In fact, Cecil B. DeMille might easily be called the Father of the American Movie Marriage. It’s DeMille who used the fundamentals of marriage for a specific and personal cinematic purpose. He gave the marriage movie goals. He elevated the couple and their home into wealth way beyond the audience’s wildest ideals, but remembered to ground their problems in the ones anyone could have. He linked their broken dreams to escapist living conditions, then shattered their security, and ultimately restored it by reminding them that what those people up there on the screen did was not for them out in Peoria. DeMille united comedy, caution, and clothes … and he nailed down the pattern of serenity, chaos, and restored order that wouldn’t be abandoned by marriage movies for decades to come. The “upper-class” marriage threatened by sin—featuring very well-dressed protagonists living in ritzy digs—became one of the wily director’s story trademarks. DeMille eroticized marriage; ironically, he commandeered its holy state for purposes of sin.
Don’t Change Your Husband warns Cecil B. DeMille’s movie, but Gloria Swanson takes a look at Lew Cody anyway … (Photo Credit 1.5)
… and in Why Change Your Wife? Thomas Meighan learns the hard way that Gloria Swanson was the right one all along. Different husbands, different titles, but the same Swanson, same DeMille, same message.
Cecil B. DeMille defined the silent marriage movie, as in For Better, for Worse, with Elliot Dexter and Swanson. Motion Picture News said Swanson’s marital troubles “fairly make the heart cry out.”
DeMille’s skills as a filmmaker enabled him to sketch out what was happening between two people in a marriage with simple visual shorthand. He needs only two shots in The Affairs of Anatol (1921). The audience sees the feet of the husband tapping impatiently as he waits for his wife to make breakfast, followed by a shot in which the audience sees the feet of his wife—being given a pedicure by her maid. This definition of their marriage is swift (two shots), unexpected (using a pedicure for a punch line), prophetic (the couple have different goals), amusing (audiences always laugh), and a full definition of where they are in their marriage (in trouble). It has a wonderful economy. But DeMille was also a master of visual excess. Against a background of lavish sets, with bathrooms as big as Rhode Island and beaded and feathered costumes, he would have his married characters stray … and stray … and stray just a tiny bit more. After they had fully enjoyed straying, and everyone in the audience had enjoyed watching them stray, DeMille’s movies would remember to punish the sinners, reminding everyone that sinning was not going to lead to a happy ending outside of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. If you want sin, said DeMille (and you apparently do), go to a DeMille movie. Participate without consequences. Because his protagonists were usually married, and because it was made clear they were wrong to stray, and because everyone was distracted by costumes and sets, DeMille managed to get away with a lot.
DeMille’s portraits of well-heeled marriages in trouble were perfect for luxury-hungry moviegoers of the silent era. They came partly to view the goods on display. His movies starring Gloria Swanson set a high tone of sophistication, presenting a soignée heroine who was definitely not a Victorian virgin. She was, after all, a married woman. Swanson’s wives were fabulously dressed, jeweled to the gills, and out on the town ready for something to happen. A woman like the one Swanson portrayed was exciting to the (possibly) bored men in the audience, and very liberating for the women. The DeMille Swanson is always juggling two challenges: her husband, and what to wear. The key question in her world is clearly presented onscreen as a title card in Male and Female (1919). “Why shouldn’t the Bath Room express as much Art and Beauty as the Drawing Room?” The audience is allowed to decide its own answer, but after viewing Swanson stepping down into a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool filled with bath salts and rose petals, attended by two maids and surrounded by art deco luxury, their answer was likely to be a heartfelt “It should!” DeMille’s presentation of marriage as a setting for idealized homes, clothes, travel, and a lifestyle of luxury had a major historical influence that is still seen on modern screens.8
Swanson, again with Thomas Meighan, ultimately became tired of her DeMille marriage movies and opted to move on, despite the luxury she was surrounded with in Male and Female. (Photo Credit 1.8)
The press campaign for Don’t Change Your Husband indicates how the DeMille marriage movie was really designed more for spectacle than for caution: “Gorgeous gowns, beautiful women and a startling story of married life. Cecil B. DeMille has done it again. He put married life in a show window, with all its heart aches, misunderstandings—with all its joy and genuine beauty.” The gowns and the women and the shocks get top billing. The campaign suggested theaters stress the film’s spectacle and glamour and remember to “go the limit.” The campaign should be designed to appeal to “everyone married or thinking about getting married or against getting married.” In other words, marriage was not necessarily what would put them in the seats; it was just as likely to be the gowns and the spectacle.
