Marie José of Belgium Claretta Petacci, claimed in her diary that in 1937 the then princess and wife of the heir to the throne tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome. However, Mussolini's son, Romano, claims that the princess and dictator entered into a sexual relationship. In 1943, the Crown Princess involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States; her interlocutor from the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, a senior diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI. Her attempts were not sponsored by the king and Umberto was
The Mistress of the World Murphy and Maud's son, who is supposed to have died shortly after his birth. In the end, mother and son fall into each other's arms. Austrian film producer Joe May conceived the idea for filming "The Mistress of the World", which he loosely based on the novel "Die Herrin der Welt" by author Karl Figdor, in early 1919. May produced "The Mistress of the World" as a serial film, which Carjels argues was more influenced by the French serials of the time rather than the American 'cliff-hanger' serials. Whereas the popular American serials were filmed over two reels, making them