Miss Lulu Bett
About Miss Lulu Bett
Lulu Bett (Lois Wilson) keeps house for her married half-sister Ina and Ina's husband Dwight Deacon (Theodore Roberts), a dentist and a justice of the peace. At dinner Dwight's brother Ninian (Clarence Burton) goes through a marriage service with Lulu that Dwight treats as legal. Ninian then admits he already has a wife. Lulu leaves him and Dwight lets her come back, where the housework is worse. She tells the schoolmaster Neil Cornish (Milton Sills). She walks out of the house. Word comes that the marriage to Ninian was not legal, and she is free to marry Neil.
Cast & crew
More about Miss Lulu Bett
William C. deMille directed. Clara Beranger wrote the screenplay from Zona Gale's novel and 1920 play. Adolph Zukor produced. Paramount released it. Helen Ferguson, Mabel Van Buren, Mae Giraci, Ethel Wales, and Charles Ogle are in the cast. The play, not the film, won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Themes
Background
Paramount released the picture in 1921, the year Gale's play won the Pulitzer. The film follows the story of an unpaid sister-in-law in a small-town house.
Making
DeMille staged the Deacon dining room as the place where a justice of the peace can turn a joke into a marriage.
Preservation
A print survives. The National Film Registry selected it in 2001. The Internet Archive holds Miss_Lulu_Bett.
Notes
- A magazine synopsis of the release calls the dinner marriage accidental and has Ninian confess a prior wife.
- The Library of Congress put the film on the National Film Registry in 2001.
- The Internet Archive identifier is Miss_Lulu_Bett.
- Gale's novel was a bestseller before the play.
- Milton Sills, usually a heavy lead, plays the schoolmaster.
Awards
- National Film Registry (2001)
Scenes
- Dwight, as justice of the peace, treats the dinner-table vows as a real marriage.
- Ninian tells Lulu he already has a wife.
- Lulu tells Neil Cornish what happened and then leaves the Deacon house.
Influenced by
- Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale
Also available
- Internet Archive (Miss_Lulu_Bett)
