Wednesdays in November | 20 Movies
Love, lust, murder, beheadings, war, betrayals, tragedy. There’s just so much juicy drama in the lives of the Royals past, present and undoubtedly the future. Just look at all the intrigue and machinations amongst the British Royals when Queen Elizabeth died this past September at the age of 96.
No wonder playwrights such as Sophocles, William Shakespeare, Maxwell Anderson and Peter Morton have delved into the lives of the Royals. And let’s face it, love them or hate them, we are still obsessed with them.
And TCM hopes you’ll lose your head over its November spotlight “Royal Treatments,” every Wednesday evening.
The retrospective begins Nov. 2 with “British Royalty-Part I.” which includes such classics as The Lion in Winter (1968) for which Katharine Hepburn won her third Best Actress Oscar; the multi-nominated Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), starring Charles Laughton in his Oscar-winning turn; the splendid musical comedy Royal Wedding (1951), as well as TCM newcomer Lady Jane (1986).
The second installment of “British Royalty” on Nov. 9 presents three films revolving around Queen Elizabeth I: Young Bess (1953); The Virgin Queen (1955); Mrs. Brown (1997), as well as two about King Arthur: Camelot (1967) and Knights of the Round Table (1953).
“European Royalty” on Nov. 16 examines the Royals in Sweden, Russia and France including Queen Christina (1933); the Oscar-winning Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and Marie Antoinette (1938) for which Norma Shearer earned her sixth and final Best Actress nomination.
TCM looks at royalty around the world on Nov. 23 with the musical The King and I (1956) for which Yul Brynner won the Best Actor Oscar; Bernardo Bertolucci’s multi-Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (1987); Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra” (1934); and Alexander the Great (1956).
But they have saved the best for last with “Fictional Royals” on Nov. 30 which features some grand comedies and musicals exploring the royals falling in love with commoners. Wonder if Harry and Meghan watched any of these movies?
The evening kicks off with the charming and enchanting 1953 Roman Holiday, which was directed by William Wyler. This fairy tale made a star out of Audrey Hepburn, who had appeared in a few British films and had appeared on Broadway in 1951 in the non-musical version of “Gigi.” She stole the film from veteran star Gregory Peck as Princess Ann, a young and bored princess of a European country on a goodwill tour. She manages to escape her “keepers” in Rome and finds adventure and romance with a handsome American journalist (Peck).
Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar, the Golden Globe, BAFTA and New York Film Critics Circle Award for the film which Wyler insisted be shot on location in Rome instead of the sound stages of Paramount. And thanks to Edith Head’s Oscar-winning costumes, Hepburn quickly became a fashion icon.
Film historian Leonard Maltin once said that the charm of the film is the parallel “between the character’s story and Audrey Hepburn. If you know anything about the background of the film itself, you can’t avoid thinking about that. It’s not just a fresh, charming performance, it is a fresh, charming performance by someone blossoming into stardom right before your eyes.”
While Wyler was in pre-production in Rome for “Holiday,” he went to England to search for young ingenues. He met Hepburn whom he recalled as “very alert, very smart, very talented and very ambitious.”
He told Thorold Dickinson, who had directed the actress in Secret People (1952), to leave the camera running after she had finished her official screen test so he could see her in a more relaxed state. He loved the natural Hepburn. “She was absolutely delightful,” Wyler was quoted as exclaiming when he saw the test. “Acting, looks and personality!”
Grace Kelly was one of the biggest stars at MGM when she met and fell in love with Monaco’s Prince Rainier. And the studio took great care to publicize their romance while she was making the romantic comedy The Swan (1956) in late 1955.
Kelly’s life totally changed when she married Rainier-there were rules and regulations that needed to be followed and no more movies. Kelly attempted a comeback in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) but her husband and his subjects disapproved. MGM opened The Swan, which was her penultimate film, in Los Angeles on the day she married, April 18, 1956. Her final movie was High Society, which opened three months after the royal wedding.
Two stars were born with The Love Parade (1929), Ernst Lubitsch’s deliciously naughty pre-Code musical comedy. Frenchman Maurice Chevalier was a star in France, but he had made only one movie, the totally forgettable Innocents of Paris (1929) in La La Land before Lubitsch hired him to play Count Alfred, a skirt-chasing, scandal magnet of a diplomat who is called home to the royal palace.
