The life of Cecil Blount DeMille was no less astounding than the spectacles that became his trademark as a motion picture producer and director. During an impressive career that paralleled the beginning and the golden age of the Hollywood studio system, he shaped a revolutionary and powerful medium of mass entertainment. A particularly flamboyant, if not baroque, manifestation of the Horatio Alger story, DeMille's achievement was characteristically American in ways that harkened back to the nineteenth century and presaged the twentieth. Although his values were basically Victorian, in his personal life and silent film DeMille created a model for conspicuous consumption that profoundly influenced contemporary American mores. As a film maker, he straddled two centuries by developing a highly pictorial visual style that accounted for both his box-office appeal during successive decades and his decline into obscurity soon after his death in l959. While he lived, he was unequaled for the type of film making that consistently broke box-office records and earned him the title "Mr. Hollywood."

DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts on August 12, l88l. In his autobiography he notes without rancor that his father, playwright Henry Churchill deMille, recorded the event in his diary with a simple sentence, whereas three years earlier the birth of his older brother William had elicited a more detailed and joyous entry and an outpouring of letters to relatives (For research assistance, I am grateful to James V. D'Arc and his staff at Brigham Young University, Chris Horak and Paolo Cherchi Usai at George Eastman House, and Ned Comstock at the University of Southern California. I am also indebted to R.J. Smith for software and to Jim D'Arc for helpful suggestions in revising this essay. An earlier version appeared in my Cecil B. DeMille: A Guide to References and Resources (Boston: G K Hall, l985).) (Cecil B. DeMille, The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, edited by Donald Hayne (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, l959), 2-3. DeMille capitalized his surname, a practice not imitated by his brother William or his niece Agnes.) On his father's side, DeMille descended from Dutch immigrants who settled and prospered in American colonies in the Northeast during the seventeenth century. William Edward deMille, his grandfather, was a North Carolina merchant and local politician whose fortunes suffered a severe reversal following the Civil War. As a result, Henry deMille grew up with relatives in the Northeast and attended Columbia College on a grant. Unhappily, he found himself socially ostracized at Columbia by students who scorned him because of his poverty. (Family, Henry deMille Diary, Cecil B. DeMille Archive, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University (hereafter cited as BYU)) Upon graduation in l875, he became a teacher at Lockwood's Academy in Brooklyn and married a colleague, Matilda Beatrice Samuel, who descended from a Jewish family. Cecil never acknowledged his maternal ancestry and stressed instead his paternal and Protestant lineage. He dignified his father with the title "professor" so that years later, studio biographies claimed that Henry deMille had taught at Columbia University rather than at Lockwood's Academy and Columbia Grammar School in Manhattan.

Beatrice deMille exerted a lasting influence upon family fortunes when she persuaded her husband Henry to pursue a career in the theater rather than in the Episcopalian ministry and to preach from the stage instead of the pulpit. After a period of acting in road shows, reading plays for the Madison Square Theater, and writing unsuccessful works, Henry deMille began a successful collaboration with producer David Belasco that resulted in a reformulation of domestic melodrama as "society dramas" for fashionable middle-class audiences in the l880s and 1890s. Belasco acknowledged that deMille was quite shrewd in negotiating advantageous contracts for such plays as The Wife and The Charity Ball, which enjoyed a long run in New York before touring the rest of the country. ("David Belasco," New York Dramatic Mirror, 9 November l895 (hereafter cited as NYDM, followed by the issue date).) In l89l deMille was prosperous enough to purchase an estate at Pompton Lake in New Jersey and to build a three-story house called Pamlico after a steamer that was once part of the family business in the South. Unfortunately, he died quite suddenly of typhoid in l893 at the age of forty. David Belasco went on to fame as a Broadway producer and to challenge the monopolistic grip on the theatrical business of the Syndicate led by Charles Frohman. (See section on theater in my "Melodrama as a Middle-Class Sermon: What's His Name" in The DeMille Legacy, edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai et al. (Pordenone Giornate del Cinema Muto, l99l)).

DeMille was twelve years old when his father died. Two years later his sister Agnes also died. Despite these family tragedies, his indomitable mother carried on by transforming Pamlico into the Henry C. DeMille School for girls. She arranged for William to be educated in Germany and at Columbia University and for Cecil to attend Pennsylvania Military College. The girls school was however not a financial success. DeMille recalled that not a day passed when his mother did not worry about expenses. (Autobiography Files, Mother Character Folder, Box 7, Cecil B. DeMille Archive, BYU.) When the school failed, Beatrice boldly decided upon another venture. She capitalized on the rights to the deMille-Belasco plays and became a successful theatrical agent representing playwrights. Then in l9l3 she sold the DeMille Play Company for a profit to the John W. Rumsey American Play Company to finance DeMille's first film, an adaptation of the Broadway play, The Squaw Man, starring actor Dustin Farnum. (New York Telegraph, l0 April l9l3, in Cecil B. DeMille Scrapbook, Robinson Locke collection, Library and Museum for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, New York (hereafter cited as LMPA).)

DeMille always acknowledged that his mother played the most pivotal role in his life: "She remains the dominant figure, the strongest force, the greatest, the clearest and best experience." He went on to say that "she was a strong character and a great soul, at once a driving power and an inspiration to us all. And when my father died it was she who taught her sons what it was to fight. ("Autobiography, Mother Character Cecil B. DeMille Archive, BYU.) DeMille's famous niece, Agnes deMille, confirms that Beatrice, or "Bebe," was dominating, independent, difficult, hard to please, and very proud of her son. (Agnes deMille, Dance to the Piper (Boston: Little Brown, l952), 4l.) Cecil was indeed her favorite. She left him a mixed legacy of enormous ambition, fierce competitiveness, and an overwhelming desire to be in control-attributes that made possible his success as a film maker and an entrepreneur.

But Beatrice deMille also challenged the patriarchal order by emphasizing woman's rights. A decade before the ratification of the woman’s suffrage amendment, she stated in an interview,

This is the woman's age. I think it has come to stay. Every relation between the sexes has changed, because woman has changed. Hereafter, no woman is going to get married without feeling that she is getting as much as she gives. This may sound . . . crude . . . but it expresses pretty clearly what I mean. . . . This theme--woman's equality--lies very close to my heart. (“Mrs. H.C. DeMille, Champion of the New Dramatist," NYDM, l0 July l9l2.) Not surprisingly, DeMille's personal and professional relationships with women, as well as his representation of them on the screen, were ambiguous. Although he instinctively wished to gain the upper hand, he also admired strong-willed and independent-minded women.

