Word: besse
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Tuned In BREAKFAST WITH LES AND BESS by Lee Kalcheim...
...time is 1961, when there actually were airwave couples like Les and Bess observing the absurd convention that breakfast was a time for smiley voices instead of burned toast and reviewing comedies like this. Nowadays, when the shows that used to be off-Broadway are on the main stem, and Broadway shows are running in the little houses, things like this open less glitzily. But the formula is as ever: one set, six characters, some brisk banter and a simple conflict in values bobbing along the sparkly surface...
...this case, Les (Keith Charles) wants to retrieve his old happiness as a baseball broadcaster, while Bess (Holland Taylor) wants to keep climbing the celebrity ladder. Conceits of this sort always depend for their success on sending the audience out whistling their moral codes, but Lee Kalcheim is an amiable writer with a gift for constructing tight comic spots for Taylor and Charles to battle in and out of. The actress makes a tough lady sympathetic; the actor is a canny counterpuncher. Together they reinvent that splendid theatrical institution, the unhappy marriage, that no playwright looking for laughs should ever...
Your obituary on Bess Truman, "A Lady in the White House" [Nov. 1], implies that a "lady" is one who confines herself totally to the private spheres of family and home, one who "would not rock the boat," and one who never expresses an opinion on anything. I am certain that Mrs. Truman possessed many admirable qualities, but that you should single out these attributes as most praiseworthy and ladylike simply perpetuates insidious stereotypes of women in general...
...crowds, she could be slyly witty in private. When her husband was contemplating the propriety of their having dinner in a Rome restaurant that was once the villa of Mussolini's mistress Carla Petacci, Mrs. Truman settled the matter: "Well, after all, she won't be there." Bess endured thousands of teas, receptions and galas. Mobbed by delegates and newsmen at the 1944 Democratic Convention that nominated Truman for Vice President, she lamented, "Are we going to have to go through this all the rest of our lives?" Eight and a half years later, after a crowd...