“MRS. GRUNDY” DEFEATED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19894, 23 March 1939, Page 2

“MRS. GRUNDY” DEFEATED

11 UN C AIM AN DEBACLE LONDON, Jan. 1. Carefully folded between sheets of tissue paper in a trunk in New York is a silver sequin gown which killed Hungary’s “Mrs. Grundy” by ridicule. It belongs to Mrs. Hans Bartsch, wife of a wealthy American manufacturer and famed as a dancer, Irene Palasty. At the Savoy, London, she told the story of the dress she will keep “for ever.” One night eight years ago she wore it at Budapest’s municipal theatre. As she was leaving she was arrested. Other women in the audience had complained that her low-cut gown was immodest. “So! Such nonsense I never did hear. Now you would call those policemen ‘frumps,’ yes?” And—as Mrs. Bartsch is married to an American—the United Slates consul formally protested. Then the fun began.

Budapest’s leading dressmakers went to the Home Office and asserted, “Fashion, independent of right or wrong, cannot bend the knee to bureaucracy.

Soon all Budapest, all Europe, then the world was laughing. It made Mrs. Grundy’s policemen pink about the ears.

The case was fixed for hearing. Never had so many applications been received for seats in court. The Home Office could not face any more ridicule. They adjourned the case indefinitely. "But the Mrs. Grundy, she die, yes? The ladies of Budapest are now so smart. The law, he is forgotten. All because of my frock.”