Episode 95: A Cozy Little Companion
An heiress is trapped and a love triangle exposed when forbidden lovers get caught beneath the sheets.
#BarbaraHutton, #PrinceAlexisMdivani, #MasJuny, #betrayal, #seduction, #fortunehunters, #lovetriangle, #sculptress, #CocoChanel, #SalvadorDali
Late summer 1932, Barbara Hutton joins Princess Louise Van Alen Mdivani and Prince Alexis Mdivani at Spanish countryside estate of his sister Princess Roussadana “Roussie” Midvani Sert. Over the course of the visit, the former royals entrap Barbara with a compromising situation.
Other people and subjects include: James “Henry” Van Alen, William “Sam” Van Alen, Silvia de Rivas de Castellane, Prince Serge Mdivani, Prince David Mdivani, Princess Nina Mdivani Huberich, Josep Maria Sert, Coco Chanel, Salvador Dali, Marlene Dietrich, Elsa Maxwell, Adela Rogers St. John, Mas Juny estate in Palamos, Spain, Montmarte district in Paris, bohemia, biography / biographies, determining facts, inaccuracies, redemption, family and friendship betrayals, seduction, fortune hunters, playboys, modern dating, online dating, lack of romance, negging, hetero-flexible, homo-flexible, dick pics, porno references, explicit come-ons, desire for romance, rebuilding life & love, divorce, true love, misaligned attraction, romance
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Publish Date: October 01, 2023
Length: 25:38
Opening Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 1 Music: Plain Mary Jane by Mrs. Jack Hylton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 2 Music: You Go To My Head by Joe Loss, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 3 Music: Love Walked In by Carroll Gibbons & The Savoy Hotel Orpheans, Album The Great Dance Bands Play Hits of the 30s
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 095 – A Cozy Little Companion
Outline
Love triangle
Seduction
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.
00:31
Story Recap
As Barbara Hutton is seen about with Prince Alexis Mdivani in Paris, Doris Duke runs into Jimmy Cromwell in Cannes.
Now back to AS THE MONEY BURNS
Title
00:45
A Cozy Little Companion
[Music Fade Out]
Episode Tag
An heiress is trapped and a love triangle exposed when forbidden lovers get caught beneath the sheets.
*For those with younger listeners, this episode includes mature situations and references.
01:09
[Music – jkl Tea Dance 2]
Section 1 – Story
[Music Fade Out]
01:23
Chubby budding fashionista and young heiress Barbara Hutton is finally enjoying a bit of life. She has joined the dispossessed Russian Prince Alexis Mdivani and his It Girl socialite heiress wife Princess Louise Van Alen Mdivani with their Lost Midnight Brigade. Since her marriage, Louise has begun to shy away from the constant late night partying of Alexis and his friends. In her place, Barbara seems to be getting most of the charming, rugged, and slightly roguish Prince’s attention.
01:55
Barbara is an old schoolmate of Louise and first became acquainted with the Prince when Barbara acted as liaison between the Prince and his fiery Spanish Juliet and Barbara’s closest female friend Silvia de Rivas now de Castellane. Prince Alexis is an ardent letter writer to Silvia, to Louise, and now to Barbara. The Prince is also longtime close friends of Louise’s brothers James “Henry” Van Alen and William “Sam” Van Alen as they once attended Eton together, and ever since the impoverished and dispossessed Prince lived off the Van Alen dimes until marrying Louise and now has access to a sizeable joint bank account. With which, the Prince enjoys freely and exorbitantly spending to his wife and her family’s trepidation.
02:43
All of the 5 Mdivani siblings have married well earning their nickname “the Marrying Mdivanis.” The eldest, sister Princess Nina Mdivani Huberich is married to a rich and successful American Dutch lawyer. While the middle brothers Prince Serge Mdivani and Prince David Mdivani have married famous and wealthy actresses and singers, and eventually nearly bankrupting their first wives. It seems as though a few million doesn’t last very long, even in the economically tight times of the Great Depression.
Their younger sister the enigmatic and mesmerizing Princess Roussadana “Roussie” Mdivani Sert has also befriended both heiresses. Roussie is a sculptress married to famous Spanish muralist painter Josep Maria Sert, who receives sizeable commissions from both sides of the Atlantic. The slender blonde Roussie might be the most cunning of them all.
