MRS. PRICE—APOSTLE OF PROTEIN

Radio Record, Volume XIII, Issue 11, 21 August 1939, Page 19

MRS. PRICE—APOSTLE OF PROTEIN

Pure Food Protagonist Now In N.Z. Is Ex-Ziegfeld Follies Girl And Pal Of Bernarr MacF adden ("RECORD’S" AUCKLAND CORRESPONDENT.)

® Have you a queasy sensation somewhere in your insides? Have you anything which advertised medicines say you have, or ought fo haye? ® Well, if you do suffer from any of these afflictions, and especially if you happen to be one of the female species which is generally understood to be particularly susceptible to complaints imaginary ond otherwise, a yisit to Mrs. Maureen Price, latest pioneer of pure foods, and advocate of iron in almost foundry-like quantities, will soon set you to rights. @ Blond hair thickly curled and lassoed in a black bow, confident, cosmopolitan and with an expansive air, Mrs. Price has been packing them in during her lecture tour of this country. Her protein pilgrimage has aiready taken her over the South Island, and is now sweeping her through the North. ER reception in Auckland has been as vociferous as elsewhere, and, if the crowds she has attracted here are any eriterion, she should be mobbed again in Palmerston North, and later still, at Wellington. Mrs. Price, according to her own statement, is over 40, and ean still skip up to 10,000. I did not ask her to give a practical demonstration of this enviable «deecomplishment, but she is sturdily built, and looks in the pink of condition, so I did not feel inclined to doubt it. The seerct? Diet!

How many food faddists have come forward in the past couple of decades with their carefully-elaborated systems. Most of them are productive of either emaciation or corpulence, as far as I can see. But Mrs. Price, after her training "under various celebrated American and English stomachsorcerers, may have something new to bring to those who burn incense to the Great God Diet. Mrs. Price’s visit here is really a return to the fold. Yes, sir, none of your American strain, even though a lengthy part of her life has been spent in the country of skyserapers. and stomach ulcers. , Born right back in little old Garston, Queenstown, she was -at the foot of the Remarkables. Her early life was not so smooth, though, for Mrs. Price has stated that she did not know what a new pair of shoes was until she was eight years old. When she did eventually acquire a precious pair, she was so proud of them that she slept with them under her pillow. To The U.S. SINCE then, .Mrs. Price has bought shoes all over the world. Leaving New Zealand, Mrs. Price went to the United States, where she took up with Flo Ziegfeld, dean of all American stage producers,

Mrs. Price being what: is known on thé stage as a ‘‘ gdodlooker,’’ and possessing one of those figures to which. streng men write poems, she easily gained a place in his company, and was seen to good advantage in such massive spectacles as ‘‘Aladdin’s Lamp" and ‘Rio Rita.’’ Silent films later claimed her. But the strain of this work proved too much for her, and her health broke down with a resounding erash. And then it was that. she hit upon the idea of diet! Then followed. a course of intensive study. Diet is not the sort of thing one can take up haphazardly. You have to know a little more. about the human body than merely where the food goes in. . . As I have said, she knelt at the feet of many recognised world authorities, and was even acclaimed by kos Angeles’s Dr. Empringham, who, as every student of diet should know, was the author of that revolutionary book, ‘‘Intestinal Gardening.’’ Met Bernarr JT was when she was beginning to make a name for herself in the sphere to which she was to devote the rest of her life that Mrs. Price met Bernarr MacFadden, and an acquaintanceship sprang wp between them such as ean only be found when two people have a mutual and absorbing interest,

MacFadden, as everyone must or should know, is the best-known devotee of physical culture in America today, and publishes many magazines. devoted to the Body Beautiful and kindred subjects. Certain of the pictures lining the walls of her consulting rooms witness to this friendship. Ste One of them, a gay photograph, shows Mrs. Price carrying Bernarr on her pack, and is entitled ‘‘Maureen Morris Price supporting Bernarr MacFadden.’"’ A companion picture showing Bernarr carrying Mrs. Price on HIS back bears the quaint caption, ‘‘Bernarr MacFadden supporting Maureen Morris Price.’’ These are but two examples of the photographic testimony to Mrs. Price’s career. In her peregrinations, teaching a "New Way of Living,’’ Mrs. Price has covered many a weary mile, Perhaps weary is the wrong epithet. For Mrs. Price is one of those exceptional women who can extract every ounce. of interest and enjoyment out of queer sights and sounds, and

niamene remote regions where white woman has seldom, if ever, trod. Much Travelled THus there are pictures of Mrs. Price with Samoan princesses; gathering coconuts; surrounded by Zulu belles; with Lord Nuffield by a lifebelt on the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage; inundated with pineapples (her favourite fruit, incidentally) ; outside the Musei Vaticani (the Vatican Museum); and strolling through the immemorial pigeons in St. Mark’s Square, Venice. A widely-travelled woman, this. She has visited 34 covlntries during the course of her seven trips round the world. A sincere woman, too. I could not fail to be impressed by the slogans which decorated her rooms. ‘‘If you live to eat, you will not live to eat. But if you eat té live, you will live to eat,’’ said one. A woman who believes that, and has spent her life trying to prove it to people who insist upon ruining their stomachs by consuming all the wrong foods, has my sympathy and esteem,