In late October 1926, the Chicago Tribune and others confirmed the engagement of Mary Landon Baker and “Count Bojidar Pouritch,” the former Yugoslavian consul reportedly having sought and received permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the match.1
On November 1, the engagement was formally announced in Time, with Mary identified thusly:
Engaged. Mary Landon Baker, Chicago heiress, famed because four years ago she refused at the church to wed her onetime fiancé Allister McCormick (Harvester scion); to Bojidar Pouritch, until recently Jugoslav Consul at Chicago.2
At long last a happy conclusion for the runaway bride, thought all. And then, three days later, the defeated report from the tireless International News Service: “The latest romance of Miss Mary Landon Baker of Chicago is all off, it was learned today.” The cause this time: “Miss Baker’s recent discovery that M. Pouritch is just M. Pouritch, and that he is not a nobleman.”3
The INS credited the newspaper Vecer with the reveal, asserting that Pouritch used the title of “Count” illegally while working in Chicago, and sought to use Mary’s wealth to improve his status in the Yugoslavian government. More detail on this political scandal came the next day, with a report that Yugoslavian politicos debated Mary’s “fickleness” and challenged her loyalties to Pouritch. Most importantly, the Baker/McCormick affair was finally given its due as a hot button issue in the Balkans:
A group of Serbian politicians who envisaged Miss Baker as bringing enormous wealth to Jugo-Slavia were urging today that Puritch [sic] be given a high diplomatic post in Belgrade. Thus, they argued, his position would match Miss Baker’s wealth, and there would be all the more reason for the wedding.
But opposition has developed among Croatian politicians who have heard of Allister McCormick’s disappointments.
The discerning Croatians had an additional grievance or two—Pouritch’s false claims of nobility, suggesting a deliberate effort to mislead Mary or, at least, Americans impressed by a European accent and uninterested in fact-checking Yugoslavia’s lack of a titled aristocracy; and his desire to leverage Mary’s wealth for his own political gain, an accusation that seems not unfounded given the Serbian position outlined above.4
Time dutifully noted the fraud excuse in their breakup announcement two weeks later. “Reported reason: M. Pouritch is not of noble blood.”5
Strangely, though, the storyline persisted throughout the month, already-outdated announcements being run whenever an inch or so of column space needed to be filled. But on November 26 came word that Mary would depart Belgrade for Venice, following the conclusion of an engagement which, apparently, “never was officially announced.” The grounds for assuming the relationship’s demise, though, seem even flimsier by those standards:
The fact that M. Pouritch was not at the station to bid Miss Baker good-by, and also that the couple had a long conversation yesterday and have not been seen together since, has confirmed the belief that the engagement, as reported, is off.6
November 26 must have produced a bit of whiplash for the society reader, as at least one paper opted to run with a syndicated piece by A.R. Ducker, reporting for the Chicago Daily News and delivering the hottest scoop of all: “Mary has a violent dislike for jazz music.”
Indeed, though the socialite had the good fortune to stay in a luxurious apartment just a few floors above one of Belgrade’s top all-night cabarets, she, like any good hipster, preferred intimate cafes and the more “soulful” local folk scene. Upon being recognized by a Romani band who offered to play her a few American tunes, Mary reportedly protested: “Don't play that! I came over here to get away from jazz.”
In the time warp of Mary and Pouritch’s November courtship, the two here are together—“Sometimes Mary comes with ‘her boy,’ as the Belgraders say of Bojidar Pouritch”—yet Ducker can also conclude the piece with a reminder that Pouritch is untitled.7
A splashier breakup feature, courtesy of a New York Times and Chicago Tribune joint syndicated special, would arrive to close out the month: “Fickle Miss Baker Quits the Noble Pouritch Cold: He’s a Count—Not a Dish; But Chicago Girl Gives Him Air.” In addition to that proud display of inaccuracy in the headline, the story also relayed romantic tales of a secret telegram code between the sometimes long-distance lovers, and offered a Romeo-and-Juliet-tinged scenario blaming Pouritch’s government enemies for the split.8
Mary, meanwhile, was settled back in London by mid-December, denying that any engagement had even existed.9 The press sought an explanation for her failure to close the deal with any of her recent European paramours, and found one: Alfred Baker’s refusal to endorse a marriage between his daughter and a non-American.
“I want Mary to marry an American,” said Mr. Baker recently. “I don’t care much what American so long as Mary loves him. […] She is too spoiled—too accustomed to her own way to be happy with a foreigner. He would try to dominate her—and then there would be trouble.”
