Igor Cassini

Igor Cassini (September 15, 1915 – January 5, 2002) was an American syndicated gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain. He was the second journalist to write the Cholly Knickerbocker column.

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Born as Igor Cassini Loiewski, he also worked as a publicist, ran the Celebrity Register, edited a short-lived magazine called Status, was a co-director of the fashion company House of Cassini, founded by his elder brother, Oleg Cassini, and was a television personality in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Cassini's height of influence was in the 1950s, when the Hearst chain claimed 20,000,000 readership for papers that carried his column. He coined the term "Jet set" to described the global movements of what had been "café society" — those who entertained at restaurants and night clubs and hobnobbed with the stars of the entertainment industry. His pen name evoked the fictional quintessential New Yorker, "Diedrich Knickerbocker", who was created by Washington Irving. The term "café society" had been invented by Maury Paul, Cassini's predecessor as "Cholly Knickerbocker" at the New York Journal American.

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Later in his career, Igor, who was known as "Ghighi", hired a young assistant from Texas named Liz Smith. He also was the host of "The Igor Cassini Show", an interview program that aired on the DuMont Television Network in 1953 and 1954, as well as another television program, "Igor Cassini's Million Dollar Showcase".

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His autobiography, co-written with Jeanne Molli, I'd Do It All Over Again: The Life and Times of Igor Cassini, appeared in 1977 (ISBN 0-399-11553-6).

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