Natalia Pavlovna Paley
Encyclopedia
Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley (Наталья Павловна Палей) (December 5, 1905 – December 27, 1981) was a member of the Romanov family. A daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia
, she was a first cousin of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II
. After the Russian revolution she emigrated first to France
and later to the United States
. She became a fashion icon, socialite and briefly pursued a career as a film actress.
and his second wife, Olga Valeriovna Karnovich, who was of Hungarian aristocratic descent.
Her parents were living in exile after contracting a morganatic marriage. They had met in St. Petersburg in 1895, when Olga Karnovich was married to an officer, and was the mother of three children. Grand Duke Paul already was the father of two, and a was a widower; his first wife princess Alexandra of Greece had died in childbirth. Their relationship did not remain secret for long. On January 9, 1897, Olga gave birth to a son, Wladimir, by Grand Duke Paul. Olga was granted a divorce from her husband and soon left Russia to marry Paul in Livorno, Tuscany, Italy, on October 10, 1902. Their daughter, Irene, was born on December 21, 1903. Not long after, the King of Bavaria gave Olga the title of Countess de Hohenfelsen, a title that was to be handed down to her descendants. They were still vacationing in Rome when the couple was banished to return to Russia by Paul's nephew, the reigning Tsar Nicholas II.
They settled in Paris and bought a house in Boulogne-sur-Seine that previously belonged to Princess Zenaide Ivanovna Youssoupoff. It was there that Natalie was born in 1905, completing their family. Paul and Olga employed a household staff of sixteen maids, gardeners, cooks, and tutors. Wladimir, Irene and Natalie had a happy and privileged upbringing, and for a time, utterly protected from the outside world. Though their parents had a busy social life, the children were very close to them and they ate their meals together, an unusual custom for children of their time and station. On Sundays, the whole family would enter the Russian church on Daru street, but would only attend private mass with the priest who had christened Natalie.
were murdered by the Bolsheviks. With her mother and her sister, Irina Pavlovna
, she went via Finland to exile in France.
In 1927 Natalie Paley became the second wife of Lucien-Camille Lelong
, the French fashion designer and war hero; they were divorced in 1937. After working for a while as a fashion model for her husband's enterprises, and appearing frequently in Vogue
, she became a movie
actress and took parts in several European movies, including Sir Alexander Korda
's The Private Life of Don Juan
(1934) and Marcel L'Herbier
's L'epervier (1933). She eventually moved to the United States, and acted in George Cukor
's Sylvia Scarlett
(1935), where she began a close friendship with the film's main star, Katharine Hepburn
, which would last through her life.
She had a brief affair with the writer Jean Cocteau
, which resulted in an aborted pregnancy.
After charming spectators with her beauty, and experiencing a brief success, she quit acting, married in 1937 the theatre producer John Chapman Wilson (1899–1967), who was a former lover of Cole Porter
, and settled with him in Manhattan
. There, for many years, she worked in public relations for the fashion designer Mainbocher
.
She died in New York City and is buried in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Church in Ewing
, New Jersey
.
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia was the eighth child of Tsar Alexander II of Russia by his first wife Empress Maria Alexandrovna. His birth was commemorated by the naming of the city of Pavlodar in Kazakhstan...
, she was a first cousin of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
. After the Russian revolution she emigrated first to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and later to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. She became a fashion icon, socialite and briefly pursued a career as a film actress.
Early life
Princess Natalie Paley was born, as Countess Natalia Pavlovna von Hohenfelsen, at her parents' estate, 2 avenue Victor Hugo (now 4 avenue Robert Schuman), in Boulogne-sur-Seine, close to Paris, France, on December 5, 1905. She was the youngest child of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of RussiaGrand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia was the eighth child of Tsar Alexander II of Russia by his first wife Empress Maria Alexandrovna. His birth was commemorated by the naming of the city of Pavlodar in Kazakhstan...
and his second wife, Olga Valeriovna Karnovich, who was of Hungarian aristocratic descent.
Her parents were living in exile after contracting a morganatic marriage. They had met in St. Petersburg in 1895, when Olga Karnovich was married to an officer, and was the mother of three children. Grand Duke Paul already was the father of two, and a was a widower; his first wife princess Alexandra of Greece had died in childbirth. Their relationship did not remain secret for long. On January 9, 1897, Olga gave birth to a son, Wladimir, by Grand Duke Paul. Olga was granted a divorce from her husband and soon left Russia to marry Paul in Livorno, Tuscany, Italy, on October 10, 1902. Their daughter, Irene, was born on December 21, 1903. Not long after, the King of Bavaria gave Olga the title of Countess de Hohenfelsen, a title that was to be handed down to her descendants. They were still vacationing in Rome when the couple was banished to return to Russia by Paul's nephew, the reigning Tsar Nicholas II.