But Mary “feels that she could never be happy married to an American, yet she hates to disappoint her father, so she just doesn’t marry anybody.” To illustrate the point, Mary’s already extensive list of European attachments, both real and speculated, was included, though one interesting addition was Chicago-born Henry Channon, Allister’s best man of 1922. Channon’s friendship with the Prince of Wales is given as the source of Mary’s entry to the European smart set, a most interesting detail for future reference. The veracity of this entire report, of course, can be somewhat left in question with Pouritch—“Belgrade’s Valentino”—again repeatedly referred to as a count.10
Despite the previous article’s concluding optimism that Mary and Pouritch’s love would triumph over Mr. Baker’s opposition, Pouritch would eventually marry Dara Pachitch, daughter of a Yugoslavian premier, making a permanent exit from the Mary-go-round and embarking on quite a significant career in the Yugoslavian government. By spring 1927, Mary herself would become “the heroine of another romance,” now avidly courted in Italy by the fiftysomething Marquis Leone Deronzis, “one of the best dancers and most dashing figures in Neapolitan and Roman society.” Though the two attended various social engagements together, Mary was more concerned with her plans to spend spring and summer in Paris and London to restock her dress wardrobe.
The update concluded with a mysterious note that, if not in reference to Pouritch, contributes a real question mark to Mary’s storyline:
A piquant sidelight on her latest romance is that Mary apparently does not consider the marquis’ attentions seriously, while a young Serbian officer of a noble family whom she met in Florence and is now stationed in Belgrade has told his friends that she was his fiance [sic].11
Though his ex remained a society staple, even making the news for the $325,000 inheritance she received upon Alfred Baker’s death in late 1927, Allister McCormick had by this time settled into the pleasant obscurity of ordinary married life. When stories did appear, they focused on apparently odd, newsworthy incidents, like the time in 1928 that Joan, now the mother of the couple’s three-year-old son Ralph, took on a job at Marshall Field because she “need[ed] the money.”12
By 1930, the family would relocate to Santa Barbara, and the enterprising Joan would find better means of support. “Enchanting setting for the blonde loveliness of Mrs. Alister [sic] McCormick...her hair like pale new gold, eyes of forget-me-not blue and exquisite skin like hawthorn blossom!” gushed the advertorial. To what could Joan owe her delicate beauty? Well, to the secret wisdom of American women, first of all. And the secret wisdom those Americans possessed? Pond’s, which at this time was running a series of ads spotlighting attractive society women. Joan, they claimed, had told her English friends of the brand’s many virtues:
The wonderful Cold Cream cleanses divinely...the Cleansing Tissues are better than anything to remove cream...the Skin Freshener tones the skin...the Vanishing Cream is the perfect powder base for face, neck, arms...and keeps hands smooth and white.13
While Joan inscribed paeans to her skin care sponsor, Mary’s early authorial intentions would flower with the 1934 publication of The Arcadians, a semi-autobiographical satirical novella. The Chicago Tribune gave it a fairly positive review, calling it “a fragment, a futility, a nothingness, but a supreme fragment, a worthwhile futility and a memorable nothingness.”14
Still, few were content to let Mary simply transmogrify into some Chicago-born Nancy Mitford. The woman had an image to maintain, and in November 1938, as war threatened and the situation in Europe rapidly deteriorated, a new generation of readers was introduced to her matrimonial agita. The latest story began with a strange telegram from “Alabama” to the Daily Mail:
“Mary Landon Baker is hiding in London from a man. I will sue her for a million dollars.”
The Daily Mail naturally took this as a suggestion, and tracked Mary down at the Mayfair Hotel, where, per the United Press’s recap of the affair, she said “That mad man has found me again.”
The man was left unidentified, but described as an individual who had peppered Mary with dozens of harassing marriage proposals. “I had to put the police and my lawyers on him,” she continued. She then took a pensive turn.
I am still hoping to fall in love. At 38 I am waiting for the right man to come along. That is one reason why I have not been married before. I have never been in love.
How lovely it would be to be able to call your place your home instead of having to travel around the world to avoid people who just persecute you.15
A Daily News piece the next day provided further detail: the man’s return came after four years of silence, and his obsession began, of course, during Mary’s engagement to Allister, giving her an ideal opportunity to indict nearly two decades’ worth of media coverage:
“I postponed the wedding five times,” she said, “and, of course, people were amazed. Every time I was seen in public with another man, it was immediately said I would marry him. Proposals came from all over the world, and this madman wrote to me daily.”
Casting her Belgradian adventure in a new light, Mary went on to explain that in 1927, she had opted to remain in Europe on a long-term basis as a means of avoiding Mr. Alabama.16
Mary’s revelations prompted some important reflection from the media that had contributed to her personal travails. And stalking, they concluded, was simply part and parcel of twentieth century single ladyhood. After a rhapsodic introduction about the struggles modern gals face from “those boisterous bipeds who suffuse us with orchids,” writer Helen Harrison honed in her focus on the lady of the hour:
Mary Baker, as you may have guessed, is one of those women who, deluged with masculine attentions, chooses to get along “without.”
But can she?
Mary’s one-time attachments had been “international in scope and pandemic in character,” wrote Harrison, in what probably seemed a clever rather than inexplicable and honestly weird description. Allister’s jilt count is bumped up to eight, as Harrison also shifts the church cancellation to 1921 and adds in a few new 1922 postponements, and Bojidar Pouritch’s noble title is restored. The article wraps on a tasteful note, quoting the suicide note of an unrelated college student named Gertrude, because, after all, dames.17
The Mary revival was in full swing. “Mary is at it again,” reported the unnamed writer of another feature, “playing an oft-repeated engagement in which the ‘engagement’ is decidedly off. She just dotes on that role of The Lady Who Dodges Marriage.”
