Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After

Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After is a dramatic television movie of 1992 telling the real-life story of the failed marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales, and his first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales.

Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After
Directed byJohn Power[1]
Produced byNick Gillott[1]
Screenplay byNancy Sackett[1]
Based onthe breakdown of the royal marriage
StarringCatherine Oxenberg
Roger Rees
Jane How[1]
Music byJames McVay
Lennie Moore
CinematographyAlan Doberman[1]
Edited byTod Feuerman[1]
Production
company
Konigsberg-Sanitsky Productions[1]
Distributed byABC[1]
Release date
13 December 1992[1]
Running time
95 minutes[2]
CountryUnited States / Canada
Made on location in England and Scotland [1]
LanguageEnglish

Directed by John Power and released in December 1992, the film stars Catherine Oxenberg as Diana, Roger Rees as Charles, and Jane How as Camilla Parker-Bowles.

The film was released on DVD in November 2004.[3] One issue of it was retitled Charles & Diana: A Palace Divided.

Background and production

The film followed on the heels of revelations published in May 1992 in Andrew Morton's book Diana: Her True Story.[4] The executive producers were Frank Konigsberg and Larry Sanitsky, who had previously worked together on Surviving: A Family in Crisis (1985) and Act of Vengeance (1986). They went on to produce Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994) and Titanic (1996) together.[5]

Oxenberg, who played Diana, is a daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia and a third cousin of Charles.[6] She had played the part of Diana once before, in The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982).[7]

Oxenberg commented on playing Diana again:

"Diana's life has changed so much since her marriage it was like playing another person. There's so much more information about her now. The character I played the first time was quite one-dimensional, the fantasy of a young girl falling in love with a prince. There was no emotional or psychological drama or struggle or anything. It was what it was. This new film has a lot of levels, dimensions and textures. It's more human."[8]

Gladys Crosbie was also repeating her part, having played Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in Britannia Hospital (1982), and was considered to be a "dead ringer" for Her Majesty.[9]

ABC's first airing of the film on US television was on 13 December 1992,[1] and was well-timed, coming four days after British prime minister John Major had announced in the House of Commons the "amicable separation" of Charles and Diana.[4][10]

Synopsis

The film begins in the early days of the marriage of Charles and Diana, when they appear to be fond of each other and even in love. However, early scenes show them to have very different characters and interests. Charles is shown as intellectual and fastidious, a lover of opera, whereas Diana wants romance and is bored by opera. Also, the spectre of Charles’s former mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles intrudes into the marriage from the beginning. Within two months of their wedding, Diana accuses Charles to his face of being in love with Camilla. A series of tribulations and infidelities is eventually shared with the world through newspaper reports. The couple ends up estranged and indifferent to each other, but still connected through two young sons, William, now aged ten, and Harry, eight.

Reception

Variety found the film "good-looking but unsatisfying" and commented that the fractured relationship of Charles and Diana was "punctuated by moments so melodramatic they would make Barbara Cartland groan". It considered that Rees had failed to convey Charles’s eccentricity and that Oxenberg’s Diana was too constantly about to snap, lacking Diana’s earlier girlishness and her later elegance.[1]

Cast

Notes

  1. Variety, December 11, 1992, reprinted in Variety Television Reviews 1991-1992 (Taylor & Francis, 1994), p. 474
  2. Alvin H. Marill, Movies Made for Television, 1964–2004, Vol. 3, 1990–1999 (Scarecrow Press, 2005), p. 74
  3. Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After at amazon.com, accessed 13 October 2020
  4. 1992: ABC PRESENTS 'CHARLES AND DIANA: UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER' at tvworthwatching.com, December 13, 2019 accessed 14 October 2020
  5. Konigsberg/Sanitsky Company at bfi.org.uk, accessed 14 October 2020
  6. David Lewis, William Addams Reitwiesner, Persons eligible to succeed to the British Throne as of 1 Jan 2011 at wargs.com, accessed 8 October 2020
  7. Lucy Fischer, Marcia Landy (eds.), Stars: The Film Reader (Psychology Press, 2004), p. 272
  8. Vernon Scott, "HOLLYWOOD -- Catherine Oxenberg doesn't plan to make a career of portraying Britain's Princess Diana, but she has her second shot at playing Di next week on ABC", UPI, 5 December 1992, accessed 12 October 2020
  9. Newsweek, Vol. 101 (Newsweek Inc., 1983), p. 70
  10. Jonathan Dimbleby, The Prince of Wales: A Biography (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994, ISBN 0-688-12996-X), p. 489
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