Perle Mesta
Perle Reid Mesta (née Skirvin) (October 12, 1889 – March 16, 1975) was an American socialite, political hostess, and U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg (1949–1953).
Mesta was known as the "hostess with the mostest" for her lavish parties featuring the brightest stars of Washington, D.C., society, including artists, entertainers and many top-level national political figures.
She was the inspiration for Irving Berlin's musical Call Me Madam, which starred Ethel Merman as the character based on Mesta in both the Broadway play and the movie. She appeared on the March 14, 1949, cover of TIME. Mesta has also been considered a model for the character Dolly Harrison in Allen Drury's 1959 novel Advise and Consent, in a 2009 essay.
Biography
She was born Pearl Skirvin, in Sturgis, Michigan, a daughter of William Balser Skirvin, an original 89er who became a wealthy Oklahoma oilman and founder of the lavish Skirvin Hotel located in downtown Oklahoma City. Her younger sister was a silent-film actress, Marguerite Skirvin (1896–1963). She married Western Pennsylvania steel manufacturer and engineer George Mesta in 1916, but was widowed in 1925; she was the only heir to his $78 million fortune ($1.05 billion today). Mesta settled in Newport, Rhode Island, but moved to Washington, D.C., in 1940. She also maintained a home in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Homestead, the location of her late husband's Mesta Machinery plant and headquarters, but spent little time there, as she felt largely unaccepted by Pittsburgh social scene. Four years later, Mesta changed the spelling of her first name to Perle.
