Nov. 6, 1957
Los Angeles
A dissolute, self-centered millionaire playboy with two marriages under
his belt meets a gorgeous starlet on the rebound from her second
marriage and the outcome should be obvious to everyone. But it wasn’t.
Frederick "Ted" Tillinghast III does not sound like great husband
material. His first marriage, to Iris Flores, the granddaughter of
former Costa Rican President Rafael Yglesias Castro, ended in divorce.
His second marriage to Sharon "Reform School Girl" Lee (who later divorced singers David Street and Budd Albright) also ended in the courts.
In filing for divorce, Lee said Ted was "quarrelsome and moody and
morose and would sulk for hours." For fish who are seeking bicycles,
this would be a no-brainer. (See previous posts on "How to Get and Keep a Husband.")
Ted apparently met Nancy Valentine at a party given by Mrs. Leslie
Snyder. Nancy’s first marriage is a little mysterious but might have
been to Omar Dejany, identified in The Times as "representative to the
United Nations for Abdullah, King of Transjordan."
Her next marriage was far more publicized. She met Sri Jaggaddipandra Bhup Bahandar Narayan, the maharajah of Cooch Behar,
while he was in the U.S. buying shoes for his subjects, according to a
1956 gossip column. The couple were apparently married in 1949, but she
returned to her family in California in 1951 after the Indian
government refused to recognize the marriage and her status as the
maharani.
She joined the Self-Realization Fellowship
and spent the next three years at the group’s Mt. Washington compound,
resuming her acting career in 1956 with an appearance in "Jane Wyman’s
Fireside Theater," according to The Times.
Ted and Nancy received a marriage license on July 25, 1956, and planned a wedding at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades after Ted promised that he would convert to the religion.
And then things went terribly wrong. Nancy became ill, leaving a crowd
of wedding guests at the shrine. Days later, Ted made headlines when
it was revealed that he had stayed out most of the night with Lee, his
ex-wife, who canceled a date to see him, according to news accounts.
There was a reconciliation and they were married in a small ceremony at the Pacific Palisades shrine.
Shortly after their first anniversary, Nancy filed for divorce,
charging mental cruelty and alleging that he had been unfaithful.
"He said I was a nobody-peasant and that he was Frederick Tillinghast
III," Nancy testified. She was granted $1 a month alimony, a car,
furniture, stocks and bonds, and $100 a month child support for their
daughter, Darin Elizabeth.
Ted went on to at least one more divorce and at least one more arrest for drunk driving before disappearing from The Times.
And why am I spending so much time on the implosion of yet another Hollywood marriage?
Because Nancy played reporter Jan Price in Jack Webb’s "Thirty" (or "-30-") and the Daily Mirror loves that movie.
Nancy Valentine as Jan Price, just your average newspaperwoman. (I mean, have you ever seen a picture of Aggie Underwood or Florabel Muir?)
Alas, I could find no further information in The Times about what became of her.
ladailymirror.com 
According to the site below, which collated gossip column information from different newspapers on actresses in Hollywood, Nancy Valentine was living in Malibu in 2003.
http://www.glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com/show/275/Nancy+Valentine/index.html
–I usually don’t trust research that I haven’t done myself because it’s apt to be poor. Believe me, I know.
Thanks for reading!
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Hey Larry: My Old Man broke into newspapers in the mid-1920’s. He answered an ad for a ‘copy boy’ and was interviewed by the editor, Florabel Muir. As it turned out, she wanted a bootlegger/gofer, not a copy boy. The newspaper, in Pasadena is long defunct as are most of the papers that I have worked for. He stuck with papers until he retired in the late 1960’s and followed Florabel’s career and even sent her a get-well card after she got shot while riding in the back seat of a car with Mickey Cohen during a botched gangland hit. The driver that night, Neddy Herbert was killed and Mickey wasn’t even scratched. My dad said that she was quite a ‘tough old gal’ who once knocked Tranchot Tone out with one punch at a night club on Sunset Strip. Speaking of Tone, why don’t you do a piece on his ex, the movie starlet Barbara Payton. I met her in the early 1960s when I was working at the old Hollywood Citizen News. She lived across the street at the Wilcox Hotel and by that time had gone from a $10,000 a week starlet to a $5 a trick street hooker. Interesting stuff.
Yer pal, Bill Hilser
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