The Royal Treatment
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television THE ROYAL TREATMENT BY MARVIN KITMAN The 25th anniversary celebration of Queen Elizabeth's rise to power began in the colonies on May 31 with The Silver Jubilee Gala, a BBC show...
...I had to get dressed and go to work...
...It is therefore difficult to understand why these newspeople were so obsequious instead of being their usual hard-hitting selves...
...The Colonial Office, I have learned from sources inside Whitehall, has completely scrapped plans to regain the colonies...
...The orgy of promonarchist sentiment was not without its positive side: It raised the possibility that we might see this sort of thing more regularly, perhaps even as a weekly series...
...Another source, who had eavesdropped on a walking tour of Hamp-stead Heath, claimed they keep her under ermine wraps because her voice is a composite of Anna Maria Alberghetti's, Jackie Onassis' and Carmelita Pope's...
...Deep down, she must think she is another Eleanor Roosevelt, the way she is continually walking about and shaking hands with the masses...
...To this humble colonial, the Queen was the primary source of interest...
...On intimate, informal state occasions, I was told, Elizabeth sounds like Minnie Mouse...
...Nowadays, it is unthinkable to be seen and not heard...
...Strolling to Guild Hall after the ceremonies, she was apparently "working the fence," greeting persons of all colors...
...presumably she was murmuring how much she loved their pas de deux...
...In the absence of interviews, a major tool of broadcast journalism for the last quarter of a century, the many shows covering the fortnight-long Jubilee as a news event concentrated instead on old film clips...
...After 200 years of independence, we have Farrah Fawcett-Majors—a living argument that the revolution was premature and that we may still not be ready for self-government...
...The few times the camera invaded her "priv-a-see" up there in the Royal Box, she was always smiling, as if enjoying the ballet and the opera equally well...
...A highlight of the evening, telecast from the Royal Opera House at London's Covent Garden, was the arrival of the 27 members of the Royal Family, who pulled up in their old family cars (Rolls-Royces) exactly on "shedule...
...Incidentally, he was the most dashing commercial network newsman on the scene, outshining Robert Trout...
...I have made a list of Her Majesty's most memorable expressions, tossed off during the 25 years of her reign...
...Watching the gold coach rolling out of Buckingham's gates, it was difficult to believe that this was the same woman who a short year ago was going bananas in New York's Blooming-dale's...
...Nor will any correspondent win an Order of the British Empire...
...For as Jennings pointed out, "It is said the Queen has no opinions...
...4. So you live here, do you...
...I have heard other reasons for the Royal silence...
...I am not sure which of the seasoned and objective commentators was the most humble, oleaginous, bowing and curtsying...
...She merely pretends to, like many of my friends who watch public television...
...This practice dates back to 1215, according to famous television historian Harvey Jacobs of ABC...
...But WHAT I found particularly puzzling about the American TV journalists' coverage of the five-hour fanfare that morning was the hushed tones they spoke in...
...That day was definitely the high spot of the two-week affair, with the Queen waking up at 5 a.m.—no, I had to wake up at that beastly hour...
...Watching Elizabeth in the montages of her career, one realizes that, ^English as she is, she has been greatly influenced by Amerioans...
...Despite his Bond Street suit, he sounded like a man wearing puttees and carrying a riding crop as he further informed us that whatever the personal disclosures we have come to expect from world leaders, we would get none from Elizabeth, because "The Queen never grants interviews...
...The Magna Carta," he explained to me, "specifically states 'no interviews.' Between the lines guaranteeing the right to trial and habeas corpus, monarchs are told never to speak to Barbara Walters...
...Get one...
...The stately ceremonies in the street were enchanting, and the service itself was solemn and thought-provoking...
...The morning after the gala...
...But I watohed long enough to hear one of the few tough words uttered by an American reporter...
...Trout should know...
...It was a glorious night for closet monarchists, a political minority said to make up about 80 per cent of the public television audience...
...The gold curtain at the Opera House was a special visual treat, too...
...I,couldn't stay for the whole five hours, of course...
...3. How do you do...
...Bully...
...Paul's commemorating her ascension to the throne...
...To me, the group of them was no better than a bunch of cookie-pushers in striped pants at the State Department...
...Talking about a building that had been destroyed during the War, Brokaw said "it happened during the Blintz...
...In fact, she has to be the least media-conscious ruler on the face of the earth...