DeMille compiled an excellent record at the Pennsylvania Military College, but he followed in the footsteps of his father and brother by deciding upon a theatrical career and completed his education at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Founded by famed producer Steele MacKaye in l884_85, the Academy was initially housed at the Lyceum Theater where Henry deMille and Belasco later premiered several of their plays. Upon his graduation in l900, DeMille acquired a small part in Charles Frohman's production Hearts Are Trumps, and appeared in performances in New York and on the road. Two years later he married actress Constance Adams. During the next decade they traveled together or separately as members of various troupes that performed in scores of towns and cities in the United States. DeMille's itinerary for the last ten days of September l9l0 included the following stops: Chester, Lancaster, Lebanon, Reading, York, and Hanover in Pennsylvania; Havre de Grace in Maryland; and Lynchburg and Clifton Forge in Virginia. (I am indebted to the late George Pratt for generously sharing with me research about DeMille's theatrical career.)

DeMille’s theatrical ambitions, however, did not focus so much on acting as on play writing and producing. But the decade following his graduation from the American Academy yielded a series of professional disappointments. Collaboration with David Belasco became a bitter disappointment when the producer appropriated his play The Return of Peter Grimm, a production acclaimed for sensational lighting effects, but denied him credit as coauthor. Further, joint writing ventures with William, and scattered efforts at producing plays were unsuccessful. DeMille's mother employed him as manager of her theatrical agency, the DeMille Play Company, but she retained control as president. Unable to pay his bills, he was periodically forced to borrow from William in order to support his wife and daughter, Cecilia.

DeMille's life changed dramatically in l9l3. According to a story that has since become legendary in motion picture history , toward the end of that year DeMille joined in a venture with Jesse L. Lasky, a vaudeville producer with whom he had collaborated on musical shows; Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn), Lasky's brother-in-law and a glove salesman; and Arthur Friend, an attorney. (For a contemporary account, see David Turconi, "From Stage to Screen," in The Path to Hollywood, l9ll-l920, edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai, et al. (Edizioni Biblioteca dell' Imagine, l988), 46-50. DeMille's version of the famous luncheon, if indeed there was one, differs in some detail from those of others. See autobiographical and biographical works of principals listed below.) Pooling resources, they founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company (named after Lasky because he was best-known) to produce feature film adaptations of stage and literary works for middle-class audiences. (Although the subject of early motion picture audiences is still being debated, initially film was an affordable and thus popular form of entertainment for the urban working class and immigrant population. During the nickelodeon and vaudeville years, however, film increasingly became the object of criticism by middle- and upper-class Progressive reforms and focus of legislation in many cities. Within this context, producers like the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company and Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players made feature film adaptations of theatrical, operatic, and literary works to legitimate film going for middle-class patrons. See my “Cecil B. DeMille and the Lasky Company: Legitimating Feature Film as Art,” Film History 4 (1990): 181-94. For discussions of early film audiences see Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship and Silent Cinema (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Tom Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Film Narrative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990); Judith Mayne, Private Novels, Public Films (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Garth S. Jowett, “The First Motion Picture Audiences,” in Film Before Griffith, edited by John Fell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983): 144-52; Robert C. Allen, “Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906-1912; Beyond Nickelodeon,” Cinema Journal 17 (Spring 1979): 2-15; Russell Merritt, “Nickelodeon Theaters 1905-1914; Building an Audience for the Movies,” in The American Film Industry, edited by Tino Balio (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975): 59-82) DeMille approached his brother for a loan of five thousand dollars to throw into the venture, but William refused, dismissing it as dabbling in cheap amusement. Undeterred, Demille pawned the family silver to raise his share of the capital. (DeMille, Autobiography, 70-72; William to Cecil, 3 September l9l3, William deMille Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library, New York (hereafter cited as NYPL) “"The DeMille Family in Motion Pictures," NYDM, 4 August l9l7, and New York Telegraph, l0 April l9l3, in Cecil B. DeMille Scrapbook, Robinson Locke Collection, LMPA; Agreement . . . between the John W. Rumsey Co. . . . Cecil B. DeMille and M. Beatrice DeMille, Cecil B. DeMille Cage File, LMPA.)

The Squaw Man, the company's first release, was budgeted at twenty-five thousand dollars and cost forth-three thousand dollars, but accounts vary. The total cost of the picture as well as significant details about its financing and production remain unclear. For example, DeMille claims that he and co director Oscar Apfel shot two negatives to guard against fire and other losses, but William recalls that the film had to be shot twice because the first print was sabotaged. Accounts also differ about the nature of a projection problem solved by Sigmund Lubin, who repunched the sprocket holes, even though he was a member of the rival Motion Picture Patents Company. (William deMille, Hollywood Saga (New York: E.P. Dutton, l939), 54-55; Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights (New York: Simon & Schuster, l926), 625-26; Charles Higham, Cecil B. DeMille (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, l973), 3l; DeMille, 90-9l. Facts about the financing and production of The Squaw Man will probably never be ascertained. Conflicting versions appear in William deMille, Hollywood Saga; Jesse L. Lasky, I Blow My Own Horn (London: Victor Gallanez, l957); Samuel Goldwyn, Behind the Screen (New York: George H. Doran, l923); Will Irwin, The House That Shadows Built (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co., l928), a biography of Adolph Zukor; The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, and United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth District: Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Petitioner, vs. Cecil B. DeMille Productions, Inc., Respondent. Transcript of the Record, 3 vols. (San Francisco: Parker Printing, l936). Curiously, the contents list DeMille as petitioner and the IRS as respondent, which makes more sense. Robert S. Birchard gives his version but does not cite sources in "Diamond Jubilee for The Squaw Man," American Cinematographer (August l989):34-39.) Fortunately, The Squaw Man opened to good reviews. It launched the film making career of Cecil B. DeMille, and eventually grossed nearly a quarter of a million dollars. (DeMille, 95.) As a monument to early motion picture history, the barn where the picture was shot has been preserved in Los Angeles.

Assuming the title of director-general of Lasky Feature Play Company, DeMille worked at breakneck pace at the Los Angeles studio. (The title "director general" meant, in those early days, that DeMille oversaw every production at the studio, even though he personally directed only a few titles. What fell into the category of producer in later years, these responsibilities encompassed the assigning a director to a film and the general supervision of budgets, shooting schedules, and the final release print.) Lasky made occasional trips to the West coast but ran the business end with Sam Goldfish in New York. Before the first year of production was over in l9l4, DeMille had amassed a staff of five directors, five cameramen (including Alvin Wyckoff, who filmed many of his silent pictures), and eighty players. Contemptuous at first, William became enthusiastic about the possibilities of film production when he saw a print of The Squaw Man. He joined the enterprise and moved to Los Angeles to head the studio's scenario department. Beatrice deMille used her influence to recruit Wilfred Buckland, Belasco's talented set designer, as the studio's art director. Partly as a result of Buckland's talent, DeMille achieved the use of selective and dramatic low-key lighting that, in combination with color tinting and toning, was billed as "Rembrandt" or "Lasky lighting" to achieve product differentiation.(See David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 224-25; Peter Baxter, “On the History and Ideology of Film Lighting,” Screen 16 (Autumn 1975): 96-98; Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 65-73.)

