, projection, wishful thinking, misjudgment
Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.
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Publish Date: February 23, 2024
Length: 23:56
Opening Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 1 Music: Shout for Happiness by Ray Noble & His Orchestra, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 2 Music: I Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight? by Jack Hylton, Album Charleston – Great Stars Of the 20s
Section 3 Music: I Only Have Eyes for You by Freddy Gardner, Album Elegance
End Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
AS THE MONEY BURNS
Podcast by Nicki Woodard
Episode 105 – Heart Bruised
Outline
Side Guys
Romance Rundown
00:00
[Music – My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
AS THE MONEY BURNS is an original podcast by Nicki Woodard. Based on historical research, this is a deep exploration into what happened to a set of actual heirs and heiresses to some of America’s most famous fortunes when the Great Depression hits.
Each episode has three primary sections. Section 1 is a narrative story. Section 2 goes deeper into the historical facts. Section 3 focuses on contemporary, emotional, and personal connections.
00:30
Story Recap
Nursing heartbreaks, Barbara Hutton sails the South Seas, while Cobina Wright tries to hostess her way back into a fortune.
Now back to AS THE MONEY BURNS
Title
00:45
Heart Bruised
[Music Fade Out]
Episode Tag
Valentine’s celebrations abound, but questions remain as to where single heiresses might be found.
01:01
[Music – Shout for Happiness by Ray Noble & His Orchestra, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Section 1 – Story
[Music Fade Out]
01:20
Looking into the horizon – is that ship on its way to or from a harbor or a shipwreck? Those aboard might be seeking or fleeing a romance, or worse wishing for a watery grave to end their pain.
Cupid’s arrows have been very busy lately. There is never a lack of love when a fortune is at stake. Only it’s not necessarily the double-sided kind. As much as Cupid’s golden arrows produce one sided nearly obsessive love, his lead arrows have the opposite effect.
Nothing is ever smooth when it comes to love with a fortune attached. Both male and female alike will target and become targeted. One hopes for romance, while the other is truly in love with the money and not so much the actual person.
How does such a romance persist?
02:15
Late January to Early February 1933
Several romantic updates flood the society columns. As newspapers speculate who is falling in and out love of late, they bemoan poor supreme hostess and coloratura soprano Cobina Wright’s fate, having fallen from the high Society perch as she struggles to survive. Luckily, her marital troubles are not fully out in the open, yet staying and working at the Waldorf continually reminds her that it is the season of love.
While she stays in Manhattan, others continue their annual Society pilgrimages elsewhere.
02:51
Vincent Astor with his wife Helene Dinsmore Astor take their yacht down South.
His sister the newly divorced enigmatic Ava Alice Astor has shed her suave and dispossessed Russian Prince Serge Obolensky in a Reno divorce. Nearly 3 months later in January 1933, Ava secretly weds her lover – Austrian born writer Raimund von Hofsmanthaal in the less romantic setting of Newark, New Jersey. Secretly, they already have a daughter Silvia together, though due to Ava’s first marriage so the child goes by Princess Silvia Obolensky.
03:25
Vincent and Ava’s younger half-brother proud scion John Jacob Astor VI, aka Jakey, is rumored to be engaged to Donna Cristina Torlonia, daughter of the Prince Don Torlonia of Italy and his former American heiress wife Elsie Moore. The Don and Donna titles are the Italian equivalents of Sir and Lady. Cristina debuted the year before, and the youths met and romanced through part of the summer while Jakey was on his world tour. The Harvard lad isn’t focusing too much on his studies and prefers to adopt the gentleman of leisure approach to life. Rumors have percolated ever since and ramping up more this February. Probably preferable than the scandalous rumors involving his mother Madeleine Talmage Astor Dick and her lover the young boxer Enzo Fiermonte. An ill-fated match from her own ocean travels aboard the Vulcania a year before.
