The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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HYDE PARK—After my very busy Wednesday morning I hurried to the United Nations where Madame Genevieve Tabouis was waiting to have lunch with me.

Madame Tabouis is one of the most interesting of the French foreign correspondents. I have known her for a long time, and I always enjoy seeing her. I am going to miss her after she leaves this Saturday, for I don't believe I shall have a chance to see her again. After leaving her at her appointment after our lunch, I proceeded to call on Mr. Bernard Baruch and had a very pleasant chat with the elder statesman.

Wednesday also was a day of many receptions. I went first to congratulate Justice Polier on her reappointment to the Children's Court, then to an Indonesian reception, and, later, to one the Russians gave. I returned home just in time for an early dinner which I was giving for some friends to meet Prince and Princess Wan of Thailand.

After dinner we went to see Marcel Marceau and his partners, Pierre Verry and Alec Sandro. This was an evening of pantomime at the Phoenix Theatre, where Marceau varies the numbers he gives on different nights. His art is really extraordinary—his control, his discipline, and the subtlety with which he portrays different emotions and situations is really remarkable.

He can make you laugh, but he can also give you a sense of tragedy. I thought a pantomime called "Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death" was a really remarkable achievement.

The imaginary character he has created, called Bip, who appears in the second part of his performance was superb in "Bip Plays David and Goliath." And I think it was excellent showmanship to end the evening with "Bip and the Butterfly," so light and so tragic.

I enjoyed every minute of the evening and it seemed to be over too quickly. I know my feeling was shared by everyone in our party and I think by everyone in the theatre. We would gladly have seen more but one realizes that this art is so exacting it must be exhausting. I would certainly welcome the opportunity to see Marceau in some of the other pantomimes that he did not give on Wednesday evening.

If you have older children in your house who enjoy making things, you might like to get—at the United Nations Book Shop or from Education Research, Inc., 1620 I Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., for the price of $1.00—a three-dimensional model of the buildings of the U.N. headquarters. This is really a teacher's aid and is called the "U.N. and How It Works."

The models open to exhibit the interior of the General Assembly hall and the major conference chambers, a large world map, 30 by 30 inches, shows U.N. activities, and the three-sided panel structures that encircle the project show pictorially how the U.N. works and what it does.

There also is a teacher's guide that goes with the model, written by a teacher, and which helps the user to adapt the information to the various age levels.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1955, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 1, 1955

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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