In l9l4 the Lasky Feature Play Company accomplished a coup in its strategy to win an upscale audience when it acquired the rights to ten of David Belasco's plays for one hundred thousand dollars. Ads that exploited Belasco's prestige as a Broadway producer displayed his name more prominently than those of Lasky, Goldfish, or DeMille. (See covers of the fall l9l4 issues of Motion Picture News. See also my "Cecil B. DeMille and the Lasky Company: Legitimating Feature Film as Art," Film History 4 (l990):l8l-97.) Also significant in the company's growth was Lasky's successful negotiation with a new distribution outlet for its feature films, Paramount Pictures, which had been organized on a national basis by W. W. Hodkinson. In l9l5 the Lasky Feature Play Company achieved yet another coup by signing Metropolitan opera soprano Geraldine Farrar to star in a series of films directed by DeMille. Farrar's successful debut in Carmen was the occasion for immense publicity that signified she had become an asset as important to Lasky Feature Play Company as Mary Pickford was to its rival, Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company.

Later that year DeMille scored another impressive hit with the release of The Cheat, a melodrama about an interracial relationship starring Fannie Ward and Sessue Hayakawa, which represented the director's latest achievement in dramatic low-key lighting. According to William, The Cheat became "the talk of the year." And Samuel Goldwyn recalled in his autobiography that The Cheat brought DeMille "to the front" and that it was "a first real `knockout' after a number of moderate successes." Although both these recollections benefited from hindsight, The Cheat did become an internationally acclaimed film that played especially well abroad. In Paris, where wartime conditions delayed its premiere, it ran for ten months on the fashionable Boulevard des Italiens and won for DeMille unquestioned status as a cinematic artist. Among its admirers was film theorist and director Louis Delluc, who wrote about the film in later years. (William deMille, l39; Goldwyn, 82; Homenaje a Cecil B. DeMille, Filmoteca National de Espana, Para la IV Semana Internacional de Cine Religioso en Valladolid (April l959); Louis Delluc, "Les cineastes: Cecil B. DeMille," Cinea 63-64 (July l922): ll; also see my "Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Film: DeMilles The Cheat," in Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, l99l).) With the quality of his films firmly established among critics and film goers, DeMille began to make fewer pictures but at increased budgets that continued to spiral upwards during the l920s. A total of twelve releases in l9l5 dwindled to four in l9l6.

Almost from the beginning, rivalries plagued the Lasky Feature Play Company, and these rivalries intensified dramatically when that company merged with Zukor's Famous Players Film Company in July l9l6. Only a few weeks before the two firms consolidated, Zukor, also under contract to release his features through Paramount Pictures, had outmaneuvered Hodkinson in a power struggle that gave him control of Paramount and which substantially increased his power throughout the now rapidly developing film industry. These mergers resulted in the formation of Paramount Famous Players Lasky Corporation, which name was later simplified to Paramount Pictures, Incorporated.

The correspondence with DeMille at the time of the mergers reveals, Famous Players Film Company did not have a scenario department or a backlog of scripts. Further, its productions had been opening to poor reviews. Critic Julian Johnston commented in Photoplay that "for months this fine studio . . . has sent out ?`"the dullest, most conventional plays." The Lasky Feature Play Company was thus able to enter the partnership, called off more than once during negotiations, on a "fifty-fifty" basis, to use Lasky's expression. For his part, Zukor undoubtedly recognized that DeMille had become one of the most talented directors in the industry and a formidable asset in any partnership. (DeMille to Arthur S. Friend, l3 September l9l6, Box 79, Arthur F. Friend Folder; Lasky to DeMille, l4 September l9l6, Box 79, Jesse Lasky Folder; Lasky to DeMille, 27 June l9l6, Box 79, Jesse Lasky Folder; Mosk Ten Commandments, Executives Adolph Zukor Folder, Box 9, DeMille Archive, BYU; Julian Johnston, "The Shadow Stage," Photoplay (December l9l6):83.)

Upon completion of the mergers, Zukor became president while Lasky and Goldfish quarreled over the vice-presidency. A few months later Goldfish was forced out after a struggle with Zukor. He soon thereafter formed Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, and in 1924 merged with Louis B. Mayer's Metro Pictures Corporation to form Metro Goldwyn Mayer. DeMille, who was busy in Los Angeles, avoided becoming embroiled in the disputes of his colleagues in New York, although he was quite able to stir up his own brand of rivalry, this over how the Los Angeles studio was to be run, a matter that is discussed later. Although trade journals reported in November l9l6 that DeMille was named president of the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company and vice-president of Pallas Pictures, these were nominal positions that further testified to the consolidation of Zukor's monopoly of the industry. These two small film studios became a part of the Famous Players Lasky/Paramount empire. A Month later, Zukor acquired controlling interest in Paramount Pictures Corporation. ("Cecil B. DeMille Heads Morosco Company," NYDM, 4 November l9l6; "Cecil B. DeMille Heads Morosco-Pallas," Moving Picture World, ll November l9l6; "Control of Paramount Acquired by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation," NYDM, l6 December l9l6.) Artcraft, yet another company (which had been formed as a subsidiary to release Mary Pickford pictures) continued to distribute special Paramount titles including DeMille productions.

When Famous Players-Lasky was formed, DeMille signed a five-year contract at a salary of one thousand dollars per week. Significantly, the terms provided that his name would be "prominently displayed upon all motion pictures . . . produced under his personal direction." (Cecil B. DeMille with Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, Cecil B. DeMille Cage File, LMPA.) During the silent era, DeMille was the only director to rival D.W. Griffith, as a box-office attraction. (Benjamin B. Hampton, History of the American Film Industry (New York: Dover Publication, 1970), 218) Unlike Griffith he succeeded in the industry for several decades. Well before his death in l959, DeMille had exemplified what film critics later meant when they adopted the glamorous term auteur. Part of DeMille's deliberate strategy in establishing the cult of the film director was a flamboyant and well-publicized lifestyle. In l9l6 he bought a Spanish colonial, hillside house in Laughlin Park on a winding street that would later be renamed DeMille Drive. For a weekend retreat he acquired several hundred acres and built a ranch called Paradise. He bought a yacht in 1921 and christened it the Seaward. A shrewd entrepreneur as well as film maker, DeMille even managed to infiltrate the Los Angeles social register, which to this day remains closed to most of the film company.

