Alice "Kiki" Gwynne Preston
- Bobby Kelley
- Aug 23
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 21
(October 8, 1896 - December 23, 1946)
Her drug addiction earned her the nickname "the girl with the silver syringe".
Kiki was born in Chatou, France, the daughter of Edward Erskine Gwynne, Sr. and his wife Helen Steele. Preston's mother was a great-granddaughter of Justice Samuel Chase, one of the signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence, as well as a granddaughter of Joshua Barney, commodore of the United States Navy during the American Revolutionary War. She was descended from Peter Jacquette, the second Dutch governor of Delaware. Preston's father was the nephew of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II (Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt).
in 1919, Kiki married Horace R. Bigelow Allen. They had a daughter, Alice Gwynne Allen, and a son, Ethan Allen. In November 1924, Kiki applied for divorce at the Paris courts, on the grounds of desertion.
In April 1925, Kiki married investment banker Jerome "Gerry" Preston. Kiki had many lovers during that time, including actor Rudolph Valentino and Prince George, Duke of Kent, whom she first met in the mid-1920s. Through 1928, she introduced him to cocaine and morphine among other drugs.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Kiki experienced a long string of tragic losses, as many people from her circle of relatives and friends found untimely deaths. Previously, in May 1929, her 30-year-old brother, Erskine almost died of a heart attack. Kiki rushed back to Paris to be by his side, since it was believed he was close to dying. Erskine ultimately survived.
On November 16, 1933, her cousin, 26-year-old socialite William Kissam Vanderbilt III, was killed in a car accident; her brother, Erskine, was also in the car, but suffered minor injuries.
In August 1935, Erskine was in another accident, when the car he was driving collided with a truck, injuring three. He was tried and fined 50 dollars and also sentenced to a thirty-day suspended sentence. On account of that accident, Erskine later suffered a paralysis in 1938. He died on May 5th 1948.
On May 28, 1934, Kiki's husband, Jerome died at Hotel Pierre, in New York, aged 37, making her a widow at the age of 36.
In February 1937, her brother-in-law (Jerome's brother), sportsman Lewis Thompson Preston also died, at age 37. On January 25, 1941, her friend, 22nd Earl of Erroll, aged 39, was mysteriously murdered in Kenya. Later that year, on September 30, her friend and fellow American expatriate in Paris, Alice Silverthorne de Janzé, committed suicide with a firearm.
On 25 August 1942, her former lover, Prince George, was killed in a plane accident, aged 39.
After suffering from mental disorders for several years, Kiki committed suicide on the night of December 23, 1946, jumping out of a window of her fifth-floor apartment in the Stanhope Hotel of New York City and landing in a courtyard of the hotel. According to her companion, Lillian Turner, Kiki had been in poor health, depressed and nervous.
Turner had just given Preston a glass of milk and then went into the living room of the apartment to read. When she heard no sounds coming from Kiki's bedroom, she entered it, only to find a window open and Kiki gone. Kiki's pajama-clad body was soon discovered in an areaway behind the hotel. Preston's mother, Helen Steele, was also living at the same hotel at the time.
Alice "kiki' Gwynne Preston was cremated, Her ashes and that of her father, mother, and brother were interred in the Gwynne family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Ny.
