Word: besse
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...America's greatest musical genius. Even the critics agree that Gershwin was unexcelled as a songwriter. His ambitious orchestral scores-Concerto in F, An American in Paris-are chains of songs; his inspiration usually started and stopped with fragmentary eight-and twelve-bar themes. Porgy and Bess, perhaps America's best attempt at opera, is a series of compelling songs...
...ragtime of many a half-forgotten early hit, beaten out by an invisible Oscar Levant; the brazen love call of the Winter Garden smash Swanee, groaned in all its original agony by blackfaced Al Jolson; Anne Brown's superb soprano raised again in the music of Porgy and Bess; and The Man I Love given an added pinch of pepper by Hazel Scott's post-graduate left hand are only a few of the courses served up in this lavish Gershwin feast. For dessert and liqueur there is a spine-tingling performance of the Rhapsody in Blue, arranged...
...Washington's National Airport she murmured, "I christen you the U.S. Capitol" and smartly swung a scored, netcovered* bottle of domestic champagne against the shiny nose of an Army C-54 hospital plane. Nothing happened. Pursing her lips, Bess Truman struck again, a backhand swipe. There were nervous titters. After nine determined tries the plane's nose was dented, the bottle still unbroken. Bess Truman passed it to an Air Forces major; when he failed to break it the party admitted defeat, moved on to christen a Navy plane with another bottle. There, on Mrs. Truman...
...White House, Bess Truman had the female press in for tea and a tour. Her 200 guests had plenty of time for a good long look around. They saw Margaret's light blue living room, where her parents drop in for after-dinner parlor-sitting. They noted the titles of her unexceptionable books (101 Greatest Mystery Stories, It's Always Tomorrow, Gone With the Wind). They got a careful eyeful of Mrs. Truman's oyster white corner bedroom and the President's big bedroom with the blue-canopied bed. In the next-door oval study...
...Independence, Bess Truman, like millions of other U.S. women, faced a servant problem. Vietta Garr, Negro cook who had worked 16 years for the Trumans, is now back of the counter in a Kansas City drugstore. Surveying her array of mechanical aids to soda-jerking, Vietta confessed that she is dubious about returning to what will be the summer White House: "I'm sort of on the outs with the cooking. I'm fountain manager now, and you don't give up that kind of a job without thinking it over. I think an awful...