Silent Feature: For Better, For Worse

Credits

Studio: An Artcraft Picture
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Released: April 27, 1919

Featured Cast: Gloria Swanson, Elliott Dexter, Tom Forman

Producer-director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter: William C. de Mille
Art director: Wilfred Buckland
Production manager: Howard Higgin
Cinematographer: Alvin Wyckoff
Editor: Anne Bauchens

Theme

A woman rejects a pacifist doctor to marry a soldier on his way to the front.

Production Quotes

“Dropping the elegant thrusts of Don’t Change Your Husband and Old Wives for New, DeMille goes straight to the heart. And no Cupid’s dart ever found its mark with greater accuracy, for the times are almost innumerable when the skill of the director fairly makes the heart cry out.”

– Peter Milne, The Motion Picture News, Vol. 19, No. 19 (May 10, 1919)

Artist Comment

“The story brings out dramatically that the man who stayed home—the only doctor available to take charge of a children’s hospital—was not necessarily a coward or a slacker. It may have taken more courage to stay and do a needed work at home than to go to the fighting front.”

– Cecil B. DeMille, Autobiography

Figures

For Better, For Worse cost $111,260.93 and grossed $256,072.97.
(These figures have not been adjusted for inflation nor do they include the considerable profits realized from reissues, television syndication, and home entertainment formats.)