OBIT ~ Etti Plesch, racehorse owner and socialite
Hyfler/Rosner
Etti Plesch
Austrian countess who lost two of her six husbands to one woman
but enjoyed great success on the Turf
Mrs Arpad Plesch earned a place in The Guinness Book of Records
by twice winning the Derby, in 1961 and 1980. A legendary figure in racing
circles, she also ended Nijinsky's run of 11 consecutive classic wins with
her Arc de Triomphe victory in 1970 with Sassafras. Meanwhile her private
life was no less adventurous. She married six husbands, losing two of them
to the French author, poet and femme fatale, Louise de Vilmorin.
Etti Plesch was born Countess Maria Wurmbrand-Stuppach in 1914.
The Wurmbrands were noble Austrians from Styria, though Etti was said to be
the natural daughter of Count Josef Gizycki, the dashing figure who married
the American newspaper heiress Blanche Patterson. Etti's mother, Countess
May Wurmbrand, who lived to be 97, spoke of his many qualities, but
described him as above all sexual: "I think it was the main interest of his
life - the pleasuring of women in a physical way. . . He was amoral and
cynical, but he was a marvellous lover."
Etti's maternal grandfather had won the 1876 Derby with Kisper,
and through this side of the family, the Baltazzis, she was a cousin of the
beautiful Baroness Maria Vetsera, who died with Crown Prince Rudolf
Habsburg, the son of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, in an apparent suicide
pact at the royal hunting lodge in Mayerling.
In her early life Etti lived with her mother and younger sister
partly in Vienna, but also in a castle in Moravia, belonging to her Austrian
grandmother, who had married the Greek Aristides Baltazzi. As a child Etti
travelled restlessly through Europe, moving from one family castle to
another, or to resorts such as Monte Carlo (where her mother loved to
gamble). The children were sometimes sent up to the mountains to Peraclava.
At other times they went to Rome, where her mother hunted in the Campagna
Romana. When she was ten, she was struck by tuberculosis and she spent two
years at the Waltzaner Sanatorium in Davos, which was later made famous by
Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. She was educated by a governess,
German being the first language and English the second.
Her mother and father divorced and her mother then enjoyed the
international life, accompanied by a succession of lovers. She never
remarried, possibly because of her early love for Gizycki.
Etti herself loved falling in love, and proudly said that her
six husbands were "absolutely different". She once declared: "I like living
for somebody. You can learn a lot. I think a woman must be married."
When she was 17 she fell in love with a Viennese boy called
Count Vladschi Mittrovsky, but he suffered from a rare blood disease and as
a result she was forbidden to marry him. So her great friend Marjorie
Oelrichs (later the wife of the band leader Eddy Duchin) took her to New
York, where she met the very rich Clendennin Ryan III, whose grandfather,
Thomas Fortune Ryan, made a fortune from railways, coal companies and
diamond fields. On their third date he proposed and she accepted in order to
get away from the problems in Europe.
He became her first husband at a huge wedding at St Patrick's
Cathedral in February 1934, with the Mayor of New York, La Guardia, as best
man. But the marriage was shortlived because he was an alcoholic and she was
still in love with her cousin. They separated after three months, and she
left America in a blaze of unwelcome publicity and tangled in legal
difficulties.
Immediately on her return to Europe she met Count Pali Pálffy, a
Hungarian many years her senior. She divorced Ryan (eschewing a settlement
that might have been worth millions) and became the fourth of his eight
wives in 1935. They lived at the castle of Pudmerice in Slovakia and enjoyed
an energetic sporting life. They went to India two years running on long
tiger-shooting expeditions. Their world was filled with stags and elephants
and vast palaces. Pálffy was one of the best shots in Europe. He understood
the stag and loved nothing better than to hear its call at 4am. He taught
his wife to shoot - to the fury of the Maharajah, she shot a record antelope
in Bikaner - and they spent much time in the Carpathians, often disappearing
for a fortnight at a time on an expedition entirely devoted to shooting.
They also went each year to Africa, which instilled in her a love of danger.
In October 1937 they went to Berlin for the World Exhibition of
Shooting, a fabulous event staged by Hermann Goering, who opened the Berlin
Schloss for a great dinner. Soon after this, Pálffy was himself hunted by
Louise de Vilmorin in Paris. Louise met him on October 18, suffered a coup
de foudre, and two days later followed him to Vienna. By December she had
won him from Etti, and she presently became his fifth wife.
Within a couple of months Etti had married another Hungarian
count, Thomas Esterházy (the nephew of her grandmother's sister), a cultured
and easygoing man. Remaining married for a record four years, they lived in
the enchanting castle of Devescer, in Hungary, and had an excellent chef.
They hunted in the forests, travelled widely, and had one daughter, Marie-
Anna Berta Felicie Johanna Ghislaine Theodora Huberta Georgina Helene
Genoveva, known as "Bunny".
Etti's new life was complicated only, since she had been married
into both families, by the unwritten rule that hostesses in Budapest never
asked the Esterházys and the Pálffys to the same dinners. But in February
1942, she departed for Rome, while her third husband remained in Budapest.
He joined Princess Johannes (Marizza) of Liechtenstein after dinner at the
Colonial Bar, and there met the bewitching Louise de Vilmorin. Esterházy
dropped her home, telling her: "For me you are like a better devil!" He was
nevertheless on the phone to her within a few hours, and she promptly
invited him round.
