Michael Maxtone-Graham

1929 - 2020

MAXTONE-GRAHAM-- Michael. Michael Maxtone-Graham, a television director and producer, advertising executive, writer, and noted anecdotalist, died on May 12th in Manhattan. He was 90. Michael Irving Maxtone-Graham was born August 2, 1929 in Orange, N.J. His father, Patrick, a banker, was Scottish. His mother, the former Ellen Taylor, was American. Michael was raised in London for the first 10 years of his life, after the 1929 stock market crash prompted his parents to relocate. As a child, he would shuttle between continents aboard ships in the 1930s eventually settling in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, safely away from the London bombings during the Second World War. He attended schools in Britain and the United States eventually attending Harvard. He later served with the U.S. Army's First Armored Division during the Korean War. Mr. Maxtone-Graham married Elizabeth Gould Brokaw in 1957. The couple raised three sons James, Christopher, Peter and their daughter Leslie. He came to New York and worked at NBC where he eventually became a director and producer of network television programs, including the iconic gameshow "The Price is Right" with Bill Cullen as host. In 1965 he became an advertising executive as a Senior Vice President for Warwick and Legler and was responsible for managing many of the firm's leading clients. In 1985 he founded and was President of a direct marketing firm, Warwick Plus. In 1990 he fulfilled a lifelong ambition of becoming a freelance, non-fiction journalist. A member of the American Society of Journalist and Authors, he regularly contributed to over 20 national magazines and a dozen of the country's largest newspapers. In 1979, he married his second wife, Diana Taylor, an interior designer and daughter of noted Manhattan hotel owner and his wife, Charles and Marica Taylor. The couple divided their time between homes in the south of France and New York, the city he called home for over 50 years. Michael took great pride in his Scottish ancestry. He shared a humorous childhood encounter while playing musical chairs and being bumped to the floor by an older 9 year old, named Elizabeth, vying for the only remaining chair when the music stopped. She later would become The Queen of England. Mr. Maxtone-Graham believed one never retires and simply does something else. In 1998, at age 69, he began a lecture series on trans- Atlantic ship crossings. A lover of history and entertaining, he became an anecdotalist and regaled audiences on the ships Regent, Seabourne, and Silver Seas. He passed away in the couple's New York apartment in the presence of his loving wife on the couple's 41st wedding anniversary. He is survived by his wife, four children, eight grandchildren, and two step children, Charles Koehl and Carla Koehl.