Romance Elvis Presley and Priscilla, the story of a love that today would have been a scandal
Hollywood Elizabeth Taylor: when Arzak sent the actress ham sandwiches
In the silent times of Cecil B DeMille the extras were not drawn, they were flesh and blood.
The 5,000 actors that appeared in
The Ten Commandments
(1923) before the opening of the waters of the Dead Sea were as real as the computer programs that digitally recreate crowds in macro productions.
DeMille revisited his classic black-and-white in 1956 with some of the biggest names in golden Hollywood, including
Charlton Heston
,
Anne Baxter
,
Yul Brynner
,
Yvonne de Carlo
and... Debra Paget
.
She is the only survivor of the mammoth historical project.
He never aspired to the role, but a telegram worked the miracle.
DeMille wanted to see her and immediately hired her because
she "had been touched by the hand of God."
Her response perplexed her because the Lord has always had a great influence on her and DeMille, with his gigantic Bible always open on the round table of her office at Paramount, seemed the reincarnation of divinity.
Her beauty made her the love object of Elvis Presley in his film debut in
Love Me Tenderly
, which was a safe conduct for the clever Priscilla Beaulieu (76) by copying the actress's hairstyle to seduce the king of rock three years later and marry him .
That act was a miracle because previously
Elvis
had proposed to Debra, but her parents flatly refused.
Both were united by their love for God.
"Elvis sang wonderfully gospel that was dedicated to the Lord," she confessed three years ago in one of his few interviews on the Connors Corner
radio show .
Her petite but well-proportioned body, her dark hair and intense blue eyes were the ideal mix for her to hypnotize several generations with her
snake dance
in
The Indian Tomb
(1959).
The film was the first major project made in Germany after World War II, although it was also shot in India for several months.
But that exoticism ended immediately.
Six decades ago she faded to black after marrying her third husband
, Kung Ling-Chie
(Louis in his westernized version), a
billionaire oil industry executive
from Shanghai with whom she had her only son, Gregory.
At almost 89 years old, she Debra still lives in a huge property in Texas outside of Hollywood.
Neither that James Stewart was "an angel" or that he described
Vincent Price
as someone "smart and funny" were enough reasons for him to continue his intense but brief career.
His life took a 180 degree turn because in his new marriage he was drowning in countless greenbacks from the inheritance and good investments of Louis, who came from one of the noblest families in China.
Imagine that the tycoon was
a direct descendant of Confucius
.
But without a doubt, those who shaped his character were the influential Soong sisters (Ai-ling, May-ling and Ching-ling), something like the Eastern version of the
Mitford sisters,
that shaped from the shadows, and also with some lights, the destiny of China since the beginning of the 20th century.
The
Soongs
were none other than her mother (Ai-ling) and her two aunts.
Today's China is the work of them and their husbands.
Ai-ling
was the oldest and married
HH Kung,
the richest man in the country with whom she forged
one of the largest fortunes in the world
, estimated at 1,000 million dollars in the 1940s;
Ching-ling
, the middle one, married
Sun Yat-sen
, the first president of the Republic of China and the father of modern China who overthrew the Manchu monarchy.
In addition, she managed to be the vice president, co-president and president of the country during different times and, finally, May-ling married the statesman
Chiang Kai-shek
, leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party and president of the country.
Debra Paget 's
voluntary retirement
was more golden than her most glorious time in Hollywood.
It is rumored that the wealth of the Kung family was 3,200 million dollars whose origin, interestingly, is related to the commercialization of Bibles in the China of the
Quing dynasty
.
The couple and their son lived in a
luxurious mansion outside of Houston
, owned
two private planes
, invested in real estate, drove around in an armored Cadillac, and were protected by an army of bodyguards.
The placid existence of the actress was altered by a lawsuit against her husband who, given his eccentricity, insisted on building armored Chinese pagodas and an
air-raid shelter with a capacity for 1,100 people
capable of withstanding an explosion like the one on his Houston estate.
from Hiroshima, as reported by
Texas Monthly
magazine in 1984. By the time that scandal broke, the couple had already divorced.
The star continued to cling to God and evangelize through the radio while the father of her son showed fear of a possible World War III.
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