Profile of Elsa Maxwell on Famous Like Me

Elsa Maxwell (May 24, 1883-November 1, 1963) was an American socialite, songwriter, radio host, and gossip columnist. She was dubbed “The Hostess with the Mostest” by the press. Maxwell has become an cultural icon in some quarters for what her fans regard as the campy quality of her endless name-dropping and snobbery.

Maxwell was born in Keokuk, Iowa and grew up in California. She left school at age 14 but later claimed to have continued her education at the University of California and the Sorbonne. In her early teens, she began to earn a living as a theater pianist and accompanist in her early teens, despite lack of any formal music studies.

In 1905, Maxwell joined a Shakespearean troupe as an odd-jobs girl and subsequently appeared in vaudeville and for a time in South African music halls. Maxwell was in San Fransisco during the 1906 earthquake. In 1907 she began to write songs and eventually published some eighty numbers.

Maxwell began showing up at parties in the United States and in Europe, meeting socially important people, and working her way up the social ladder. By the end of World War I, she was giving soirées for royalty and high society throughout Europe. In 1925 and 1926, she organized the International Motor Boat Races at the Lido in Venice. On behalf of the prince of Monaco, Maxwell planned the Monte Carlo Beach Club, the Casino Hotel, and the Piscine Restaurants of Monte Carlo in 1926.

Maxwell's lavish parties were noted not only for her famous guests but also for the entertainment she devised to keep them amused. She is thought to have invented the "scavenger hunt", a popular party game in the 1930s. She was also fond of costume parties. One of her guests, Elizabeth Varley, wrote about attending an Elsa Maxwell party while visiting with conductor Arturo Toscanini’s daughters, Wally and Wanda:

When it became known that La Maxwell would be giving a special party, everyone was clamouring for an invitation. I was one of the lucky ones, and on receiving the invitation learned that this was to be a fancy dress evening: men were to dress as women and vice-versa, in short a transvestite affair. This being Venice, no-one raised an eyebrow. Wally was vastly intrigued by the whole idea, and promptly set about organising costumes for her house guests. She decreed that Wanda and I should be dressed as rough sailors complete with ‘six o’clock shadow’ on our chins. Wally herself stuck to the feminine gender, appearing as a convincing ‘Madame’ of a low class sea front brothel. But there was one ‘gentleman’ who really stood out from the crowd and that was Marlene Dietrich, flawless in top hat and tails.

In the early 1930s, Maxwell returned to New York City, but the Great Depression prompted her to move to Hollywood in 1938, where she appeared in several not very successful movie shorts, including Elsa Maxwell's Hotel for Women (1939) and The Lady and the Lug (1940). She later appeared in Stage Door Canteen (1943).

In 1936, Maxwell's I Live by My Wits was published in Harper's Bazaar. Two years later her Life of Barbara Hutton was serialized in Cosmopolitan.

In 1942, Maxwell was given her own radio program, "Elsa Maxwell's Party Line", and a syndicated gossip column. During this time, she continued to organize parties for famous people.

During the 1950s, she lived in New York, at a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. In 1954, Maxwell published a memoir, R.S.V.P. In 1957, she published How to Do It; The Lively Art of Entertaining . She also made weekly television appearances on Jack Paar's "Tonight" show.

At a party she threw for Maria Callas in 1957, she introduced the opera singer to Aristotle Onassis. Maria Callas' husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, described Maxwell as "the ugliest woman I have ever seen". Maxwell died in New York in 1963 at age 80. Maxwell never married and is thought by some to have been a lesbian.

Further Reading

Party Girl : The Elsa Maxwell Story (1989), by Rosemary Kent, ISBN 1556110405

Reference

• Profile of Elsa Maxwell, Women in American History, Encyclopedia Brittanica
• "Elsa Maxwell, The Hostess with the Mostest"
• Elsa Maxwell Tribute Page

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