Late in his career DeMille allegedly advised actress Paulette Goddard, "Never go across the alley even to dump garbage unless you are dressed to the teeth." Although the anecdote may be apocryphal, it testifies to the director's shrewdness in creating and exploiting his own persona. Photos of the executives of Famous Players-Lasky published upon the company's merger show Zukor, Lasky, and Goldfish in conventional coat and tie, whereas DeMille, dressed in a white shirt with unbuttoned collar, projects both California informality and a romantic aura. On the set his costume became increasingly colorful and included boots (to support his weak heels), puttees, jodhpurs, an open-throat shirt, a silver whistle, and a Louis XV hat. As his productions became more lavish, he surrounded himself with a retinue including an associate producer, press agents, script girls, a secretary, an assistant director, a microphone boy, and a chair boy. Visitors to his office felt awed by the Gothic windows, fur rugs, armor, cases of mementos, production sketches and paintings, and an enormous carved desk. Actors aspiring to be cast in a DeMille film were subjected to scrutiny under a spotlight that the director would kick on without warning. ("Lasky and Famous Players Combine," NYDM, 8 July l9l6; Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New York: Teachers College Press, l968), 340; Phil Koury, Yes, Mr. DeMille (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, l959), l80; Agnes deMille, 36; Jesse L. Lasky, Jr., Whatever Happened to Hollywood? (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, l973), 26l-62.)

DeMille strongly asserted the preeminence of the director's role in film making. But although his tendency to preeminence may have sorely tested the producers with whom he worked, it also provided a solution to the dilemma of exorbitant salary demands by star actors. Rather than capitulating to such demands, he proposed "all-star" pictures featuring unknown players who would be elevated to stardom. In effect, DeMille's scheme reflected his theatrical background as it meant transferring the concept of the stock company to film making. Although Zukor experimented with DeMille's idea, he did not entirely abandon the star system nor did DeMille, who went on to acquire a reputation as a star maker even though he seldom worked with stars once they achieved a box-office following to rival his own.(Hampton, History, 194-95) Two famous examples are illustrative. Mary Pickford had won such an enormous following at the box office that she wielded considerable leverage during successive contract negotiations with Zukor. But DeMille, after directing Pickford in two films on the understanding that he would be in complete control, advised Zukor to free her to sign a contract with rival First National. And, after discovering Gloria Swanson in a Mack Sennett comedy, he starred her in six of the seven productions scheduled for l9l9-2l, then advised her to pursue her options when she became queen of the Paramount lot.

During the pre-World War I phase of his career in silent pictures, DeMille experimented widely with technique, especially lighting, and with widely varying film genres. He made westerns, comedies, domestic melodramas, historical epics, and war pictures. And after the war he produced a series of sex comedies and melodramas, stories about the lifestyle of the rich geared to the rising expectations of the middle class in a mass-consumer economy. A number of these films contained spectacles in flashback or fantasy sequences that contributed to soaring production costs but delighted audiences. As the "consumption ethic" displaced the Protestant ethic and the mood of the country became somewhat hedonistic, sexual permissiveness increased, especially among the younger generation. (See standard works on the l920s such as Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper & Bros., l93l) and William Leuchtenberg, The Perils of Prosperity, l9l4-l932 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, l958), which have set forth interpretations of the decade, and fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald such as Six Tales of the Jazz Age and Other Stories (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, l960). See also recent works such as Paul A. Carter, Another Part of the Twenties (New York: Columbia University Press, l973), and Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the l920s (New York: Oxford University Press, l977).) Although the so-called revolution in manners and morals began before the war and was at times exaggerated, undoubtedly its symbol was the "new woman." She was at the center of a materialistic society in pursuit of pleasure. William deMille recalled that shortly after the war, "C.B. . . . discovered that the whole country was very much interested in `sex appeal.' . . . He started a new era of stories--smart 'sophisticated comedy dramas." (William deMille, "Great Pictures and the Men Who Made Them," October l935, (a draft of the manuscript that was published as Hollywood Saga), William deMille Papers, NYPL.) DeMille stated in his autobiography, however, that he made Old Wives for New, the first of his sex comedies, only after repeated urging from Lasky, who wired from New York: "You should get away from the spectacle stuff . . . and do modern stories of great human interest." (DeMille, 2l2.) Whatever the impetus, the early Jazz Age cycle of films was among the most innovative and commercially successful of his career.

Straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, DeMille was well qualified to update the Victorian woman as the focus of Jazz Age spectacle and consumerism. Although he never relinquished Victorian sentiments about womanhood, his attitude toward sexuality could occasionally be modern. For example, he dwelt excessively on maternal love but expressed opinions about marriage reminiscent of prewar, Greenwich Village bohemian espousals of free love. While planning a film about the Virgin Mary, he declared, "the love of mother for son and son for mother is perhaps the purest emotion of which our mortal consciousness is capable." Similarly, he stated during an interview, "woman's love that has not much of the maternal is only passion. And I know of no human emotion so entirely untrustworthy, so disappointing, so certain to demonstrate its own mortality."

Concerning a husband's philandering, however, he averred, "It's a matter of small importance, so far as his feeling for his wife is concerned." He claimed that in eighteen years of marriage, he had never spent a Saturday night at home. Supposedly, his wife Constance enjoyed the same privilege but most likely she was not a "new woman." On the other hand, DeMille asserted that sex "is the one thing that one is never free of. If the relations between a man and woman are not right, not harmonious, every other relation of their lives is affected." (Koury, 222; "More about Marriage. As told by Cecil B. DeMille to Adela Rogers St. John," Photoplay l9 (May l92l):25-26; "What Does Marriage Mean? As Told by Cecil B. DeMille to Adela Rogers St. John," Photoplay l9 (December l920):29-30.) Not surprisingly, DeMille's screen heroines were hybrid versions of the "new woman" modern but with Victorian trappings.

DeMille's ambivalence toward the female sex surfaced in both his personal and professional relationships with women. Concerning Constance, he simply declared in his autobiography that he was incapable of discussing her and resorted to quoting his niece, Agnes. (DeMille, 5l, l20-2l.) Constance, who was eight years older than her famous husband, and allegedly ended their sexual relationship when she learned after Cecilia's birth that she had become barren. (Autobiography, Constance Adams DeMille Folder, Box 7, Cecil B. DeMille Archive, BYU; Higham 35, 47.) Three more children, two sons and a daughter, were later adopted. DeMille struck up liaisons with his scenarist, Jeanie Macpherson, and actress Julia Faye, among other women. Not content with a devoted spouse and several mistresses, he surrounded himself with a contingent of professional women that included his scenarist Macpherson, his editor Anne Bauchens, a corps of secretaries (notably Gladys Rosson), and a team of women researchers. Interestingly, these women never married, remained fiercely loyal to "the Chief," and spent day and night working at the studio or at the mansion. DeMille's close professional association with women, both "modern" and commendable on its face, was compromised by his apparent demanding the entire devotion of his female associates almost as if he looked upon them as a kind of harem. (Koury, 35-39.)

