Page 231 - Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories

Duchess Berlin 1928 219

and ALEXANDRA, their son, the Czarevitch ALEXIS, 12
years old, sleeps soundly in a bed near them.
The shot PANS SLOWLY into a CLOSE SHOT of a
black-and-white, formal photograph of the Russian Im-
perial Family. A TIGHT PAN moves to each face as the
VOICE OVER, the same voice as the American reporter,
JOHN WILSON, softly intones:
(Voice Over)
Wilson: In the summer of 1918, in the village of Ekaterinburg,
in Russia, a murder was committed. At 3:15 in the morning,
July 17, the Red Communist Guard awakened the four-cen-
turies-old Imperial Family of the Romanovs: the father, Czar
NICHOLAS II, and his wife, the Czarina ALEXANDRA;
their four young daughters, each one a princess: the eldest,
the Grand Duchess TATIANA, who volunteered as a nurse in
a military hospital; the Grand Duchess OLGA, who danced
long evenings at the palace of Peterhof; the Grand Duch-
ess MARIA, who was shy and bookish; the Grand Duchess
ANASTASIA who in that murderous summer turned 17; and
lastly, the only son and heir to the throne of all the Russias,
the Czarevitch, the Crown Prince ALEXIS, 12 years old,
incurably ill with the bleeder’s disease, hemophilia. On the
night of July 16-17, 1918, on this summer night, the Royal
Family, deposed and arrested by the Red Communists, were
roused from their beds. The guards told them they were to be
removed by truck from Ekaterinburg to a safer sanctuary...

The TIGHT PAN LOOSENS AND CONTINUES,
PANNING from ALEXIS’ portrait face to ALEXIS’ real
face asleep in the bed next to the bureau holding the fam-
ily picture.

ALEXIS’s face is flushed and almost beautiful in sleep. The
PAN continues, discovering the sad royal attempts at mak-
ing the room comfortable until it holds on a MEDIUM

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