Man and Wife

As the nascent film industry was still shaking itself out, the early 1920s saw plenty of opportunity for smaller players like New Jersey-based Effanem Productions to float lower-budget product onto the market. Fairly modest in both scope and ambition, MAN & WIFE reaps appropriate dividends - it's diverting but little more, while also being just a tad ridiculous.

Another tale of country vs. City life, MAN & WIFE finds farmgirl sisters Dolly and Dora longing for something bigger than their pa's attempts at marrying them off to the local farmhand. Running off to the city, Dora disappears, while Dolly, staying on the farm, eventually meets and falls in love with a visiting doctor. Moving out themselves to establish a sanitarium, the two are shocked to learn - quite by accident - that the doctor's prior wife, presumed dead in a fire, is actually alive and hopelessly insane. Only the doctor himself can perform the brain surgery necessary to restore her health - but what will the woman's regained sanity reveal about her prior identity? (If I have to tell you, you may need the operation yourself!)

Predictable in the extreme, MAN & WIFE is basically a one-hour, self-contained soap opera, mainly interesting for how bonkers the plot is willing to get. Its primary draw now will be for fans of Norma Shearer, quite winsome as the city-loving Dora. She clearly reveals the charming star quality that would soon get her shipped out to LA, making much bigger films under the auspices of Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer. As for the rest of the cast, they're proficient but nowhere near as memorable, with Robert Elliot as the doctor making for a particularly dull leading man. Production values are modest and locations limited, though at just 54 minutes, the picture is mercifully brief - not doing anything terribly novel, it at least knows when to exit the stage.