...So we're lucky to have pictures...
...He has been doing these jubilees ever since William the Orange...
...Out came that media sensation of the 1960s, Princess Margaret, dressed in what famed BBC announcer Richard Baker described as a "plain white dress...
...Every queen—from Jackie Onassis to Jackie Curtis—talks to the press...
...Former Vice President Spiro Agnew once accused the network news departments of being riddled with effete Eastern intellectual snobs...
...Her Highness is an oddity in the electronic age...
...So why doesn't Elizabeth speak to TV journalists...
...There were many occasions, it turned out, where Elizabeth spoke, a joy to queen listeners such as myself...
...It's proof of what Peter Jennings, in a minispecial on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment (June 3), called "the ability of the monarchy to adapt...
...On Jubilee Day itself (June 7) it looked as if she may have learned something from Jimmy Carter as well...
...As the gold coach went by, John Laurence called it "a monstrosity...
...Rather, Elizabeth is a benevolent despot, as we used to call them, and of a has-been empire...
...2. It's a great pleasure to meet you...
...There was more oil on TV screens those two weeks than on the North Sea following the recent spill...
...it was 10 o'clock her time—for the ride to the thanksgiving service at St...
...It happened on CBS, which took a distinctly republican view of the event, providing no special morning coverage other than merely inserting the Jubilee as another feature on The CBS Morning News with Hughes Rudd...
...The command performance by the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet, augmented by numerous superstars—Placido Domingo, Margaret Price, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev—was TV's loveliest occasion of the year...
...Tom Brokaw of the Today show, for example, was more to my taste...
...It is certainly the most difficult to duplicate for any commoner putting on airs, since to get it right you must stand on a receiving line and say it quickly 5,000 times in a row...
...For someone like myself, who knows more about the cherries jubilee at bar mitzvahs than the silver one at Buckingham Palace, sharper aural reporting would have been helpful...
...As my friend Jonathan Dolger, an editor at Simon and Schuster and one of the nation's foremost authorities on theater curtains, remarked, "It looks just like a Godiva chocolate...
...I suppose he meant compared to Elton John's outfits...
...Actually, no one knows what Elizabeth really thinks...
...This, after all, was not our Queen...
...On Television THE ROYAL TREATMENT BY MARVIN KITMAN The 25th anniversary celebration of Queen Elizabeth's rise to power began in the colonies on May 31 with The Silver Jubilee Gala, a BBC show that the Colonial Broadcasting System (American public TV) bought satellite rights to...
...then a new Queen for a Day series can't be very far behind...
...I suspect he would have been closer to the truth if he had branded them closet monarchists...
...Women's Wear Daily ran a picture of Nureyev and Fonteyn bowing to Her Highness...
...That last line is possibly the House of Windsor's grandest oratorical achievement...
...5. Terribly pleased...
...One theory has it that it is against English law for the nation's head to be interviewed...
...6. I declare this bridge open...
...At this, the closet monarchist in me cried out, "Hello, but she does grant audiences...
...The overall experience was movingly conveyed by ABC's Robert Trout, the Dean of Canterbury of American correspondents, who observed: "The sight we are seeing is so splendid, it can scarcely be described in words...
...If the revival of such silver oldies as Name That Tune can be presented in the prime-time access hour (7:30 p.m...
...It gave PBS fans a ohance to count tiaras, a favorite indoor sport among those addicted to British quality programming, of which the Silver Jubilee was another fine example...
...Thus there is no chance that Sandy Hill, of Good Morning America, who set the Guinness Record for fawning at a distance of 3,000 miles, will become the next Duchess of Sixth Avenue...
...I myself spotted 11 tiaras and two transvestites in the preshow mingling, before I fell asleep during the actual singing and dancing...
...Still, I don't for a minute believe that she appreciates dance and opera...
...7. Thenkh youh...
...Bill Beutel and Frank Reynolds of ABC, Tom Brokaw of NBC...
...These quotes were gathered from 28 hours of Jubilee broadcasts, and capture the spirit of the Elizabethan age: 1. So kind of you to come...
...and John Laurence of CBS...
...Hello," I said to myself, "this is odd": While Princess Margaret is renowned for her love of music, being a great admirer of the work of Mick Jag-ger, I was under the impression that the Queen was interested only in horses and, maybe, dogs...
Vol. 60 • July 1977 • No. 14
