Let's Get a Divorce

1918 American film
  • April 28, 1918 (1918-04-28)
Running time
50 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageSilent (English intertitles)

Let's Get a Divorce is a 1918 American silent comedy film starring Billie Burke and written for the screen by husband and wife team John Emerson and Anita Loos. The film was produced by the Famous Players–Lasky company and distributed through Paramount Pictures. The film is based on the popular stage play Divorçons by Victorien Sardou and Émile de Najac.[1][2][3]

Plot

As described in a film magazine,[4] Cyprienne Marcey (Burke), who eats, dreams, and writes romance, picks out Henri (Miltern), the brother of her roommate, as the object of her affections. Following their spectacular elopement, Henri's attempt to return to writing is a jolt to her romantic temperament. Seeing in Henri's cousin Adhemar (Kaliz) the soul of romance, she asks Henri for a divorce so that she might marry Adhemar. Henri agrees, but once the clandestine aspect of her love affair with Adhemar is removed, it soon palls on her. On the night before the day set for her divorce she persuades her husband to take her to dinner and away from Adhemar. When the latter breaks into their private dining room with the police, he is denounced by Cyprienne who emphatically states that Henri, her husband, is the only man she ever loved.

Cast

  • Billie Burke as Madame Cyprienne Marcey
  • John Miltern as Henri de Prunelles
  • Pinna Nesbit as Yvonne de Prunelles
  • Armand Kaliz as Adhemar
  • Rod La Rocque as Chauffeur
  • Helen Tracy as Mother Superior
  • John Merkyl as Calvignac (credited as Wilmuth Merkyl)
  • Cesare Gravina as Head Waiter

Preservation status

Let's Get a Divorce is considered to be a lost film.[5]

See also

  • Kiss Me Again (1925)
  • That Uncertain Feeling (1941)

References

  1. ^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: Let's Get a Divorce(Wayback)
  2. ^ Progressive Silent Film List: Let's Get a Divorce at silentera.com
  3. ^ Several Broadway revivals of Divorcons prior to the 1918 film; IBDb.com
  4. ^ "Reviews: Let's Get a Divorce". Exhibitors Herald. 6 (21). New York City: Exhibitors Herald Company: 27. May 18, 1918.
  5. ^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Let's Get a Divorce
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Divorçons.
  • Let's Get a Divorce at IMDb
  • AllMovie.com
  • Lantern slide and larger version of same
  • lobby poster,...#2 lobby poster
  • nicely lithographed poster artwork of Billie Burke, descriptive, on yet another lobby poster(HeritageAuctions, ha)
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Films directed by Charles Giblyn
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Novels
Plays
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Film
/I signals that Loos also wrote the
intertitles; some works are co-written
Writer
(screenplay/
scenario)
Story
Novel
Titles
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Other
Uncredited
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