BELGIUM: The Americanized King

BELGIUM The Americanized King

Belgium’s Bachelor King Baudouin last week flew back to his dazzled homeland from the U.S. He had left Brussels three weeks before, a gloomy, aloof young monarch who seemed content to live in the shadow of his embittered, interfering father, ex-King Leopold III. But as he toured the U.S., there was a king-sized thaw. In Washington. Baudouin joked with newsmen; in Dallas, he danced until 2:30 in the morning beside a swimming pool, confided: “I have never had so much fun in my life.” Hollywood was a chat with Gina Lollobrigida and lunch with Debbie Reynolds. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, eating prawns and spareribs. Baudouin interestedly watched a pretty stripper named Coby Yee peel. Said a U.S. observer: “Nobody knows what bit him. But I figure he’s just been shut up all his life, and now that he’s out on his own. he’s going to be his own man.”

Flying Bouquets. When Baudouin’s plane touched down at Brussels’ Melsbroek airport, he descended smiling to embrace his father, kiss his grandmother, shake hands with his handsome younger (25) brother Prince Albert, whose proposed marriage to Princess Paola Ruffo di Calabria at the Vatican had set off an anticlerical uproar in Belgium (TIME, June 8). Normally. Baudouin would have gone directly from the airport to his Laeken palace, bypassing busy Brussels, with its snarled, honking traffic. Instead, riding in an open limousine, the King made a 15-mile tour of his capital city, where hundreds of police and a battalion of gendarmes were needed to hold back the curious crowds. Flowers showered down on the smiling King, who won cheers by nimbly catching bouquets in midair. Cried a plump Brussels housewife to her neighbor: “It’s the American Baudouin!”

Abhorred Cutaways. The next day King Baudouin again broke with the past by holding Belgium’s first royal press conference. As more than 100 reporters munched cookies, sipped champagne, and smoked the King’s own crested cigarettes, Baudouin moved affably among them, freely offered heretical opinions and answered questions. Of U.S. newsmen he said: “They establish instant, familiar relations with their important guests, which is. you will admit, far different from our traditions, so I had to adapt myself quickly.” Were Americans materialistic? “I found them idealistic.” What about court protocol? ‘I abhor cutaways. They should be banned in Belgium.” Of his brother’s fiancée. Princess Paola: “A wonderful girl. Italy has given us a lovely present.”

And though the King’s new affability did not accomplish it, all Belgium took it as a good omen that with his return to Belgium the brouhaha about Prince Albert’s marriage showed signs of dying down. At issue was the fact that if Pope John XXIII performed the marriage at the Vatican, there could be no civil ceremony first, as Belgian law requires. Reason: since the Vatican is a sovereign state, it considers its own service to have civil status as well. “In a gesture of particular solicitude toward Belgium.” the Pope last week helped to pacify the situation by agreeing that young Albert and Paola should be married in Brussels instead of in the Vatican.