The other morning, Their Royal Highnesses Prince Albert and Princess Paola of Belgium, here to celebrate the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the independence of Belgium, were expected at a quarter past nine in the lower plaza of the McGraw-Hill Building to see The New York Experience, a film about how truly awful but truly wonderful it is to live in New York. At twenty-five minutes past nine, Their Royal Highnesses Prince Albert and Princess Paola had not arrived, and the publicity man for Trans-Lux, owners and operators of the film, was beginning to get nervous, because the film ran for a full hour, and at eleven o’clock three hundred schoolchildren were scheduled to see the show. Standing alone at the foot of the escalator, looking up quickly every time he heard footsteps approaching, he said, “If they are really late, I don’t know what we are going to do.” He also said, “Ah, the vicissitudes of publicity. The TV people were to be here, but they’re stuck in New Jersey. They had it on their books. I was on the phone with them this morning. But now they’re in
New Jersey.” And he said, “I hear that the Prince and the Princess are staying at the Waldorf, and that the city didn’t even give them a police escort around town. Can you imagine? Royalty and no police escort!”
At half past nine, the publicity man looked up and saw twenty men, each wearing a dark suit, each with a little red-and-white card indicating that he represented the Belgian press, come down the escalator, and the publicity man sighed and shook his head. In the next fifteen minutes, a woman carrying a large shopping bag, a man wearing a golfing shirt, two women chatting in French, and a man wearing a pin-striped suit with a woman wearing a blue dress came down the escalator, and each time the publicity man sighed and shook his head. Then, at a quarter to ten, he looked up and saw a man followed by a large group of people come down the escalator. He said, “This must be the Prince.” And it was.
The publicity man held out his hand, tipped forward slightly, and said to the Prince, “Welcome, Your Highness.”
The Prince and the publicity man shook hands, and then the Prince started to move on.
“Where is the Princess?” asked the publicity man.
“Alas,” said the Prince, “the Princess could not come.”
“Oh,” said the publicity man. “I am sorry.” His face fell a tiny, tiny bit. But then, catching himself, he said, “Well, if you’ll just come over here, I would like to have a picture of you standing in front of this poster.” The poster advertised The New York Experience.
—June 2, 1980