Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Griffith's 1914 version of The Battle of the Sexes, now lost, was a sensational popular success. In 1928, in need of a "quickie," Griffith brought out the idea for a remake. As Eileen Bowser of The Museum of Modern Art writes, "...The Battle of the Sexes is a minor Griffith film but...its theme was dear to his heart, one that he had used over and again ever since the early days at Biograph: the values of home and family, under attack by outside forces. In keeping with the jazz age in which The Battle of the Sexes was made, the threat from outside the family is a young blonde gold digger, played by former Sennett bathing beauty, Phyllis Haver. The story is further modernized by comedy elements (with) a satiric (at times Lubitsch-style wit) which is not common to Griffith's films...But the more serious episodes...show his skill in handling actors within space in a way that expresses feelings, tensions, and the relations between people. Belle Bennett, after her performance in Henry King's Stella Dallas (1925), had come to be the archetype of screen mothers. But it was Griffith who had created this archetype...(Here, Bennett) stands with full dignity for that which the family represented to Griffith, at a time when that institution was severely threatened by the manners and morals of the jazz age."