In his personal life, DeMille became a sort of marriage guru. The movie magazines of the era carried interviews such as the one written by Adela Rogers St. Johns that appears in a 1920 Photoplay. In the article, “ ‘What Does Marriage Mean?’ As Told by Cecil B. DeMille,” the director gave St. Johns his views on marital infidelity (a subject, many said, on which he was an expert), suggesting that “if a woman has the mental strength to stand the gaff, her husband will always come back to her … if she just has the moral poise to weather his yieldings to the beast within.”9
Because DeMille’s titillating portraits of marriage managed to hide sex behind a conformist cover-up, they were wildly popular with audiences and inspired imitations. Fig Leaves (1926) is a perfect example of the DeMille-ish comedy. Directed by Howard Hawks (in an early effort), designed by William Cameron Menzies, with gowns by Adrian, Fig Leaves has three major characteristics of the DeMille marriage movie: a sequence set in ancient times (cave days), marital discord (over clothes), and a great emphasis on luxury (a “Color by Technicolor” fashion show). Fig Leaves opens in the days of cavemen, in which “the Garden of Eden was the only fashionable part of town.” The hero (Adam, played by George O’Brien) gave his rib “to learn the quaint old sport of matrimony.” His wife, Eve (the beautiful Olive Borden), is “one of the few brides who never threatened to go home to mother.” Charmingly anachronistic, à la The Flintstones, Fig Leaves shows O’Brien reading the morning newspaper (a hunk of granite), with stories like “There’s Bad Blood Between Cain and Abel,” an announcement of “Mastodon Races Today,” and an ad that suggests “Try Forbidden Fruit—an Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.”
Adam is contented with his life, but Eve has three problems: “I haven’t a thing to wear, I haven’t a thing to wear, and I haven’t a thing to wear.” She spots “a wonderful bargain in fig leaves” in the paper, but her husband angrily informs her that “ever since you ate that apple you’ve had the gimmes—first it was twin beds and now it’s clothes.” Imitating DeMille—and simultaneously satirizing him—the movie makes use of the basic male/female “we’re stuck with one another” personages of the original married couple, Adam and Eve, who here are a 1920s version of Blondie and Dagwood. When the image fades from cave days to present time, Adam becomes a plumber, but Eve’s still a housewife who wants more clothes. (“Woman hasn’t changed a bit,” says the title card.) Eve’s girlfriend (Phyllis Haver) gives her dubious advice—“Get all the pretty clothes you want regardless of Adam”—while a title card solemnly informs the viewer that “in all probability the Serpent in Eden was really another woman.” Adam’s male friend isn’t much more helpful. He advises Adam on how to handle women: “Treat ’em rough, but don’t kill ’em. You might want ’em for somethin’ someday.”
