Ads, articles, and filler from old Toronto newspapers
The February 22 1923 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this photograph:
The Marquis (usually spelled Marques) de Casa Maury and Paula Gellibrand got married in 1923, and were divorced in 1932. (He later married Freda Dudley Ward, who was the mistress of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, from 1918 to 1934.) Ms. Gellibrand married four times in total, and was once described as “the most beautiful woman in Europe”.
Here’s one more photo from the September 16 1924 edition of the Toronto Daily Star, featuring a young woman who was spending time with the Prince of Wales:
Pinna Nesbit (1896-1950), as she was born, was a Canadian silent film actress, appearing in movies between 1917 and 1920. Frederick Cruger was husband number two of three; her Wikipedia page states flatly that she had an affair with the Prince of Wales.
The October 17 1925 edition of the Hamilton Evening Journal (of Hamilton, Ohio), ran an article claiming that Mrs. Cruger had received a vanity case from the Prince that was made of platinum and encrusted with emeralds and diamonds.
Here’s another photo from the September 16 1924 edition of the Toronto Daily Star, featuring actress Pearl Shephard:
I couldn’t find much information on Pearl Shephard. Her Internet Movie Database entry lists her as appearing in a number of movies between 1917 and 1922.
A search for the prince yielded an article that talked of his fondness for the high life; he ran through $60,000 in 90 days in 1922. He apparently hung out with Mabel Normand for a while, but then became captivated enough by Ms. Shephard to ask his uncle, the Khedive of Egypt, whether he could marry her. The answer was no.
Here is a picture of the prince later in life. He passed away in 1977.
I am becoming endlessly fascinated by the photo sections of Toronto Daily Star editions from the 1920s – there are so many stories there.
Here’s a photo from the September 16 1924 edition of the Toronto Daily Star:
Alice “Kiki” Preston (1898-1946) endured upheavals when very young: her father, mentioned above, declared bankruptcy in 1902 and died of acute kidney problems in 1904.
She married Horace Allen in 1919; he became an executive in a plastics corporation. She filed for divorce in November 1924, on the grounds of desertion. In 1925, she married Gerry Preston, an investment banker, and they eventually moved to Kenya, becoming part of a group of expatriate aristocrats known as the Happy Valley Set. She became addicted to drugs, and had an affair with Prince George, the Duke of Kent, who became addicted as well.
Her life ended tragically: her husband died in 1934 and, after enduring the deaths of many of her friends and relatives, she jumped out of a window of her fifth-floor apartment in New York in 1946.
Here’s a photo from the May 19 1925 edition of the Toronto Daily Star that yielded a fascinating story:
Irene Marcellus, who was apparently considered “the girl with the most beautiful figure in America” at one time, was working as an artist’s nude model when she met Sarath Kumar Ghosh, also calling himself Prince Sarath Ghosh of Ghoshpara, who was travelling the United States giving lectures about India. Ghosh befriended Ms. Marcellus and her sister; he apparently fell in love with her, but she refused to marry him.
When Mr. Ghosh passed away unexpectedly in 1920, he left his estate to the two Marcellus sisters and to Annabelle Stretch, who worked as a stenographer, on the condition that they “abandon their present work of posing as artist models in the nude and to use their respective legacies to fit themselves to earn their livelihood in another manner.” Ms. Stretch had never worked as a model, but whatever.
Ms. Marcellus continued on the stage for a while, appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies between 1920 and 1923. She then gave it up to concentrate on sculpture, and apparently to hope that there was more money in Mr. Ghosh’s estate than the $5,000 that was known about.
A Google search turned up a long article on Ms. Marcellus and Mr. Ghosh in the July 12, 1925 edition of the Helena Daily Independent, which was the source of much of this material. It’s fascinating (if somewhat overblown) reading. I could find no record of her after this, so I have no idea whether she got any more money or had any success as a sculptor.
Among other things, Mr. Ghosh (or perhaps Prince Sarath) was a writer. His two-part series titled The Wonders of The Jungle (published in 1915 and 1918) is available on the Project Gutenberg website here and here; I haven’t read any of either book. The Secret Desi History and Pulp Flakes websites have a lot of information on this self-styled prince.
Wikimedia Commons has photographs of Ms. Marcellus, some of which may be NSFW.
The May 19 1925 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained a photograph of the Countess of Seafield, a Scottish peeress who was extremely wealthy:
The Countess of Seafield had held her peerage since the age of nine. In 1915, her father, James Ogilvie-Grant, had been killed in the First World War, so she inherited his title. Her father had also been Baron Strathspey, Baron Colquhoun, and the chief of Clan Grant, but these honours could go to male heirs only, so they went to his younger brother.
The Countess was born Nina Ogilvie-Grant, and then became Nina Studley-Herbert when she married her husband in 1930. She later became one of the seven godparents of Antony Armstrong-Jones, who was eventually Princess Margaret’s husband. That’s a lot of hyphenated names.
As it turned out, she got to keep her title; she held it until her death in 1969. At that time, she was the second-richest woman in Britain; Queen Elizabeth II was first.
From the “I’m not sure this is a good idea department”: the May 19 1925 edition of the Toronto Daily Star mentioned that anyone in New York could rent a live lion from the Central Park Zoo.
I suppose that the lions had long since become habituated to humans and were no longer dangerous, but this just seems like a bad idea on so many levels.
The April 17 1928 edition of the Toronto Daily Star included a photograph of a woman from Seattle who had become the wife of the former Maharajah of Indore.
Google searches turned up the following:
The April 17 1928 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained a photograph of a principal and a kindergarten teacher who had gotten married:
Out of curiosity, I traced Mr. Watson in the Toronto city directories (the directories only list heads of households, so I couldn’t trace her). He and his wife didn’t live on Glenholme Avenue very long – he is listed in the 1928 directory as rooming on Atlas Avenue, I couldn’t find him in the 1929 directory at all, and the 1930 directory lists a J. R. Watson working as a teacher at Humewood School and living on Winona Drive.
He is listed as either a teacher or a principal at Humewood School until 1939, moving at least twice more. I couldn’t find him or his wife after that; I assume that they moved out of the city. Humewood School still exists.
The April 17 1928 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this brief notice about a British aristocrat who had married a young actress:
Hermione Baddeley (1906-1986) went on to have a distinguished career in movies and television. Among other roles, she played Mrs. Cratchit in the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, and a housekeeper in the TV series Maude. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Room At The Top (1959), despite her part lasting only 2 minutes and 32 seconds.
The article on the marriage of David Tennant (misspelled in the article) and Ms. Baddeley doesn’t mention that she was an hour late for the wedding, having misremembered the time of the ceremony. This might have been foreshadowing: the couple divorced in 1937, but apparently remained good friends.
Toronto Old News 
