The movie took home six Oscars: Best Score, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Editing. It also earned nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress (Winters). It was named among the “100 Greatest Movies of All Time” by the American Film Institute, and the National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the Library of Congress in 1991, naming A Place in the Sun a “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” film.
The movie’s tagline read: “A love story of today’s youth . . . filling the screen with ecstasy as they seek a place in the sun!”
Father of the Bride
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
CAST
Spencer Tracy Stanley Banks
Joan Bennett Ellie Banks
Elizabeth Taylor Kay Banks
Don Taylor Buckley Dunstan
Billie Burke Doris Dunstan
Leo G. Carroll Mr. Massoula
Moroni Olsen Herbert Dunstan
Melville Cooper Mr. Tringle
Taylor Holmes Warner
Paul Harvey Reverend A. I. Galsworthy
Frank Orth Joe
Russ Tamblyn Tommy Banks
CREDITS
Pandro S. Berman (producer); Vincente Minnelli (director); Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett (screenplay), based on novel by Edward Streeter; John Alton (photography); Adolph Deutsch (music); Cedric Gibbons, Leonid Vasian (art directors); Edwin B. Willis, Keogh Gleason (set decorations); Douglas Shearer (sound); Ferris Webster (editor); Walter Plunkett, Helen Rose (costumes); Sydney Guilaroff (hairstylist); Jack Dawn (makeup)
RELEASE DATE: June 16, 1950
RUN TIME: 92 minutes, black and white
Kay and “Pops”
SUMMARY: Stanley Banks’s world is turned on its head when his daughter Kay announces her engagement to boyfriend Buckley Dunstan. A myriad of questions arise at once. Is the boy good enough for Kay? A man-to-man talk is necessary. Will Kay get over her last-minute jitters? Only after an unforgettable father-daughter talk. Are his parents accepting of martinis? Apparently anytime except at engagement parties. Is their home big enough for the reception? Well, just put all the furniture into storage. As wedding plans get underway, Stanley meets each disaster, unpleasant encounter, and money-draining suggestion with equal parts frustration and terror but always with a soft spot for his ever-loving daughter, Kay.
REVIEWS
“It’s the second strong comedy in a row for Spencer Tracy, doing the title role, and he socks it. There’s also the timely casting of Elizabeth Taylor as the bride (a title she just assumed in real life) to help stir wicket interest, and Joan Bennett completes the star trio with an elegant performance as the mother.”
—Variety (“Brog”)
“Elizabeth Taylor’s good looks aid her in creating the illusion that in each successive scene the audience, like the father, is suddenly seeing her for the first time. . . . Father of the Bride is something like a good party. The occasion is well ordered, the people charming, the lapses not serious, and the end achieved before the conviviality is exhausted.”
—New York Herald Tribune (Otis L. Guernsey, Jr.)
“The film, while it packs all the modern tribal matrimonial rite that was richly contained in the original [Streeter novel], also possesses all the warmth and poignancy and understanding that makes the Streeter treatise much beloved. . . . Father of the Bride is a honey of a picture of American family life.”
—The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)
The bride in all her glory, fashioned by Helen Rose
notes
THERE WAS NO MORE APPROPRIATE CASTING FOR ELIZABETH in 1950 than in Father of the Bride. In 1949 she had become engaged to Bill Pawley, Jr., but during the making of A Place in the Sun the romance had about run its course. In October of that year she met hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton, Jr. at a nightclub and they began dating. Elizabeth grew up with the strong conviction that when two people fall in love they seal it with marriage. Her romance with Hilton escalated rapidly and by February 1950 they became engaged. Father of the Bride had gone into production just a few weeks earlier and this most fortuitous timing allowed MGM to put the film on a schedule that would have it premiere just two days after her actual wedding to Hilton, and in general release a month later.
