Medford mail tribune., May 07, 1961, Image 38

Family Weekly May 7, mi
By GEOFFREY BOCCA
HOLLY
WOOD IN
THE
Audrey Hepburn poses on the balcony of Swiss chalet she shares with mate Mel Ferrer.
Switzerland is a small country in Europe bounded on
all sides by tax collectors.
For generations, it has been an international refuge of
the dummy holding company, the secret bank account,
and the wealthy who fall in high tax brackets at home.
Currently conspicuous among the latter group are
many big-name movie stars of the United States and
England. In fact, so many film greats, have settled in
Switzerland for tax purposes that they have established
a miniature Hollywood in the Alps.
For example, the Richard Burtons have a home at Ce
ligny, near Geneva. Jack Palance rents the Villa la Jac
quiere, at Epalinges, on Lausanne's outskirts. William
Holden lives at Saint Prex in the mountains behind. Noel
Coward has a pink and white chalet, called les Avants,
near Montreux. Peter Ustinov has a house at Villars.
David Niven rents the Villa Saint Andrew at Aigle.
George Sanders and Yul Brynner have apartments at
Lausanne. Others in the area include directors Norman
Krasna and Robert Siodmak, producer Anatole Litvak,
and sometime Hollywood writers A. J. Cronin and
Georges Simenon.
All these live in the Lausanne area, in the Canton of
Vaud. A few eccentrics eccentrics, that is, of the type
who would live at Palm Springs instead of Beverly Hills
have homes farther out. Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hep
burn have the Chalet Ariane at Burgenstock, and they
persuaded Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren to buy a house
near them. Deborah Kerr and her husband Peter Viertel
have a home at the ski resort of Klosters, in the Canton
of Grisons. Anthony Quinn lives near them. Alfred Hitch
cock lives at Saint Moritz. So does Hildegarde Neff.
The German movie colony has moved in, too, but to a
different and more clannish part of the country, the Can
ton of Ticino. If one earns millions of taxable Deutsch
marks, the Italian part of Switzerland offers the best of
both worlds: spaghetti", chianti, dolce vita and low
Swiss taxes. You'll find Nadia Tiller at Castagnola,
Hardy Kruger at Cassarate, and Paulette Goddard, who
is married to writer Erich Maria Remarque, in Ascona.
Ideal for Qlobe-Trotters
All these, as well as hundreds of businessmen and peo
ple of inherited wealth, have found in Switzerland the
ideal legal haven against heavy taxation. For movie stars
it is particularly ideal, since the postwar trend of making
movies away from Hollywood has made Switzerland a
central jumping-off point for travel anywhere.
Switzerland's banking and taxation system is unique.
The numbered bank account enables anyone to keep his
fortune an absolute secret: only two persons know to
whom the number belongs, the depositor himself and the
manager who signs him in. The other bank personnel
know the depositor only by number.
Switzerland itself is a confederation of 22 cantons, all
Movie stars have discovered that
4 Family Wkly, Mav 7. IM1