The Press: Elsa at War

"Elsa Maxwell is a stoutish lady who has won something of a national reputation for throwing gay parties.

"On the basis of that rather dubious claim to fame, some 20 impressionable newspapers buy her syndicated wares which are presented in a rather fluffy column to attract what we once called the gum-chewing trade."

Thus, in his first "Publisher's Notebook" column for his newly purchased Chicago Daily News, dynamic John S. Knight launched a blast at civilian complacency in general, at exuberant Elsa Maxwell's recent Hollywood "Victory Party," celebrating the liberation of France, in particular. Concluded Publisher Knight: "I'm afraid it made me retch" (TIME, Oct. 30).

Last week in her own syndicated column, "Elsa Maxwell's Party Line," which is printed not by 20 but by 35 U.S. newspapers, the "World's Greatest Hostess" cracked back: "Speak for yourself, John." Declared she: "In ordinary times, such notice . . . would be flattering. Today it reflects something peculiar in the sense of proportion of certain segments of the Fourth Estate. ... I pit my record against yours on the fight for freedom. My party . . . had behind it one single purpose: to bring every influential force in this country into a liberal, intelligent front against reaction, and for both a military and a democratic victory."

Later in the week, from the depths of a rumpled bed in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria, beside the dictaphone to which she confides notes for her daily column, the fabulous Elsa admitted that she had been very angry with Mr. Knight. She could think of no one he could accuse of superficiality with less justice than herself. Her Paris party, she said, was not a party at all: "It was a very beautiful dedication." Perhaps, she added, Mr. Knight was angry because he wasn't invited. "Don't you think so?"

Laughs ... "I like best of all," Elsa once observed, "the sincerity in the anxious eyes of all the little American women who are trying to be useful to their country." Elsa, not little but conspicuously American, considers her parties, like her "Line," an important contribution to the nation's morale. She once swore she would never do a column, because she hates gossip and abhors café society ("The only society I recognize is that of intellect and talent"). Only because "people needed to laugh more" did she yield in 1941 when Paul Winkler of Press Alliance syndicate offered her 40% of the gross proceeds if she would try her hand at columning.