Pola Negri, born as Apolonia Chalupec on 31 December 1894 (or 1897) in Lipno, Poland, became one of Hollywood's most famous silent film stars. When she was a child her father was arrested by the Russian army and sent to a Siberian gulag. As a result her mother moved to Warsaw where Pola was accepted into the Imperial Ballet. Her promising career was cut short by tuberculosis and, with the help of her mother's childhood friend, she was accepted into the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts. She debuted as Hedwig in Ibsen's The Wild Duck and moved to the national theatre of Poland.

World War I interrupted her rise and she and her mother were again cast into poverty. She resumed acting after the war and was discovered by film director Ernst Lubitsch with whom she made many successful movies in Germany. Adolf Hitler was so mesmerized by her that he personally countermanded an order forbidding her to work in Germany because she was supposedly partly Jewish (she later won a 10,000 franc judgment against a French newspaper which claimed that she had an affair with Hitler).

Her film with Lubitsh, Madame du Barry, was released in the U.S. as Passion and it made them both immediate stars. They moved to Hollywood where she appeared in a string of successful movies and was known as a great rival to Gloria Swanson, who eventually married the Marquis Le Bailly de la Falaise de la Coudraye (1898-1972) (Swanson and Negri once had a cat fight with real cats).

Negri married and divorced a Polish nobleman, Count Eugene Dambski. She became the mistress and fiancee' of Charlie Chaplin but broke her relationship with him in a verbal spat which was assiduously reported. As she later claimed, "A great deal has been written about my relationship with Charlie Chaplin. Unfortunately, much of it has been written by Mr. Chaplin. Still less fortunately, what he wrote was largely untrue. Rather than say he behaved in less than a gentlemanly fashion, I would prefer to excuse him on the grounds that all clowns live in a world of fantasy."

At the death of her former lover Rudolph Valentino (who said of himself in 1923,“Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.”), Negri rushed out of a film location to throw herself, heavily veiled in black and supported by bodyguards, onto Valentino's coffin. She brought his body back to Los Angeles from New York City with train stops along the way for his fans to pay homage. The public was unimpressed and her popularity began to wane.

She was not forgiven when, in 1927, less than a year after Valentino's death, she married Prince Serge Mdivani (whose brother, David, married film star Mae Murray) and took him to live in her chateau in France. They divorced in a highly public proceeding at The Hague in November 1932 after she lost the bulk of her fortune which was estimated in 1929 to be $5 million. She claimed that his mishandling of her financial affairs ultimately ruined her.

Prince Serge then married wealthy opera singer Mary McCormic who was known as the "baby diva" and went through her money as well. Pola Negri returned to Europe for a while then back to the U.S. to make her talking-picture debut in A Woman Commands. When it was not successful, she returned to Europe and remained there until the increasing Nazi domination caused her to leave in 1940 for the U.S. where she finally retired from films in 1964.

She lived for a while in one room in a small hotel in New York City and was forced to sell her jewels in order to survive. She then recovered some of her European property and moved to San Antonio, Texas, in 1957. She lived forgotten there with a female companion, Margaret West, until her death. She wrote Memoirs of a Star in 1970, but never regained her position or her money and suffered a brain tumor which she declined to have treated. She lived two additional years and died of pneumonia at San Antonio's Baptist Hospital 2 August 1987 and was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. She left most of her estate, including rare prints of her early films, to St. Mary’s University and her personal library to Trinity University, both in San Antonio.

Gladys Virginia Steuart, born 18 July 1891, died 19 November 1947, was a daughter of John Henry Steuart (1831 – 1892), U. S. Consul at Antwerp, and Mary Virginia Ramsay Harding Steuart (1891 – 1947, later Mrs. de Strale d’Ekna), whose father was a Virginia millionaire. Gladys met in at the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in Paris in 1912 and married at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Geneva 29 July 1914, Count Gyula/Julius Apponyi de Nagy-Apponyi (1873 – 1924), son of Count Ludwig Apponyi, Grand Marshal of the Court of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty of Hungary. Gladys' sisters, Muriel and Fanny, married respectively Count Seherr Thoss and Count Laszlo Karolyi.

