Rent The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)

Most enjoyable - The Prince and the Showgirl review by RM

Brilliant acting by all main characters. Comic contrast between Olivier's formal role and Monroe's playful character. Entertaining and fun. Family viewing.

A 1957 film, but does not feel dated because it was portraying a historic period (1911).

DVD beautifully produced.

One of the best performances by Marilyn Monroe in a role showcasing her acting skills and unique tongue-in-cheek comic charm. For Laurence Olivier, this was a light-hearted departure from his usual weighty roles.

Of Diplomacy and Dimples - The Prince and the Showgirl review by CH

The middle-European tangle of events which yielded the Great War has brought much commentary. What all can agree is that these had roots which went back centuries, and all grew rapidly around 1910. And yet, even with the shooting in Sarajevo in 1914 many did not anticipate the War and all its consequences.

No historian has mentioned the part played in all this by Marilyn Monroe.

As she puts it, “your Balkan revolutions, you have them all the time!” She is addressing the Regent of Carpathia, which did not exist but sounds as though it should. How does she find a place in territory chronicled by A.J.P. Taylor and Christopher Clark? She is the eponymous hoofer in The Prince and The Showgirl (1957) who has stayed in London in 1911, and is among the cast visited backstage by the Regent who is also there for the Coronation of George V.

He is so struck by her that she receives an invitation to meet him at the Embassy in Belgrave Square. Flattered, she also wises up when she realises that there will be only the two of them (cold food means that flunkeys are not needed to serve it). Marilyn is in well-nigh every scene – and blows the Regent off the screen. An achievement all the more remarkable in that the he is none other than Laurence Olivier who also directed but did not dissuade himself from giving one of those hammy performances to which he was prone. The accent! The hair! One fully expects him to give her (oft-wiggling) bum a cackling slap, a routine which Sid James made all his own.

Written by Terence Rattigan from his own play, it would be far less without Marilyn who understood comedy and is well supported by an array of English actors, among them Sybil Thorndike as something of a comic Dowager while the chorus line includes Vera Day and Jean Kent – and, in another outing as a supercillious official, Richard Wattis gets to wear a costume grander than his usual suit and tie. The plot turns around the succession in Carpathia, the King-to-be played by Jeremy Spenser who a few years earlier had given a tremendous performance as a troubled boy in Edge of Divorce.

Born in 1937, Spenser is the only main player in this film who is still here. He vanished from the scene in the late-Sixties. Would that somebody could prevail upon him to recall his work on this and other films. As it is, The Prince and The Showgirl is now perhaps not as often seen as the charming My Week with Marilyn (2011) which sprang from Colin Clark's memoir of working with her and Olivier on this very film.

At almost two hours, The Prince and The Showgirl is perhaps too long but it makes good use of a limited set, from which it sometimes breaks out for a ballroom and the Abbey, and Rattigan's dialogue includes such sharp lines as a showgirl's assertion, “I wouldn't miss the Coronation for the whole Body of Guards!”

Meanwhile, Marilyn makes another apt political point: “that's the thing about General Elections – you never know who is going win.”

all a bit silly - The Prince and the Showgirl review by pete b

sort of okay, but never really believable. probably an interesting piece for students of cinema history.