Cecil B. DeMille

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Cecil B. DeMille
Demille - c1920.jpg
Publicity portrait, circa 1920
Background information
Born as: Cecil Blount DeMille
Born Aug 12, 1881
Ashfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died Jan 21, 1959 - age  78
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
 
Alma Mater: Pennsylvania Military College
American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Spouse(s): Constance Adams DeMille
(1902 - - )
Parents: Henry Churchill de Mille
Matilda Beatrice DeMille
Children: 4, including Katherine DeMille (adopted) and Richard DeMille (adopted)
Relatives: William C. DeMille (brother)
Agnes DeMille (niece)
Peggy George (niece)
Occupation: Director, producer, screenwriter, editor, actor
Years active 1899–1958
Website: http://www.cecilbdemille.com/

Cecil Blount DeMille (✦August 12, 1881 – †January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer, and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. He was an active Freemason and member of Prince of Orange Lodge #16 in New York City.

DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York City. He began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later moved to writing and directing stage productions, some with Jesse Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was also the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story made it commercially successful, and it first publicized Hollywood as the home of the U.S. film industry. The continued success of his productions led to the founding of [[Paramount Pictures]] with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and commercial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for twenty-five years.

DeMille directed The King of Kings (1927), a biography of Jesus, which gained approval for its sensitivity and reached more than 800 million viewers. The Sign of the Cross (1932) is said to be the first sound film to integrate all aspects of cinematic technique. Cleopatra (1934) was his first film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. After more than thirty years in film production, DeMille reached a pinnacle in his career with Samson and Delilah (1949), a biblical epic which became the highest-grossing film of 1950. Along with biblical and historical narratives, he also directed films oriented toward "neo-naturalism", which tried to portray the laws of man fighting the forces of nature.

He received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director for his circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. His last and best known film, The Ten Commandments (1956), also a Best Picture Academy Award nominee, is currently the eighth-highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. In addition to his Best Picture Awards, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his film contributions, the Palme d'Or (posthumously) for Union Pacific (1939), a DGA Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He was the first recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, which was named in his honor. DeMille's reputation as a filmmaker has grown over time and his work has influenced numerous other films and directors.

Death

Cecil B. DeMille suffered a series of heart attacks from June 1958 to January 1959, and died on January 21, 1959, following an attack. DeMille's funeral was held on January 23 at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. He was entombed at the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now known as Hollywood Forever). After his death, notable news outlets such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian honored DeMille as "pioneer of movies", "the greatest creator and showman of our industry", and "the founder of Hollywood". DeMille left his multi-million dollar estate in Los Feliz, Los Angeles in Laughlin Park to his daughter Cecilia because his wife had dementia and could not care for an estate. She would die one year later. His personal will drew a line between Cecilia and his three adopted children, with Cecilia receiving a majority of DeMille's inheritance and estate. The other three children were surprised by this, as DeMille did not treat the children differently in life. Cecilia lived in the house for many years until her death in 1984, but the house was auctioned by his granddaughter Cecilia DeMille Presley who also lived there in the late 1980s.

Legacy

Known as the father of the Hollywood motion picture industry, Cecil B. DeMille made 70 films, including several box-office hits. DeMille is one of the more commercially successful film directors in history, with his films before the release of The Ten Commandments estimated to have grossed $650 million worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, DeMille's remake of The Ten Commandments is the eighth highest-grossing film in the world.

According to Sam Goldwyn, critics did not like DeMille's films, but the audiences did and "they have the final word". Similarly, scholar David Blanke, argued that DeMille had lost the respect of his colleagues and film critics by his late film career. However, his final films maintained that DeMille was still respected by his audiences. Five of DeMille's film were the highest-grossing films at the year of their release, with only Spielberg topping him with six of his films as the highest-grossing films of the year. DeMille's highest-grossing films include: The Sign of the Cross (1932), Unconquered (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and The Ten Commandments (1956). Director Ridley Scott has been called "the Cecil B. DeMille of the digital era" due to his classical and medieval epics.

Despite his box-office success, awards, and artistic achievements, DeMille has been dismissed and ignored by critics both during his life and posthumously. He was consistently criticized for producing shallow films without talent or artistic care. Compared to other directors, few film scholars have taken the time to analyze his films and style academically. During the French New Wave, critics began categorizing certain filmmakers as auteurs such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Raoul Walsh. DeMille was omitted from the list, thought to be too unsophisticated and antiquated to be considered an auteur. However, Simon Louvish wrote "he was the complete master and auteur of his films" and Anton Kozlovic called him the "unsung American auteur". Andrew Sarris, a leading proponent of the auteur theory, ranked DeMille highly as an auteur in the "Far Side of Paradise", just below the "Pantheon". Sarris added that despite the influence of styles of contemporary directors throughout his career, DeMille's style remained unchanged. Robert Birchard wrote that one could argue auteurship of DeMille on the basis that DeMille's thematic and visual style remained consistent throughout his career. However, Birchard acknowledged that Sarris's point was more likely that DeMille's style was behind the development of film as an art form. Meanwhile, Sumiko Higashi sees DeMille as "not only a figure who was shaped and influenced by the forces of his era but as a filmmaker who left his own signature on the culture industry." The critic Camille Paglia has called The Ten Commandments one of the ten greatest films of all time.

