The Silver Queen

Suzanne Egera Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch Engalitcheff gained an H.R.H. before her name via her fourth marriage, to a genuine, if somewhat disreputable, Russian prince. By then she had long been known as the Silver Queen, a reference to the origins of her wealth in the mines of Park City, Utah, that attached to her as she climbed the social ladder of turn-of-the-century high society. Susie, as friends and family knew her, entertained fabulously at her luxurious houses in Salt Lake City and Pasadena - turning her Gardo House, originally built for Brigham Young's favorite wife, into perhaps Salt Lake's most famous mansion - and became a recognized figure in the social circuit and society publications of the west and east coasts. She also lost four husbands and a daughter, suffered through headline-grabbing court battles over inheritances, and in an attempt to maintain a passing way of life, ultimately frittered away what wealth the Great Depression did not take.