Gladys and Gyula Apponyis’ daughter, Countess Geraldine Apponyi, was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 6 August 1915. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the family fled to Switzerland but returned to Hungary in 1921. At the death of Count Apponyi on 27 May 1924, his widow took her three daughters, Geraldine, Virginia (who later married Count de Baghy de Szechen), and Gyula, to live live near her widowed mother in Menton in the south of France. There Gladys married a French Army officer, Gontrand Girault, by whom she had more children, Guy, Sylviane, and Patricia Girault. Her Apponyi in-laws insisted that her children by the first marriage be returned to Hungary where they were enrolled at the Sacred Heart boarding school in Pressbaum near Vienna.

The young and beautiful Geraldine’s grandfather’s fortune had been depleted and she accepted work as a shorthand typist. She then sold postcards at the Budapest National Museum where one of her uncles was director. A photo of the then-17 year-old Geraldine, taken while leaving a ball at the Karolyi Palace in Budapest, was given several years later to a sister of King Zog of the Albanians who introduced the young woman to the King in December of 1937. He asked for her hand almost immediately and Geraldine, who became known as the “White Rose of Hungary,” was raised to royal status as Princess Geraldine of Albania.

On April 27, 1938, in Tirana, Albania, Geraldine married the King, who was 20 years her senior, in a civil ceremony witnessed by Count Ciano, Mussolini's envoy. She was Roman Catholic and he was Muslim and promised to build for her a Catholic chapel in their royal palace. King Zog I, Skanderbeg III of Albania (born Ahmet Zogolli, his name was later changed to Ahmet Zogu, born 8 October 1895), was King of Albania from 1928 to 1939. He was previously Prime Minister of Albania between 1922 and 1924 and President of Albania between 1925 and 1928. At 22, Geraldine was the second-youngest Queen in the world (after Egypt’s Queen Farida). The couple drove to their honeymoon in a scarlet open-top, Mercedes Benz, which was a present from Adolf Hitler (Hungary’s Regent Horthy sent a phaeton and four Lipizzaner stallions). Geraldine’s marriage made her mother, Gladys, the first American-born mother of a queen.

Geraldine’s only child, her son, Leka I, was born at the Royal Palace in Tirana, Albania, on 5 April 1939. Although Geraldine retained her Catholic faith, her son was Muslim and a godson of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. King Zog's rule was cut short with the invasion of Albania by fascist Italy in April 1939 and the family fled the country into exile only two days after the birth of their son. The puppet government passed the throne to Italy’s King Victor Emanuel III.

From 1946, Geraldine and Zog lived in Greece, Turkey, England, Egypt (where they lived until King Farouk was toppled in 1952), the United States (at Knollwood, their estate on Long Island), France, Rhodesia, Spain, and finally South Africa. Their son, Leka I, is the current claimant to the Albanian throne. When he married an Australian, Susan Cullen-Ward (1941 – 2004), Queen Elizabeth II sent a telegram of congratulations. They have a son, Crown Prince Leka, who was born in South Africa in 1982 (his maternity ward was supposedly declared temporary Albanian territory for one hour so that he would be born in Albania).

