Queen Kelly
About Queen Kelly
Prince Wolfram, engaged to the mad Queen Regina, flirts with convent student Kitty Kelly, takes her to the palace, and says he loves her. Regina horsewhips Kelly, sends her away, and locks Wolfram up. That European half is what Erich von Stroheim finished. The script’s African half, in which Kelly is sent to East Africa, marries a man named Jan, and runs a brothel under the name Queen Kelly, was not shot. Gloria Swanson shut the production down over those scenes and fired Stroheim.
Cast & crew
More about Queen Kelly
Shot in 1928–29. Swanson stars as Kitty and produced, with Joseph P. Kennedy, her lover at the time. Walter Byron is Wolfram. Seena Owen is Regina. Paul Ivano, William H. Daniels, Gordon Pollock, and Hal Mohr photographed the Stroheim footage. Adolph Tandler is the music credit. Viola Lawrence edited. On 24 November 1931 Richard Boleslawski directed a different ending, photographed by Gregg Toland: Kelly dies in despair and Wolfram stands by the body in a chapel. A part-sound version of about 101 minutes, with that ending, was released in Argentina in October 1932 and in France in November 1932. Stroheim’s contract kept it out of the United States. It went to Europe and South America.
Themes
Making
Swanson stopped the camera when the story moved to the African brothel. What exists of Stroheim’s cut ends with the whip and the locked prince. The death in the chapel is Boleslawski’s later close, not the ending Stroheim wrote.
Look
Ivano, Daniels, Pollock, and Mohr shot the palace and the convent sequences. Toland shot the 1931 chapel ending.
Music
The 1932 export version is part-sound. Adolph Tandler is credited with music for the silent production.
Preservation
The Stroheim African ending was never shot. A 101-minute part-sound export version, with the 1931 chapel ending, survives.
Notes
- The catalog year is 1928, the year shooting began. The export release is 1932.
- Sunset Boulevard (1950) uses a piece of the silent footage as a film Norma Desmond had made. Stroheim, playing her butler, suggested the clip.
- That 1950 insert was the first time an American audience saw any of it.
- Sylvia Ashton, Wilson Benge, Sidney Bracey, Gordon Westcott, and Tully Marshall are billed.
- An Internet Archive copy is filed as queenkelly1929.
Scenes
- Wolfram takes Kitty from the convent to the palace.
- Regina whips her and jails the prince.
- In the 1931 ending, Wolfram looks at her body in a chapel.
Also available
- Internet Archive (queenkelly1929)
- Wikimedia Commons (Queen Kelly (1929).webm)
