Motion Picture News, December 6, 1919
"That Cecil B. DeMille has proven himself one of the foremost
directors on the screen has long been recognized. It looks as
if he has excelled himself with "Male and Female," an
adaption of Sir James M. Barrie's play, "The Admirable Crichton."
There may be those who will find fault that the original title
has been changed, but if they know the British playwright they
will appreciate the fact that he cannot be done successfully on
the screen. So "Male and Female" is Cecil B. DeMille's
achievement any way you look at it. True, he has incorporated
Barrie's underlying thought the English life is divided by sharp
contrasts - that equality does not figure in it except in moments
of extremity. And when stressful events are over, things are as
they were in the beginning."
Photoplay, December, 1919
"A truly gorgeous panorama, unwound about the story contained
in J.M. Barrie's play, "The Admirable Crichton," with
Miss Macpherson as the composer of the optic version, and Mr.
DeMille as the conductor and expounder. It is a typical DeMille
production - audacious, glittering, intriguing, superlatively
elegant, and quite without heart. It reminds me of one of our
great California flowers, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow
and devoid of fragrance."
Gene Ringgold and DeWitt
Bodeen in The Complete Films of Cecil B. DeMille (Citadel
Press, 1969)
"For audiences today, 'Male and Female,' 'Why Change Your
Wife?,' or 'The Affairs of Anatol' and their luxurious, high-toned
goings-on can, at best, only be viewed as "high camp'; their
production, architectural and costume designs, in particular,
are responsible for the term 'Early DeMille.'."
Kevin Brownlow in The
Parade's Gone By (University of California Press, 1968)
"'Male and Female' was a delightful version of 'The Admirable
Crichton,' and the famous bathroom scene was introduced with sly
humor. . . "
James Card in Seductive
Cinema (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)
". . . the word 'admirable' was sufficiently foreign to Hollywood
parlance to cause Paramount to change the title of its new property
to 'Male and Female.' With this alteration, all Hollywood felt
semantically secure. one wonders how the great British master
of whimsey reacted to this American violence done to his drama
even 
before the cameras rolled. If
he was stunned by the new title, he must surely have been staggered
by the DeMillean additions to his plot when he beheld Gloria Swanson,
all decked out in peacock feathers, being fed to the hungry lions
of Ishtar in one of C.B.'s most lavish flashbacks to savage goings-on
in Babylon."
"When DeMille adapted Sir James Barrie's 'The Admirable Crichton' in 1919, changing the title to 'Male and Female' was not the only alteration Sir James' work suffered in Hollywood hands. 'Male and Female' reflected much more accurately the new emphasis placed on the story than did the original title. Although ostensibly the movie was still concerned with an English family, no one could possible mistake Gloria Swanson for a Londoner. It became unquestionably an essentially American battle of the sexes between Gloria and Tommy Meighan as the stalwart Crichton."
Lewis Jacobs in The Rise
of the American Film (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939)
"Even more suggestive of the new era was the significantly
titled 'Male and Female.' A modernization of James Barrie's 'The
Admirable Crichton,' it related the intimate adventures of a lady
(Gloria Swanson) and a butler (Thomas Meighan) on a desert isle,
emphasizing the supremacy of sex over class barriers and condoning
marital infidelity, 'spice,' and sensation for their own sake.
More daring in its subject matter than any other picture Hollywood
had produced, bolder in its attack on the genteel tradition, this
film ushered in the new movie showmanship. Throughout it played
on the audience's senses with luxurious settings, cave-man love
scenes, sensual display."
Benjamin Hampton in History
of the American Film Industry (Dover Publications, 1970 -
orig. published 1931)
"Jeanie MacPherson and Cecil DeMille renamed the play 'Male
and Female' and expanded it until it was an almost perfect recipe
for box office success, filled with comedy, romance, thrills and
sex appeal, the latter element being supplied principally by Gloria
Swanson . . . The public's joyous reception of 'Male and Female'
convinced DeMille that the new formula was very positively in
tune with the times."
copyright 1999 by Tim Lussier. All rights reserved.