An Italian Neoclassical Giltwood Console Table, last Quarter 18th Century

Property from the Ernest and Rosemarie Kanzler Foundation, Sotheby's New York, October 24-25, 2002, lot 907

Born in Zurich to a family of modest origins, Rosemarie Kanzler (1915-2000) became one of the most glamourous figures on the postwar international social circuit by means of her intelligence, charm and Marlene Dietrich-like allure. She left Switzerland as a young adult to pursue a singing career with a traveling German theatrical troupe. After the outbreak of World War II she fled to Cuba, whence she continued to Mexico City, where in 1944 she married the film producer Manuel Reachi, whom she divorced in 1948. After spending time in Hollywood, Paris and the South of France she married the Mexican entrepreneur Carlos Oriani, whom she divorced after less than a year, and within a few months had remarried the Connecticut heir to the Squibb pharmaceutical fortune Frederick Weicker, who died four months after their wedding. In 1955 she married the Detroit businessman Ernest Kanzler, an uncle by marriage to Henry Ford II. Ernest Kanzler died in 1967, and 1973 Rosemarie married her fifth and final husband, the French banker Jean Pierre Marcie-Rivière; they were divorced in 1989.

In addition to being an avid practitioner of matrimony, Kanzler was also a matchmaker and said to be instrumental in the introductions of Henry Ford II to his second wife Cristina Vettore Austin, and Ford's daughter Charlotte to the Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos. Kanzler maintained well-appointed houses in New York, Paris and Argentina and her colourful life was recorded in her 2000 autobiography Yesterday is Gone.