03:39
During one late summer week, Roussie invites members of the Lost Midnight Brigade to her and Sert’s countryside home Mas Juny in Palamos, near Barcelona, Spain – Sert’s city of origin. Sert bought the farmside residence as a wedding present for his much younger second wife. The estate dates back to 1482, and the main house’s newer parts were built in the 16th and 17th Centuries. A stoney structure along the coast, only 10 minute walk to Costa Brava’s two best beaches. The main house has 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, and the additional quarters can accommodate 12 guests. And it is the other frequent guests that add to its legendary status including Coco Chanel, Salvador Dali, and Marlene Dietrich. Dali himself will have a little painted hut on the estate under another future owner after World War II. There are rumors bisexual Roussie herself is also a lover of Coco Chanel. The romantic historic villa becomes known for its elaborate and decadent parties, a life of excess, orgies, and even drugs. Topless ladies walk around intoxicated with opium.
04:56
For this 1932 summer party, Alexis and Louise stay in the main house, while Barbara is situated in the guest quarters with the others. Roussie ensures all her guests are comfortable and well entertained.
The glamorous and seductive Roussie constantly outmaneuvers everyone around her. Her eyes transfix on Barbara, first coddling and enchanting the young heiress back in Paris. There Sert and Roussie’s bohemian yet lavish existence in the art district of Monmartre is a lure all on its own. Roussie herself is a sculptress whose greatest invisible work is how she manipulates people. She has plans for the plump and slightly dumpy young heiress, one who has a good taste in fashion but not the body to wear it. Roussie could reshape Barbara in more ways than one, and Roussie’s magical spell has a more than willing convert.
05:51
Barbara has always struggled with her weight, her wealth, and even more the lack of friends. She fears never being loved except for *her money, and the string of failed romances since her December 1930 debutante ball only further disillusion the young heiress and stokes her fears. Thus Barbara takes solace in writing to and receiving letters from Prince Alexis, who always listens attentively and caringly like a wiser and encouraging dear friend. Barbara comes to see him as her one true friend. He never dismisses her fears. He listens to her frustrations about both friends and potential lovers, and he assures her that one day she will live a life of romance and adventure. She will find a place in the world where people won’t care about her wealth as they will already be comfortable like her and therefore more carefree. Oh how, Barbara so desperately wants that kind of life.
06:51
From the Prince’s perspective, at first, Barbara is nothing more than a cozy little companion who writes him perplexed letters but provides him links to his ex-lover and a lever to manipulate Louise into marriage. He unromantically dismisses the plump little girl for other more desirable mates but treats her like a kindly older brother. He pushes away her obvious affections by confessing his love for Silvia then flipping to Louise. Only his feelings and intentions towards Barbara suddenly change – ever since that grand ball revealed her enormous fortune. Now, the Prince begins dropping hints of his crumbling, stifling, and unhappy marriage. The wonderful and socially desirable Louise is a mismatch and crushing his spirit.
07:42
Barbara is a devotee of true love and always believed ardently the Prince should have married Silvia. Alas those young lovers lacked the substantial fortune, thus they each chose financially beneficial mates more suitable to both their families and their desired lifestyles. Sharing these confessions build more and more sexual tension between Barbara and Alexis, though she claims only to see Alexis as her best friend.
08:10
Despite all the frivolity of the Mas Juny visit, it becomes increasingly noticeable to all the other guests just how much attention Alexis pays constantly to Barbara, who devours hungrily all she can get. Oh yeah, friends,… The mutual desire is palpable. She has long had a crush on him since she was a young teen. He is glamorous and sophisticated and fun. As he was once enamored with the equally seductive Silvia, Barbara would never dare imagine to get his romantic interest for herself. Still she regularly confides in him all her heartbreak as he listens so intensely.
They huddle together deep in conversation. His knee brushes against her. He rubs her shoulders at other times. Every touch sends electric sensations throughout the young heiress’s body. Several times it almost feels like they are about to kiss, but then something stops them. Nerves, other guests,…
09:15
Pushed to her limit, Louise’s polite demeanor crackles under the strain. Barbara attempts to steer clear, going on day excursions for bullfighting or sightseeing or taking swims alone.
Roussie watches with delighted anticipation urging her youngest brother on, giving hints on Barbara’s vulnerabilities, watching for her weakening, and driving wedges between the two heiresses bringing out the animosity to stir the pot.
The royal siblings communicate almost telepathically – having long learned how to survive by their wits on the streets of Istanbul and Paris after fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. They have hatched a plot, but they need a catalyst to set things off.
09:58
The long suffering Louise at first was more accommodating and biting her tongue at this new interloper. She fought hard to win Alexis away from Silvia, but Silvia was sexy and alluring versus the plump and needy Barbara. Louise now openly makes snide remarks and complains to anyone who will listen. But most sidestep the conversation, not sure how to respond to the humiliation of it all.
10:25
One afternoon, Roussie suggests the guests head into town. Noticing Barbara is missing from the group, a search party forms to locate her. Roussie smiles to herself as they head down to the guest house to retrieve her.
