Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Old Postcard Wednesday--Queen Elizabeth II greeted at gala party by Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, and George Burns




With the upcoming royal wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton two days from now it was easy to select the old postcard for this week. Here is a 56-year-old Queen Elizabeth shaking hands with 67-year-old Frank Sinatra. Behind her is Nancy Reagan, then 61, and 58-year-old George H.W. Bush, chatting it up with 87-year-old George Burns, who died in 1996. Sinatra died two years after Burns, in 1998. Perry Como, age 70 in this image, passed in 2001, and Ronald Reagan (out of view in this scene) died in 2004, although his days out in society ended ten years before then.

The Queen celebrated her 85th birthday on April 21, 2011. Her husband, Prince Philip, whose face is obstructed by the Queen in this image, will turn 90 this coming June. A month later Nancy Reagan will also be 90. George H.W. Bush will be 87 in June. Dionne Warwick is now 70......

They had their days in the sun and their evenings of star shine......

Now most gala parties are enjoyed by those who are a generation and more behind the celebrities in this scene. But the celebrations honoring the marriage of William and Catherine on April 29th will be multi-generational, and worldwide. We need this royal wedding as an escape from all that plagues us, a day of real-time make-believe, broadcast to an international audience of people who are worried, wounded, and worn out. I am actually grateful to William and Kate for being such brave ones willing to place their marriage in view of a world that both loves and loathes royalty and will gush one moment and gossip the next. I have a tender feeling for this pair (made stronger by the fact that she and I share a birthday), and I think that those in the Queen's receiving line in this old postcard certainly would also. In fact, they left behind some prescient musical and comedic messages for future lovers, some who will be future kings and queens. These videos are for Prince William of Wales and Catherine "Kate" Middleton; long may they love:

{Note added after initial publication: I do not know why, but sometimes the Perry Como vid appeared twice and the George Burns vid was excluded altogether. This weirdness was corrected when I refreshed the page. Also, my feeds were also all whacky Wednesday morning after publication -- so I have pulled it back, swapped my original Perry Como selection to a different one of the same song, and republished in hopes this will shock the system into seeing things my way! My apologies if it did not work...}


Perry Como:

This was my favorite song when I was a child. I sang it to myself often and 
believed in it, believed that it was possible to have a pocketful of starlight.


Frank Sinatra:



Dionne Warwick:



George Burns:

How George Met Gracie
George Burns tells the audience how he met Gracie Allen. This is a clip from 
The Burns & Allen Show. Several episodes are available at HoughsVideos.50Megs.Com 



.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am intrigued that so many Americans are fans of our Royal Family! I really hope you enjoy watching it ... me? I'll be out of town for the weekend, I'm sorry I am no Royalist but looking at this photograph of Her Majesty makes me realise that she was quite a cracker, I still have 3 years to go to catch her up in it and she looks stunning!

susan said...

It's definite some major lessons have been learned by the royal family since they celebrated the last spectacular wedding. I loved Diana but the whole thing really was in the realm of too good to be true which resulted in so much pain.

Hers and Charles's sons have benefited from some of the silly rules being relaxed. It's very cool that Kate and William begin their lives together as marital equals. I wish them well. I also wish them better weather for the day than my old favorite auntie who lives in the north of England told me was forecast for London on Friday.

Jani said...

nice post!:)

I wish you a great week and God bless you!

Don't Feed The Pixies said...

we did a warm up at toastmasters about the royal wedding and only 3 out of 15 people were interested in watching. I think somewhere they've become another celebrity couple (albiet not one that choses fame)

Herself wants to watch, so i will probably end up watching - i hope that they do make a go of it: but i have to say it's one hell of a thing to think about when someone proposes to you "If i say yes then one day i'll be Queen"

You'd certainly stop and think very hard about that one

Lydia said...

Jane~ I imagine it is strange for you over there to note all the hullabaloo we here are making of the whole thing. Jeez, I think more than half of our national press is in London right now. The rest are covering the horrid killer tornadoes here. I know which assignment I would choose!
Loved your description of the queen as "quite a cracker" and I agree with you that she looked amazing. Dressed quaintly, but her face was so young!

susan~ I thought about your interesting comment today while driving into Salem, about the comparisons to the other wedding and lessons learned from that disastrous marriage. I did not watch the wedding of Charles and Diana, as the whole arrangement seemed so false and tense to me. I did grow to admire Diana as the years went by and think hers was a truly tragic life.
It looks like your favorite auntie saw the same weather reports as the msnbc team. :(

Jani~ Thank you! It is a pleasure to have you visit my blog and leave a kind comment. :)

Pixies~ Glad you are sticking with Toastmasters! Interesting poll there. Interesting, too, that they seem a celebrity couple there, as I would not necessarily think that is the impression here. I mean, compared with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who define celebrity here the royal couple seems different...backed up by all that tradition.
Kate has to be brave as hell, and surely selfless in many regards, taking on a future of Queen. I find it quite amazing. (Glad Herself wants to watch so we can all watch together :)

Lydia said...

Andressa~ ^.^

The Blog of Bee said...

I do wish I had read this so beautifully written pots earlier. However better late than never. Being an absolute royalist I love it and a week plus after the wedding I can say that everything was perfect and that the then Catherine Middleton got it absoluteky right.

Lydia said...

Bee's Blog~ I appreciate you reading the post and am thrilled it felt right to you! I loved the royal wedding, too.

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