I think why it stuck to Marie Antoinette is because it confirmed people's prejudices. Lady ANTONIA FRASER (Biographer): In short, a royal chestnut. Others used it, advanced it, but Marie Antoinette? Nuh-uh. A 17th century French queen may have made that heartless remark. The 18th century queen never said let them eat cake. Searching for the real Marie, her most recent biographer, Lady Antonia Fraser, destroys one myth. She's been vilified and, to some experts anyway, misunderstood. STAMBERG: The doomed young French queen has been portrayed in music, paintings, novels, films. (Soundbite of opera, The Ghosts of Versailles) SUSAN STAMBERG: In John Corigliano's 1991 opera, The Ghosts of Versailles, Marie Antoinette is haunted by her final terrible hours. Since then, her life and death have been spelled out often, in fact and fiction, as we learn from NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg. That is, at least, a better review than the crowd gave the original Marie Antoinette, the queen who was guillotined in the French Revolution. The movie premiered, appropriately enough, in France, where it was booed, along with slight applause. That may be the fervent wish of American theater owners when the film Marie Antoinette opens next month.
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