 Press Room:
Dearly Beloved
On Stage & Screen:
Wedding comedies don't stand on ceremony
By Jonathan Spencer
tickets on sale now
Dearly
beloved, we are gathered here to join in holy matrimony our dear readers and
the concept of the “wedding comedy,” as portrayed on the Broadway stage and
the Silver Screen.
As
long as there have been stage boards to tread and popcorn to munch in
darkened movie houses, there have been romantic comedies. And as long as
their have been romantic comedies there have been madcap weddings. From
Much Ado About Nothing to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the iconic
traditions of walking down the aisle and living happily ever after have
found a cozy home in the theater and on screen.
What
follows is a brief Hit Parade of the top contenders in this now ubiquitous
entertainment genre.
* * *
* * * * *
In the
world of wedding comedies, Philip Barry’s witty and sparkling The
Philadelphia Story is hard to beat. It was a hit on Broadway in
1939 with Katharine Hepburn (for whom it was written) as the fiery Main Line
socialite Tracy Lord,
who, days before her wedding, is torn between her nouveau riche
fiancé, George Kittredge; her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Joseph Cotten) and a fast-talking tabloid reporter and
would-be novelist named Macaulay “Mike” Connor (Van Heflin). The production
ran for over 400 performances. Hot on its heels was a classic 1940 film
version starring Hepburn as Tracy, Cary Grant as Dex, and Oscar-winner Jimmy
Stewart as Mike. It even spawned a 1956 Cole Porter musical adaptation,
High Society, featuring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra.
And to bring it all full circle, High Society later begat a Broadway
musical version in 1998, which ran for 144 performances.
A
decade later, Spencer Tracy explored the world of the forgotten man at
weddings in 1950’s Father of the Bride, which chronicled the
disasters a father faces as he doles out money for his daughter’s
increasingly costly wedding ceremony. It also touches upon separation
anxiety as he muses on the impending task of “giving away” his darling girl
(18-year-old Elizabeth Taylor). The film gave birth, literally, to a sequel
the following year, Father's Little Dividend, which dealt with the
impending arrival of the Tracy character’s first grandchild. But there were
more “offspring” to come, in the form of a 1961 TV series and a 1991 movie
remake starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, which also had a sequel. And
to top it all off, there is a three-act play by Caroline Francke based on
the original novel by Edward Streeter.
One of the most memorable (and politically incorrect) MGM musicals
of the 1950s was
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The story concerns a rancher named
Adam (Howard Keel) who decides it's high time that he got married. He treks
over the mountain pass into town, where he finds and courts Milly (Jane
Powell). But when Milly arrives back at his ranch, she discovers she'll be
sharing it with his six unruly brothers. Inspired by Milly’s teachings on
social graces (including dancing) the boys get it into their heads that
they’d like to try marriage on for size, too. So they “kidnap” six local
girls and carry them back to their isolated mountain retreat as their
potential brides, cutting off any town pursuit by triggering an avalanche.
The musical inspired a Broadway version in 1982 and even a short-lived TV
series starring Richard Dean Anderson.
The
1994 British import Four Weddings and a Funeral introduced
American audiences to a new star, Hugh Grant. The story chronicles the
adventures of a group of London-based friends through the eyes of Charles, a
frequently tongue-tied and always commitment-phobic Englishman who finds
himself unexpectedly smitten with an attractive American named Carrie (Andie
MacDowell). Through the course of the film. Charles and Carrie (who is
engaged to a bluff Scotsman) repeatedly encounter each other at weddings, as
well as the funeral of a close friend. After a series of missed
opportunities, vows both honored and broken, and personal revelations, the
pair are finally united. A deft combination of comedy and tragedy, Four
Weddings became a sleeper hit and went on to earn more than any other
British film in cinema history.
There
are a bundle of other worthy movie offerings on this theme, including
My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), in which
Julia Roberts suddenly discovers she's
in love with her best friend -- four days before his wedding; the Australian
import Muriel’s Wedding
(1994), which introduced Toni Collette in a story
about a socially awkward “ugly duckling" who discovers that reality and
one’s dreams don’t always match; The Wedding Singer (1998), a
salute to
1980s
nostalgia – and big hair – in which the jilted Adam Sandler finds
consolation and love with waitress Drew Barrymore; and 2002’s independent
film phenomenon
My Big Fat Greek Wedding,
which tells the story of a Greek-American woman (Nia Vardalos) who falls in
love with a non-Greek American (John Corbett).
On the
serious side, toss in the wedding scene that launched 1972’s The
Godfather (“Don Corleone, I am honored that you have invited
me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter”) and the final scene
from 1967’s The Graduate (“Elaine! Elaine!”) and you get the
big picture.
ON
BROADWAY
Perhaps the best example of the stage edition of the wedding comedy genre is
still running on Broadway as we speak. The Drowsy Chaperone,
which debuted in 2006, is a fond homage to American musicals of the
Prohibition era. It stars Bob Martin as “Man in Chair,” a quintessential
Broadway fanatic who copes with his rainy-day blues by listening to an old
recording of his favorite stage show, 1928’s Drowsy Chaperone. As
the notes of the overture drift out of his phonograph, his New York
apartment is transformed into a dream world and plays host to the realized
characters from the recording – the guests of an elaborate weekend wedding
party. Key players include Janet, the beautiful but conflicted Broadway
starlet; her possibly-too-recently-acquired fiancé, Robert; her desperate
producer; a roaming Latin lothario; and the title character, her brassy
chaperone, who tends toward drowsiness when she drinks champagne. What
follows is a joyful collage of every cliché plot line ever concocted,
including mistaken identity, spit-takes, and gangsters on the lam. Watching
from his armchair perch, Man in Chair inserts his opinions on the action of
the play and offers hilarious insights on the subject of theater and life in
general.
The
serio-comic Member of the Wedding, based on the novel by
Carson McCullers, tells the story of 12-year-old tomboy Frankie, who feels
her family is ignoring her while they prepare for her older brother's
wedding. A stage adaptation written by the author and starring Julie Harris
opened on Broadway in 1950 and ran for over 500 performances. A 1952 film
version starring much of the original cast followed and earned Harris an
Oscar nomination in her very first film.
Two
other musicals employ memorable wedding-related sequences: Stephen Sondheim
and George Furth’s Company revolves around Bobby, a single man
unable to commit to a steady relationship, let alone marriage; the married
couples who are his best friends; and numerous girlfriends. One of the many
vignettes in this untraditional musical features the patter song “Getting
Married Today,” in which the character of Amy breathlessly rattles off at
high speed the many reasons why her wedding just won’t be happening.
Our second offering, Lady in the Dark, a Freudian 1941
collaboration by Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin, and Moss Hart, tells the tale of
Liza, an unhappy editor of a fashion magazine who is undergoing
psychoanalysis. All the music in the show is featured in three dream
sequences. In “The Wedding Dream,” Liza comes to realize that she does not
love the man to whom she is engaged and that she is much more of a sexual
creature than she allows herself to be in the real world. In this sequence
she sings the haunting “This Is New.”
There
are many more examples from each of these two entertainment worlds, to be
sure, but I’ll add one more before I go – but from a different medium. My
choice for the greatest wedding on stage or screen, bar none: Rhoda’s
wedding. You may laugh, but back in 1974 we were all glued to our TV sets.
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