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THE DIRECTOR AS SUPERSTAR
DeMille’s celebrity created the prototype of the director as superstar.
The actor he had been in his youth never left him and he played to the
crowds on his sets. Surrounded by a potentate’s entourage, he had
dressed in puttees and open throat shirts with a flair that became the
ubiquitous popular image of a director. He often narrated his motion pictures,
appeared in their trailers and portrayed himself in other directors’
films – most notably in Billy Wilder’s SUNSET
BOULEVARD (1950).
Then there was his role as host and director of Lux Radio Theatre
(1936 - 1945), where, on peak Monday nights, as many as 40,000,000
people heard DeMille present radio adaptations of popular films. (Compared
to a television viewership today, DeMille drew more people than the Superbowl.)
Picturegoer magazine (November 11, 1950) was indicative of media
opinion when it called DeMille “the best known movie-maker of them
all.” Reports of what DeMille said and did while making his pictures
became a staple of Hollywood folklore. But beyond the mostly apocryphal
stories that are still part of the lexicon – “Ready when you
are, C.B.” – was the bedrock of DeMille’s genuine contributions.
FOUNDER OF HOLLYWOOD
THE SQUAW MAN (1914) was
more than DeMille’s debut film and the first important full-length
motion picture made in Hollywood; more than a critical and financial success.
As Joel W. Finler wrote in The Movie Directors’ Story,
“it accelerated the trend toward establishing California as the
new home of movie-making.” (Finler’s 1985 book presents career
accounts of 140 directors but only five names grace its cover: DeMille,
Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg.)
INNOVATIONS IN LIGHTING
In The Film Daily’s biographical sketches of directors (July 1,
1928), DeMille was “credited with new developments in lighting and
photography,” which he began in his first years of production. “C.B.
was almost, if not quite, the first director on the West Coast to use
artificial lights,” Cecil’s older brother, William C. de Mille,
wrote in his memoir, Hollywood Saga.
DeMille and his set and lighting designer, Wilfred Buckland, had both
been trained by Broadway producer, David Belasco, known for his brilliant
lighting techniques. DeMille explained in his autobiography that while
shooting THE WARRENS OF VIRGINIA (1915), he borrowed
some portable spotlights from the Mason Opera House in downtown Los Angeles
and “began to make shadows where shadows would appear in nature.”
When business partner Sam Goldwyn saw the film with only half an actor’s
face illuminated, he feared the exhibitors would pay only half the price
for the picture. After DeMille told him it was Rembrandt lighting, “Sam’s
reply was jubilant with relief: for Rembrandt lighting the exhibitors
would pay double!”
DEDICATION TO ART AND DESIGN
In Behind the Screen: The History and Techniques of the Motion Picture,
Kenneth Macgowan cited CARMEN (1915) and THE
CHEAT (1915) as “two of the best examples of DeMille’s
reforms in settings and lighting.” The Cheat also impressed other
filmmakers, especially in France, by its bold design elements, unique
frame composition, avante garde décor and innovative color tinting.
And, Macgowan observed, that by hiring Wilfred Buckland, “DeMille
gave Hollywood its first art director.”DeMille’s early exposure
to classic art enkindled a lifelong appreciation of artists. He recognized
the brilliance of such talents as Mitchell Leisen, whom he hired to design
the lavish costumes for the Babylonian sequence in MALE AND FEMALE
(1919). (Leisen remained with DeMille as costume and set designer,
art director and assistant director, until, in 1933, he became a director
in his own right.)
Some outstanding advertising sketches for MALE AND FEMALE
were done by a young Walt Disney; famed Hollywood costume designer, Edith
Head, received her first major assignment creating candy-themed dresses
for THE GOLDEN BED (1925). After DeMille brought Adrian
with him to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, his brilliant costume designer for THE
VOLGA BOATMAN (1926) became chief of MGM’s Costume Department.
From his silent film period until the end of his career, DeMille employed
accomplished illustrators such as Dan Sayre Groesbeck, John Jensen and
Arnold Friberg as sketch and storyboard artists, as well as costume designers.
Film historian John Kobal called DeMille “a modern de’Medici”
because he gathered the greatest artists and artisans around and let them
flourish.
DeMille’s influence on fashion and scenic design would permeate
the movie industry and affect nationwide consumerism. He once said that
he’d brought “a certain sense of beauty and luxury into everyday
existence, all jokes about ornate bathrooms and de luxe boudoirs aside”
(The New York Dramatic Mirror, June 12, 1920).
