My first recollection of Eva Perón comes from a Movietone newsreel I saw in 1947 with my parents at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, California when I was four years old. To my knowledge, I have no other recollection from 1947. She was on a state trip to Europe, her first ever outside Argentina. The newsreel showed the most beautiful woman in the world being bowed to by just about everybody. I thought she was a queen.

She went to Spain, where she was greeted at the Madrid airport by three million people; among them, General Franco and his cabinet. There is a photo of Evita standing on the steps outside a reception held in her honor in Seville. She is wearing a long dark gown, very beautiful strapped shoes, a jeweled tiara of some sort on her spectacular bleached blonde hair, and a luxurious mink cape. She is surrounded by other beautiful women and numerous important-looking men dressed in uniforms, black ties and tails, medals and other symbols of power - but she is clearly the very center of the moment.

She continued on to Rome and Paris, where she met with representatives of the great French fashion houses Christian Dior and Marcel Rochas. They were to supply her with the clothing that made her into an international fashion spectacle in the following years. A Newsweek article in the August 3, 1947 issue describes a reception held in her honor in Paris, attended by every Latin American diplomatic mission. She wore a skin-tight gold dress with a long train and a gold veil. Her shoes were covered with various jewels, and she was herself bejeweled spectacularly in gold and diamonds.

She seemed in every respect to want to be viewed as a queen, in the way that I viewed her while I held my mother's hand at the movie. Her appearance made her seem completely individual and completely unassailable, but she was assailable. There is another fashion moment, in a voyage by car, in which she thumbs her nose at the force that was soon to defeat her.

On June 4, 1952, Juan Perón was inaugurated to another term as President. By this time, Evita, then just thirty-three, was suffering badly from the uterine cancer that would eventually kill her. Despite her physician's orders, she insisted on accompanying her husband to the inauguration.

She ordered a frame to be built, of plaster of paris and wire, to be bolted to the inside of the open car in which they would travel to the ceremony. She wore a full-length mink coat to hide the frame to which she had tied herself. She was like a statue bolted to a float so she wouldn't fall over. Without it, she would have been unable to stand next to Perón on his great day.