King Zog died in Hauts-de-Seine, France on 9 April 1961. It was said that he had survived 55 assassination attempts. Queen Geraldine, the first half-American queen, died in Albania on 22 October 2002, where she had been invited to return by 40 members of Parliament that same year. Their son’s activities have ensured that he will never assume his father’s throne. For years he was an arms dealer (sometimes referred to as “Rambo of the Balkans”) for which he was arrested in Thailand. In 1999 he was arrested in South Africa and his diplomatic privileges revoked when police found more than 70 weapons with 14,000 rounds of ammunition in his home. When his airplane landed in Gabon for refueling, troops who had been hired by the Albanian government to arrest him surrounded the plane. He appeared in the door with a rocket launcher and his would-be attackers fled. He re-entered Albania for the first time in 1993, greeted by 500 supporters, under a passport issued by the Royal Court-in-exile. Although the government refused to acknowledge the passport (which listed his occupation as “King”) he was allowed to visit, declaring that he would renounce the passport if a referendum on the monarchy failed. Leka returned again in 1997 when 2,000 supporters greeted him and his weeping mother. The promised monarchy referendum was held and only 1/3 of voters favored its restoration (Leka made accusations of voter fraud but they were largely disproven). He organized an armed insurrection and was sentenced in absentia to three years imprisonment for sedition, a conviction that was pardoned in 2002 when he re-entered the country to live. That same year he attempted to bring almost 90 pieces of arms, including hand grenades and rocket launchers, into Albania. His son, the Crown Prince, now lives in Tirana.

Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino), daughter of Eduardo Cansino and Volga Haworth Cansino, was born Brooklyn, NY, 17 October 1918. The daughter of a Spanish-born dancer and his partner, Hayworth became a professional dancer with her father's nightclub act at the age of 12 and appeared as Rita Cansino in several films beginning in 1935. She was billed as her father’s wife rather than his daughter and, during those years, she endured her father’s repeated sexual abuse.

She escaped her plight by marriage to a man 22 years older than she. On the advice of her first husband, Edward Judson (who became her manager; they were married 1937 - 1943), she changed her name and dyed her hair auburn, cultivating a sophisticated glamour that first registered in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Strawberry Blonde (1941), and Blood and Sand (1941). The musicals You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), both with Fred Astaire (who said in his memoirs that she was his favorite partner and “danced with trained perfection and individuality”), and Cover Girl (1944), with Gene Kelly, made her a star and a favorite pinup girl of American servicemen.

The sexual allure of Hayworth's performance rose to its peak in Gilda (1946), which caused censorship issues because of the so-called striptease in which she was filmed singing "Put the Blame on Mame" (the dubbed voice was not hers). Rita was called "The Great American Love Goddess" and was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1941. In that same year a photo of her in Life magazine became the most-requested G. I. pinup selling more than five million copies. In a reference to her status as a bombshell, Rita’s likeness was placed on the first atomic bomb to be tested after World War II at Bikini Atoll.

Her later films included The Lady from Shanghai (1948), directed by her second husband, Orson Welles (to whom she was married 1943 – 1948 and had a daughter, Rebecca), as well as Affair in Trinidad (1952), Salome (1953), Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), Pal Joey (1957), Separate Tables (1958), The Money Trap (1966), and The Wrath of God (1972).

Rita was in the south of France in 1948 when she was invited to a party she did not want to attend given by Elsa Maxwell in Cannes. She dressed all in white and arrived late and, from the moment Prince Aly Khan saw her, he was smitten although both were still married. His sexual appetite was voracious but selfish (Alastair Forbes said of him, “Aly's idea of premature ejaculation was about the same as Father Christmas's - i.e. one should only come once a year.”). Rita announced she was leaving films and married in France (she was visibly pregnant at the time) on 27 May 1949 (as his second wife) Prince Aly Aga Khan, born Turin, Italy, 13 June 1911, died France, 12 May 1960, son of Prince Sultan Mohammed, Aga Khan III, leader of the world’s Shia Ismaili Muslims, and his second wife, Theresa Magliano, an Italian ballet dancer. Through his father, Aly Khan was a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed by his daughter, Fatima.

They had one child, Princess Yasmina Aga Khan, who was born 28 Dec 1949 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Aly Khan was expected to succeed his father despite his well-known tastes for fast cars and beautiful women. But when his father, the Aga Khan, died in 1957, his will designated Aly Khan’s eldest son, Karim, then a student at Harvard, to succeed him. Aly Khan was then named as head of Pakistan’s delegation to the United Nations despite criticism of his not being Pakistani.