STARS AND PROTEGES
DeMille introduced the talents of choreographers Theodore Kosloff and
LeRoy Prinz to films. Academy Award winning composer Elmer Bernstein,
to whom DeMille entrusted the score of THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956),
has said in numerous interviews that he owes DeMille “everything.”
DeMille helped start the careers of such directors as Mervyn Le Roy, Henry
Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Sam Wood, John Farrow and William K. Howard and
guided others, such as George Sidney, along their way.
Stars that DeMille discovered or developed for the screen include Theodore
Roberts, Sessue Hayakawa, Geraldine Farrar, Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid,
Richard Dix, Thomas Meighan, Bebe Daniels, William (“Hopalong Cassidy”)
Boyd, Charles Bickford, Henry Wilcoxon, Robert Preston and Evelyn Keyes.
Charlton Heston got his first big film breakthrough role as the circus
manager in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
(1952) and the part of Moses, for which he would be most
identified for the rest of his life, in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
DeMille was an early exponent of filmic stock companies, using many of
the same stars, as well as character actors, repeatedly. He also reopened
doors. After Edward G. Robinson had been blacklisted during the McCarthy
era, DeMille hired him to play Dathan in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
As Robinson wrote in his autobiography, All My Yesterdays, “Cecil
B. DeMille returned me to films. Cecil B. DeMille restored my self-respect.”
THE TALKIES
DeMille was one of the few successful silent film directors to flourish
in the sound era. On DYNAMITE (1929), his first “talkie,”
he advanced the whole industry. Because microphones picked up the cameras’
whirr, cameras were put into big, immovable boxes. When DeMille wanted
to get a shot from a staircase, he had his prop man muzzle a free-moving
camera with blankets and quilts. The head of MGM’s Sound Department,
Douglas Shearer, saw what DeMille was doing and came back to him with
the first camera blimp. (As early as 1918, DeMille, partner Jesse L. Lasky
and five other men had formed Filmusic Company, which made music rolls
that were in sync with movie projectors.)
THE DIRECTOR’S DIRECTOR
Throughout his life, DeMille was a strong advocate for all directors.
He was an early and prominent member of the Motion Picture Directors
Association -- the first organization to give directors a united
voice -- and regularly wrote articles in trade publications on behalf
of directors’ artistic rights. When the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences was founded in 1927, he became highly active in
its Directors Branch.
In February, 1931, DeMille tried to put together a Directors Guild.
His prescient idea was for productions to be controlled by “the
creative minds in the industry rather than by the financiers.” (A
Depression economy aggravated corporate resistance; his plan was put aside
after six months.) Five years later, the Screen Directors Guild
– now The Directors Guild of America – was established.
DeMille became a staunch member and, in 1953, its first recipient of the
D. W. Griffith [Lifetime Achievement] Award.
Fellow directors also benefited from examples of DeMille’s screen
style and wit. In The Celluloid Sacrifice: Aspects of Sex in the Movies,
Alexander Walker wrote of DeMille’s marital comedies as “one
of the most sustained series of incitements to imitation that the silent
cinema produced.” One can see their influence in the films of artists
ranging from Ernst Lubitsch to Woody Allen. On a more dramatic note, elements
of
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923) are apparent
in Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (1929) and in Alfred
Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).
DeMille’s work inspired many other creative souls. Film historian
Kevin Brownlow has pointed out that FOOL'S PARADISE (1921)
“was the first film that impressed Kurosawa as a boy.” Steven
Spielberg fell in love with movies while watching his first one, The Greatest
Show on Earth.
THE MASTER OF SPECTACLE
After the sound era, DeMille became increasingly identified with films
of grand historical sweep. “Nobody turned out a spectacle like DeMille,”
Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies, said in a broadcast on
September 4, 2002. “I like spectacle,” DeMille wrote. “I
like it when critics say I do it well. But I spend much more time working
on dramatic construction than I do planning special effects.”
DeMille’s unparalleled success with popular epics makes him the
father of the blockbuster. When Steven Spielberg won the DGA’s
Lifetime Achievement Award on March 11, 2000, he credited DeMille
with teaching him “how to put a lot of money on the big screen and
then make the studio pay for it.” DeMille’s granddaughter,
Cecilia de Mille Preseley, has often said that she considers Spielberg,
“The DeMille of today. Like Grandfather, he has consistently been
able to capture vast audiences. He has had great commercial success without
losing his personal vision or compromising his integrity.”
PRODUCER AND AUTEUR
DeMille was, as Picturegoer (November 11, 1950) stated, an “awesome
combination of director and producer” – which allowed him
control over his films. He had been elected three times as president of
the Association of Motion Picture Producers of California and
received the Screen Producers Guild’s coveted Wreath of Honor
in 1956.
