Elsa Maxwell

Elsa Maxwell ( born May 24 1883 in Keokuk, Iowa, † November 1, 1963 in New York City ) was an American journalist.

Life

Elsa Maxwell was the daughter of Scottish immigrants in Keokuk and came to California as an infant. At the age of 14, she left school and joined a Shakespearean theater group. 1905, they moved to the vaudeville stage and went on a European tour. On her travels met Maxwell important people from society and used their contacts.

After an exquisite dinner for the British politician Arthur Balfour, later 1st Earl of Balfour, at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, Elsa Maxwell established in 1919 as the first host of the high society. Later she organized banquets, dance balls, garden parties, costume parties, golf tournaments on the French Riviera or International Motor Boat Races from Lido to Venice for the European Higher and moneyed aristocracy, and filled the society columns of the newspapers.

In the early 1930s, Maxwell returned to New York and used her popularity as a hostess. The illustrious party stories they were then in their daily columns in countless newspapers and on the radio ( Elsa Maxwell 's Party Line) for the best. In the late 1930s she moved to Hollywood and was the best-known reporter society of their time - they decided about the rise or fall of Hollywood stars.

Trivia

  • Elsa Maxwell is known as the mother of all today's tabloid journalists.
  • At a garden party in 1948 Maxwell presented the actress Rita Hayworth the British- Indian Prince Ali Khan, son of Aga Khan III. Before, the Hayworth later married.
  • An intimate friendship wont Elsa Maxwell with Maria Callas, which was mistaken for a lesbian relationship.
  • Maxwell it was that made known opera singer with Aristotle Onassis. The love affair of the two made ​​to the marriage of the shipowner with Jacqueline Kennedy in October 1968 for headlines.
305075
de