Cecil B. DeMille

He was awarded 2 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 1725 Vine Street; and for Radio at 6240 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 207-222. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, making his stage debut in 1900. For twelve years he was actor/manager of his mother's theatrical company.

According to DeMille he fell in love with film after watching The Great Train Robbery (1903) in Manhattan with Jesse L. Lasky. Several days later they lunched with Sam Goldfish (later to change his name to Samuel Goldwyn) and attorney Arthur Friend and formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, which later grew to be Paramount Pictures.

In 1913, Jesse L.

Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and DeMille formed the Lasky Film Company (which years later evolved into Paramount Pictures), and the next year went west to California and produced the successful six reeler, The Squaw Man (1914), of historical significance as the first feature length film produced in Hollywood. He championed the switch from short to feature-length films and is often credited with making Hollywood the motion picture capital of the world. Rather than putting his money into known stars, he emphasized production values. He also developed stars, notably Gloria Swanson. He produced and directed 70 films and was involved in many more. Many of his films were romantic sexual comedies (he is supposed to have believed that Americans were curious only about money and sex).

He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Cheat (1915) and The Ten Commandments (1956). He has also appeared in one film that is in the registry: Sunset Boulevard (1950).

His best-known were biblical/religious epics: Joan the Woman (1916), The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956).

Cast Gloria Swanson in six of his films: Don't Change Your Husband (1919), For Better, for Worse (1919), Male and Female (1919), Why Change Your Wife? (1920), Something to Think About (1920), and Affairs of Anatole, The (1921).

He and his wife adopted daughter Katherine DeMille in 1920, when she was 9. He father had died in World War I and her mother died of tuberculosis. Her birth name was Katherine Lester.

Directed four films based on stories from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible: The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). The first two are silent films with sequences in two-strip Technicolor, while the other two are sound films in full Technicolor.

President of DeMille Pictures Corporation, formed in 1925.

He planned four biblical epics which were never made: "The Deluge" (1927), about Noah's ark; "Esther" (1939), about the beautiful Jewish queen of Persia; "The Queen of Queens" (1940), about Mary, the mother of Jesus; and "Thou Art the Man" (1945), about David, king of Israel.

Five of his films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction: Dynamite (1929), North West Mounted Police (1940), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). Only Samson and Delilah (1949) won.

According to Tim Adler's book about the history of the Mafia in Hollywood, in the late 1930s De Mille was threatened by the mob, which wanted to swindle him while he was in his hospital bed. DeMille stood up from the bed and ordered the gangster to get out of his room, because he -- DeMille -- was not afraid of the Mafia.

Eight of his films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography: The Sign of the Cross (1932), Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935), The Buccaneer (1938), North West Mounted Police (1940), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). Only Cleopatra won.

Directed three films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Cleopatra (1934), Greatest Show On Earth (1952), and The Ten Commandments (1956). The Greatest Show on Earth won.

Stuntman Jack Montgomery, who played a Christian cavalryman in DeMille's The Crusades (1935), recalled in an interview the tension that existed between DeMille and the dozens of stuntmen hired to do the battle scenes. They resented what they saw as DeMille's cavalier attitude about safety, especially as several stuntmen had been injured, and several horses had been killed, because of what they perceived to be DeMille's indifference. At one point, DeMille was standing on the parapets of the castle, shouting through his megaphone at the "combatants" gathered below. One of them, who had been hired for his expertise at archery, finally tired of DeMille's screaming at them, notched an arrow into his bow and fired it at DeMille's megaphone, the arrow embedding itself into the device just inches from DeMille's head. He quickly left the set and didn't come back that day. He came back the next day, but for the rest of the picture, DeMille never shouted at the stuntmen again.

From 1936 to 1945 he hosted and directed the hour-long "Lux Radio Theatre", which brought the actors and stories of many movies to the airwaves and further established him as the symbol of Hollywood.

Six of his films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Special Effects: Union Pacific (1939), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944), Unconquered (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). Reap the Wild Wind and The Ten Commandments both won.

Beginning in 1940 and continuing on to the end of his career, all of the films that he produced and directed were made in color and narrated by him.

In December 1942, The Film Daily's national poll of critics named DeMille one of the year's Top Five Directors for his work in Reap the Wild Wind (1942). He placed third, behind William Wyler for Mrs. Miniver (1942) and John Ford for How Green Was My Valley (1941).

The Associated Press reported on Sunday 3 December 1944 that Paramount announced that production of "The Flame," DeMilles's epic about the Mexican Revolution, had been cancelled because of the high cost involved. ("'Flame' Too Costly", The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Monday 4 December 1944, Volume 51, page 3.).

DeMille was notable for his courage and athleticism and despised men unwilling to perform dangerous stunts or who had phobias. He criticized Victor Mature on the set of Samson and Delilah (1949), calling him "100 percent yellow".

He appeared as himself in the classic Sunset Boulevard (1950) with his former star Gloria Swanson as the fictitious disturbed former silent film actress Norma Desmond.

A conservative Republican, DeMille was an active supporter of the practice of blacklisting real or alleged Communists, progressives and other "subversives", in 1952, he attempted to get Joseph L. Mankiewicz removed as President of the Directors Guild because he would not endorse the DeMille-inspired loyalty oath. Directors George Stevens and John Ford managed to block DeMille's efforts. DeMille also refused to cast liberal Democrat Burt Lancaster in Samson and Delilah (1949) and Greatest Show On Earth (1952) due to politics, despite Lancaster's imposing physique and real life experience as a circus acrobat, which allowed him to do his own stunts.

To promote The Ten Commandments (1956), he had stone plaques of the commandments posted at government buildings across the country. Many of them are still standing to this day, and some are now the subjects of First Amendment lawsuits.

At the 15th Foreign Language Press Film Critics Circle Awards in 1957, DeMille won in two categories: Best Film ("in terms of content") and Best Director, both for The Ten Commandments (1956).

Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe Award winners who mentioned DeMille in their acceptance speeches include Elizabeth Taylor (1985), Barbara Stanwyck (1986), his son-in-law Anthony Quinn (1987), Sophia Loren (1995), Shirley MacLaine (1998), Steven Spielberg (2008), and Martin Scorsese (2010).

A photograph of DeMille working on the set of Cleopatra (1934) appears in the selvage on the right side of a sheet of 10 USA 37¢ commemorative postage stamps, issued 25 February 2003, celebrating American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes.

Profiled in "American Classic Screen Profiles" by John C. Tibbets and James M. Welch (2010).