Word: empresse
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...CATHERINE, THE PORTRAIT OF AN EMPRESS-Gina Kaus-Viking...
...about. Last week appeared neither the first nor the last of her biographies, but one of the best. Readers whose vague knowledge of 18th Century Russia had been based on vague cinemas, had their smatterings bettered and corrected by it; those who were more interested in women than in empresses found Catherine, The Portrait of an Empress, an extraordinary woman's life well told...
...Frederica, the unconsidered daughter of a German princeling, she was brought up to be a pawn of European diplomacy; at 14 she was sent to Russia to marry her third cousin, Grand Duke Peter (half-German). For 17 years she lived at the Russian court, waiting for the aging Empress Elizabeth to die, waiting-what was worse-for her neurotic husband to make her his wife. The first nine of those years they lived together, and Catherine did her wifely duty as her husband saw it: at night, in bed, she helped him play with dolls, in the daytime...
...Husband Peter connived at this intrigue even more openly. When Poniatowski was recalled to his native Poland, Catherine solaced herself with a muscular Guards lieutenant named Orlov. But meantime she was making herself as popular as Peter, with his anti-Russian fads, was making himself disliked. When the old Empress finally died Catherine and Peter were at open enmity. A successful coup d'état upped Catherine to the imperial throne. Her lover's brother murdered the miserable Peter-without her knowledge or consent, says Biographer Kaus. Rather than punish her lover, Catherine shouldered the blame...
...salient characteristics might suggest that, for the purpose of manufacturing profitable moving pictures, Director von Sternberg and Cinemactress Dietrich constituted less than an ideal partnership. To the executives of Paramount, on the other hand, they justified a series of five pictures (Morocco, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress), few of which made any money. The sixth, The Devil Is a Woman, is notable chiefly because, since Director von Sternberg's contract has not been renewed, it terminates this unfortunate alliance by illustrating its disadvantages even more strikingly than its predecessors...