The Sad Shanghai Suicide of Marshall Smith Hairston, July 1936

Marshall Smith Hairston of Stella, Patrick County, Virginia, went to Hankow and Shanghai in 1917 to work for British-American Tobacco. Later he moved to work as the factory manager for the Yee Tsoong Tobacco Co. in Pudong. Marshall married a Patrick County girl, Dixie Elizabeth McCabe in 1925, and they had three boys. Sadly, in 1926 one of his boys (Marshall Smith Hairston Jr.) died. Due to disruption across the country Marshall, who was up-country on business, heard of the trouble at Shanghai but could not get back to Shanghai easily as the rail lines were cut. It took him ten days to get home. When he did he learned that his child had died.

Marshall was apparently distraught and never got over not having been able to get back to Shanghai in time to protect his child. In July 1936 he checked into Room 302 of the Astor House Hotel, lay down on the bed, took his pistol and shot himself in the heart. He was discovered the next morning at 5.30am when his room boy came to wake him as arranged. He was 40 years old. He left behind his wife and two other children. He was buried at the Bubbling Well Cemetery in Shanghai. Dixie Elizabeth died in 1991 at 96.

Prince Alexis Mdvani & Barbara Hutton’s 1934 China Honeymoon

In the 1920s everyone had heard of the “Marrying Mdvani’s” – the sons and daughters of a super wealthy Georgian family who fled the Bolsheviks in 1921. By 1934:

• Serge Mdvani had married the actress Pola Negri, but dumped her after she lost all her money in the Wall Street Crash and married the opera singer Mary McCormic;
• David Mdvani married the actress Mae Murray, bankrupted her, got divorced and took up with the French actress Arletty;
• Isabelle Mdvani married the Spanish painter Jose Maria Sert;
• Nina Mdvani married a Stanford professor and later a son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle;
• but perhaps Alexis Mdvani did best – he Louise Aster van Alen of the Astor family but, in 1931, divorced her to marry Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress. They travelled a lot and in February 1934…

Prince Alexis Mdvani and Barbara Hutton, 1934

They arrived in China on their honeymoon tour…to much fanfare from the celebrity spotting China Coast press….

It was a good time for Alexis to be out the country as his brother Serge and David were in court accused of embezzling $8,000 from the fraudulent Pacific Shore Oil Company.  The Mdvani’s sailed from Kobe to Tientsin (Tianjin) on the small steamer the Choko Maru (Below)…

From Tientsin they headed straight to Peiping (Peking), but only one journalist was at the train station to intercept them…the journalist, rather like one of today’s hack pack in Beijing, found little of interest except to vulgarly mention money….

They obviously decided not to give the journalist the story he might have wanted most – and which they did announce from Peiping a few days later…

But don’t pop the champagne corks just yet – fake news, 1934 style!!

And so onto Shanghai…here they are, in resplendent furs, arriving at Shanghai North Railway Station just off the Peking Express. The young man on the left is Jimmie Donahue, Barbara’s cousin.

I think we can assume at the Cathay – this article interestingly shows just how wealthy Hutton was…

And then, after a couple of weeks (of fairly low key sightseeing and visiting) they decamped for Hong Kong….though (as so often I fear) time in Shanghai seems to have done their fledgling relationship no good at all…quarrels on-board the Conte Verde from Shanghai to Hong Kong are reported by fellow passengers…

From Hong Kong the couple boarded planes and got to Europe – Venice, Paris…all beckoned as the honeymoon continued. But China was not past…

Married in June 1933 the couple divorced in March 1935.

24 hours later she married Count Kurt Heinrich Eberhard Erdmann Georg von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow.

Alexis was killed in a car crash in Spain in August 1935.

