Biography
Igor Cassini was born Igor Aleksandrovich Loiewski on September 15, 1915, in Russia. Igor Cassini and his elder brother, Oleg Cassini, were the sons of Russian diplomat Alexander Loiewski and his wife, Countess Marguerite Cassini, a Russian-Italian aristocrat. His maternal grandfather, Arthur Paul Nicholas, Marquis de Capuzzuchi di Bologna, Count de Cassini, worked for the Russian Tsar Nicholas II as a diplomat in China and the United States.
Igor Cassini spent his early childhood between Russia and Kopenhagen, Denmark, where his father was a diplomat with the Russian Embassy. His family were landed aristocracy in Russia until 1917, when the communists seized their ancestral estate. At that time his father adopted his wife's Italian name of Cassini, and the family fled to Florence, Italy. There Igor Cassini and his brother helped his mother, who worked as a fashion designer of hats at the salon of Countess Fabricotti. He also traveled with his mother and elder brother to Paris twice a year, where he studied French and became fascinated with the new French fashions and lifestyle. In the 1920s-1930s Igor Cassini studied art and literature in Florence.
In 1936, fleeing from the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, Igor Cassini moved to the United States together with his parents and elder brother. He made a career as a journalist for the Hearst newspaper chain. In 1940 he married Austine McDonnell, also a Hearst journalist and a tireless storyteller, also known as Bootsie. At the time of their marriage Igor Cassini and Bootsie both worked for the Washington Times-Herald. They had no children, and she divorced him in 1947, to become the third wife of William Randolph Hearst.
Igor Cassini ascended to the height of his influence during the 1950s, when he was a syndicated gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain reaching 20 million readers. Cassini's popular 'Cholly Knickerbocker' gossip column was in fact a product of a group effort, after he hired a Texan journalist Liz Smith as a ghostwriter, who worked for him during the 1950s and early 1960s. He also was a television personality in the 1950s and 1960s and hosted 'The Igor Cassini Show' in 1953 and 1954, as well as his other television program, 'Igor Cassini Million Dollar Showcase'. Cassini was credited for coining the term "Jet set" to describe the global movements of the rich and aimless globe-hopping travelers.
He was married five times. His second wife was Elizabeth Waters, a fashion model, they had one daughter, Marina. His third wife was Charlene Stafford Wrightsman, the younger daughter of Charles B. Wrightsman, an oil mogul whose art collection fills several rooms at the Metropolitan Museum. She and Cassini had one son, Alexander. His fourth wife was Nadia Cassini, an actress and model known as Gianna Lou Muller. His fifth wife was Brenda Mitchell, with whom he had two sons, Nicholas, a professional golfer, and Dmitri and actor and skier.
Cassini was a co-director of the fashion company House of Cassini, founded by his brother, fashion designer Oleg Cassini. He also worked as a publicist and an editor. Igor Cassini died on January 5, 2002, in New York.
