Word: thrones
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...grave. Everything about it is weakly done: the acting, the direction, the sets, and the plot. Even George Sanders, of whom much more should be expected, fails to rise to the occasion. He plays the part of a villainous usurper by the name of Gurko who is seeking the throne and the hand of Joan Bennett. Joan, however, knows better and with the help of the second of the Cristo line she foils him in every respect. This fellow Cristo (Louis Hayward) is less convincing in his portrayal of virility than is Alice Faye in the role of Virtue Rewarded...
...whom he had been estranged since 1934 ("The King tires of everything; some day he will tire of me," she had said). Near her sat the two of his four sons whom hemophilia had not killed: tall, goodlooking Don Juan (for whom he had renounced his claim to the throne) and deaf Don Jaime. Wild-eyed Infanta Beatriz was there, and Alfonso may have remembered that she had driven the car in which Son Gonzalo was riding the night a slight accident made him bleed to death (the King had paced his room that night, sobbing like a child...
Japan's grave-faced Emperor Hirohito last week wrapped himself in a silken robe embroidered with the sacred Paulownia blossom and stepped into the innermost sanctuary of the Imperial Palace to worship his mythological ancestress, the Sun Goddess, celebrating the ascension to the throne 2,601 years ago of his lineal ancestor, the great Emperor Jimmu. Aside from the fact, of no great importance, that there is no historical evidence that Jimmu ever existed, there was a striking difference between the two ceremonies 2.601 years apart: whereas Jimmu had given thanks to the Sun Goddess after his conquest...
...lesser shrines, as in the Imperial Sanctuary, the ceremonies proclaimed Japan's faith in what the Japanese call "the way of the gods": patriotism, unity and belief in the imperial divine ancestry. Proclaimed Home Minister Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma as the great day ended: "Japan has a sacred throne. . . . Japan's imperial rule is therefore an extension of Heaven...
...Francisco Franco palavered along the Mediterranean with Dictator Mussolini and Marshal Pétain (see p. 27) his onetime sovereign added another egg to the Spanish omelet. Dandified, talkative King Alfonso XIII, deathly ill with angina pectoris in Rome, announced that a month ago he had abdicated his vacant throne in favor of his son, 27-year-old Don Juan, Prince of the Asturias...