Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley (Наталья Павловна Палей) (December 5, 1905 – December 27, 1981) was a French-born fashion icon, socialite, and film actress who was a first cousin of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II.
Best known as
Natalie Paley, she was born
Countess Natalia Pavlovna von Hohenfelsen in
Paris,
France. Her father was
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, and her mother was his
morganatic wife,
Olga Karnovich, who had been granted a Bavarian title, Countess von Hohenfelsen. Her mother was later created Her Serene Highness
Princess Paley by her brother-in-law,
Nicholas II, and the children of the marriage took the name Paley. She had two half-siblings from her father's previous marriage to
Alexandra of Greece:
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, who was one of the murderers of
Rasputin and
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, who married
Prince Wilhelm of Sweden at age sixteen.
She escaped from Russia in 1920; her father and her brother
Vladimir Paley 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.
[1]
After charming spectators with her beauty, and experiencing a brief success, she quit acting, married in 1937 the
theatre producer
John Chapman Wilson, 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.
[edit] Filmography