Vera and the Sultan

Vera McGinnis was well aware one of the world’s richest and most exotic men was in the audience that September night in 1926 when she put on her best outfit to perform in Singapore. She’d heard all the stories of the “escapades” of the Sultan of Johore, including the time he fell for a showgirl and supposedly kidnapped her. “The story included rather startling, although romantic details, and all-in-all gave the gentleman quite a buildup,” she’d remember. In her autobiography, wr