Happy Holiday

It turns out Ms. Spenser hadn’t seen Roman Holiday (1953) so we queued it up. It took several weeks of “Short Wait” at the top of our list, but it finally showed up. In case you haven’t seen it, let me say that it is great.

It starts with Audrey Hepburn as princess of an unnamed European country (Marie of Romania?). It shows her at a diplomatic reception in Rome, unable to sit down while she is greeting dignitaries. She slips a shoe off under her skirt, and can’t get it back on. We also meet Gregory Peck, a reporter for an English language paper, playing poker with some of the boys.

Hepburn has a bit of a meltdown after the reception, and they give her a sedative to help her sleep. It doesn’t work - she just gets loopy. She sneaks out the window and wanders around town. Peck finds her snoozing by a fountain. He assumes she is drunk, and takes her to his apartment to sleep it off. When she passes out on the bed, he dumps her onto the sofa and takes it himself, transferring her back when he wakes up first.

When he goes to work, he finds out that the princess has “taken ill”, and realizes who he has in his apartment. So he decides to show her the town and take his photographer friend (Eddie Albert, acting very bohemian) - and make it into an exclusive story.

Of course, they fall in love. The wonderful thing is that Hepburn and Peck don’t live happily ever after. She has to go back to princessing. He decides not to do the story, and at the end, she shakes his hand at a press conference, and Albert gives her the photos.

I was glad to see that this movie is so good. It was full of those little touches that make classic comedies so much fun, like the scene with the shoes at the start. I want to say director William Wyler looked like Lubitsch or Preston Sturges in some scenes, but maybe it’s just good old classic movie making.

Ms. Spenser liked it too, but she fell asleep for a lot of it. No judgement, just a long day.