Controversy exists whether DeMille's post-World War I sex comedies and melodramas, produced in response to a shift in the cultural climate, represented an artistic decline. During the l9l0s and l920s, DeMille had achieved an impressive reputation as a film maker. Critic Peter Milne gave the following assessment in a work about film directing in 1922: "DeMille early secured . . . superior results to those achieved by the general run of directors in the early days." Also in that year, Motion Picture News announced the names of industry pioneers for election to its Hall of Fame and included but two directors, Griffith and DeMille. Tamar Lane claimed in l923, on the other hand, that DeMille was "the hokum merchant par excellence" who gave "if nothing else, a very enjoyable evening's entertainment." (Peter Milne, Motion Picture Directing (New York: Falk Publishing, l922), 48; Tamar Lane, What's Wrong with the Movies? (Los Angeles: Waverly, l923), 65; "The Motion Picture News Hall of Fame," MPN, 30 December l922.) In his evocative work about the silent era, film historian Kevin Brownlow stresses a point of view articulated by DeMille's niece, Agnes that after the disappointing failure of The Whispering Chorus at the box office in 1918, DeMille decided to lower his standards and cater to the masses. According to Brownlow, DeMille the artist thereby embarked upon his own ruin. (Kevin Brownlow, The Parades Gone By (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, l968), 206-90.)

The evidence does not altogether support Brownlow's speculation about DeMille's career. With respect to his attitude toward mass audiences, for example, DeMille evinced the type of cultural stewardship that characterized the ambivalence of Progressive reformers regarding immigrant and working class peoples. As he stated in l9l8, "The very fact that we are reaching so many people makes it necessary for us to go slowly in our experiments towards more artistic pictures." (Clipping from Theatre Magazine (January l9l8) in Cecil B. DeMille Scrapbook, Robinson Locke Collection, LMPA.) During World War I, DeMille made films vilifying Germans and even switched the ending of The Little American so that America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, would embrace a Frenchman. So much for artistic integrity. (Conversation with James Card, 27 February l983.) On the other hand, Brownlow's characterization of The Whispering Chorus as an artistic film is also debatable. Although its photography and editing were exceptional, the film was marred by tiresome moralizing that represented a regression to the prewar era. In contrast, DeMille's next picture, Old Wives for New, was not only au courant but witty and justifiably trendsetting. Similarly, William deMille's titles for Why Change Your Wife were didactic but very amusing. Indeed, the cycle of postwar sex comedies and melodramas included some of the director's more notable efforts. DeMille's moral point of view in these films was less conventional than that of Erich von Stroheim's in Blind Husbands and Foolish Wives. Certainly, his touch was less heavy-handed and was said to have influenced Ernst Lubitsch. See my Virgins, Vamps, and Flappers: The American Silent Movie Heroine (Montreal, Eden Press, l979), l32-53.) But films made after this early cycle, such as Manslaughter and Adam's Rib, deservedly earned the label "hokum." Still, the rest of DeMille's silent films cannot be consigned to the junk heap, for they include The Volga Boatman, a representation of the Bolshevik revolution, and the renowned King of Kings.

As a businessman, DeMille had remarkable entrepreneurial instincts and a compulsion to dominate that led him into several ventures. During the post-World War I period, for example, he became interested in aviation. Always contemptuous of cowardice on the set, he was determined to conquer his own bouts with vertigo and joined the air force as a pilot. Although his patriotic objective to fight in the war was unrealized, DeMille enjoyed flying and realized its economic potential. With a group of associates he founded the Mercury Aviation Company and became president and chairman of the board. The airline provided passenger service to California cities between San Diego and San Francisco, engaged in stunt flying to attract publicity, and branched out into the export business. But DeMille, unable to give sufficient time to both the airline and film making, opted for the latter, undoubtedly much to the relief of Zukor and Lasky. In 1921 the Mercury Aviation Company and the Mercury Export Corporation were disbanded.(DeMille, l93-203.)

During the l920s DeMille became as engrossed in complicated deals to finance his film productions as in film making itself. When his contract with Famous Players-Lasky expired in 1920, DeMille received attractive offers from both United Artists and First National. Since his loyalties lay with Famous Players-Lasky, he renegotiated his contract but bargained for a greater share of the profits by pointing out that only two of his thirty-seven films had been financial failures. In order to deal with Famous Players-Lasky in a more independent capacity, DeMille had formed Cecil B. DeMille Productions (DeMille Productions) in l9l6 a partnership with his wife Constance; his attorney, Neil McCarthy; and a relative, Ella King, to deal with Famous Players-Lasky in a more independent capacity. Even after the departure of Sam Goldfish and Arthur Friend, two of the four founders of Lasky Feature Play Company, intra staff feuding continued unabated. DeMille skirmished constantly with executives about his escalating budgets and control over productions. According to his new contract (in 1920), DeMille Productions negotiated with Famous Players-Lasky for film making costs, studio facilities, and actors against 70 percent of the net profits to be realized from distribution and rentals. In 1922 DeMille Productions branched out from moving pictures to business deals involving real estate, oil, securities, and other properties. But problems between DeMille Productions and Famous Players-Lasky regarding budget, accounting procedures, and division of profits required renegotiating the contract once again in November 1923. (United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Petitioner, vs. Cecil B. DeMille Productions, Inc., Respondent, 89-95.)

During the filming of The Ten Commandments in l923, acrimonious relations intensified between DeMille Productions and the New York office because of money. DeMille had spent lavishly on this, his first Biblical epic, which had the additional expense of being filmed partly in color, and costs would eventually mount to 1.5 million dollars. Zukor, concerned about the fiscal health of Famous Players-Lasky, was not appeased by the director's offer to waive financial benefits guaranteed by his contract for the picture, nor by the visit of attorney Neil McCarthy to mollify him. Then DeMille made a power play that equaled in audacity the best efforts of his New York collaborators. Early recognizing the importance of banks in financing motion pictures, he had acquired administrative positions in several banking corporations, not the least of which was A.P. Giannini's Bank of Italy, which ultimately became the Bank of America. With a pledge of a million dollars by Giannini, DeMille offered to buy full rights to the movie. The ploy was successful; Zukor backed down from his ultimatum and allowed the director to continue exceeding the budget. But the seeds of a major rupture had been sown.