Fig Leaves is fast-paced and charming. When Eve is struck by a car owned by a big-name fashion designer (“She loitered in front of my motor, but I’m not angry”), she is offered a job as a model; Adam object
s. It’s the traditional “No wife of mine will ever work.” Eve models anyway without her husband’s knowledge, until he accidentally sees her parading around in her skivvies. The crisis of the film is put directly onto the screen in a clearly stated dialogue exchange between Adam and Eve, an exchange that every audience member could understand. It’s all about clothes. “You didn’t give them to me,” says Eve, “so I went out to earn them. That’s every woman’s right.” Adam fires back: “And every man’s right is to respect his wife and not have her parading around half-naked! You wanted clothes? You cared more for them than you did for me. Very well, Eve, you keep the clothes.” He stalks out, but within minutes everything is resolved. “Please, Adam, I’m sorry. I’ve learned my lesson. I know that clothes don’t mean everything.” Fig Leaves takes marriage to its roots, the conflict between Adam and Eve, and gives it a DeMillian problem—gorgeous clothes designed by Adrian and displayed on beautiful women in glorious Technicolor. Then it puts temptation in its place; a cautionary tale, but with a soupçon of irony. The end returns an audience to cave days. “Cain and Abel are having a slaying party,” says Adam. “Oh, but I haven’t a thing to wear!” responds Eve.
By the end of the silent era, some standards and traditions involving movie marriages had been established. It had become obvious that audiences liked to sit in the dark and observe marriages they would never have—sexy, rich, glamorous, exotic—and that they were willing to be cautioned, warned, and made to suffer for the experience. They were willing to pimp marriage out as an excuse to see clothes and furniture and places they would never see any other way.
Comedy, caution, and clothes—all these were molded into audience-pleasing movies about marriage. The 1920s marriage movie was a movie about what it meant to a man or a woman to be married. The state of being married was central to the plot. (The movie had to stay, as it were, in the family.) The stories were hermetically sealed, linked directly to the condition of the marriage; even if it was set in Borneo or against a political struggle, it was nevertheless still the story of a marriage and nothing else. Borneo and politics were background settings, decorations, or bonuses added on for variety.
The silent era also located the fundamental attitudes that would endure for marriage stories: an “I do” movie in which happiness would dominate, and an “I don’t” in which tragedy would prevail. Equally importantly, the movies of the 1920s found the handle on how to keep from offending any audience members who wanted to believe in the sanctity of marriage: establish happiness and destroy happiness, but always restore happiness. Along the way, show viewers something new, something beautiful, something sexy (if you can get away with it), and something escapist. Throw in some spectacle—a fur coat and a swan-shaped bed.
By 1929, the silent-film movie marriage was a set piece, smoothly operating in a beautifully produced film such as Wild Orchids, starring Greta Garbo. When the audience first meets the married Garbo, she is not the languid woman most people associate with her. She’s animated, excited, and alive. Married to one of those ubiquitous older movie millionaires (Lewis Stone, in this case), Garbo has just had the wildest ride of her life as their chauffeur recklessly races the couple to their departing ship. (The film opens with the defining call: “Hold the ship! The Sterlings are on their way!” Thus we learn of Stone’s wealth and importance: ships are held for him.)
This opening sequence, very brief, cleverly tells viewers important news: Garbo is married. She is youthful, full of life and humor, and craves excitement. Her husband, however, is older, calmer, and super-wealthy. And they are on their way to “inspect his plantations in the Orient.” “The Orient” was then, and has always been, the place American women go to find weird sex in the movies. On board ship, in fact, Garbo will encounter “sex” in a 1920s-style physical form: Valentino clone Nils Asther. Garbo stumbles across Asther as he is beating one of his servants in the hall outside his stateroom. This heats Garbo up for future inappropriate meetings between them. Heat (“the everlasting heat”) is, in fact, the theme of Wild Orchids. Asther explains to Garbo that she wears “cold orchids” but that in his country (Java) “the orchids grow wild” because of all the heat. “The East,” he tells her, “is a country of the senses.” While Garbo and Asther flare nostrils and exchange smoldering glances, Stone pursues his business interests. Thus, the movie carries out the established pattern of silent-movie marriages: orchids, Javanese dancers, pulsating heat, a wife who wants to make love, a husband who wants to make another business deal … and a man who represents sexual freedom, with a slight touch of kink thrown in. The plot is essentially that of The Cheat, but without any money being owed. In the end, all the heat (Garbo and Asther all wrapped together in the moonlight) cools down. Garbo and Stone sail home and back to normalcy.
