The Founder of Hollywood

Background:

“It was a theory that died very hard that the public would not stand for anyone dressed in clothes of another period....I got around this objection by staging what we call a vision. The poor working girl was dreaming of love and reading ‘Tristan and Isolde.’ The scene faded out, and scenes were depicted on the screen that the girl was supposed to be reading....Thus a bit of costume picture was put over on the man who bought the picture for his theater, and there was no protest from the public.” Cecil B. DeMille

One of the most flourishing filmmakers during the first half of the 20th century, Cecil B. DeMille, born in 1881, died in 1959, was a fundamental figure in the early development of the classic Hollywood narrative filmmaking style, a form which remains dominant to this day. Though less critically respected than D.W. Griffith, he in fact played a more significant role in shaping the structure of the Hollywood system. For his great contributions to the business, DeMille has been named “the founder of Hollywood,” “the showman of showmen” as well as “the world’s greatest director.” Additionally, the lifetime achievement award from the Hollywood Foreign Press (Golden Globes) is named after him. The film school at Chapman University in Orange, California is also named in honor of him.

Gaining first recognition for his efforts in the most famous early feature film The Squaw Man (1914), the 1958 recipient of Golden Laurel’s Top Producer/Director continued to develop a status as one of the finest filmmakers in the industry with such films as The Cheat (1915), and reached the zenith of his fame in the late 1910s and early 1920s with films like Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), The Ten Commandments (1923), and The King of Kings (1927).

Before his death, DeMille proved he remained a great director by nabbing an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for his spectacular work in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). His last amazing behind-the camera-efforts is the remarkable remake of The Ten Commandments (1956), which received an Oscar nod for Best Picture.

Outside the limelight, one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), who earned $500/week for The Warrens of Virginia (1915), $500/week for The Captive (1915) and $10,000 for Sunset Blvd. (1950), married actress-wife Constance Adams from 1902 until his death in 1959. The pair shared one biological daughter and three adopted children. Though DeMille and his wife were together for almost sixty years, he had long-term affairs with companions Julia Faye and Jeanie Macpherson. He sporadically entertained the two women simultaneously on his yacht or his ranch. Knowing the affairs, his wife chose to live with their children in the main house.


C.B

Childhood and Family:

On August 12, 1881, Cecil Blount DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, but raised in Saint John, New Brunswick. His father, Henry Churchill de Mille, was a lay minister in the Episcopal Church and taught at Columbia University. He also worked as a play reader with New York’s Madison Square Theater, wrote several plays, and even enjoyed a very victorious partnership with David Belasco. After his death in 1893, Cecil’s mother, Matilda Beatrice Samuel de Mille, developed the family house into a girl’s school and later built the DeMille Play Company. Cecil had an older brother named William C de Mille.

Cecil B. DeMille, known by family and close friends as C.B, attended Pennsylvania Military College, but dropped out to join the Armed forces at the outburst of the American-Spanish War. Declined for being too young, he then enrolled in American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in order to follow in his brother’s footsteps who had started a fruitful stage career.

While on tour, Cecil met actress Constance Adams and they got married on August 16, 1902. The couple welcomed a daughter named Cecilia DeMille Presley in 1908. Cecil and his wife also had three adopted children, John, Richard and Katherine DeMille.

On January 21, 1959, Cecil passed away because of heart failure and was buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. His wife died a year later, on July 17, 1960.


'The Greatest Show on Earth

Career:

One of the most thriving filmmakers in Hollywood history, Cecil B. DeMille started his career on Broadway with a role in “Hearts Are Trumps” in 1990. A touring actor, he teamed up with the silver haired “wizard of Broadway” David Belasco seven years later on a production of “The returned of Peter Grimm,” while also helping his mother run the DeMille Play Company. Meanwhile, he directed or stage managed numerous shows, as well as wrote or co-wrote plays like a one act cabaret drama, “The Royal Mounted,” which would later become the root of his 1940’s film North West Mounted.

By 1913, DeMille had added the quality of judicious businessman to his credits when he collaborated with burlesque producer Jesse L. Lasky, with whom he formerly penned many one-act operettas, Arthur Friend and glove salesman Samuel Goldfish to form a motion picture firm called Lasky Feature Play Company. Moving to Hollywood, DeMille immediately scored a success with The Squaw Man (1914), the most celebrated early feature film in which he served as co-director and co-producer. The film’s massive victory subsequently established the new company as a force and helped set DeMille’s directorial career on the rise.