Despite the enormous success of The Ten Commandments, Zukor sought to renegotiate DeMille's contract and to impose restrictions on his productions and staff size. (DeMille, 264-65; Lasky, l69.) At the beginning of 1922, DeMille finally broke with Famous Players-Lasky, purchased the Ince Studio in Culver City for DeMille Productions, and contracted to release his films through Jeremiah Milbank's Producers Distributing Corporation. (James D'Arc points out that this studio later became Selznick International Pictures, then Path), and is now Culver City Studios, the site of independent film operations.) The Cinema Corporation of America was organized as a holding company that owned the stock of both Producer's Distributing Corporation and a new subsidiary, Cecil B. DeMille Pictures Corporation, controlled jointly by Milbank and DeMille. (The name Cecil B. DeMille pictures was revived in 1933 when DeMille, now at Paramount studio, sought greater profit participation in his films. At the time DeMille’s attorney, Neil S. McCarthy, prepared the necessary legal documents to organize DeMille Pictures in Nevada, but this entity was not fully operational until 1937. It continued operation until 1952. See series XI of this register.) DeMille Productions then contracted with Cinema for the services of DeMille as director in exchange for production costs. Later that year, Producer's Distributing Corporation merged with the Keith Albee-Orpheum circuit of theaters. Unfortunately, DeMille again found himself in a large corporation in which his control over film making was challenged. (United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 96-97; DeMille, 266-67.)

DeMille claimed in retrospect that Cinema failed to advance promptly the funds needed for production and to acquire the necessary theater chains for distribution. But his position in the corporation was undoubtedly undermined by the fact that his features--those directed by himself as well as those under his supervision at DeMille Productions--were earning modest, if any, profits. Further, DeMille's two million dollar expenditure for The King of Kings created a crisis that threatened bankruptcy and led to the merger of Producer's Distributing Corporation, the Keith Albee-Orpheum chain, and Pathế in l927. DeMille was particularly unhappy about this move, since, in his opinion, Pathế had always stood for cheap pictures as opposed to his own high-budget, quality features. But even the enormous success of The King of Kings did not result in solvency. Consequently, Film Booking Office under Joseph P. Kennedy and Keith Albee-Orpheum, renamed Radio-Keith-Orpheum, was consolidated by the Radio Corporation of America in 1928. Pathế passed under the control of RKO, but Cinema was kept in existence for the purpose of distributing The King of Kings. DeMille, seeing little future for himself in the new organization, signed a contract with MGM and moved out of the DeMille Studios. (United States Circuit Court of Appeals, 97-l0l; DeMille, 285-90; Hampton, 3l9-20; Higham, l70-72.)

DeMille made three pictures for MGM: Dynamite, his first sound film; Madam Satan, a musical version of Why Change Your Wife; and his third version of The Squaw Man. Although he made the transition to sound without difficulty, in essence he recycled his silent films during the early Depression period and only Dynamite made a profit. Not surprisingly, Louis B. Mayer did not renew his contract with MGM upon its expiration in 1931. Further, DeMille's attempt to establish a production company called the Directors Guild with Frank Borzage, Lewis Milestone, and King Vidor came to naught.

Curiously, DeMille and his wife then embarked upon a lengthy and expensive trip to Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, although they were then in the midst of a financial and( professional crisis. When they returned, DeMille Productions had sustained further losses in addition to those incurred earlier as a result of the introduction of sound. On the verge of bankruptcy, DeMille was forced to borrow on his life insurance, negotiate additional loans, and mortgage his house and properties in Laughlin Park. As a final blow, he learned that the Internal Revenue Service had charged DeMille Productions with delinquency and was faced with an assessment of nearly 1.7 million dollars in back taxes. Although the tax case was eventually resolved in his favor, it required six years of litigation.

By the time DeMille decided upon The Sign of the Cross as his next picture, the industry regarded him as box-office poison. According to DeMille:

I went around to all the companies. . . . Nobody would listen--I was through. I was dead. . . . Nobody said, "Yes, Mr. DeMille, come on in." For the years that you had (done big things)--nothing. . . . You were completely dirt. Finally I went around to Mary Pickford and bought The Sign of the Cross from her, myself. (Autobiography, Personal Childhood Folder, Box 7, Cecil B. DeMille Archive, BYU.)

But like a phoenix, DeMille emerged triumphant. With Jesse Lasky and Ben Schulberg preparing the way, he returned to Famous Players-Lasky. Zukor placed him under severe budget constraints, however, and stipulated that he finance 50 percent of The Sign of the Cross himself.

Unfortunately, Lasky and Schulberg were soon maneuvered out of the organization in a power struggle that left even Zukor in a precarious position. But the The Sign of the Cross became a commercial success upon its general release and was the first of numerous historical spectacles that continued to be the director's trademark in the sound period. DeMille not only recouped his reputation as a successful box-office director but finally achieved what had been eluding him for years. During the rest of his motion picture career he was granted increasing and fairly extensive control over his productions. (DeMille, 335.)

Both in his personal and professional life, DeMille obsessively insisted upon dominance and control of his personal and professional relationships. Agnes deMille, who has written perceptively about her famous uncle, attributed this characteristic to sibling rivalry. (Agnes deMille, "Goodnight, C.B.," Esquire 6l (January l964):l24-25.) In the early days, Cecil's theatrical career had ended in failure while William had become a successful playwright in the footsteps of their celebrated father. Cecil was thirty-two years old when he left for California to film The Squaw Man and was painfully aware of his lack of achievement. As he glibly observed, "I was at an age when most men have found their groove in life, even if the groove is a `rut.'"(DeMille, 72.) Significantly, the roles of the two brothers became reversed. Cecil became a legendary producer and director, whereas William's modest film career came to an end in the l930s when he became plagued by ill health and financial problems. Now it was William's turn to borrow money from his brother, who had become increasingly inaccessible as secretaries guarded access to him. (William deMille to Cecil DeMille, 2 February l935, Personal, Box D, Cecil B. DeMille Archive, BYU.) In later years the brothers seldom saw each other. DeMille also held himself aloof from other members of his family and from his staff, who always referred to him as "Mister” or "Boss." Agnes deMille recalled that even the director's adopted sons, John and Richard, also called him "Mister." She observed that he was reluctant to associate with those whom he could not dominate and so eschewed the risks of close friendship. (Agnes DeMille, "Goodnight, C.B.," l26.)

