Maxine Cheshire, Who Chronicled Beltway Scandals, Dies at 90

It was 1954 when she landed on the society desk of The Washington Post, the right place at the right time — though she didn’t know it then; as she wrote, “I was looking for ax murderers, not ambassador’s wives.” The only job on offer was as a society reporter, but as it happened the women’s editor, Marie Sauer, was looking for someone to treat the beat as serious journalism. By 1965, Ms. Cheshire had her own column, VIP, which was syndicated across the country.

When Mrs. Kennedy married the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968 on Skorpios, his private island, Ms. Cheshire was one of a global pack of reporters sent to cover the event, which Mr. Onassis did all in his considerable power to prevent, including marshaling the Greek navy. The Germans chartered an expensive yacht. The French deployed a young woman clad in a miniskirt (and no underwear) as a distraction. The Americans had Ms. Cheshire, who hurled herself into a packed Boston Whaler and onto the lap of a photographer, grabbing his hair as a tether. All these efforts failed, however, and in the aftermath, Ms. Cheshire broke her foot.

In what can only be described as the munificence of the copy gods, the Athens doctor who eventually treated her had an antique desk in his office that caught Ms. Cheshire’s eye — and her eye was very good; she had a sideline as an antiques collector — and she decided to check out his dealer, whose shop was nearby and who, she learned, just happened to be a close friend of Onassis. He also just happened to be back from the wedding, and he was delighted to tell her all about it.

Ms. Cheshire’s collision with Frank Sinatra was less delightful. It was Jan. 20, 1973, the night of Richard Nixon’s second inauguration, and Sinatra, a pal of the new vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was there as a guest. The singer was visibly loaded, and he accosted Ms. Cheshire, who a year earlier had asked him whether he thought his reported ties to the Mafia would be a problem for the vice president.

“Get away from me,” he shouted at her. “You scum, go home and take a bath.” He then called her “nothing but a two-dollar broad,” adding an expletive used to deride women and stuffing two one-dollar bills in her empty glass.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/business/media/maxine-cheshire-dead.html