English Wikipedia. They screened four of his films at Christ Church, where DeMille and his family attended church when they lived there. [67], On December 12, 1913, DeMille, his cast, and crew boarded a Southern Pacific train bound for Flagstaff via New Orleans. [269] He often appeared in his coming-attraction trailers and narrated many of his later films,[270] even stepping on screen to introduce The Ten Commandments. Explore Cecil B. DeMille's biography, personal life, family and cause of death. [115] In 1916, DeMille purchased a mansion in Hollywood. [180] His playwright father introduced him to the theater at a young age. Of his seventy films, five revolved around stories of the Bible and the New Testament; however many others, while not direct retellings of Biblical stories, had themes of faith and religious fanaticism in films such as The Crusades and The Road to Yesterday. DeMille's film The Affairs of Anatol came under fire. Name Constance DeMille Cause of death pneumonia: Born April 27, 1874 . Cecil was 77 years old at the time of death. He would speak to the entire set, sometimes enormous with countless numbers of crew members and extras, via a microphone to maintain control of the set. [21] DeMille's sister Agnes was born on April 23, 1891; his mother nearly did not survive the birth. [138] Despite the criticism, it was Paramount's highest-grossing film of the year. Story - The Left's Kavanaugh Hate-Fest (2018) . [204] As DeMille's career progressed, he increasingly relied on artist Dan Sayre Groesbeck's concept, costume, and storyboard art. [note 4], While filming The Captive in 1915, an extra, Bob Fleming, died on set when another extra failed to heed to DeMille's orders to unload all guns for rehearsal. He began his career as a stage actor in 1900. According to Richard Birchard, DeMille's weakened state during production may have led to the film being received as uncharacteristically substandard. William had been a successful playwright, but DeMille was suffering from the failure of his plays The Royal Mounted and The Genius. [189] In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, both DeMille's Samson and Delilah and 1923 version of The Ten Commandments received votes, but did not make the top 100 films. [261][262] He was known for his unique, working wardrobe which included riding boots, riding pants, and soft, open necked shirts. [32] At the age of twenty-one, Cecil B. DeMille married Constance Adams on August 16, 1902, at Adams's father's home in East Orange, New Jersey. [10] At the military college, even though his grades were average, he reportedly excelled in personal conduct. Eddie Murphy is going to the Golden Globes. Additionally, DeMille's epics such as The Crusades influenced Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky. DeMille did not believe a large movie set was the place to discuss minor character or line issues. He suffered from a post-surgery infection from which he nearly did not recover, citing streptomycin as his saving grace. However, Sam Goldwyn realized that if they called it "Rembrandt" lighting, the audience would pay double the price. [168] In the months before his death, DeMille was researching a film biography of Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout Movement. He initially sought out William deMille. [6] He was the second of three children of Henry Churchill de Mille (September 4, 1853 February 10, 1893) and his wife Matilda Beatrice deMille (ne Samuel; January 30, 1853 October 8, 1923), known as Beatrice. Occupations. [32] Publicists wrote that he became an actor in order to learn how direct and produce, but DeMille admitted that he became an actor in order to pay the bills. Film Director. [163], On November 7, 1954, while in Egypt filming the Exodus sequence for The Ten Commandments, DeMille (who was seventy-three) climbed a 107-foot (33m) ladder to the top of the massive Per Rameses set and suffered a serious heart attack. In the silent era, he was renowned for Male and Female (1919), Manslaughter (1922), The Volga Boatman (1926), and The Godless Girl (1928). [160] A unique practice at the time, DeMille offered ten percent of his profit to the crew. Occupations. [123] The Sign of the Cross was the first film to integrate all cinematic techniques. [15], DeMille was a brave and confident child. William deMille reluctantly became a story editor. DeMille served as executive producer but could not improve Quinn's style of direction. However, Birchard acknowledged that Sarris's point was more likely that DeMille's style was behind the development of film as an art form. [177] Cecilia lived in the house for many years until her death in 1984,[178] but the house was auctioned by his granddaughter Cecilia DeMille Presley who also lived there in the late 1980s. He directed 70 feature films, beginning in the silent era . [39] Another unperformed play he wrote was Son of the Winds, a mythological Native American story. The 1956 film was a partial remake of an earlier