Word: vestals
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...ancient Rome the Vestal Virgins were six daughters of patrician families who were appointed at the age of six to ten to keep a flame constantly burning in the temple of Vesta, Rome's goddess of the hearth. Twenty centuries later, when Producer Gabriel Pascal got around to casting six Vestal Virgins for RKO's Androcles and the Lion (TIME, Oct. 15), no less than 2,200 hopefuls from Hollywood's horde of extras felt eminently qualified for the parts. One literal-minded applicant enclosed a medical affidavit certifying her eligibility, but many felt that photographs...
...Addis was looking a little shaken by his ordeal. "In any other role, you can tell a girl she looks 'too young' or 'too beautiful' for the part," said he. "What can you say to a girl who won't make a suitable Vestal Virgin?" But he had apparently found just what he was looking for. The lucky six: two divorcées, aged 39 and 47, three married women, aged 23, 56 and 60, and one unmarried girl, aged...
...Hurricane. The faculty was stunned to find that the list included not only young, newly appointed instructors, but also such top, long-established men as English Professor Nathan C. Starr and Biologist Paul A. Vestal. The fact that the firings had been made by trustee formula did not soothe faculty feelings. Why, the faculty wanted to know, were the top professors not consulted? Why did the cuts have to be so drastic? Why had Wagner stuck by the formula when he knew that he was eliminating some of his ablest and most popular...
Demi-Rome. It was not an easy matter to decide. The world's oldest profession could claim a long and proud history in Italy. Romulus and Remus, the brothers who founded Rome, it was said, were themselves the bastards of a vestal virgin who yielded to Mars for a consideration. In 1490 a city vicar reported to the Vatican that Rome's prostitutes numbered more than "6,800, not even counting those who live in concubinage and those who, not publicly but in secret, maintain five or six women in their houses." Sixtus V (1585-90) wanted...
Steamboats and Gold. Much of the country along the Missouri is still almost as wild as it was then. While Stanley Vestal was writing The Missouri near Sioux City, Iowa, the wild geese, held up in their spring flight by a six-inch snow, made such a racket that sleep was impossible. Through its loveliest country the Missouri is rich in historic sites that almost nobody ever sees because nobody ever uses the river for travel any more -old campgrounds, old trading posts and forts, Indian battlefields, old steamboat landings that date from the days when river boats pushed...