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Movies Forum Index » Silent Movies Forum » New Jersey Star-Ledger: DeMille may be a dim memory but his
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| Bruce Calver |
 Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 2:22 pm |
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http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/10810711603640.xml
DeMille may be a dim memory but his legacy shines
Sunday, April 04, 2004
BY STEPHEN WHITTY
Star-Ledger Staff
He was, first and foremost, a showman.
Grand stories. Casts of thousands. Widescreen epics of color, sound and special
effects. For five decades, the name Cecil B. DeMille was synonymous with
blockbuster.
Today, it's barely mentioned.
"I doubt many of the young directors are familiar with him," says historian
Kevin Brownlow. "Yet, he really created the building blocks of movie spectacle.
... He invented the epic tradition."
This month, though, that tradition gets its due.
DeMille's 1956 "The Ten Commandments" has just been released on DVD, with an
accompanying six-part documentary. Brownlow's own two-part study, "Cecil B
DeMille: American Epic," runs tomorrow and Wednesday at 8 p.m. on TCM. The
station is also showing eight of DeMille's earliest films, including his
pioneering 1914 Western, "The Squaw Man."
Not surprisingly, given the scale of these movies, there's a big-screen option
as well: Brownlow's documentary, and an expanded DeMille festival (with live
music for all silents, including the 1927 "King of Kings") unspools at the
American Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens, from Saturday through April
25th. (Call 718-784-0077 for information.)
"At the time I began the research I wasn't terribly keen on DeMille," Brownlow
admits. "But my partner, Patrick Stanbury, said 'You know, he's much more
interesting than you think.' And it's true -- the further back you go in his
career, the better he gets."
A creature of the Victorian age, DeMille was born in 1881, and raised in
Pamlico, the family's grand home in Pompton Lakes. His father had co-written
several hits for the stage star, David Belasco, and Cecil became determined to
follow his example.
He had less success, however, and after marrying Constance Adams, an actress
from Orange, further obligations. Then, in 1913, the Broadway producer Jesse L.
Lasky, suggested DeMille help him get into the picture business by filming a
play called "The Squaw Man." Lasky even had the locations, in nearby Fort Lee.
DeMille though -- in an instinct for authenticity he would never lose nor cease
to advertise -- decided that a cowboy movie needed to be filmed in cowboy
country. He packed up the company, including star Dustin Farnum, and headed
west. After stopping in Falstaff, Ariz. -- and rejecting it as too built up --
he went on to California.
He finally stopped in a dusty town called Los Angeles.
It was not a place where Wild West locations had to be faked. DeMille rode his
own horse to the studio -- actually a run-down barn -- and carried a revolver.
He was even shot at twice, from the underbrush. After a month of hard, dusty
work, though, the pioneer had a film -- and a hit.
It was the first feature ever made in Los Angeles and the first of DeMille's
successes. It was also the beginning of his larger-than-life legend -- an image
that would soon include riding boots, a perch atop a high crane and a scurrying
cluster of lackeys ("Ready when you are, C.B.!")
"He was a formidable man," says his granddaughter, Cecilia. "When he was making
a picture, he was like Patton. He demanded complete attention, complete control.
I only saw him get angry once, but I saw him pretend to lose his temper a lot.
He would focus it on one person, and use that to get everybody's attention. That
was his M.O."
It was an M.O. that got results.
"He ruled the set with an iron hand," "Samson and Delilah" star Angela Lansbury
recalls in "American Epic." "And an iron voice, I might add."
As the industry grew, DeMille's talents grew with it. He pioneered the use of
dramatic, "Rembrandt" lighting. He reveled in sensational material, moving from
"The Cheat" -- with its shocking scene of a Japanese moneylender branding a
white woman -- to Jazz Age marital comedies with titles like "Why Change Your
Wife?"
"Like D. W. Griffith, he's been so pillaged by other filmmakers, you don't
always recognize how original these films were," says Brownlow. "But his
psychological drama, 'The Whispering Chorus,' is truly a masterpiece. ... Some
of the comedies are superb."
Even more superb, though, was DeMille's business sense. When, in the early'20s,
America was rocked by Hollywood scandals like Fatty Arbuckle's rape trials and
actor Wallace Reid's drug addiction, DeMille sensed the changing times.
And so he changed first, and announced his next picture -- "The Ten
Commandments."
Cynics pointed out that the scenario -- which employed the exodus only as a
flashback within a modern melodrama -- merely used its last-reel sermon to get
away with the same sexy scenes. Gossips snickered that the moralizing came from
a not-too-married married man.
Yet, the film was a hit, and while people may smile at its hokum today, no one
who knew its creator calls it hypocritical.
"He was a deeply religious man," says his granddaughter. "He knew his Bible and
he had a very, very deep belief in God." If he had affairs, she says, it was
only because his wife -- warned not to bear other children after their first --
had barred him from the marriage bed.
"I think he was cynical in many respects but not where religion was concerned,"
Brownlow says. "He came out of the Victorian age and he truly believed, in a
deep and fundamental sense."
