Back on QV

[Pushpit]

13 hours ago, exlondoner said:

I’m sure the twenties were roaring enough if you were a bright young thing. In any case, Cunard are much more transatlantic than British, what with charging in dollars and suggesting people wear tuxedos, whatever they might be. 

Nancy Mitford was a débutante and presented to King George V in 1923, having come out (old sense!) the previous year.  She wrote The Pursuit of Love, a coded autobiography of her time between 1920 and the outbreak of WWII. It was a very different world to what most people in Britain would face, but there was no shortage of balls and other parties for that particular slice of society.

[3rdGenCunarder]

56 minutes ago, WantedOnVoyage said:

One way to kill off Roaring Twenties night is to be entirely authentic and prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol for the evening.  

 

NOOO! Just close the doors to all the bars and ask passengers to give the secret password (which can be found in the daily programme, of course).

[roscoe39]

20 hours ago, exlondoner said:

I’m sure the twenties were roaring enough if you were a bright young thing. In any case, Cunard are much more transatlantic than British, what with charging in dollars and suggesting people wear tuxedos, whatever they might be. 
 

 

I think they mean a dinner suit..........as my hero Norma Desmond declared  "tuxedos are for waiters"

[rmsEtruria]

13 hours ago, exlondoner said:

My latest brochure, which is definitely British, as the few voyage prices are in £s, mysteriously says, ‘dinner jackets, tuxedos, or dark suits’. I have no idea what that is meant to mean.

The wording is rather awkward. What they mean—I think— is “dinner jackets (for Americans, that means ‘tuxedos’) or dark suits; but the way it comes out sounds like they are talking about three different things. (Good thing they didn’t try to add German parlance into the mix, or it would have been “dinner jackets, tuxedos, smokings, or dark suits”!)

[exlondoner]

10 hours ago, WantedOnVoyage said:

One way to kill off Roaring Twenties night is to be entirely authentic and prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol for the evening.  

 

BTW, as we all should know, "tuxedo" is derived from Tuxedo Park, Orange County, NY, were the short evening jacket for gentlemen was first introduced in the US by a local socialite who himself was made aware of it by HRH Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.  So in the US, it has always been referred to as a... tuxedo. 

Yes, but most of us are not in the US, and indeed most of us did not suffer from Prohibition in the 1920s. There is no particular reason why Europeans should be aware of any of this, unless they are interested in anthropology and sociology. Cunard ships sail happily and unknowingly between the two worlds.

[Victoria2]

 

We had some 'fancy dress' on a Roaring night, think Peaky Blinders and inflatable guns, and  I'm sure Cunard didn't set out to encourage fancy dress but everyone had a marvellous time and as other folks' dress has no impact on us at all, it's just great to see a buzzing, happy ship.

Same with Masquerade. Some passengers didn't get the memo and turned up in 'different' dress but again, so what. A dozen or so out of over two thousand?

I think we can all live with that. I know we can. 🙂

[Lanky Lad]

A quick question for those who were on QV recently.  I'm just wondering who the Entertainment Director is, oh and was there a pianist in the Commodore Club in the evenings. 

[safarigal]

1 hour ago, Lanky Lad said:

A quick question for those who were on QV recently.  I'm just wondering who the Entertainment Director is, oh and was there a pianist in the Commodore Club in the evenings. 

They are tending to have a different musician in the Commodore Club every night on this voyage. My favorite is the pianist Robin Rose, but there is also Akos Somogyi on the piano. The jazz trio plays some nights, and tonight it is the Watsons Duo. I must say I do prefer the gentle notes of the piano, at least you can talk, but you can't find a seat when the jazz trio is there, so they are obviously very popular.

[roscoe39]

1 minute ago, safarigal said:

They are tending to have a different musician in the Commodore Club every night on this voyage. My favorite is the pianist Robin Rose, but there is also Akos Somogyi on the piano. The jazz trio plays some nights, and tonight it is the Watsons Duo. I must say I do prefer the gentle notes of the piano, at least you can talk, but you can't find a seat when the jazz trio is there, so they are obviously very popular.

I will miss Carl who the last I heard was doing crystal, he was so talented and he could down those Manhattens like no ones business.

[safarigal]

4 minutes ago, roscoe39 said:

I will miss Carl who the last I heard was doing crystal, he was so talented and he could down those Manhattens like no ones business.

When I last spoke with him, he said he would not return to Cunard. I miss him so much! He is the best 🙂 

[roscoe39]

43 minutes ago, safarigal said:

When I last spoke with him, he said he would not return to Cunard. I miss him so much! He is the best 🙂 

yes I had that conversation pre 2020, a great loss to Cunard. When are we seeing you and Mr B next?

