Part 1 In the silent-film era, movies told the story of marriage straightforwardly, as a familiar situation--and audiences cheerfully accepted it as such. The idea that marriage might be unappealing at the box office, or perhaps a depressing plot development, didn''t seem to exist in the same way it did later, in the studio-system years. Silent-film makers presented marriage as something audiences could and would recognize, and therefore enjoy seeing on the screen. In embracing the subject, they had available current history, past history, imaginary history . . . different tones, attitudes, moods . .
 . myriad events and characters . . . the works. Although it was a rigid or fixed social event, marriage could still be used flexibly. It could be the main event, the comic relief, or the tragic subplot. And, of course, it could always be linked to the surefire box-office concept of love.
Unlike in later decades, many silent movies openly carried the concept in the title: The Marriage of William Ashe (1921); The Marriage Maker (1921); Man, Woman, Marriage (1921); The Marriage Chance (1922); Married People (1922); The Married Flapper (1922); The Marriage Market (1923); Marriage Morals (1923); The Marriage Cheat (1924); Marry in Haste (1924); Married Flirts (1924); The Marriage Circle (1924); Marriage in Transit (1925); Marry Me (1925); The Marriage Whirl (1925); Married? (1926); Marriage License (1926); The Marriage Clause (1926); Marriage (1927); Married Alive (1927); Marriage by Contract (1928); Marry the Poor Girl (1928); The Marriage Playground (1929); and Married in Hollywood (1929); etc. And this doesn''t include titles with the words "bride," "groom," "wife," and "husband." The marriage film found its basic definition in the silent era, and had no trouble doing so. Why would it? All anyone had to do to tell a story about marriage was to present a couple in love, get them married in the first scene (or open with them already married), set them up in a home of some sort, give them a recognizable problem, make the problem worse, and then resolve it. Couple, situation, problem, resolution: this is the pattern silent audiences saw and embraced, and their responses to it were clear. They would laugh at it. Or they would cry over it. Silent films were a beautiful art, and they were never simpleminded, but many of them often presented marriage in a basic mode, happy or sad.
They went bipolar: raucous comedy or stark tragedy. Both types could be shaped into cautionary tales. The comedy version provided audiences with release as they laughed at their own problem in a safe form, and the tragic one warned them things could be much, much worse. In other words, the pattern for stories about marriages was simple enough: Was it going to be a yes or a no version? Was it "I do" or "I don''t"? Would it divert or warn? This "bipolar" approach to the basic setup (couple, wedding, home, problems) was a useful business discovery. It was one thing to treat marriage as a joke--that was predictable. The really significant thing was to accept it as a failed enterprise. Once it became clear that viewers had no trouble accepting the idea that marriages could turn into problems, that romance could fail, movies could show marriage as a disappointment without offending married couples. Up there on the screen, marriage didn''t have to be sacred.
Entering a movie theater apparently was an absolution. Long before they had arrived in their seats, boy had met girl, boy had got girl, and boy had married girl. That part was over, and they apparently felt it was now okay for all hell to break loose on the screen. Nosy neighbors, hideous in-laws, naughty children, snotty and ungrateful children, interfering children, lost children, kidnapped children, crippled children, evil children. Uppity cooks, oversexed maids, lippy gardeners, and butlers with more class than their employers, because, lord knows, you just couldn''t get good help. Adultery, competition, bankruptcy, arson, death, murder, and suicide. Incest. War and plague.
Earthquakes and typhoons and a household of terrible furniture never fully paid for. Marriage on film could be a world of woe, all the direct result of merely saying two words: "I do." Marriage could be--and was--accepted as a hangover, the "after" of the happily-ever-after. The hilarious comedy version was common in two-reelers, where lampooning marriage had great appeal for audiences. For filmmakers, it was an easy shorthand with which to connect to what men and women knew--and get them to laugh about it. In particular, Mack Sennett comedy shorts made use of marital conflicts between two incompatible mates. (Bring on the rolling pin and the mother-in-law jokes!) The mockery of marriage liberated everybody--audiences, who roared at what they recognized, and moviemakers, who rolled freely over its sacredness in all directions. Two great examples from Sennett star the wonderful team of Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, talented clowns of the silent era.
