By Martha Morgan
When I was young, and didn’t know any better, I decided I would age gracefully like Jeanette MacDonald in the movies.
Jeanette MacDonald always looked as if she had a hairdresser follow her around through cyclones, woods, and ocean voyages, which she probably did.
Her hair looked as good first thing in the morning when she got up as it did at a ball the night before, every curl in place, every ringlet casually draped over her shoulder.
Why I thought I’d ever achieve such perfection I have no idea, except that I was using Princess Alexandra Kropotkin’s recipe for a face mask guaranteed to keep wrinkles from forming – ever.
Princess Alexandra was one of the White Russians who escaped the revolution of 1917 and proliferated all over Europe and North America.
She probably wasn’t royal at all but I dutifully lay down with the salt and milk paste on my face until my friend tried it and didn’t speak to me for years.
How was I to know she was sunburned at the time?
The mask worked quite well, and I might have avoided wrinkling like a prune in old age, but it’s hard to say. I was young then, and still had no wrinkles when I had 6 kids and forgot all about it.
By the time I remembered it was too late. I didn’t look like Jeanette MacDonald, who had gone on to international fame in operas after Nelson Eddy was shot by her jealous courtier.
Naturally Jeanette never married but was looked after by her faithful maid until she was too old to do anything but sit in her garden looking beautiful with talcum powder on her hair.
Eventually Nelson appeared in the mist, singing Maytime with a full orchestra backing him up. She got up and joined him, wearing a hoop skirt and leaving her old body behind for the maid to deal with.
I tell myself there are all sorts of wrinkles … and mine are laugh lines, not frown lines.
