Word: widowing
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...Cribbage Board. A hearty, goodfellow type of woman, Perle Mesta is an Oklahoma widow, whose wealth came from a marriage of Oklahoma oil and Pittsburgh machine tools. Not even her warmest admirers, who liked her liveliness, would credit her with overwhelming charm or notable wit. But ambassadors, Senators and Cabinet officers come at her beck. In a city where a hostess' success can be scored like points in a cribbage game by counting up the rank of her guests, Perle Mesta outscores them all. Unlike her predecessors, Perle Mesta won her position not by prestige and not alone...
Professional society is based on entertaining people who are not necessarily your friends. Washington visitors are astonished at the ferocity with which it is practiced in the capital. Years of rigorous competition have produced a prototype of the hardy, or winter-blooming Washington hostess. She is a widow, past 60, of ample means and ample bosom. She must have enough forwardness to fight for her prey, enough toughness to withstand the fangs of her rivals...
...disinclined or too poor for the expensive game. Young, dark-eyed Mrs. Grover Cleveland was the last White House mistress to exert social dominance (she frowned on the bustle and the bustle disappeared). The White House experienced a brief, last burst of gaiety when "Princess Alice" Roosevelt (now the widow of Speaker Nicholas Longworth) made her debut there and was serenaded wherever she went with Alice Blue Gown...
...Hammer for the Bride. During one of Ray's subsequent romances-an elopement with an Albany widow named Mrs. Janet Fay-Martha intervened even more decisively. Ray promised to marry Janet, drove her to a New York apartment, and got her to turn over checks worth $6,000. But Martha quarreled with Janet, slugged the bride-to-be in the head with a hammer, and ordered Ray to strangle her with a scarf...
Loretta Young is a Park Avenue widow who finds herself temporarily broke. She gets a scholarship to Pointer College, where she joins her pretty daughter (Betty Lynn) in pursuit of higher education and a youngish English professor (Van Johnson). With the help of the "Kissing Oak" and other standard campus props, Mother gets her man, and Betty gets compensation in the form of a stripling...