Word: countesses
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Hatrack & the Countess. When Henry Mencken fought the Watch & Ward Society and was arrested in Boston for selling the issue of his American Mercury that contained the story of a casual prostitute called Hatrack (she took her customers to cemeteries*), Mencken retained Hays. When the Countess Cathcart was denied entry to the U.S. because she had had an affair with the Earl of Craven (the Earl was admitted without a fuss), Hays was at her side. In his autobiography, City Lawyer, Hays recalls that when the Countess was brought before a deportation board of inquiry, she asked: "But haven...
...night at roulette, sells the earrings. Bought by an Italian diplomat, the widower Baron Donati (De Sica), they travel with him to his new post-at Paris, where in the course of social events he renews acquaintance with his old friend, the count, and is introduced to the countess. Later, while the count is away on maneuvers, the baron executes a few of his own. To the amazement of both parties to the little intrigue, people of the world as they think themselves to be, they fall in love...
Bitter Decline. With Stendhalian suddenness, the mood of the picture breaks. The countess, who has never had to choose between anything more serious than dancing partners, suddenly faces a cruel choice between love and loyalty. The count comes home, sees what has happened, tries hard to calm her. She takes a trip. The baron's letters follow her. She rushes back to throw herself in his arms...
Thereupon the count takes a decisive hand. He tells the baron-who by now has given the earrings to the countess-who it was that gave them to her first. Shocked at her unfeeling duplicity in accepting such a gift, the baron breaks off his suit. The countess goes into a decline, the count into a mounting rage. In the end he challenges the baron to a duel. In rushing to prevent it, the countess has a heart attack and dies...
...Hollywood screen. Gone are all the mannerisms, the soulful eye-woggling and love-me-please pout. He is the military aristocrat to the last shoe button, going a fair piece down Swann's Way with no illusions-an intelligent, very French, clearly self-knowing performance. As the countess, Darrieux nicely achieves an odd mix of innocence, flirtiness, and neurasthenia, but cannot quite hold her own with the competition...