A ROGUE WITH EASE

From the happy-go-lucky memoir in Moscow On The Hudson (1951) and the life of a Russian colony in New York City, this makes a story of the goodhumored bogus nobility racket of the '20s. One day working in a toothpick factory -- the next Basil Saratov becomes a Prince and as an uninvited guest at fashionable weedings starts his collection of wealthy patrons who have to beg him to sell his family's heirlooms (ordered from 3rd Avenue). Through an association of equally phony aristocrats, Saratov lands in Hollywood, and, when the storm breaks over Count Bimsky (from Ohio), in trying to prove his spuriousness, he hikes himself into real secutiry, in pictures as well as in marriage. A Russian inventor who over-Americanizes, Olga, intent on the stage and her wealthy young husband, J.J. o'sullivan, who despises everything American, a fake leader of a cult, American title-seekers -- these help to carry the opera bouffe along its extravagant, lighthearted way. Pleasant.