Aly Khan was killed in an automobile accident 12 May 1960 in suburban Suresnes, France, when the Lancia he was driving was hit by an oncoming car as he was driving to the home of his half-brother, Prince Sadruddin, near the Saint-Cloud golfcourse. A former French model, known as Bettina, was seated next to him and was slightly injured. Aly Khan’s chauffeur, who was seated in the rear seat while his employer drove, escaped with minor injuries.

Rita’s marriage to Aly Khan failed in 1951 and they divorced in 1953. She returned from Europe to the States and resumed her film career, leaving the screen again during her marriage to singer Dick Haymes from 1953 – 1955. Her final marriage, to director James Hill, was from 1958 to 1961. She once said, “Men go to bed with Gilda but they wake up with me.”

For some 15 years before her death, Hayworth suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, assumed all responsibility for her mother and made public the fact that she was suffering from the disease – the first time many people were made aware of its ravages. Rita Hayworth died at her daughter’s apartment in Manhattan on 14 May 1987 and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA. Since 1985, the Rita Hayworth Galas, chaired by her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, have raised more than $44 million. One hundred percent of those funds go toward research and support programs for Alzheimer’s disease. Actor Joseph Cotton said of Hayworth, “"No matter how bad the film, when Rita danced it was like watching one of nature's wonders in motion."

Martha "Sunny" Sharp Crawford, daughter of George W. Crawford and Annie Laurie Warmack Crawford, was born at Manassas, VA, 1 September 1931. Sunny’s father, who was the founder and chairman of the Columbia Gas and Electric Company, died when his only child was three, leaving a fortune of $75,000,000. Her mother purchased Tamberlane, an estate in Greenwich, CT, and a Fifth Avenue apartment.

Sunny graduated from Chapin School in New York City then was removed to Europe when she fell in love with a Russian translator from a noble but penniless family. Sunny’s mother remarried Russell Aitken in 1957 and they took Sunny with them to the Schloss Mittersell in the Austrian Alps where she met her future husband. She married as his first wife on 20 July 1957, Prince Alfred von Auersperg, born Salzburg 20 July 1936, died Salzburg 19 June 1992. The wedding was performed at Tamberlane, her family estate in Greenwich, CT, by a Catholic priest.

Sunny’s daughter, Annie-Laurie “Ala,” married as her second husband 9 June 1989, American banker Ralph Isham, born 17 Apr 1956. Sunny’s son, Prince Alexander “Alex,” married NYC 10 June 1995, American Nancy Louise Weinberg, born Norfolk, VA 10 May 1959. Prince Alfred and Sunny Crawford divorced and he married two more times and had an additional daughter by his third marriage.

Martha married second, in NYC 6 June 1966, Claus Borberg, born in Copenhagen 11 August 1926, who was adopted and used his mother’s name of Bulow altering it to “von Bulow.” He was an attorney in London and served as vice president of Getty Oil. The story of their marriage and her subsequent coma was told in the book and movie "Reversal of Fortune." Claus was charged with her attempted murder but subsequently acquitted after a lengthy, expensive, and well-publicized legal battle. Sunny and von Bulow had a daughter, Cosima, who sided with her father in his trials for the attempted murder of his wife. Sunny’s mother, whose estate was worth $90 million, had drawn her will so that her three grandchildren would share equally at her death. Mrs. Crawford rewrote her will excluding Cosima and dividing her $90 million equally between Sunny’s two children by Prince Alfred. Cosima and her father continue to live in Sunny’s homes and to draw income from her estate while Sunny was in a persistent vegetative state until December of 2008.

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Anita Rhinelander Stewart, daughter of William Rhinelander Stewart and Annie Armstrong Stewart, was born at Elberon, NJ, on 7 August 1886, and died at Newport, RI, on 15 September 1977. Her father, although trained as an attorney, managed several trusts established by his old and socially prominent family. Mrs. Stewart’s sister was Mrs. Anthony J. Drexel whose daughter later married the 14th Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham.

