Nils Hanson

Nonagerian Nils Hanson is the son of Swedish born George and Elsie Hanson. His early life and public education were split between Concord, Massachusetts and Larchmont, New York. With the advent of World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the South Pacific Theater until its conclusion in 1945. Returning home he met and married Marilyn Stacy Reed. Tragically, she died in a car accident two years later. A 1949 graduate of Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois. In 1948 he was a campus organizer in the presidential campaign of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. In 1952 he was a contributing speechwriter for vice presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon. He began a 30-year career turn with Thomas Cook Travel. In 1959 he took a six-year leave of absence to work as congressional campaign manager and assistant appointments officer for Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York. He returned to Thomas Cook from which he retired in 1989 as vice-president of their International Division. Prior to her marriage in 1917, Hanson’s mother was employed by theatrical producer Florenz Ziegfeld as a companion and personal assistant to the tempestuous and flamboyant Lillian Lorraine. Lorraine became a major star in the golden age of Broadway Musical Theater and Hollywood silent films. Over a period of eleven years, the two women became close as sisters. Elsie Hanson became Lillian’s closest friend and confidante. Just prior to her death in 1977, Elsie made tape cassette recordings of her life story during the era of Flo Ziegfeld and Lillian Lorraine. Those recordings were the motivation and inspiration for Nils to write “Lillian Lorraine, The Life and Times of a Ziegfeld Diva.” McFarland Corporation published the book in 2011 and it is now going into a second printing in April of 2018. Nils is now in collaboration with author Robert Hudovernik on a historical biography, “Hotel des Artistes” due for publication in the summer of 2018. A twenty-two year resident of East Hampton, Nils Hanson presently resides in New York City where he is an administrator of the 501C3 National Ziegfeld Club.