silent . Pioneering film director. However, one word is especially appropriate. Age. In other "Talk Shop" columns, DeMille explained that "no stone was left unturned to make the picture absolutely true to the life portrayed" and that he had brought in "eighteen big Tiger Tribe Indians . He had completely adapted to the production of sound film despite the film's poor dialogue. [203], DeMille often edited in a manner that favored psychological space rather than physical space through his cuts. Cecil B. DeMille Birthday and Date of Death. Between 1914 and 1956, he made seventy feature films; all but seven were profitable. Early life [ edit ] Born in Orange, New Jersey , [1] DeMille was the daughter of Judge Fredrick Adams, [2] New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, [1] and Ella Adams, his first wife. Cecil B. DeMille's "Ten Commandments" is getting appropriately colossal treatment in honor of its 55th anniversary. Any problems on the set were often fixed by writers in the office rather than on the set. We have estimated Cecil B. DeMille's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. [278] As one of the establishing members of Paramount Pictures and co-founder of Hollywood, DeMille had a role in the development of the film industry. Cecil B. DeMille, of course, is the legendary filmmaker, director of The Ten Commandments, The King of Kings, Cleopatra, Samson & Delilah, The Greatest Show on Earth, and many more excellent and timeless films. Frequent actors and actresses on the show included Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Loretta Young, Don Ameche, and Fred MacMurray. Age at Death: 77. They also learned that other filmmakers were successfully shooting in Los Angeles, even in winter. The selection is made by the HFPA's board of . Famous Players-Lasky donated the films. The longest-living Oscar winner is a recipient of the Golden Globes' prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he was awarded in 1977, and he received the Producers Guild of America's Lifetime . After the film was shown, viewers complained that the shadows and lighting prevented the audience from seeing the actors' full faces, complaining that they would only pay half price. [137] Following his surgery and the success of Union Pacific, in 1940, DeMille first used three-strip Technicolor in North West Mounted Police. As DeMille continued to rely on Groesbeck, the nervous energy of his early films transformed into more steady compositions of his later films. Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille, (1) affectionately known as C.B., was a seminal cofounder of Hollywood and a progenitor of Paramount studio who became a mega-star of . These films represent those which DeMille produced or assisted in directing, credited or uncredited. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. He stated that The Ten Commandments was the final culmination of DeMille's style. DeMille discovered the possibilities of the "bathroom" or "boudoir" in film without being "vulgar" or "cheap". [132], DeMille sued the union for reinstatement but lost. Moreover, DeMille was audited by the Internal Revenue Service due to issues with his production company. . [110] After the release of DeMille's The Godless Girl, silent films in America became obsolete and DeMille was forced to shoot a shoddy final reel with the new sound production technique. imported from Wikimedia project. date of death. In the months prior to his death, DeMille was researching a film biography of Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout Movement. [161] Post-production lasted a year and the film premiered in Salt Lake City. Cecil Blount DeMille (/ s s l d m l /; August 12, 1881 - January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor.Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films.He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. Among his best-known films are The Ten Commandments (1956), Cleopatra (1934), and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Roaring Twenties were the boom years and DeMille took full advantage, opening the Mercury Aviation Company, one of America's first commercial airlines. imported from Wikimedia project. Furthermore, DeMille argued with Zukor over his extravagant and over-budget production costs. Gender. [231] DeMille's distinctive style can be seen through camera and lighting effects as early as The Squaw Man with the use of daydream images; moonlight and sunset on a mountain; and side-lighting through a tent flap. He debuted as an actor on February 21, 1900, in the play Hearts Are Trumps at New York's Garden Theater. (Cecil Blount De Mille o DeMille; Ashfield, 1881 - Hollywood, 1959) Productor y director de cine estadounidense recordado especialmente por sus superproducciones de epopeyas histricas y religiosas. Constance Adams DeMille (April 27, 1873 July 17, 1960) actress and wife of filmmaker Cecil Blount DeMille. [232] In the early age of cinema, DeMille differentiated the Lasky Company from other production companies due to the use of dramatic, low-key lighting they called "Lasky lighting" and marketed as "Rembrandt lighting" to appeal to the public. Despite a cast led by Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, the 1958 film, The Buccaneer was a disappointment. Peters claimed that he encouraged the cast to attend the funeral with him anyway since DeMille would not be able to shoot the film without him. However, Beatrice introduced Lasky to DeMille instead. [171], Cecil B. DeMille suffered a series of heart attacks from June 1958 to January 1959,[168] and died on January 21, 1959, following an attack. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. [31] In 1901, DeMille starred in productions of A Repentance, To Have and to Hold, and Are You a Mason? His family's, DeMille's niece and William deMille's daughter. [129], From June 1, 1936, until January 22, 1945, Cecil B. DeMille hosted and directed Lux Radio Theater, a weekly digest of current feature films. [256] Meanwhile, Sumiko Higashi sees DeMille as "not only a figure who was shaped and influenced by the forces of his era but as a filmmaker who left his own signature on the culture industry. [230] Actor Charlton Heston admitted DeMille was, "terribly unfashionable" and Sidney Lumet called Demille, "the cheap version of D.W. Griffith," adding that DeMille, "[didn't have]an original thought in his head," though Heston added that DeMille was much more than that. [41] The Return of Peter Grimm sparked controversy; however, because Belasco had taken DeMille's unnamed screenplay, changed the characters and named it The Return of Peter Grimm, producing and presenting it as his own work. Despite its quick turnaround, the film was fairly successful. The actor had 10 Globes nominations and five wins, including a special award for his vocal work on . [148] Again, 1952's The Greatest Show on Earth became Paramount's highest-grossing film to that point. [181] Henry was heavily influenced by the work of Charles Kingsley whose ideas trickled down to DeMille. retrieved. When the AFRA expanded to television, DeMille was banned from television appearances. By 1930, DeMille had perfected his film style of mass-interest spectacle films with Western, Roman, or Biblical themes. The first, for radio contributions, is located at 6240 Hollywood Blvd. [108] The King of Kings established DeMille as "master of the grandiose and of biblical sagas". [218][219] DeMille cast some of his performers repeatedly, including: Henry Wilcoxon,[220] Julia Faye, Joseph Schildkraut,[221] Ian Keith,[222] Charles Bickford,[223] Theodore Roberts, Akim Tamiroff[224] and William Boyd. [241] Religion was a theme that DeMille returned to throughout his career. [209][note 13], DeMille was known for autocratic behavior on the set, singling out and berating extras who were not paying attention. AKA Cecil Blount DeMille. He bought the rights to the novel in 1925, but abandoned the project in pre-production. Mature refused to wrestle Jackie the Lion, even though DeMille had just tussled with the lion, proving that he was tame. [145] After working on Reap the Wild Wind, in 1944, he was the master of ceremonies at the massive rally organized by David O. Selznick in the Los Angeles Coliseum in support of the DeweyBricker ticket as well as Governor Earl Warren of California. [10], Cecil B. DeMille's mother, Beatrice, a literary agent and scriptwriter, was the daughter of German Jews. Work period (start) . In that respect, he was better than any of us. [120] After his contract ended at MGM, he left, but no production studios would hire him. William deMille would later convert from theater to Hollywood and would spend the rest of his career as a film director. [73] There were problems; however, with the perforation of the film stock and it was discovered the DeMille had brought a cheap British film perforator which had punched in sixty-five holes per foot instead of the industry-standard of sixty-four. . . This prohibited denying anyone the right to work if they refuse to pay a political assessment, however, the law did not apply retroactively. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. He went before the Paramount board of directors, which was mostly Jewish-American. 