"Anything Blindfolded"

There was free champagne. Many jealous Russian emigres in Paris prudently forgot their high talk of '"boycotting" the ceremony and attended the wedding last week of Barbara Woolworth Hutton to "Prince" Alexis Mdivani in the Russian Church in Paris. The church was jammed. Three thousand people stood on the sidewalk, lost their tempers, punched each other's faces, nearly ruined the bride's dress (Patou) and had a grand time. There are no seats in a Russian church. For over half an hour, while four bearded brocaded priests chanted at them, led them round & round the altar and sprinkled them with holy water, bride & groom stood, holding lighted candles. The bride swayed dangerously once or twice but did not collapse. Among the nine ushers who took turns holding gilt crowns over the heads of the couple were Prince Theodore of Russia, Serge Lifar, a dancer at the Paris opera, and three other Woolworth heirs, cousins of the bride: James Donahue, Woolworth Donahue, and Fraser McCann.

By French law a husband who has not signed a marriage contract is entitled to 50% of the bride's estate.

"I will sign anything blindfolded, because I am so in love with Barbara!" cried Alexis Mdivani, secretary of a "Georgian Legation" in Paris that neither Russian legitimists nor the Soviet government recognizes, and he put his sign manual to a paper, which, according to the Hearst Universal Service, gave him a settlement of $250,000 a year. Pleased Papa Franklyn Hutton gave the pair a yacht for a wedding present and they departed for a honeymoon in Venice, Biarritz and Barcelona before settling down to what Princess Barbara said would be "leisure."

The size of the groom's settlement set the world wondering at the size of the bride's fortune. When the late Frank Winfield (5-c- & 10^-c-) Woolworth died in 1919, he owned approximately one quarter of the stock of this giant company. He left his entire estate to his wife, Jennie. Since the latter, aged 66, suffered from premature senility, the estate was administered by a committee consisting of their two daughters: Helena (Mrs. Charles McCann), and Jessie (Mrs. James Paul Donahue), and Hubert Parson, president of the company (1919-32). When Jennie Woolworth died in 1924 the estate was divided equally among two daughters, Jessie & Helena, and one granddaughter, Barbara Hutton, whose mother, Edna Woolworth Hutton, had died in 1917.

Barbara Hutton's inheritance at that time consisted of some 175,000 shares of Woolworth common stock. Trustees have traded it back and forth, sold large blocks of it. Financial sleuths estimate her fortune as of 1933 may have dropped to a market value of $20,000,000, of which the income might be $1,000,000 before taxes, a tidy sum but not to be compared with the inheritance of Heiress Doris Duke ($53,000,000), still fair game for the rest of Russia's aristocracy.

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