04:16
As for Harvard, baby-faced richest boy Huntington Hartford represents his school in a round of squash games. No updates for his wife Mary Lee Epling Hartford’s whereabouts or activities, and his smothering mother Henrietta Hartford was last seen in New York’s Charity Ball at the Waldorf. However his sister Josephine Hartford Makaroff and her second husband Caviar King Vadim Makaroff (Makarov) are participating in Palm Beach and yachting activities.
04:42
The Hartford’s Newport neighbors remain abroad. The tall and less awkward heiress Doris Duke remains under heavy surveillance with her overly ambitious mother Nanaline Duke. Nanaline disapproves of almost any suitor who glances at Doris. Nanaline would ideally marry her daughter to an equal if not larger fortune – a nearly insurmountable task. And all those pursuing Doris are lacking heavily in that department. The heir to two fortunes and much older James HR Cromwell aka “Jimmy” would seem to be a good bet, but Nanaline has been watching his mother Eva Stotesbury and stepfather E.T. Stotesbury’s strange habits like closing Whitemarsh Hall near Philadelphia. Nanaline suspects their fortune is likely to not be as plush as before the 1929 Crash.
05:29
The Stotesburys have migrated down to Palm Beach to enjoy the activities in the warmer clime. They are seen attending recently deceased architect Addison Mizner’s heavily attended memorial along with the architect’s pet monkey Nettie. Mizner made a name in the area after they commissioned him to build their large El Mirasol estate. Where the Stotesburys continue their lavish lifestyle and host a party for Jimmy, who is busy prepping for his upcoming book launch.
Will Doris be making it back to the U.S. to attend or down the altar anytime soon?
05:59
Meanwhile, ruggedly handsome newly divorced Russian Prince Alexs Mdivani leaves New York after his failed attempt to secure slightly less chubby budding fashionista Barbara Hutton’s hand in marriage. On his trip westward, he had made his intentions to marry Barbara very clear to fellow passengers publisher Morley Kennerley and his wife Jean Kennerley. Upon their arrival to New York in December 1932, the Kennerleys were picked up by Barbara’s houseguest, while the Prince made his way to the Savoy Hotel.
06:28
In the last remaining hour before he sails out Barbara’s life for good, the heart bruised Alexis drowns his sorrows in soda, ohhh the troubles in Prohibition America. Rumors that Barbara with her cousin James “Jeem” Donahue, and Peppy D’Albrew join the Prince at the speakeasy. In a fit, he tears up his ticket for the Bremen declaring, “I’m not going to sail.” His companions insist it wouldn’t be proper to have his valet travel alone. They somehow manage to pour the heart bruised disconsolate Prince into the ship for a rather dull trip home.
Afterwards, Barbara makes her plans to travel in the opposite direction. Her companions on the trip are none other than Morley Kennerley and Jean Kennerley.
07:11
On board the ship Bremen, the sullen Prince is not all too lonely with passenger Helen Whitney Bourne. Ever the drama queen, he claims to friends in cablegrams he might join the Foreign Legion.
When he arrives in France at where the boat meets train depot, he is greeted with open arms by none other than Society It Girl and heiress Louise Van Alen. Yes, his recent ex-wife is more than willing to soothe him over his rejection by her rival Barbara. Alexis and Louise will be seen about Paris dining together. *However Louise will not be the only female consoling poor Alexis. Lady Silvia Hawkes Ashley and Baroness Maude von Thyssen are also in the mix.
07:57
Then the question remains where exactly is Barbara Hutton, who is leaving a string of broken hearts all across the world while she sails the South Seas. From Society reporters to Fifth & Park Avenue elites to Broadway to the struggling public, all are curious to know more about her cardiac affairs. Joining reporters Nancy Randolph, Cholly Knickerbocker, and Walter Winchell, Broadway columnist Ed Sullivan adds his own bits to the speculation game.
08:24
The news reports at least 4 maybe 5 potentially broken engagements, all of which she claims were never real. With so many romances, it’s so hard to keep track. There was the millionheir Phil Plant around the time of her bow at Buckingham Palace. Prince Alexis Mdivani which ended when they were caught in between the sheets at his sister Princess Roussadana “Roussie” Mdivani Sert’s Spanish estate. In San Francisco, Barbara had to slip away from the very ardent young Count Emmanuele Borromeo d’Adda. Some papers confused him with his 60 yr old father, such as might happen when everyone keeps using the same names.