Since he prized his independence, DeMille’s ongoing battles with the front office about control over his productions were predictable. As a director he was incapable of delegating authority, left nothing to chance, and personally supervised details such as the selection of thousands of extras and animals for his spectacles. Unwilling to assign a script to a writer who would work alone in retreat, he stationed his scenarists in a nearby bungalow and regularly harangued them. (Koury, 233.) Studio technicians were amazed by his grasp of mechanics. Still, he seemed to be] aware of his deficiencies as an administrator, especially his tendency to get bogged down in details. (DeMille, l20.) And he drove himself relentlessly. He slept little, and worked hard even when in ill health. For example, although he had emergency prostate surgery when shooting Union Pacific, in 1939, he continued to direct the film while flat on his back on a stretcher. Then in 1954 he suffered a major heart attack during the filming of The Ten Commandments remake on location in Egypt. DeMille was advised to cease production immediately and recuperate, but he refused to break the momentum and finished the grueling four month location work as well as the remainder of the picture in Hollywood. For DeMille, motion picture directing was an assertion of will that gave his very existence its meaning. As Agnes deMille has observed:

As a director of mass movement, this century has not seen his like. I have worked with many . . . and I know. . . . The power to dominate the mob came out of his guts, the very core of his nervous life. When I began to direct I recognized what went into these spectacular displays of endurance. . . . The strength for this domination came from an undeviating belief in what he was doing and from his enormous pride of position. (Agnes deMille, Dance to the Piper, 35-36.)

Charles Higham contends in his biography of DeMille that as a result of facing bankruptcy and failure during the Depression, the director ceased to have any artistic aspirations and thereafter catered to the masses. Consequently, the sound films represent "a very serious decline" in comparison with the silent pictures. (Higham, 22l; Charles Higham, interview with James V. D’Arc, l8 July l977, Cecil B. DeMille Archive, BYU. Higham had access to the papers in the DeMille Archive, then housed at the DeMille Estate, while writing his biography. Unfortunately, parts of the biography are questionable because of such writing quirks as unattributed quotes.) In effect, Higham restates Brownlow's thesis but establishes the moment of artistic decline later in DeMille's career. Critics confronted with intriguing inconsistencies and contradictions in the director's work persist in elevating him to the status of an artist and then tracing his fall. Undoubtedly, DeMille suffered a traumatic experience when faced with the possible demise of his film making career during the l930s. A man with his ambitions and pretensions could not tolerate failure. As he wrote in his autobiography, "Almost the only time I feel physically weary and without energy, if my health is otherwise good, is when I am . . . not succeeding." (DeMille, 303.)

Precisely because DeMille enjoyed wealth, fame, and power, he was instrumental in attracting the middle class as early film goers, but he also understood that he had to develop as broad an appeal as possible. If anything, he remained faithful to the concept of highly commercial pictures throughout his lengthy career. As for the sound spectacles that became his staple after his return to Paramount, they were the latest and most successful example of his brand of film making. These historical epics were hardly without the usual artistic flourishes that so puzzle critics accustomed to kitsch, nor did they represent a complete and dramatic break with the films of the silent era.

As he approached the end of his career, DeMille became engaged in political activities that embroiled him in bitter feuds both before and during the Red-baiting years of the Cold War. Controversy first arose as an indirect result of his lengthy association with the Lux Radio Theater. Approached by Lever Brothers in the mid-l930s with a lucrative contract to host and direct a weekly radio broadcast, DeMille took advantage of still another mass medium. At the height of its popularity, the radio program reached an audience of forty million with dramatizations of films in distribution. During a visit to the White House, DeMille was informed that President Roosevelt gauged the popularity of his occasional fireside chats by comparing his audience with the Lux program. (DeMille, 347.) If motion pictures had not already made his name a household word, the radio series certainly accomplished that feat and boosted attendance at his films as well. But DeMille's increasing political conservatism led to a painful and costly exit from the program in 1944.

Although he was descended in part from a North Carolina family that had lost its fortune during the Civil War, DeMille became a conservative Republican and thereby contravened Southern Dixiecrat tradition. Possibly, he could have branched out into a political career that would have expressed the conservative and patriotic sentiments of his frontier epics. In 1936 he served as a delegate to the national Republican Party convention but refused the California State Republican Committee's nomination for senator two years later. (DeMille, 352-53; Higham 252, 257.) Given his conservative, if not reactionary, political views, DeMille predictably became embroiled in a controversy involving his membership in the American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA). (Higham, 277; Unidentified article (2l August l929), Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter cited as AMPAS).) Earlier, he had parted company with his cinematographer, Alvin Wyckoff, over the formation of a cameramen's union; and, as president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, he fought the Actors Equity Association of New York in its attempt to unionize the film industry. In 1944 he contested AFRA when it assessed each of its member’s one dollar to pay for a campaign against the so-called right-to-work proposition on the California state ballot. If passed, the measure would have abolished the closed shop in California. Characteristically, DeMille refused to pay the dollar levied by AFRA and was barred from any further radio (and subsequently television) appearances. Although he retaliated by initiating a series of lawsuits against AFRA and the American Federation of Labor, he lost decisions in the lower courts and an appeal to the California State Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Albert Woll and James A. Glenn, "DeMille Loses Again," (American Federationist 52 (January l948):l0-ll; Koury, 296.)

Undeterred, DeMille organized the DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom in 1945 to campaign in favor of right-to-work laws and against communist infiltration. A supporter of the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibited the closed shop and placed labor unions under restrictions, DeMille testified before the House Committee on Education and Labor in 1947 and endorsed President Truman's executive order to establish standards of loyalty for federal employees. (New York Herald Tribune, 23 February l953, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, LMPA; Los Angeles Times, 26 March l947, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, AMPAS.) In 1953 he became the chief consultant to the United States International Motion Picture Service, a State Department agency charged with producing "cold war films." Los Angeles Times, 24 April l953, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, AMPAS.) Further, DeMille also sought to make his political position prevail within the motion picture industry, then seriously divided over the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and the blacklist. While Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the liberal president of the Screen Directors Guild, was abroad, DeMille led an attempt to dismiss Mankiewicz as president and to endorse a loyalty oath. But when Mankiewicz returned to the United States, a lengthy and acrimonious debate among the Guild's membership led to the ouster of the board and defeat for DeMille. (Koury, 300-302.) Still, he was accorded some recognition for his political activities during these years. For example, he received the American Legion's gold medal for Americanism and the Freedom Foundation Award, presented to actor Robert Montgomery, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and himself by Vice-President Nixon. (Motion Picture Herald, 29 September l945, and Los Angeles Times, 24 April l953, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping file, AMPAS; New York Herald Tribune, 23 February l953, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping file, LMPA.)