The film, based on a popular novel by Edward Streeter, was a comedy of the highest order. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s script, coupled with Minnelli’s sensitive handling of the material, created an authentically comical succession of events that were honest and poked fun at the hoopla surrounding marriage ceremonies without ever diminishing the state of marriage itself. Spencer Tracy, in one of the first comedies of his long career, was nothing short of brilliant in the title role, appropriately frustrated, baffled, harried, and put-upon, but all the while loving and genuinely funny. Elizabeth was at her best in their scenes together, both sincere in the more serious moments and getting mileage out of inherently comedic scenes with her straight-faced line readings. Elizabeth and Tracy’s rapport on the screen carried over from the friendship that quickly formed between them offscreen. From this time on, important events in Elizabeth’s life always elicited a note of congratulations from Tracy signed “Love Pops.”
A costume sketch for Elizabeth by designer Helen Rose
Primping in her dressing room before going in front of the cameras
Reading on the set, what else? Edward Streeter’s Father of the Bride.
The blushing bride with her groom, onscreen (Don Taylor) and in real life (Nicky Hilton). Hilton, of the famed hotel chain, was the great uncle of “celebutantes” Paris and Nicky.
Elizabeth gets a visit from studio head Louis B. Mayer (left). Mayer could not have been more pleased to have Elizabeth’s own marriage to tie in with publicity for the film.
A charity fashion show at the studio during the making of Father of the Bride
On the set with her “Pops,” Spencer Tracy. They became great friends during filming.
Elizabeth’s marriage to Nicky Hilton took place on May 6, 1950, at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. She arrived amid screeching police sirens to a church filled with hundreds of guests, among them celebrity friends she had made at MGM, including Tracy, Lana Turner, and Fred Astaire. It was a dream ceremony for the press and MGM. Father of the Bride was so well-executed that it did not need the ballyhoo of Elizabeth’s wedding to help it along at the box office, but it certainly did not hurt. After its release the film became the most profitable comedy in MGM history at that time. Tracy earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his performance. The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.
Elizabeth and Tracy’s rapport on the screen carried over from the friendship that quickly formed between them offscreen.
Portrait of an eighteen-year-old bride-to-be, onscreen and off
Quo Vadis
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
CAST
Robert Taylor Marcus Vinicius
Deborah Kerr Lygia
Leo Genn Petronius
Peter Ustinov Nero
Patricia Laffan Poppaea
Finlay Currie Peter
Abraham Sofaer Paul
Marina Berti Eunice
Buddy Baer Ursus
Felix Aylmer Plautius
Elizabeth Taylor extra
CREDITS
Sam Zimbalist (producer); Mervyn LeRoy (director); S. N. Behrman, Sonya Levien, John Lee Mahin (screenplay), based on novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz; Robert Surtees, William V. Skall (photography); Miklós Rózsa (music); Cedric Gibbons, Edward Carfagno, William A. Horning (art directors); Hugh Hunt (set decorations); Douglas Shearer (sound); Ralph E. Winters (editor); Herschel McCoy (costumes); Sydney Guilaroff, Joan Johnstone (hairstylists); Charles E. Parker (makeup)
RELEASE DATE: December 25, 1951
RUN TIME: 171 minutes, color
SUMMARY: Roman soldier Marcus Vinicius returns home from years
of war and meets Lygia, an early Christian woman whose religious beliefs prevent her from returning Marcus’s love. The spurned Marcus then arranges to buy her as his slave, but she flees and returns to her people, fellow Christians. Meanwhile, Emperor Nero’s twisted mind compels him to set Rome aflame. When he ultimately blames the destruction of the city on the Christians, followers of the new religion are rounded up and thrown into an arena to fight for their lives amid wild beasts of prey. Marcus, still in love with Lygia, makes it his mission to save her life.
REVIEW
“Here, in this mammoth exhibition, upon which they say that M-G-M has spent close to $7,000,000 and which runs for just shy of three hours, is combined a perfection of spectacle and of hippodrome display with a luxuriance of made-to-order romance in a measure not previously seen. Here is a staggering combination of cinema brilliance and sheer banality, of visual excitement and verbal boredom, of historical pretentiousness and sex. We have a suspicion that this picture was not made for the overly sensitive or discriminate. It was made, we suspect, for those who like grandeur and noise—and no punctuation.”
