I cannot find anything (in a quick search) on her American family but, as she was a member of the Ziegfeld Follies team circa 1923-25, I doubt if she was an heiress.
There are several references to her having been married prior to her wedding to Claude Leigh (whose birth surname was Levy).
One press item in the UK said that she had an older daughter as well as Virginia Leigh, the daughter of Claude Leigh.
Below are a couple of news reports stating she would marry Claude Leigh.
She used the name Myrtle Thoreau as a stage name, but whether she had legally changed her name is something I cannot ascertain. Could it have been a corruption of her first husband's name? Again, I don't know. I haven't found anything about the first husband.
The online transcription of the UK Births, Deaths and Marriages registers shows that, for her surname when she married Claude Leigh in 1925 , three surnames were given: Thorelius, Thoreau and Johnson. According to the information provided by Sotheby's Johnson was her birth name.
At the time of the divorce from Claude Leigh in London in 1940 she was calling herself Mrs Myrtle Leigh. She accused him of cruelty.
May 1940
Her marriage to Frank Delaney, a wealthy solicitor, was relatively short lived. According to Sotheby's, they married in November 1944. By late November 1952 Myrtle had secured an annulment on the grounds that he did not have the Court's permission to marry while his first wife was alive. (I have to confess I do not understand this type of restriction. I have never heard of it previously).
[Note some reports named her as "Christiana", some as "Kristina". It is definitely the same lady whose jewels we have looked at]
Annulment November 1952.
The latest information I found on her as Mrs Myrtle Leigh was for 1956.
More information about Myrtle Leigh's character can be found in reports about her youngest daughter, Virginia Leigh, daughter of Claude.
Virginia seems to have moved between the US and the UK after the war, and starred in at least one film.
During the 1947-48 Debutante season in New York Virginia Leigh received considerable publicity, most of it apparently engineered by her mother.
The following report comes from the Australian Women's Weekly. Could I stress that this magazine was not a scurrilous rag. It was a reputable, highly respected and influential magazine.
Virginia Leigh is in the forefront. 27 October 1947.
Mother and daughter at the Opera New York
Sadly, I don't have any other information on either mother or daughter. There are a number of photos of Virginia Leigh on historical photo sites on the net -- most from her first days as a deb.
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