Today we are discussing one of my all-time favorite roncoms, Roman Holiday.

It is not a radical choice to love Roman Holiday.

It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and it won three Academy Awards, including for Audrey Hepburn for Best Act and Dalton Trumbo for best screenplay.

We'll talk more about Dalton Trumbo in our end-of-episode interview.

The film came out in 1953 and was directed by William Weiler.

Wiler started his career in silent film, and you can see the reverberations of that

in Roman Holiday, which is light in dialogue and heavy in hijinks.

Roman Holiday introduced the world to Audrey Hepburn, who was 24 years old when the movie came out.

Elizabeth Taylor was slated to play the main character, Princess Anne, but Audrey Hepburn's

screen test was so good that Taylor, already a huge star, got punted.

Hepburn's co-star was Gregory Peck, who is now best known as Atticus Finch, but he wouldn't star

in to kill a mockingbird for 10 more years.

When they started filming Roman Holiday, Peck was already globally known and already had

four Academy Award nominations under

his belt. Originally, the film was only to have Peck's name above the title, with introducing

Audrey Hepburn, beneath it in smaller font, because nobody had ever heard of failed ballet dancer Audrey Hepburn before. But Gregory Peck

understood what he was witnessing with Hepburn, so he told Weiler to give her equal billing.

Apparently, he said, you've got to change that, because she'll be a star and I'll look like a big jerk.

The two meet after they have both had a bad day.

Anne feels totally stultified.

She has to wear a Victorian child-style nightgown instead of the pajamas she would prefer,

and she has milk and crackers sent to her

...