A Hollywood Costume Extravaganza(Charles E.J. Moulton) We arrive at the forth installment of personal accounts about Herbert Eyre Moulton’s movies in the book he wrote about his film work: “My Brilliant Film Career”.
This time the story is about the movie “Princess” from 1993.
This movie was released as “Piccolo Grande Amore” and information about it can be received under these links:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107823/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_110
https://www.mymovies.it/dizionario/recensione.asp?id=18371

After the stories he told us in “The Making of Attack Squadron”, “Herb Moulton & Clint Eastwood” and “The Making of an Erotic Thriller”, we now turn to “A Hollywood Costume Extravaganza”.
Let’s see what Herbie has to say:



In the script of the Italian-produced movie “Princess”, we find this direction:

“The door opens and an elderly, impeccably dressed BUTLER appears, with a silver tray piled high with magazines.

BUTLER
Excuse me, Your Highness, but you said you wanted these urgently.

Three guesses who the butler is, and the first two don’t count. That’s right: always the butler and never the boss, a somewhat wearying sentence I seem to be serving for a lifetime.
The setting for this Graustarkian love story is the mythical principality of Lichtenhaus, with its royal family modelled on the Grimaldi clan of Monaco. For the part of the princesses, meant to be Caroline and Stephanie, two of Vienna’s most important dramatic regal landmarks were chosen to offer their cinematic bailiwicks. Even the minor players were handpicked by the director, Carlo Vanzina, a one-time protegé of Fellini, no less. So, it was a noble line I was about to tangle with when I turned up at Vienna’s equally noble Hotel Imperial for the casting interview.
All right, yet another butler, but this one was special, for he was part of the household of His Royal Highness, Prince Maximilian, played by a favorite of ours, David Warner, not too long ago considered the quintessential Hamlet-for-our-time. His screen-break-through came in 1966 with the crazy title role in “Morgan, A Suitable Case For Treatment”. That made him a star and my wife and me fans of his for life. Some time later, our son Charlie joined the club with “Omen”, and when he told Warner that himself, Warner snorted: “Oh, God, that!” Our film-freak son was likewise excited by the casting of Paul Freeman as Otto, the villain of the piece, remembering his evil turn as Beloque, the Nazi heavy in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”: “500 000 watts of Nasty!”
My workaday duties for the prince were dispatched in two different palatial settings: the Hofburg, the Emperor Franz Josef’s old pad in the heart of Vienna, and, a few streets, and, a few streets and a couple centuries removed, the Theresianum, a superbly preserved baroque complex that once served as an officer’s training school and was named after its patroness, the Empress Maria Theresia, whose name it still bears as a college for budding diplomats. Its 18th century splendor has been has been kept lovingly intact, and we were to play our scene in the fabled library, a treasure house of precious inlaid wood and priceless antique leather volumes all the way up to the frescoed ceiling. It’s open to visitors only with a special pass and suitable pedigreed blue blood.
Our first scene however was set in Maximilian’s princely bedchamber in the Hofburg, and I had the honor of waking up the royal slugabed with this exquisitely cadenced speech:

BUTLER
Good morning, Your Highness. Today is May twelfth, the feast of Saint Ladislas Martyr, also your cousin of Romania. The temperature is falling slightly: a high of fifty-three degrees, and a low of forty-five.

The scenes with Mr. Warner were all of them fun, with his easy gift of friendly argle-bargle, both relaxed and refreshing. He even did me the kindness of autographing a portrait of himself which I’d removed from a calendar I’d bought at Stratford, a full-size head-and-shoulders done in pastels and dubbed “The Actor”. This was the first time he’d ever seen it!
“To Herbert, Many Thanks, David Warner, ‘The Actor’, Vienna 1993.”
Between takes we retreated to the cellar and the museum staff canteen. The scene there could well be entitled “Costumed Chaos in the Canteen”, for there happened to be another film, a real costume extravaganza, being shot in these hallowed precincts at the same time as ours, the latest Hollywood version of “The Three Musketeers”, the jokey one done with American accents and all, with Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland. The latter nearly brought down destruction on their entire operation by his tosspot antics in the all-night-fleshpots of Babylon-on-the-Danube. So, as things heated up, the Gods were already making rumbling noises.
Of course both companies had to break for meals simultaneously, turning the canteen into the scene of the most variegated costume orgies, Louis XIII and Monaco Gold-Braid, since the climactic reels of Lon Chaney’s “Phantom of the Opera”. It might have been better if they’d released those goings-on as newsreel stuff and jettisoned the two doomed feature films. But of that, more anon ...
The venue for my second scene was less crowded and yet more elegant: the Theresianum library doubling as the Lichtenhaus Council chamber, presided over by the sinister Otto, whose machinations were suddenly broken up by Maximilian’s no-nonsense and imperious entrance sweeping in, with me, padding breathlessly, in his wake. I was bearing the obligatory silver tray, onto which H.R.H. was lofting over his shoulder, without looking all manner of official-looking documents and letters. It was a dizzying journey across what seemed to me recently restored to its former glory.
I am pleased to report that while scampering behind the Prince, molto allegro, I was somehow nimble enough enough to catch everyy single one of the documents he was tossing over the royal epulet. Limping and tottering at his heels, dodging and feinting, but always maintaining my dignity, so I went, and a memorable sight it should be, too, if the movie ever gets released.
That’s precisely where the fate-keeps-on-happening routine comes in: a delicious light comedy script, first rate directing, handsome authentic settings, and stars like David Warner, Paul Freeman, and Susannah York as the Queen Mother, plus what Signor Vanzina promises in the press releases to be a sensational new Dutch actress, Barbara Snellenburg as Princess Sophia: “ This girl will be a star!”
And the best of Viennese-Italian-Dutch luck to them all, what with Moulton here as Major-Domo (Major Disaster would be more like it). For as far as my sources can discover, “Princess”, running true to form, hasn’t yet seen the light of day anywhere, or if it has it hasn’t reached Central Europe yet or any of the international publications we subscribe to. It might have been shown in Vanzina’s native Italy, but it was filmed in English for the English-speaking market.
As far as that all-too-jokey “Three Musketeers”-movie goes, well, of course it was a movie for the MTV-generation and a kind of a youthful introduction to Alexandre Dumas. Literary history for the Brat Pack with a huge Top 40 Hit as a PR-gag, Roddy, Sting and Bryan, the three musketeers of Rock ‘n Roll, singing it away, all for one and all for love. Me, Herbert Eyre Moulton, having shared tables with Kiefer and Charlie in the Hofburg canteen in Vienna, chatting away with good old David and hearing the Hollywood hotshots repeating their lines while drooling over their Wiener Schnitzels. Seriously now, Gang, could it be that this butler-playing character-actor is the subject not to a a pernicious, contagious curse, but a small blessing? Could it have rubbed off during those united lunchroom melées in the Hofburg cafeteria? After all, I wined and dined with the best. Maybe “Princess” will have its day in the sun after all. A sobering thought. And a good one. Just like the movie I was in.

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