American Royalty: Mid-Century Movie Stars in Crowns and Tiaras

 

“Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have immortal longings in me”
– Cleopatra,  Antony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare

 

 

“I woke up one morning to find I was famous. I bought a white Rolls-Royce and drove down Sunset Boulevard, wearing dark specs and a white suit, waving like the Queen Mum.”
– Peter O’Toole

 

 

She keeps Moët et Chandon
In her pretty cabinet
‘Let them eat cake, ‘ she says
Just like Marie Antoinette
A built-in remedy
For Kruschev and Kennedy
At anytime an invitation
You can’t decline

Caviar and cigarettes
Well versed in etiquette
Extraordinarily nice
She’s a Killer Queen
Gunpowder, gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
Anytime

Recommended at the price
Insatiable an appetite
Wanna try?
– Killer Queen, Queen

 

 

“They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Princess and the Pea

 

 

“How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.”
― Oscar Wilde, Salome

 

 

I’d like to be a queen in people’s hearts but I don’t see myself being queen of this country.
– Princess Diana

 

 

“She married a staple-gun queen twelve years ago and has been more or less waiting for the annulment to come through ever since, although she tells people who ask that he died in a mudslide.”
– Andy Warhol

 

 

“This is the greatest mystery of the human mind–the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.”
― John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday

 

 

“Ah, Princess,” Dallben said, with a furrowed smile, “a crown is more discomfort than adornment. If you have learned that, you have already learned much.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

 

 

“One of the world’s most popular entertainments is a deck of cards, which contains thirteen each of four suits, highlighted by kings, queens and jacks, who are possibly the queen’s younger, more attractive boyfriends.”
― Lemony Snicket

 

 

“If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

 

 

And one Hollywood actress who became European royalty