Igor Cassini - Marriages

Marriages

His first marriage, in 1940, was to Austine Byrne McDonnell (1920–1991), a Hearst journalist known as "The Most Magnificent Doll Among American Newspaperwomen". She also screentested for the role of Melanie Wilkes in the motion picture Gone with the Wind. At the time of their marriage, they both worked for the Washington Times-Herald. They had no children. Known as Bootsie, she divorced him in 1947 and the next year became the third wife of William Randolph Hearst, Jr. During and after her marriage to Cassini, she wrote "These Charming People", the society column of Washington Times-Herald, under the bylines Austine Cassini and Austine.

His second wife was Elizabeth Darrah Waters whom he married in 1948 and divorced in 1952. They had one daughter, Marina.

His third wife, whom he married in 1952, was Charlene Stafford Wrightsman (1927–1963), the younger daughter of Charles B. Wrightsman, an oil millionaire whose collection of French and Austrian furniture — much of which was acquired through the designers Denning & Fourcade — and decorative arts fills several galleries at the Metropolitan Museum. She was previously married (1947–1950) to the actor Helmut Dantine, by whom she had a son, Dana Wrightsman Dantine. She and Cassini had one son, Alexander.

On April 8, 1963, while in her bedroom, with her 14-year-old stepdaughter, Marina Cassini, by her side, as the teenager watched the 35th Academy Awards on television, Charlene Cassini swallowed 30 sleeping pills and died the next day. She reportedly was distraught after Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had indicted her husband for failing to register under the U.S. Registration Act, as an agent of a foreign government (a public relations agency he helped found, Martial & Company, had taken on the Dominican Republic as a client). She also suffered from headaches following a minor household accident, was depressed after the suicide of a ski instructor friend, and had become bitterly estranged from her father.

After his wife's death, Cassini later wrote, "We discovered the apartment, particularly her closets, littered with all kinds of pills, hidden in vases, under linens, stuffed in her shoes and the pockets of her clothes."

Cassini's fourth wife was the actress Gianna Lou Müller, better known as Nadia Cassini, whom he married in 1969 and divorced in 1972.

His fifth wife was Brenda Mitchell, a top fashion model, from whom he also was divorced. They had two sons, Nicholas, formerly a professional golfer on the Nationwide Tour and Dimitri, who is involved in international real estate.