About this time DeMille became involved in yet another attempt to capitalize on the mass media, an attempt that was again frustrated by his strong advocacy of a political viewpoint. A weekly syndicated newspaper column titled "Cecil B. DeMille Speaking" began to appear in l950 in newspapers across the country. His staff, notably his publicist, Phil A. Koury, produced a column which eventually reached twenty million readers each week. But DeMille was not satisfied with the columns and prevailed upon his writers to publicize his political beliefs. General Features Corporation, the syndicate, objected to the airing of his controversy with AFRA and his endorsement of the Taft-Hartley Act. Inability to resolve these differences led to the cancellation of the series in 1951. DeMille had by then become convinced that he himself was the target of a Red conspiracy. (Motion Picture Herald, 25 November l950, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, AMPAS, Koury 303-06.)

As a film maker, DeMille had long since become accustomed to negative criticism from those he bitterly labeled the "New Yorker crowd." In a lighter moment he is said to have remarked, "Every time I make a picture the critics' estimation of the American public goes down ten degrees"--decidedly a reversal of his artistic reputation in the early silent era. (Koury, l3.) During the post-World War II years DeMille's sensitivity to critical reaction to his pictures manifested itself in political paranoia. After the release of Samson and Delilah in 1949, he assigned a member of his staff to check the political convictions of every critic who wrote a negative review of the film. But research did not validate the existence of a critics' conspiracy and showed instead that communist papers such as Daily People's World and Daily Worker were more positive about the biblical epic than highbrow magazines! When the Catholic Legion of Decency gave his next picture, The Greatest Show on Earth, a "B" rating, one step above "Condemned," for objectionable dialogue and costumes, DeMille compared the influence of the Catholic Church to worldwide communism. (Koury, 287-9l; Los Angeles Examiner, 29 December l950, and Los Angeles Times, 25 January l953, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, AMPAS.)

During his last years DeMille received the accolades due an elder statesman of the motion picture industry. In 1953 he accepted two statuettes at the Academy Awards ceremony, the Irving Thalberg Award "for consistent high quality of production" and an Oscar for The Greatest Show on Earth as best picture. A founder of the Academy, DeMille had not been so honored previously. Also in 1953 the Screen Directors Guild presented him with the first D.W. Griffith Award, which was created to recognize directors for unique and outstanding contributions to the industry. The Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association decided to present an annual Golden Globe named the Cecil B. DeMille Award for "outstanding contributions throughout the world." DeMille was the first recipient. In 1956 the Screen Producers Guild honored DeMille with the Milestone Award for his "historic contribution to the American motion picture industry." In 1959 (the year he died) he was distinguished as the foremost producer-director of the industry in Exhibitors Magazine for the tenth consecutive year. (Los Angeles Times, 28 January l953, and Times of India Publication (undated), Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, AMPAS; Unidentified article (27 January l956), Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, LMPA; "Cecil B. DeMille, 77, Pioneer of Movies, Dead in Hollywood," New York Times, l January l958.) Further, the enormous success of The Ten Commandments, released at a time when the industry was ailing and film attendance was poor, brought him awards and recognition in foreign countries as well.

Characteristically, DeMille did not leave documentation of his place in motion picture history purely to chance. Over the years his staff meticulously prepared and preserved an archive that now fills more than a thousand document cases. In addition to hundreds of scrapbooks filled with clippings, photographs, and pre and postproduction artwork, the massive collection includes scripts, contracts, telegrams, correspondence, production data, and other memorabilia. (I have been unable to locate papers dating back to l9l4-l5 in the DeMille Archive. Since William deMille complains in Hollywood Saga about lack of access to a typist when he arrived to write scripts in l9l4, speculations are in order as to what may have become of such papers, if any existed.) DeMille also built a special vault on his estate to protect nitrate prints of the moving pictures he created. All but a few of the seventy titles survive. In the late l940s he began work on his autobiography. Collaborating with him in this enterprise were Donald Hayne, a confidant, and subsequently Art Arthur, his executive assistant during the filming of The Ten Commandments and a scriptwriter who held office in the Screen Writer's Guild. Arthur tape recorded and transcribed interviews with DeMille and set up enormous research files for the project. The autobiography, which credited Hayne as editor, was published with good reviews a few months after his death. (See James V. D'Arc, "So Let It Be Written: The Creation of Cecil B. DeMille's Autobiography," Literature/Film Quarterly l4 (l986):3-9.)

Cecil B. DeMille died of heart failure on January 21, 1959 at the age of seventy-seven. At his request only a simple service was held and he was privately entombed in the family mausoleum at Hollywood Memorial Park. Not surprisingly, his death made front-page headlines all over the country. Time, in a classic play on words, announced his passing as the end of "DeMillenium." DeMille was survived by his ailing wife Constance, his daughter Cecilia, and three adopted children, John, Katherine, and Richard. Half an estate estimated at four million dollars worth of stocks and properties was bequeathed to Cecilia, while the remaining half was set up in trust funds for his adopted children and grandchildren. He also left seventeen individual bequests totaling forty thousand dollars, the largest to one of his former mistresses, actress Julia Faye. Constance, described as a "loyal, devoted and able helpmate," received no provision because she had controlled a separate source of income for several years. When she died the following year, she left the bulk of her estate, valued at three quarters of a million dollars, to her daughter Cecilia; fifteen hundred dollars each to her three adopted children; and one thousand dollars each to her two maids, cook, and chauffeur. (Los Angeles Mirror, 2l July l960, and Citizen News, 5 June l96l, Cecil B. DeMille Clipping File, AMPAS.)

At the time of his death, DeMille was working on a picture titled On My Honor about Baron Robert Baden-Powell and the Boy Scout movement. Perhaps his death was fortuitous in that a film about scouting and, if handled in the traditional DeMille manner, might have been ignored at the box office by the rebellious youth of the l960s. As a showman DeMille knew well the audience of the small towns he had toured in theatrical companies at the turn of the century. But the basic values articulated in his pictures would be challenged in the l960s by political and counter cultural dissidents, a numerical but vocal and influential minority. The motion picture audience would become fragmented. Already in the l950s, movie going patterns had been affected by the 1949 Paramount decision that forced the studios to divest themselves theater chains, and by the impact of television. "DeMillenium" was indeed at an end, for the studio system and the sociohistoric context in which DeMille had flourished passed into eclipse. Nevertheless, his concept of the blockbuster commercial film, which may be traced back to the silent era, has prevailed among the generation of young directors who produced the moneymakers of the last decades of the twentieth century.

Written by Sumiko Higashi who teaches history and film at the State University of New York College at Brockport. She is the author of Cecil B. DeMille: A Guide to Reference and Resources; Virgins, Vamps, and Flappers; The American Silent Movie Heroine; and articles about women in cinema, film, and history, and DeMille's silent films.