Curly-haired Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, 35, used to cut quite a dashing figure as a skier and amateur bicycle champion. About a year ago, the prince (French by birth, Lithuanian by descent) became Barbara Hutton's fourth husband. Then he developed an intense interest in a very expensive sport: auto racing.
With princely fervor, Igor ordered high-powered cars, formed a racing club, trained all winter. The bill came to 60 million francs (about $200,000). Last week he lined up for Monte Carlo's International Grand Prix, first since the war.
The Grand Prix is no Sunday drive. The tortuous 198-mile course zigzags through narrow city streets, swoops uphill & down. In the 1937 race, a Frenchman drove over a cliff into the sea, and one Italian ended Up with his radiator embedded in the ticket office of Monte Carlo's railroad station. Last week, after 50 laps (halfway), eleven of the 19 cars in the race had quit. But Igor, gripping the wheel of his No. 36, a crimson Ferrari, was still in the running. Then it happened.
On the 54th lap, his Ferrari skidded out of control. In the stands by the waterfront, Monte Carlo's glossy postwar idlers gasped and screamed. Igor's auto spun crazily and came to rest, backside-forward against a pile of straw. Slowly, with compressed lips, the prince emerged from his wrecked car, walked with dignity into the bar of the Hotel de Paris and was not seen again.
The winner: an Italian named Giuseppe Farina, an old hand at taking sharp turns, who spun over the 318 kilometers at an average 101.3 k.p.h. Giuseppe's take: 730,000 francs, two silver cups, a bunch of roses wrapped in cellophane.