Elsa Maxwell

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Elsa Maxwell photographed by Carl van Vechten
According to Peter Evans she were proud of her power of intriguing and threteaning people

Elsa Maxwell (b. May 24, 1883, Keokuk, Iowa - d. November 1, 1963, New York City) was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, and professional hostess. Her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day earned her the nickname "the hostess with the mostest".

Maxwell is credited with the introduction of the scavenger hunt and treasure hunt for use as party games in the modern era ([1]). She appeared in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen, alongside Judith Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, Katharine Cornell, Lynn Fontanne, Helen Hayes, Gertrude Lawrence, Alfred Lunt, Lord Menuhin, and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

In 1953, Maxwell published a single issue of her magazine, Elsa Maxwell's Café Society, which had a portrait of Zsa Zsa Gabor on the cover. Anne Edwards' biography of Maria Callas (Callas, 2001) and Peter Evans biography of Aristotle Onassis both claim that Maxwell introduced Callas to Onassis. The first one also claims that Maxwell was a lesbian who tried to seduce Callas herself.^{[citation needed]} In his MARIA CALLAS: Sacred Monster, Stelios Galatopoulos does not assert the former but he does show considerable proof of the latter by producing love letters from Maxwell to a repulsed Callas.

[edit] Bibliography

RSVP: Elsa Maxwell's Own Story, by Elsa Maxwell, 1954.
How To Do It, or The Lively Art of Entertaining, by Elsa Maxwell, Little, Brown and Company, 1957.
Ari: The Life and Times of Aristotle Socrates Onassis, by Peter Evans, 1986