Credits

Studio: An Artcraft Picture
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Released: January 26, 1919

Featured Cast: Elliott Dexter, Gloria Swanson, Lew Cody

Producer-director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter: Jeanie Macpherson
Art director: Wilfred Buckland
Technical director: Howard Higgin
Cinematographer: Alvin Wyckoff
Editor: Anne Bauchens

Theme

When a woman loses patience with her unglamorous husband, she follows her fantasies.

Production Quotes

“Gloria Swanson, formerly of Triangle, is playing a leading part in the new Cecil B. DeMille production. Lewis Cody is playing a heavy role in the same picture.”

– A.H. Giebler, “News of Los Angeles and Vicinity,” Moving Picture World, November 16, 1918

Reviews

“This enterprise, as a matter of screen tone and wall decoration, is a masterpiece. As a story, it starts a masterpiece and ends a masterflop. The DeMille faculty of exquisite detail is in its dazzling zenith. Here is life—just as life springs up and grows in gardens fertilized with gold.”

– Julian Johnson in Photoplay Magazine, April, 1919

Letters From Regional Theater Owners

“This picture went over big. It’s a superb production which appeals to both men and women.”

– L.A. Neal, Sterling Theatre, Superior, Wisconsin, Exhibitors Herald, Vol. IX, No. 10 (August 30, 1919)

Artist Comment

“I have had hundreds of letters from wives and husbands, thanking me for showing them their mistakes in Don’t Change your Husband. All that I pictured is true.”

– Cecil B. DeMille in Hazel Simpson Naylor, “Cecil B. DeMille, the Master of Mystery,” Motion Picture 18, No. 10 (November 1919)

Figures

Don’t Change Your Husband cost $73,922.14 and grossed $292,394.10.
(These figures have not been adjusted for inflation nor do they include the considerable profits realized from reissues, television syndication, and home entertainment formats.)