The following years, DeMille cemented a reputation for himself as A-list director with such projects as Carmen (1915), The Cheat (1915) and The Golden Change (1916). Also in 1916, the Lasky Feature Play Company merged with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Films Company and Frank Garbutt’s Bosworth, Inc to form the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, and then assumed control of Paramount. He maintained his position as Director General for the company, but he gradually resigned his decision-making duties to focus on making his own films.

His early work for Famous Players was Joan the Woman (1917), which earned critical acclaim, but met with only humble box-office success. He followed it up with such successful and powerful domestic social comedies as Old Wives for New (1918), Don't Change Your Husband (1919), Why Change Your Wife? (1920) and Saturday Night (1922). In this era, DeMille also started to spread out his business welfares by forming California’s first commercial airline named Mercury Aviation Company in 1919. He also sat on the board of the Bank of Italy (later Bank of America) and helped launch the bank’s association with the cinematic industry.

In 1923, DeMille again attracted the attention with his behind-the scene-effort in the highly successful The Ten Commandments, starring Theodore Roberts, Charles de Rochefort and Estelle Taylor. Despite the massive sensation, the film went enormously over budget that led to a tension in relationship between the director and Famous Players-Lasky. As a result, the studio did not renew Demille’s contact, and he finally departed Paramount in 1925 to set up his own studio, Cecil B. DeMille Pictures. He bought the old Inc. Studios to form Cinema Corporation of America and later the company fused with the Keith vaudeville chain, then into Pathe.

Working on his own, DeMille produced such major hits as The Volga Boatman (1926) and King of Kings (1927). However, the company’s lack of other such achievements compelled DeMille to sign a three film deal MGM in 1928. His first picture, Dynamite (1929), was a modest hit, and his next, Madam Satan (1930) and a remake of the highly successful The Squaw Man (1931), proved to be box-office disasters. With the disappointing result, MGM did not renew his contract. To avoid the prospect of being jobless and nearly bankrupt, DeMille and his wife then made a European trip in hope of kindling film productions in The Soviet Union and Great Britain. Unfortunately, the efforts were useless and they returned to the U.S., where DeMille managed to get a one-picture contract to direct and produce The Sign of The Cross (1932) which was jointly produced by his old studio, Paramount. The film was incredible hit, and DeMille stayed with the company for the remainder of his amazing career.

Again with Paramount, DeMille reestablished his status as a bankable filmmaker, making many hits like The Plainsman (1937), The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939, won a Golden Palm from Cannes Film Festival), Northwest Mounted Police (1940), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944), Unconquered (1947) and Samson and Delilah (1949). He also delivered his best work at historical costume epics with the Oscar-nominating for Best Picture, Cleopatra (1934), and The Crusades (1935). Under studio boss Y. Frank Freeman and President Barney Balaban DeMille helped make the company the most advantageous of the studios during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

During his busy scheduled with Paramount, in 1936, DeMille received the offer to host the CBS successful radio show, “Lux Radio Theater,” in which he also served as director. He stayed with the dramatic anthology series until he decided to quit in 1945 due to disagreement with the radio union.

Back to the director’s chair after three years hiatus, DeMille continued to make a name for himself with the drama film The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Starring Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde and Charlton Heston, the charming film with an un-typically contemporary-setting won him an Oscar for Best Picture and a nomination for best director. He also picked up a Golden Globe for Best Director. His directorial career finished with his impressive remake of The Ten Commandments (1956), which was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture.

At his death in 1959, DeMille was in the process of directing /producing a classic film about the making of the Boy Scouts, to star James Stewart. His property papers include a script, and general research material.


Awards:

- Laurel: Golden Laurel, Top Producer/Director, 1958
- Oscar: Best Picture, The Greatest Show on Earth, 1953
- Golden Globe: Best Director, The Greatest Show on Earth, 1953
- Directors Guild of America: Lifetime Achievement, 1953
- Cecil B. DeMille: Lifetime Achievement Award, 1952
- Irving G. Thalberg Memorial: Honorary Award, Distinguished motion picture pioneer for 37 years of brilliant showmanship, 1950
- Cannes Film Festival: Golden Palm, Union Pacific, 1939