The Millionairess - 3996

Amazon.com Though Bernard Shaw's The Millionairess may rank among his lesser works, it is given a top-drawer staging in this 1972 BBC production. Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, California Suite) is priceless as Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden, a woman every bit as impossible as her name. Epifania, "a woman brought up on seven figures" is, as her amused lawyer observes, "a comic figure in her misery." Her feckless husband has taken up with a more affectionate younger woman. Epifania's own "Sunday wife" (Charles Gray from Rocky Horror Picture Show) is an equally worthless chap. But she meets her match in a principled and idealistic English doctor (Tom Baker of Dr. Who fame) who challenges her to transform 35 shillings into her own fortune. The play's farcical first act is best, with the assorted couples and companions descending on the lawyer's office. Things bog down a bit with the introduction of the good doctor, but to watch the incomparable Smith tackle this most juicy of roles as "the most interesting woman in England," for whom money means power, security, and freedom, is "legitimate bliss." --Donald Liebenson Product Description Millionairess, The (Shaw Collection, The) (DVD) Epifania (Maggie Smith) is glamorous, clever...and also the richest woman in the world. After yet another row with her spendthrift husband, Epifania meets an intriguing Egyptian doctor (Tom Baker). But she faces the challenge her money-mad father imposed on her before his death: She can only consider for marriage a man who can convert 150 pounds into 50,000 pounds within six months. Coincidentally, the good doctor has a similar challenge from his mother and can only consider for a wife a woman who can make her own living for six months with only 35 pence to start. Will Epifania be able to prove her profitability? And is the good doctor even interested in the challenge of a woman used to getting whatever she wants? ]]>
ASIN: B000E8JNQU
VSKU: DBV.B000E8JNQU.G
Condition: Good
Binding: DVD