Having touched upon the Old Testament, DeMille soon turned to the New with "King
of Kings."
On its release the film was immediately controversial -- English laws still
prohibited the portrayal of Jesus, and the B'nai Brith lambasted its portrayal
of the Jews. It was also widely popular. Cannily marketed to church groups, it
played some cities for years.
It is a story that has repeated itself recently, but DeMille got little reward
for being first. His own studio was sinking in debt, and his next few pictures
failed. Soon after sound arrived, a nervous industry swept him away, writing him
off as an antique.
Unemployable at home, DeMille even looked for work in Moscow, where his 1928
film, "The Godless Girl," had been a huge hit. (Of course, the Soviets had cut
the final reel, in which the atheist got her comeuppance.) "Can you imagine the
humiliation of someone as right-wing as he was, having to go to Russia to look
for a job?" Brownlow asks. Even more humiliating: DeMille couldn't find one.
Finally, in 1932, Paramount, a studio he had helped create, grudgingly offered
him a job.
It was another religious epic, "The Sign of the Cross," but this time, DeMille
was determined to serve both God and Mammon. His movie would feature plenty of
pious believers, but it would also feature every Roman perversion he could sneak
past the censor, including Claudette Colbert in a bath of asses' milk, and the
nude Elissa Landi menaced by an amorous gorilla.
The film was, of course, a stupendous smash and DeMille followed it with two
more rousing costume epics, "Cleopatra" and "The Crusades." When that cycle
slowed, he moved on to rah-rah Americana like "The Plainsman," and "Union
Pacific." He became a brand-name mogul, hosting a radio show and even playing
himself, in "Sunset Boulevard."
The fame came at a price, Brownlow says.
"When DeMille got back into pictures, it was only by the skin of his teeth,"
says the historian. "And so he became more and more determined that his films
were going to be financial successes. He became this sort of tabloid filmmaker,
aiming at the lowest common denominator."
That crudity had begun to show in his pictures, and his politics. Although
"Samson and Delilah" was a hit in 1949, even its stars knew it was camp. The
following year, the conservative DeMille led an ugly (and unsuccessful) fight
against the liberal leadership of the Directors Guild, demanding members sign
loyalty oaths and inform on their crews.
Of course, DeMille's politics weren't utterly out of place in'50s Hollywood.
Even after the Guild fight, he remained admired for his sense of scale ("The
Greatest Show on Earth" won a Best Picture award in 1952) and his own kind of
loyalty -- even forgotten silent stars were kept regularly employed on Cecil B.
DeMille productions.
Still, in a post-war Hollywood full of trendsetting talents like Wilder, Kazan,
Huston, Hitchcock -- and a new wave of European imports -- DeMille seemed more
Victorian than ever.
Instead of looking forward, though, DeMille looked back. Nearly forty years
after he had first gone to Hollywood, he decided to return to a favorite
subject. He would make "The Ten Commandments" again -- this time as a purely
Biblical story, produced on an epic scale.
It turned out to be epic even by DeMille's standards.
The film took almost four years of work, from the first day of pre-production to
the final cut; the arduous desert shoot involved a cast of literally thousands,
including the modern Egyptian army. Conditions were hellish and, one day on the
set, the aging director had a heart attack.
Amazingly, he kept the fact from his nervous studio and ordered his family and
assistants to keep the picture going. Gritting his teeth, he willed himself back
to work within a week.
"We had all pitched in," says Cecilia DeMille. "I used to get up at 4 in the
morning to help Frank Westmore with the makeup -- he was just swamped. The crew
was just incredible, and you know, afterward grandfather did something which had
never been done: He gave them all a percentage of the picture. I still write
checks today -- big checks."
The picture was a hit, and if it showed DeMille's disinterest in actors --
Charlton Heston's Moses is mostly poses -- it proved his mastery of spectacle.
The plague of blood, the parting of the Red Sea -- these were Bible stories made
real. "I wish I could put an image up there like DeMille could," Martin Scorsese
confesses in "American Epic."
They were the last images the old master would create. Although he began
preparing new projects -- including an outer-space epic -- his health never
really recovered from that last shoot. He died, in 1959, after another massive
heart attack, at 77. He was buried in the Hollywood Cemetery, within sight of
the Paramount gate.
DeMille had been present at the birth of Hollywood; its studio system would not
long survive him. Four years later, a remake of his "Cleopatra" practically
bankrupted 20th Century Fox; by the end of the'60s, the last of the contract
players had left. The old studio days were gone.
Lately, though, the epics have returned.
"The Last Samurai" and "Master and Commander" -- these are movies DeMille would
have made 60 years ago, with Gary Cooper. A three-part, 10-hour "The Lord of the
Rings"? The old man would have eagerly risen to the challenge. "The Passion of
the Christ"? C.B. did it all first.
He may be irreplaceable as a showman. But the show he invented is still packing
them in.
You can contact film critic Stephen Whitty at (212) 286-4298 or at
swhitty@starledger.com.
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://home.comcast.net/~silentfilm/home.htm
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