Everything about Cecil B Demille totally explained
Cecil Blount DeMille (
August 12,
1881 –
January 21,
1959) was a successful
Academy Award-winning
American filmmaker in the first half of the
20th century, known for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies.
Biography
Early life
DeMille was born while his parents, Henry Churchill DeMille (1853–1893), an
Episcopal lay minister and playwright from
North Carolina, and Matilda Beatrice Samuel (1853–1923), who was born to a
Sephardic Jewish family in
England but converted to her husband's faith, were vacationing in
Ashfield, Massachusetts. DeMille grew up in
Pompton (now Wayne), New Jersey and attended
Pennsylvania Military College in
Chester, Pennsylvania beginning at the age of 15. He had an older brother,
William, and a younger sister who died in childhood, Agnes, after whom Cecil's famous
niece was named. After Henry's death in 1893, Cecil's mother, Beatrice, ran a well known boarding school for girls in New Jersey.
Career
DeMille directed dozens of
silent films, including
Paramount Pictures' first production,
The Squaw Man (1914), which was co-directed by Oscar Apfel, before coming into huge popularity during the late 1910s and early 1920s, when he reached the apex of his popularity with such films as
Don't Change Your Husband (1919),
The Ten Commandments (1923), and
The King of Kings (1927). A few of his silent films featured scenes in two-strip
Technicolor.
Though most commonly referred to by the press as DeMille with a capital "D", DeMille used "deMille" with a small "d" for his personal dealings. DeMille's business address for most of his career was 2010 DeMille (capital "D") Drive,
Hollywood, California (which is actually in the adjacent
Los Angeles neighborhood of
Los Feliz). He used the small "d" for private correspondence and the capital for his business and film dealings. In either case, the persona of the larger than life showman was reinforced by such affectations and his status as an icon thrived.
Cecil B. DeMille had a keen eye for talent and was known for being an instrumental catalyst for the rising status of many a struggling or unknown actor. Actor
Richard Dix's best-remembered early role was in the silent version of DeMille's
The Ten Commandments.
Richard Cromwell owed his 1930s movie fame in part to being personally selected by DeMille for the role as the leader of the youth gang in DeMille's poignant, now cult-favorite,
This Day and Age (1933).
DeMille displayed a loyalty to certain supporting performers, casting them over and over in his pictures. They included
Henry Wilcoxon,
Julia Faye,
Joseph Schildkraut,
Ian Keith,
Charles Bickford,
Theodore Roberts,
Akim Tamiroff, and
William Boyd. He also cast leading actors such as
Claudette Colbert,
Gloria Swanson,
Gary Cooper,
Jetta Goudal,
Robert Preston,
Paulette Goddard, and
Charlton Heston in multiple pictures. He wasn't known as a particularly good director of actors, often hiring actors whom he relied on to develop their own characters and act accordingly.
DeMille also had a reputation for being a tyrant on the set, and he despised actors who were not willing to take physical risks; such was the case with
Victor Mature in
Samson and Delilah, when Mature refused to wrestle the lion, though the lion was tame and had had its teeth pulled. (DeMille remarked that Mature was "100% yellow").
Paulette Goddard's refusal to risk personal injury in a scene involving fire in
Unconquered cost her DeMille's favor and probably a role in
The Greatest Show on Earth. DeMille was, however, adept at directing "thousands of extras," and many of his pictures included spectacular set pieces, such as the parting of the
Red Sea in both versions of
The Ten Commandments; the toppling of the pagan temple in
Samson and Delilah; train wrecks in
The Road to Yesterday,
Union Pacific and
The Greatest Show on Earth; and the destruction of a zeppelin in
Madame Satan. DeMille knew what the movie-going public wanted, and he provided it.
DeMille was one of the first directors in Hollywood to become a celebrity in his own right. From 1936 to 1944, DeMille hosted and even acted as pitchman for Cecil B. DeMille's
Lux Radio Theater, which was one of the most popular dramatic
radio shows at the time. Gloria Swanson immortalized DeMille with the oft-repeated line, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" in
Billy Wilder's
Sunset Boulevard, wherein DeMille played himself. DeMille also appeared as himself in Paramount's 1947 all-star musical comedy
Variety Girl and he narrated many of his later films, as well as appearing on screen in the introduction to
The Ten Commandments.
DeMille first used three-strip
Technicolor in
Northwest Mounted Police (1940). Following the favorable response to the vivid color photography, shot partly on location in the Canadian Rockies, DeMille decided to always use Technicolor in his films.
While he continued to be prolific throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he's probably best known for his 1956 film
The Ten Commandments (which is very different from his 1923 film of the same title). Also representative of his penchant for the spectacular was the 1952 production of
The Greatest Show on Earth which gave DeMille an
Oscar for best picture and a nomination for best director.
In 1954, Secretary of the Air Force
Harold E. Talbott sought out DeMille for help in designing the cadet uniforms at the newly established
United States Air Force Academy. DeMille's designs—most notably his design of the distinctive cadet parade uniform—won praise from Air Force and Academy leadership, were ultimately adopted, and are still worn by cadets today.
Near the end of his life, DeMille began pre-production work on a film biography of
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, and had asked
David Niven to star in the film; the film was never made. Because of illness, he asked his son-in-law, actor
Anthony Quinn, to direct a remake of his 1938 film
The Buccaneer; although DeMille served as executive producer, he was very unhappy with Quinn's work and tried unsuccessufully to remedy the situation. Despite a good cast led by
Charlton Heston and
Yul Brynner, and some impressive battle scenes, the film was a disappointment.
Personal life
DeMille married
Constance Adams on
16 August 1902 and had one child, Cecilia. The couple adopted
Katherine Lester in the early 1920s; her father had been killed in
World War I and her mother had died of
tuberculosis. Katherine married Anthony Quinn. They also adopted two sons, John and Richard.
During on-location filming in Egypt of the exodus sequence for 1956's
The Ten Commandments, the then 73 year-old DeMille climbed a 107-foot ladder to the top of the massive Per Rameses set and suffered a near fatal heart attack. Miraculously, aided by his daughter Cecilia, but against his doctor's orders, he was back directing the film within a week.
Cecil B. DeMille died of
heart failure in January 1959 and was interred in the
Hollywood Forever Cemetery in
Hollywood, California. At the time of his death, he was reportedly negotiating to direct
Ben-Hur for
MGM, and was planning to direct a movie about space travel.
DeMille's mansion in
Wayne, New Jersey was recently demolished, although the gatehouse has been transformed into a modest-size home, currently occupied by
child actor Ryan Ward from the
Academy Award-nominated film
Far From Heaven.
Legacy Honor
The former film building at
Chapman University in
Orange, California is named in honor of DeMille. The
Lawrence and Kristina Dodge College of Film and Media Arts now resides in Marion Knotts Studios.
The Golden Globes' Life Time Achievement Award is called the Cecil B. DeMille award.
He is mentioned in the
Mel Brooks film
Blazing Saddles in a deliberately
anachronistic joke; the film takes place in the late 1800's, and DeMille didn't even begin to direct until after 1910. Jim "The Waco Kid", once a top notch fast-draw reduced to a chronically inebriated deputy, remarks that he "must have killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille" in his prime.
Filmography (As Director)
Filmography (Appearing As Himself)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
The Fallbrook Story (short subject) (1951)Further Information
Get more info on 'Cecil B Demille'.
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