The Last Word

MANNERS & MORALS

When he went into Manhattan supreme court last week to ask annulment of his marriage, middle-aged (51) Dramatist Laurence S. Liebson portrayed himself as a man supremely bilked by the wiles of a perfumed woman. Mrs. Doraine Van Roos DuPont Liebson, he complained, had led him to believe, during six delightfully dazed months of courtship, that "she was a maiden of 26." But after the wedding last February, he discovered that she was nearer 48, that she had a married daughter--and two grandchildren.

This, he implied, was only a beginning. He discovered that she had simply assumed the name DuPont for flash effect during a career as a cosmetician and manufacturer of lady's chin straps, and that she was actually the daughter of a Polish laborer. As a perpetrator of "marital fraud," Doraine deserved neither a separation nor alimony, her husband argued.

The sprightly Doraine, described by Manhattan's delighted tabloids as "age-defying," "shapely," "sleek," "chic" and "doll-faced," disagreed completely with her husband in a description of her own virtues which was introduced as evidence. Doraine wrote:

"My pulchritude exceeds my mental endowment, which exceeds that of my bookish husband. As to my other natural endowments, I enumerate:

"I am respectable, cultured, well-behaved and poised, proud, quiet and refined, clean-minded, meek and immaculate, delicate, tender, bighearted, lovable, unselfish, unspoiled, generous and ambitious. I don't gossip, I'm not vengeful, don't gamble or drink, have rare dexterity, am supermundane, possess savoir faire. I'm perspicacious, perceptive, euphemistic, strong, healthy, idealistic, make my own clothes, hats and bags, do my own hair, cook and love music.

"In truth I could keep a husband so happy, give him inexhaustible pleasures and could bubble over with the right man because I am many women all rolled into one. Indeed I've always conquered male hearts with little effort, including young men and those frozen fast by age. But the world I built for you crashed in the third week of our honeymoon because you turned my girlish head!"

Under the full impact of this blast, Justice Kenneth O'Brien awarded her $1,000 for lawyer's fees and a $125 weekly temporary alimony. Doraine crossed her legs prettily for the photographers and, with a confident smile, went off to await the trial she had thoughtfully requested.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.