Elsa Maxwell (1883–1963)

Elsa Maxwelll was born in Keokuk, Iowa, and grew up in San Francisco, California, where her father sold insurance and did freelance writing. Her interest in creating party games began when she was tutored at home by her father and she stopped attending school around age 12 or 14. In 1905, she left San Francisco to go on the road as an odd-jobs girl in a Shakespearean troupe and then moved on to performing in vaudeville and music halls. She began showing up at parties, working the room and working her way up the social ladder. By the end of World War I, she was the premier hostess of parties for the rich and famous, including royalty, all over Europe. Her parties were renowned not only for the celebrity guests but also for the novelties Elsa created to amuse them. She's credited with inventing the scavenger or treasure hunt that first became all the rage as a party game in the 1930s. Elsa returned to the USA in the late 1930s, but the Great Depression prompted her to move to Hollywood, where she appeared in several minor movie shorts. Her radio program, "Elsa Maxwell’s Party Line," which began in 1942, and her syndicated gossip column were more successful. She also wrote four books, including her memoirs I Live by My Wits (1936), first published serially in Harper’s Bazaar, and R.S.V.P. (1954). In 1957, she published How to Do It: The Lively Art of Entertaining and began making weekly television appearances on Jack Paar’s "Tonight" show. She was dubbed "the hostess with the mostest" by the press.