In the wake of a war that forced Americans out of moral as well as political isolation, Cecil B. De Mille anticipated the changing mores of American domestic life in Old Wives for New (1918), the first in a long cycle of socio-sexual comedies. These films dealt with modern marriage from a point of view that stressed sex and social manners more than the old-fashioned Puritan values of home and family. Upper-class adultery was satirized rather than condemned; rather than stressing the sinfulness of his characters, De Mille emphasized the stylishness of their clothes! Seen today, these films are tremendously enjoyable as remarkably “adult” forerunners to the Lubitsch-style satires of the later twenties, and as refreshing documents of the early '20s styles, dress and manners. (The costume and art direction in Why Change Your Wife? are particularly outstanding.) Six of De Mille's films from 1918-1921 starred Gloria Swanson. In Why Change Your Wife? she plays a once fun-loving woman who, as the result of marriage, slips into a prim and dowdy personal phase. Her husband (Thomas Meighan) takes up with a vampish butterfly (Bebe Daniels) who wins him temporarily. A change of attitude on Swanson's part results in an ultimate reconciliation, but not before some delightful comedy and a small dose of somewhat heavy-handed melodrama. Treasures from the Eastman House, a PFA Publication