The director Cecil B. DeMille is most famous now for his biblical epics, but from 1919 to 1921 he featured the glamorous rising star Gloria Swanson in a flurry of films about modern love and marriage. These pictures presented Swanson tackling moral dilemmas regarding marriage, infidelity, and divorce, all while decked out in spectacular fashions. The titles will give you some idea of their content:
Don’t Change Your Husband
For Better or Worse
Male and Female
Why Change Your Wife?
Something to Think About
The Affairs of Anatol
As they suggest, these films promoted a pretty socially conservative view, but they were also sympathetic to those who stray from the straight and narrow. There was plenty of time to have some fun before doing the right thing in the final reel. (DeMille knew a thing or two about attracting audiences – his biblical epics always included an orgy. You know, to make the moral lesson clearer.)
DeMille worked predominantly with female screenwriters. Long-time DeMille collaborator Jeanie Macpherson wrote fifty films for him over the years, including all of this batch except for Why Change Your Wife?, which was written by Olga Prinzlau and Sada Cowan.
Olga Prinzlau 
Sada Cowan
In 1920 DeMille made two films starring Swanson: the serious Something to Think About and the comedy Why Change Your Wife?
Something to Think About
Swanson is the poor daughter of a blacksmith who has her education paid for by a wealthy friend and admirer (Elliot Dexter). After several years she agrees to marry him out of gratitude, but before the wedding she falls for another man (Monte Blue), whom she elopes with. They move to the city, poor but happy, until Blue is killed in an industrial accident, leaving pregnant Swanson widowed. She returns to her father, but he is still furious over the elopement and will have nothing to do with her. Swanson is on the verge of committing suicide when Dexter steps in, offering to marry her solely for the sake of the unborn baby. Naturally this situation leads slowly but surely, over several years, to true love and reconciliation with her father.
It’s a pretty straight ahead narrative, and I guess the “something to think about” is “who should I marry?”. I’ve seen enough films from this era to get the impression that folks back then chose their marriage partners very, very quickly, and errors of judgement were probably pretty common.
This film I found a little too serious and plodding, though it was refreshing that there weren’t really any bad guys: Blue as the’other man’ was charming and sweet, and Dexter is saintly and forgiving. Swanson’s brutish father is the only real reprobate in the tale, though he comes around in the end.
Why Change Your Wife?
This film I found more enjoyable, thanks to the charm and chemistry of the two leads. Plus it’s funny. When it comes to silent movies, comedies age better, I’ve found. This one has a frothy light tone and many clever plot details. And it takes place entirely in the world of the rich, giving Swanson an opportunity to don the eye-popping outfits which were her trademark.
The actor playing the husband here, Thomas Meighan, was 41 years old, to Swanson’s 21, but I had no idea of the gap when I watched this. She plays older very convincingly; one never doubts her maturity and worldliness. In fact Swanson was younger than both Olive Thomas (26) and Mary Pickford (28), who were playing schoolgirls in 1920.
The very first scene is charmingly mundane, as a married couple get in each other’s way in the bathroom, his attempts to shave being interrupted by her trips to the medicine cabinet. Their marriage is shown to be comfortable but unexciting.
The next scenes show the husband putting up with nagging and reproaches from his wife. Stereotypes abound here, and Swanson is depicted as prudish and moralistic – we know this because she’s buttoned up in an old-fashioned blouse, wears glasses, and is reading a book called “How to Improve Your Mind”.
She won’t let him smoke his cigar, or play foxtrots on the gramophone (she prefers a classical piece called “The Dying Poet”), and scolds him for making a frivolous purchase: “think of the starving people in Europe”. She even goes so far as to send his adorable dog outside.
This is significant. When a character can’t warm up to a dog, well, we all know something is wrong with them.
Meighan decides to get in her good graces again by buying her a dress, but while he’s in the store his head is turned by a young lady modelling an elaborate negligée (Bebe Daniels). She looks like this:
He buys the negligée and presents it to his wife with dire results. She thinks it’s far too revealing, and reacts angrily:
Isn’t that fascinating?! Obviously ‘Oriental’ and ‘Turk’ were code words back then for ‘sexually daring’.
Soon after this outburst Meighan buys two tickets for a variety show but Swanson refuses to go. She’s still miffed about the negligée, and besides, it’s just too low-brow for her, she’s going to a violin recital instead. Stuck with the tickets and feeling aggrieved, Meighan takes the ever-hovering Daniels to the show and enjoys a few drinks later at her apartment. The situation is a revelation to him… She finds him funny and charming! She doesn’t mind that he smokes! And she likes foxtrot music!
At the door, momentarily befuddled by her perfume, he kisses her but immediately regrets it, and rushes home to his wife. Unfortunately she smells the perfume on his collar and – overreacting impressively – declares their marriage is over. Quick work!
With this, the blame is laid solely upon the outraged wife. In this film the husband only fault is being too easygoing, leaving him open to manipulation by conniving women.