—The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)
Costume test shot of Elizabeth as Lygia. The role was played in the film by Deborah Kerr.
notes
WHILE IN ROME IN THE SUMMER OF 1950, ON HER FIVE-MONTH honeymoon across Europe with Nicky Hilton, the newlyweds visited the set of Quo Vadis and Elizabeth agreed to participate in the filming as an extra, just for fun. Her uncredited (and indiscernible) cameo in the film was as a Christian slave girl in the arena.
Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis had been adapted for the screen numerous times in the past. MGM’s version was of the breed of epic, supercolossal historical films Hollywood made in abundance in the early 1950s, as an answer to the home entertainment provided to formerly devoted moviegoers by television. MGM spent $7.6 million on the production, an expense that proved justified when it took in nearly twice that amount at the box office. Elizabeth made costume tests for the lead female role of Lygia, but she was already well occupied with both work and a new husband and ultimately took part only as an extra. Lygia was played by Deborah Kerr.
Father’s Little Dividend
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
CAST
Spencer Tracy Stanley Banks
Joan Bennett Ellie Banks
Elizabeth Taylor Kay Dunstan
Don Taylor Buckley Dunstan
Billie Burke Doris Dunstan
Moroni Olsen Herbert Dunstan
Richard Rober police sergeant
Marietta Canty Delilah
Russ Tamblyn Tommy Banks
Tom Irish Ben Banks
Hayden Rorke Dr. Andrew Nordell
Paul Harvey Reverend Galsworthy
CREDITS
Pandro S. Berman (producer); Vincente Minnelli (director); Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett (screenplay), based on characters created by Edward Streeter; John Alton (photography); Albert Sendrey (music); Georgie Stoll (music conductor); Cedric Gibbons, Leonid Vasian (art directors); Edwin B. Willis, Keogh Gleason (set decorations); Douglas Shearer (sound); Ferris Webster (editor); Helen Rose (costumes); Sydney Guilaroff (hairstylist); William Tuttle (makeup)
RELEASE DATE: April 27, 1951
RUN TIME: 82 minutes, black and white
SUMMARY: Stanley Banks has recovered from daughter Kay’s wedding, the boys are settled in school, and with no financial woes to cast a shadow upon him and wife Ellie, life is good. Then Kay drops the big news: She and Buckley are going to have a baby. Buckley’s parents and Ellie are ecstatic, but Stanley is unsure becoming a grandfather is worthy of such overblown enthusiasm. He is confounded throughout many of the events to come, from arguments over baby names, to the manner of childbirth, to the hysteria surrounding the birth itself. Then when the young man finally arrives, he develops an instant, mystifying aversion to Stanley—but it’s nothing a little quality time with his young namesake can’t solve.
The young Dunstans with Grandma and Grandpa Banks, clockwise: Elizabeth, Don Taylor, Joan Bennett, Spencer Tracy, and baby Donald Clark
REVIEWS
“Things couldn’t be better than they are in this sequel to the movie version of John Streeter’s Father of the Bride. . . . All the players are just right in the roles to which they have become accustomed, but once again Spencer Tracy wraps the picture up with a grand comedy performance as an innocent bystander turned babysitter.”
—New York Herald Tribune (Otis L. Guernsey, Jr.)
“The glib script by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, based on the characters created by Edward Streeter, misses none of the situations that make for laughs among those about to become grandparents or parents for the first time. Real-life situations have just the broad touch needed to sharpen comedic flavor, and the entire cast goes about the duties with obvious enjoyment.”
