FAMOUS PLAYBOY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 59, 5 April 1946, Page 7

FAMOUS PLAYBOY

HUSBAND OF GLORIA SWANSON PRETTY WOMEN ADORED HIM Alone on New Year’s Eve, in a suit that had grown a little too small for him, Michael Farmer came home to Ireland. There were no bands and no announcements. Nobody recognised him in his Dublin hotel.

Yet once the doings of Michael Farmer threw large numbers of the human race into something approaching a frenzy. He was the Playboy Supreme of Gloria Swanson. If the then Prince of Wales was around, there, too, was Michael Farmer.

No party, dinner, or ball worth going to, from Palm Beach through Bermuda to the Lido, was without Michael Farmer. He was handsome, he was rich, and pretty women adored him. But that was in the ’thirties, before barbed wire climbed over the Riviera and the champagne ran out. At 44 he has a wallet full of newspaper clippings, a Christmas card from a princess, and huge photographs of Gloria Swanson smiling from the writing desk of his hotel room.

He was caught by the war in Cannes. Later he moved to Biarritz, and he was born in Cork. The Germans came in. . Here his troubles began. He still has an Irish passport, for he was born in Cok. The Gemans accepted it, and allowed him to live in the unoccupied zone.

But when all Fance “went under” he was confined by German order to a small town of some 3000 inhabitants. The Germans accused him of being a London Irishman. What happened after that appears to have been sheer fantasy. Michael Farmer continued to live the life of an international playboy in the little French town.

But the Germans grew suspicious. They accused him of giving money to the Maquis. Then they locked him up in a chateau with several hundred other forgotten people.

After some “rough stuff” by the Qestapo, the Germans let him go.

Then came the Normandy invasion. Michael Farmer reached Parks in time for the liberation,