Word: valet
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Britain's Ambassador to The Netherlands, Sir Richard Sykes, 58, had just stepped into his silver-gray Rolls-Royce for the four-minute ride from his residence to the British embassy in The Hague. As Sykes' Dutch valet, Karel Straub, 19, closed the car door, two men suddenly emerged from the back of the courtyard. One fired a revolver through the rear side window of the limousine, hitting Sykes four times; the other gunman shot Straub twice at close range. Sykes and Straub died later in the hospital...
This is a tale of Old Boy meets Old Girl, but does Old Boy lose Old Girl again? Cecil (Harrison) is an English novelist and knight who lives in autumnal bachelor ease at his country house with the aid of a loyal valet, Hawkins (George Rose), who is not above discreetly reproving his master or sampling his port. Into this Eve-less Eden strolls the recently widowed Evelyn (Colbert). It's not the first time. Fifty years before, the same majestic tree that spans the garden had seemed the arbor of true love to Evelyn and Cecil...
...some extent, the connection can be made: both plays are about romances, both involve the relationship between a rather stupid nobleman and his bright, if not well-born, valet, and both go through intricate plots before the romance proves successful. There, however, the connection ends...
...long ago that blacks were all but invisible on American television, except for those playing servants, like Jack Benny's valet Rochester or Ethel Walers in Beulah. As recently as 1968, a sponsor became apoplectic when Singer Petula Clark touched Harry Belafonte on the arm during a show. Some TV producers are apt to congratulate themselves for displaying so many blacks on TV now; even though mostly bad, the shows come weighed down with all kinds of pretensions to relevance...
...overacting and the ability to strangle on cue, wields his demeanor like a sledgehammer and leaves viewers so unsettled that it takes them a while to remember what the rest of the movie is about. Once he appears on the screen with his insipid lackeys and his hapless barber-valet, it is hard for the nicer elements of the plot to reassert themselves...