The Virgin Queen is a 1955 DeLuxe Color historical drama film in CinemaScope starring Bette Davis, Richard Todd and Joan Collins. It focuses on the relationship between Elizabeth I of England and Sir Walter Raleigh.
The film marks the second time Davis played the English monarch; the first was The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). It was also the first Hollywood film for Australian actor Rod Taylor.
Charles LeMaire and Mary Wills were nominated for the Academy Award for Costume Design. LeMaire won, but for another film, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955).Synopsis
In 1581, Walter Raleigh (Richard Todd), recently returned from the fighting in Ireland, pressures unwilling tavern patrons into freeing from the mud the stuck carriage of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (Herbert Marshall). When Leicester asks how he can repay the kindness, Raleigh asks for an introduction to Queen Elizabeth I (Bette Davis), to whom Leicester is a trusted adviser. Leicester grants the request.
Actors