Word: ballrooms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
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...
...next morning, nineteen girls and nineteen fathers arrive at the Youngbloods' Club, to hang up their debut gowns and to practice the Presentation in the ballroom. Picking their way among trails of plastic cedar, they listen as a sleepy-eyed Youngblood explains the procedure: the announcer will call out each girl's name; holding a bouquet of white roses, she will then ascend the platform, curtsey to the audience, then march down the hall and latch back onto her father's arm. They run through it once, simulating the rose bouquets with short ropes of the plastic cedar...
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...