The Pittsburgh Press (December 12, 1945)
Scarlet-clad future queen wiggles a mean rhumba
LONDON (UP) – Princess Elizabeth, very swishy in a scarlet evening gown, wiggled a mean rhumba around a Mayfair nightclub dance floor until early this morning. The king and queen sat at home waiting for her.
The 19-year-old chestnut-haired princess who someday will rule Britain was seeing the town without parental supervision – her second outing in two weeks.
Her “date” was a mustachioed, bespectacled and blond youth named Charles Villiers, who served as a captain in the Elite Grenadier Guards. A few hours earlier, the king had decorated Capt. Villiers – pronounced Villers – with the Military Cross for valor.
See Coward revue
The hero guided the princess around the small, crowded dance floor as though he was handling a piece of rare china.
Capt. Villiers had called at Buckingham Palace for the princess and her lady in waiting and had joined the rest of the party at a theater where they saw Noel Coward’s revue “Sigh No More.”
Two other Grenadier Guards officers, the princess’ lady in waiting and a girl friend were in the party which pushed its way into the crowded night spot in mid-evening.
Elizabeth, wearing a long-sleeved scarlet gown with sequins, heard a Russian woman singer chant a ditty that “Englishman Never Make Love by Day.”
Stands in line
At 12:45 a.m., when dancing ended, she stood rigidly with 500 of her future subjects while the Cuban rhumba band played “God Save the King.”
Then, like the rest of the women, she joined the queue at the cloakroom to retrieve her mink coat. Her party piled into a Rolls Royce and sped back to Buckingham Palace.
Other revelers, stretching traditional British reserve to its utmost, stolidly refused to make a stir about the VIPs – very important persons, in the king’s English. Nobody tried to get an autograph.
Elizabeth huddled among the dancers on the crowded floor without getting an extra inch of hip-space from anybody. A red, white and blue ribbon and bouquet of flowers on her table were the only special recognition she received.