A Friday Lady without a lady

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Can we have a Friday Lady without a photograph of one for one time? Probably not, but we’re doing it nevertheless. The mighty impressive Rolls-Royce Phantom V seen above has a strong link to a fine lady that we’d like to put in today’s spotlight. It’s the Countess Mona (von) Bismarck, who owned the car in the 1960s and who toured in it through Paris traffic at the time. Pictures aplenty of her to be found. With her dog, in fashion shoots, or with men. Here is even a whole website dedicated to her. Just not with a car. So there we go.

But Mona was not your everyday Friday Lady. She was also known as The Countess of Kentucky or Mrs. Harrison Williams, after she married the American tycoon and supposedly ‘The Richest Man In America’. It was her third marriage. The later Von Bismarck name came from yet another marriage with Count Edward von Bismarck, grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. And there were more to follow. In 1933, she was named ‘The Best Dressed Woman in the World’ and had become a world star in doing so. Cole Porter wrote about her in a song, Salvador Dalí famously portrayed her.

For her, back in 1963, a Rolls-Royce Phantom must have been a natural choice for a car. It’s said to be one of 92 with similar James Young body. It was auctioned once earlier, back in 1993, when purchased by ‘an elegant lady who’s being driven by her chauffeur’, or so the auctioneer writes, adding ‘Due to the increasingly restrictive traffic restrictions in the capital, the owner now decides to separate from the Rolls-Royce she liked so much’. It’s also said to always have been kept in a heated garage and only non-original items are added: air-conditioning and a telephone. It was, however, seen for sale last summer too. Now, it's up for grabs again... The estimate for a car of this calibre seems cheap. Or are we missing something?

(Words editor, picture Osenat)

 

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