Erich von Stroheim's 1929 film Queen Kelly was shut down mid-production following complaints by its star Gloria Swanson. The director was fired and a new ending was filmed, though the film was never released in the US. Queen Kelly has now been restored and reconstructed by Dennis Doros with a new recreation of the original ending based on von Stroheim's original scripts.
The film sees Swanson play Patricia Kelly, a young woman who becomes involved in a love affair with a Prince (Walter Byron) set to be wed to the Queen (Seena Owen) of a European nation.
Queen Kelly opens at New York's Film Forum on January 16th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
Check out the trailer and poster below.
The official synopsis reads:
Queen Kelly opens in the imaginary European country of Cobourg-Nassau, sometime before the first World War, where the vain and cruel Queen Regina V (Seena Owen) obsesses over her feckless fiancé (Walter Byron), Prince “Wild” Wolfram. When the dissolute prince encounters an innocent but flirtatious convent girl, Patricia Kelly (Gloria Swanson), he falls in love. Desperate to see her before his upcoming wedding to the Queen, he kidnaps Kelly and brings her to his rooms in the palace. When the Queen discovers the lovers, she whips the nightgowned girl and throws her out into the night. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Kelly returns to the convent, where she receives a telegram, summoning her to the bedside of her dying aunt (Florence Gibson) in Dar-es-Salaam, German East Africa. There, the innocent young girl is shocked to find herself in a seedy bordello. On her deathbed, Kelly’s aunt begs her niece to wed the syphilitic brothel owner, Jan (Tully Marshall).
