Codice albumGBB-F-005259

Image IDGBB-F-005259-0000

1931, 16 january, MIAMI, FLORIDA, USA : The multimillionnaire heiress MONA HARRISON WILLIAMS (1897 - 1983) at the opening of the winter racing season at Hialeah Park, Miami, Florida. Born Mona Travis Strader in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1917, she married Henry J. Schlesinger and divorced in 1920. In 1921, she married the banker James Irving Bush, 14 years her senior, said to be the " handsomest man in America ". They divorced in Paris in 1925. On July 2, 1926, Mona married Harrison Williams, a widower 24 years her senior. Williams was the richest man in America with an estimated fortune of 600 million (8,000,000,000 in today dollars), made in financing public utilities. They kept in Italy the villa Il Fortino overlooking Capri 's Marina Grande. In 1933, Mona was named " The Best Dressed Woman in the World " by Chanel, Molyneux, Vionnet, Lelong, and Lanvin, becoming the first American to be so honored.In 1943, Mona's portrait was painted by Salvador Dalí. Williams died in 1953; and in January 1955, Mona married her " secretary ", the homosexual Albrecht Edzard Heinrich Karl Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1903 - 1970), an interior decorator of an aristocratic sort and the son of Count Herbert von Bismarck and grandson of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In 1970 Mona was widowed again and in 1971 married Bismarck's physician, Count Umberto de Martini, a nobleman (after Mona acquired a title for him from King Umberto II of Italy), who was 14 years younger than she. It was only after his death in a sports car accident in 1979 that Mona realized that him, like Bismarck, had married her only for her money. In Truman Capote 's Answered Prayers (Musica per camaleonti, 1987), she was the model for the character Kate McCloud.

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