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| PRINCE AND THE
SHOWGIRL, THE (director:
Laurence Olivier; screenwriter: Terence Rattigan/from
the play 'The Sleeping Prince' by Terence Rattigan;
cinematographer: Jack Cardiff; editor: Jack Harris;
music: Richard Addinsell; cast: Marilyn
Monroe (Elsie Marina), Laurence Olivier (Charles, Prince
Regent), Sybil Thorndike (Queen Dowager), Richard Wattis
(Northbrooke), Jeremy Spenser (King Nicholas);
Runtime: 118; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Laurence
Olivier; Warner Bros.; 1957-UK) "Genial but Dull and heavy-handed Ruritarian comedy that co-stars the 50-year-old British stage great Olivier with the 30-year-old American Hollywood sex queen Marilyn Monroe." Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz Laurence Olivier ("Henry V"/"Hamlet"/"Richard 111") directs and stars in this genial but dull and heavy-handed Ruritarian comedy that co-stars the 50-year-old British stage great Olivier with the 30-year-old American Hollywood sex queen Marilyn Monroe. There was a coldness between them as the stars dueled for audience appeal, something Marilyn won easily. It's based on the hit play 'The Sleeping Prince' by Terence Rattigan, in which he scripted. Colin Clark's memoir “The
Prince, the Showgirl and Me” is an
entertaining insider's peek inside the making of that
film, in which he was hired as third assistant
director. In 2011 the book was made into a film
entitled 'My Week With Marilyn,' in which the
23-year-old Colin has a field day ripping into Sir
Larry and telling of, the recently married to
intellectual playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn's
vulnerabilities. The film makes an excellent
companion piece for The Prince and the Showgirl. The
stuffy Grandduke Charles (Laurence
Olivier), the prince-regent of
Carpathia, a fictitious Balkan country, is in
London in 1911 for the coronation of King George V and
kills an evening in town by visiting the
Coconut Girl Club where he is attracted to a saucy
American showgirl understudy Elsie Marina (Marilyn
Monroe), whom he meets backstage. He orders his
British attaché Northbrooke (Richard
Wattis) to invite her to the embassy for a
secret private supper. During the course of her
overnight stay, the Grandduke's rebellious,
pro-German, reform-minded snippy 16-year-old son
Nicholas (Jeremy Spenser), who will inherit in
18 months the kingdom from his father, makes a
phone call in German planning a coup on his uptight
and conniving to make war father but is overheard by
the German speaking Milwaukee girl Elsie. When the
feisty but dotty hard-of-hearing queen-dowager
(Sybil Thorndike), the mother-in-law of the Grandduke
Charles, decides to make Elsie
the lady-in-waiting for the coronation day, it
gives the good-hearted and not so dumb American a
chance to use her knowledge to reconcile father and
son. Despite mostly positive reviews on its theater release, the pic was a box-office flop. REVIEWED ON 8/4/2012 GRADE: B- Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ |