Bunny Mellon
The Life of an American Style Legend
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Bunny Mellon
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Narrated by:
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Vanessa Cortland
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By:
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Meryl Gordon
About this listen
A new biography of Bunny Mellon, the style icon and American aristocrat who designed the White House Rose Garden for her friend JFK and served as a living witness to 20th century American history, operating in the high-level arenas of politics, diplomacy, art, and fashion.
Bunny Mellon, who died in 2014 at age 103, was press-shy during her lifetime. With the cooperation of Bunny Mellon's family, author Meryl Gordon received access to thousands of pages of her letters, diaries, and appointment calendars and has interviewed more than 175 people to capture the spirit of this talented American original.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Meryl Gordon (P)2017 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 217
The fate of Brooke Astor, the endearing philanthropist with the storied name, has generated worldwide headlines since her grandson Philip sued his father in 2006, alleging mistreatment of Brooke. And shortly after her death in 2007, Anthony Marshall, Mrs. Astor's only child, was indicted on charges of looting her estate. Rarely has there been a story with such an appealing heroine, conjuring up a world so nearly forgotten.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing
- By Beje on 09-06-15
By: Meryl Gordon
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The Woman Who Knew Everyone
- The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington's Most Famous Hostess
- By: Meryl Gordon
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 13
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 13
Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents–Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle’s life – “Call Me Madam” – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Breathtaking Life!
- By Barbara Kenley on 01-24-25
By: Meryl Gordon
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When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
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I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise
- A Life of Bunny Mellon
- By: Mac Griswold
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story4 out of 5 stars 10
Bunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work—the White House Rose Garden—demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great pairing of author &reader produced engrossing biography of brilliant, self educated, disciplined, romantic, rich American
- By Gracenote on 05-31-23
By: Mac Griswold
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Lady in Waiting
- My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
- By: Anne Glenconner
- Narrated by: Anne Glenconner
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,032
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,753
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,730
Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the fifth Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Horrible Reading
- By Teddy hall on 03-27-20
By: Anne Glenconner
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Curse of Riches
- By: Claire Prentice
- Narrated by: Claire Prentice, Hillary Huber
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 268
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 229
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 229
How did the Wendels, one of New York’s most famous Gilded Age families, disappear from history? The Wendels built a fortune from New York real estate, and rubbed shoulders with the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Stuyvesants. But as the 19th century came to an end, the Wendel family tore itself apart. Following six years of painstaking archival research, Claire Prentice has prised open the door of the Wendels’ Fifth Avenue mansion—dubbed “the house of mystery” by the press—to reveal a fascinating and dysfunctional family imprisoned in a gilded cage.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Kept Waiting for it to be Interesting
- By Mary on 06-23-23
By: Claire Prentice
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Heiresses
- The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies
- By: Laura Thompson
- Narrated by: Laura Thompson
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
Heiresses: Surely they are among the luckiest women on earth. Are they not to be envied, with their private jets and Chanel wardrobes and endless funds? Yet all too often those gilded lives have been beset with trauma and despair. Before the 20th century a wife’s inheritance was the property of her husband, making her vulnerable to kidnap, forced marriages, even confinement in an asylum. And in modern times, heiresses fell victim to fortune-hunters who squandered their millions.
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1 out of 5 stars
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tough listen and tough to keep track
- By Amazon Customer on 03-29-23
By: Laura Thompson
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The Husband Hunters
- American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
- By: Anne de Courcy
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 686
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 586
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 583
Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bondfide Valuable History Lesson
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 09-21-18
By: Anne de Courcy
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Deliberate Cruelty
- Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century
- By: Roseanne Montillo
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 223
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 193
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 192
When Ann Woodward shot her husband, banking heir Billy Woodward, in the middle of the night in 1955, her life changed forever. Though she claimed she thought he was a prowler, few believed the woman who had risen from charismatic showgirl to popular socialite. Everyone had something to say about the scorching scandal afflicting one of the most rich and famous families of New York City, but no one was more obsessed with the tale than Truman Capote.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An interesting true crime story buried in here
- By Quinn on 11-11-22
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Reckless Hearts (Short Story)
- A Story of Slim Hawks and Ernest Hemingway
- By: Melanie Benjamin
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
Spain, 1959. Slim Hawks Hayward likes to think she doesn’t get jealous. But when her dear friend Lauren “Betty” Bacall learns that Papa Hemingway has come to watch the bullfights and insists that Slim make introductions, she can’t help feeling protective. Slim has known Papa for years. He always makes her feel like the most beautiful woman in the room—even when his wife is standing right beside him. Truth be told, Slim could have learned to love him all those years ago, in the streets of Havana or the mountains of the American West.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Slim tale
- By L. Wroten on 01-20-20
By: Melanie Benjamin
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When the Going Was Good
- An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
- By: Graydon Carter, James Fox - contributor
- Narrated by: Graydon Carter
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 83
When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A lucky man
- By Dassha1 on 03-30-25
By: Graydon Carter, and others
What listeners say about Bunny Mellon
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Gamble Carter Bell
- 03-11-19
What a story!
Was a delight to read!! I learned so much about Bunny Mellon and her family, fashion, hobbies, and life.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Pins and Needles
- 06-12-18
LOVED IT!!!
Bunny Mellon was an intriguing woman. I was so sad when I finished this book. I felt like I had lost a friend. I'm sure I will reread it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- cindy
- 11-28-19
Fascinating story!
I did not expect this book to be so fascinating. It gave me a birds eye view into American history while telling this very interesting story of Bunny Mellon. Her story didn't begin with her marriage to Paul Mellon.... her story began the day she was born.
I have already recommended this book to all my friends and family members.... male and femaie.
Love, love, loved it!!!!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Santilla Victorian
- 03-06-23
A beautiful tribute to a style icon
Oooh I LOVED this. People deserve to know how wonderful Mrs. Mellon was. I enjoyed the dialects of the person who portrayed her in this reading. It’s a must read (listen).
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- LS
- 07-05-23
A Gem
We should all be so lucky to have a pinky worth of the Grace and Character Of Bunny Mellon.
I hung on every word. Wonderfully written and Narrated. Oh how I wish I could of known this magical magnificent woman.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joey Koo
- 08-27-20
Sumptuous- a wonderfully detailed biography.
This is one of the most wonderful, detailed biographies I’ve ever read. It was a beautiful and intriguing look into the life of a American icon. It’s written in a way that gives the reader a vivid look into her life and a taste of how she lived. Overall a wonderful book and a fascinating story.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Reeneebeebee
- 06-23-19
Fascinating
Well written and read. Spellbinding could not resist learning about the lives of America's wealthiest society.. Very enjoyable.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- R
- 11-28-22
Loved it.
Really well researched and written book about a fascinating American. The narration is wonderfully performed.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- H. Short
- 06-25-19
Full of history.
A lot I didn't know about 1940, 50 and 60's Virginia horse country. Very worth the time. Best book I read all year.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Christy
- 11-07-18
very well written
I'm a biography eater and a history buff. this was such a treat. so well written. so authentic. and narrated perfectly. good job!
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