RIP, Princess and Queen

Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies / A lass unparalleled..

Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2

Birthday Beauties

I'm normally not very fond at all of February, but it's clear that there is some strange magic to that unpromising month, if only based on the extraordinary gifts it seems to have bestowed on what would appear to be a disproportionate number of children born nine months later.

Today, really, is an embarrassment of gorgeousness...

We start with the woman Cecil Beaton described as an "Asian Venus," the extraordinary Princess Fawzia of Egypt. Today she's a little old lady living quietly in Cairo, but in her time she was rather a handful, as well as being the Shah's first wife.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have art-film darling Tilda Swinton, seen here, I believe, doing an al fresco Carrie Nye impression. Or is it Cybill Shepherd?

Joel McCrea ended up a grizzled character player in Westerns, but in his youth he was a gleamingly handsome leading man at the dawn of the Talkies.

Ah, Lady Olivier. Mercurial, brilliant, and capable of inspiring, based on all one reads, almost boundless reserves of affection among friends and loved ones despite infinitely bad behavior, Vivien Leigh never quite recovered from the strain of being married to one of the few people on earth perhaps as lovely as she and yet more able than she to be regarded even more for his acting than his entrancing bone structure.

Speaking of which, bone structure would likely have carried this young man far (or at least further than sleazy Joan Collins TV movies) had not an unkind fate intervened. Somehow one feels there is an element of mercy in Jon-Erik Hexum's having been saved from a future as the David Hasselhoff of the 2020s...

If Hexum's presence here adds a note of the tragic, let's scurry right back to the ridiculous and consider the last of our birthday belles and beaux, the smoldering Miss Elke Sommer. Here we see her in full Scandinavian sexbomb bloom, in a still doubtless drawn from one of the almost endless number of All Star International Productions of the 1960s to which she contributed ... well, not very much at all.

The last I heard of her she was feuding with Zsa-Zsa over who was or was not a bigger has-been, but that was years ago. I'm sure it's still a question she's mulling over, but even so I hope she's having a happy birthday.

Goodbye to All That

Living in Cairo, it's hard to forget the 26th of July, if only because one of the main streets through town has been given the name (Shar'a sita wa ashreen iulio in Arabic, which really is a mouthful to try and relay to a taxi driver).

What the date marks, though, is the abdication of Egypt's King Farouk, an event that caused headlines in 1952:

Farouk's abdication marked the end of over 1oo year's rule by his family, who originally arrived in the country as Albanian soldiers of fortune in service to the Ottoman Sultan.

The revolution began a repudiation of all things royal, starting with the King's ubiquitous portraits.

Unlike their Russian or French counterparts, the family all escaped safely. Farouk departed Alexandria on the royal yacht, accompanied by hundreds of pieces of luggage, his daughters, and his second wife, Nariman, a commoner whom he had married only a year earlier in a (fruitless) search for renewed popularity and (more successfully) an heir, after having divorced his first Queen, Farida, for her unfortunate habit of having daughters.

Nariman never made much a splash; even at her wedding, she was overshadowed by her stunning sister-in-law, the Princess Fawzia (who looked not well pleased at the whole affair):

Farouk and family spent the first few years of exile in Italy, living in many ways much the same life they had in Egypt.

Nariman eventually returned to Cairo, marrying several more times and ending her days in a simple apartment in the city's Heliopolis neighborhood.

Farouk's later exile was, to be kind, undistinguished, involving a great dealing of gambling, eating, drinking, and cavorting with showgirls. He is now most remembered, perhaps, for the only witty thing he ever said:

"The whole world is in revolt. Soon there will be only five Kings left - the King of England and the kings of diamonds, hearts, spades, and clubs."

Bonus Splendour

Tehran, 1942: a pensive, Klimtische moment

Posting about Princess Fawzia of Egypt got me thinking - and googling. I quickly discovered that there's too much Fawzia out there on the web not to share. This evocative portrait is courtesy of Kodak Agfa's marvelous collection - check it out.

Fun fact: on top of being a Princess of Egypt, a sometime Queen of Iran, and stunning to look at - she's Albanian! And believe you me, therein lies a tale...

Image du Jour

Fawzia of Egypt, by Beaton

You don't get a whole lot more spectacular than Her Royal and Imperial Highness, Princess Fawzia of Egypt, Queen of Iran - sister of King Farouk, first wife of the last Shah, and probably the 20th century royal most likely to be mistaken for Hedy Lamarr. She's also the oldest surviving member of the Egyptian royal family, living quietly in Cairo, having remarried and removed herself entirely from public life after the Egyptian revolution of 1952.

If you care to, you can find out more about her here, here, or here.