A true auteur, DeMille was intensely involved with design and scripts,
imprinting his vision on every frame of film. While he did not take a
writing credit after FORBIDDEN FRUIT(1921), his hands-on
work with his screenwriters resulted in one literate, often poetic voice,
recognizable in picture after picture. “I knew the meaning of ‘plot,’
‘counterplot,’ and ‘situation,’ DeMille wrote,
“long before I could read or write.” Colleague George Cukor
said about DeMille, “The way that man could tell a story was wonderful.
You were riveted to your seat” (Film Culture, Fall, 1964).
Always forward-looking, DeMille was one of the few – and earliest
– producers to boost the advent of television (“Trail-Blazer
Sees New Trail,” The New York Times, June 4, 1939).
WOMEN’S RIGHTS, CIVIL RIGHTS
Decades before the Feminist Movement, DeMille employed more women in responsible
behind-the-scenes positions over the longest period of time than any other
filmmaker. Some of DeMille’s collaborators included scenarist, Jeanie
Macpherson, aide de camp, Gladys Rosson, and film editor, Anne Bauchens,
who cut every DeMille picture from WE CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING (1918)
to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956).
DeMille always valued strong, intelligent women -- having had an eloquent
model in his mother, Beatrice Samuel de Mille, a teacher, play broker
and writer. A list of his films points to the preponderance of stories
that feature women in active rather than passive roles. (Consider Holly/Betty
Hutton taking complete charge of the circus in the finale of The Greatest
Show on Earth.)
Many of DeMille’s beliefs regarding civil rights are evident in
THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956).
His indicating a romance between black actress, Esther Brown as an Ethiopian
princess and Charlton Heston’s Moses was ground-breaking for a major
Hollywood studio production at that time. In the racially tense America
of 1955 – when the scene was shot – it was a radical statement.
Later scenes contain overt dialogue denouncing any prejudice or injustice
against “another race, another creed.”
BUSINESS, POLITICS AND AVIATION
DeMille’s contributions went beyond the film industry. He became
a pilot and a pioneer in aviation. DeMille established airfields at what
is now the Miracle Mile area in Los Angeles, and founded Mercury Aviation,
the first airline in the United States to carry passengers on a regular
basis. Always civic minded, DeMille had been endorsed by the California
State Republican Committee to run for Senator and Governor. He declined
both nominations, as he believed he could reach more people through his
films than through public office. But DeMille’s statesmanlike qualities
paved the way for future film personalities, such as Ronald Reagan, to
be taken seriously in the political arena. (An editorial in The Boston
Hearld once said that DeMille “is to motion pictures what Winston
Churchill is to statesmanship.”)
When he had been hosting Lux Radio Theatre for nearly nine years,
DeMille, took a stand that received enormous publicity and had far-reaching
effects. The American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA, later
AFTRA) demanded that its members contribute a dollar towards a political
campaign supporting the closed shop. Though in favor of unions, DeMille
opposed such political assessment fees and refused to pay the dollar “tribute.”
He was suspended from the union in January, 1945. His action not only
cost him the Lux job – which had given him a rewarding steady contact
with the American people – it banished him from working in radio
(and later television) for the rest of his life.
In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, assuring that no one can
be denied the right to work for refusal to pay a political assessment.
Senator [Robert A.] Taft said that the law would not have been enacted
if DeMille’s refusal to pay the dollar had not drawn such widespread
attention to an abuse of union power.
Grass roots encouragement gave birth to the DeMille Foundation for Political
Freedom. When the organization began in September, 1945, only two states
had had the right to work laws on their books. When, after DeMille’s
death, it dissolved in February, 1959, there were nineteen.
THE BUSINESS OF SHOW BUSINESS
Maintaining the courage of his convictions also gave DeMille hits at the
box office. He was a firm believer in Sir Henry Irving’s line that
theatre “must be carried on as a business or it will fail as an
art.” But DeMille did not strategize over what projects would sell,
nor set out to placate studio money men. As he said in an address to the
Harvard Business School , “Nobody was in sympathy with the subject
I wanted to do until after it was a success” (The New York Times,
June 5, 1927).
Those “successes” would often affect the whole motion picture
business. Special effects editor, Bruce Cardozo, said (September, 2002),
“ SAMSON AND DELILAH (1949) saved
Hollywood. Television was threatening to make big budget movies obsolete.