Lubitsch had a rough time finding the perfect leading lady to play the Queen without a Prince Consort. “Those who are attractive often have poor voices and those who can act and have good voices ae not so pleasing in their appearance,” he told the press. “The screen now demands a girl who looks well, can act well, and speak well.”
Enter Jeanette MacDonald, who had everything he was looking for in the kingdom’s unmarried ruler Queen Louise, who gets more than she bargains for when she marries and makes Count Alfred her Prince Consort.
The Lubitsch MacDonald was a far cry from the actress who starred in numerous musicals at MGM with Nelson Eddy. She’s saucy, near naked in a few scenes -remember this is pre-Code-and a near-perfect farceur. But MGM desexed her.
Chevalier, who was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for The Love Parade and The Big Pond in 1930, made three other films with MacDonald-1932’s One Hour with You and 1934’s The Merry Widow, both directed by Lubitsch, and Rouben Mamoulian’s 1932 Love Me Tonight.
The Love Parade was nominated for six Oscars and was Paramount’s biggest box office hit to date.
While The Love Parade was the epitome of sophistication, The Student Prince (1954) creaks. Based on Sigmund Romberg’s 1924 popular operetta-Dorothy Donnelly supplied the book and lyrics-The Student Prince revolves around the handsome young Prince Karl, who is sent incognito by his grandfather, the king of the fictional Karlsberg, to the university in Heidelberg. He wants his grandson to learn social skills, aka, become a man. Though he has been engaged since childhood to a princess he’s never met, Karl falls hard for a beautiful young barmaid named Kathie.
So should he run away with her and give up the throne? Or should he return home when his granddad dies and become the new King? Let’s just say Kathie shouldn’t give up her day job.
There was a lot of Sturm und Drang swirling around the MGM production-Lubitsch just happened to direct the lauded 1927 silent version The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg with Norma Shearer and Ramon Navarro-when the musical went initially into production in 1952. Star Mario Lanza had recorded all the songs, but the tempestuous performer didn’t show up on day one - or two or three. Eventually, he was shown the door by MGM and the movie was shelved.
Temporarily.
Using Lanza’s recordings, they put the film back into production with British actor Edmund Purdom lip-synching to Lanza. Ann Blyth, who had starred with Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) was cast as Kathie. And audiences finally got to hear her gorgeous soprano tones. Though Purdom, who also starred in The Egyptian (1954), didn’t catch on with American audiences, The Student Prince was a box office hit and received decent reviews from the critics.
MGM’s fluffy romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945) was sex symbol Hedy Lamarr’s final film for the studio. And it had to be rushed into production because she was pregnant with her daughter. But director Richard Thorpe and his cinematographer hid the fact with a lot of close-ups of her face.
She plays a beautiful princess of a European monarchy staying at a plush New York hotel while she attempts to rekindle a romance with an American reporter (Warner Anderson).
Enter Robert Walker, the studio’s boy-next-door leading man best known for playing the psychopath Bruno in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), as the sweet naïve bellboy who mistakes Hedy for a maid. When her identity is revealed, she insists he become her assistant while she’s in town. June Allyson also is on hand as an invalid living in the hotel who loves the bellboy. Will Hedy abdicate the throne to marry her reporter? Will Walker’s Jimmy realizes Allyson’s Leslie is the one who loves him?
Being a fairytale, you know how it ends!
It wasn’t a fairytale life, though, for Walker. Though his career was riding high at the time-he also starred with Judy Garland that year in The Clock-he was depressed and drinking throughout the production because his wife Jennifer Jones had left him in 1944 for producer David O. Selznick. Tragically, he died at 32 in 1951 during production of My Son John (1952).
The evening ends with Princess O’Rourke (1943), a delightful, Oscar-winning precursor to Roman Holiday. This time around, Olivia de Havilland plays Princess Maria, who is living in exile with her uncle (Charles Coburn) from her European kingdom in New York City due to World War II. She meets cute-and incognito-Robert Cummings, who plays a commercial airline pilot, his best buddy and co-pilot (Jack Carson) and his wife Jane Wyman. And you guessed it-Princess Maria and Cummings’ Eddie fall in love. When her identity is revealed, Eddie isn’t thrilled with the rules and regulations he must follow if he wants to marry her and become a prince consort. True love prevails, though, thanks to FDR’s beloved Scottie dog Fala (played by the scene-stealing Whiskers) coming to the rescue.
Norman Krasna, who made his directorial debut with Princess O’Rourke, won the Oscar for his sparkling screenplay.