In 1915, Fatty and Mabel made two gems, That Little Band of Gold and Fatty and Mabel''s Married Life. In the former, an entire romantic comedy is neatly wrapped up with one single title card: "A Kiss, A Pledge, A Ring." (So much for the meet-cute.) Immediately following, after the marriage, trouble arrives. Another title card says it all: "And now she waits for him." A few frames later, she''s being told "Your husband is sipping wine with a strange woman"--and suddenly it''s "all over but the alimony." Mabel''s mother is very helpful in this brief but eloquent scenario. With no need for a title card, she is seen clearly mouthing the traditional words "I told you so" to Mabel when Fatty begins to misbehave.
Fatty and Mabel''s Married Life, a self-labeled "farce comedy," lays out what would always be a typical conflict in movies about marriage: the man goes out to work, and the woman is left home alone. When he comes back at night, he sits and smokes his cigar, and she has nothing to do but sew. Progress in their relationship is depicted by Mabel getting mad and throwing things and by Fatty falling down a lot. In the end, the police arrive and the neighbors are shocked. Crammed into the brief two reels of running time are such further developments as kisses and promises, mistakes and misunderstandings, apologies and accusations, tears and laughter--not to mention some gunfire, an organ grinder, and a monkey. All these things are pretty much what will become the basic elements of the marriage movies of the future, only with more gunfire and no organ grinder. (The monkey stays in the picture.) Even comics such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, who created their own specific and original universes on film, used wretched marital behavior as basic material.
In Spite Marriage (1929) Keaton becomes the victim of a sophisticated stage actress (Dorothy Sebastian) who marries him only after she''s been jilted, hence the film''s title. Keaton, a pants presser by trade, is then stuck with a tantrum-throwing bride who gets dead drunk on their wedding night and creates an awful scene in a nightclub. In My Wife''s Relations (1922), Keaton is yoked to an unloving Polish wife who has four huge and horrible brothers who constantly torment him physically and mentally and, despite everything, hilariously. Keaton is, in fact, a kind of house slave. Things change when the brothers mistakenly think Keaton''s inherited a fortune. "He''s rich," one grouses. "Now we''ll have to be nice to him." Another brother is more cerebral: "Let''s murder him first and then kill him.
" When it came to marriage, Keaton''s character was snakebit. He and his new bride are happy in One Week (1920), but when they try to work together and assemble their prefab little house, nothing goes right. Harold Lloyd made a charming two-reeler called I Do in 1921, in which he and his beloved surreptitiously elope, never realizing that her parents, who are dying to get them married, are facilitating their sneaky actions all the way. Lloyd''s best film about marriage is feature-length: Hot Water (1924). As the movie begins, the audience is treated to the following title card: Married life is like dandruff--it falls heavily upon your shoulders--you get a lot of free advice about it--but up to date nothing has been found to cure it. As the plot gets under way, Lloyd''s character says no matter what he''ll never exchange his freedom for marriage, but bang! He spots the lovely Jobyna Ralson, and his life is suddenly defined as: "A honeymoon--then rent to pay." Lloyd has to support not only his wife but also her hideous family: a lazy lout of an older brother, a Dennis-the-Menace younger one (an artist with a pea shooter), and one of film''s most horrific mothers-in-law, played by Josephine Crowell. Crowell is described as having "the nerve of a book agent, the disposition of a dyspeptic landlord, and the heart of a traffic cop.
" (And what''s more, she sleepwalks.) Lloyd earns a living for the sponging brood, runs their errands, puts up with their insults, and endures comic interludes that include his struggle to bring a live turkey home on a crowded streetcar as well as a terrifying ride with the family in his new automobile ("the Butterfly Six"). With help from his in-laws, the car is totaled. The Keaton and Lloyd films are very funny, but if you described the events happening onscreen to a blind man, he''d probably weep. Most silent comedy presented marriage as hell. What made it work was that although the movies were saying "marriage is a disaster," they were also winking and adding, "but it''s our disaster." The comedy was empathic. It touched on issues that plagued ordinary people--in-laws, money, infidelity, m.