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19 Aug

Lucy Cotton, born in Houston, TX, approximately 1891, daughter of Adelaide Wisby Cotton and Warren Jefferson Cotton, was an actress who performed on Broadway and then in a series of early movies. In 1916-1917, her first stage appearance was in Turn to the Right! She was then given a starring role in Up in Mabel’s Room in 1919 and afterwards left the stage for good. The titles of her successive movies give a fair indication of the type of roles in which she was cast: Blind Love, The Devil, The Misleading Lady, Divorced, Life Without Soul, Roses and Thorns, and The Sin That Was His.

She married on 10 October 1924 in Paris Edward Russell Thomas, owner of the New York Morning Telegraph, a Yale graduate whose father, General Samuel Thomas, left a fortune of twenty million dollars enabling an annual trust fund of $180,000 for Edward. The son reportedly made two million dollars on his own by creating a corner in the cotton market. In the 1907 financial panic he was forced to sell his renowned racing stables but eventually recovered his fortune. In 1902 Thomas was the first driver in America to kill someone with an automobile when his Daimler, formerly owned by William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., struck a seven year-old child and dragged the body three blocks. Years later Thomas would be seriously injured in another auto accident from which he took months to recover and his daughter also died in the same manner.

Edward R. Thomas first married in Newport, RI, a 17 year-old Virginian, Linda Lee. After their divorce she took her sizable financial settlement and married the composer Cole Porter. The story of their highly-social relationship, largely financed by her funds, was told in the movie DeLovely. Edward R. Thomas’ second wife, by whom he had a son, Samuel Finley Thomas, was Elizabeth Finley.

Thomas and Lucy had a daughter, Lucetta Cotton Thomas, in May of 1925, the year before he died on 6 July 1926 at the age of 52. For a short while his widow assumed management of his profitable newspaper. His extensive estate included a $50,000 bequest to his sister’s husband, Rhode Island Governor Livingston Beeckman, and his second wife sued the estate to increase the amount left to his young son (who was eventually to become chief of neurology at New York’s St. Luke’s Hospital). Thomas’ infant daughter by Lucy received a trust fund of approximately two million dollars with the remaining amount, slightly over one million dollars, to his wife. She frequently entered into litigation with his estate over the succeeding years in an effort to receive some of her daughter’s income.

In 1934 Lucy gave a ninth birthday party for the girl at her fifteenth-floor apartment at the Hotel Pierre. The party lasted twelve hours and more than 500 guests paid $2.50 each to join the festivities with the proceeds going to a pianist who was a protégé of Lucy. Two singers from the Metropolitan Opera performed during the party and Lucetta was seen clutching a big doll before being led away to bed by a governess while the party continued for seven more hours.

Lucy Cotton Thomas married Lyton Grey Ament in 1927 and Charles Hann, Jr. in 1931. Both marriages were performed by the same minister in Towson, MD, and both ended in divorce. In 1933 she married William Magraw, president of Manhattan’s Underground Installations Company. Immediately after that marriage kidnappers demanded $150,000 in ransom not to abduct Lucy’s daughter, Lucetta. Lucy moved to south Florida where her late husband owned substantial property and, in 1934, she purchased the Deauville resort at Miami Beach consisting of a hotel, casino, swimming pool, and bathing beach. The sales price was said to be three million dollars. She ran it for two seasons before leasing the resort to the owner of True Confessions magazine. During World War II it was used by the Coast Guard for anti-invasion beach patrol, never recovered its glory days and was demolished in 1956.

On 3 May 1941 Lucy divorced William Magraw and, three hours later, in Key West, Florida, married Prince Vladimir Eristavi-Tchitcherine, born 19 October 1881 in Orel, Russia, who had been working in a jewelry store at the time of their meeting. The Tchitcherines were a Russian noble family with medieval roots, although not a royal one, while the Eristavis were a Georgian royal family, and Vladimir added the second name to his own after his first marriage before World War I to Clementine de Vere. She was divorced from her first husband and the father of her son, Herman Wirtheim, a tiger tamer and circus artist known as Herman Weedon. Prince Vladimir married second in March 1929, Diane Rockwood who was from Indianapolis, IN, and they were also divorced.

Lucy and Prince Vladimir were re-married in a religious ceremony on 15 June 1941 in New York City’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral officiated by the church’s dean. Afterwards a reception was held in the penthouse of the St. Regis Hotel. The couple lived in Miami and were divorced there on 12 October 1944. On 12 December 1948 her butler found her unconscious in her bed with an empty bottle that had held 100 sleeping pills. Lucy Cotton Thomas Ament Hann Magraw Eristavi-Tchitcherine was declared dead upon reaching the hospital. Prince Vladimir died in February of 1967 in New York City.

Lucy’s daughter, Lucetta Cotton Thomas, left home upon reaching her majority and had no further contact with her mother. Having been taunted for years by the nickname, “Miss Cotton Panties,” she changed her name to Mary Frances Thomas and married Kenneth Oscar Bailey. They lived in Luray, Virginia, where she died in an auto accident on 20 January 1980. She had no children and most of her estate went to charity.

 
 
  1. KellyB

    March 15, 2010 at 9:33 pm

    Lovely website, and very nice article on Lucy Cotton.
    I need a photo of Lucy for a book I am working on – would you be able to lend?
    Many thanks, Kelly Brown

     
  2. mrsastor

    June 19, 2010 at 9:24 am

    Of course.

     
  3. mrsastor

    June 19, 2010 at 9:25 am

    Many thanks!