They settled in Paris and bought a house in Boulogne-sur-Seine that previously belonged to Princess Zenaide Ivanovna Youssoupoff. It was there that Natalie was born in 1905, completing their family. Paul and Olga employed a household staff of sixteen maids, gardeners, cooks, and tutors. Wladimir, Irene and Natalie had a happy and privileged upbringing, and for a time, utterly protected from the outside world. Though their parents had a busy social life, the children were very close to them and they ate their meals together, an unusual custom for children of their time and station. On Sundays, the whole family would enter the Russian church on Daru street, but would only attend private mass with the priest who had christened Natalie.
Imperial Russia
In January 1912 Tsar Nicholas II forgave his only living uncle and Grand Duke Paul returned immediately to Russia on the occasion of the tricentenary of the Romanov family. He was followed later by his wife and their three children. It was then when Natalie saw her country of origin for the first time. The family settled in Tsarskoe-Selo in a luxurious palace filled with antiques, and object of arts. In Russia Natalie got in touch with her maternal grandmother, her half-sisters and half brothers. Three months after they had settled into their new life, Wold War I began.Later life
Paley escaped from Russia in 1920; her father and her brother Vladimir PaleyVladimir Pavlovich Paley
HSH Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley was a Russian poet.Prince Vladimir was born Vladimir von Pistohlkors in Saint Petersburg, Russia...
were murdered by the Bolsheviks. With her mother and her sister, Irina Pavlovna
Irina Pavlovna Paley
Princess Irina Pavlovna Paley, , was the daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia and his second wife Olga Valerianovna Paley.-Early life:...
, she went via Finland to exile in France.
In 1927 Natalie Paley became the second wife of Lucien-Camille Lelong
Lucien Lelong
Lucien Lelong was a French couturier who was prominent from the 1920s to the 1940s.-Career:Born in Paris as the son of Arthur Lelong, the owner of a textile shop, he trained at the Hautes Etudes de Commerciales in Paris and opened his fashion house in the late 1910s...
, the French fashion designer and war hero; they were divorced in 1937. After working for a while as a fashion model for her husband's enterprises, and appearing frequently in Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, she became a movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
actress and took parts in several European movies, including Sir Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
's The Private Life of Don Juan
The Private Life of Don Juan
The Private Life of Don Juan is a 1934 British comedy-drama film about the life of an aging Don Juan, based on the 1920 play L'homme à la Rose by Henry Bataille. The movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon.-Plot:...
(1934) and Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier
Marcel L'Herbier, Légion d'honneur, was a French film-maker, who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films in total...
's L'epervier (1933). She eventually moved to the United States, and acted in George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
's Sylvia Scarlett
Sylvia Scarlett
Sylvia Scarlett is a 1935 romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, based on The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, a novel by Compton MacKenzie. Directed by George Cukor, it was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s...
(1935), where she began a close friendship with the film's main star, Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
, which would last through her life.
She had a brief affair with the writer Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, which resulted in an aborted pregnancy.
After charming spectators with her beauty, and experiencing a brief success, she quit acting, married in 1937 the theatre producer John Chapman Wilson (1899–1967), who was a former lover of Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
, and settled with him in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. There, for many years, she worked in public relations for the fashion designer Mainbocher
Mainbocher
Mainbocher is a fashion label founded by the American couturier Main Rousseau Bocher , also known as Mainbocher. Established in 1929, the house of Mainbocher successfully operated in Paris and then in New York...
.
She died in New York City and is buried in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Church in Ewing
Ewing Township, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the 2010 Census, there were 35,790 people, 13,171 households, and 7,980 families residing in the township. There were 13,926 housing units. The racial makeup of the township was 63.1% White, 27.6% African American, 0.3% Native American, 4.3% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 2.2%...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
.
Ancestors
Filmography
- L'ÉpervierL'ÉpervierL'Épervier , is a French drama film from 1933, directed and written by Marcel L'Herbier, starring Charles Boyer and Jean Marais. The film was based on novel of Francis de Croisset...
(1933) - Le Prince Jean (1934)
- The Private Life of Don JuanThe Private Life of Don JuanThe Private Life of Don Juan is a 1934 British comedy-drama film about the life of an aging Don Juan, based on the 1920 play L'homme à la Rose by Henry Bataille. The movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon.-Plot:...
(1934) - Sylvia ScarlettSylvia ScarlettSylvia Scarlett is a 1935 romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, based on The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, a novel by Compton MacKenzie. Directed by George Cukor, it was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s...
(1935) (uncredited) - Les Hommes nouveauxLes Hommes nouveauxLes Hommes nouveaux is a French drama film from 1936, directed by Marcel L'Herbier, written by Marcel L'Herbier, starring Harry Baur and Jean Marais...
(1936) - Folies Bergère (1936)
External links
- Natalia Pavlovna Paley at Find A GraveFind A GraveFind a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...