Heiress: The Rich Life Of Marjorie Merriweather Post by William Wright
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best biographies I’ve ever read. The author, Wright, has done a magnificent job of objectively portraying Post’s life with a flare of imagination and insight. The writing is crisp, clear and thorough.

The first part of the book does a terrific job of telling the reader just who and what C.W. Post was. From there it whisks off to lay out the rest of Marjorie Post’s life. What an attentive reader will pick up is the drive of C.W. to create and be a genius. The same was all there for Marjorie to continue genius creations. Instead, as Wright tells us, Marjorie took all of her ingenuity to create massive parties and monster sized materialism. It saddened me to realize what a waste Marjorie made of her life. There is so much she could have done.

After the ’29 crash, Post’s life becomes mundane as her parties and structures move along. The writer does a great job here and later as she ages and the parties continue. Wright intersperses the party tales with detailed descriptions of the grand rooms involved and including pages written by daughter, Dina, and granddaughter, Mawee.

Later in the ’30s the story gets very interesting as Marjorie & husband Davies find themselves in Russia during one of the worst times in history to be there. The writer does a yeoman’s job of negotiating the narrow shoals of illustrating Marjorie’s party frenzy and Stalin’s political party executions.

There are plenty of photos and even a breakdown of Post’s staff in her later years which really helps in understanding who is who and where they belonged. I also like the little image that introduces each chapter. Each thumbnail is part of a larger photo in the gallery provided that is easy to check and understand what period of time the chapter is about. The book also clearly keeps you apprised of where you are in time throughout.

Involving Florida: The Mar-A-lago story is all here. Very interesting from construction to its fate at the time of publication in 1978. You’ll have to go elsewhere for the story of the later exchanges of the property involving the Federal government, others and, eventually, to saving the structure & full restoration by Donald Trump.

Also included are the times at the mansion with Marjorie, daughter Dina Merrill, etc. and the society stars of Palm Beach. Along with the issues of the lock & bolted closed Palm Beach society. Better handled in short prose by Wright than the extended non-objective writing by Ron Kessler later.

Bottom line: I Highly recommend this book. 10 of 10 points.

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