My father George Jordan, was the assistant Editor of the Rome Italy Bureau of the Associated Press from 1935 to July 1941, except for a period from 1936 to 1937 when he was temporarily assigned to cover the Spanish revolution. Sometime between 1935 and 1938, he wrote a story for the Associated Press about the beautiful Christmas decorations in a Lenci store in Italy.
Sometime later, following the death of Enrico Scavini in December 1938, His wife, Madam Lenci presented my Father with a boudoir doll fashioned in the image of Marlene Dietrich. She told my Father that it was a wish her husband had made on his deathbed that my Father should have this doll in gratitude for the story he wrote.
When Hitler marched into Poland in 1939, Mousolini made several ships available to Americans for safe passage to America. The doll traveled to the US with my Mother and me on the ship Conte Savoi, packed in a trunk. My Father remained in Italy until 1941 just before the US entered the war. He flew out on a Pan American Clipper. .. (continued below)
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