Word: maides
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Actress Jefford reverses herself, unfortunately, in the Old Vic's Saint Joan. The maid of Domremy, by Shaw's description in his preface, was one of the first of modern women, a take-charge overlord of men. But Jefford's Joan is a wide-eyed schoolgirl heroine, as coy and cute as Sabrina fair. The production also suffers from the paralyzed, tableau style of Douglas Scale's direction. In the end, Saint Joan is the least remarkable of the Old Vic's productions, but it is paradoxically the outstanding one of the lot. For Shakespeare...
...Eine Kleine Mothmusik," a fascinating correspondence between Perelman and Mr. S. Merlin of Busy Bee Cleaners, Merlin writes that Perelman's maid "says you need a bulldozer, not a servant, and the pay is so small she can do better on relief." Throughout The Rising Gorge, Perelman allows himself this sort of knee-slapper somewhat more often than, as I remember, he did in his earlier pieces, and the result is an even more enjoyable brand of humor...
...moldering Venetian palazzo in the late 19th century sit two desiccated women. Miss Bordereau (Franchise Rosay) is 100 or so and has wrung life dry; her old-maid niece. Miss Tina (Wendy Hiller), has had life squeezed out of her. In swirls a worldly dandy, Henry Jarvis...
...wolfing, sees a woman being strangled in a passing train. Murder, she says to the police, but they only smile indulgently. Miss Marple gets her back up. "If you think I am going to sit back." she bellows, "and let everybody regard me as a dotty old maid, you are very much mistaken...
Whereupon the indomitable frump hauls on her baggy tweeds, takes up her trusty golf clubs ("Must keep fit, you know"), and stomps forth to see justice done. In the process, she takes a position as maid-of-all-work in Ackenthorpe Hall, a grim old grange about an hour from London, where she not only discovers the strangled woman's body in the Egyptian sarcophagus-the one that every English country house is fitted out with-tut even grubs up two more fine fresh stiffs. And of course in the end the old bag bags the killer. Best shot...