The Stewarts were divorced in 1906 and she married a few months later James Henry “Silent” Smith who had unexpectedly inherited fifty million dollars from an unmarried uncle, becoming overnight one of the wealthiest men in America. Silent Smith was then more than 50, had never been married, and lived in a modest apartment while working as a stockbroker. After his inheritance he was immediately taken up by the very social Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. After he married Annie Armstrong Stewart he settled one million dollars on her beautiful daughter, Anita, as she entered the marriage market (Anita’s mother would add another one million dollars at her daughter’s wedding). Smith bought the palatial New York residence of the late William C. Whitney at the corner of Sixty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, opposite Central Park. The $2,000,000 purchase price was considered a bargain.

Annie Armstrong Stewart preferred a high social profile to her first husband’s fondness for quiet evenings at home and she soon became one of Silent Smith’s favorite hostesses. Within a month of her divorce she and Anita sailed for Scotland where Annie married Silent Smith. The Smiths then took a world cruise honeymoon on the Drexel yacht accompanied by Anita as well as the Duke and Duchess of Manchester (she was the American-born Helena Zimmerman). The groom, who had been married only months, died of a heart attack in Kyoto, Japan, on 27 March 1907. Although he was required to leave the bulk of his estate to two nephews, his widow received what was reported to be as low as $3,000,000 and as high as $30,000,000 while her daughter, Anita, was given an additional half-million trust fund. Silent Smith’s sister, who was married to a baronet, Sir George Cooper, was left $3,000,000.

Anita met in Paris in April of 1909 Prince Miguel de Braganza whose father, the Duke of Braganza (usually referred to as the Pretender to the Portugese throne), was a son of the de facto King of Portugal from 1828-1834 and a grandson of Joao VI, King of Portugal and Emperor of Brazil. Miguel’s family lived in exile in Austria where Emperor Franz Joseph was generous to them. Only three months after their meeting, the engagement of Anita Stewart to Prince Miguel was announced at a concert dance in London where her mother had leased the Berkeley Square home of the Duchess of Somerset. From his summer home in Bar Harbour the bride’s father declined to comment about his daughter’s engagement. At first it was announced that the marriage would be morganatic but Anita refused to accept anything less than a title of princess.

On September 6th the generous Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph, announced that he had created Anita a Princess in her own right. The New York Times wrote, “It seems easier than we thought for an emperor to transform a plain American Miss into a Princess, when no principality goes with the title and no pecuniary endowment. Miss Stewart is buying her own principality, and is expected to endow rather than be endowed.” Then it was learned that the groom was to renounce his inheritance rights as Portugal’s then-King was unmarried as was his heir, his uncle the Duke of Oporto (who in 1917 would marry American Nevada Stoody). Again Anita refused to consent to the marriage on those terms. So, on the eve of the marriage, Anita’s mother paid all the groom’s substantial gambling debts in exchange for his not renouncing his succession rights and for Anita’s refusal to convert to the Catholic faith. The groom’s father then created his son the Duke of Vizeu.

After all the necessary negotiations, Anita Rhinelander Stewart married at a small Catholic church near Tulloch Castle (which her mother had leased for the season) outside Dingwall, Scotland, on 15 September 1909, Prince Miguel de Braganza, Duke of Vizeu (ad personam by his father 1909), born Reichenau 22 September 1878, died NYC 21 February 1923. Anita was given away by her brother who wore the Stewart tartan and the event was a high-profile social gathering for the American expatriate community, including the Bradley Martins who attended with a house full of guests (including their daughter, the Countess of Craven) from their nearby shooting estate. A Catholic bishop, who said daily mass for the visiting King and Queen of Spain when they were visiting in the area, pronounced the Pope’s personal blessing at the end of the ceremony.

The first stop on their honeymoon was to visit the generous Franz Joseph in Austria where Anita was formally presented to court. While they were away creditors searched the Prince’s home in an effort to confiscate anything that could be sold to settle his considerable debts. At the time it was reported that one-fifth of the dowry was to be committed to creditors. Anita had a daughter and two sons but the marriage was not happy. At the outbreak of war Prince Miguel joined the Kaiser’s army. Anita sailed with her children for New York City where she was met at the pier by her father whom she had not seen in eleven years (at his death he would leave the largest portion of an estate worth more than two million dollars to Anita).

