Word: besse
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...treaty to stimulate foreign private investment and U.S. technical assistance for Brazil. In flowery Portuguese, Dutra assured a joint session of Congress of Brazil's enduring friendship. When the Presidents parted, Eurico Dutra handed out his bread & butter gifts: for President Truman, a silver cigarette case, and for Bess Truman, a handful of Brazilian semiprecious stones...
...Porgy & Bess. After hearing New Yorker Samuel Barber's Stravinskyesque Capricorn Concerto, American week finally got around to its triumph. Maurice Ravel had once told George Gershwin, "Don't you ever try to imitate the Europeans . . . It's better to write good Gershwin than bad Ravel." And after hearing some piano preludes, songs from Porgy and Bess and An American in Paris, topped off by a rousing Rhapsody in Blue, Cannes connoisseurs found good Gershwin good enough for them. They let Conductor Horenstein & Co. know it with six noisy curtain calls. Concluded old Cannes Critic Edouard Berthier...
...ingratiated herself early with Harry Truman. She feted him as a Senator, gave the first party in his honor-a $5,000 blowout-when he became Vice President. She gave a huge "coming-out" party for Margaret Truman in 1946. When Margaret sang in Oklahoma City, Perle brought Bess Truman's bridge club all the way down from Independence to hear her, threw a big party at the Skirvin Hotel afterward...
Perle is reaping her reward. She is one of the few people who call Mrs. Truman "Bess," often drops in for lunch at Blair House. At the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, she sat at the President's right hand with her famed diamond clips aglitter, next day proudly stood beside him in a receiving line for deserving Democrats. ("Did you notice us winking at each other? That's because several people called me Mrs. Truman.") She even made her first political speech, and the President told her it was wonderful...
Harry Truman, with no such backlog, was having a hard time breaking even. The Government pays the White House staff and servants, but does not feed them. Bess Truman tried cutting the staff (which runs between 25 and 30), gave up because the housework didn't get done. Feeding the help, plus the family and friends, meant that Truman must pay for about 2,000 meals a month. In the Roosevelt era the monthly food bill sometimes soared to $7,000; Bess Truman has cut it to about $2,000. On quiet nights with the family, Harry Truman often...