NEW CABARET STAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 17

NEW CABARET STAR

CLEVER RUSSIAN BARONESS

COLOURFUL CAREER

Lena Morava. Russian baroness and wife of a British Army officer, made her first appearance in a London floor show in May, writes the London "Evening Standard." • She speaks six languages fluently and sings in nine, but in spite of her perfect English one would never mistake her for an Englishwoman, with her enormous dark eyes, animated smile, and quick expressive gestures. "I did not dare to tell my husband that I meant to get'a job, but waited until it was fixed and presented him with the fait accompli," she said with a laugh, when interviewed. "The war has hit us badly financially," she continued. "If I stay at home I cannot help worrying, but if I am I working I feel that I am helping, and that makes me happy. My husband understands , this and approves my action." ESCAPE FROM SOVIET. Lena Morava has had the most colourful life. As a child of six she escaped from Russia during the Revolution with her grandmother and several other people, in a pig-cart. Eventually she reached the safety of her wealthy father's estate in Estonia. Owing to the privations and semistarvation that she had gone through she was attacked by a spinal weak- j ness. To cure it she attended the, dancing school of a former ballerina of the Russian Imperial Ballet, and showed such promise that it was decided to make dancing her career. At the age of fourteen, however, her voice had developed so rapidly that she was sent to Paris to study singing under Donalda, who formerly sang with Caruso. While she was singing in classical concerts in France, Rene Blum spotted her, and she was offered a contract to ■go to Monte Carlo as a light operatic singer. She then appeared in Continental cabarets, having developed the sophisticated sentimental style which the Frenchwoman puts over so well. Mile. Morava then met and married the Army officer who is now her husband.

Stark dead-black outfits are going out, and you will hardly wear unrelieved black at all except as a dress in fragile material for theatre or cocktail parties.