Another Italian Prince Girolamo Jerome Rospigliosi had pursued her hotly the year before but finally abandoned the pursuit then married a significantly smaller American heiress Marian Snowden. Both Italian aristocrats have Italian royal fathers with American dollar princess mothers.
09:19
In Hawaii, Barbara might have invited Raymond Guest to join her but received no reply. Her other Park Avenue beau, James Blakeley is celebrating his birthday back in Manhattan without her. It seems likely aboard one of her cruises a young unnamed man in a light grey suit fervently attempts to woo her only giving up when their travels end. At one of the sightseeing stops, one localite makes a quick and unsuccessful attempt to gain Barbara’s attention.
Every dock more reports and speculation. What ever is an heiress to do?
09:54
Tuesday, February 14th, 1933
Barbara Hutton arrives in New Zealand for a mini 2 day excursion then heads out on Thursday to Sydney, Australia.
At Chicago’s Art Institute, the first American Valentine is on display. In 1849 two years after graduating from Mount Holyoke, Miss Esther Howland proposed to her father how to improve his stationary business by creating her own with lace and colored paper versus those he was importing from England. The display includes the Valentine along with her workboox and 3 rare books “New Gentleman’s Valentine Writer,” “Cupid’s Annual Charter,” and “The Girdle of Venus.” Chicago Historical Society also has a display of historical cards from local residents, including one postmarked in 1851 to Emma Taylor of State Street. Events and parties are to be held at the Drake and the White Elephant Room. Despite that, one popular debutante moans to the Chicago Tribune she hardly expects a Valentine much less chocolates or other gifts as the young bachelors hardly know the day has arrived. Sure enough, when a local popular bachelor is asked if he has any party plans, he asks when is Valentine’s Day?
11:10
Down in Palm Beach, Barbara’s aunts and cousins are having their own celebrations.
At Whitehall, Aunt Jessie Woolworth Donahue throws a party for 80 friends, and on the terrace her son Woolworth Donahue hosts a party for the youth and includes the Winter Colony’s hottest guest Lili Damita.
At Mar-A-Lago, Aunt Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton also hosts a juvenile Valentine’s Day party for young Nedenia “Dina” Hutton.
Though not all is perky and rosy. Rumors hint that Aunt Jessie might be soon be engaged to an unnamed royal, while Aunt Marjorie occasionally hears that her husband financier E.F. Hutton might be dabbling on the side.
11:47
Back in Manhattan, a royal union is finally made on…
Sunday, February 19th, 1933
In a Russian ceremony, Princess Luba Obolensky marries Prince Serge Troubetzkoy. The sudden announcement is given less than a week before the couple is united in marriage. The Russian exiles continue the 5 generations of marriage between the two families. The press has a field day, and most early reports leave off one detail that becomes more prolific in later accounts. This is Princess Luba’s first marriage and Prince Serge’s second. Only his first marriage was to Luba’s sister Princess Anna Obolensky who while on their honeymoon “leaped” eh-hem correction “fell” from the Eiffel Tower in 1931. Unlike her sister, Luba has harbored feelings for Serge for most of their lives. Here’s hoping Luba and Serge have a much happier union.
A wicked sense of humor arises when Cupid’s arrows are shot amiss. Sadly, love and fortune so rarely end in bliss.
12:54
[Music – I Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight? by Jack Hylton, Album Charleston – Great Stars Of the 20s]
Section 2 – History & Historiography
[Music Fade Out]
13:13
When I began this journey into uncovering these tales, I was most fascinated by the aspects of falling in love with a fortune attached. The perils and heartbreaks that might ensue. So similar to all complicated love stories, and yet so much extra as well.
What I uncovered is a long intertwining and very incestuous tale of complicated entanglements, love triangles – rectangles – and maybe even larger. People crisscrossing each other’s paths over and over. Always a new trail to digress in order to understand what is really going on.
