Coco Chanel, Wallis Simpson and American actress Maxine Elliott hosted an endless round of parties at grand villas built to their precise specifications.īut while Simpson’s man, King Edward VIII, abdicated his throne for her, both Chanel and Elliott refused the repeated proposals of English aristocrats, preferring to control their own privileged lives.Īs Chanel said: ‘There have been several Duchesses of Westminster, but only one Coco Chanel!’ Like Hayworth, Maxine Elliott had made her way up from humble beginnings in the theatre (sleeping upright on trains in touring productions across the U.S.) to become celebrated as one of the most beautiful women of her day. In the early Thirties, a trio of glamorous women ran the show. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Noel Coward and Rudolph Valentino all enjoyed a carousel of cocktails and scandal.
The scene was typical of the giddy hedonism that had dominated the French Riviera ever since European aristocrats and artists made it their playground in the Twenties. The Prince emptied 200 gallons of cologne into the Olympic-sized swimming pool of his villa, the Chateau de l’Horizon, and 500 wedding guests consumed 600 bottles of champagne and 50 lb of caviar while Hayworth - now officially Her High Princess Margarita - cut the cake with a glass sword.
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