Few Hollywood filmmakers have fit the cliché of a "Hollywood director"
as well as Cecil B. DeMille. He was egotistical, a tyrant on the set, he
oversaw the smallest details of every scene -- and he even wore riding pants and boots and used a megaphone while working.
But, then, few Hollywood filmmakers were as successful and popular as DeMille. From the mid 1910s to the mid-1950s,
De Mille turned out hit
after hit by combining comedy, drama, overacting, sex,
and the Bible into a style that the public couldn't get enough of.
Born on August 12, 1881, "C.B." was working by the age of 19 for
legendary Broadway producer Charles Frohman as an actor, writer, and director. In 1913, film producer Jesse Lasky
hired DeMille to direct a feature version of the stage play, The Squaw Man.
Since Lasky's studios in New York City weren't really suited for filming a
Western, it was decided to take the production on location. Originally, the
film was intended to film in Arizona, but bad weather forced the company to
keep moving west, until they ended up in Hollywood, California
(specifically around what is now the corner of Selma and Vine).
Over the next fifteen years, DeMille turned out more than 60 feature films, ranging
from sex comedies to westerns to Biblical epics. In the late '20s, his fortunes dipped a bit, but with a
series of pictures that were filled with the bizarre -- Exploding dirigibles! Baths in asses’ milk! Lesbian orgies!
-- he made it back to the top. The wilder it got, the more moviegoers ate it
up, and DeMille never looked back.
His fame increased. He hosted a weekly radio program; he appeared in the trailers for his films as a guarantee of their quality; he even showed up in other directors' pictures as the model of what a Hollywood director looked like.
Although his pictures were always box office hits (1956's The Ten Commandments alone made the 2009 equivalent of more than
$600,000,000), they won only one Oscar for Best Picture (1952's The Greatest Show on Earth).
For all his success, DeMille's legacy (other than filming the first feature
picture in Hollywood) may lie in three things he didn't have much to do with:
The first is the annual television airings of The Ten Commandments. Each year, new viewers are exposed to the hammy
acting of Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, and Edward G, Robinson in a film that somehow combines piousness and ballyhoo.
The second is an anecdote from the filming of that same picture. While probably
apocryphal, the story of DeMille and a camera crew gave us the expression, "Ready when you are,
C.B."
The last is from Billy Wilder's film, Sunset Blvd. Wilder cast DeMille as himself in this story of the
deluded silent-film star Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson (who had herself starred in many of
DeMille's biggest hits of the '10s and '20s). Norma, who has just murdered her
lover, retreats into a world of past glory, calling
to her former mentor, "All right, Mr. DeMille; I'm ready for my
close-up."
Suggested Sites...
- Cecil B DeMille.com - dedicated to the work, life, and legacy of the director.
- Classic Movie Favorites: Cecil B. DeMille - all kinds of epic information about the director.
- Greenbriar Picture Shows: Pre-Code DeMille on DVD - it's not dirty; it's morally uplifting!
- Golden Globes: Cecil B. DeMille Award
- the organization may be disreputable, but the honor is not.
- DeMille's Lost City - in 1923, DeMille filmed a silent version of The Ten Commandments and left the set as a ruin to confuse archaeologists.
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