Georgia: The Marriage-Go-Round

To twice-married Muriel Marston and twice-married Richard Joshua Reynolds, it appeared that true love had come at last. She was a graduate of the New York Times society desk; he was heir to the Reynolds Tobacco Co. fortune, trying to make do on $31,672 a week (after taxes). They met at the 1950 Knickerbocker charity ball in Manhattan (she had just divorced Husband No. 2; he was still married to Wife No. 2), were wed in 1952. She fondly called him “Buck Rabbit.” He endearingly called her “Doe Rabbit.”

The Reynoldses settled down to a quiet life in a Manhattan flat, a Palm Beach mansion, an estate near Winston-Salem, N.C., a Monte Carlo apartment, a Tahiti bungalow and a 30-room hideaway on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia. Every year, Buck Rabbit gave Doe Rabbit $125,000 in spending money, about $40,000 worth of jewels—and, presumably, all the Camels, Winstons and Salems she could smoke.

Better Than Jewels. In 1958, Reynolds went even further. He impulsively set up $6,000,000 in trust funds for Muriel; less impulsively, he made them revokable. For Christmas, he found a gift for the girl who had everything: a brand-new, $45,000 checking account.

Yet somehow the idyl ended. Reynolds preferred to spend most of his time on Sapelo Island, with its two tennis courts, two swimming pools and its airstrip. There, Muriel’s only real companion was Buck Rabbit, whose disposition had been considered none too amiable even before he came down with pulmonary emphysema (a serious lung disease).

Muriel traveled to Europe in 1959. She now insists that she went because her husband told her she needed a rest after months of patiently nursing him; Reynolds claims Muriel was ordered to leave by his doctors, who thought her presence was damaging to his health. When Muriel landed in Paris, she was met by a chauffeur whom Reynolds had provided. The driver turned out to be a private detective who, with his fellow sleuths, cost Reynolds a cool $56,000.

Less Than Yacht Fare. Although no detective testified to any sort of misbehavior by Muriel, Reynolds sued her for divorce, charging “prior cruelty,” which Muriel hotly denied. She presented an affectionate letter from Reynolds to prove that he had not felt himself very cruelly treated. The suit was first heard in Mclntosh County, Ga., which includes Sapelo Island. Reynolds’ spending habits make for one of Mclntosh’s biggest industries, and Muriel did not do well before county jurors. They awarded Reynolds, who did not appear in court, his divorce, and allowed Muriel only $1,042 a month in permanent alimony.

This was hardly yacht fare, and Muriel appealed. The Georgia Supreme Court voided the trial, citing 39 errors, and ordered it held again in Mclntosh County. This time Reynolds showed up, wheezing into an oxygen machine. Even more sympathetic, the jury gave Reynolds his divorce again, with no permanent alimony for Muriel.

That was last May. Last week the state supreme court was again hearing an appeal from Muriel. The Reynolds divorce action had already taken up 8,000 pages of testimony, and cost Reynolds alone more than $750,000 in lawyers’ fees.

But to Buck Rabbit, now 54, that was only the half of it. After the first trial, he was cabled by his lawyers that a motion for a new trial had been denied. Reynolds therefore felt free to marry a German girl named Annemarie Schmitt, who was taking a round-the-world cruise with him at the time. But Muriel’s lawyers had quickly appealed the denial to the Georgia Supreme Court, leaving Buck and Doe Rabbit still legally wed.

Muriel’s lawyers contend that Reynolds is therefore an adulterer, and adulterers cannot sue for divorce in Georgia. Reynolds thought he answered that one at the second trial, when he explained that his marriage to Annemarie had (because of doctor’s orders) “never been consummated as a marriage between man and wife.” Reynolds had no more to say on the subject last week. He had found some new digs in Switzerland, where he was staying with Annemarie, who might or might not be Wife No. 4.