My Official Wife (1926 film)

My Official Wife
Lobby card
Directed by	Paul L. Stein
Written by	Archibald Clavering Gunter Graham Baker
Starring	Irene Rich Conway Tearle
Cinematography	David Abel
Production company	The Vitaphone Corp.
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. (as Warner Brothers Production)
Release date	October 16, 1926 (1926-10-16) [1]
Running time	74 min. (7,846 feet)[2]
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)
Budget	$148,000[3]
Box office	$315,000[3]

Irene Rich, lead actress

My Official Wife is a 1926 American silent romantic drama film by Austrian director Paul L. Stein, and his first American film. It stars Irene Rich[4] and Conway Tearle.[5] It is an adaptation of the 1891 novel My Official Wife by Richard Henry Savage (which had been filmed once before in 1914 by the Vitagraph Company of America with Clara Kimball Young as the lead), but the storyline was updated to include World War I.[2][6][7]

Cast

• Irene Rich as Hélène, Countess Orloff
• Conway Tearle as Alexander, aka Sascha
• Jane Winton as Demimondaine
• Gustav von Seyffertitz as Grand Duke
• Stuart Holmes as Ivan
• John Miljan as Nicholas
• Émile Chautard as Count Orloff, Hélène's Father
• Sidney Bracey as Valet to Sascha
• Michael Vavitch as Commandant
• Tom Ford
• Russell Ritchie
• Tom Costello
• Igor Presnikoff
• Florence Wagner

Reception

Reviews were extremely mixed. Film Daily compiled newspaper review quotes upon the film's release (as it did for many releases), citing the New York American as stating it was "repulsive ... players are badly miscast." The Daily News called it "worth going to see ... well acted, well directed and nicely dressed up bit of screen hokum." The Evening World called it a "matinee picture for unhurried chocolate munchers ... too long and too slow moving," and the Morning Telegraph dubbed it "first rate entertainment ... our interest never for one moment lagged."[8]

According to Warner Bros records the film earned $219,000 domestically and $96,000 foreign.[3]

Preservation

With no prints of My Official Wife located in any film archives,[9] if is a lost film.

See also

• My Official Wife (1914 film)
• Escapade (1936 film)

References

1. "Stein's Next for Warner's Will be "Matinee Ladies". Motion Picture News: 1582. September–October 1926. ark:/13960/t9r228z0d.
2. "My Official Wife". The Film Daily. October 17, 1926. p. 17.
3. "Appendix 1". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 15 (sup1): 5. 1995. doi:10.1080/01439689508604551.
4. Kobal, p. 15.
5. "Elmwood – My Official Wife" (PDF). Buffalo Courier-Express. March 7, 1927. p. 4.
6. Kennedy, Thomas C. (October 23, 1926). "My Official Wife: Love and Romance in Imperial Russia". Motion Picture News. p. 1594.
7. "When All Dukes Were Grand Ones" (PDF). Greenpoint Weekly Star. November 12, 1926.
8. "Newspaper Opinions". The Film Daily. November 3, 1926. p. 9.
9. Library of Congress / FIAF American Silent Feature Film Survival Database: My Official Wife

Bibliography

• Kobal, John, ed. (1976). Hollywood Glamor Portraits: 145 Photos of Stars, 1926–1949. New York: Courier Corporation. ISBN 978-0-486-23352-9.

External links

• My Official Wife at IMDb