Word: empress
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Died. Mrs. Elizabeth White, 59, onetime Princess Der Ling, lady-in-waiting to China's Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi, first high-born Chinese woman to marry a foreigner (Thaddeus White, U.S. Vice Consul at Shanghai); after being run down by a truck; in Berkeley, Calif. Daughter of a Manchu ambassador to France, Princess Der Ling, in America, lectured to eager audiences, wrote reminiscences of Chinese royalty (Son of Heaven, Jades and Dragons), taught Chinese at the University of California...
Catherine Was Great (by Mae West; produced by Michael Todd) is an opulent and incredible fancy-undress affair in which the queen of all the sirens essays the Empress of All the Russias. "Catherine," said Mae West in a first-night curtain speech, "had 300 lovers. I did the best I could in two hours." For a while her best was reasonably good: she seemed to make Lords of the Bedchamber of the whole Russian court and boudwarriors of half the Russian army. As she followed her hips about the stage in a solemn slink, as she languidly drew shameless...
Worse yet, the man-eater in Catherine was not enough for Actress West; she insisted on encompassing the Empress as well, and far from spoofing the imperial manner, tried to outdo it. When a courtier reminded her that "They also serve who only stand and wait," she replied "Quoting Milton's 'prome', I presume!" She had sponged up enough history to soak her play with wars, uprisings and palace intrigues. But the excitement was conveyed in dialogue that had the specific gravity of lead, and the results, when not merely sedative, were often crushing...
...squadron's time came on Oct. 31, 1943 when it swept around the Solomons bastion at Bougainville (at 31 knots) whipped close inshore and shot up Jap airfields one after the other while Marines stormed ashore at Empress Augusta Bay. Near the end of the job a Jap task force turned up. Burke, who had made a 31-knot run to refuel, was back on the job. The Little Beavers led their task force in sinking a cruiser and four destroyers that day. Navymen had never seen anything like the fury and deadly precision of the Little Beavers...
When Jacques Offenbach's operetta La Belle Hélène was first performed in Paris in the days of Empress Eugenie. Prince Metternich took one horrified gander at its neo-Homeric ribaldry, primly led his wife to the nearest exit. But La Belle Hélène outlived Metternich. Last week, in a new version called Helen Goes to Troy, a lavish $140,000 Manhattan production that seemed likely to become Broadway's latest smash-hit musical, it was still going strong...