Etti Plesch

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Etti Plesch
Born
Maria Anna Paula Ferdinandine von Wurmbrand-Stuppach

3 February 1914 (1914-02-03)
Vienna, Austria
Died29 April 2003 (2003-04-30) (aged 89)
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Occupation(s)Socialite, racehorse owner, huntress
Known forOnly female owner to win The Derby twice
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1934; div. 1935)​
​
​
(m. 1935; div. 1937)​
Count Tamás Esterházy de Galántha
​
​
(m. 1938; div. 1944)​
Count Sigismund Berchtold
​
​
(m. 1944; div. 1949)​
William Deering Davis
​
​
(m. 1949⁠–⁠1951)​
Dr. Árpád Plesch
​
​
(m. 1954; died 1974)​
Parent(s)Count Ferdinand von Wurmbrand-Stuppach
May Baltazzi

Etti Plesch, born Countess Maria Anna Paula Ferdinandine von Wurmbrand-Stuppach (3 February 1914 – 29 April 2003), was an

Louise de Vilmorin, a French literary figure, and owned two winners of The Derby, Psidium in 1961 and Henbit in 1980.[1]

Early life

Born as Countess Maria Anna Paula Ferdinandine von

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria), said that Count Gizycki's main interest in life was "the pleasuring of women in a physical way... He was amoral and cynical, but he was a marvelous lover." Gizycki was famed in the early 1900s because of his stormy marriage to American newspaper heiress Cissy Patterson
.

Etti von Wurmbrand-Stuppach spent her childhood in her family's castle of Napajedla and was raised in Vienna and in Moravia, with travels to other sites throughout Europe. From the age of 10 until she was 17, she was treated for tuberculosis at the Waltzaner Sanatorium in Davos, the setting for Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain.

Thoroughbred racing

With her last husband, Dr. Plesch, who shared Etti's passion for

Thoroughbred horse racing, for which she had been influenced by her maternal grandfather Alexander Baltazzi, who won the 1876 edition of the Epsom Derby with Kisber.[2] Her husband and she began racing Thoroughbreds in 1954, and won major races such as the 1959 Coronation Cup with Nagami and that year's Irish Oaks with Discorea. Their 1961 Epsom Derby winner Psidium was bred by Etti Plesch and raced by the couple. Following her husband's death in 1974, she continued to race horses, and in 1970 won France's most prestigious race with Sassafras. In 1980, Etti Plesch became the only female owner to ever win the Epsom Derby twice when her horse Henbit won England's most prestigious race.[3]

Among her other notable horses, Etti Plesch owned and raced

stakes race winner in the United States, hat became an important sire of 97 stakes race winners[4] and was the Leading broodmare sire in Great Britain and Ireland in 1999 and 2001.[5]

Personal life

At the age of 17, she fell in love with Count Wladimir Wladschi

Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was best man. The marriage only lasted three months; they divorced in 1935 and she returned to Europe with "a settlement of only $35,000."[6] The marriage was later annulled in 1944.[6]

Second marriage

After she returned to Europe, she met Hungarian Count

Louise de Vilmorin
in Paris, divorced Etti in December 1937, and married Louise.

Third marriage

On the rebound, Etti married Count Tamás Esterházy de Galántha (1901–1964), descendant of the junior comital branch of a great princely family, on 5 March 1938, and went to live in his Devecser castle, in Hungary. They hunted, traveled, and had one daughter:

  • Marie-Anna Berta Felicie Johanna Ghislaine Theodora Huberta Georgina Helene Genoveva "Bunny" Esterházy de Galántha (1938–2021), who married the Hon. Dominic
    5th Earl of Minto, in 1962; they divorced 1972.[8]

In 1942, she journeyed abroad alone, and her husband became involved with Vilmorin, the same woman who had married her second husband Count Pálffy. Count Esterházy divorced Etti in 1944 and ran away with Vilmorin, although the two never married.

Fourth marriage

Etti's next husband was Austrian Count Sigismund Berchtold zu Ungarschütz (1900–1979), son of Count Leopold Berchtold, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who advised the Emperor to declare war on the Serbs, starting World War I. They wed in 1944 and divorced in 1949.[6]

Fifth marriage

The fifth was

William Deering Davis, who had been briefly married to silent film star Louise Brooks, in the 1930s; Plesch's marriage, at age 34, to Davis, aged 52, lasted from 1949 until their divorce in 1951.[9]

Sixth marriage

In 1954, Etti married her last husband, Dr

Thomas "Loel" Guinness in Paris. The Plesches lived on the Avenue Foch in Paris, and at the Villa Leonina at Beaulieu-sur-Mer
in the south of France, where he had a famous botanical garden.

After her husband's death in 1974, she took up partying,[10] and writing her memoirs, which were almost completed at the time of her death. They were edited by Hugo Vickers and published posthumously in 2007 as Horses and Husbands.[11] She died 29 April 2003 in Monte Carlo.[12]

Descendants

Through her daughter Bunny, she was a grandmother to two boys, Alexander Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound (1963–1985), who died unmarried, and Esmond Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound (b. 1965).[12]

References

  1. ^ Hugo Vickers
  2. ^ Park, James (10 March 1958). "Arpad Plesch sets new buying fashion". Evening Standard. p. 18. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  3. ^ Bloodhorse.com obituary – 5 May 2003
  4. ^ The Australian – 11 February 2008
  5. ^ BloodHorse.com – 21 December 2004
  6. ^
    The San Francisco Examiner
    . 27 March 1949. p. 94. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  7. ^ "EX-MRS. C.J. RYAN JR. WED TO COUNT PALFFY; Countess Scored by New York Judge Is Bound for India to Spend Honeymoon". The New York Times. 3 December 1935. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  8. ^ "FLOCKY BEAT BUNNY--and gave Arpad Plesch a step-grandson and a step-great-grandson". Evening Standard. 30 January 1963. p. 7. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  9. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
    . 16 January 1949. p. 43. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  10. ^ Nemy, Enid; Times, Special To the New York (2 April 1982). "GALA FOR PRINCESS WHO CAME HOME AGAIN". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  11. ISBN 978-1-904349-54-9
    .
  12. ^ a b Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003, volume 2, page 2713.

Further reading

  • Horses & Husbands – The Memoirs of Etti Plesch (2007) Dovecote Press
    ISBN 978-1-904349-54-9
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