Then Samson drew such huge audiences, it bolstered Paramount and other
studios as well.” Cardozo also pointed out that it was in Samson
and Delilah that the first motion control camera system was used in the
climactic destruction of the temple scene.
INDUSTRY LEADER
On March 23, 1950, DeMille was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences with a special award for being a “distinguished…pioneer”
and “for thirty-seven years of brilliant showmanship.”
Another special award was presented by the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents
Association on February 21, 1952. Named the Cecil B. DeMille Award
for its first recipient, and still given annually at the Golden Globes,
DeMille was acknowledged “for continuous and outstanding contributions
to the motion picture industry and throughout the world.” The following
year, DeMille won two Golden Globes as director and producer of THE
GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952); Walt Disney got the Cecil
B. DeMille Award
.
But perhaps nothing compared to the Academy’s 25th Anniversay
Oscar ceremony on March 19, 1953. DeMille received the Irving G.
Thalberg Memorial Award – “given for consistent and high quality
of production by an individual producer” – and THE
GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH won as the Best Picture of 1952. The
program, televised for the first time, was emceed by Bob Hope, who quipped,
“Mister DeMille has brought something new to the movies. They’re
called customers.”
Beyond professional recognition, THE
GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH is significant because it captured
for posterity the American circus as it would never be again.
AMERICAN HISTORY
DeMille loved America. He imparted his passion by telling his country’s
stories through characters with identifiable human emotions against a
backdrop of stunning pictorials.
THE PLAINSMAN (1936), THE
BUCCANEER (1938),
and UNION PACIFIC (1939)
are considered DeMille’s American trilogy. But NORTH
WEST MOUNTED POLICE (1940), REAP
THE WILD WIND (1942) and UNCONQUERED
(1947) also brought chapters of America’s past to life.
James V. D’Arc, Curator of the Arts and Communications Archives
at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, said (June, 2002),
“DeMille painted these wonderful pictures of the American experience
that still hold up so well. He had an epic sense of what was important.”
DeMille’s innate sense of history also led him to save an extraordinary
amount of material documenting his life and career. Today, most of it
comprises the Cecil B. DeMille Archives at Brigham Young University. Taking
twelve years to complete, the Collection is contained in 1200 boxes of
organized production files, correspondence and scrapbooks, more than 8,000
pieces of production-related art and over 15,000 photographic images.
DeMille’s paper legacy is used by film scholars from all over the
world.
But DeMille’s ultimate legacy remains the effect his films have
had on billions of people.
RELIGION
While DeMille only drew from specific scriptural sources three times –
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (filmed twice), THE
KING OF KINGS (1927) and SAMSON AND DELILAH
– conventional concepts of DeMille indelibly link him to biblical
epics. Raised with a love for and knowledge of the Bible, DeMille saw
the screen as a universal pulpit. (His father, Henry Churchill de Mille,
had been a lay reader in the Episcopal Church and a Broadway playwright.)
Nothing pleased DeMille more than learning that his films brought men,
women and children closer to God. Letters came to him for decades describing
the effects of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923)
and THE KING OF KINGS on people
from all walks of life – including testimonies of how those pictures
led many to pursue religious vocations.
Evangelist Billy Graham -- who has called DeMille “a prophet in
celluloid”-- was profoundly influenced as a young man by The King
of Kings. His daughter, international preacher and Bible teacher, Ann
Graham Lotz, has said that her own conversion as a child took place while
watching the film on TV.
And it is television that continues to present what may be DeMille’s
most abiding gift. For thirty years, THE
TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956).
has aired during Holy Week on the ABC network (to consistently high ratings),
touching ever new generations of viewers.
From the beginning, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS resonated with
Jewish, Christian and Moslem religious leaders, as well as with lay people
of all ages. In a speech he gave at the New York opening of the film,
DeMille said he hoped that those who saw it “would not only be filled
with the sight of a big spectacle but filled with the spirit of truth.”
Forty-six years later, the DeMille Foundation continues to receive letters
affirming the film’s message of faith and freedom for this day and
age.
THE LEGACY CONTINUES
DeMille is the only early silent era pioneer who made successful films
until the end of his life. He who was a young man in the 19th century,
continues to impact people in the 21st. Pathfinder and innovator, he changed
an industry, a town and the world for the better. He was, as James D’Arc
said, “a man with a mission. Mission accomplished.”
The October, 2002, issue of Vanity Fair had an article accompanying
a photo layout saluting Paramount’s 90th Anniversary. It
opened with an iconic name that spanned the ages. “Somewhere,”
the headlined text began, “Cecil B. DeMille was smiling.”
Legacy
written by Lisa Mitchell
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