The royals - Kitty Kelley [110]
Still, the Queen resisted. She did not want the monarchy to have anything to do with show business, and she certainly did not want her family acting like television stars. “I’m not Jackie Kennedy and this isn’t the White House,” she said, referring to the First Lady’s televised tour of the White House. The Queen disliked performing on television and could never relax in front of the camera. She dreaded having to televise her annual Christmas message, which was staged and carefully produced with makeup artists, technicians, and TelePrompTers. She could not conceive of having television cameras follow her around every day, recording her offhand remarks and actions.
“The Queen also questioned if it would be sensible to allow television to intrude into the family’s private life,” recalled Heseltine. “In the end, however, she agreed.”
It took three months of negotiation to get her approval. “You know the proverb ‘When elephants wrestle, it is the grass that suffers,’ ” said one man involved in the discussions. “There was Prince Philip to contend with; he kept saying, ‘Most journalists just want the shot where you’re seen picking your nose,’ and Cawston [BBC documentary executive] kept saying, ‘I’m not a journalist.’ Then there was Mountbatten, who, of course, knew all there was to know about broadcasting, and Mountbatten’s son-in-law, Lord Brabourne, who as a film producer actually did know something. He was the one who brought on Richard Cawston, head of the BBC’s documentary department.”
The Queen finally gave her consent to the film when she was assured total editorial control, including the copyright,* plus half the profits from worldwide sales.† She then agreed to allow the BBC’s camera crew inside her office at Buckingham Palace during her weekly audience with the Prime Minister, which previously had been so privileged that even her husband had been excluded. She also invited the television crew into her home at Balmoral for a family picnic. To sell to the lucrative American market, she suggested a segment with President Nixon on his visit to London and another segment showing Walter Annenberg presenting his credentials as the Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. “We need something special,” said the Queen.
But not so special as to create controversy. Her Majesty knew better than to allow cameras to accompany her to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor on the morning of March 31, 1969, for the secret reinternment of her father. She knew the public might be jolted to learn that the King’s body had lain unburied for seventeen years in an oak coffin locked in a small passageway under the castle. So she ordered the Windsor grounds closed to the public and summoned the royal family† to the chapel, where the Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend Robin Woods, conducted the solemn burial service in private.
Throughout the filming, the BBC crew took direction from the Queen. At one point the producer suggested she exercise one of her corgis. Her Majesty insisted on exercising all of them. Her husband, who despised his wife’s nipping dogs, exploded.
“They want one of the fucking animals, do you understand?” snapped the Duke of Edinburgh. “Not fourteen fucking dogs.”
In the film, that scene showed the Queen without her husband but with all her corgis.
The BBC producer described the film as historic. “I’m sure people will find it fascinating because it will show the role of the monarchy,