Lady Grantham of ‘Downton Abbey’ is not even close to an anomaly. British aristocrats married American heiresses in droves within the 1900s that are early. But ended up being it actually since straightforward as ‘cash for class’?

Tim Teeman

Senior Editor and Writer

PBS/Photofest

It really is the many animated this Downton Abbey fan has ever seen Lady Grantham. Elizabeth McGovern, whom plays the period detergent opera’s slack-jawed, sleepy-eyed matriarch Cora—who constantly appears listlessly zonked, whatever tragedy has simply befallen her spouse or unlucky-in-love daughters—gallops with gusto through the tales regarding the real-life American heiresses who married British aristocrats in the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary series Million Dollar American Princesses.

The series that is three-part which begins on Sunday night right before the very first episode of Season Five of Downton, centers around the tales of the clutch regarding the 200 roughly US heiresses who married British lords at round the finish regarding the 19 th century and the start of 20 th.

The marital trade, on top at the minimum, appears sharp and sound: Hard-up British aristocrats enjoy the wide range of United states heiresses, while United states heiresses obtain a name and also to are now living in a grand, crumbling castle method before their great grandkids have all Harry Potter-obsessed with precisely the same task. Continue reading →