6/13/2022

I quite enjoyed this rather daft story about a small European Kingdom presided over by "King Eric" (Lowell Sherman) - an ostensibly feeble monarch who is being manipulated by his wife "Queen Martha" (Nance O'Neil), his independently-minded daughter "Anne" (Mary Astor) and his rebellious Prime Minister "Gen. Northrup" (Robert Warwick) who, in cahoots with his wife, has arranged a convenient marriage for the unwilling daughter. The princess, meantime, has her eyes on the King's secretary "Granton" (Anthony Bushell) and when her mother travels to the USA, they plan to elope - except an attempted coup gets in their way... It's only 75 minutes, this. It features some well timed, lightly comedic, performances from Sherman and O'Neil, and given it can't have had much of a budget - it is really quite a well stitched together, good looking caper. For some reason, they altered the title from Robert Sherwood's play "The Queen's Husband" - which I think is more illustrative of the story than this rather misleadingly risqué one - it doesn't really help!