Elsa Maxwell was an American hostess, songwriter, author, and entertainer.
Background
Elsa Maxwell was born on May 24, 1883 in Keokuk, Iowa (where her mother was visiting). She was the daughter of James David Maxwell, an insurance salesman and newspaper columnist, and of Laura Wyman. She was taken as an infant to San Francisco, where she spent her childhood and teens.
Education
Because of her father's opposition to formal education, Maxwell had less than two years of structured schooling: a few months in a public school at age eight, and a short period at Miss Denham's private school at age twelve. Her father taught her to read and write and encouraged her to read everything in his library. "I never saw McGuffey's Reader, " she wrote years later, "but I was familiar with Browning, Keats and Plato, and I had struggled through Herbert Spencer's philosophy by the time I was eleven. "
Career
Maxwell's first experience as a hostess was on her thirteenth birthday, when she borrowed, without permission, the motor launch of a neighbor to take several children on a cruise around San Francisco Harbor. But it was a party to which she was not invited that inspired her career as an international hostess; when she was twelve, her family was left off the guest list of a party given by their neighbor, Senator James Fair, for his daughter, Theresa. The rejection caused Maxwell to decide that she would give great parties to which everyone would want to come. Later, according to some accounts, she seemed to take particular pleasure in snubbing anyone connected with the Fair family. In 1906, Maxwell joined a traveling Shakespearean repertory company. Her travels took her to New York City, where Harrison Fiske, publisher of the New York Dramatic Mirror (for which her father had been West Coast correspondent) helped her get a job as pianist in a nickelodeon. In her nonworking hours she wrote songs and, at age 24, made her first sale, "The Sum of Life" to music publisher Leo Feist, for $10. She met and composed a song for vaudeville performer Dorothy Toye, who then took Maxwell on tour to South Africa as her accompanist. In South Africa, Maxwell wrote more songs, and played piano in music halls. She also began what was to become a lifetime occupation: giving parties. From South Africa, Maxwell went to Paris, then London. In the latter city, at the time when Great Britain entered World War I, she wrote "Carry On, " a song which was featured in a 1914 musical revue. By the time she returned to New York City, in 1915, she had penetrated the titled social circle of London and enjoyed a small reputation as a hostess there. In New York, during the war years, she arranged and managed several fundraising events. She also wrote the music and lyrics for Alva E. Belmont's woman suffrage musical, Melinda and Her Sisters. This work, which starred Marie Dressler and Marie Doro, was performed at the Waldorf Astoria Theatre in 1916. The postwar period in Europe provided the ideal climate for Maxwell's decidedly unconventional style of entertaining. She believed that most dinner parties were dull, and that cocktail parties were "ghastly businesses. " To be successful a party must include games and have a strong element of surprise. The surprises at her parties ranged from the scavenger hunt (which she claimed to have invented) to providing camels for the return trip to Luxor after a moonlight supper in the Egyptian desert. Murder mystery parties, treasure hunts, and costume events were among her "parties-with-a-difference. " Having positioned herself at the center of the "smart set" with a knack for bringing together members of "high" and "cafe" societies, Maxwell was soon in demand to assure the success of new businesses catering to the rich. She helped establish the Lido at Venice as an international playground by starting a golf club there. She also launched a beach club and restaurant in Monte Carlo and two nightclubs in Paris. By the mid-1930's she was known on both sides of the Atlantic as the "arbiter of international society. " Louis Bromfield wrote a play about her DeLuxe (1935) in which she played herself in a fifteen-performance Broadway run. Cole Porter and Noel Coward wrote songs about her: Porter's, "I'm Dining with Elsa Tonight"; Coward's, "A Marvelous Party. " Maxwell told some of her story in I Live by My Wits, serialized in Harper's Bazaar (1936). She also wrote The Life of Barbara Hutton, serialized in Cosmopolitan (1938). In 1938 she moved to Hollywood and appeared in movies: Elsa Maxwell's Hotel for Women (1939), Public Deb No. 1 (1940), and the featurettes Riding Into Society (1940) and The Lady and The Lug (1940). Maxwell was technical adviser and consultant for the 1943 motion picture Weekend at the Waldorf. She also lectured, wrote a syndicated gossip column, and broadcast celebrity news on her radio program, "Elsa Maxwell's Party Line. " Maxwell's autobiography, My Last 50 Years, was published in 1943; in 1957, she wrote another, R. S. V. P Elsa Maxwell's Own Story. In the latter year she also shared her party-giving secrets in How to Do It or the Lively Art of Entertaining. A book of anecdotes about celebrities she knew, The Celebrity Circus, was published in 1963. Her last public appearance, one week before her death in New York City, was at the April in Paris Ball, an annual event she had founded in 1951.
Views
Quotations:
"I have more friends than any living person. They are my riches. "
Personality
Although Maxwell's abilities provided a substantial living, she did not manage money as well as she managed galas and fetes, and depended on the generosity of wealthy friends for many of her needs. Maxwell never settled in a home of her own. She lived instead in hotels, and borrowed others' houses for her parties.
Maxwell was a closeted lesbian who publicly condemned homosexuality despite enjoying an almost 50-year romantic partnership with the Scottish singer Dorothy Fellowes-Gordon "Dickie" . The two met in 1912, and remained together until death.
Quotes from others about the person
"She has never been any closer to life than the dinner table. " - Janet Flanner