Word: xvi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spokesman at 26 for Washington at the Continental Congress; brilliant assistant to the "financier of the Revolution," Robert Morris (no kin); leading framer and "stylist" of the Constitution; first U. S. minister to France. But his name has come down as the "notorious aristocrat" who intrigued with Louis XVI against the French Revolution; who deliberately let his archenemy, Tom Paine, rot in Luxembourg Prison; who speculated in U. S. lands, wheat, tobacco, the public debt...
...Gouverneur Morris' complete diaries (edited by his great-granddaughter) covering the years in France (1789-1793) which blackened his name for a century and a half. Therein Morris does more to clear his later reputation than others have managed to do for him. It is true that Louis XVI's ministers wore a trench to his door. "This Morning," runs a typical entry, "employ myself in preparing a Form of Government for this Country." He was mistaken in his methods, blinded by vanity and ignorance of the French common people. But Morris' Monarchist sympathies were far from...
Prodding Louis XVI to accept a liberal constitution he argued that the French, having no such schooling in democracy as pre-Revolution Americans, would first swing to bloody revolutionary extremes, then fall into the hands of unscrupulous dictators. French rulers, said Morris, had so corrupted the French masses that they "have no Religion but their Priests, no Law but their Superiors, no Moral but their Interest." Gouverneur Morris appears, in short, as a well-meaning liberal, preaching moderation to people who, on the Right and Left alike, wanted none of it. As for his scheme to smuggle Louis XVI...
...give her the support she deserves. His portrayal of Court Fersen is un convincing; in the emotional heights of tender love scenes, he appears stiff and wooden. What the film suffers in this respect, however, is more than compensated for by Robert Morley in his role as Louis XVI. This young actor does a masterful picturization of the loyal, but pathetically simple King, who would rather fashion wooden soldiers than attend to affairs to state...
...honest, nimble play, Oscar Wilde is made a much more important one by British Actor Robert Morley's performance of the title role. Already known to U.S. cinemagoers for his fine Louis XVI in the current Marie Antoinette, Morley achieved stage fame overnight for his Oscar Wilde. From start to finish he is Wilde: whether softly purring his feline epigrams ("Frank [Harris] is asked to all the best houses-once"; "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing"); or fighting in court, desperate and cornered, for his freedom; or sinking...