Mary Wells Resurfaces With Tone Deaf Blog on Millionaire Life
If you thought ad legend Mary Wells was dead, think again. Wells founded Wells Rich Greene, an agency of the Mad Men era that later turned into a hotbed of kickbacks and corruption under print chief Harold Singer.
The 80-year-old Wells is alive and well and maintaining a hilariously tone-deaf blog for WowOWow, that web site for femmes d'un certain âge.
She's only done three posts since January, but already there's enough to make you shake your head in dismay at how out of touch with recession-era America cashed-out ad agency owners can get.
First, note that she's blogging from the Caribbean island of Mustique. Don't have your own island home? Oh well, you'll just have to enjoy Mary's descriptions of hers.
Here are some highlights, coupled with commentary:
I know the world is shrinking because I seem to know everybody who comes around the corner these days.Mary, You know everbody because you live on a tiny island, not because the world is shrinking.
Sometime in the '80s, Colin Tennant, or Lord Glenconner as I think he prefers, suggested selling his half of the island of Mustique to my husband and me ...Yes, of course. Haven't we all had an experience like that?
... he bought the island thinking that Princess Margaret, who he was close to and adored, would have privacy there with her new husband, Tony. For a few years, that privacy was delicious and probably deliciously naughty for Princess Margaret and some of the other royals who needed occasional release from the English leash they were on.This is a not-so-veiled reference to the rumor that Princess Margaret had a lot of sex on the island with different guys. Why not just say it out loud?
We went to Mustique after giving up a winter weekend house we had in Acapulco.Isn't it awful when you have to give up your "winter" house?
Colombians were trying to take over Acapulco at that time and one of them barged into our house when we were not there with guns ablaze and terrified the people working there, locking them up in the kitchen.Still, at least only the servants were victimized by the gunmen. You don't have servants? How quaint.
[Harding Lawrence, her ex-Braniff client whom she ended up marrying] ... had been so helpful to the Mexican government by ruining Acapulco, flying millions of tourists from the United States there on Braniff Airlines and by building big hotels for them ...Mary, Braniff was your former client. Why are you badmouthing the company? Even if it and your husband are both dead?
I couldn't persuade Harding to buy half of it either. We were having incredible problems, then, building the palace on the hill. Harding had retired and had time to build such a house, but he had to bring almost everything from France and Italy to build it with.That reminds me. I have to make a few calls to my own Italian construction workers about my tropical island palace.
The palace on the hill became too large for me and, to my children's dismay, I decided to sell it and find a smaller solution. ... The house sold within the month.Not affected by the real estate slump? How did I not guess that.
You can read Wells blog yourself here.