When Queen Elizabeth II Met a Famous Hollywood Queen
Queen Elizabeth II demonstrated that she took her coronation oath seriously. She exhibited a strong commitment to her civic and religious duties in her decades on the throne. The royal family around her might have often been engulfed in scandals and provided the tabloids with steady fodder for decades on end. However, the queen has been not only scandal-free, but seemingly free of any hint of frivolity. While the queen was a cultural icon, she was worlds apart from another cultural icon born the same year as Her Majesty, in 1926: Marilyn Monroe.
Queen Elizabeth was born on April 21st of that year, while Marilyn was born about six weeks later, on June 1st. The two icons lived worlds apart, one in Hollywood, the other in Buckingham Palace. However, the two did meet once on common ground, when the monarch met the movie star at the London premiere of the Battle of the River Platte. Both women were thirty-years-old at the time, when Monroe waited in a line of guests to shake the queen’s hand. It was the only time those two different types of royalty – a Hollywood queen and a real life one – met.