The fur-coated bride was young (22), pertly pretty and the "richest girl in the world."The socialite-playboy groom smiled ecstatically and told reporters: "I assure you that it was love at first sight . . . love at first sight." Then amateur Sportsman James H. R. Cromwell and his bride, the former Doris Duke, boarded the Italian liner Conte di Savoia, sailed romantically away on an eight-month, round-the-world honeymoon. That was in 1935.
Last December the Reno courts awarded Doris Duke Cromwell a divorce on grounds of cruelty. Jimmy Cromwell marched straight into New Jersey's Chancery Court. There, last week, he finally succeeded in having the divorce declared null & void in New Jersey—where Mrs. Cromwell has some $10,000,000 worth of property. Grounds for the court ruling: 1) Doris Duke Cromwell had never become a bona fide resident of Nevada, even though she bought a house there; 2) the Nevada court had improperly concealed the evidence in the case. The decision made the validity of Reno divorces in other states increasingly uncertain.
"Shameful and Shocking." Jimmy Cromwell, son of Philadelphia's rich & famed hostess, Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury, had not been reticent about pleading his case in court. His basic philosophy: "I don't believe that a marriage license alone suffices to keep a woman in love with her husband. What happened to me can happen in the best regulated families."
The trouble began with politics. Said Jimmy: "You know ... I have always been a good New Dealer. I persuaded Mrs. Cromwell to contribute $50,000 to the Roosevelt campaign in 1940. Her attorney ... is a good old Republican reactionary and I am sure he helped to poison Mrs. Cromwell's mind against me."
When Jimmy — presumably on the strength of the $50,000 campaign contribution—was made U.S. Minister to Canada, the Cromwells' domestic relations continued to deteriorate. Said the Cromwell counsel, State Senator John E. Toolan: "She humiliated him greatly by her indifference" to the responsibilities of a diplomat's wife even though she dutifully joined him in such chores as inspecting a Canadian gold mine (see cut). Her "conduct and her carryings on" were "shameful and shocking."
Back in New Jersey, added Senator Toolan, Mrs. Cromwell subjected her husband to "the acme of refined cruelty . . . when Mr. Cromwell's valet . . . was compelled to wait several hours . . . because Mr. Cromwell's bedroom was occupied by his successor in his wife's affections." A deposition from Mrs. Stotesbury stated that her daughter-in-law frequently trav eled without Jimmy, "and with companions of which my son deeply disapproved."