Word: mudlark
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...Mudlark (20th Century-Fox), based on Theodore Bonnet's 1949 bestseller, embroiders the legend of the slum waif whose naive devotion to the Crown coaxed Queen Victoria out of a 15-year solitude and awakened Parliament to its social responsibilities. Produced in England by U.S. moviemakers, the picture drew some British sniping, even before the cameras turned, for its casting of Irene Dunne as the Queen. The sniping was resumed when the film was picked as Britain's Command Performance movie in November...
...their one public movie of the year, Britain's royal family turned out for the command performance of The Mudlark, starring Irene Dunne as Queen Victoria, later met and mingled with some visiting Hollywood royalty, including Gloria Swanson...
...this breezy tale about a seven-year-old ragamuffin who wandered into Queen Victoria's dining room one evening, and thereby briefly set the Empire on its ear. Since it appears that something like this did happen once upon a time, Author Bonnet's job in The Mudlark was to fluff up the fact into a light historical novel. This, with the help of a lot of imaginary speeches and caperings by the Queen, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, he has done well enough...
Little Wheeler, who started the whole thing, was a "mudlark" who worked the Thames for the leavings of the tides. He didn't know much, but one of the things he knew was that the Queen was the mother of her country; motherless Master Wheeler made up his mind to see her. So past the Windsor Castle guards he slipped one foggy November night, into the castle yard, and then, startlingly, down into an open coalhole. When the grimy urchin eventually groped his way upstairs and surprised the Queen at her dinner table, she forgot her composure sufficiently...
There is just enough ingenuity in The Mudlark's conception and skill in its writing to sustain a fine long story. Author Bonnet has chosen to pad it outrageously in order to fill the regulation-size novel. The book suffers as a result, but it is pleasant enough for an afternoon of hammock reading...