End of a Queen
Description
In this touching story, Tammy Grimes plays Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen sitting in a freezing prison cell in Paris. As she waits for her death, she thinks back on her life and all her troubles. Her guard, Lieutenant Dupuy, feels sorry for her situation. Meanwhile, Georges, a rebel fighter she had hurt before, makes her feel even more torn up inside. The show ends with her sad but brave death.
Marie Antoinette, despised by the French people for her extravagance and political meddling, is brought to trial in 1793 at the height of the French Revolution. Guarded by sympathetic lieutenant de Busne, she faces the wrath of Prosecutor Georges, a man she once sentenced to exile for a trifle. She accepts the inevitable outcome with dignity, or is it vindictiveness that refuses to show the French people a cringing queen?
Tammy Grimes stars as Marie Antoinette in this poignant drama, set in a cold stone cell of a Paris prison as the condemned queen reflects on her life and struggles. Her jailer, Lieutenant Dupuy, shows compassion for her plight, while Georges, a revolutionary she had wronged, adds to her internal conflict. The episode ends on her tragic yet resolute death.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater is a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982, and later in the early 2000s was repeated by the NPR satellite feed. In New York City it was not aired by the then all-news WCBS but by its originating station, WOR, which produced and announced it as simply Radio Mystery Theater.
Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Updated Jul 16, 2026.
