The real story behind Princess Margaret’s visit to the United States

The expensive Netflix series is famous for showing the pomp and ceremony of royal life. So one scene will come as a shock to fans. SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT: THE CROWN SEASON 3

Glamorous, ego-driven and innate party animals — the arrival of Princess Margaret and her husband Lord Snowdon, Antony Armstrong Jones to the United States in 1965 was always going to cause a stir.

They were the captivating, dazzling royal couple and the introduction of real royalty to the Hollywood set was nearly guaranteed to ruffle feathers and inspire diva antics.

However, in the new season of The Crown, which dropped Sunday night on Netflix, the episode that covers Margaret and Tony’s US trip also shows the Princess exchanging some very bawdy limericks with then President Lyndon B. Johnson and helping the UK secure a financial bailout from the Yanks.

So just how much is fact and how much is fiction?

Related: Everything we know about Season 3 of The Crown

Related: Surprising star at the heart of The Crown

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Helena Bonham-Carter and Ben Daniels as Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon in the new series of The Crown Season 3. Picture: Netflix

WHY MARGARET AND TONY WERE IN THE US

There was one reason that Margaret and Tony crossed the Atlantic in November 1965: Sharman Douglas. Sharman had become friends with the Princess while her father was the Ambassador to the Court of St James in the late 40s.

Nearly 20 years later, Sharman invited the royal couple to visit her family ranch near Tucson in Arizona, a visit that at some point was transformed into an official visit.

The timing of their visit also happily corresponded with the American publication of Antony Armstrong Jones’ book Private View.

Soon, royal events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and New York were booked in for the glamour couple.

STARS IN THEIR EYES

When the royal couple landed in Tinseltown, they did so with a splash. Hollywood’s A-list found the real-life Princess fascinating while she, according to her biographer Theo Aronson, was equally intrigued with Hollywood royalty.

A number of sparkling events were planned for Margaret and Tony and with so many egos in the room, it was only so long before things got heated.

One famous run-in features Elizabeth Taylor and a whopping 33.19 carat jewel then worth more than $440,000.

According to reports, when Margaret heard that Richard Burton had presented Taylor with the huge rock she had declared that it was “the most vulgar thing she had ever seen”.

Somehow the comment reached Taylors’ ears and when the two women finally met, Taylor asked Margaret if she would like to try it on.

As the princess modelled the huge diamond, the Oscar-winner quipped “Doesn’t look so vulgar now, does it?”

Margaret’s meeting with Grace Kelly was equally bumpy. By then, the actress had been married to Prince Ranier for nearly a decade. “Well, you don’t look like a movie star,” Margaret said.

Kelly swiftly replied: “Well, I wasn’t born a movie star.” Aronson writes that Princess Grace would “flush with anger” when she re-told the story over the years.

Nor was Judy Garland a fan. During a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Margaret decided she wanted the Broadway darling to perform. “Go and tell that nasty, rude little princess that we’ve known each other for long enough and gabbed in enough ladies’ rooms that she should skip the ho-hum royal routine and just pop over here and ask me herself,” Garland reportedly retorted. “Tell her I’ll sing if she christens a ship first.”

Ouch.

Still Margaret’s charm made an impression elsewhere. Aronson quotes one attendee at a swanky NY soiree that Margaret attended saying: “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a put-on; campy; tongue-in-cheek camp. She’s doing an impersonation of herself.”

The glamorous couple attracted attention across the globe. Picture: Reginald Davis/REX/Shutterstock

DIPLOMATIC DANCE

Princess Margaret made a better impression when she landed in Washington, where President Johnson and his wife Lady Bird hosted an official state dinner for their distinguished guests.

The dinner was not simply an opportunity to get out the best silver: The so-called ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK was struggling. President Johnson had been angered when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had denied his request for troops to join in the Vietnam conflict.

In The Crown, Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham-Carter) gets into a drinking competition and then a dirty limerick game with President Johnson, who famously swore less like a trooper and more like an entire US marine corps.

An uncomfortable Prime Minister Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins) later tells the Queen (Olivia Colman) that Princess Margaret “won the evening” with this very unroyal rhyme.

“There was a young woman from Dallas,

Who used a dynamite stick as a phallus.

They found her vagina in North Carolina,

And her arsehole in Buckingham Palace.”

Sadly, there is nothing in the historical record to back up the events. That said, we do know for a fact that Margaret loved jokes, the more ribald the better.

She was also, according to a number of biographers, a woman who could go off track.

Sir Alan Campbell, the former British Ambassador to Italy has said “Personally, I found her very agreeable, though I believe it is true that she sometimes had a sharp tongue if she was bored.”

“However, she was a thorough professional so far as royal duties were concerned.”

In real life, reports of the evening are largely fairly banal. Princess Margaert wore pink and Johnson took her for a spin around the dance floor, looking warmly at her. From what remains of the official record, Margaret played nice, giving a very lovely toast: “We are having the most wonderful time in the United States. The hospitality and kindness which have received everywhere has touched us greatly and it will make us take home superlatively happy memories of all we have done and seen. And we only wish we could have stayed longer.”

PICKING UP THE BILL

Arriving home in the UK, Margaret and Tony felt the trip had been a smashing success. “I enjoyed it all enormously,” the Princess reportedly later said, “and I have kept an abiding love for the United States ever since”.

Tony, meanwhile, was “voted the man with whom most American women would like to be marooned on a desert island”.

However questions were soon raised about the cost of the trip with the press reporting on the expense of the royal couple’s $57,000 jaunt (about $660,000 in today’s money) and soon there were headlines focusing on ‘Jet-Set Parties’, ‘Own Hairdresser’ and ‘Who Pays?’

The criticism though was largely unfair given they had spent plenty of time doing the sort of dull work that is part and parcel of being a working royal such as plaque-unveiling and a whole lot hand shaking.

Princess Margaret clashed with some Hollywood celebrities during her visit to the US. Picture: Reginald Davis/REX/Shutterstock

US BAN

While the visit might have, on balance, been hailed a success, there were others less than keen on seeing Princess Margaret return to the U S of A. In official papers released in 2003 it was revealed that the diplomats had barred the royal from making another official visit to America in the early 70s. Essentially Lord Cromer, the then-UK Ambassador to Washington had put his foot down.

When the Princess’ private secretary Lt Colonel Frederick Burnaby-Atkins inquired about the second visit, Lees Mayall, the Vice-Marshal of the Diplomatic Service responded, writing: “You will remember that Lord Cromer is not at all keen on having the Princess in the United States, possibly for some time to come. This is mainly due to the behaviour of some of HRH’s friends, who tend to take such visits very lightly.”

(Quite what this questionable behaviour was, and or who were the saucy friends in questions, sadly remains a mystery.)

At the time, Lord Snowdon told the UK Telegraph: “I have no idea why there should have been any objection to what went on.”

Biographer Christopher Warwick had a different view, saying: “Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon were the Royal Family’s representatives of the Swinging Sixties. They did wave the flag for Britain in 1965, but it’s fair to say that the visit was more pleasure than duty.”