Mary & the Prince

Prince Mohamed Ibn-Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia performs his princely functions in a princely manner. With his brothers, he attended the San Francisco Conference in long white robes and created an impression of stateliness and dignity, called on the U.S. State Department, inspected U.S. factories and Niagara Falls, dined with countless Arab-American groups, bought new automobiles, radios, phonographs and typewriters, lived splendidly in an eighth-floor suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.*

But, like Haroun al Rashid, Prince Mohamed occasionally doffed his princely garb and mingled with commoners.

In Detroit the bearded, 32-year-old Prince had been introduced to a comely 22-year-old Moslem-American stenographer, Mary Mohammed. Mary Mohammed said that she met the Prince at a banquet, added that he took her home and stayed until 5 a.m. Later she came to New York, with a chaperon.

"He took me everywhere," said Mary

Mohammed. "I stayed at the Waldorf, and we went to nightclubs, shows, on boat rides, and even to Coney Island. I loved every minute of it, and especially the times when we could slip away from the Prince's bodyguard. But as for romance, that's just plain silly. He was attracted to me because I can speak Arabic. . . ." The Prince, mindful of his one wife and six children in Saudi Arabia, said that he did not remember Mary Mohammed. He then departed for England and home.

* The Arabian-American Oil Co. (owned fifty-fifty by Standard Oil Co. of California and Texas Co.) paid a lot of the bills. Washington heard that Arabian-American's advances to the royal Saudi Arabian party ran well into six figures.

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