Snide tone notwithstanding, the piece is more detailed than most, fleshing out Allister and Joan’s story. In a quote attributed to a September 1923 London Evening News piece titled “How I Wooed and Won,” Allister outlined his whirlwind romance with Joan—the two meeting August 1 and engaged within days after a courtship of dancing, tennis, and golf. And then:
After the ceremony they sifted through the cablegrams and telegrams they had received. Among them was a message with the single word, “Congratulations.” It was from Miss Baker.18
One week later, Christmas Day readers were given a most spectacular gift: “And Everywhere That Mary Goes the Villain Still Pursues Her,” a full-page feature accompanied by cartoons depicting Mary as a blonde bombshell traipsing the world, perpetually confronted by spooky telegrams and phone calls.
The lurid recap of the previous two decades’ affairs makes a fitting climax to the Baker/McCormick media narrative. The Fourth Street Presbyterian mythology is revised:
It seems that Mary, in all her bridal finery had been up to the church door, taken one look at the crowd, carpet, canopy, cops and everything, gasped and ordered the chauffeur to keep right on going, back home where she had hysterics for a couple of days. Nobody could understand just what had happened to her, but it was later diagnosed as “altarphobia,” a rather rare condition in women.
Upon Allister’s match with Joan—which, according to this version of events, somehow took place both in 1923 and four years into his engagement to Mary—“it was Miss Baker’s turn to feel sad.”
She was quoted as saying that she never wanted to know the young lady who had carried on in her place, but later the two met and told the world that they liked each other very much. Only the other day Mary admitted that Allister was the most charming man she ever met and that she still could not understand why she had not quite married him.
One cause, of course, may have been her love for Barry Baxter, which had potentially fatal consequences. After telegramming him with her intentions to wed Allister, “Mr. Baxter opened the telegram at the theatre, fainted, and later died, though there was no conclusive evidence that his death was due to the shock.”
Mary is given a brand new ex, Czar Boris III of Bulgaria, whose 1926 proposal—denied by both Mary and the Bulgarian government—she is said to have refused due to the country’s inegalitarian approach to gender roles.
“There have been many others mentioned among the suitors and losers,” concluded the writer, “and right now she is said to be engaged to a Hungarian Count who fully believes that she is really to be his Countess. It is said that he has laid bets at odds of one to ten. But all that Mary says is that she is still waiting for the right man.”19
Almost two decades later, in a 1956 Chicago Tribune feature, Mary Landon Baker still retained her celebrity as the woman who “left her man”—by this point himself the father of a married son—“waiting at the church.”20 And Mary would remain single until her death in 1961—doing her best, perhaps, to both fulfill and finally deny the media's most wished-for narrative.
“Mary Landon Baker to Marry,” Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1926.
“Milestones: Nov. 1, 1926,” Time, November 1, 1926.
“Mary Baker Simply Can’t Make Up Mind,” International News Service/Telegraph-Herald, November 4, 1926.
“Fickleness of Mary Baker Causes Row in Jugo-Slavia,” Brooklyn Times Union, November 5, 1926.
“Engaged,” Time, November 15, 1926.
“Another Fiance of Mary Baker Gets the Hook,” Daily News, November 26, 1926.
A.R. Drucker, “Soulful Music for Mary Baker,” Chicago Daily News/Argus-Leader, November 26, 1926.
“Fickle Miss Baker Quits the Noble Pouritch Cold,” New York Times/Chicago Tribune/Fort Worth Record-Telegram, November 30, 1926.
“Latest Portrait of Mary Landon Baker,” Daily Times, December 10, 1926.
“Mary Landon Baker’s Bothersome Love Problem,” Courier-Journal, December 19, 1926.
John T. Burke, “Marquis Courts Chicago Girl,” The Times/St. Petersburg Times, March 14, 1927.
“Mrs. Joan M’Cormick Takes Job in Store,” New York Times, April 30, 1928.
Pond’s, “Mrs. Alister McCormick: Lovely as the Flowers in Her California Garden,” Leader-Post, October 8, 1930.
“Mary Landon Baker Writes of Mayfair,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1934.
“‘Another Man’s Here Again,’ Moans Shyest ‘Bride-to-Be’” United Press/Pittsburgh Press, November 15, 1938.
“17-Year-Pursuer Finds Mary Baker,” Daily News, November 16, 1938.
Helen Harrison, “Men besiege the heiress, but she chills their ardor like a snow storm,” El Paso Times, December 4, 1938.
“Mary’s Flight from Another Little Lamb,” Albuquerque Journal, December 18, 1938.
“And Everywhere That Mary Goes the Villain Still Pursues Her,” San Francisco Examiner, December 25, 1938.
“Mary Landon Baker: She left her man waiting at the church,” Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1956.