Word: valet
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...Truman liked to travel with an entourage of a dozen or more.) Besides Mamie and Mamie's mother, Mrs. John S. Doud, he took a staff of only seven: Appointments Secretary Thomas Stephens, Press Secretary Jim Hagerty, White House Communications Chief Dewey Long, Personal Secretary Ann Whitman, Personal Valet John Moaney, Jim Hagerty's secretary, Mary Caffrey, and one White House military aide, Air Force Major William G. Draper, who was gainfully employed as the plane's pilot. A swarm of Secret Service men and 28 newsmen and photographers tagged along in a chartered Constellation...
...Confidences was all ambitious mothers and wily servants, dissembling lovers and trumped-up letters. But in an elegantly stylized production, the play seemed almost to be danced. Done so lightly, even its witless deceptions had an air of wit. Madeleine Renaud made an exquisite widow; Barrault, playing an agile valet, had about him a touch of quicksilver, of Mercury himself. To enjoy the production it was less necessary to understand French than to respond to style...
Five Fingers tells the extraordinary (and presumably true) story of a valet who succeeded in photographing numerous top-secret Allied documents (including plans for the Normandy invasion) at the British Embassy in Ankara during the summer of 1944 and then selling them at extravagant prices to the Germans. Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and based on a book by L. C. Mayzisch called Operation Cicerco, the picture is frequently amusing and always exciting...
...loaded with enough surprises and ironic twists (including the fact that the Germans refused to believe that the documents were genuine) to fill half-a-dozen run-of-the-mill espionage thrillers. In addition, Mankiewicz's screenplay contains some effective frills of its own: a love affair between the valet and a former employer, a beautiful Polish countess, some bright epigrammatic dialogue, and an array of skillfully drawn diplomatic officials. Particularly clever use is made of the contrasting personalities of the pompous, victimized, British Ambassador (superbly played by Walter Hampden) and the disdainful German Ambassador (equally well played by John...
Visits to "grand houses," where a valet would unpack his luggage, made Chesterton uneasy. Neither he nor the valet could ever be sure what would turn up in his bags and pockets-a green glass bottle stopper and a horse pistol on one occasion; on another, "several stubs of pencil, a paperbacked murder story, some colored chalks, and a small cigar or two." Nor did anyone know what he would bring to a lecture: a Dutch audience that flocked to hear him talk on Dickens went away much enlightened on the subject of Browning...