Don't Change Your Husband

1919 Comedy 86 minutes Directed by Cecil B. DeMille

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About Don't Change Your Husband

Leila Porter is tired of James Denby Porter, the glue king. He works, he is careless of his clothes, he drops cigar ash, and he eats green onions before he kisses her. She divorces him and marries his friend Schuyler Van Sutphen. Van Sutphen is worse. While she is gone, James reforms. She divorces again and goes back to him.

Cast & crew

More about Don't Change Your Husband

Cecil B. DeMille directed. Jeanie MacPherson wrote the story. Jesse L. Lasky produced it. Alvin Wyckoff photographed it. Anne Bauchens edited it. Wilfred Buckland was art director. Shooting ran from 12 October to 29 November 1918. Famous Players-Lasky copyrighted it on 31 December 1918. It opened 26 January 1919. DeMille's records put the cost at $73,922.14. The negative is 6,420 feet, seven reels, with tinted sequences. Wikipedia times it at 86 minutes.

Themes

  • Onions before a kiss
  • A second husband who is worse
  • The glue king tidies up
  • Leila Porter
  • James Porter
  • Schuyler Van Sutphen
  • divorce
  • glue
  • Gloria Swanson

Background

It opened on 26 January 1919, two months after the Armistice, as the next of DeMille and MacPherson's marriage comedies after Old Wives for New.

Making

DeMille shot it in California in the last weeks of the war and just after, with Swanson leaving a glue manufacturer for Cody's playboy and then coming back. Buckland designed the rooms. The print is tinted.

Look

Alvin Wyckoff photographed the tinted seven-reel comedy, including the rooms Wilfred Buckland designed.

Preservation

A print survives, with tinted sequences, and a copy is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • Elliott Dexter plays James. Gloria Swanson plays Leila. Lew Cody plays Schuyler Van Sutphen.
  • Sylvia Ashton is Mrs. Huckney. Theodore Roberts is the bishop. Julia Faye is Nanette, called Toodles. Ted Shawn plays a faun.
  • It is the third of DeMille's six marriage films and the first of them with Swanson. MacPherson wrote it as an answer to Old Wives for New (1918).
  • A Chinese silent film of 1929 used the same English title and a similar divorce-and-return story.
  • Wid's Daily on 10 November 1918 reported the picture already in production in California.
  • The AFI box-office figure from DeMille's records is $292,394.10 in gross rentals. The figure usually printed with the cost is $292,134.10.

Scenes

  • James eats green onions and then tries to kiss Leila.
  • She finds Van Sutphen a worse husband than the one she left.
  • She divorces a second time and remarries James.

Influenced by

  • Old Wives for New (1918)

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Don't Change Your Husband (1919).webm)

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