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...Elsa Maxwell gave to the world of society, in which boredom is the occupational disease, an illusion that it was composed of marvelously amusing people having a wonderful time. They thanked her for it by giving her a free ride through the caviar-and-champagne life, the transatlantic life, the gaspy-gossipy life, which she enjoyed so much that she made lots of other people enjoy it too. She was a clown always ready and willing to take a pratfall, and she was often compared to a court jester. But Elsa was really a kind of super cruise director, working...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Society: The Cruise Director | 11/8/1963 | See Source »

...very first thing Elsa did in her life was to steal the show; she was born in an opera box during a performance of Mignon, in Keokuk, Iowa. "My mother should have known better than to go to the opera that night," she once observed. She grew up, fat and unhappy, in San Francisco, where her father was an insurance man and stringer for the New York Dramatic Mirror...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Society: The Cruise Director | 11/8/1963 | See Source »

...Series of Disturbances. It was not until after World War I that Elsa began her blast-off on the trajectory that was to put her into international orbit for the rest of her life. She had an eye for the bright young comers-"darling Cole" Porter, with whose "secret songs" she sent many a titled gathering into a state of delicious shock; and, of course, "dear Noel" Coward...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Society: The Cruise Director | 11/8/1963 | See Source »

...famous party was a scavenger hunt staged in Paris in 1927, with a gallon of Patou perfume awarded to the player who brought back the most unusual items. Recalls Elsa: "The players took off, and a series of disturbances promptly broke out all over Paris...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Society: The Cruise Director | 11/8/1963 | See Source »

Crushes & Feuds. Back in the U.S. during the Depression, Elsa tried her hand at some unsuccessful movie shorts in Hollywood and was in danger of sinking into an un-Maxwellian obscurity, when the postwar wave of international prosperity brought her back with a new cast of characters. Now she was a newspaper columnist, playing for an audience of millions her roles of social arbiter, super name-dropper, gossip and buffoon...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Society: The Cruise Director | 11/8/1963 | See Source »

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