Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

35. For Better, For Worse

35 For B~tt~r, For Wors~ An Artcraft Picture. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by Edgar Selwyn and jeanie Macpherson (DeMille's records indicate that William C. deMille wrote the scenario), from a story by Edgar Selwyn. Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Production manager: Howard Higgin. Photography : Alvin Wyckoff Picture started: january 27, 1919. Picture finished: March 24, 1919. Length: 6,939 feet (seven reels). Cost: $1 I 1,260.93. Released: April 27, 1919. Gross: $256,072.97 Cast: Gloria Swanson (Sylvia Norcross), Sylvia Ashton (her aunt), james Neill (her uncle), Elliott Dexter (Dr. Edward Meade), Tom Forman (Dick Burton), Wanda Hawley (Betty Hoyt), Theodore Roberts (Dr. Roland), Raymond Hatton (Bud), Spotiswoode Aitken and Winter Hall (doctors), jack Holt (crusader), Monte Blue and Fred Huntley (colonial militiamen), Edythe Chapman, and May Giraci After the completion of Don't Change Your Husband, DeMille offered Gloria Swanson a contract on behalfofFamous Players-Lasky. He was not above using his personal charm in the interests of the studio. Swanson was arguably naive. She almost certainly thought that DeMille was looking out for her best interests when in fact he was only concerned with signing her at a bargain-basement salary. The agreement, dated December 30, 1918, paid Swanson the munificent sum of $150 a week for the first four months and $200 a week thereafter. With the usual options to be exercised at the discretion ofthe company, Gloria Swanson would be earning $350 a week in two years.1 Considering that Tom Mix was making $350 a week as a star-director of two-reel comedies for the Fox Film Corporation in 1917, and that Mary Pickford received $10,000 a week that same year, Gloria Swanson was clearly being exploited. Swanson's second DeMille picture is a strange, overwrought drama of a doctor who had the courage to stay at home and minister to sick children when the nation and the woman he loved were urging him to take up arms and go to war. Just as DeMille had been one of the first filmmakers to deal with American involvement in the Great War, he was 138 For Better, For Worse / 139 also the first to address the issues of life on the home front, during and immediately after the conflict. Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918, and little more than two months later For Better, For Worse was ready to go into production. During the war Americans came to despise slackers and draft dodgers .2 Patriotic posters urged young men to enlist, and Hollywood joined forces with the government by producing films like Draft 258 (RolfeMetro , 1917), The Yellow Dog (Universal-Jewel, 1918), The Slacker (Metro, 1917), The Slacker's Heart (Emerald, 1917), and Mrs. Slacker (Astra-Pathe, 1918). For Better, For Worse attempted to smooth over the ill feeling Americans had for slackers. No doubt some of DeMille's interest in the project derived from his own inability to get "Over There." Still, the film is basically a moralistic melodrama, notable primarily for its production values and the performance of Gloria Swanson. Swanson is excellent as the frigid and vindictive Sylvia Norcross, so much so that it is difficult to see what Elliott Dexter's character sees in her. When war is declared, both Edward Meade and Dick Burton are in love with Sylvia and set to go to France with the American Expeditionary Force. Sylvia favors Dr. Meade, but he doubts her love; she shies at his touch and is unready for any romantic commitment. The war presents a convenient excuse for her to stay romantically uninvolved. She tells Meade: "I'm glad you and Dick are both going, Ned-a girl never forgives a man who stays home when he's needed 'over there'!" At St. Agnes Hospital Dr. Roland persuades Meade that his talents are more necessary in the children's ward. Reluctantly, Meade refuses his military commission. When he tells Sylvia of his decision she scolds him: "Ned, you've always been my hero, but I couldn't love a man who stayed home-when brave men are going out to die!" 140 / Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood She waves under Meade's nose a newspaper article about German sharpshooters killing military doctors. When this attempt at shaming him into the army fails, she wraps herself in the flag and appeals to his sense of patriotism. Meade...