In merriment, they fling open the doors – only to find Barbara and the Prince entangled beneath the sheets. A moment of deep passion interrupted and now turning into white hot embarrassment.
Louise runs off in tears back to the main house. She must have known Alexis has cheated on her during their barely yearlong marriage, but this is unbearably painful. Worse, Alexis does not chase after her. He merely collects his things and with an air of defiance marches back to the main house where his eyes meet Roussie’s. Triumphant.
11:18
Barbara quickly packs her bags and leaves the premises.
Lost and confused, Louise collapses in tears on the bed with Roussie beside her. The mystical sculptress admonishes her brother’s blatant selfishness and admits he will always be a cheater that’s just his nature.
“My dear,” Roussie whispers, “Alexis is a cad. One woman will never be enough to satisfy him. You must let him go to be free and happy.”
Louise can hardly believe what she is hearing. She has been in love with Alexis since he first entered her life almost 10 years ago. She thought they had true love. She had willingly defied her family in allowing a romance to develop then forcing their marriage in May 1931. And now, could it all be over so quickly? So definitively?
Roussie shrugs and whispers, “If you really love him you want him to be happy and you will give him a divorce.”
Oh, how fragile love can be when a fortune is at stake.
12:35
[Music – You Go To My Head by Joe Loss, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Section 2 – History & Historiography
[Music Fade Out]
12:52
I know I’ve said it before this or that episode is one I have been looking forward to telling. But I have to say it again – this is one of the BIGGEST episodes I have been waiting to tell. And one in which this whole series has been developing towards and afterwards.
An important turning point event has just taken place, and so much of the aftermath will take far more perilous turns in regards to what just happened.
And that makes it – this event – also one of the biggest enigmas within this story. What really happened when… A chain of events, a sequence retold inaccurately time and time again in other accounts. A careless oversight, an unknown secret, or an intentional whitewashing?
13:50
Amazingly, this particular story anecdote often gets overlooked or sped over when talking the large vastness of Barbara Hutton’s life. And the story is always told primarily through her perspective, not Prince Alexis Mdivani’s nor Louise Van Alen’s. In fact, they get minimized in the process. But it is the other two parties and their history and the real concrete dynamics that make this a tale worth retelling.
14:20
If you go to any of Barbara’s 4 biographies and a few additional articles or references outside those main sources, you will get a more sanitized version of events. Only two mention the Mas Juny event, and one of those Poor Little Rich Girl is a large and overly embellished plagiarism of the other account Million Dollar Baby. Yes, they do admit to the scenario of Barbara and the Prince being caught in bed together. The other accounts skirt that situation and might mention some inappropriate attention and questionable interaction by the Prince, but the situation will be described in a more chaste version coupled with the next events that follow.
15:02
However in all accounts, they mention Barbara persistently claims that Louise was not interested in nor really in love with the Prince and severely downplays that couple’s very long and complicated history.
Remember these stories are written to redeem Barbara, and one cannot offer redemption if one admits to Louise’s family connection with the Prince. This not a betrayal of some regular American dollar princess in a world where minor impoverished royals marry into newer fortunes of the distinguished capital “S” Society. The Prince had been part of the Van Alen clan for nearly a decade. In other words, this is a whole other level of betrayal.
15:47
Which brings me back to another point I have been hammering about which is the chasing down of accurate facts. There is potentially a year difference between accounts of the previously described Patou incident in Biarritz. Did it happen in 1931 or 1932? Should it really matter? Well, um, I don’t know – what do you think? Were Prince Alexis and his sister Roussie targeting and seducing Barbara for a year or only within the last few months? Did Prince Alexis really marry his best friend’s sister only to immediately within less than five months after their wedding start pursuing another heiress with such impunity?
16:31
And about this particular event, that is not revealed by sources until much later, actually after Barbara’s death. The two exposes written in the 1930s are both by close supporters and somewhat apologists Elsa Maxwell and Adela Rogers St. John. The two other biographies are written first pre-death Barbara Hutton by Dean Jennings (someone who is by far the least sympathetic to Barbara, actually somewhat scathing and critical of her) and the other after her death In Search of A Prince by her later social secretary trying to redeem Barbara after the heavily scandalous plagiarized version mentioned above. These 4 accounts gloss over the details of this event and will only mention parts of the situation or the later aftermath, but not what actually happened and when. This might have been hidden and unknown knowledge either at the time written or to those interviewed later. Also there was strong sense of decorum in not wanting to reveal certain sexual matters too blatantly that might lead to lawsuits or censorship. In the more publicly modest times such as the 1930s newspapers, writers would use a prevailing code of euphemisms from which people might have understood the situation or at least partially fill in the blanks even back then.
