Matrimony madness

>> 'Tis the season to get hitched--or read books and watch movies about it

by JULIET WATERS

If you believe the statistics, marriage may be back in style, or at least divorce is out. After peaking between 1975 and 1979, at 5.3 divorces per 1,000 marriages, in 1997 the divorce rate in the U.S. hit a 20-year low at 4.3. Nevertheless in 1998 America's divorce rate was still the highest in the world.

In Wedding Bell Blues: 100 Years of Our Great Romance With Marriage by Michael Barson and Steven Heller, no mention is made of Montreal. However, we do apparently have one of the lowest marriage rates in the world, and perhaps even the history of the world. Less than 40 per cent of Montrealers are expected to marry before the age of 50. Still, every once in a while you do hear of someone getting hitched, and this is marriage season. So here are some gifts I've picked out from the pages of this picture/factoid book on marriage in popular culture.

How about an antique marriage manual like Talks on Nature: A True Marriage Guide by J.H. Greer, M.D. (1888) which advises: "Let no married lovers think of habitually occupying the same bed. It can do no good... What one may gain in vitality the other loses... The close bodily contact under a common bed clothing is a constant provocation to amorous ideas and sensations. It is the purely sensual that needs to be put to one side that the spiritual may grow."

Or Facts About Marriage Every Young Man & Woman Should Know by S. Dana Hubbard, M.D. (1922): "On your wedding night, be tender, considerate and appreciate that the little wife has had a day of excitement and nervous and physical strain. Your wife and you are alone. She is absolutely yours and for the first time is entirely in your power. At your mercy. If you shock or disgust her by precipitancy or over eagerness, or zeal, appreciate it may be the undoing of your wedded bliss and joy. You may regret it the balance of your life... The honeymoon is often one nightly repetition of legalized prostitution sinking the pure, the high and the holy into the low and debasing [sic] lust of over excited passion."

For the less spiritual couples there are always vintage tabloids, like Screen Dreams and Look, featuring the marriages of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher, Ava Gardner and Mickey Rooney, Ava and Frank Sinatra, Frank and Mia Farrow, Mia and Woody etc.

For the cocooning types, there are movie classics like The Philadelphia Story, The Way We Were, The Awful Truth, Unfaithfully Yours, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. And some not so classics like: I Married a Monster From Outer Space, Henpecked, Alimony, Bride of the Gorilla, The Gay Bride, I Married a Communist, He Married His Wife, the terrifying She Married an Artist, and the wonderfully titled Repent at Leisure.

For the not-so-perfect couple, who should maybe be subtly discouraged from going anywhere near the altar, there are movies that can turn just about anyone into a runaway bride or groom Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Ref, Days of Wine and Roses, The War of the Roses, Peggy Sue Got Married and Shoot the Moon.

And finally, if one subscribes to that old adage about the best things in life being free, how about some good advice for your pre-nuptial pals. For the groom there's this from Socrates: "By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." And for the bride, this from Katharine Hepburn: "If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married." :

Wedding Bell Blues: 100 Years of Our Great Romance With Marriage by Michael Barson and Steven Heller, Chronicle Books, pb, 132pp, $29.95