Mayor Oscar gets Bavarian throne replica for his Las Vegas City Hall office
“Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Head must not be higher than Mayor’s!”
That could be a line from a Las Vegas redux version of “The King and I,” the 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein film musical hit starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr.
As the Las Vegas Sun dutifully reported in its June 21 edition, “Mayor Goodman gets a gift fit for a king: With throne, he now has seat to match his ego.” Read story here.
Mayor Oscar’s new throne, which towers behind his City Hall desk, was the gift to the City of Las Vegas from the World Market Center furniture emporium earlier this month when Goodman and a group of visiting mayors attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors toured the center.
“This was a fun gift and an interesting way for us to demonstrate our enthusiasm for the city,” World Market Center spokeswoman Dana Pretner told the Sun. “It’s quite perfect for the king of Las Vegas, Mayor Goodman.”
Identified by the center as a replica of a throne used by a Bavarian king in the mid-19th century, the chair features a tooled leather seat, lions’ heads carved into the ends of the arms, plus a back rising nearly six feet. The copy is of Indonesian origin, retailing at $1,832.
Middle to late 19th century would mean the original throne was occupied by Ludwig II, King of Bavaria from 1864-1886. A Web site notes he was known by nicknames such as the Swan king, the Mad King of Bavaria, the Dream King, and Mad Ludwig. The site asks: Did he commit suicide or was he helped? Three days after being declared legally insane, Ludwig mysteriously drowned in Lake Starnberg, south of Munich. “Ludwig’s latent homosexuality and his patronage of Richard Wagner have also contributed to the Mad Ludwig legend,” according to “The German Way and More” Web site.
So there you have it. Mayor pro tem Gary Reese may have been more on the mark than he imagined when he quipped that he doubts the mayor will use the throne for long.
A closet gay German king who subsidized allegedly anti-Jewish composer Wagner? Sure doesn’t fit into Mayor Oscar Goodman’s profile.
