Bruce Von Stiers

Sandy Schreier does guest spots on shows like Oprah and radio interviews. She is something called a Fashion Historian. Sandy is also the author of Hollywood Dressed and Undressed. Now Sandy has a brand new book out. The title of the book is Hollywood Gets Married. It was published by Clarkson Potter.

In this new book, Sandy shows us how Hollywood deals with weddings, both real and on the movie reels. In her Introduction, Sandy tells of how the wedding gown of the Duchess of Windsor was copied and sold at varying prices. According to Sandy, Miss Piggy is the only one to have a copy of Princess Di’s wedding gown.

The book has nine sections, along with the Introduction and an Index. There are 178 full color pages in the book.

The first section is called Love In Bloom. Here Sandy explains how important it was for wedding gowns to be part of the publicity for a movie. If its star gotten married in the movie, a shot of the bride in her bridal gown was used to promote the film. Then we are treated to pictures of the likes of Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Sylvia Sidney and other actresses whose characters got married on screen. Sandy provides a paragraph of background information for each picture. We see a picture of Miriam Hopkins from the film Design For living. The accompanying text lets us know that the film was based on a autobiographical play by Noel Coward. This section also has pictures and tidbits about stars like Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Ginger Rogers and Maureen O’Hara. There is even a picture of the sixties star Virna Lisi in a micro mini wedding dress.

The next section is Always A Bridesmaid. There are pictures here of Loretta Young, Betty Hutton and Ashley Judd is various publicity stills. The text with Loretta’s picture mentions about the wedding she participating in, being Maid of Honor for her friends John Wayne and Josephine Saenz. The picture of Betty Hutton was from her film, Dream Girl. The photo of Ashley Judd is actually a group shot from the film Where The Heart Is. There are also publicity stills from films like My Best Friend’s Wedding, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Runaway Bride.

It Takes Two goes into the wedding ceremony itself and the design of the wedding gowns worn by the stars. This section shows us a picture from the film Our Town. Here we have a very young looking William Holden in front of a minister with Martha Scott during their nuptials. There is also a shot from Little Shot of Horrors that shows Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene in their wedding clothes getting ready to go through a flowered archway. Real life couple Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland are shown in a shot from The Valachi Papers, a mafia film from the 1970’s. There are also pictures and text about later films such as Mickey Blue Eyes, An Ideal Husband, The Story of Us and Sunshine.

Other sections of the book deal with the vagaries of the Hollywood weddings. We get to read about Nicolas Cage and Sara Jessica Parker in Honeymoon in Vegas. There is also So I Married An Axe Murderer with a shot of Nancy Travis at the alter with Mike Myers. The real life nuptials of Anjelica Huston and Robert Graham are listed. In We Are Family, we see Steve Martin as the Father of the Bride and Alan Alda as the nervous father in Betsy’s Wedding. Private Lives shares some tidbits about the wedding of Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hepburn. Julia Roberts is featured throughout the book. There are a couple of shots of her from Runaway Bride and one from her short lived marriage to Lyle Lovett.

Hollywood Gets Married is a wonderful coffee table book. You can’t help reading the text that Sandy has provided with the pictures. She gives a lot of information about the stars and both their movie and real weddings. There are pictures from some of the very first movie weddings on up to The Wedding Planner with Jennifer Lopez. If you love to read about Hollywood stars of past and present, you won’t want to pass up Hollywood Gets Married.

Hollywood Gets Married can be found at major book retailers. It has a list price of $ 29.95 U.S. It can also be ordered at www.randomhouse.com. Look for the Clarkson Potter section at the Random House web site.