Royal Wedding (1951)

Toronto Film Society presented Royal Wedding (1951) on Monday, August 27, 1984 in a double bill with The Swan as part of the Season 37 Summer Series, Programme 7.

Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Producer: Arthur Freed.  Director: Stanley Donen.  Screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner.  Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner.  Music: Burton Lane.  Associate Producer: Roger Edens.  Dance Director: Nick Castle.  Art Directors: Cedric Gibbons, Jack Martin Smith.  Costumes: uncredited.  Music Direction: Johnny Green.  Orchestration: Conrad Salinger, Skip Martin.  Cameraman: Robert Planck.  Editor: Albert Akst.

Cast:  Fred Astaire (Tom Bowen), Jane Powell (Ellen Bowen), Peter Lawford (Lord John Brindale), Sarah Churchill (Anne Ashmond), Keenan Wynn (Irving Klinger/Edgar Klinger), Albert Sharpe (Jamie Ashmond), Viola Roache (Sara Ashmond), Mae Clarke (Telephone operator), Henri Letondal (Purser).

“The royal couple, not being under contract to M.G.M., do not appear in the film.”  So states a commentary on Royal Wedding, the Fred Astaire-Jane Powell film that tells the story of a brother-sister team of Broadway stars who each find romance in London at the time of a brother-sister team of Broadway stars who each find romance in London at the time of the marriage of the then Princess Elizabeth to the present Duke of Edinburgh.  While the royal couple is indeed absent from the film, their presence is felt throughout.  British parades, pageantry and crowds filmed on location recreate the excitement that the royal wedding generated in 1947.  But to avoid confusing Royal Wedding with a documentary, the film’s title was changed to Wedding Bells for its British release.

The film’s script, which was written only after the producer Arthur Freed had collected his location footage, was a recreation of the story of how Adele Astaire came to end her career by meeting and marrying the British Lord Charles Cavendish in the summer of 1928 while taking Funny Face from Broadway to London with her brother.  In the film, a fictitious romance is added for Fred, so that not one but two intercontinental weddings can take place on Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding day.

Royal Wedding is famous as one of those films that almost didn’t get made.  June Allyson, who was originally cast as the lead, announced her pregnancy after ten days of shooting.  Delays caused Charles Waters to resign as director to take up other commitments.  Judy Garland replaced Allyson, only to start missing rehearsals and be fired.  The wooden Sarah Churchill replaced the ravishing Moira Shearer as Fred Astaire’s love interest.  At least, the young Powell replaced Garland to play the 52-year-old Astaire’s unlikely sister in one of her most important musical roles.  And Stanley Donen, by replacing Charles Waters, got to direct his first film on his own (On The  Town had been co-directed with Gene Kelly).

Another first was the screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, whose second screenplay would be An American In Paris.  Royal Wedding was also Lerner’s first collaboration as a lyricist for Burton Lane’s music.  Lerner and Lane had had successes on Broadway separately in the same season with Brigadoon and Finian’s Rainbow respectively.  But their happy Royal Wedding teamwork would eventually lead to a Broadway collaborative effort with On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.

Most critics agreed that among the songs, the big production number, “I Left My Hat in Haiti,” was something of a let-down, while the vaudeville-style performance of a song with an extremely long title was a veritable show-stopper.  Film histories tend, though, to pay most attention to Astaire’s solo, “You’re All the World To Me,” in which he literally dances all over the walls and on the ceiling (The effect was created by having Fred dance in an upright position while the room itself revolved with the camera and furnishings anchored to the floor.)

As for the song with the long title, “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been A Liar All My Life” is not, in nspite of many claims, the longest song title in history.  The Guinness Book of Records awards that dubious honour to Hoagy Carmichael’s “I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank On the Streeets of Yokohama With My Honolulu Mana Doin’ Those Beat-O Beat-O Flat On My Seat-O Hirohito Blues.”

Notes by Cam Tolton