A real-life superhero wedding… but how?
Match-day entertainment is a key feature in all forms of live sport. Even on live television broadcasts, it is somebody’s job to try and keep the crowd in the stadium entertained while the TV feed cuts back to the studio for the pre-match and half-time analysis. Your regular match-day entertainment will not have the budget or spectacle of the Super Bowl half-time show. Still, teams and clubs around the world try to find effective methods to keep their fans’ eyes glued to the field even when there is no serious action taking place.
Of any sport, baseball is the one most famed for its match-day entertainment. Thanks to baseball, ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’ is the most famous song in the history of sport because of its frequent performances over a long period of time. Baseball even popularised the ‘kiss cam, using breaks or lulls in play to force couples into kissing one another. In a similar vein, I’m pretty sure that baseball has had its fair share of half-time proposals.
While the half-time proposal is a fixture of sports around the world, I wonder how many weddings have taken place before or during sporting events. Once again, you only need to turn to baseball to receive the answer to this question. When it comes to pre-match weddings that take place on the playing field in front of fans who paid to watch something entirely different, baseball again stands alone.
The date was 5th June 1987. It seemed to be just another day of the Major League Baseball Season, with the New York Mets set to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates inside Shea Stadium. However, before the reigning World Champion Mets took to the field, fans inside Shea Stadium were treated to a unique event. For the fans inside the stadium expecting to see a high-level game of baseball, some may have been surprised when the stadium announcer began to say these lines:
“Ladies and Gentlemen… In the early ’60s, two future legends had their auspicious beginnings. One was the Amazing Mets. The other was the Amazing Spider-Man. Today, these two great American institutions, Spidey and the Mets, honour a third, most sacred institution—that of matrimony. The management of Shea Stadium and Marvel Comics invite you to witness the marriage of Spider-Man and his fabulous fiancée, Ms. Mary-Jane Watson. Please cast your eyes to centerfield and join us in welcoming the bride and groom.”
You certainly read that right. After the stadium announcer had made this most bizarre announcement, a limousine would enter the Shea Stadium playing field and make its way towards home plate. Out of the limo would come Spider-Man, the fictional comic book superhero, and an actress representing his girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson. Spidey was wearing a black tailcoat over his traditional red and blue attire, while Mary Jane was wearing a designer wedding dress .The two would soon be joined at home plate by fellow superheroes Captain America, Firestar, Iceman and The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man creator Stan Lee. Lee would act as minister for this wedding ceremony. The event would feature everything you expect to find at a traditional wedding service, including vows, the exchange of rings and the ‘I do’s (or the I thee webs). After all that had been taken care of, the field would be cleared, a baseball game would later commence, and the New York Mets would dispatch the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-1. For the fans in attendance that day, they had unwittingly borne witness to one of the oddest events that has ever taken place inside of a sporting arena.
Why was a wedding of two fictional comic book characters done for ‘real’ in front of a live audience of baseball fans on a random Friday in June 1987? The answer: to imitate art. Marvel Comics used the live wedding of Spider-Man and Mary Jane as a promotional tool to advertise a special edition of The Amazing Spider-Man set to be released to the public the following Tuesday. In The Wedding!, the 21st edition of The Amazing Spider-Man Annual, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson finally wed. When asked about this wedding plotline by the Associated Press, Stan Lee responded: “I figure the poor guy has been single for 25 years…how much longer can I keep him frustrated?” (Peter Alan Harper, ‘Superhero Takes A Bride At Shea Stadium’ Associated Press 6th June 1987) It depends on how well the fanbase receives this storyline.
