Quiet Wedding is a 1938 comedy play in three acts by the British writer Esther McCracken. [1] A young couple's plans for their wedding are undermined by the constant interruptions of their relatives. A sequel Quiet Weekend was written in 1941 and proved to be even more successful.
Mildred and Arthur Royd own a "quiet" weekend country cottage. Their daughter, Marcia and her husband arrive not on the best of terms. Denys, the Royds' young son, arrives with the glamorous Rowena Marriott but Miranda, a young guest, remains embrassingly devoted to him. [2]
Mildred has to cope with the complications which develop as everything goes wrong. [2]
Arthur keeps company with Adrian Barasford. Bachelor Adrian's interest is divided between discussing fishing with Arthur and his devotion to the charming middle-aged Mary Jarrow. Arthur and Adrian become involved in a salmon-poaching with matters straightened out the next day but all leave hurriedly to escape the consequences and to evade a visit from the vicar looking for money. [2]
In 1941 a film adaptation Quiet Wedding was directed by Anthony Asquith, starring Margaret Lockwood, Derek Farr and Marjorie Fielding. [3] A further version appeared in 1958 as Happy Is the Bride , directed by Roy Boulting. [4]
Quiet Wedding was presented on Theatre Guild on the Air 3 May 1953. The one-hour adaptation starred Diana Lynn, John Dall, and Jessie Royce Landis. [5]
John Edward Boulting and Roy Alfred Clarence Boulting, known collectively as the Boulting brothers, were English filmmakers and identical twins who became known for their series of satirical comedies in the 1950s and 1960s. They produced many of their films through their own production company, Charter Film Productions, which they founded in 1937.
Glynis Margaret Payne Johns is a British retired actress, dancer, musician and singer. Recognised as an icon of screen and stage, Johns has a career spanning eight decades, in which she appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays. She is the recipient of awards and nominations in various drama award denominations, including the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the Laurel Awards, the Tony Awards, the Drama Desk Awards and the Laurence Olivier Awards, within which she has won two thirds of her nominations. As one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema, she has several longevity records to her name.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.
Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.
David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was an English stage, film, and television actor and comedian. Having been described as both a leading man and a character actor, he is primarily remembered for his roles as authority figure George Banks in Mary Poppins, fraudulent magician Professor Emelius Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and as hapless antagonist Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug. Tomlinson was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend in 2002.
Emily Olivia Laura Blunt is a British actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for three British Academy Film Awards. Forbes ranked her as one of the highest-paid actresses in the world in 2020.
Blood Wedding is a tragedy by Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1932 and first performed at Teatro Beatriz in Madrid in March 1933, then later that year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Theatre critics often group Blood Wedding with Garcia Lorca's Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba as the "rural trilogy". Garcia Lorca's planned "trilogy of the Spanish earth" remained unfinished at the time of his death, as he did not include The House of Bernarda Alba in this group of works.
Cecil Parker was an English actor with a distinctively husky voice, who usually played supporting roles, often characters with a supercilious demeanour, in his 91 films made between 1928 and 1969.
Michael Joseph Anderson was an English film director, best known for directing the World War II film The Dam Busters (1955), the epic Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and the dystopian sci-fi film Logan's Run (1976).
Adrian Dunbar is an Irish actor, director and singer, known for his television and his theatre work. He co-wrote and starred in the 1991 film Hear My Song, nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the BAFTA awards.
Esther Helen McCracken was a British actress and playwright.
Philo McCullough was an American actor. He appeared in more than 250 films between 1914 and 1969. He was born in San Bernardino, California, and died in Burbank, California.
Happy Is the Bride is a 1958 black and white British comedy film written and directed by Roy Boulting and starring Ian Carmichael, Janette Scott, Cecil Parker, Terry-Thomas and Joyce Grenfell. It is based on the play Quiet Wedding by Esther McCracken, previously filmed in 1941.
Quiet Weekend is a 1946 British comedy film directed by Harold French and starring Derek Farr, Frank Cellier, Marjorie Fielding, George Thorpe and Barbara White. A family try to relax during a weekend holiday in the country. It was a sequel to the 1941 film Quiet Wedding, with several of the actors reprising their roles. It was based on the long running 1941 West End play Quiet Weekend and shot at Welwyn Studios, Welwyn Garden City and Berkshire.
Frederick Hugh Herbert was a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, short story writer, and infrequent film director.
Quiet Wedding is a 1941 British romantic comedy film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Margaret Lockwood, Derek Farr and Marjorie Fielding. The screenplay was written by Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald based on the play Quiet Wedding by Esther McCracken. The film was remade in 1958 as Happy Is the Bride.
Mildred Pierce is an American period drama television miniseries created by Todd Haynes for HBO. Adapted from James M. Cain's 1941 novel of the same name, It is about the titular heroine, a divorcée during the Great Depression struggling to establish a restaurant business while yearning for the respect of her narcissistic daughter. The miniseries also features Guy Pearce and Melissa Leo. It is the second adaptation of the novel, after the 1945 film noir produced by Warner Bros. and starring Joan Crawford. Carter Burwell wrote the original score for the miniseries.
It's a Boy is a 1933 British comedy film directed by Tim Whelan and starring Leslie Henson, Albert Burdon and Edward Everett Horton. It is a farce about a blackmailer who attempts to demand money from a young woman on the brink of marriage. It was based on the 1931 play It's a Boy by Austin Melford, an English adaption of the 1926 play Hurra, ein Junge by Franz Arnold and Ernst Bach. with sets designed by the art director Alex Vetchinsky.
Quiet Weekend is a 1941 play by the British writer Esther McCracken. It opened on 2 July 1941 at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End, where it enjoyed a successful run of 1,059 performances, closing on 29 January 1944. The production was directed by Richard Bird and designed by Michael Relph. It was a sequel to the 1938 play Quiet Wedding.
Paul Soskin was a Russian Empire-born British screenwriter and film producer. Soskin was born in the Crimea. His first few films in Britain were low-budget quota quickies, but his breakthrough came with the 1941 comedy Quiet Wedding starring Margaret Lockwood. In 1948 he produced director Roy Ward Baker's drama The Weaker Sex for Two Cities Films.