When Etti returned from Rome, she found that De Vilmorin had
stolen another husband from her. Another divorce followed, and De Vilmorin
eloped with Esterházy, though she did not marry him. During the war he was
imprisoned in Hungary after the Soviet occupation. When he escaped, having
lost all his property, he hastened to her in Neuilly. She took one look at
him and announced: "Un Esterházy n'est pas exportable!"
Etti's next two husbands followed in quick succession. The
fourth, in 1944, was an old friend, the Austrian Count "Zsiga" Berchtold,
son of Count Leopold Berchtold, the Minister of Foreign Affairs who tricked
the Emperor into declaring war on the Serbs and so started the First World
War. The fifth (whom she married in America in 1949) was Deering Davis of
Chicago, who had been briefly married to the filmstar Louise Brooks, in the
1930s. Both marriages ended in divorce.
Etti dismissed the fifth marriage as "a temporary arrangement",
and finally, in 1954, at the age of 40 and with five husbands behind her,
she married Dr Arpad Plesch, a distinguished Hungarian lawyer, international
financier and collector of rare botanical books and pornographic esoterica.
A fascinating man, he could converse on any topic, though he was also the
subject of a number of disagreeable stories.
Born in Budapest in 1889, he had been extensively educated
before being attached to the Austro-Hungarian War Office and entrusted by
all successor states to liquidate the economic representations of
Austria-Hungary in Stockholm and Zurich. After 1925 he devoted himself to
his extensive investments, and in 1936 he sued the British Crown for
face-value redemption in gold, with interest, of a considerable block of
convertible "gold notes" issued in 1917 by the British Government and
redeemable in London or New York. The Court of Appeal found in his favour,
but the House of Lords reversed the decision on the grounds that the bonds
came under American law. Had Plesch won, he would have been the richest man
in the world.
In 1939 he applied for Haitian citizenship, having taken an 80
per cent share in the Haitian-American Sugar Company. It was said that he
was acting in a manner detrimental to the interests of both Britain and the
United States, and in 1941 he was blacklisted in both countries.
Intelligence reports described him as "a cunning, shrewd and suspected man .
. . unprincipled and reported dangerous . . . a financial and legal genius
without scruples or allegiance, without any hampering ties of national
feelings." His private life too was unconventional. Originally the secretary
of a rich international builder, he married first his widow and then his
daughter.
When Etti married him, she finally became a rich woman. The
Plesches lived on the Avenue Foch in Paris, and at the Villa Leonina at
Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the South of France, where he had a famous botanical
garden and where their hospitality was legendary. A fine portrait of Arpad
Plesch was painted by their Riviera neighbour Graham Sutherland. They spent
the London season at Claridge's, where their enormous dark green Rolls-Royce
was parked daily. They launched her daughter Bunny and his
step-granddaughter, Flockie, into London society with a huge party at
Claridge's for 700 guests.
And now Etti's racing career began. In 1954 the Plesches bought
several yearlings at the Newmarket sales. They bred Psidium from the brood
mare Dinarella, and at various times had horses in training with Sir Gordon
Richards and Harry Wragg, and with trainers in Ireland, Italy, France and
the United States.
Her first success at the Epsom Derby was with Psidium in 1961,
at 66-1, the longest odds since 1913, and her second came in 1980 with
Willie Carson winning on Henbit at 7-1, despite two stumbles during the
race. She and her husband also won the Prix du Jockey Club, the Prix Robert
Papin, the Prix Morny and the Prix Vermeille. Her best buy was Discorea (for
450 guineas), which won the Irish Oaks.
Another dramatic win was when she raced Sassafras in the 1970
Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Nijinsky and Lester Pigott were set to win a
twelfth successive classic for his owner, Charles Englehard (who was said to
be the inspiration for Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"), but Etti's jockey, Yves
Saint-Martin, ran a better race. Englehard, already a sick man, was crumpled
in defeat and died a few weeks later.
Dr Plesch died in London in December 1974, aged 85. In widowhood
Etti owned apartments in London, Paris, New York and Monte Carlo. She was a
friend of Prince Rainier and the Reagans, and she loved a party. She would
entertain at Claridge's or the Connaught, her appetite being prodigious, and
she was engaging company. She expressed herself in forthright terms wholly
devoid of political correctness, and any head waiter who politely enquired
if all was well would be rewarded with a torrent of complaints. She judged
humans as livestock, describing the wife of a friend as "a bad breeder".
Lately she had all but completed her memoirs, which were awaited
with some trepidation in international society. She is survived by her
daughter, Countess Bunny Esterhazy.
Etti Plesch, racehorse owner and socialite, was born in Vienna
on February 3, 1914. She died in Monte Carlo on April 29, 2003, aged 89.
Hyfler/Rosner
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:b8pqco$brh$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> A classic obit.
>
> Etti Plesch
> Austrian countess who lost two of her six husbands to one
woman
> but enjoyed great success on the Turf
>
>
Note that the obits of Etti Plesch and Guy Mountfort appeared on the same
day. Her obit mentioned her devotion to tiger-hunting, and his to saving
them from extinction.
Robert Feigel (aka Bob)
wrote:
And both fascinating obits. Thanks.
ÿbob
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Robert Feigel (aka Bob)
wrote:
> A classic obit.
>
> Etti Plesch
> Austrian countess who lost two of her six husbands to one woman
>but enjoyed great success on the Turf
<snipped>
> Lately she had all but completed her memoirs, which were awaited
>with some trepidation in international society.
Something I'll be keeping an eye out for. She sounds a bit like my
wife's late great-aunt. "A formidable lady ..."
˙bob
Echoes
> ...
> > Austrian countess who lost two of her six husbands to one
> woman
> > but enjoyed great success on the Turf
The above is so funny let alone the rest.