Word: ustinov
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...world's wit were rolled into one portly fellow. PETER USTINOV, who died last week at 82, once boasted, "I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins" (his great-grandfather wedded the Princess of Ethiopia). He spoke six languages, and a few others of his own comic invention. With gifts too wide-ranging to be contained in one art form, he wrote hit plays (Romanoff and Juliet) and books of nonfiction and short stories. He could be an excellent film director (Billy Budd) and a serious Shakespearean (King Lear at Stratford, Ont.). He won Supporting...
...world's wit were rolled into one portly fellow. PETER USTINOV, who died last week at 82, once boasted, "I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins" (his great-grandfather wedded the Princess of Ethiopia). He spoke six languages, and a few others of his own comic invention. With gifts too wide-ranging to be contained in one art form, he wrote hit plays (Romanoff and Juliet) and books of nonfiction and short stories. He could be an excellent film director (Billy Budd) and a serious Shakespearean (King Lear at Stratford, Ont.). He won Supporting...
...Soviet foreign ministry was one of the quietest spots in the U.S.S.R.'s diplomatic service. But when Afghanistan's nonalignment policy began to slip, the Soviet leadership panicked. Three members of the Kremlin inner circle--Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, KGB chief Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov--feared that the Afghans would tilt toward the U.S. unless stern "measures" were taken. Late on the night of Dec. 12, ailing Communist Party chairman Leonid Brezhnev called the three to a secret meeting to hear their proposal. To keep the U.S. from installing a friendly regime, they said, Moscow must send...
Long before Russell Crowe helped reignite filmgoers' enthusiasm for Roman epics, Sir Peter Ustinov, now 81, was king of the genre. He fiddled as Nero while Rome burned in Quo Vadis? (1951) and won the first of his two Academy Awards in 1960 for a supporting role in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. "When I was in Rome for the 50th anniversary of Quo Vadis?, the mayor asked me to say a few words in Italian," Ustinov recalls. "I reminded him I was Nero, who only spoke Latin." The story captures the wit and erudition for which Ustinov - who was knighted...
...These days Nero can't help but reflect on the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America. "We had Pax Romana, now there's Pax Americana," Ustinov says. "The empires are very close to each other - the eagle, the legions, the respect for the flag. That's why Americans make the best Roman films." American hegemony is just one of a multitude of topics on which Ustinov is happy to expound. The British-born son of a French mother and a half-German, half-Russian father (who had an Ethiopian grandmother to boot), his cosmopolitan origins and a lifetime...