David Mdivani

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David Mdivani (born February 14, 1904 in Tbilisi , † August 5, 1984 in Los Angeles , California ) was one of five siblings who became famous between 1927 and 1935 as "Marrying Mdivanis". They had 11 weddings and 7 divorces in just a few years, increasing their popularity and wealth in equal measure.

Life

David Mdivani was the son of Zakhari Mdivani, who served as a general under Tsar Nicholas II . served. The mother, Elisabeth Viktorovna Sobolevska, was the daughter of a Polish father and a Georgian mother. He had four siblings:

For his military service, Zakhari Mdivani was appointed governor of the city of Batumi in 1914 , and the family moved to the Caucasian Black Sea coast, where the paternal grandfather lived in a large family house.

Zenas Marshall Crane, a son of the late Senator from Dalton , Massachusetts , visited Zakhari Mdivani there in 1919 when he was on an oil business in Georgia and the Caucasus . He took David, then 16, and his brother Serge to the United States , where they attended Phillips Academy, an American high school and boarding school in Andover , Massachusetts, near Boston .

The other members of the family managed to leave Georgia shortly before it was conquered by the Red Army and to flee to France via Constantinople . The family met in Paris in 1922. Since their exile, the siblings had allowed themselves to be dubbed princesses and princes, which was not legitimate, but was to prove enormously prestigious. After their mother's sudden death, the two older sons returned to the United States in 1923, where they kept their heads above water with odd jobs. David Mdivani later took a job as a laborer in the Torrance oil fields , near Los Angeles .

Through contacts with other émigrés, he met the film actress Pola Negri in 1925 . She was looking for a bridge partner for her mother who could speak Polish or Russian. Her choice fell on David Mdivani, who was soon a regular guest at her house and thus came into contact with people from the film industry. The film producer Mack Sennett was very impressed by the handsome "Prince" and engaged him in 1926 for the short film "A Small Town Princess", which premiered March 20, 1927. The main characters were Billy Bevan and Madeline Hurlock; David Mdivani played the movie star Lionel Lorraine. Because he wanted to remain anonymous when the film came out, he was featured in the opening credits as David Manor.

Through Pola Negri , David Mdivani also met actress Mae Murray , who was one of Hollywood's highest paid film stars. She took a liking to the man who was 19 years her junior and the idea of ​​becoming "Princess Mdivani" through marriage. For this she was ready to offer her destitute husband a princely life. On June 27, 1926, the wedding took place in Beverly Hills, Pola Negri and Rudolph Valentino were groomsmen. On May 14, 1927, Pola Negri married Serge Mdivani in Paris , so that the two film divas were not only Princess Mdivani, but also sisters-in-law.

In the summer of 1928, reporters in Hollywood discovered that Mae and David had become parents. Their son, whom they named Koran Mdivani, was reportedly born in February 1927. In fact, Mae had given birth to the child in Paris in January 1926. To this day it is not clear whether David Mdivani was the biological father.

The marriage lasted only a few years, in 1931 Mae Murray filed for divorce. In the press she announced that the prince had robbed her of her career and her money. He was extremely jealous, hit and insulted her several times. In the meantime, she barely got any film roles and her entire fortune had vanished through waste, legal proceedings and the stock market crash . When the Koran fell ill and Mae could not pay for the treatment, the doctor's family took the boy into care. In December 1940 he was officially adopted by them and given the name Daniel Michael Cunning.

David and Serge Mdivani had now founded their own company, the Pacific Shore Oil Company, and leased six plots in the Venice oil fields, southeast of Santa Monica . Although they found oil there, the brothers stood on trial in 1933. They were accused of embezzling over $ 30,000 while investors - including their former wives - received nothing. Finally, in October 1934, charges of theft were dropped. Instead, they were charged with conspiracy for the purpose of a criminal offense on the weakened count and sentenced to fines at the end of the trial.

David Mdivani and Mae Murray at their wedding on June 27, 1926 in Beverly Hills

From 1937 to 1939 David Mdivani had a love affair with the French actress Arletty , whom he met in Venice in 1937. She is said to have become pregnant by him in 1939, but decided not to have the child.

After the outbreak of war he returned to the USA and settled in Palm Beach . There he married Virginia Sinclair in 1944, heir to the oil tycoon Harry Ford Sinclair . A year later their son, Michael Sinclair Mdivani, was born.

In October 1959, Virginia Sinclair-Mdivani filed for divorce on charges of "cruelty". David Mdivani countered with an attack on Virginia's lesbian friend Virginia Kent Catherwood. It was known that she was a friend of Patricia Highsmith , who in 1952 had served as a model for the character of Carol in the novel Salt and His Prize . David Mdivani sued her for a million dollars in compensation for pain and suffering on the grounds that she viciously influenced his wife against him and thereby destroyed a happy 14-year marriage. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn after Virginia Sinclair agreed to return to her husband.

Virginia Sinclair filed for a second divorce in 1963 and the verdict became final a year later. After Virginia's death in 1979, David Mdivani returned to the family estate, where he lived with his son Michael.

David Mdivani died on August 5, 1984 at the age of 80. He was buried in Los Angeles , with the inscription Loving Father on his headstone .

literature

  • Susanne Buck: murderer, fashion, dowry hunter. Jonas Verlag, Weimar 2019, ISBN 978-3-89445-568-2
  • Alice-Leone Moats: The Million Dollar Studs. New York 1977

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neal Gabler: The Marrying Mdivanis. How an Early Hollywood Family Became the Original Kardashians . In: Los Angeles Magazine . 29th November 2016.
  2. ↑ Misia Sert: Paris memories . Wiesbaden 1959, p. 217 .
  3. ↑ Los Angeles Evening Herald . Los Angeles November 26, 1920, p. 12 .
  4. ↑ Misia Sert : Paris memories . Wiesbaden 1959, p. 220 .
  5. ↑ Denise Tual: Au cœur du temps . Paris 1987, p. 37 ff .
  6. ↑ Cecil Roberts: The Pleasant Years . London 1974, p. 17 .
  7. ↑ The Mdivani Brothers' Own Story by David Mdivani . In: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Daily Magazine . December 7, 1935, p. 30 .
  8. ↑ Pola Negri: Memoirs of a Star . Doubleday, New York 1970.
  9. ↑ Alice-Leone Moats: The Million Dollar Studs . New York 1977, p. 24 .
  10. ↑ Michael G. Ankerich: Mae Murray - The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips . Kentucky 2013.
  11. ↑ Michael G. Ankerich: Mae Murray - The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips . Kentucky 2013, p. 200 .
  12. ↑ Jane Kesner Morris Ardmore: The Self-Enchanted: Mae Murray, Image of an Era . New York 1959.
  13. ↑ Michael G. Ankerich: Mae Murray - The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips . Kentucky 2013, p. 257 ff .
  14. ↑ Suits Against the Mdivanis Are Dismissed . In: The Binghampton Press . October 10, 1934, p. 23 .
  15. ↑ Denis Demonpion: Arletty . Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-066940-0 .
  16. ↑ Andrew Wilson: Beautiful Shadow. The life of Patricia Highsmith . BTV, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-8333-0311-5 , p. 194 ff .
  17. ^ Times Record . New York November 25, 1959, p. 11 .
  18. ↑ Michael G. Ankerich: Mae Murray - The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips . Kentucky 2013, p. 304 .
  19. ^ Find a Grave. Accessed February 11, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Mdivani, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Georgian-American husband
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Tbilisi
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1984
Place of death los Angeles