A revolution in Portugal in 1910 ended that country’s monarchy and its King fled to England. In 1920 Prince Miguel, Duke of Vizeu, renounced his claims to the Portugese throne one week before his elderly father renounced his own rights in favor of his third son, Dom Duarte. Although Prince Miguel’s renouncement was supposedly a retroactive one that included his children, there has always been a question whether he could renounce his children’s rights. His American descendants have wisely never pressed the claim and have lived productive lives free of any royal intrigue. Dom Duarte’s son is the current Duke of Braganza and pretender to the Portugese throne.

After the war Prince Miguel joined his family in America where he became an insurance salesman in the firm of his brother-in-law in 1922. The next year Prince Miguel died of influenza at the age of 44. In 1926 Anita renounced her titles and regained her American citizenship. She opened a photographic studio in New York City and remained friendly with her husband’s family, announcing in 1934 the engagement of her sister-in-law, Princess Maria Antonia, to Ashley Chanler, nephew of the first husband of Amelie Rives, Princess Troubetskoy.

Anita married second, on 2 April 1946 (the same year in which her only daughter committed suicide), Lewis Gouverneur Morris of Newport, RI, scion of several early American colonial families. He had served five months in prison in 1921 as a result of the financial failure of his brokerage firm. He died in 1967. Anita’s mother married in 1915 a man who was younger than Anita, Jean H. E. St. Cyr, whose much older wife had died four months earlier leaving him one million dollars. At one time it was alleged that he had been born Jack Thompson and was a bellboy before adopting a French name in order to enter society.

When Anita’s mother died in 1925 at El Cerrito, her California home, her estate was said to be $40,000,000 and her young husband received one-third interest. At the time of her death it was disclosed that Prince Alexander von Thurn und Taxis, a cousin of Prince Miguel de Braganza, received almost one-quarter of a million dollars from the estate as payment for an outstanding debt. In 1914 Anita had assigned her future interest in that portion of her mother’s estate to satisfy a court-ordered judgment for her husband’s substantial debt to his cousin. Anita, formerly Duchess de Vizeu, died on 15 September 1977 at her home in Newport, RI. She was 91 and died on the 60th anniversary of her wedding to Prince Miguel de Braganza.

Mattie Elizabeth Mitchell, born in Portland, Oregon, 28 August 1866, died in Paris 20 February 1933, was a daughter of U. S. Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon. He was born John Hipple in Pennsylvania but left his wife and children there and moved to Oregon where he changed his name. In his first of three terms as U. S. Senator, his opponents tried to prevent his being seated, charging him with bigamy, desertion, and living under an assumed name. A Senate committee decided against a full investigation. After his third term as U. S. Senator, he was convicted of land fraud for having received fees for expediting land claims of clients. He died 9 December 1905 while awaiting appeal of his conviction and sentence of imprisonment.

Mattie met her future husband on the Riviera and they were engaged for several years. "This marriage is known to have been a love-match, as Miss Mitchell had no fortune whatever to offer as a dot," reported the newspapers at the time. She married in Paris on 11 February 1892, Francois, 5th Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Duc de Liancourt, Prince de Marcillac, Duc d'Anville, born 21 April 1853, died in Monaco 24 February 1925. The religious ceremony was held at the Church of St. Clothilde in Paris and the bride (whose father was not present) was escorted into the church by the American Ambassador, Whitelaw Reid. Guests included several Americans active in Paris society. After the wedding the bride’s mother remained in Paris for two months as a guest of artist George P. A. Healy who completed the bride’s formal portrait just prior to the wedding.

