The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 50

By Bert Andrews 3 Vt5S ONCE she was offered $100,000 by a peace-loving man if she'd only refrain from bothering him for 365 days. But she talked herself out of it in two tries, at $50,000 a try! Now she'd like very much to have that cash, and the question is: Can she talk herself back into it? Precedents say that she can't. But precedents mean less than nothing to this woman of variegated exploits, who is bound to turn up on the first team when they set about selecting an aggregation of All-Time, Ail-American Glamor Girls. For she is none other than the remarkable Lydia Locke, who has been, among other things, an opera star playing dramatic parts, and whose spectacular career has included marriages to: A Reno gambler. (He called himself Lord Reginald W.

Talbot. She was indicted and tried after he was shot, but won swift acquittal, the jury agreeing that she killed in self-defense.) A grand opera star. (This was the late who sang with the Metropolitan, and who stood the excitement a good many years longer than any other husband of iLydia did. She got the divorce.) A millionaire organ manufacturer. (He was Arthur H.

Marks, who died a few weeks ago. It was he w-ho gave Lj-dia $300,000 in cash and offered the additional $100,000 for a leave-me-alone promise, which she didn't keep. She's trying now to sue Mrs. Margaret Martin Hoover Marks, with whom he later found happiness and peace and quiet.) 1 A soldier of fortune. (By name, Harry Dornblaser, who ended his life with a bullet in Cleveland, Ohio.) A French shipping man.

(His name is Carl Marinovic. He's in Paris at the moment, far away from Lydia. The marriage ended in a divorce.) If the mere matter of marriages doesn't establish Lydia's All-Time Glamor-Girl rating, it may be added that her hectic-life has included such highlights as an attempt to present an adopted baby as her own a hand-to-hand duel with a husky janitress over a dispute about eight days' rent a one-round, no-decision bout with a chauffeur over a purse of twenty-five cents, and a $25,000 suit against Julian W. Robbins, banker, whose automobile bumped her and broke her leg. Lydia was born just about fifty years ago in the little town of Hannibal, Missouri, of moderately well-to-do parents who soon discovered two things: that Lydia had a remarkable voice and that she knew how to use it to get what she wanted around the house.

By the time she was sixteen, there 1 1 Htl Hi tiii i- JOT I i- fas Oi And So the FiveTinws-W ed Lydia Locke. JTho Could lftt Orville Harrold, cents for payment, they had words. She bopped him in the right eye with her good right hand and on the head with a slipper from her left foot. The judge said later she did just right. The Robbins suit was settled out of court.

While winning these minor fights, Lydia was losing her singer husband. He filed suit, naming Mr. Marks as corespondent. She retortoi with a counter-suit. Harrold said: "I don't care who gets it, as long as it is gotten." Lydia i got it.

Then began the dizziest period of Lydia's Jite, the phase that is echoed today in the latest of her many suits. She married Marks, who had been married once before. At first he thought it a lot of fun to have a wife who had so much fun, who kept so busy and who liked to be on the go without wasting too much time in repose. But after six years, he found that he couldn't stand the strain. The story goes that he went ta.

a famous sanitarium to be built up, but that before the physical training experts had a chance to goito work on him, his wife called. The man who ran the plac talked to the wife. Legend has it, that after the chat he talked with Marks and told him jTs uP Again X-' ivj5 lrrTTh Still for a Fortune 1 -V When Millionaire Arthur Marks Uied Ke- 1 1 cently He Left the Bulk of His Estate to Lvdia Was Indicted for Hi Third Wife, Shown Above. Lydia Could 11? Ill Sending a Poison Pen fSot Refrain 1 fi 1 Letter to the Third roH 1 1 jKry- 100'000- i fr1 ''a fAf vm iihA Xx -jr- wasn't anything around the house that she still craved, and she took her voice onto the concert stage in search of bigger and better excitement. She did have talent; opera coaches of the time conceded that.

But more than that, she had a flare for the spectacular that was to leave her, and all about her, with few monotonous moments. At eighteen she ran into tall, handsome "Lord" Talbot, whose title couldn't be found in any British reference book but who made it do in the gaming rooms of Nevada. They got married after a whirlwind courtship, and he was the only one of Lydia's husbands who had as tempestuous a nature as she did, a nature he manifested by beating her into silence occasionally. Lydia objected and de- manded a divorce. They met in a law- yer's office.

The marriage was ended right there, with a bullet. After her Lydia settled "Lord" Talbot's estate and found that, thanks to a winning streak of the previous few weeks, he had left her enough to study opera in Chicago and in Paris. Orville Harrold, the grocery boy whose operatic career began when Madame Schumann-Heink beard him singing behind his horses one day, came into Lydia's life next. He felt he needed a wife with life, pep and ambition, and so he parted from the bride of his humble days and, after a divorce, married Lydia. While she was Mrs.

