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"Speed and efficiency" was the slogan of the Whitman Bennett Studios, a production company founded in 1920 on the ruins of the erstwhile Triangle corporation. Bennett himself was a well-known dealer in rare books and an author of some note. In 1921, Bennett made an agreement with First National to produce a series of melodramas starring Lionel Barrymore, the most notable of which was a 1921 version of the ancient crook melodrama Jim the Penman. Also featuring Barrymore's wife, Doris Rankin, Jim the Penman was directed by Kenneth Webb, while Bennett himself would helm such films as Wife Against Wife (1921), starring Pauline Starke; Virtuous Liars (1924), featuring aging matinee idol Maurice Costello; and Back to Life (1925), a vehicle for popular ingenue Patsy Ruth Miller. The latter proved one of Bennett's final contributions to screen history.