Cecil B. Demille

Due to the length of the following, and the fact that the connection to John Wayne is brief, I've posted here in Off Topic Discussions. This is a repost from the McCandles Texas forum at Yahoo (and yes, it seems that "Sheriff" Art got his information from IMDb).

I hope you enjoy it.

Chester

Today (August 12) would have been the 122nd birthday of Cecil B. DeMille.

Cecil B. DeMille and the Duke did work together on one film; more on Reap the Wild Wind (1942) after the article.

Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia: Cecil B. DeMille

To a generation of moviegoers, Cecil B. DeMille was the very image of a Hollywood producer-director. With his theatrical voice and manner, and his penchant for puttees, megaphones, and other such accoutrements, he fit the role to a tee, and perpetuated that image through appearances-as himself in short subjects (like Hollywood Extra Girl), feature films (like Sunset Blvd), his own preview trailers, and on radio's popular weekly series "Lux Radio Theatre," which he hosted from 1936 to 1945.

DeMille was, first and foremost, a showman; he was also a superb storyteller. He was sometimes accused of being simplistic, but that approach suited mass audiences just fine, and in the 1990s his 1956 production of The Ten Commandments still draws a formidable audience for its annual television broadcasts.

He came from a theatrical family; his father, a clergyman, also wrote plays, and his mother had a touring theatrical troupe. When his older brother William enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, he followed suit, learning his trade as an actor, then stage manager, and then playwright (with his brother) under the tutelage of famed impresario David Belasco in the early part of the 20th century. In 1913 he joined Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn) to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. (the foundation of Paramount Pictures) and make a feature-length version of a play, The Squaw Man (1914). The Squaw Man has often been referred to as the first feature-length film and the first film to be made in Hollywood; neither statement is true. DeMille didn't even direct it himself; he collaborated with Oscar Apfel. But the film was indeed a great success, and helped put all three of its creators on their feet in the movie business.

DeMille began blowing his own horn right from the start: he appeared on screen in prologues or curtain-raising sequences of some of his earliest films, establishing himself with audiences. In collaboration with art director Wilfred Buckland and cameraman Alvin Wyckoff, DeMille learned to tell his stories in cinematic terms, some of them quite bold and inventive for their time. Early features like The Warrens of Virginia, The Cheat (both 1915), Maria Rosa (1916), Joan the Woman, The Little American (both 1917), and The Whispering Chorus (1918) are still impressive today.

In 1919 DeMille moved into the realm of social comedy with Don't Change Your Husband and Male and Female. The latter film included a now notorious scene of Gloria Swanson preparing for her bath and discreetly disrobing before the camera, with the help of a servant. The scene caused a sensation, and the canny DeMille followed up with a series of similar pictures, including Why Change Your Wife? (1920), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), and Saturday Night (1922).

Gloria Swanson was one of many actors to benefit from exposure in DeMille films. He was responsible for making opera singer Geraldine Farrar, light comedienne Bebe Daniels, and leading men Wallace Reid and William Boyd first-rank stars, and while DeMille didn't discover Claudette Colbert or Charlton Heston, it was their work in his movies that solidified their stardom.

A series of scandals rocked Hollywood in the early 1920s, and forced the industry to defend itself against accusations of being a modern-day Gomorrah. DeMille responded by making the cautionary melodrama Manslaughter (1922), and then The Ten Commandments (1923), which offered a modern-day morality tale with an elaborate Biblical flashback. He followed it, several years later, with a reverent production of The King of Kings (1927). To a publicly pious DeMille, there was no contradiction in having made saucy sex comedies just a few years earlier.

In the mid-1920s he launched his own production company, for which he supervised a slate of films, and directed The Road to Yesterday (1925, featuring the first of many DeMille train wrecks), The Volga BBoatman (1926), and other "run of the DeMille" pictures. With the coming of sound, he moved to MGM for the grandiose, high-camp Madam Satan (1930) and a surprisingly low-key, effective remake of The Squaw Man (1931). (He had already remade his cornerstone movie in 1918!)

DeMille hit his stride once more when he returned to Paramount, where he would remain for the rest of his career. He drew on prior experience to mix historical drama with sex in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934), as well as the somewhat tamer The Crusades (1935), and ventured into offbeat territory for the chilling vigilante tale This Day and Age (1933) and the endearingly silly romantic adventure yarn Four Frightened People (1934).

For the most part, however, DeMille made nothing but "big" movies from that point on: big Westerns like The Plainsman (1936) and Union Pacific (1939), big costume adventures like The Buccaneer (1938) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942). With advancing age, he took more time on each new project, and his final films Samson and Delilah (1949), the circus saga The Greatest Show on Earth (1952, winner of the Best Picture Oscar), and The Ten Commandments (1956)-were, progressively, the biggest he'd ever tackled. (He produced a lavish remake of The Buccaneer in 1958, but gave his son-in-law Anthony Quinn the opportunity to direct.)

DeMille became a hated figure to many in Hollywood through his heavyhanded wielding of power for political purposes, especially during the McCarthy era, but even his worst enemies admitted that as a showman he was unsurpassed. When he died in 1959 it was truly the end of an epoch in the Hollywood he helped to create. His memoir, "The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille" was published posthumously in 1959. His daughter Katherine DeMille had a minor acting career, starting in her father's films in the 1930s.

TRIVIA FOR DeMille:

One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)

Although married to wife Constance for sixty years, DeMille had long-term affairs with two other women: Jeanie Macpherson and Julia Faye, occasionally entertaining both women simultaneously on his yacht or his ranch. His wife knew of the affairs preferred to live with their children in the main house.

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

REAP THE WILD WIND (1942)

In 1840, there's work on the Florida Keys for honest salvagers (like the Claibornes) and outright pirates like King Cutler, who bribes sailors to cause wrecks. When Capt. Stuart's ship is wrecked, Loxi Claiborne rescues him, falls for him, and travels to Charleston to convince the owners the wreck wasn't his fault; company lawyer Steve Tolliver returns with them to Key West to investigate. Tolliver and Stuart's rivalry for Loxi's hand complicates their swashbuckling adventures in pursuit of Cutler, ending in a trial and a dangerous dive for evidence.

World famous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper has a small role in this film.

THE CAST:

Ray Milland .... Stephen Tolliver
John Wayne .... Capt. Jack Stuart
Paulette Goddard .... Loxi Claiborne
Raymond Massey.... King Cutler
Robert Preston.... Dan Cutler
Lynne Overman .... Capt. Phillip Philpott
Susan Hayward .... Drusilla Alston
Charles Bickford .... Bully Brown, mate of the Tyfib
Walter Hampden .... Cmmdre. Devereaux
Louise Beavers .... Maum Maria
Martha O'Driscoll .... Ivy Devereaux
Elisabeth Risdon .... Mrs. Claiborne
Hedda Hopper .... Aunt Henrietta Beresford

TRIVIA FROM "REAP THE WILD WIND":

For the 1954 theatrical re-release, John Wayne was given top billing in the posters because of his increased star status, and Susan Hayward, who had since 1942 become a major star instead of a supporting player, was misleadingly billed second. Formerly top-billed Ray Milland got third billing in the new posters, while leading lady Paulette Goddard was demoted to fourth billing.

Happy birthday to CB!

I hope you enjoyed the article.

See you along the trail,

Art