What was Maine Chance?
The Jokake Inn sold winter to families. Its neighbor sold something more specific: a new figure, and two weeks of being looked after while you got one.
Elizabeth Arden had built a cosmetics empire on Fifth Avenue’s red doors, and in 1934 she had turned her summer house in Mount Vernon, Maine, into Maine Chance, a beauty and reducing spa for rich women. In 1946 she bought a 45-acre adobe estate at the southeast foot of Camelback Mountain, next to the Jokake. It had belonged to Mabel Thompson Filor, who had died the year before. Arden enlarged the main house, added guest cottages and a big pool ringed by massage houses, and opened it as the Arizona Maine Chance. Vogue covered the opening in October 1947.
It was women only, open from about November to April, while the Maine house was closed. Guests usually came for two weeks of breakfast in bed, exercise, steam and paraffin baths, massage, facials and a nap after lunch, on about 900 calories a day. The guest list is the stuff of legend. Mamie Eisenhower is the best attested; spa histories add Clare Boothe Luce, Edna Ferber, Rosalind Russell and Ava Gardner.
It outlived Arden, who died in 1966, by about twenty-five years. It was still open when Charles Keating’s Phoenician opened next door in 1988. It closed in the early 1990s, was torn down, and the Phoenician built its Canyon Suites on the site.
Inside Maine Chance
The house. Vogue found the remodeled main house “white-plastered, modern, spacious,” with a hall and drawing rooms in a Regency and Louis XVI mix. Writers have reported a Georgia O’Keeffe, a Chagall and a Magritte on the walls and antiques from the decorator William Odom in the cottages. The architect of Arden’s alterations isn’t named in any source we’ve found.
The routine. The Arizona Republic laid it out in March 1950. A guest saw the house physician on arrival. Mornings started with breakfast in bed and went on to corrective exercise, swimming, and steam or paraffin-wax baths. Massage was given in the pool houses, followed by scalp, nail and facial treatments. Everyone napped after lunch. The food was about 900 calories a day, with no salt, sugar or butter, and no alcohol. Phoenix New Times, remembering it in 2014, added the fat-shaking machines and the “Top Hat,” a chocolate-covered cream puff served on the last day.
The guests. The spa sold privacy, so its register isn’t public, and most of the names come from secondary accounts. Mamie Eisenhower is the most solid. A 2024 Town of Paradise Valley oral history remembers a time “just before Mamie Eisenhower was to arrive at the Maine Chance.” The Insider’s Guide to Spas’ history of Scottsdale’s spas, which cites the 1950 Republic, adds Mrs. Henry Ford II, Sylvia Porter, Perle Mesta, Ethel Barrymore, Mrs. John Foster Dulles and others. Ava Gardner is better documented at the Maine spa than at this one.
The neighborhood. Maine Chance sat on the same shelf under Camelback as the Jokake Inn and the Paradise Inn. Together they were the midcentury resort colony that Charles Keating assembled into The Phoenician. Maine Chance held out longest. The Jokake slept its last summer in 1979, the Paradise Inn closed in 1987, and Maine Chance was still taking guests after the Phoenician opened.
The sources, and what they don’t settle
What’s solid. Arden’s 1946 purchase and the seasonal Arizona branch appear in Wikipedia’s Maine Chance history and the cosmetics historian at Cosmetics and Skin. Laura Kitty’s history of the Arizona spa draws on Vogue (October 1947) and Town & Country (January 1948) for the house. The Phoenician’s own history places the Canyon Suites on the former Maine Chance site. Joan Fudala’s list of lost Scottsdale places gives “1946–90s.”
What’s unsettled:
- The opening year. Arden bought the estate in 1946; the first season was most likely 1947, the year of the Vogue coverage and the date a Paradise Valley oral history gives. The City of Scottsdale’s 2004 historic context says “the 1950s,” which is too late. We use 1947.
- The closing year. “Early 1990s” (New Times) or ”90s” (Fudala). A family history of the Filor estate says the spa was still running after the Phoenician opened in 1988 and was bought for the resort about a decade later; the Canyon Suites were finished in October 1996. No source gives the year.
- Keating. Wikipedia says Keating’s 1985 purchase included the spa’s land. A spa operating past 1988 argues for a later sale, perhaps after Keating’s empire collapsed in 1989. We haven’t found the deed.
- Who owned it after Arden. Her company passed to Eli Lilly in 1971 and to Fabergé in 1987, but no source ties either one to the Arizona spa.
- Prices. The figures in circulation are for the Maine spa and we haven’t carried them over.
- The guest list, beyond Mamie Eisenhower. A story that President Eisenhower was allowed to dine in Mamie’s cottage in 1958 has no source we can find.
Where the answers are. The Arizona Republic for each autumn’s opening and the 1990s closing; Maricopa County deed records for the parcel; Lindy Woodhead’s biography of Arden, War Paint; and the Phoenix Public Library’s postcard collection.
Why it matters
Scottsdale’s resorts usually sold the West: horses, adobe and cowboys. Maine Chance sold something different from the same address, a New York idea of beauty and discipline, to women who could afford two weeks of it. It was a forerunner of the wellness resorts the area is known for today. It was also the last of the old Camelback resort colony to close, still operating after the Phoenician opened next door.