The focus of our today’s feature is on a man who was as outstanding as he was rich and high-living.  The name of this man is Ali Khan…

Ali Khan remained an heir to his father, Aga Khan III until his passion for racing cars, racehorses and beautiful women eventually deprived him of his chances to become a spiritual leader for 20 million Asian and African Ismaili Muslims.
 
Born in Italy and educated in Europe, Prince Ali Suleiman Khan inherited immense wealth and was quick to learn how to use it. After his wife’s death in 1929, Aga Khan sent his son to study law in London. Dark-skinned and of medium height, the young Ali was an exotically handsome and extremely driven young man. He quickly became interested in and involved in racing cars, breeding Derby-winning horses and making love. He took part in prestigious auto races, hunted in Africa and was expertly running his many stud farms and villas in Ireland, France, Switzerland and Venezuela. During World War Two he provided invaluable assistance to Allied intelligence using his flawless English, French and Arabic, for which service he received Croix de Guerre with palms and the US Bronze Star. Ali Khan later won admiration serving as Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations in which capacity he worked from 1958 until his death in a car accident on May 12, 1960. 

As is natural for a man of such a stature, Ali Khan was a ladies’ man and having mansions and villas scattered all across the world all he had to do was just to win a woman’s attention and then go after her wherever she went. He lavished his loved ones with expensive gifts. One of his many admirers, Elsa Maxwell, wrote that Ali always danced slowly and excitedly as if it were the last dance in his life. Each time he told a woman he loved her he was absolutely sincere… because he really loved her at that particular moment… The problem was that the moment never lasted long. In 1936 a morally shattered Lowell Guinness, a British MP, told a divorce court that leaving his young wife, Joan with Ali Khan  a happy and loving woman for a brief period of absence, he came back only to find her asking for a divorce because she was marrying Ali…

On May 18 1936 Ali Khan tied the knot with the divorced Joan Yarde-Buller and they became the parents of two sons. All went well until he met the sultry American Sex Symbol of the 40s and 50s, Rita Hayworth. Rita and Ali met at a party during the 1948 Cannes Film Festival. Ali managed to impress the Hollywood’ superstar despite fierce competition from leading American actors and the Shah of Iran who were bending over backwards to  win Rita’s heart.  For a while it seemed to be a match made in heaven, but Rita got quickly disappointed with their family life. The two retired to one of Ali’s many mansions where Rita hoped to get some rest away from the frenetic pace of her Hollywood schedule. On December 28, 1949 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Rita gave birth to their daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan. Unlike his wife, however, Ali Khan either failed to change his customary lifestyle or just refused to. Used to his jet set ways, Ali was feeling lonely. Soon after, his infidelities and the cultural and social clashes between husband and wife led to their separation and eventual divorce. On March 15, 1951 Rita Hayworth sailed back to America with Princess Yasmin in tow becoming the first woman to abandon Ali. Ali Khan resumed his customary live of a jet setting playboy changing countries, sometimes after spending just a few hours in a posh hotel suite before flying off to another... His playboy reputation prompted one of his contemporaries to write that “a woman was looked upon as being over the hill and unfashionable if she hadn’t, even once, been in bed with Ali Khan.” Even though Ali was changing women as quickly as he was doing his horses and cars, his flings were so passionate and mutually fulfilling that only a precious few of his ex-lovers had any reason to complain about…

His biggest romance, however, was with Lady Thelma Furness, the then mistress of the Prince of Wales. She fell in love with Ali. Enraged by all that, Edward VIII embarked on his affair with Thelma’s American friend, Wallis Simpson, for whom he eventually gave up the British throne…. 

“When I’m in love with a woman the only thing on my mind is to make her feel good,” said the 20th century Don Juan, Prince Ali Khan…
 
 

01/30/2006