MRS. LEWIS DE GIELGUD TO VISIT HASTINGS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 15, 11 October 1937, Page 11

MRS. LEWIS DE GIELGUD TO VISIT HASTINGS

A ^ very delightful person is Mrs Lewis de Gielgud, wife of the undersecretary for the League of Red Cross Societies, who, with her husband will visit Hastings this week. Their visit to Australia and New Zealand is part of a world tour in the interests o.f the International Red Cross. It is also, in a sense, a honeymoon tour for Mr and Mrs Gielgud, whose marriage took place at Budapest on June 9, just before they started on their journey. Hungarian by birth, Mrs Gielgud possesses the charm of person and personality for which her country women are famous. Short in stature and slim, she is brunette in colouring ,with brown hair and very beautiful brown eyes and clear-cut features. Her voice is low-pitched and very eharming, so that it was not surprising to find that she had aehieved considerable success as an act'ress — on the stage and later in films — in her own country. Indeed, negotiations were in progress for Hpllywood contracts when she became engaged to marry Mr Gielgud, and for the time Tqeing these "talkings," ' as she called them, were broken offi. However, Hollywood is inciuded in their itinerary before . their return to Paris, where their ohme will be. The -"talkings" will be taken up again. 4,1 did have an invitation to go to England for film work,:" Mrs Gielgud said on her arrival at Melbourne recently, "but it is being made very difficult nowadays for foreogners to take up engagements of any sort, because there have been so many of them coming over from Europe that it had created much trouble. But now that 1 am a British subject" — and she smiled at her husband, who bears a defiiute family resemblanee to his famous actor brother, John Gielgud — "perhaps I will be able to do so." The heaquarters of tho international Red Cross organisation are in Paris, so Mr and 'Mrs Gielgud will be domiciled gud may appear in French films. "1 there, and it is probable that Mrs Gielwould prefer the English," she added. "My husband is very happy that I should go on with my work, but I shall wait and see. I do not intend to sacrifico my husband to my own career." As well as being an actress on both stage and gcreen, Mrs Gielgud contesses to having engaged in journali&m in her own country and in the writang of serial stories. She had an ambition, too, to write a play in which she herself could appear." "But," she said with a smile, "I was too generous with my own part, and it would not do." At this stage her husband interjected with the remark: "Are you confessing that you are doing what everyone tells you you should not doT» And Mrs Gielgud admitted that she • is writing a book about this very interesting tour, which will probably be called "Round the World Through a Woman's Eyes." The travellers came very close to war on this journey. They left Shanghai on the President Hoov^r as 20 Japanese battleships were steaming m. The horrors of borobardment began the next day. "My husband wanted to return to Shanghai from Hong-Kong," Mrs Gielgud said, "but another offlcer from the league was sent to take charge and we were told to continue our journey. We knew the trouble was approaching, for we had been conscious of the tension in China, and had seen the refqgees pouring along the roads from the north, making for the International Settleinent in Shanghai. It was all very sad." '