Synopsis
The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) is a British-American romantic comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Laurence Olivier directed and co-starred opposite Marilyn Monroe in a film produced by Monroe's own company — which, as film history records, made for a famously combustible production.
London, 1911, coronation week. Charles, the Regent of Carpathia — stiff, self-important, allergic to being contradicted — spots an American chorus girl named Elsie at a cabaret and has her summoned to the palace for supper. Elsie arrives, drinks freely, says exactly what she thinks about European royalty, and falls asleep in a palace armchair. The Regent has never met anyone quite like her. That, more or less, is where the real film begins.
The on-set tension between Olivier and Monroe — documented extensively and later immortalised in My Week with Marilyn — actually seeps through the screen in useful ways. Monroe's Elsie plays naive, but never really is; she reads every room before anyone has noticed she arrived. Stream The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) online on iFILM.
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