ADELE Z. SILVER

Book Is Better Than the Movie

"The Lion in Winter" is a movie getting more praise than it deserves. Its story the flamboyant struggle between Henry Plantagenet, king of England, and his queen. Eleanor of Aquitaine-is "worthy" stuff, and all the huzzahs heaped on the movie smack suspiciously of applause for good intentions to give history to the masses. In Technicolor yet.

Henry and Eleanor need none of this pretentious help from Hollywood. Their lusty loves and hates are told much better in a splendid book,

ADELE Z SILVER

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE and the Four Kings, by Amy Kelly, who is moved by history and not noble pomposities.

The four kings are Louis of France, Eleanor's first husband, whom she abandoned for the handsome young Henry of England, and the two sons of her marriage to Henry-Richard the Lion Hearted and John-who successively held the throne of England.

Eleanor's heritage was a proud one, those lovely lands of southern France where chivalry and the music of the troubadours reached their greatest glories. She was a spectacular descendant of a remarkable line-Gervase of Canterbury reports her “a very intelligent woman, sprung from a nob'e race, but unsteady"-and driven by far more than the frustrated passion for King Henry than the movie allows her.

Thirteen years older than Henry, she is a captive queen for a decade. Henry locks her up in Salisbury Castle, though on a few occasions in the years of her confinement, she emerges to preside at some family conclave or seasonal court. It is such

an occasion, the Christmas Court of 1183. that the movie treats. turning it into a raucous battle of the sexes-all of them. in every combination possible. The resulting confusion can only be straightened out by reading Miss Kelly's book.

There Richard is not the whimpering homosexual the movie makes him, but a brusque man of arms; John, who becomes King John of Magna Carta in 1215, is not a slack-jawed young idiot but, in Miss Kelly's words, "the nimblest in wit of all the brothers and of a lightwing suddenness of action:" there Eleanor is a woman of many parts, not just an aging imperious queen denied her bed with Henry.

THOUGH IT IS probably hearsay to say so, Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor is the worst part of the movie version. Tears glittering in her beautiful eyes, the famous mouth quivering, she is Hepburn at her best-and no Eleanor at all. At every turn. it is Hepburn the star who confronts the king, challenges the restless princes, stands accused of deceit-and with her accomplished movie-star tricks wins our sympathy. If Miss Hepburn wins an Oscar for this performance, it will be for her courage in presenting her handsome but ravaged face to the camera.

Not so boring as that terrible movie, "Becket." which dealt with the same King Henry and his unhappy Archbishop of Canterbury. "The Lion in Winter" has some good performances, beautiful color and a few striking shots of crumbling English castles. But the book-available in paperback from Vintage at $1.65-is blessed with strong, full-bodied characters and graceful writing that puts the spurious dialogue of the movie to shame. Since the movie costs $2.75, the book is not only better but a bargain as well.