TREND TO FORMALITY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19311, 29 April 1937, Page 10

TREND TO FORMALITY

New Style Hollywood Weddings

rjOLLYWOOD'S habits in the past have included the surprise elope-ment-quick marriage routine, practised by uncounted .couples who have flown or motored to Yuma, Mexienli, >r Tijuana, to be wedded in a 10minute service, followed by a weekend honeymoon. To-day Hollywood is setting a "new" style in weddings—the well-planned, dignified, iftcn elaborate church wedding. Just why this trend towards formality has gripped Hollywood remains inexplicable, because the players now married in church are as young, as and as deeply in love as those A-lio, in former days, rushed through the ceremony without ceremony. Publicity cannot be the secret of this "new" idea either, because players tire certain to have their marriages reported and their photographs printed in newspapers whether they marry in a church after long-drawn-out planning, or surprise their friends by announcing that "yesterday we went to Yuma and got married."

Whatever the cause of the movement, it is agreed by all Hollywood lltat a young Australian was partly .esponsifde for establishing the trend; for the "new" style in weddings is directly traceable to the formal ■hurch marriage of Maureen O'Sullivan, to John ,X. B. Villiers-Farrow, the brilliant Hollywood writer, formerly of Sydney, who has won literary fame in the picture capital as plain John Farrow. Theirs was the most colourful wedding Hollywood had had in many years, and took the L-ity back to the olden days, when ■ here were such costly ceremonies as hat which united Rod' La Roeque and Vilma Hanky, and which holds the record for elaborateness to this day.

Following quickly upon the heels of the O 'Sullivan-Farrow marriage was that of Henry Fonda to Frances Fey-mout-Brokaw, which was just as

elaborate as Miss O'Sullivan's ceremony, although it took place in Xew York (,'itv.