Alexis Mdivani

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Alexis Mdivani with Barbara Hutton

Alexis Mdivani (born February 7, 1908 in Tbilisi , † August 1, 1935 in Palamós , Spain ) was the youngest of five siblings who were referred to in the press as Marrying Mdivanis , and a successful polo player . He became famous in 1933 when he married the department store heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton .

Life

Alexis Mdivani was born as the youngest son of Zakhari Mdivani, a general of Tsar Nicholas II, and his wife Elisabeth Viktorovna Sobolevska. Other family members were:

  • Nina Mdivani (born January 26, 1901 - † February 19, 1987)
  • Serge Mdivani (born February 17, 1903 in Tbilisi, Georgia, † March 15, 1936 in Florida)
  • David Mdivani (born February 14, 1904 in Tbilisi, † August 5, 1984)
  • Roussadana Mdivani (7 July 1905 - 16 December 1938)

In November 1920, General Mdivani left Georgia to support the Belarusian General Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel in the fight against the Red Army . A short time later, his wife and children managed to flee to Constantinople by ship , and together the family emigrated to Paris in 1921 . Elisabeth Mdivani and her children acquired the title of prince and princess, which served them as an entree to high society. After their mother died unexpectedly in 1923, the two older brothers, who had attended school in the USA from November 1920, traveled back to the United States , where they initially worked on oil fields. David Mdivani married the film actress Mae Murray in 1926 , and Serge Mdivani became the husband of the film diva Pola Negri in 1927 . Both actresses carried the title "Princess Mdivani" after their marriage, which brought them publicity and the Mdivani family media attention. Nina Mdivani had married Charles Henry Huberich, a well-known lawyer, in 1925; Roussadana Mdiwani met the painter Josep Maria Sert in 1927 .

Alexis Mdivani studied in Cambridge from 1925 , where he was successful in the polo team of his college and met the later tennis champion James Van Alen . In 1930 he began working in the Paris office of the New York City Bank and was also appointed Secretary of the Georgian Embassy in Paris. His reputation as a princely playboy spread through affairs with well-known beauties, for example with the photo model Toto Koopman and with the American actress Kay Francis . Alexis Mdivani had come into contact with his extremely wealthy Santa Barbara family through his school friend, James Van Alen . In May 1931 he married James' sister, Louise Astor Van Alen. Even before the wedding, however, he had met the department store heiress Barbara Hutton, who was considered the richest heiress in the world. How and on whose instigation the divorce from Louise Van Alen came about is not entirely clear. Barbara Hutton's biographer Clemens David Heymann claims that Alexis' sister Roussadana deliberately arranged an affair between her brother and Barbara Hutton in order to be able to couple Alexis with the even richer Barbara Hutton. There is no evidence of this; However, Heymann's version of the story served as the script for the American TV series "Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story," which was created in 1987 with Farrah Fawcett in the title role. Alexis Mdivani was played by British actor Nicholas Clay .

Against her father's resistance, Alexis Mdivani married Barbara Hutton in Paris in June 1933. The church wedding on June 22, 1933 in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was a world-famous media spectacle with over 8,000 viewers, which was reported in newsreels in cinemas in the USA and Europe. When marriage Alexis Mdivani received a large sum of money. When Barbara Hutton came of age on November 14th, he gained full control over her entire fortune of around $ 42 million. The supposed dream couple was sobered up soon after the wedding. In March 1935, Barbara Mdivani traveled to Reno , Nevada to seek a divorce. On May 13, 1935, the divorce was final, and immediately afterwards she married the Danish Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow.

Alexis Mdivani had received cash, valuable jewelry and the Palazzo San Gregorino in Venice , acquired in 1934 from Barbara Hutton , as well as a gold Rolls-Royce Phantom II Continental, which Barbara had made for him shortly after the wedding. He had a fatal accident with this car on August 1, 1935. He was traveling on a coastal road in Spain, near the town of Palamós, where his sister Roussadana lived with her husband. His lover at the time, the German baroness Maud Thyssen, wife of the industrialist Heinrich Thyssen, sat with him in the vehicle . Maud Thyssen survived seriously injured, Alexis Mdivani was killed instantly in the accident. Roussadana Mdivani, who found her brother's bloody corpse on a donkey cart at the scene of the accident, was never to recover from the terrible incident. She became depressed and a long-standing drug addiction worsened massively. Alexis Mdivani was first buried in the Catholic cemetery in Palamós. His brother-in-law Josep Maria Sert planned to renovate a historic chapel and rededicate it as a family mausoleum. However, that did not happen. Roussadana Sert fell ill with tuberculosis and died in a Swiss sanatorium in 1938. She was buried in the village cemetery in Saint-Saphorin (Lavaux) . In 1951 Nina Mdivani had the remains of Alexis exhumed in Spain and transferred to Saint-Saphorin, so that he found his final resting place next to Roussadana.

literature

  • Susanne Buck: murderer, fashion, dowry hunter. Jonas Verlag, Weimar 2019, ISBN 978-3-89445-568-2
  • Clemens D. Heymann: Poor little rich girl. Life and Legends of Barbara Hutton. Goldmann, Munich 1989
  • Philip Van Rensselaer: Million Dollar Baby. Intimate portrait of Barbara Hutton. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1980
  • Alice-Leone Moats: The Million Dollar Studs. New York 1977

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Liaut, Jean-Noel: The Many Lives of Miss K. New York, 2013, p 32 .
  2. ↑ Kear, Lynn: Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career . MCFARLAND & CO INC, 2006, ISBN 978-0-7864-2366-8 , pp. 27, 40 .
  3. ↑ Buck, Susanne: murderer, fashion, dowry hunter . Jonas Verlag, Weimar 2019, p. 172 .
  4. ↑ Alexis Mdivani Dies in Crash . In: Urbana Daily Courier . August 2, 1935, p. 1 .
  5. ↑ Alexis Mdivani Virtual Memorial. Retrieved June 30, 2020 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mdivani, Alexis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American polo player
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Tbilisi
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1935
Place of death Palamós , Spain