The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 109

Tage Four American Girls Fall for Lure of Piptiirftsflue. Titled Noblemen Princesses of United States Have United Beauty With Ancient European Families Jessica Brown, as She Used to Appear in the Follies. In Oval The Earl of Northesk, Her Husband come back from Europe of the brilliant Continental life the titled couple are living. It seems that social circles there have accepted the young actress without question. She is an American girl, a beautiful and charming American girl.

That seems to be enough. The husbands of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, now Countess Morner, have for a long time been of breathless interest to the America public. Her marriages and separations, her alimony suit3 and her divorces have filled columns in the newspapers ever since she first graced the stage at the New Amsterdam some ten or fifteen years ago. Peggy has gone through it all smiling, stepping lightly from doorstep to doorstep, always expensively dressed and brilliantly jeweled. Peggy's husbands, up to the most recent one, have always been fabulously rich, and newspaper accounts usually mentioned Peggy's name side by side with figures of some six or seven digits.

But evidently Peggy wearied of mere wealth, for less than a year ago she married a. young Swede who boasted no fortune. But the young man had something very desirable that the other men had lacked, he had a bona fide title, and his wife would bear the appellation of Countess Morner of Sweden. As to the count, he was possibly a little bewildered by Peggy's sophistication. He was unschooled in American ways.

He arrived In June, 1920, a nice boy of twenty-three, to take a course at Columbia and establish a Swedish tooth paste business. He was very straightforward, and manly, with a handsome face and a certain foreign polish. He' was perhaps a little dazzled by the brilliant Peggy. He did not seem to quite understand her. For a while after the wedding things were a bit stormy.

But now everything is all right and the 11 .4 By Marion T. Byrnes lft A Peggy Hopkins Joyce With Her Most Recent Husband, the Count Morner r-rrHERE was blare of trumpets, a quickened I beat of the drums in the orchestra. The great room was darkened except for a single spotlight. The gay and fashionable people cheered and whistled and stood upon their chairs in the frenzy of their enthusiasm. Sweeping splendidly from the doorway to her table on a dais was Gloria glorious Gloria returned triumphantly to America as the Marquise de la Falaise et de la Coudray.

Close at her elbow was her husband, the Finally they reached their seats, only to have an electric sign flash on above their heads. A brilliant sign of colored lights representing an American flag and the tricolor with their poles crossed in a friendly fashion. It represented hands across the seas, the union of two nations, of Washington and Lafayette, and all the warmth cf cling that can exist between two nations temperamentally unalike. The orchestra played the "Matscillaise," and the cheers of the crowd grew louder, deafening. Their approval of the match was expressed in cheers that shook the rafters of the high ballroom.

It was a welcome home party given to the famous screen actress upon her return to America as a French noblewoman. For American approval to foreign titles is equaled only by foreign approval of American dollars. And Gloria, who seemed to be at a pinnacle of fame and popularity, put herself upon a still higher pedestal by her most recent gesture of wedding a marquis. Incidentally jumping her price to her producing company from $10,000 to $15,000 a week. And it is said that there were days when Gloria might have thought a mere thousand a week was an ample income.

But now undoubtedly she is in a position in the film world not unlike that of the Borgias over Florence, the Hapsburgs over Austria, the Tudors over England. Democratic as we are, there is something about a title that makes us lose all sense of reason. Princes, dukes, earls, lords and even sirs-there is witchery in them a witchery that upsets our stolid American traditions, an enchantment that makes us forget all the bother our forefathers went to rid themselves of such things as tyrannical nobles and class distinctions. This title-getting propensity of American women Is unique in history. There is no known precedent to titled nobles of alien lands consistently marrying commoners of another land.

There is no reason in It or no sense to it. Or maybe there is much reawm and sense. "The war," they say, simply in an attempt to explain it. But thrre is another thing. In Europe, an American girl is regarded with as much a and deference as a nobleman is here.

There has gr. up about kar tradition that gives her a decided advatittgj. As tales of Indians uscil to filur across the The Marquis and Marquise de la Falaise et de la Coudray. The Marquise Is Known as Gloria Swanson Atlantic, so ballads of American girls drift now. They are superwomen in the eyes of most Europeans, fabulously rich, beautiful and brilliant.

A European who marries an American girl is always regarded as having done well. And if he is an impoverished nobleman and marries an American tin king's daughter he is regarded as having done very well. Gloria Swanson is the first of the American screen actresses to marry a foreign title, but there have been several stage actresses before her who, because of their charm or beauty or something or other, succeeded in doing that enviable thing marrying a nobleman. Jessica Brown was a dancer in, the Follies. She went through her paces no better or no worse than any other girl in the ranks of the chorus.

But she was a personable young thing, and the Earl of Northesk, heir to an English estate, decided that she would make a countess as perfect as his heart could desire. So after a few difficulties in connection with her first husband, Miss Jessica Brown of Follies and Winter Carden fame, became Countess Northesk and sailed for England and Switzerland. And ever since reports have happy couple of noble status are planning a career together in American movies, using the full nomenclature of Count and Countess Morner. A title has a face value in America..