[safarigal]

1 hour ago, roscoe39 said:

yes I had that conversation pre 2020, a great loss to Cunard. When are we seeing you and Mr B next?

Not for a while alas! So we are getting our Queen Victoria fix right now 🙂

[lincslady]

On 8/22/2023 at 5:00 AM, roscoe39 said:

I think they mean a dinner suit..........as my hero Norma Desmond declared  "tuxedos are for waiters"

I think tuxedo and dinner jacket (or DJ, which it is usually called in the UK, not dinner suit) is the same thing - two piece black suit, black bow tie, white shirt and the trousers usually have a ribbon 'stripe' for want of a better word down the sides of the legs.  Full evening dress is white tie and tailcoat jacket, rarely worn nowadays - maybe at a formal dinner in Buckingham Palace?

[rmsEtruria]

Indeed. Don’t know Norma Desmond, but I suspect what she meant was that a gentleman’s proper attire at dinner was not a DJ/tuxedo, but full evening dress, i.e., tails and white tie.

[Pushpit]

8 hours ago, Lanky Lad said:

A quick question for those who were on QV recently.  I'm just wondering who the Entertainment Director is, oh and was there a pianist in the Commodore Club in the evenings. 

Michael Harvey is the Ents Director.

 

George Gazsi was the pianist on my July cruise and I've seen him on quite a few previous cruises too. So they seem to put him on early evening in Commodore, and a crooner later in the night, or switch it the other way around for the next day / deploy whichever folk/Irish/Newfoundland duo/trio is on circuit.

Edited August 26, 2023 by Pushpit

[exlondoner]

18 minutes ago, rmsEtruria said:

Indeed. Don’t know Norma Desmond, but I suspect what she meant was that a gentleman’s proper attire at dinner was not a DJ/tuxedo, but full evening dress, i.e., tails and white tie.

Not Sunset Boulevard?

[rmsEtruria]

19 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

Not Sunset Boulevard?

A TV show, I believe? I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. (No TV until 1991, and even now, not much of a tube watcher.)

[exlondoner]

Just now, rmsEtruria said:

A TV show, I believe? I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. (No TV until 1991, and even now, not much of a tube watcher.)

A great Billy Wilder film about Hollywood from the early 1950s. I’m sure it is on TV occasionally.

[rmsEtruria]

1 minute ago, exlondoner said:

A great Billy Wilder film about Hollywood from the early 1950s. I’m sure it is on TV occasionally.

Ah, yes, now that you mention Billy Wilder, that does ring the right bell—but no, I’ve not seen it. 

[3rdGenCunarder]

4 hours ago, exlondoner said:

A great Billy Wilder film about Hollywood from the early 1950s. I’m sure it is on TV occasionally.

 

When I did the first Circumnavigation of Australia, it was a segment of the World Cruise. They were doing "director of the month" on the World Cruise, showing a different movie every week. I was so happy I was there for Billy Wilder--Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, and Sunset Boulevard. (the fourth week, which we missed, was The Apartment) All classics!

[roscoe39]

Norma also claimed to be ready for her closeup. Between that and "fasten your seatbelts" arguably the two most immortal lines ever spoken on celluloid.

[NE John]

I read somewhere that Americans wear tuxedos to separate themselves from British formal wear of waistcoats and long tails and also show solidarity with the US Gilded Age staff who wore tuxedos. 
We just had robbed barons, not official lords and ladyships. 
 

[techteach]

Sunset Boulevard and Norma Desmond. Great play on Broadway we saw around 1995 with Glenn Close as Norma.

[MrsPeel55]

1 hour ago, techteach said:

Sunset Boulevard and Norma Desmond. Great play on Broadway we saw around 1995 with Glenn Close as Norma.

 

that was the musical, we saw it that year too 🙂, it was the year we travelled the most, I was pregnant, we thought we wouldn't travel for a while with a baby....destiny proved us wrong, she was 7 month old when we crossed the pond again  🙂

Lloyd Webber is staging  for the West End to open next month, I'\m not sure bout going, as much as we love musicals, not sure about Nichole Scherzinger .....

Edited August 27, 2023 by MrsPeel55
typos

[exlondoner]

9 hours ago, roscoe39 said:

Norma also claimed to be ready for her closeup. Between that and "fasten your seatbelts" arguably the two most immortal lines ever spoken on celluloid.

I am shocked, shocked,,,