Duke To Miss Film Premiere

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30740, 3 May 1965, Page 13

Duke To Miss Film Premiere

(N.Z' P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, May 1. The stars of society, business and politics are gathering for the year’s most glittering film premier—the biography of the Duke of Windsor, “A King’s Story.” But the 70-year-old former Edward VIII, the only king to abdicate the British throne, will not be at the premiere tomorrow.

It was announced yesterday the Duke’s doctors felt it inadvisable for him to travel from Paris.

The Duke left the London Clinic on March 19 after a series of eye operations. Yesterday’s announcement said the Duchess would remain with him in Paris.

The film’s producer, Mr Jack Le Vien, said it was possible the Duke and Duchess would come to London at the end of May to see the film. “Everybody is so disappointed, particularly the Duke and Duchess,” Mr Le Vien said.

But many other celebrities will be in the audience of 2000 at the premiere.

They will include Lady Churchill, Barry Goldwater, the millionaires Paul Getty and Nubar Gulbenkian, Mrs Douglas Fairbanks, the shipowner Basil Mavroleon and the banker Henry Tiarks.

: A number will be persons who were close to the Duke in 1936 when he had to bow to the pressure of those who opposed his marriage to American divorcee, Mrs Wallis Simpson, abdicate, and leave the country. Lady Monckton, widow of his then legal adviser. Lady Alexander Metcalfe, wife of his best man his equerry Sir John Aird, his friend Commander Colin Buist and Lord Brownlow, who escorted Mrs Simpson to France just before the abdication, will all be there. it will be Lady Churchill’s first public engagement since Sir Winston’s death.

Mr Le Vien made the film biography of Sir Winston Churchill, “The Finest Hours.” Much of it was filmed near the Windsor’s Paris home.

The exiled couple have spent most of their time in France and the United States since the abdication. The film begins by showing the couple in their garden, then goes into flashback as they tell their story, with hitherto unseen film of the Duke's childhood. The Duke himself re-enacts his historic broadcast announcing his abdication. Mr Le Vien told reporters the Duke and his 68-year-old wife were both very shy. but the Duchess possessed “extraordinary self-discipline.” The £5-a-seat premiere, given a martial flavour by the Band of the Royal Marines and honour guards in ceremonial dress, will benefit the scholarship and travel grant programmes of the English Speaking Union.