At Long Last

Crown Prince Carol of Rumania had just turned 30 when he met her in 1924. According to one version, the meeting took place at a ball in Bucharest's officers' club. According to another, he saw her at the opera, and winked at her. According to a third, she waited for his car to pass on a dark road near Bucharest, her clothes disheveled as though she had been in an accident, and permitted herself to be rescued. At any rate, Carol Hohenzollern fell deeply in love with Elena Lupescu; she became his mistress, and everyone who read the Sunday supplements during the last 23 years knew it.

Daughter, Daughter. She had red hair and green eyes, and a camellia-white complexion. They called her Magda, a good name for a voluptuous beauty of her type. She joined the Greek Orthodox Church, though her mother was a Roman Catholic Viennese dancer and her father a Jewish merchant (variously described as a moneylender, druggist, innkeeper, garageman). The story goes that Papa Lupescu was very fond of Carol, and liked to refer to him and Magda as "my children." Once, when Carol's brother Nicolas recklessly proposed to marry a commoner, Papa Lupescu chided Magda: "Daughter, daughter! What kind of a family are you getting mixed up with?"

Magda shared Carol's first five-year exile (1925 to 1930). She shared his power when he returned to Rumania in 1930 and was crowned. She moved into a villa on Bucharest's Alea Elisa Filipescu, where she raised white turkeys. She was violently hated in the country (manifestoes attacked "this red-haired witch who exercises such an occult influence over our King"). When Edward VIII abdicated for Wally Simpson's sake, Carol thought it prudent to suppress the news in Rumania for a while--lest his subjects get ideas. But he refused to give Magda up. Said he: "She is the other half of my being, the other half of my brain."

In 1940, under pressure from the Nazis, Carol and Magda had to flee Rumania. Afterward, Magda Lupescu's villa was opened to the public--at 10-c- admission.

Two Elenas. Countess Rosie Waldeck once said: "Any $50-a-week American publicity man could have saved Lupescu all along." Carol hired a considerably more expensive publicity man (Russell Birdwell; fee: $35,000) to get them admitted to the U.S., but he failed. The couple went to Mexico City, where they lived quietly in the dignified old suburb of Coyoacan. Invitations to their small, candlelit parties were sought eagerly. Later they went to Brazil, where they stayed at Rio's Copacabana Palace.

In 1947, the ex-King was 53 years old. Magda never told anyone her age, but it was at least 50. Back in Rumania, young Mihai, Carol's son, was King now. It did not seem such a long time ago that little Mihai had asked innocently one day: "Who is Daddy's lady friend?"

In Rio, Carol and Magda played a lot of bridge, walked their dogs. Friends insisted that Carol had always wanted to marry Magda, and that she had always refused. After all, there was the chance that he might be King again some day, and what would Papa Lupescu have said? Last year, a U.S. friend, speaking to a critic of the couple, summed up their status: "For 23 years, she has been faithful to him. For 23 years, he has not looked at another woman. Which is more than you can say for yourself, you so-and-so."

Then Magda Lupescu fell ill of pernicious anemia. She looked frail and joked about how easily she grew tired.

Last week, Carol summoned friends to his Copacabana suite (in which the Windsors had once stayed). He talked with them nervously, then he led them into the bedroom. Magda wore a white satin bed-jacket. She was dying, the doctors said. In the presence of the six witnesses, ex-King Carol married Magda Lupescu.* She assumed the title of Princess Elena of Rumania, the same name that Carol's bitter, blonde wife had once borne. Reporters said that the ex-King cried during the ceremony, but this was later denied.

* Under Brazilian law, if a couple, one of whom is dying, wish to marry, they can declare that intention before six witnesses. A court then decides whether to make the marriage legal. Divorce does not exist in Brazil, and both Carol and Magda have been divorced; however, Brazilian courts sometimes recognize the divorces of foreigners. A knottier gimmick in the Carol-Magda nuptials is a Brazilian legal provision that the deathbed wedding procedure is invalidated if the ill spouse recovers.

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