In 1902 Mattie was sued by the Countess Spottiswood-Mackin (American-born Sally Britton of St. Louis). The Duchess had leased a house from the Countess but left it without paying because it was not adequately heated. The Countess then filed a lien to attach the Duchess’ jewelry to satisfy the unpaid debt. The Countess sued for libel and the Duchess countersued for expenses and damages to her reputation. The court took five years to reach a divided decision which satisfied neither side.

The la Rochefoucaulds had one child, the Duc de Liancourt, born 28 June 1905, who died of meningitis on 11 March 1909 after an illness of six weeks. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld’s younger brother succeeded as the 6th Duke and his line continues. Mattie was buried in the Vault of La Rochefoucauld Castle near Paris.

T

Nevada Hayes Stoody was born 21 October 1885 (some sources say as early as 1870 which seems more likely) in Ohio, the second child of Jacob Walter Stoody (1846-1922) and Nancy Miranda McNeel Stoody (1848-1922) who married in 1867. She died 11 January 1941. Her origins were never clear, but she came from a small town in Ohio to New York City before 1906.

Her first husband, Lee Agnew, was New York representative of the old Record-Herald. They were divorced in Manhattan and he later invented a device for delivering folded newspapers from presses - an invention which made him very wealthy. When he died 31 January 1924, he left her the excess income from his estate over that which was necessary for the support of their son, Lee "David" Agnew, Jr. The excess was substantial. A day after her divorce from Lee Agnew, Sr., in 1906, she married William Henry Chapman who was then in his seventies. When he left her more than $8 million at his death one year later, the newspapers dubbed her "the $10 million widow."

She immediately went to Europe where it was reported that those vying for her hand included Lord Falconer (later the 10th Earl of Kintore who married American heiress Helen Zimmerman, formerly Duchess of Manchester), Count A. F. Chereff-Spiritovitch (a younger officer in the army of the Tsar), Prince Mohammed Ali Hassan, and Count Aubert de Sonies who came from Paris to New York on the same ship with the widow. While the Count was in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel waiting to present flowers and a proposal of marriage, she departed by a rear exit with Philip Van Valkenburgh, a prominent member of an old New York family. They were married in Connecticut on 23 November 1909 and were divorced after a short time amid protracted legal battles; she finally settled $200,000 upon him in 1910.

She immediately left for Europe where the press continued to report those seeking her hand in marriage. Nevada married morganatically in Rome 26 September and in Madrid 23 November 1917, Don Alfonso of Portugal, Prince of Braganza, Duke of Oporto, born Ajuda 1 July 1865, died Naples 21 February 1920, son of King Luis I. He forfeited his inheritance rights to the throne by his marriage and his financial allowance from the royal family was cut.

Nevada styled herself as the Crown Princess of Portugal. Her husband was the uncle of King Manuel of Portugal and only brother of King Manuel's father, the murdered King Carlos. King Victor Emanuel, a cousin of the Duke of Oporto, gave him asylum in the Royal Palace in Naples and a reported allowance of $10,000 per year. The Duke of Oporto died in Naples in 1920 having fled there after the Portugese Revolution. After the death of the King of Portugal Nevada petitioned the republican government – to no avail - to grant her all the royal family’s funds as she considered herself its senior member.

She sailed to the U. S. in 1921 to have made a silver casket on a bronze base (weighing half a ton) in which to convey her late husband’s body from Naples to Lisbon. There it would be displayed in the Pantheon before the Duke of Oporto was buried next to his murdered brother, the late King. In 1935 the Duchess of Oporto traveled on the Ile de France to New York where she reported that, having spent two months in Germany, she was "greatly impressed by Adolf Hitler."

She jealously guarded what she perceived as her rights as Crown Princess and once, on a trans-Atlantic cruise which also included the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, to ensure that she be seated on the Captain’s right at dinner rather than the Grand Duchess, she entered the dining room ahead of all other guests to take her seat. She died 11 January 1941 in Tampa, Florida, at St. Joseph's Hospital after an illness of 10 days. She had spent the winter in Tampa for the preceding 10 years. She left a son, David Agnew, of New York, and four sisters.