Word: countesses
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...fact that the Germans refused to believe that the documents were genuine) to fill half-a-dozen run-of-the-mill espionage thrillers. In addition, Mankiewicz's screenplay contains some effective frills of its own: a love affair between the valet and a former employer, a beautiful Polish countess, some bright epigrammatic dialogue, and an array of skillfully drawn diplomatic officials. Particularly clever use is made of the contrasting personalities of the pompous, victimized, British Ambassador (superbly played by Walter Hampden) and the disdainful German Ambassador (equally well played by John Wengraf), who keeps insisting to his "juvenile delinquent" colleagues...
...plays the villain with just the right amount of quietness and self-assurance; if, at times, he seems a bit too suave and sophisticated, the fault lies with the script. Daniel Darrieux has comparatively few lines but her sly captivating smile suggests the essential shrewdness and unscrupulousness of the countess better than any script could...
Sleek and slinky Countess Pia Bellentani was an amateur poetess and a woman of passion. She had long regarded her relations with the middle-aged count, her husband, as a "purely formal duty." Her friend Carlo Sacchi the silk merchant was an amateur poet as well and only slightly less passionate. In Italy's caviar and champagne set during the early '40s, the two made a neatly rhymed couplet, and even Signora Sacchi nodded at their idyl on the theory that it was only a "passing passion...
...From Countess Pia's point of view, however, it passed too fast. By 1948, her poetry had taken on a brooding tone, and Carlo's had become downright morbid: "I see death moving about in the room." One night in September of that year, Pia and her husband, the Sacchis and Sacchi's newest girl friend were all dining together in sophisticated splendor at the sumptuous Villa d'Este. "An ill wind is blowing for me tonight," murmured Sacchi darkly. Eying Sacchi's new girl, Pia asked a friend: "What...
Caviar & Melba. Beverley began his glamorous career (in 1921) as a reporter for London's gaudy Sunday Dispatch. The aim of this journal was to supply its readers with "an astonishing array of obscure countesses, viscountesses and . . . wives of baronets, all pontificating with monotonous regularity on the problems of the hour." As many of these noble ladies were "barely literate," it was up to Beverley to invent their opinions in order to have something to report. The rest of his job was writing what the Dispatch called "caviar-and-champagne" items, e.g., MYSTERY DOCTOR DENIES KNOWLEDGE OF COUNTESS; ARAB...