To the One I Love the Best

A witty and charming account of the wildly entertaining Elsie de Wolfe in 1950s Hollywood, recounted by her dear friend, the beloved creator of Madeline
Ludwig Bemelmans’ charming intergenerational friendship with the late-in-life “First Lady of Interior Decoration” provides an enormously enjoyable nostalgia trip to the sun-soaked glamour of Los Angeles, where de Wolfe surrounded herself with classic movie stars and a luminous parade of life's oddities.

With hilarity and mischief that de Wolfe would no doubt approve, To the One I Love the Best lifts the curtain on 1950s Hollywood—a bygone world of extravagance and eccentricity, where the parties are held in circus tents and populated by ravishing movie stars.

Bemelmans, who was working at MGM, had originally come to the California home of de Wolfe just for cocktails but by the end of the night, he was firmly established as a member of the family: given a bedroom in…