Максин Эллиот: Американдық актриса және кәсіпкердің өмірі мен мансабы

American actress and businesswoman
the actress born in 1904

Maxine Elliott (February 5, 1868 – March 5, 1940) also known as Little Jessie, Dettie or by her birth name Jessie Dermott, was an American actress and businesswoman. She managed her own theater and experimented with silent films in the 1910s. Immensely popular, she was rumored to have intimate relationships with highly notable people such as King Edward VII and J. P. Morgan. During World War I, she was active on the cause of the Belgian relief.

Born on February 5, 1868, to Thomas Dermot, a sea captain and Adelaide Hill Dermot, she had a younger sister, actress Gertrude Elliot and at least two brothers, one of whom, a sailor, was lost at sea in the Indian Ocean. By age 15 in 1883, Jessie had been seduced and made pregnant by a 25 year old man whom she may have married underage, according to her niece's biography. She either miscarried or lost the baby. This incident left a psychological wound on her for the rest of her life. Eliott later developed a relationship with a man from a rich local family, Arthur Hall. When suspicions of her pregnancy developed and when her relationship with Hall was eventually exposed, she and her father left for South America. Later in her older years she would still make bitter remarks about the separation between her and Hall.

She adopted her stage name Maxine Elliott in 1889, making her first appearance in 1890 in The Middleman. In 1932, she built le Château de l'Horizon near Juan les Pins. There she entertained guests that included Churchill, Lloyd George and Vincent Sheean. In her old age, the diarist "Chips" Channon described her as "an immense bulk of a woman with dark eyes, probably the most amazing eyes one has ever seen", "lovable, fat, oh so fat, witty and gracious"; he recorded having watched her eat "pat after pat of butter without any bread". Elliott died on March 5, 1940, in Cannes, France, a wealthy woman, at the age of 72.

Elliott was interred at Protestant Cemetery in Cannes and became the subject of a biography titled My Aunt Maxine: The Story of Maxine Elliot c.1964, written by her niece, Diana Forbes Robertson. Her other descendants include British actor Leo Woodall.