Harry Winston’s nickname is just one element in a new biography by one of his sons.
“Talk to me, Harry Winston. Tell me all about it,” Marilyn Monroe purred in “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” the song in the 1953 movie “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” that named one of New York’s pre-eminent jewelers.
Now his son Ronald is telling all about it, too, in a new book describing his father’s rise in the jewelry business and the lengthy legal battle over the company with his brother, Bruce, that followed his father’s death in 1978. (The company has been owned by the Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch Group since 2013.)
The book’s title, “King of Diamonds: Harry Winston, the Definitive Biography of an American Icon,” tapped the “King of Diamonds” description that Cosmopolitan magazine used in 1947 and that stuck with the jeweler throughout his life.
Ronald Winston, 82, said he wrote the book with William Stadiem, a longtime friend, because he realized he “was the only person in the world that knew the real story, and when I disappear there won’t be a story.” Skyhorse Publishing is scheduled to release the biography on Sept. 19 in the United States and on Nov. 23 in Europe and Britain.
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