Long before TikTok and Instagram, indeed for much of the 20th century, newspaper gossip and society columns regularly announced who had spent extravagantly and who had behaved badly. It was a time when interest in high society matched, or even surpassed, interest in Hollywood actors and Broadway starlets, and Prince Serge Obolensky, a nightlife-and-hospitality impresario, who seemed to know everyone and be everywhere, could always be found among the boldface names.
Born into an aristocratic Russian family, the Oxford-educated, polo-playing prince fought in the Russian cavalry during World War I, then against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. His marriage to Princess Catherine Yurievskaya, daughter of Czar Alexander II, ended in divorce. His second wife, Ava Alice Astor, the daughter of John Jacob Astor IV, launched him into a different kind of aristocracy.