A formula for marital trouble: Wild Orchids, with the older Lewis Stone and the young and glamorous Greta Garbo. Stone, from his twin bed, reaches out to his wife … (Photo Credit 1.9)
… gives her a chaste peck “good night” …
… and falls asleep, leaving her awake and full of longing, soon to be really awakened on a trip to the exotic Orient, where the heavy scent of “wild orchids” will tempt her.
This pattern might be called the “rich and strange” approach, well designed for the poor and ordinary. It can be seen to be clearly in place by the sound era in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest films, suitably entitled Rich and Strange (1932). A young married couple live in very modest circumstances in London. The husband is overtly dissatisfied with his lot. Riding home on the crowded subway, he sees an ad in a newspaper that asks him directly, “Are you satisfied with your present circumstances?” He knows he is not. The audience knows he is not. The idea is that they probably are not, either, so empathy is established. The husband arrives home, finding his cheerful little wife seated at her sewing machine, making herself a dress. She, unlike her husband, is totally contented, and thus a touch of hope for their future is established: at least one of them is happy. Noting that he’s grumpy, the wife suggests the solution that the entire international film business hopes will be the chosen one: why don’t they go out to the pictures that evening? His reply sounds like the clarion call of the unhappy mate. “Damn the pictures … I want some life! Life, I tell you! I want some of the good things in life! Money!” Immediately following this outburst, in the magic way of movies, the postman arrives with the news that the husband’s wealthy uncle has decided to give them all his money so they can have some adventures while they are young.
There can be no more overt announcement of what the marriage movie was designed to do by the end of the silent era. As an audience sat watching in their theater seats, they were sold a series of lies. Now you have some money. Now you can leave your boring situation. Now you can have some adventures. Now you can escape your disappointment. And so they do, for “now.” Onscreen appears the quote from The Tempest that gave the movie its title: “Doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.” The surrogate movie couple take a sea voyage, and a great deal happens. New clothes. New friends. Excitement. Seduction. Theft. Imprisonment. Shipwreck. Rescue. And, finally, a return home, back to their little flat, both united and now willing to live their own lives as they know them, dedicated to loving each another and maintaining their marriage. And for the perfect honest touch, as the movie ends they begin bickering. The compatibility of their incompatibility has been restored. In a sense, they did go out to the movies, as their experience is exactly the one their audience has had.
1 It is a supreme irony that moviegoers could be conned into believing in romance that led to happy endings in one kind of movie, and then be shown that what came after the happily-ever-after was pretty awful … and yet still be conned all over again into believing that the awfulness could be fixed, made new, and restored to the point of the original happy ending. (And, of course, be conned even further into going to more romantic comedies.)
2 Most of these films are actually romantic come
dies. A few are melodramas, which magazines and reviewers broke down into a more specific type (“comedy-melodrama,” “society melodrama,” “domestic melodrama,” etc.). Not all are actually marriage movies about domestic travails, and none were labeled as marriage movies.
3 In the sound era, not all the problems were predictable. Pets could start talking, aliens take over the PTA, and atom bombs reduce husbands or wives to miniature size (quite a challenge for the sex life).
4 Keaton had learned all too well offscreen what it meant to be married to domineering in-laws. He was unhappily wed to Natalie Talmadge, the third sister to the powerful star actresses Norma and Constance. All three daughters were under the very firm thumb of their formidable mother, Peg.
5 DeMille’s version is still an involving movie for today’s modern audience, and all three versions made money.
6 Wine of Youth was based on a successful stage play, Mary the Third, by Rachel Crothers.
7 In his excellent book on Cecil B. DeMille, Empire of Dreams, Scott Eyman labels these films “comedies of divorce” that anticipated the works of Lubitsch. He adds, “DeMille started his comedies where most directors end them … with marriage. They all take place after the glow has worn off and the partners are growing bored with each other.”
8 Movies like 2008’s It’s Complicated link stories about married and divorced couples to an upper-middle-class vision of glamour, largely through the presentation of astonishingly appointed homes.
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