Grande Dame

Two grand hotels in Paris, tarted up by mega-money from Mideast and Far East royalty, are preparing to compete for the carriage trade. On Saturday the George V, long renowned as one of the City of Light's most elegant hotels, reopens after a two-year, $125-million renovation. Its new name: the Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris. Although managed by Four Seasons, the eight-story building, off the Champs-Elysees, is owned by a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, Prince Waleed ibn Talal.

Eva Turner, a grande dame of British music for more than three decades and heralded by many as the definitive "Turandot" of Giacomo Puccini's final opera, has died at age 98. Miss Turner, who had suffered a broken hip three months ago, died Saturday at Devonshire Hospital in London, said Katherine Morgan, a family spokeswoman.

There's no people like show people -- and no play proves that more than "The Royal Family," which opened Wednesday night at the Ahmanson Theatre. George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's tart valentine to show biz has been around for almost 80 years, but amazingly, its situations and emotions still feel relevant and fresh. "The Royal Family" and its theatrical dynasty of once and future thespians, the Cavendishes, are firmly planted in the 1920s.

SOCIAL SHUFFLE The two legendary grande dames of the stage--Carol Channing and Mary Martin--met up with hundreds of L.A.'s most socially secure women at a special event at the Music Center Wednesday. It was, as Keith Kieschnick told the crowd at the Ahmanson, a "reward for your membership" in the Blue Ribbon.

The folks in La Jolla never go for want of an outstanding grand marshal, chosen from the ranks of its citizenry, for its annual Holiday Parade in December. Last year it was Ted (Dr. Seuss) Geisel; the year before, Joan Kroc; the year before that, Cliff Robertson. And this year the sponsors, the La Jolla Town Council, could have picked Gregory Peck or Raquel Welch--or Jonas Salk or a half-dozen other Nobel prize winners who live in the community.

Two years after suffering a near-fatal heart attack, Rose Maddox, one of the grande dames of traditional country music, has cautiously resumed her quest for a comeback. "I had seven bypass operations and was unconscious for three months, so I'm just now starting to get back into it," Maddox said. "I miss the music business; it's a part of me, and I love it.

As a teen-ager, Marjorie Popple, 92, used to hike from Pasadena past acres of poppy fields to the Scripps Home in Altadena, her arms loaded with Christmas baskets for the elderly residents. "They don't have any legs now," Popple said, referring to automobile-obsessed Californians. "Everybody walked in those days. You weren't going to hitch the horse up, anyways." These days, Popple resides in the home for the elderly she visited in her youth.

She was shy, ferociously private and deeply devoted to her garden. Food was Agatha Christie's other great passion. She adored chocolate truffles, even ordered them to be delivered to her in the desert of Arabia, and thought nothing of drinking an entire cup of rich, pure cream. So much for any element of scandal in the great mystery writer's life.

I did not know either Louella Parsons or Hedda Hopper, but as a newspaperman I had brief encounters with both, and so I was fascinated the other night by the TV movie of their competitive careers, "Malice in Wonderland." Any pretense of verisimilitude was discarded in the casting of Elizabeth Taylor as Louella Parsons. Even when she wore her mink coat flared wide and walked with a waddle, Taylor in no way suggested the dumpling that was Parsons.