Shanghai’s 1931 Mouth Bling Craze

I have nothing to add – read it and come to you own conclusions…appeared in the press, July 1931…

Restarting the Foreign Language Press in Shanghai, 1945

Once Shanghai was liberated by the allies in 1945 getting the old foreign language press up and running was immediately on the agenda. Some newspapers had carried on – albeit in odd ways – the North-China Daily News carried on for much of the war in enemy hands; the Shanghai Mercury moved to New York and carried on printing as a pro-allied paper for those interested in Shanghai; there were some pro-axis publication sin English, French, Russian including the old pro-Japanese Shanghai Times and new entrants such as the Nazi-funded XXth Century magazine (which Eileen Chang/Zhang Ailing infamously contributed to).

So, claiming to be the first foreign language newspaper to resume publication is a tricky claim with all sorts of caveats – but we’ll go with the Courier de Chine.

Charles Grosbois (1893-1972) was an interesting character – a former school teacher at Shanghai’s French School he then became head of education for the French Concession. He was an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society, artistic director of Shanghai’s French radio station and (I am very happy to report, as it’s wasn’t very common sadly) was a loyal member of the Free French and a supporter of De Gaulle in Shanghai during the war. Due to not being compromised with the pro-Nazi and pro-Japanese Vichy administration that ran Shanghai during the war (though after 1942 Japan effectively ran the Concession itself with only the most collaborating collaborators working with them) he became the Cultural Director for France in Shanghai after the war, and until 1951 – after this it became impossible for Grosbois to work with the new communist government (who seized the premises of the Aurore University and Pasteur Institute) and he left China. He didn’t leave Asia completely though and, with the new UNESCO organisation, worked on education in Korea.

Shanghai Modern – Even when it comes to washing the streets down in 1932

Since its earliest days as a treaty port Shanghai always used sprinklers on its streets – a big help when horse and cart was the main conveyance and equine pee was a major problem that needed washing away. 1932 though and Shanghai does away with its old horse and cart watering carts and introduced motorised sprinklers. Just in time too – when trouble with the Japanese came and the Settlement needed defending the American Marines turned the sprinkler cart into their water wagon.

Shanghai – what a cliche!!

‘Shanghai this and Shanghai that’…so true now, and then – 1933 to be exact. Of course Shanghai Madness was not Spencer Tracey’s best movie by a long way and Shanghai Orchid never got made.

However, the article was right – audiences had seen Dietrich and Anna May Wong smoking in Shanghai Express (1932), Mack Sennet’s Shanghai Love (1932), Mary Nolan in Shanghai Lady (1929), Richard Dix in Shanghai Bound (1927), Conrad Nagel in Ship From Shanghai (1930), Hichcock’s East of Shanghai (1931) and an Anna May Wong movie called Streets of Shanghai (1927) as well as probably a few I’ve forgotten….

Throw Shanghai in the title and hope for the best….and we still had Shanghai Gesture and a whole bunch more to come.

Beatrice Gracey of Shanghai Weds a Scotsman, 1933

I’m sure you’ll agree that Miss Beatrice Gracey looks like a woman who knows her mind; makes her decisions and sticks to them.

She was of strong stock – Beatrice’s father was S.P. Gracey, who was a banker and member of the Shanghai Stock Exchange but had been in Shanghai in various posts, including with the  American Trading Company, since the early part of the century.

Beatrice left the University of California and returned to Shanghai in 1930. She then took a job with the US Consulate in Hankow (Hankou) and along the way met D.W. Morrison, a Scottish oilman based in China working for the Asiatic Petroleum Company.

Obviously they fell in love and Beatrice travelled from China to San Francisco, then across country to New York and then another ship to Southampton before a train up to Inverness in Scotland where she married D.W. Morrison at his ancestral home.

I believe the couple returned to China and that Beatrice was interned for the duration of the war in Chapei camp in Shanghai.

The Opening of the Shanghai-Hangchow Highway, 1933

This month in 1933 heralded the official opening of the Shanghai-Hangchow (Hangzhou) Highway (what is now the G92 or something I think), all 320 miles of it…and so the West Lake became a road trip tourist attraction from Shanghai….