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...becomes Emperor Karl's secret agent in World War I; her scurryings around in Parisian underthings, waving secret documents, make Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd look like a timid traveler in an old suit of B.V.D.s. When Kristina collapses into the arms of Spain's Alfonso XIII, her sister, Countess Zia, takes over for the between-wars decades. When at last, after more than 700 pages, Hitler and the Russians start divvying up what's left of the Dukay world, many a reader may feel an unreasonable sense of relief...
After Gaona married Carmen Moragas, one of the most beautiful women of the Spanish stage, resentful aficionados pelted him with cushions and bottles. He swore never to fight in Madrid again. Dark-eyed Carmen soon left him to become the great & good friend of Alfonso XIII, but Mexican legend has since reversed the story: it was the Indian boy who got the king's girl...
Alexander Dumas would smile at his characters in this gem: they are all as he would have them, exceptionally good or horrendously evil. Vincent Price as Richelieu is oily and sinister, with just a dash of greed. Frank Morgan as Louis XIII is weak and vacillating. The heroine is June Allyson, who is totally incapable of portraying anyone not pure and naive. Lana Turner plays Lady de Winter, the cruel, unscrupulous femme fatale; she is grotesquely miscast, but retains a certain innate charm...
...machinery of such solemn decisions grinds slow and small. Some 200 years ago, a monk wrote to Pope Clement XIII begging him to define the bodily Assumption of Mary as "a most certain dogma of faith." Clement passed the matter on to the Holy Office. In 1863, Spain's Queen Elizabeth made the same request. Pius IX, though recognizing the Queen's good intentions, was somewhat annoyed at a temporal sovereign's interference in sacred matters. He replied: "I am not worthy to publish such a dogma. The wishes of Your Majesty, the holy wishes of Your...
Command performances were agony. Once, playing before Portugal's Queen Amalia, Bauer found the court piano in such bad shape that half the keys stuck. At the Spanish court he had to struggle through a Beethoven sonata while twelve-year-old Alfonso XIII romped about him, and the Infanta Isabella chattered all the way through the piece ("How like Wagner . . . This reminds me of Chopin...