DeMille was one of the first directors to become a celebrity in his own right. He cultivated the image of the omnipotent director, complete with megaphone, riding crop, and jodhpurs. He was known for his unique working wardrobe, which included riding boots, riding pants, and soft, open-necked shirts. Joseph Henabery recalled that DeMille looked like "a king on a throne surrounded by his court" while directing films on a camera platform.

DeMille was liked by some of his fellow directors and disliked by others, though his actual films were usually dismissed by his peers as vapid spectacle. Director John Huston intensely disliked both DeMille and his films. "He was a thoroughly bad director," Huston said. "A dreadful showoff. Terrible. To diseased proportions." Said fellow director William Wellman: "Directorially, I think his pictures were the most horrible things I've ever seen in my life. But he put on pictures that made a fortune. In that respect, he was better than any of us." Producer David O. Selznick wrote: "There has appeared only one Cecil B. DeMille. He is one of the most extraordinarily able showmen of modern times. However much I may dislike some of his pictures, it would be very silly of me, as a producer of commercial motion pictures, to demean for an instant his unparalleled skill as a maker of mass entertainment." Salvador Dalí wrote that DeMille, Walt Disney and the Marx Brothers were "the three great American Surrealists". DeMille appeared as himself in numerous films, including the MGM comedy Free and Easy. He often appeared in his coming-attraction trailers and narrated many of his later films, even stepping on screen to introduce The Ten Commandments. DeMille was immortalized in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard when Gloria Swanson spoke the line: "All right, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up." DeMille plays himself in the film. DeMille's reputation had a renaissance in the 2010s.

As a filmmaker, DeMille was the aesthetic inspiration of many directors and films due to his early influence during the crucial development of the film industry. DeMille's early silent comedies influenced the comedies of Ernst Lubitsch and Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris. Additionally, DeMille's epics such as The Crusades influenced Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky. Moreover, DeMille's epics inspired directors such as Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and George Stevens to try producing epics.[31] Cecil B. DeMille has influenced the work of several well-known directors. Alfred Hitchcock cited DeMille's 1921 film Forbidden Fruit as an influence of his work and one of his top ten favorite films. DeMille has influenced the careers of many modern directors. Martin Scorsese cited Unconquered, Samson and Delilah, and The Greatest Show on Earth as DeMille films that have imparted lasting memories on him.[75] Scorsese said he had viewed The Ten Commandments forty or fifty times. Famed director Steven Spielberg stated that DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth was one of the films that influenced him to become a filmmaker. Furthermore, DeMille influenced about half of Spielberg's films, including War of the Worlds. The Ten Commandments inspired DreamWorks Animation's later film about Moses, The Prince of Egypt. As one of the establishing members of Paramount Pictures and co-founder of Hollywood, DeMille had a role in the development of the film industry. Consequently, the name "DeMille" has become synonymous with filmmaking.

Publicly Episcopalian, DeMille drew on his Christian and Jewish ancestors to convey a message of tolerance. DeMille received more than a dozen awards from Christian and Jewish religious and cultural groups, including B'nai B'rith. However, not everyone received DeMille's religious films favorably. DeMille was accused of antisemitism after the release of The King of Kings, and director John Ford despised DeMille for what he saw as "hollow" biblical epics meant to promote DeMille's reputation during the politically turbulent 1950s. In response to the claims, DeMille donated some of the profits from The King of Kings to charity. In the 2012 'Sight & Sound' poll, both DeMille's Samson and Delilah and 1923 version of The Ten Commandments received votes, but did not make the top 100 films. Although many of DeMille's films are available on DVD and Blu-ray release, only 20 of his silent films are commercially available on DVD

Commemoration and tributes

The original Lasky-DeMille Barn in which The Squaw Man was filmed was converted into a museum named the "Hollywood Heritage Museum". It opened on December 13, 1985, and features some of DeMille's personal artifacts. The Lasky-DeMille Barn was dedicated as a California historical landmark in a ceremony on December 27, 1956; DeMille was the keynote speaker and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. The Dunes Center in Guadalupe, California contains an exhibition of artifacts uncovered in the desert near Guadalupe from DeMille's set of his 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, known as the "Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille". Donated by the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation in 2004, the moving image collection of Cecil B. DeMille is held at the Academy Film Archive and includes home movies, outtakes, and never-before-seen test footage.

In summer of 2019, The Friends of the Pompton Lakes Library hosted a Cecil B DeMille film festival to celebrate DeMille's achievements and connection to Pompton Lakes. They screened four of his films at Christ Church, where DeMille and his family attended church when they lived there. Two schools have been named after him: Cecil B. DeMille Middle School, in Long Beach, California, which was closed and demolished in 2010 to make way for a new high school; and Cecil B. DeMille Elementary School in Midway City, California. he former film building at Chapman University in Orange, California, is named in honor of DeMille. During the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin refers to himself in one instance as "Cecil B. DeAldrin", as a humorous nod to DeMille. The title of the 2000 John Waters film Cecil B. Demented alludes to DeMille.

DeMille's legacy is maintained by his granddaughter by the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation

Biography

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Wikipedia article: Cecil B. DeMille Biography

Career

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Wikipedia article: Cecil B. DeMille Career

Filmography

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Wikipedia article: Cecil B. DeMille Filmography

External links

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Wikipedia article: Cecil B. DeMille
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