13:46
While this section is generally used to explain elements and contextualize the past within the story, this time I will progress the timeline a little forward but still quite a few
| decades before our current times.
Because as it seems, that even our side guys, the disposable love interests, hangers-on, or witnesses have their own lives that are causing them to reappear into the popular mainstream consciousness today.
That is most definitely due to the recent FX & Hulu’s series Feud Season 2: Capote vs. The Swans. Many of the side guys have married a few times, and their second or later wives will be debutantes in the mid-1930s and later becoming Capote’s swans in the 1960s & 1970s.
14:28
Leland Hayward with swan Slim Keith – Leland is a talent manager and producer of Broadway’s shows like Rogers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific and the Sound of Music plus other Broadway to film adaptations. Leland is also the stepbrother of millionheir Phil Plant. Phil is known as a Broadway playboy through Leland’s connections. Only Leland too is a playboy. He marries his third wife Slim Keith and later cheats on her and leaves her for his next fourth wife Pamela Digby Churchill (her ex is Randolph Churchill – as in Winston Churchill’s son, Pamela herself is the daughter British Baron Digby). That situation is later dredged up in Episode 3 of Capote vs. The Swans.
15:11
Born Mary Raye Gross later name changes to Nancy by her mother, the original “California Girl” goes by the nickname “Slim” and becomes a model and almost turned to opera before deciding that career would be too demanding. Slim marries first director Howard Hawks, second Leland Hayward, and thirdly Kenneth Keith, Baron of Castleacre. Pamela herself has quite a history. Pamela’s third husband will be William Harriman. She will have affairs with Aly Khan, possibly William Paley, Stavros Niarchos, and Baron de Rothschild. She also serves as the 58th U.S. ambassador to France under President Bill Clinton.
15:47
Winston Guest with swan C.Z. Guest – Winston and his brother Raymond Guest are two dapper Society men of breeding and manners in the social set. They are distant cousins of Winston Churchill, and with the American side of a potential dollar princess marriage. They may have served as the two non-cousin escorts to Barbara Hutton’s debutante ball. *I can’t relocate the reference to verify at this moment. Winston will later receive a special cigarette case from Barbara, and it is eluded she might have asked Raymond to join her on her 1933 South Seas adventure. Raymond decided to avoid the tabloid circus surrounding his friend. Polo player and businessman Winston will soon marry his first wife in 1934 – whom I won’t reveal exactly right now as it serves as a potential plot point but she is too is an heiress of one of our main fortunes and has been a recurringly featured debutante so far.
16:37
Winston’s second wife is C.Z. Guest who was a Ziegfeld Follies girl and posed nude for artist Diego Rivera and Salvador Dali before her marriage. As referenced in Episode 3 of Capote vs The Swans, the couple will experience financial troubles after Winston’s airline implodes. Their daughter is future 1980s It Girl debutante Cornelia Guest. C.Z. Guest is friends with Barbara Hutton as well as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. And recently, one listener sent me on Instagram a photo of C.Z. Guest visiting with Doris Duke.
17:10
William “Bill” Paley with swan Barbara “Babe” Cushing Paley – Paley is a top producer at CBS Radio and later Television and attended the famous Last Party by Cobina Wright and her husband William May Wright aka “Bill,” held the night the couple realizes they lost their fortune in the Crash. Paley will appear at several events for Cobina and is surely behind anytime Cobina appears on radio. He will later transition into television. His second marriage is to fashionable Babe Paley, who herself debuts in 1934. She is one of 3 popular society sisters. Middle sister Betsey Cushing marries first to James Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt’s son. Eldest sister Mary “Minnie” Cushing will also marry into one of our primary fortunes by the end of the decade.
17:56
Lastly, Jackie Kennedy’s sister swan Princess Caroline Lee Bouvier Radziwill hires brothers Albert and David Maysles for a Bouvier family documentary in 1972. During that production, they meet and film the Bouvier’s strange cousins Big Edie Beale and Little Edie Beale. That footage will become the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. Lee herself has many liaisons, but that is far too much digression and more recent commentary focuses on the rivalry with her sister Jackie.
