Note: This week presented are four tributes to William Hopper. He became an actor because his mother Hedda (actress, then a powerful gossip columnist) pushed him into the profession. “When I worked at Warner Bros.,” stage-shy Hopper said, “I was so scared I stuttered all the time.” It’s sometimes impossible to spot Hopper in his early roles unless he is standing up and thus using his height and good looks to advantage. Also, his youthful brown hair, before WWII made it white, makes him hard to recognize. He appears in ‘blink and you’ll miss him’ roles in TCM stand-bys such as Stagecoach (1939), Knute Rockne, All American (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Hopper later played Paul Drake, Perry Mason’s private detective, on the greatest courtroom drama in the history of creation.
Public
Wedding
1937 / 1:00
Tagline: “Married by Mistake Only to Enjoy It”
[internet
archive]
In this zany rapid-fire comedy, Jane Wyman, her con-man father, and three minions run a threadbare carnival act. They face intractable money problems that may even force them to into an activity that involves work. This prospect is so horrible to the quintet that they hit upon the idea of raising money with a public wedding. That is, they are putting on a sham wedding as an event at which advertisers can buy time and space to market their goods and services. And the down-home Americans of the time get an hour or two of entertainment for the price of admission.
Two problems arise. Two of the minions make off with all the proceeds. And Wyman ends up married to a young unknown artist (William Hopper) for real. In a satire of the news-hungry press of the time, the remaining minion (Dick Purcell) recruits his fan dancer GF to stage a suicide attempt as a publicity stunt in order to pump the juicy story of an artist as a bum that left an innocent girl at the altar to pursue his art.
The publicity enables Wyman to set up Hopper up as a portrait painter for the rich and famous in the social register. Wyman argues to Hopper that a successful artist needs to build up notoriety before he can sell paintings. Hopper argues, "Good, sound, honest work will be appreciated in the end" to which Miss Practicality answers, "Well, who the heck wants to wait till the end?" Hopper’s dream is to set up a scholarship fund that sends art students to Europe for study abroad. But the con-man father exploits this idealistic plan for his own larcenous purposes.
A lot of incident is packed into a comedy that is only an hour long. The tone is rather slap-happy. In her first part at the top of the bill, Wyman seems very young and feisty but has the charisma a movie star needs. Hopper, sadly, not so much. He has all the power of attraction of The Young Suitor in a Charlie Chan movie. Seeing his hair in its original brown is odd given we are used to seeing Paul Drake’s white hair.
Usually a heavy or a heavy-handed character, Berton Churchill as the father is funny in the American blowhard tradition of the Frank Morgan’s Wizard of Oz and W.C. Fields’ Larson E. Whipsnade in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. Looking to weigh about 80 pounds, tiny Marie Wilson as the fan dancer provides additional comedy. Fastidious Dick Purcell* makes a moue of disgust and barks “Why don't you cover your mouth with your hand when you yawn” to which she replies huffily, “And get bit?”
Even when the script is lame, the nutty story makes its own kind of giddy sense. So the
movie checks the box of creating its own world. Credibility
is impaired by Hopper asserting his right to wear the pants in the
family when they both know Wyman is the brains and gasoline of
their alliance. The man who runs the restaurant is stereotypically Greek, but
this does not seem so strange to me who lives in a place where many people still
use the expression “Greek restaurant.”
*Never thought you would ever see in the same sentence "fastidious" and "Dick Purcell," did you? This blog is full of surprises.
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