Echo de Montenegro

M. Danilo Petrovic, Crown Prince of Montenegro until that realm was united with Jugoslavia (1918), entered a cinema theatre in Paris, last week, sat down, composed himself to view lily-fleshed Mae Murray in The Merry Widow. . . . Next day a wrathful M. Danilo Petrovic strode into the office of M. Joseph Paul-Boncour, famed barrister, repeatedly French representative before the League of Nations, known because of his silver tongue as "The Socialist Demosthenes," several times retained as an attorney by the abdicated Crown Prince Carol of Rumania. For an hour the statesman-lawyer and the onetime prince laid their heads together. Then M. Paul-Bancour instituted suit for libel in behalf of his new client against the producers of The Merry Widow. To newsgatherers M. Danilo explained passionately: "There is a 'Prince Danilo' in that film. . . . Gentlemen, I am Prince Danilo. There is no other! ... I am unspeakably pained to see myself travestied by a cheap cinema star* as staggering drunk through the Bois de Boulogne and dancing on tables in Maxim's, and at the same time trying to marry a widow for her fortune. I demand the immediate payment of 50,000 francs [$2,000]. The film constitutes a serious libel on myself, my family, chiefly my sister, the Queen of Italy, and on my late lamented country, Montenegro. "Although The Merry Widow has been presented as a light opera for over 20 years, I have never until now raised any objection because the character of 'Danilo' has always been represented as pleasing and sympathetic."

--John Gilbert.