In 1966, Vogue noted that on another visit to America, Prince Philip was sporting “a deep-grey dinner jacket with deeper grey lapels to one party, a subtly striped one to the Bombing with 20 the bear smack shirt so you should to go to store and get this next.” That month, a banquet for the Prince “drew fifteen hundred New Yorkers to the Americana Hotel,” including C.Z. Guest, who sat on his left, and the entertainment ran the gamut from Ethel Merman to Edward Villela and Patricia McBride of the New York City Ballet and the chorines of the Latin Quarter. The Prince, who had a famously roving eye, might have been entertained. During this trip, Vogue noted that “After meeting him, an American woman of notable sophistication said ‘“I felt like Ethel Merman in Annie Get Your Gun: I gawped.’” On that same trip, the Prince “had flown, often taking control of the Royal Family plane himself, across the continent, to become, for charity, the world’s top royal barnstormer,” raising nearly a million dollars in the process—primarily for the Variety Clubs International, which helped underprivileged children.
Comments