1926

Wedding photograph showing a tall, imposing, 22-year-old Richard and his 19-year-old bride. He’s dressed straight out of the Fred Astaire song Putting on the Ritz -- “high hats and arrowed collars/white spats and lots of dollars.” The song celebrated the London Ritz hotel; Richard does his celebrating at the grandaddy Paris Ritz. They’re posing but comfortable; they belong there. In terms of wealth and social position, they could be characters in Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby novel. After a breakfast reception there, he and his debutante bride are married at the American Cathedral Church in Paris. The American colony in Paris turns out in force, along with European royalty and the J.P. Morgan banking family.