Last night I watched the 1928 Erich Von Stroheim picture The Wedding March, part of the selection of Fay Wray movies TCM was showing yesterday (it was followed by King Kong). You can get the plot synopsis elsewhere. Austrian prince falls in love with commoner girl (Fay Wray), marries heiress (ZaSu Pitts). I recommend it. Even in the imperfect print we saw the cinematography and art decoration were impressive. Written, directed, and produced by von Stroheim who also starred and participated in the art direction, editing, set decoration, costume design, etc.
My dad would have loved the picture with all its Germanic pomp and circumstance.
Today my wife showed me the relevant passages in Fay Wray’s autobiography, On the Other Hand (get it?), about The Wedding March. Ms. Wray had nothing but glowing things to say about von Stroheim and her experience making the movie more generally. She also provided a summary of what the movie was supposed to have been like.
You see, as released the movie was just under two hours. As envisioned by von Stroheim it weighed in at more than six hours and consisted not only of The Wedding March, roughly the first third of the movie, but of its sequel The Honeymoon, released only in Europe and now lost, and the unfilmed last third. Ms. Wray’s remarks were very interesting and informative.
Now you might ask how we just happened to have Fay Wray’s autobiography sitting on our shelves. I’ve mentioned before that we have a lot of books.
Too bad the idiom is not, In the Other Hand. And BTW, what kind of morons would construct a wall to keep a giant ape out and then build a giant-ape- sized door in said wall?