After a seemingly instant divorce, Meighan marries Daniels. There is a clever reprise of the opening bathroom scene, in which Meighan is again trying to shave between interruptions from his petulant new wife. I particularly liked that DeMille flipped the bathroom layout here from what it was in the opening scene, where Meighen faces the mirror at left. Now he faces the mirror at right, in a mirror-image reversal of a familiar but altered situation. Wife number two may be more fun than wife number one, but she is prone to tantrums and speaks in baby talk. And she has a cat, so she hates his dog. Meighen looks rather rueful at this point, but resigned.
Meanwhile Swanson is heartbroken and distraught. To cheer her up, her aunt takes her out shopping. In a change room she overhears two women gossiping about how she lost her husband because she dressed so dowdily. Furious, she flings herself in the opposite direction, demanding of the sales staff:
This is what the audience has been waiting for – Gloria Swanson dolling herself up in exotica. From here on she appears only in the most glamorous, luxurious, shoulder-baring fashions. Finally!
Looking for a little fun, she goes with her aunt to a resort, and thanks to her bizarre bathing costume attracts a crowd of admirers. She also runs into Meighen and his new wife there. Swanson has her revenge, as he gets an eyeful of her new appearance.
She’s also had an attitude adjustment, for she now seems very fond of his dog, uttering the old chestnut:
“The more I see of men, the more I like dogs.”
That evening Meighan and Swanson gaze longingly across the room at each other while Daniels sneaks around to flirt with the violinist who was previously courting Swanson, played by ballet dancer and actor Theodore Kosloff.
A quick aside here… Kosloff’s character here, the romantic, hand-kissing European dandy, was a well-used stereotype of the time. It was very common throughout the 20s and 30s to contrast a plain-speaking, masculine American with his contrived opposite: the dapper, snobbish European with his cigarette holder, effeminate mannerisms, and womanizing charm. This ‘type’ was very often introduced as the heroine’s comedic, would-be lover. He flatters her with lavish attention, but in the end she returns to her husband, because of course she wasn’t really in love with that odd little foreign fellow. He’s just not as manly as her hubby, and his attentions probably weren’t sincere anyway.
In Why Change Your Wife? Kosloff doesn’t get very far wooing Swanson, but he does get to face down the ex-husband in a truly fabulous bathing suit.
I mean, it has a cape.
Back to the story…
Resisting their attraction to one another, Swanson and Meighan each decide to return to the city, only to find themselves on the same train. Upon their arrival, Meighan has a bad fall and hits his head. (He slips on a banana peel, I kid you not.) Swanson has the medics transport him to her home, and in a hilariously vague-yet-specific prognosis, the doctor declares:
Daniels is alerted and she shows up to take possession of her husband. But he can’t be moved! She doesn’t care! Cue the no-holds-barred brawl.
They wrestle over the key to the door until Swanson threatens to throw acid in Daniels’ face. Stalemate. They settle in for the night. Daniels falls asleep but Swanson keeps vigil.
In the morning Meighan awakes hale and hearty. Seeing that he only has eyes for his ex-wife, Daniels seizes the vial of acid and throws it at Swanson, only to discover it was just eyewash. Daniels knows she is licked, and exits, declaring that the only good thing about marriage is alimony.
Cut to Swanson and Meighan remarried and back in their old home, but with a few changes. Swanson, in a daring negligée, pours hubby a drink, lights his cigar and puts a foxtrot on the gramophone. The lesson is clear:
So, yes, the gender politics are dated and cringey. It’s annoying how blameless the husband is throughout, and it’s not terrific that Gloria has to tart herself up to win him back. It’s DeMille’s sly message to the ladies, that only by being sexy can you secure your husband’s loyalty.
Still, within the traditional framework there’s a great deal of sympathy and humour at play in this story. The women are the strong characters, the only ones with any agency, as the man drifts helplessly back and forth between them.
Gloria Swanson was a forceful presence on and off the screen, and lived her life exactly as she pleased. She was every inch the star: a savvy, fashion-forward, glamorous celebrity who had six husbands and many lovers, made and spent fortunes, and joined the Pickford-Fairbanks-Chaplin-Griffith founded United Artists in 1925 with her own production company.
Interesting trivia tidbit: Through her sixth husband Swanson became friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and testified at John’s immigration hearing for permanent residency.
Unexpected Connections Department: Thomas Meighan was the sole witness when Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas were secretly married in 1916. (See previous post for more about Olive Thomas.)
1920 
1950
P.S. Knowing about the work DeMille and Swanson did together in the 1920s (some sources claim they had an affair as well) just makes their scenes together, thirty years later in Sunset Boulevard all the sweeter.
1920 
1950
Up next: I think it would be interesting to contrast this with a European take on marriage and infidelity, so next I’ll take a look at the Swedish film Erotikon, directed by Mauritz Stiller.