Financed by Joseph Kennedy and independently produced by Gloria Swanson who wanted to focus on serious roles, Queen Kelly balances a comedic charm with eccentric, dark flourishes, as in the opening scene featuring a hysterical, drunken Queen surrounded by wildly decadent décor and wearing nothing but the cat she clutches to her chest. Her fiancé Prince Wolfram falls in love with Swanson’s sweet Catholic girl Kitty Kelly and risqué antics ensue, ranging from the delightfully playful to the deliriously sadistic. Miraculously, the plot leads to Kitty succumbing to a nightmarishly arduous, unforgettable wedding ceremony with an old brothel owner in Africa. At this point in the production, Swanson’s misgivings about von Stroheim unfortunately coincided with the advent of the talkie, and Kennedy pulled all funding. The remains of von Stroheim’s original vision were reconstructed from fragments of the African footage that resurfaced in 1963, replacing a tacked-on Romeo and Juliet ending Swanson had released abroad without von Stroheim’s approval.