Oh, how the games and tales of fortunes and heart break never seem unending, but who knew they would be so dizzingly intertwined…
18:37
[Music – I Only Have Eyes for You by Freddy Gardner, Album Elegance]
Section 3 – Contemporary & Personal Relevance
[Music Fade Out]
18:53
This podcast has always been personal for me. A way to purge and discuss the little thoughts in my head. A way to relate and convey my own feelings of isolation, misunderstanding, and heartbreak.
I had plenty in my past, and I somehow am racking up quite a few more not only while developing this story for many years but ever since I first hit record and really started sharing this story with the public.
My strong core motivation is tied very much to broken hearts and dreams. A deep driving ambition to have something good happen after so much disappointment. Sunken costs, I’m not sure. Resilience, determination, insanity,…. Uhhh, ummm, can’t really say anymore. Most days I feel more crazy, but it’s also the resoluteness which helps me handle the other problems that crash into and on top of me. Focusing on a destination to get through dark and troubling times.
19:47
Back in 2013, I was divorced and out of a job. After a nearly 10 year relationship, the re-entry into dating was not fun. Dating has always been difficult for me even before that relationship began. Oh how hard I tried to hold on and make it work for this one time it felt right. The hardest part for me is always needing and wanting a real connection. And somehow that comes with even more complications with projection, wishful thinking, and misjudgment. As you might can tell by the stories I’m drawn to and the details I point out, that I have a slightly different perspective on life.
20:27
My number one problem in dating is sex. It gets so tiring deflecting the crude, blunt, and crass way guys bring up the subject. The over proliferation of porn has only made it worse. I don’t blame someone wanting to make sure that it’s not a situation where they are being strung along for a series of dinners. They should never worry with me. I don’t have the patience to endure bad or boring company for that even when finances are nonexistent.
In contrast, it’s disgusting that complete strangers push their fantasies and so generously offer to do things like threesomes or some other act I have never had the remotest desire or interest to perform or have performed on me. And yet, it gets even more disappointing when I finally dated one or two people I have known for some time only to realize they too only cared I performed like a sex object completely unrelated to my interests or personality.
21:23
For crying out loud, I want a little romance. I need to feel safe and comfortable and cherished and loved. I might be academic in one way, but I am wholly a person based first and foremost on love. My closest lifelong friends and family all know this about me. I have had a few enviable close intimate non-romantic relationships, but in love errrr… not so lucky.
21:51
The most romantic was my first love back when I studied for a summer at Brown University, and the next would be my ex-husband. Both had horrible endings – one during a death in my family and the second a divorce.
Now as I am starting over, is it so wrong to want a little more in an interaction? Then I discover these tales of heiresses and fortune hunters with elements from my past. And all I could wonder was how did ALL these men seduce these ladies?
Could today’s lack of romance in the dating app age learn a few things from this past era? Yeah, heart break will occur, but hell at least give some better effort.
Times can change, but hearts will always crave the same things…
22:39
Hulu and F/X’s series Feud Season 2: Capote vs. the Swans has a few more episodes left. I will be watching to see what other connections I can catch. Do you have any to add as well? Please come visit As The Money Burns via social media and share. I would love to hear those connections or any others in your own personal lives as well.
If you enjoy As The Money Burns, then please share, like, & subscribe.
Hook
23:07
[Music – My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Next when we return to AS THE MONEY BURNS…
Another set of divorce rumors and scandal abound as another lover has been found.
Until then…
Credits
23:24
AS THE MONEY BURNS is an original podcast written, produced, and voiced by Nicki Woodard, based on historical research. Archival music has been provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, check out their website at www.pastperfect.com.
Please come visit us at As The Money Burns via Goodpods, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook (now Meta), or Instagram. Transcripts, timeline, episode guide, and character bios are available at asthemoneyburns.com.
23:56
THE END.