Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Scandalous Women is very pleased to welcome historical fiction author Juliet Grey to the blog.  Juliet is the author of the new trilogy about Marie Antoinette, the first book BECOMING MARIE ANTOINETTE is released today.  Regular readers of my blog know that I am a huge fan of Marie Antoinette, in fact I'm a tad obsessed and have been ever since I learned that she and I shared a birthday. So I was very excited to hear that there was going to be new trilogy that examined her life from her childhood to her death. Isn't the cover gorgeous? Above the strains of the violins and the tinkling of crystal and porcelain, a silvery laugh pierced the air, drawing all attention toward the head of the table. The woman seated at the king’s right had grabbed a morsel off the royal plate with a heavily jeweled hand and popped it into her own mouth. She wore no powder in her flaxen hair, a shade or two more yellow than my own. Her complexion was the color of fresh dairy cream—the better to sho...

A hapless nightclub hat check boy, Louis Blore (Red Skelton), loves nightclub singer May Daly (Lucille Ball), but she is in love with Alec (Gene Kelly). And May she loves money. When Louis whens the Irish sweepstakes, he sees his chance to win May. She agrees to marry him but tells him that she doesn't love him. Louis agrees anyway. However, Alec is not ready to give May up, so Louis's friend convinces him to slip Alec a Mickey Finn. Louis mistakenly drinks the Mickey Finn intended for Alec, falls asleep, and dreams he is King Louis XV of France, and that May is Madame du Barry, and that Alec is a dashing rebel called the Black Arrow. Eventually after various entanglements (including the Dauphin shooting the King in the posterior with a bow and arrow), Louis wakes up and realises that Alec is the man for May. That's the plot of the 1943 MGM musical, based on a 1939 Broadway musical with music by Cole Porter, starring Ethel Merman as May. The movie version jettisons most o...