SLAPPED PREMIER

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 107, 9 November 1938, Page 4

SLAPPED PREMIER

Bay Has £2,000,000

FAMOUS 0 LOBE-TROTTER COUNT LU 1)1 SALM in Loudon is Count Ludi Salm, whose aristocratic face is lus passport at almost every frontier post in ruirope and America. Count Ludi stands 6ft. oins., with immense shoulders. Proud feature's are relieved by a pair of merry eyes, anil his engaging smile is known in luxury hotels and liners, in Continental expresses, and in all the capitals of Europe. His friends are counted in thousands. They include the taxi-drivers in New York, London, and Vienna, who collect his autograph instead of the fa re.

As we walked in the foyer of Ins hotel, in Piccadily, Adolphe Menjou, famous for 17 years films, came over, cried: Hello, Ludi, what are you doing around?

And a man sitting behind us, beckoned a waiter and asked in a penetrating whisper, “Who is that man talking to Ludi Salm?” •Count Ludi married Millieent Rogers, then called the richest girl in the world. Their son was the. forty-inii-lion-dollar baby. At ,14 the hay now owns over £2,0(100,000. The Salm divorce was one of America’s most celebrated cases.

Count Ludi slapped the face of a premier in public. That was Hungarian Count Karolvi. That slap was one of the most sensational affairs Vienna, can, remember. It nearly divided a country. For 14 years he played tennis, won championships in Britain, Austria, Germany, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. A war-wounded leg has stepped piay now. Faced Charging Rhino. In Africa they talk of the time when he faced a charging, rhino, saw hunters and porters scrambling up trees to safety, hut refused to fudge and dropped the beast with one shot when only 20 feet away. For weeks he was “lest” away among the sources of the Nile, was twice reported: dead. His family was ancient before history was thought of: Julius Caesar talked of the “savage count of the Rhine”—the man who even then bore in his crest the tw 0 salmon which gave the family their name. Count Ludi is in London seeing a few of the friends “of which I have so many and for which I am so •JiankluJ,”