The Prince and the Showgirl

I haven't done a post on The Prince and the Showgirl before, so when it showed up on the TCM schedule recently I made a point of DVRing it to watch and do a post here.

The scene is London, 1911. Edward VII had died the previous year, leaving George V to become the new monarch. But the official coronation with all the pageantry isn't held right when the old monarch dies, as it takes time to bring in all the other crowned heads of state to attend the coronation. Among them is the royal family of Carpathia (not of course a real state, but part of modern-day Romania and Hungary in the northern part of the Balkans). They have a king in Nicholas VIII (Jeremy Spenser), but he's still only 16 so he won't ascend to the throne until he's 18, with his father the Grand Duke (Laurence Olivier) being regent, not being king himself because he only married into the family. The British Foreign Office sends envoy Northbrook (Richard Wattis) to make certain the Regent's stay in London is pleasant, because there's a dicey political situation in Carpathia.

The Regent having been in a marriage of convenience and now being a widower is perfectly comfortable seeing women, at least insofar as royal protocal will let him. In London, he plans to meet the star of an American revue, The Coconut Girl. But when he meets the cast, it's actually one of the chorus girls he winds up desiring, young Elsie from Milwaukee (Marilyn Monroe). He invites her back to the embassy for dinner, and Northbrook reluctantly goes along despite Elsie being American (the European disdain for American bluntness being on display here) and her not knowing anything about royal protocol.

The Regent plans to have dinner alone with Elsie, which is not what she expected at all. While the two are alone, the Regent starts discussing the Carpathian political situation on the phone, not realizing Elsie is really smarter than you'd think at first site. The Regent is of Hungarian descent, so not much of a fan of the Kaiser. Nicholas, however, is of German descent, and is thinking seriously of moving Carpathia closer to Germany politically when he takes the throne. He also cavorts with reformers whom his father doesn't like and even imprisons. To secure his hold, Dad has told the switchboard operator at the embassy not to let Nicholas receive or make any phone calls.

None of this should really matter to Elsie, but she winds up getting more involved in the Carpathian situation mainly because everybody in the royal family seems to like her. The Queen Dowager (Sybil Thorndike) lets her stay as a temporary lady-in-waiting, allowing her to attend the coronation and events surrounding it. It also lets her get involved in the spat between father and son, and she decides to try to patch things up as a family affair as much as a political matter.

The Prince and the Showgirl wasn't an easy production, as documented in the film My Week With Marilyn from the beginning of this decade. Olivier directed as well as starred, and he was none too happy with Monroe. To be fair, she did have a reputation for being difficult. But to be fair, a bigger problem is with Olivier's performance, making the Regent look like a man you'd wonder what anybody would see in him. Instead of trying to rein in Marilyn, he should have been rening himself in.

The movie certainly looks nice in terms of sets and costumes, with the mockup of Westminster Abbey looking particularly good. However, that scene looks out of place with the action of the rest of the movie.

All in all, The Prince and the Showgirl isn't a bad movie, but it's also not the first thing I'd suggest to introduce people to either Olivier or Monroe. It's available on DVD too.