Word: besse
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White House. Bess and Harry Truman have done their best to preserve the pleasant fiction. But the fact remains that the American public takes a deep, proprietary interest in anyone who lives rent-free at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...next night Harry Truman took off his Democrats' hat, picked up his social topper and escorted Bess to a full-dress reception in their honor at Washington's staid Congressional Club. There the President gave each one of the 500 guests a hearty handshake and a good word, beamed approvingly as the red-coated Marine orchestra played music from South Pacific, and took a disparaging sip of the nonalcoholic fruit punch...
Decca's late president, Jack Kapp, fathered the original-cast musical recording with George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and his company has set the pace ever since (Carousel, Call Me Mister, Annie Get Your Gun). But the competition is furious. Producers' royalties have shot up to 10% per record, and producers switch unpredictably to different labels as they bring out new shows. RCA Victor cinched the rights to Call Me Madam by financing the musicomedy for $225,000, but had to do without Star Ethel Merman, whose recording contract committed her to do the songs...
...next eleven minutes he handled all questions with the same deliberate care, and the conference went off without a hitch. That night the President, in his old single-breasted tuxedo, and Bess, resplendent in black velvet, had the time of their lives at a fund-raising show for the newly revived U.S.O. at Constitution Hall. Onstage, Cabinet officers, military brass, Congressmen and local society bigwigs wisecracked, caterwauled, sawed away on their fiddles, square-danced, and performed a frantic Charleston, complete with short skirts and rolled stockings...
...Bess Truman was down with a cold, so like the dutiful husband he is, the President had dinner at home. But at 9 o'clock he slipped over to Washington's Hotel Statler, and dropped in to make a few off-the-cuff remarks before a banquet of the Society of Business Magazine Editors...