Sandra Rambeau was a captivating figure, known for having not just one, but three royals vying for her attention. Wealthy men eagerly reached for their wallets, while smitten admirers showered her with jewels. Even the most cunning individuals found her irresistible.

What exactly was it about Sandra Rambeau that made men lose their composure?

Wherever she ventured, the blonde and elegantly sultry former switchboard operator from Springfield, Missouri, left a trail of rubies, diamonds, luxurious fur coats, sleek limousines, and marriage proposals in her wake.

With her striking beauty and undeniable charm, Sandra needed only to signal her interest, and she attracted a parade of admirers—ranging from movie stars and industrial magnates to politicians and even a Nazi general.

The Duke of Kent, who was King Charles’s great-uncle and the brother of the late King George VI, became enamored with Sandra. He lavishly set her up in an upscale Belgravia residence, showering her with money and an abundance of jewels.

In return, Sandra introduced him to the world of drugs.

Sandra – born plain Mary Dorothy Rambo in a one-horse town in the mid-West – arrived in Britain as one of the ‘Dorchester Girls’, dancers from New York’s Broadway, shipped over to London in the inter-war years to liven up the capital city’s nightlife.

Within weeks she was in the arms of a besotted Prince Bishnu Shamser Rana, a rich playboy from Nepal who couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.

Sandra Rambeau’s real name was Mary Dorothy Rambo when she lived in America

Within weeks of arriving in Britain a rich prince from Nepal had fallen in love with Sandra

‘It was a case of love at first sight,’ she trilled, ‘for he proposed to me a week after our first meeting. My romance with the prince will thrive in London, despite the fact that the prince has a wife in Nepal. As far as his being married is concerned, Indian princes usually have several wives.’

Unfortunately for Sandra that wasn’t quite the case. When she sailed to Italy to join Bishnu she discovered his pregnant wife sitting in her hotel-room, refusing to budge. She came back to London empty-handed – no husband, no princely title, no money.

By luck she soon met the Duke of Kent, who fell for her sexual allure but also her access to hard drugs. His relationship with another druggie American, Kiki Preston – known as ‘the girl with the silver syringe’ was over, and the 33-year old bachelor prince was looking for more fun in a similar vein.

Within weeks of Sandra eagerly feeding his various appetites, the duke had gone off the rails – and though the relationship lingered on for six months, eventually he had to be rescued by his eldest brother, the Prince of Wales, who put him under house-arrest in a home on the Windsor estate till he could be weaned off the drugs.

Pretty soon the Duke was shunted off to an obscure castle in Serbia where, sitting eagerly waiting, the impoverished Princess Marina of Greece accepted his proposal of marriage with alacrity.

So what to do with Sandra? Two emissaries of the king, George V, went round and knocked on the door of the Belgravia love-nest. Her time in Britain was up, they said – off you go. They offered her £20,000 [nearly £2million today] to disappear.

So Sandra took the money and ran.

Back in the States she was romanced by film stars Cary Grant and Charlie Chaplin before she ended up in Paris. But then World War II broke out – and, always with an eye to the main chance, after the 1940 Nazi occupation of the city she ended up in the arms of General Franz Ritter von Epp.

Prince George, Duke of Kent, the future King Edward VIII, George, the future King George VI and Henry Duke of Gloucester

German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and General Franz von Epp leave the Munich Airport with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for the “Four Power Conference” in Munich to decide the question of Czechoslovakia

At 72 to her 30, Hitler’s big buddy should have known better.

What she thought she’d get from marrying a Nazi general old enough to be her grandfather is anyone’s guess – but Sandra probably thought it’d be safer getting married to the winning side.

Soon she realised her big mistake and after only a few weeks as Frau Ritter von Epp, she was on the boat back to sunny California – where she was instantly labelled a Nazi spy by the FBI.

She shrugged it off. From Missouri to Hollywood, to England and France, then on to Germany and back to the States, she was always looking for the next big pay-day.

That looked like it was coming her way when in 1946 the Marquess of Milford Haven, cousin of the king, flew back from New York where he’d met and made love to Sandra on his way home from war service with the Royal Navy.

So besotted was the marquess he approached King George VI asking his permission to marry her. ‘Lord Milford Haven,’ wrote the New York Daily News, ‘is 26. Miss Rambeau is… older’.

‘She knew more ways to have sex than there are pages in the Bible,’ wrote biographer Frank Walker, which is why Sandra, who unsurprisingly never became a Marchioness, was able to take on he-man film star Errol Flynn, renowned for his rapacious bedroom romps, and his chum Freddie McEvoy, a British public-school ne’er-do-well.

The Duke and Duchess of Kent  leaving for Himley Hall near Dudley, to spend the first part of their honeymoon in 1932

She’d been through so many rich men, were there any left? Oh yes – George Hearst, son of America’s richest press magnate, William Randolph Hearst. He married her but then on second thoughts, changed his mind almost instantly – so she sued the pants off him.

What happens to a good-time girl when the money – and the men – run out? Still clinging to the diamond and ruby ring given to her by the Duke of Kent, Sandra quietly returned to the family she’d left behind when she set on on her path to fame and fortune. By now they lived in Delano, a wine town in mid-California far from the bright lights of Mayfair, Manhattan, Hollywood and the Cote d’Azur where her star had once shone so brightly.

She died there forgotten, aged 78, in 1987.