British Prince Does Honors for Ship Shop : Business: Royal representative helps open Harrods store aboard Queen Mary. But if he deigned to work there, he couldn’t because of his beard and mustache.

Aboard a ship owned by Americans, a boutique owned by Egyptians was ceremonially opened on Friday by a British prince whose mother was Greek and his wife Austrian.

Don’t miss the Queen Mary, English to its keel.

Fifty-plus years after the liner was launched, a grandson of Queen Mary herself, Prince Michael of Kent, was quite good enough to be invited to Long Beach to cut the ribbon for Harrods, the first American “signature” boutique in America (meaning the goods have Harrods printed on them).

Had the prince wanted to work there, however, the Queen Mary’s new masters, Walt Disney Attractions, would not take on the bearded, mustachioed HRH as the lowliest ticket-taker unless he submitted himself to the razor. Within the last two weeks, the ship’s veteran first officer and several other employees were fired for their whiskers. The word went out: shave up or ship out.

Rue, Britannia. What is going on aboard the evah-so British Queen Mary, the seagoing symbol of John Bullish virtues, British-gin martinis and manly displays of facial hair, now a concrete-locked “entertainment center” in perpetually Disney-fresh, maiden-voyage condition?

The “Voyage to 1939” promotion launched Friday, when the prince shoved a ship’s telegraph lever from 1990 back to 1939--an age when hearty seamen with full chests and full beards worked these decks--bears as well the luggage stickers of a voyage to the perpetual Disney Never-Never Land peopled by the eternally pre-adolescent. The horror of hormones means its employees can wear neither beard nor mustache (Mouseketeer Cubby did not shave, after all), and its dismay at anything of higher proof than cough syrup is well known (the outsized “brut champagne” bottle that rechristened the ship held confetti and fireworks, and on deck, a decorative champagne cooler was filled with plastic ice and an immovably anchored bottle).

In exquisite weather and an absence of any pressing local news, entertainment reporters and news people fleshed out the dockside crowd of VIP guests. HRH, ferried the few yards from the hotel in a black 1939 Rolls, remarked, “I like to think my grandmother Queen Mary would have been proud and pleased to know such a distinguished retirement awaited her namesake.”

He himself was distinguished enough to maintain his aplomb through the lavish foofaraw of a confetti blizzard, swooping biplanes, Big Band swoon-tunes and an all-singing, all-dancing cast of 1930s newsmen and passengers, before he went off to inspect the Harrods shoplet he had just inaugurated.

With all the money Disney has spent on refurbishing--and another $1.5 billion said to be in the offing for a nearby “Mysteries of the Sea” theme park to be announced later this month, according to a spokesman--there is still some rocking aboard the permanently moored QM.

Employees are reluctant to talk; if they can be fired for beards, what might a press interview do? But one employee, contemplating her last hours with crimson nail polish--another Disney no-can-do--can admire the way Disney tends its properties, but not so much its people. “I don’t like all the changes, but I like my job.”

So out with the red talons, out with earrings bigger than a dime. A lot of raw-shaven, pink upper lips were in evidence at the Queen this week. “You just look like a clone, that’s what I don’t like. I understand it at Disneyland--you want everyone to look the same so the kids don’t get confused. But this is a more adult attraction.”

Of First Officer John Magness, 65, fired for keeping the mustache he had grown 42 years ago as a seaman, the employee said: “I love that guy--he’s great.”

Another, a hotel worker with a fresh shave: “Lotta people got mad. Some quit.” And another, asked about some possible structural change: “I dunno, with this new company.”

Even an errant apostrophe, much less a cavalry mustache, is a blot on the precision Disney stands for; to press officers’ annoyance, some invitations and press releases misspelled Harrods’ name as Harrod’s.

Bringing the crowd to order on Friday, the Disney folks, with a politesse that doesn’t take no for an answer, did not say, “Just where do you think you’re going, buddy?” They said, “Good morning, do you need an escort?” (I dunno, do you have a good-looking one with blue eyes?) They didn’t say, “What are you doing still on the loose?” They said “Good morning, have you been seated?” (I’m upright and walking; do I look seated?)

Since Disney took over the lease of the Queen Mary (as well as its fellow traveler, the Spruce Goose) in 1988, the British Image has been paired with the Disney Image. The Queen Mary’s promenade deck, until recently ornamented by such little cash-eaters as the “Crown Jewels” and “Her Majesty’s Sweet Shoppe,” now has a real flagship British store, thanks to Disney chairman Michael Eisner, “a good friend and customer of Harrods,” and his friend Mohamed Al Fayed, chairman of the fabled Harrods and the House of Fraser chain of stores. The two had begun talking about a Harrods signature shop on the Queen Mary more than a year ago, said Michael Cole, media director for the House of Fraser.

“It’s clearly promotional; it signals the power Disney has to pull special attractions. It wouldn’t have come here if Joe Blow leased this place,” said Long Beach City Councilman Evan Anderson Braude, who has already written a letter of protest to Eisner over the “lack of dignity” in making veteran employees lose their whiskers or their jobs. (Let it be known that Braude himself wears a handsome butterscotch mustache.)

Shipboard shops are part of luxury liner life. The QEII has a Harrods boutique aboard. The privileged passengers aboard the Titanic enjoyed--though not for very long, of course--luxurious shops and restaurants. When it sailed in 1912, the then-owner of Harrods sent a courtesy bouquet of flowers, one department store baron to another, to Mrs. Isidor Straus, wife of one of Macy’s owners, who died with her husband when the ship sank.

The Queen Mary’s Harrods, in the former first-class library (a few by-the-foot novels, encyclopedias and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books still occupy shelf space in the burled oak and sycamore shelving), sells several hundred Harrods-marked items--key chains, golf balls, sweat shirts, mufflers and such, and a few one-of-a-kinds; to one side is an antique rocking horse for $5,000.

Boxes of Harrods tea heading this way for the grand opening were held up briefly in Customs, according to Cole, who fretted in jest whether a descendant of King George V on American soil was provoking rebellion in the customs houses. “I thought, ‘Have they thrown it in the harbor?’ ”

Harrods’ motto, translated from Latin, means “All Things, for All People, Everywhere.” On Friday, Braude picked up a square of terry cloth. “Just what the average Long Beach person wants--a towel with ‘Harrods’ on it.”

BACKGROUND

Walt Disney Co. manages the Queen Mary and the neighboring Spruce Goose for the city of Long Beach under a contract acquired in 1988 when Disney bought Wrather Corp. Disney officials say they plan to erect a theme park at the Queen Mary site but the details have yet to be worked out.