Word: eightyish
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DIED. Joe Venuti, eightyish, peerless jazz violinist whose daring experiments in swing were matched only by his outrageous practical jokes; in Seattle. Trained in the classics, Venuti played second violin in the Philadelphia Orchestra but longed to improvise. He played with Dance Band Leaders Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman, teamed up with Guitarist Eddie Lang to make hundreds of vintage jazz recordings and then formed his own band. An energetic performer who worked high jinks with his bow to play four strings at once, Venuti enjoyed a renaissance in the past decade and was still performing in jazz spots last...
Died. "Prince" Mike Romanoff, eightyish, Hollywood's reigning restaurateur-raconteur for more than two decades; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. That no one knew Romanoff's precise age is a fitting footnote to the life of a legendary impostor who at various times passed himself off as Rasputin's assassin, the son of Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone and a cousin of Czar Nicholas II. Actually, there is evidence that he was born Harry F. Gerguson, the son of Russian immigrants. After trying his hand at farming, peddling papers and bumming, the flamboyant phony with...
Died. Harry Romanoff, eightyish, one of the last of Chicago's Front Page-style reporters; in Chicago. "Romy" became famous for the telephone impersonations that often enabled him to scoop rivals without ever leaving the city room. Consider his coverage of the 1966 Speck murder case: as soon as he heard the news, he called the house where the eight nurses had lived, identified himself as the coroner, and pumped a cop on the scene for all details-minutes before the real coroner appeared...
...invitation to Ethel Kennedy's Hickory Hill is still almost as coveted as it used to be. Perle Mesta, eightyish, the hostess who is a household word, is back on Washington's social barricades again after an eclipse during the Kennedy years brought on by her support of Nixon in 1960. Also back is Mrs. Mesta's onetime social rival, Gwen Cafritz. Atop the whole pecking order, as she has been for so many decades, is Alice Roosevelt Longworth?daughter of President Teddy, widow of a noted Speaker of the House.* She rules the roost with her crisp...
From all reports it was quite a confrontation. There in her Washington studio stood the venerable Mrs. Lloyd Shippen, eightyish, matriarch of Mrs. Shippen's Dancing Class for the past 37 years and one of the capital's most autocratic social arbiters. Up stepped Mark Roosevelt, 13, great-grandson of President Theodore and a young man who already seems to know his mind. Why, asked Mark, were there no black youngsters in her classes? Mrs. Shippen's reaction was immediate. "She really gave it to me for about five minutes," relates Mark. "She talked about mixed marriages...