Her Wedding Night *** (1930, Clara Bow, Ralph Forbes, Charles Ruggles, Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher) – Classic Movie Review 11,047

‘SHE’S THE GIRL WHO PUTS THE HONEY IN HONEYMOON!’

Director Frank Tuttle’s 1930 American comedy film Her Wedding Night is based on the play Little Miss Bluebeard by Avery Hopwood, written by Henry Myers, and stars Clara Bow, Charles Ruggles, Ralph Forbes, Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher.

A songwriter called Larry Charters (Forbes) persuades a friend named Bob Talmadge (Gallager) to impersonate him, and to escape his fans goes to France, where he is accidentally married to an American movie star, Norma Martin (Bow), vacationing in Southern France.

[Spoiler alert] Her Wedding Night is a salty and sassy sex comedy set on the rich Riviera, where there are endless mistaken identities on the way to a final happy and intentional marriage between the film star and the songwriter.

There’s a rush of great fun, high spirits and good humour from a bright ensemble cast, and particularly vivacious Bow and the dapper Ruggles (as Bertie Bird), as the Paramount Pictures studio remakes the 1925 silent film Miss Bluebeard (also directed by Frank Tuttle) to cash in on ‘It’ girl Bow’s infamy. She was involved in court battles ranging from unpaid taxes to being in divorce courts. Bow’s popularity had waned with the coming of sound, and she made a couple of film comebacks – Call Her Savage (1932) and Hoopla (1933) – and then married cowboy star Rex Bell and retired from film aged 28.

It was shot at Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, and released on 18 September 1930, by Paramount Pictures, who remade the film at the company’s Joinville Studios in Paris into several other languages, including the French version Marions-nous [Let’s Get Married], with different actors.

Clara Bow, Charles Ruggles, Rosita Moreno and Geneva Mitchell all competed in Paramount’s billiards championship between takes during this film’s production on 29 October 1930 and Bow won by a straight run of three.

Also in the cast are Geneva Mitchell as Gloria Marshall, Rosita Moreno as Lulu, Natalie Kingston as Eva, Wilson Benge as Smithers, Lillian Elliott as Mrs Marshall, Raoul Paoli as The Mayor, Rose Dione as Masseuse, and Sam Savitsky as Parisian Boulevardier.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,047

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