WHY CHANGE YOUR WIFE?
Starring Gloria Swanson, Thomas Meighan and Bebe Daniels
PICTURE PLAY MAGAZINE
June 1920
Film goods, bearing the label of Cecil B. De Mille, are always of the champagne brand. "Why Change Your Wife?" is a liqueur of rich bouquet. It sparkles with a dry, subtle wit, and it certainly is warming. It might as well have been called "Why Change Your Clothes?" Bebe Daniels and Gloria Swanson run the gamut of sartorial emotion from chapeaus to chemises. For the first time, in my opinion, Miss Swanson makes just claims to being an actress. As the blue-stocking wife in the beginning, she gives a real and amusing characterization. Wearing prim gowns, severe coiffure, and bone-rimmed pince-nez, she resembles a de-luxe edition of a New England schoolma'am. Fancy Gloria doing that! But don't let this information deter you from seeing her. You'll see a great deal of her before the picture ends.
Thomas Meighan appears as the husband who wearies of his wife because she bothers him while shaving and becuase she won't go around the house looking like a Winter Garden favorite. The matrimonial crisis comes when she refuses to wear a bare-back and legless negligee which he purchases for her. Then, too, she prefers a violinist who stirs her soul to the "Follies," which stirs his. Tom Meighan is so good-natured I have the feeling he'd put up with a wife who wore red flannels. In this play, however, he is lured from home by Bebe Daniels. He gets a divorce and marries her, and straightway, Bebe bursts his illusions by becoming a properly dressed wife. While at a seaside resort, he encounters his first wife in a one-leg bathing costume and knows he made a mistake. Bebe becomes jealous of the first wife and eventually gets a divorce; hubby returns to his original spouse.
The fade-out reveals the maids bringing abouit a reunion of their twin beds. "Why Change Your Wife?" is not for your grandmother or her grandchilren, but you may like it. De Mille caters to the sophisticated and, judging by the crowds partonizing this picture, we are a sophisitcated nation. "Why Change Your Wife?" is a rouged, gemmed, silk and sensuous reflection of artificial life. It is elegant -- "smart" is the right word, I think.
WHY CHANGE YOUR WIFE?
Starring Gloria Swanson, Thomas Meighan and Bebe Daniels
MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE
July 1920
Cecil B. De Mille might be called the apostle of domesticity. Surely no married couple would come to grief who heeded his lessons. De Mille has an uncanny understanding of man and woman and he weaves this sex knowledge into silken photoplays that not only appeal optically but remain in the mind later on. In "Why Change Your Wife?" he preaches a sermon to young wives who do not try to keep themselves youthful and appealing to their husbands. Once, I might have considered the fight between wife number one and wife number two exaggerated. . . but women are queer animals after all and I think perhaps De Mille understands them better than I do. Gloria Swanson is certainly his finest bit of clay. She reflects his messages better than any mirror. Bebe Daniels is satisfactory but at a disadvantage compared to the glorious Gloria. Gloria Swanson is as refined and as rich as the almost improcurable attar of roses. Tom Meighan is more handsome than ever as the man who discovers that wives will be wives.