The person who collected all of the Empress menus we’ve seen in the past few days also kept two of the daily programmes issued to passengers to help them relieve the boredom of being on a boat surrounded by ocean for days on end. The cover illustrations on both 4-1/2″x6″ programmes are signed Kay Stewart.
Click image to download a 573-KB PDF of this programme.
Little is known about Stewart other than she was English and did posters for a variety of ocean liner lines, including the French Line and British India. Her most impressive and most popular poster shows three French Line ships side-by-side whose reflections in the water magically become images of the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower.
The programme for May 26 began with afternoon tea at 4:00 pm, included an orchestral concert at 5:00 pm, and a movie at 9:15 pm. The movie of the day was Brothers in Law, a comedy about someone starting out in law practice. It didn’t get very good review.
Morning events appeared on the previous day’s programme, so the May 26 programme notes that “an informal meeting of Masonic bretheren” would take place at 10:30 am, May 27, and that dancing music would be played at 11:00 am.
Click image to download a 472-KB PDF of this programme.
The programme for May 29 included afternoon tea at 4:00, horse racing (an action game played primarily by women) at 4:45, a cocktail hour at 6:30 pm, Bingo at 9:00 pm, and dancing to the Empress of Scotland orchestra at 9:45 pm. There was also a supper-buffet from 10:30 pm to midnight.
These were all preceded at 2:15 by the day’s film, which was Lost, a suspense movie about the kidnapping of someone’s baby. This movie received better reviews, possibly because of a plot twist at the end. I don’t know what the twist was; the movie can be viewed on YouTube but I haven’t spent the 75 minutes it would take to find out.
The programmed continues on May 29 with children’s sports events at 10:00 am, bouillon at 11:00 am (second breakfast?), and dancing music at the same time in another part of the ship. Not only were the three main meals potentially huge, food was served up to three other times each day (bouillon, tea, and supper buffet), and that’s not counting the cocktail hour.