In London last week, handsome, hollow-eyed Princess Irina Alexandrovna Youssoupov and her husband Prince Felix were guests of honor at a bright little dinner party to which were invited Gertrude Lawrence, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mr. and Mrs. James J. Walker. The dinner was to celebrate an occasion. The Princess had just received from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Ltd. a check for the largest libel settlement ever made. Though only four people in the world supposedly knew the exact amount, good guessers put it in the neighborhood of $750,000.
Last March a London jury decided that the Princess deserved $125,000 from MGM because the cinema Rasputin and the Empress showed a "Princess Natasha" being raped by the Mad Monk of the Russian court (TIME, March 12). Princess Irina had only one connecting link with Rasputin: her husband had helped to murder him on the night of Dec. 16, 1916.
MGM appealed the verdict, lost a second time. It could, if it would, have carried the case to the House of Lords, but the Princess was prepared to sue MGM in the U. S., start actions against every exhibitor daring to show the picture. This meant not only that MGM might be liable for damages to exhibitors who were forced to pay the Princess, but also that few theatres would want to risk showing a picture which cost $1,000,000 to make. Hence MGM proposed a settlement. For her promise to drop all further action in the matter, the Princess received in addition to her cash award a stipulation that hereafter Rasputin and the Empress will only be shown with a preface explaining "Princess Natasha" is entirely fictional.
Well-known to Parisian socialites for his activities in behalf of impoverished Emigres in Paris, dapper Prince Youssoupov is no stranger to the courts. In 1925 he lost a suit against Joseph P. Widener for $500,000 worth of pictures which he was under the impression that Mr. Widener had accepted as security for a loan. But for the occasion which prompted last week's dinner party the Princess Irina owed less to her husband's testimony on the stand than to her lawyer, bright-lipped, buxom Fanny Holtzmann.
For several years, Miss Fanny Holtzmann has been known vaguely in Manhattan theatrical circles as "the highest paid woman lawyer in the world." Since most women attorneys receive trifling fees, this distinction was negligible, although Lawyer Holtzmann's clients included Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence and Leslie Howard. She began her legal career as a schoolgirl, doing chores about the office of her older brother, Lawyer Jacob L. Holtzmann, studied law at Fordham, opened an office of her own half an hour after being admitted to the bar in 1922. She has been ready for the plaintiff ever since. She has additional offices in Hollywood and London. Most of her friends as well as her clients are stage folk. Last week's dinner to toast MGM's defeat was given by Miss Holtzmann in the apartment of her friend Mrs. Charlotte Goulding.