The Show-Off is a 1926 American silent film comedy produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures, based on the play of the same name by George Kelly.

[2] It's one of two films that co-starred popular Broadway actor Gregory Kelly (first husband of Ruth Gordon) who died shortly after The Show-Off wrapped production.

[3] A couple, James and Alita Hazlitt, have endured a long, difficult marriage that has oscillated between affection and animosity, intermittently separating and reconciling.

He would later co-star with Florence Vidor in St. Clair’s The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926), a film that, according to Menjou “boosted me to the top rungs of the Hollywood ladder.” [6] Dubbing the film “a jolly little comedy,” New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall, praised director Malcolm St. Clair for getting “the most out of this light story” but cautioned that “he shows an irresistible desire to photograph merely feet, which sometimes is only fairly interesting, while at other times it is quite strained.” Hall praised the performances of Florence Vidor, Lawrence Gray and Betty Bronson, but noted that Adolphe Menjou “is not quite up to his usual high standard, being a little too deliberate.”[7] Paramount studio’s policies, which “encouraged a good deal of creative freedom” was particularly conducive to St. Clair’s needs as a filmmaker.

[11] St. Clair, in his use of this “subtle” approach to comedy, also makes reference to the notable “newspapers-at-the-table” scene from Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle (1924), in which Betty Bronson sits at dinner, flanked by her parents, each separated by “a vast expanse of table.” Orson Welles would employ these visual and psychological configurations in his famous sequence from his Citizen Kane (1941).

[14] The irony encompasses and transcends age, generation, and marital status: [T]he two couples argue, ironically indicating to each other (and to the audience) the degree of their love by the ferocity of their disagreements.