The Trouble With Royalty-Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Roman Holiday, starring Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, story by Dalton Trumbo, a Hollywood Ten member not originally created in the red scare Cold War 1953s but only in 2003 on the re-released

 

No question it was tough being royalty in say the 16^th, 17^th,18^th, 19^th centuries especially in places like England, France and Russia where you very likely might lose your head, literally, if you made a false move, or were just in the way of human progress. Not so in the 1950s when the royal remnant was just hanging around collecting payments, kissing babies and opening fairs. The film under review, Roman Holiday, puts a little different spin of the toughness question, the problem with celebrity, acting royally in a democratic age, and being in the spotlight without any relief for what after all is an accident of birth. Of course this romantic comedy written by the red scare Cold War Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo doesn’t deal seriously with the issue of why there is a need for even a remnant of royalty in a democratic age but does in a whimsical romantic comic way deal with that problem of just trying to be an ordinary Jill when the world is always watching you.       

Here is the dilemma, here is Princess Anne, played by fetching Audrey Hepburn, of some unnamed European country who is on a whirlwind tour of that continent trying to drum up support for her country and do the whole endless scheduled obligatory rounds that royal prestige requires. But our Princess is a bit feisty, is ready to fly the coop, has had it with ceremony, schedule and formality. That flying the coop is what drives this storyline.

Once she flies the coop from her country’s embassy in Rome (after having been given a sedative to calm her nerves when she freaked out with the routine she had to put up with) she is picked up by Joe, played by Gregory Peck, an average democratic American Joe who just so happened to be a newspaper reporter in exile in Rome waiting for his big scoop to fly away from his own coop. Because the Princess was acting dopey he eventually chastely brought her to his apartment to sleep it off. Naturally too once the embassy found out she had escaped they were in a frenzy to find her, bring her back to the fold. The chase is on.  

Of course Joe did not know at first who he had on his hands, but once he got wise he saw nothing by blue skies and big bylines in his future. A big fat exclusive on the secret life of a real live Princess, guys would have killed, would still today do so maybe worse, for that kind of up close and personal story. Complete with photographs (to be provided surreptitiously by a “flash” friend and associate). The Princess of course wants to remain anonymous and the game of cat and mice proceeds. But Anne really did want to see how the other half lived, had her own wish list of fantasies she would like to play out. And Joe obliged her. Things got sticky though as Anne had to turn back into Cinderella at midnight because this unlikely pair fell in love just that quickly. But commoners and princesses don’t mix in the real world, usually, and princesses of presumably small and unnamed countries have certain duties and responsibilities to uphold so they part, part to eventually go their separate ways. Without a hint of scandal since Joe forsook his big chance once the deal went down. This one was slow in spots but is a prime example of a feel good classic romance even if thwarted, 1950s style. And Audrey Hepburn still looks fetching over fifty years later.