—Variety (“Brog”)
“All the way through the picture Mr. Tracy does a wonderful job of displaying the agonized reactions of a father and a badly baffled man. In him is again superbly mirrored a real American type—slightly prettified and idealized, we’ll grant you, but never sugared or overdone. And the same goes entirely for Joan Bennett as the charmingly eccentric wife, for Elizabeth Taylor as the expectant mother and for Billie Burke and Moroni Olsen as the other in-laws. Don Taylor does even better as the tormented husband of the girl, and in him one sees the definite glimmers of another distracted father twenty years hence.”
Doting “grandmother” Joan Bennett with Elizabeth, Don Taylor, and Donald Clark
On Pops’s lap. Tracy and his longtime partner on the screen and in life, Katharine Hepburn, were two of Elizabeth’s favorite actors, and inspired her to work at her craft.
Between takes of Father’s Little Dividend
Snack time with her onscreen husband, Don Taylor
Elizabeth plays with baby Donald Clark.
Clowning with Don Taylor. This baby-themed sequel to Father of the Bride earned $3.1 million in domestic film rentals.
notes
IF FATHER OF THE BRIDE WAS SO APTLY TIMED IN THE LIFE of Elizabeth Taylor, its successor, Father’s Little Dividend, was the complete opposite. Buckley and Kay Dunstan and Nicky and Elizabeth Hilton may have reached the altar at the same time, but the Dunstans had beaten them to the nursery. Immediately after their wedding, Elizabeth and Hilton departed on a honeymoon lasting five months, spent primarily in casinos across Europe. This epic honeymoon comprised most of their 203-day marriage. Reports back from Europe alluded to Hilton’s drinking problem and possible domestic violence. It has been written over the years that Elizabeth became pregnant on the trip and suffered a miscarriage caused by Hilton’s physical abuse. Whatever the precise circumstances between them may have been, the marriage was evidently over by the time they returned from Europe.
Elizabeth had filmed Father of the Bride in the blush of love. As Father’s Little Dividend went into production in October 1950, Elizabeth’s marriage was falling apart and she was in an entirely converse state of mind. No matter what was happening in her personal life though, she maintained her professionalism on the set. Director Vincente Minnelli later said he was struck by how, in spite of the breakup of her first marriage, Elizabeth remained a pleasure to work with: “I was delighted. I found her so responsible, intelligent, and professional.”
Elizabeth and Spencer Tracy continued their mutual admiration society as well. She later said, “He was one of the people I learned from. He had a stillness, a quietness about him that spoke more than volumes, and it just was mesmerizing. He could play any role and he just drew you in.” Tracy repeated his successful interpretation of Stanley Banks. In fact, the team behind Father’s Little Dividend, the same that had crafted Father of the Bride, remained at the top of their game and produced that rarest of rare gems in Hollywood: a sequel that did not diminish but indeed measured up to its predecessor.
By the time
Father’s Little Dividend was in theaters, Elizabeth was no longer married. She filed for divorce from Nicky Hilton on December 22, 1950. She did not take a penny from her wealthy ex-husband. Elizabeth was now a single woman again—and there was no shortage of suitors beating a path to her door.
In spite of the breakup of her first marriage, Elizabeth remained a pleasure to work with.
Dutch magazine cover of Elizabeth and baby
Screenland cover from her Father’s Little Dividend period
Callaway Went Thataway
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
CAST
Fred MacMurray Mike Frye
Dorothy McGuire Deborah Patterson
Howard Keel Stretch Barnes/Smoky Callaway
Jesse White Georgie Markham
Fay Roope Tom Lorrison
Natalie Schafer Martha Lorrison
Douglas Kennedy drunk
Elisabeth Fraser Marie
Johnny Indrisano Johnny Terrento
Stan Freberg Marvin
Elizabeth Taylor herself
CREDITS
Melvin Frank, Norman Panama (producers/directors/screenplay); Ray June (photography); Marlon Skiles (music); Cedric Gibbons, Eddie Imazu (art directors); Edwin B. Willis, Hugh Hunt (set decorations); Douglas Shearer (sound); Irvine Warburton (editor); Helen Rose, Gile Steele (costumes); Sydney Guilaroff (hairstylist); William Tuttle (makeup)