Harrold, Lydia battled with the janitress. Neighbors stopped the fisticuffs and a bewildered judge dismissed counter-charges filed by the women. At about this time, too, came the dispute with the chauffeur and the suit against banker Robbins. The chauffeur had been sent by a neighboring store to deliver a package. When Lydia wasn't prompt enough in finding the twenty-five U.

i Jri '-yi'-wiL i If -Ct 1 hi fortune h.vc in P. 11 i 11 I ,1 I of his fortune she should have in i muim Tempestuous Lydia Locke Has Been Married Five Times. She Now Is Asking Permission to Name Marks Widow Defendant in Two Suits She Filed Against the Millionaire Before His Death. 1 it "Was SirrPOfl that 1. It was agreed that she would 'K- if I -x get 1 ouu.ihiu casn on the line, an rstatp in 1 1 $300,000 cash on the line, an estate in 'You might as well nack nn.

fsn't anything we can do for you. you neea is a divorce." Whether this is true or not, the Marks couple did decide to part and there were huddles with lawyers as to what share exchange for the six years of her life that she had given him. Port Chester, another house in New York and some smaller pieces of property that he had acquired. Then they said goodbye, and Marks retired, or so he thought, to a state of single blessedness where he could have the quiet his nerves demanded. He was wrong.

Before long, she was on the telephone or present in person at his home and office to. discuss a lot of details which she believed still had to be settled. That was wheri he made the bid of $100,000 for sUencej and a' lot of it. He put that $100,000 in trust, on condition that she would get it if she wouldn't come near him again and would not get her name into the papers in any scandalous manner, both pacts being for a period of one year. Most people thought that she was a cinch.to get the money and that he was bidding pretty high for 305 days of calm, but they were wrong, at least about her getting it.

Just before six months had passed, she confided to him that he was the father of a child which had been born to her since the divorce. She had birth certificate, affidavits and other drcuments to prove it, what's mora. Mark3 didn't appreciate being made a parent in. such an unexpected manner, and so hej was mean enough to hire detectives 'to check up on the story that Lydia told. They found that she had made a few slight mistakes, to-wit: (1) the baby wasn't born to her; (2) it had been borrowed from a maternity hospital in Kansas City, and (3) all the fancy documents were bogus.

Lydia stuck to her guns until the Kansas City authorities recovered the baby by habeas corpus proceedings. Then she admitted that she had, indeed, made a slight error, and she went to Marks to ask, in effect: "How does this affect that $100,000 trust fund?" He replied in words similar to these: "I ought to take it all away, but I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll not bother me for the remaining six months, I'll let you have half of it," It looked for a time as if she'd get that $50,000, for she married Pomblaser and Marks married again, and it seemed certain that both couples would be too en grossed with honeymooning to fret about extraneous matters. But just before the second six months was up the new Mrs. Marks got a poison pen letter, and' a copy of it was sent to Mr.

Marks. AFederal Grand Jury indicted Lydia for sending the letter through the mails. It was charged that Lydia wrote the letter, and that she had had her sister, Frances Adams, mail it. The indictment was never brought trial. Neither was a $250,000 suit thkt the new Airs.

Marks brought against Lydia for defamation of character. But Mr. Marks considered that Lydia had loi feited the $50,000 and he told her to. Lydia effected an orderly retreat to Paris after this series of skirmishes. Widowed by Dornblaser'si suicide she next met and married Carlo Marinovich, the shipping man.

After a hectic five years they wera divorced in White Plains in 1932. i But despite those side attractions Lydia was not yet through with Arthur Marks. She and Marks had adopted boy during their married life, and short time before Mr. Marks' death shs had gone into court with two actions. In one of them she demanded $75,000 which she said she had spent on the education of the adopted boy.

This matter, she told the court, had been overlooked in the divorce settlement. In the other she asked the courts to void the agree ment she had signed when'she and Mr, Marks were divorced in 1924, and shs pouted: "1 signed that under duress. When Marks died at his Palm Beach' estate he left Lydia exactly nothing and, he cut off the adopted son, who was named in his will as Newton Locke, with only $500. He left all his estate except that $500 to his widow. Lydia was thoroughly annoyed Sy that.

She went into court again with a motion for permission to name Mrs. Margaret Marks, executrix of the estate, as defendant in the two suits. And not until the New York courts rule finally on her' motion will it be known whether she can talk herself back into the fortius shs talked herself out oL in l. -i' i i i 1 The Laic Arthur Hudson Marks Is Shown Romping Mith the Son He and Lvdia Adopted in 1922..