Name: Queen Kelly
Age: Somewhere from 92 to 96 years old. Or brand new, maybe?
Appearance: Decadent visions of dissipated European royalty in palatial grandeur, and seedy expat iniquity in East Africa. Erich von Stroheim directed this film, so every frame bursts with expensive vices, exposed flesh, outlandish costumes, drifts of spring blossom or swags of velvet and the occasional splash of bodily fluids. Not to mention more candles than Barry Lyndon, more or less. Gloria Swanson is the star…
Swanning about in the usual high-fashion ensembles? Not so much. She plays a schoolgirl nun, so she is dressed very plainly. At one point she wears a nightie.
I see, lingerie. Decidedly not, and she is covered up by Walter Byron’s overcoat most of the time.
Walter who? A British actor, chosen to be Swanson’s co-star in this movie. He could have been a big Hollywood star.
Why wasn’t he? Well for one thing, Queen Kelly was abandoned mid-production, and never released in the US.
Whoa. Yes, one day Swanson walked off set and made an angry phonecall (“The director is a madman!”) to Joseph P. Kennedy.
JFK’s father? The very same. He and Swanson were lovers, and producing the film together.
You really should have led with that fact. Sorry. When they met, Swanson was with United Artists, and Kennedy was running FBO. Together, they decided to make a prestige picture with a great director. They picked Erich von Stroheim.
Amazing filmmaker. But wasn’t he well known for overshooting by hours and angering the censors with his risqué content? That’s not a very sensible choice. No, but it was a very romantic one.
Sounds like Swanson regretted it – but what could be so shocking in a film about a nun? For one thing, she ends up the madam of a brothel in Tanzania. And Seena Owen spends most of the film wearing nothing but a cat.
OK, I am beginning to understand why this film was never finished. That’s just the half of it. Sexual hypocrisy, racial prejudice, moral panic, a giant financial betrayal and the coming of sound were all factors in the downfall of Queen Kelly. Stroheim never directed a film again and instead of seeing it through, Kennedy left the film industry for good.
Sounds like a cursed project. Well, you might say that. Swanson and Kennedy certainly did. And so would you after spending $800,000…
I assume Swanson tried to brush it under the carpet and move swiftly on. Not really, she championed the film until the end of her days. She shot an ending of her own, and Stroheim tried to shoot the missing portions too, but never got the chance. Swanson hired a big-name director to rework it in the 1950s. And she leapt on the chance to show the rediscovered “African” footage in the 1960s.
Wait, I think I saw this film… You saw a snippet of it in Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) for sure – Swanson and Stroheim’s twisted on-screen reunion. But Dennis Doros of Milestone Film & Video made a reconstruction of Queen Kelly in the 1980s, and he has produced a new, improved version from nitrate sources which is playing in cinemas now.
That’s it! Isn’t Doros afraid of the curse? Maybe he broke it for good. The reconstruction looks stunning.
How can I see it? Check your listings. The new Queen Kelly is popping up at US film festivals and silent film festival – Denver, San Francisco, and more.
Will it be released on Blu-ray? I should very much think so.
Do say: “Read more about Swanson, Stroheim and Kennedy’s ill-fated endeavour in The Curse of Queen Kelly, out on 27 March from Sticking Place Books.”
Don’t say: “Cut!”
