Ghost Army Legacy Project
  • Home
  • News
    • The Latest From Us
    • Ghost Army in the News
  • Gold Medal
    • Overview
    • What Can I do ?
    • Letters of Support
  • The Unit
    • Overview
    • Soldiers >
      • Rosters
      • Veteran Bios
      • Bio of the Month
      • Photographs
      • Honoring the Dead
    • Selected Operations and Maps >
      • Operation Brest
      • Operation Bettembourg
      • Mapping The Ghost ARmy
    • Sonic Deception
    • Secrecy and Leaks
    • Links
  • Archive
    • Archive Overview
    • Official History
    • Selected Interviews
    • Curtis Collection
    • Nussenbaum Scrapbooks >
      • Nussenbaum Book 1
      • Nussenbaum Book 2
    • Dahl Letters >
      • Training in the USA
      • Overseas
      • Back in the USA
      • Postscript: Love and Loss
    • Katz Letters >
      • Training in the USA
      • England
      • France
      • Luxembourg
      • Germany
      • Back in the USA
    • Tompkins Diary
    • National History Day
    • Selected Documents
  • About Us
    • Board
    • Contact
  • Donate
  • Multimedia
    • The Ghost Army in Color
    • WWII Museum Exhibit
    • Tintype Photos

Bio of the Month

Featured biographies of Ghost Army Soldiers

George Nardiello

12/7/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
George Nardiello was a fashion designer who married a countess and became the personal fashion designer of Marilyn Monroe.

​​George was born on January 28, 1922 in Manhattan, one of four sons. His father, Vincent Nardiello, was the doctor for the NY State Boxing Commission, and also treated injured hockey players for the NY Americans and the NY Rangers. 

He attended several colleges, including Yale, before the war, dropping out of all of them. Seeing George's interest in design, his father was able to hook him up as an apprentice with Anthony Blotta, a New York fashion designer.

George registered for the draft on June 30, 1942. He joined the 603rd, where he served in Company C. He served in  Europe with the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.



After the war, George took up his studies again. He graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York in 1948. Shortly after his graduation he and fellow Ghost Army veteran Bill Blass, Parsons '49, were among the winners of the prestigious Chicago Tribune American Fashion Competition Award. Nardiello and Blass would go on to see their designs among the winners almost every year through 1953. 
Picture
Nardiello made a reputation as a designer of cocktail and evening gowns, traveling to Europe four times a year for inspiration and personal renewal. Unlike Blass he did not pursue his own label, but worked for design labels Anthony Blotta, Kiki Hart, Cameo, and Rona.

In 1954, he married Italian contessa Marisa Pompei de Lassi. The Palm Beach Post article says that their daughter, Mia, their only child, was "the only baby in the fashion business who had her clothes made by Blass and Norman Norell."

In 1955, Nardiello became the designer for the personal wardrobe of Marilyn Monroe. In Norman Mailer's 1973 biography of Marilyn, he quotes her as saying she liked Nardiello because he was "well-groomed and slim and fit into [his] clothes like a beautiful hand . . . inside a glove . . . [he] was so happy inside his suit. It was like the person within . . . also had a good suit which was their own skin." He maintained his "day job," and worked with Monroe on weekends. 

Nardiello says that "she was very difficult to design for because she wanted everything to look like a slip. Everything had to be skin tight. You had to reinforce every seam or everything would break."

After several years, Monroe went back to Hollywood and that was the end of their relationship. (Though he was called to her side in 1962 when he was asked to sew her into the Jean Louis dress she wore to sing "Happy Birthday" at John F. Kennedy's birthday party at Madison Square Garden.)
Other stars who wore his signature gowns included Marlene Dietrich, Mitzi Gaynor, Rosalind Russell, and Jayne Mansfield.

George and Marisa divorced about 1973. He continued to design his trademark long flowing evening gowns, and became sought after in Republican political circles. His gowns were part of the private collections hand picked by First Lady Pat Nixon and Lenore Romney (George's wife and Mitt's mother).

In about 1980, George met David Blank, and the two men developed a committed relationship that lasted for 25 years.

In 2002, George moved to Palm Springs, CA. He died on December 10, 2005 after a long illness. 


To see Nardiello's full bio, with sources for all the information and photos, as well as the bios of hundreds of other Ghost Army soldiers, go to our Veteran Bio page.​

0 Comments

John "Jack" Swift Anderegg, Jr.

10/7/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
John Anderegg went from MIT to the Army back to MIT, and on to a career as an entrepreneur and engineer.
 
Anderegg was was born in 1924 in Philadelphia  He grew up in Colonia, NJ. His father had served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France in WW1, immediately after his graduation from Cornell, and his grandfather, born in Switzerland, had been a professor at Oberlin.
 
He attended MIT but did not finish his degree before leaving to join the Army.
 
He served in the 3133rd Signal Company Special, which operated as an independent sonic deception unit in Italy in 1945.
 
When he came home from Europe he used the GI Bill to study shorthand for a year at a secretarial school so he could take better and more complete notes when he returned to MIT! Graduated from MIT in 1949.
 
He was an  "intuitive mechanic," a traveling salesman for American Wire,  an engineer with Draper Labs, and an open wheel auto racing enthusiast. Later in life he also studied blacksmithing in North Carolina.
 
In 1955 he was one of the founders of Dynamics Research Corp, a technology/management consulting firm in Massachusetts, primarily serving the Department of Defense, and other government agencies). He served as President and Chairman from 1955-1986.
 
He married Hope Ingersoll in 1959  and they had 3 children. They lived primarily in Carlisle, Massachusetts, and he was active in Republican politics.
 
After her death he married Frances Garland, and retired with her to Buzzards Bay. He died at home on August 5, 2015.
 
To see Anderegg's full bio, with sources for all the information and photos, as well as the bios of hundreds of other Ghost Army soldiers, go to our Veteran Bio page.

0 Comments

    Remarkable Soldiers

    Many of the soldiers who served in the Ghost Army led fascinating lives. We have been documenting them on the Veteran Bio page.  We plan to highlight one veteran every month here. 

    Archives

    August 2021
    July 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020

    Categories

    All
    3133rd
    603rd
    Artists

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • News
    • The Latest From Us
    • Ghost Army in the News
  • Gold Medal
    • Overview
    • What Can I do ?
    • Letters of Support
  • The Unit
    • Overview
    • Soldiers >
      • Rosters
      • Veteran Bios
      • Bio of the Month
      • Photographs
      • Honoring the Dead
    • Selected Operations and Maps >
      • Operation Brest
      • Operation Bettembourg
      • Mapping The Ghost ARmy
    • Sonic Deception
    • Secrecy and Leaks
    • Links
  • Archive
    • Archive Overview
    • Official History
    • Selected Interviews
    • Curtis Collection
    • Nussenbaum Scrapbooks >
      • Nussenbaum Book 1
      • Nussenbaum Book 2
    • Dahl Letters >
      • Training in the USA
      • Overseas
      • Back in the USA
      • Postscript: Love and Loss
    • Katz Letters >
      • Training in the USA
      • England
      • France
      • Luxembourg
      • Germany
      • Back in the USA
    • Tompkins Diary
    • National History Day
    • Selected Documents
  • About Us
    • Board
    • Contact
  • Donate
  • Multimedia
    • The Ghost Army in Color
    • WWII Museum Exhibit
    • Tintype Photos