Word: ouida
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...lavishly over minor details as major crises. All of each evening, until a normal 3 a.m., she keeps right on working-at parties. The only thing that can keep her away from a party given by Elsa Maxwell, Lady Mendl or Cobina Wright Sr. or Barbara Hutton Grant or Ouida Rathbone or Baron Rothschild is an earthquake, a flood, or possibly a runny nose. Her conversation is slick, spangled, witty, shot full of Colbyisms. Some of these are close to schoolgirlish, like "doll," meaning darling, for a man she likes; others are more stern, like her stock stopper...
Mention of the word party brings to Ouida Bergère's baby brown eyes a weird, predaceous glitter. Ouida Bergère (nee Ida Berger) is chubby, red-headed Mrs. Basil Rathbone. Once something of a scriptress, for seven years she was head of Paramount's scenario department. Now, with her tall, dark, talented, professionally sinister, personally amiable cinemactor husband she inhabits an overstuffed stronghold in Hollywood's fashionable Bel Air quarter. There she contrives her parties. They are said to begin as a fulmination of her blood, a bounding along the veins, which eventually detonates...
...late a run of foul California weather has dashed Ouida Rathbone's efforts. It began with her Charity Ball last December. The project was sumptuous. Pièce de résistance was to have been an Alpine scene re-created with real snow in the subtropical palm gardens of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Afternoon of the party the rains came. What with this disappointment and that, by 7 in the evening Mrs. Rathbone was in a state of nervous collapse and could not take part in the festivities. But her guests had a high old time inside...
Fortnight ago Ouida Rathbone was at it again. So was the weather. It poured. But that did not stop 54 guests, representing most of Hollywood's international elite, from streaming into the plush-conditioned Rathbone mansion. Occasion was a party in honor of Polish:born Pianist Artur Rubinstein. London-born Conductor Leopold Stokowski, and Poland...
...there are the big producers, who like to play poker and polo. Intrepid and hard-working Ouida Rathbone is leader of an amorphous salon of her own, and she managed to bag a specimen of nearly every Hollywood social genus for her party...