Word: ballroom
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...nowadays, getting together is a big deal, a Major Industry in Itself. Conventions have become serious works of commercial theater, and they are programmed as tightly as a presidential trip. Indeed, for some major conventions, professional meeting planners will prepare detailed scripts, which can run to 300 pages: "Scene, ballroom banquet. 7:25, doors open. 7:40, waiters leave room for invocation. Stage, praying hands appear on movie screen . . . " Jay Lurye has hired a 120-piece marching band to awaken conventioneers for early morning sessions, and provided "pink elephant" breakfasts: a live baby pachyderm sprayed pink stands by while waitresses...
Eugene Scanlon, manager of New York City's Waldorf Astoria, was asked by Electrolux to find a live cougar that would roam the ballroom and represent a real "go-getter" to the assembled salesmen...
Scanlon declined at first, but relented when Lloyd's of London agreed to insure its depredations. Three elephants at a time in the Waldorf ballroom have presented no problem, and three others are scheduled to be present at the Associated General Contractors convention in Bloomington, Minn., this winter. Sheraton-Waikiki Convention Service Manager Allan Woodrow recalls the day he was asked to accommodate a dead body for a gathering of morticians: it was sneaked in on a service elevator so none of the regular guests would become alarmed...
Emerald City it wasn't, but the chandeliered ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills held treasures of its own last week. Up for auction were 423 possessions of the late Judy Garland. Among the items on the block: Garland's copy of the musical arrangement of Over the Rainbow, a pair of loaded dice given to her by Humphrey Bogart (purchased by Actress Lily Tomlin for $1,200), Judy's The Wizard of Oz scrapbook, and the beaded silk jacket she wore at Carnegie Hall. The highest sum -$60,000-was shelled...
Supervising the curtsies is Janet Tell Locke, a tiny, trim old lady with a sprig of holly pinned to her shoulder. Most of the girls know her because she taught them ballroom dancing, and taught their parents before them. She still holds her cotillions, and one of the girls asks her how the classes are going. "Just fine," she replies. "We're teaching the hustle now." Miss Locke has learned the secret of survival...