17:53
I will have more to say on the friendship betrayal later, while this episode really focuses more on seduction and entrapment. But in the near future, I will open up more about the full dynamics of this situation. This tale is far from over.
So as things percolate, consider this – if we only follow Barbara’s biographies and the two larger articles, we would be led to believe this was a brief and sudden pursuit. Of course, those versions focus on Barbara and what she needed, and very little is given to Louise. In actuality, two young heiresses are wronged by this situation.
As for Prince Alexis, well a Mdivani is a Mdivani, or haven’t you been paying attention?
Human nature is awfully tricky and complicated especially when pursuing a fortune.
18:56
[Music – Love Walked In by Carroll Gibbons & The Savoy Hotel Orpheans, Album The Great Dance Bands Play Hits of the 30s]
Section 3 – Contemporary & Personal Relevance
[Music Fade Out]
19:15
When I found this story and began digging in, I myself had just gone through a divorce and was rebuilding my life both in career and love.
It’s so funny how people normally consider me very studious and academic. It’s definitely what comes through when you meet me in career or similar ambition related settings. What sometimes people lack in understanding is the source of my deep-seated passions. I’m not only into history, but history that very much hinges on personality and people. I love studying other cultural histories, because it gives me a connection to others and a way to recalculate my interpretations. The names and settings might be different, but the feelings will be the same only bound by a different set of social customs and rules.
20:05
When I began this journey of discovery into these heirs and heiresses and their past romantic lives, I was also re-entering the dating world. Oh god, how much has changed since I began my nearly decade long relationship, and I was never good at dating to begin with. So many misaligned attractions and far worse the crippling and reductive way people (in my situation men) would interpret and approach me.
Most of the time either mundanely practical or / and actually more than too often far too sexual and even pornographically explicit. Completely devoid of any personal or unique identification to me as a person.
20:52
Remarkably, I have very good male relationships in family and friends, in a manner to which I am used to being catered and acknowledged and respected and accepted. But in dating, there is so much negging added with hostile overt sexual come-ons. Seriously, where’s the romance? And for crying out loud, there came a new crop of problems as people started identifying as hetero or homo flexible. That’s when I gave up on online dating. Yes, there was a lot of weeding out of people, but it gave an opportunity to meet people where it was so difficult in an otherwise isolated existence. But many of those interactions were so very lacking.
21:37
Ummm, I love history, social and cultural history. That means literature and fancy balls and psychological entanglements. I am indeed a romantic. I want seduction, the lure of a flirtatious encounter, a touch, a pursuit…
After losing what seemed like the love of my life, the one I was made for and was made especially for me to the horrors of a drug addiction. I tried to console my re-entry into dating with a chance to have other romantic experiences. My ex and I were good, but there were areas that definitely could have improvements. But now the dating world was more dick pics and porno references galore.
Arrggggh….
22:28
Then I stumble upon these young heiresses and their pursuit by a set of fortune hunter playboys. And in an era without so much technology, and I began to wonder hmmmm,… what were their seduction techniques. How did these men get these relatively in essence girls to fall in love with them? Could we in the modern day learn a little something?
22:53
For me, the core of romance and seduction is acceptance and celebration of another in their uniqueness. A laugh, an inner world and sanctuary, that can transition into many forms of acceptance.
Seduction always exposes vulnerabilities. And everyone, young heiresses included have weaknesses.
But alas, true love is far more fleeting, and the heartbreak from betrayal especially due to fortune will cast a long dark shadow over their lifetimes.
23:29
From the beginning, Past Perfect Vintage Music has been a part of every episode. It’s an amazing collection of digitally restored music from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. So many great big band classics with stars like Benny Carter, The Savoy Orpheans, Carroll Gibbons, Roy Fox, Ray Noble, only to name a few. Other albums in Past Perfect’s collection include Duke Ellington, Noel Coward, Glenn Miller, and so much more. And now, the newly launched Past Perfect Vintage Radio channel can come directly to your home. The daily schedule (based in the UK) is Vintage Mornings, Long Lunch, an hour long with World War II songs, followed by All That Jazz, a Tea Time Show, Noel’s Nightly Interlude with Noel Coward, then Showtime from musicals and movies with lots of Fred Astaire, lastly Love Songs, then Vintage Music After Dark…
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Hook
24:49
[Music – My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Next when we return to AS THE MONEY BURNS…
Deceptions run high as another divorce is announced and a grand home re-opens. Can’t these people get their stories straight already?
Until then…
Credits
25:08
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, Twitter (now known as X), Facebook, or Instagram. Transcripts, timeline, episode guide, and character bios are available at asthemoneyburns.com.
25:38
THE END.