To further capitalise on this special live wedding event, Marvel decided to produce merchandise commemorating the day in question. Gift bags adorned with a picture of Spider-Man wearing a top hat and catching a baseball in his left hand were made and handed out to ‘lucky’ fans who managed to witness the event, along with Spider-Man pin badges. There was even a commemorative poster produced featuring Spidey and his wedding party with Mets players Darryl Strawberry, Wally Backman, Roger McDowell and Lee Mazilli, who would rather have been anywhere else than taking a photo with some cosplay artists. According to actor Stephen Vrattos, who was dressed as Spider-Man in the above poster, “[The Mets’ players] lacklustre responses and dour countenances were palpable.” (Stephen Vrattos, ‘Wedding Photo’, Heroes in my Closet, 6th April 2010)
For this unusual wedding, Marvel Comics did manage to attract some mainstream attention. The bride, groom and Stan Lee were the subject of a bizarre interview on Good Morning America and the ceremony itself was discussed briefly on Entertainment Tonight. You can see the two incidences in the video below:
The wedding was even the subject of a tongue-in-cheek article in the New York Times four days earlier on 2nd June 1987. The report, titled ‘Spider-Man To Wed Model’, detailed that ‘Friday night at Shea Stadium, Mary Jane Watson – an actress, model and computer businesswoman – will be married to the Amazing Spider-Man, a superhero also known to comic-book cognoscenti as Peter Parker, a freelance photographer for the mythical Daily Bugle in Manhattan.’
The article, which featured in the newspaper’s fashion pages below the main article about ‘The Short And Long Of New Furs’, went into detail about the fashion side of this mock wedding. They chose to mention that Mary Jane’s wedding dress, a ‘form-fitting white lace, satin and tulle gown’, had been designed by the late Willi Smith. They mentioned that Smith had also designed Spider-Man’s black tailcoat, which had been ‘buttoned with the masks of Comedy and Tragedy’. They even wrote about how Mary Jane’s wedding ring would feature ‘a black widow spider setting’. You can find the full New York Times article about this event using this link: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/02/style/spider-man-to-wed-model.html
Now the special day had arrived as two actors portraying Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson would make their way out onto a baseball field, perform a 10-minute mock wedding ceremony, kiss and then make their way off the baseball field. All done in front of a stadium of fans who had simply paid to watch a game of baseball.
Stephen Vrattos, who would play the role of the Green Goblin as part of the wedding day proceedings, remembers that “As show time neared, Jeremy and Tara left before the rest of us, because Spider-Man and MJ would be entering from the outfield in a limousine. Soon thereafter, Captain America, Hulk, Iceman, Firestar and Green Goblin were escorted to the field…A makeshift pulpit was erected midway in front of the third-base line facing the stands where the ceremony was to take place. The heroes and I flanked either side of the podium. There wasn’t any announcement. We simply ambled into place to a few cheers, jeers and choice comments”. Stan Lee would deliver a scripted set of lines, the vows were made, the rings were exchanged and Spidey dipped his new wife for a kiss in which Mary Jane would only taste fabric. The webhead would pick up his new wife, carry her into the limousine, and the other costumed actors would leave the field. Now whose ready for some baseball?
Despite not being able to find accurate sales figures to prove how successful The Wedding! was as a comic book, ‘the wedding’ as a publicity stunt can be seen as a success. To promote the event, Stan Lee managed to attract publicity from Entertainment Tonight, Good Morning America and The New York Times, two TV shows which regularly attract large audiences and one of the most-read newspapers in the world. Images of the event’s merchandise are still available online and the features done on GMA and ET have since been uploaded to YouTube, as shown by the video above. There is no possible way to know if the live wedding of Spidey and MJ at Shea Stadium was successful as a marketing tool to promote the original comic book. However, it certainly succeeded as a publicity stunt for which many people still remember to this day.
Sixteen years after this publicity stunt, Spider-Man would return to New York City live and in living colour once again, this time showing off his web-slinging. The venue this time was not Shea Stadium, but Radio City Music Hall. Radio City served as one location on a 40-city nationwide tour. The show in question, Spider-Man Live!, was a stunt spectacular which told the origin story web-slinger from getting bitten by the radioactive spider to saving Mary Jane from the Green Goblin. The event, presumably used to capitalise on the smash-hit film released the previous summer, would run in New York for six straight nights from 25th February-2nd March 2003. However on this occasion, Spider-Man would not be tying the knot with his red-headed lover, but instead tying his opponents in knots with his superior web-spinning abilities.
Link to Stephen Vrattos’ original blog, which provided much of the information for this article: http://www.heroesinmycloset.com/search/label/Shea%20Stadium)
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