Photoplay (May 1921)

"If a woman doesn t want to marry, she has always the privilege of remaining single. If she does marry, let her do it with her eyes open and not wieclc two lives. Dorothy Cummings, Gloria Swanson, and Wallace Reid m a scene from Cecil deMiUe's production, '"The Affairs of Anatole. More Tke Second Episode of "What Does Marriage Mean?" As told by Cecil B. deMille to Adela Rogers St. Johns N 'OTHIXG creates so many ripples upon the waters of public oi)inion as a pebble of truth," said Cecil de]\Iille whimsically. We were contemjilating a few of the ripples. Letters — thousands of them— piled the big, stately desk and overflowed onto the floor. In the dim light of the shaded lamp that left the far corners of the big, impressive room shadowy and fascinating, they looked like heaps of drifted lea\"es — brown, pink (many pink), yellow, white, blue, gray, with here and there an ornate touch of purple or crimson in monogram or border. Cecil deMille sat contemplating them a little ruefully, though his eyes crinkled in that magnetic, refreshing humor that he ne\er wholly loses. "They're a motley crew," he said slowly, "but tremendously interesting. It's amazing — astounding that a few words about marriage, stripped of ancient traditions and outworn creeds, should start so many echoes. Certainly if I had not been already convinced of the righteousness of my cause in tearing the \ eils from the spectre of sex, I should be con\ inced now of its necessity." They had come, these strange messages and still stranger questions, these violent denunciations and loud anthems of praise, in response to an inter\ iew with Mr. deMille published in the December Photoplay under the title "What Does Marriage Mean?" The interview, a brutally frank, white-hot expose of Cecil dcMille's own theories of marriage, women, sex, and divorce, declared also his purpose of lessening the divorce evil by producing such dramas as "Why Change Your Wife?" "Don't Change Your Husband" and the forthcoming "AiTairs of Anatole." It was to this interview that Mr. deMille referred when he spoke of the "pebble of truth." For oddly enough, he told me that he had received more letters concerning its publication than from any picture he had made. I ha\e never seen Cecil deMille so human as when we sat there in his magnificent offices, discussing these letters as we read them. Many were bitter in their objection to his views, but in spite of these I think he was touched by those which expressed gratitude and by the apjjeal of woman after woman for his advice in her own tragic matrimonial problem. And he read, too, the one in which a man hoped Mrs. deMille had a big, strong brother who would beat Mr. deMille up with an axe handle — and the one which said the writer had tried the "every Saturday night out" proposition and when she got out of the hospital she was going to get a divorce— and the one that contended Mr. deMiUe's sex \iews wou''^ land him in Matteawan some fine day. High Lights From "What Does Marriage Mean?' FOR centuries sex has brought disaster to the world because it has been shut behind a stone wall, the object only of hushed voices. You can t fight an unacknowledged thing." "T HAVE been married eighteen years. In eighteen years I have never passed a Saturday night at home. In eighteen years I have never said where I was on a Saturday night, nor what I was doing, nor with whom I was. And in eighteen years, / have never been asked." "TF a woman has the mental strength to stand the gaff, her husband will always come back to her." "V\7HY. oh why. will reformers try to reform the world from the standpoint of what ought to be instead of what is?" "CEX is the one thing that everybody has. Its effect is a universal problem. " "V\ /OMEN get into strange habits of picking. It"s habit, purely and simply habit. They start by saying 'Please don't do that, dear,' and end by saying, 'Go see what George is doing and tell him to stop it." " '"^HE breaking of the law comes from adultery, not sex." "AT the present stage of the game, fidelity to the marriage *• covenant is to be gained only by showing wives how men may be taught to hold sex within the bounds of moral law and decency." 24