27 October 2022. [193], DeMille rarely gave direction to actors; he preferred to "office-direct" where he would work with actors in his office, going over characters and reading through scripts. Compared to other directors, few film scholars have taken the time to academically analyze his films and style. The legendary comedian, 61, has been confirmed to receive one of the night's highest honors, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, given as a way to honor "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment," per the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Mini Bio (1) Julia Faye's career is inextricably linked to director Cecil B. DeMille. [84] Goldwyn was later fired from Famous Players-Lasky due to frequent clashes with Lasky, DeMille, and finally Zukor. He began his career with reserved yet brilliant melodramas; from there, his style developed into marital comedies with outrageously melodramatic plots. [50], DeMille was poor and struggled to find work. "[35] DeMille had more violent sexual preferences and fetishes than his wife. DeMille was credited in small print as "based on an idea by Cecil DeMille". [211] He despised actors who were unwilling to take physical risks, especially when he had first demonstrated that the required stunt would not harm them. [63] The Lasky Company wanted to attract high-class audiences to their films so they began producing films from literary works. On the day of DeMille's death, President McKay sent a telegram to the DeMille family stating that DeMille "merits the welcome, 'well done that good and faithful servant; enter thou into the rest prepared for the just.' . Finally, he would leave the script with artists and allow them to create artistic depictions and renderings of each scene. "[156], Alfred Zukor responding to DeMille's proposal of The Ten Commandments remake, In 1952, DeMille sought approval for a lavish remake of his 1923 silent film The Ten Commandments. Cecil B. DeMille. [106] His first film in the new production company, DeMille Pictures Corporation, was The Road to Yesterday in 1925. The King of Kings (1927) The first real film about Jesus Christ, this one also set up the template by which all others would be measured until 1988. Consequently, he formed the DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom in order to campaign for the right to work. His first three films were Westerns, and he filmed many Westerns throughout his career. DeMille toured with the circus while helping write the script. Though the film was not high-grossing, it was well-received and DeMille was asked to shorten its running time to allow for more showings per day. Friday 12 Aug 1881. This was the first feature-length film made in Hollywood. [215][216][217] He also cast established stars such as Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, Paulette Goddard and Fredric March in multiple pictures. Credits. Married Life. He claimed he abandoned the project in order to complete a different project, but in reality, it was to preserve his reputation and avoid appearing reactionary. [90], During World War I, the Famous Players-Lasky organized a military company underneath the National Guard called the Home Guard made up of film studio employees with DeMille as captain. [46] Life was difficult for DeMille and his wife as traveling actors; however, traveling allowed him to experience part of the United States he had not yet seen. The continued success of his productions led to the founding of Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. [61], The Lasky Play Company sought out William DeMille to join the company, but he rejected the offer because he did not believe there was any promise in a film career. [17] As a child, DeMille created an alter-ego, Champion Driver, a Robin Hood-like character, evidence of his creativity and imagination. Cecil B. DeMille. Cecil Blount DeMille. However, throughout his career, he filmed comedies, periodic and contemporary romances, dramas, fantasies, propaganda, Biblical spectacles, musical comedies, suspense, and war films. DeMille filming the "big Indian raid" of Call of the North. [89] DeMille was maintained as director-general and Goldwyn became chairman of the board. This concerned the executives at Paramount; however, the film turned out to be the studio's highest-grossing film. [91] Although DeMille considered enlisting in World War I, he stayed in the United States and made films. [174] DeMille left his multi-million dollar estate in Los Feliz, Los Angeles in Laughlin Park to his daughter Cecilia because his wife had dementia and was unable to care for an estate. Self - The Real FBI Story (2017) . [248], According to Sam Goldwyn, critics did not like DeMille's films, but the audiences did and "they have the final word". [179][note 12], DeMille believed his first influences to be his parents, Henry and Beatrice DeMille. [307] In the same ceremony, DeMille received a nomination from Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures for The Greatest Show on Earth. After reading the screenplay, Daniel A. Lord warned DeMille that Catholics would find the film too irreverent, while non-Catholics would have considered the film Catholic propaganda. [160] The Exodus scene was filmed on-site in Egypt with the use of four Technicolor-VistaVision camera filming 12,000 people. [128] He supported Herbert Hoover and in 1928 made his largest campaign donation to Hoover. DeMille's return was approved by Zukor under the condition that DeMille not exceed his production budget of $650,000 for The Sign of the Cross. [30] DeMille attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (tuition-free due to his father's service to the Academy). [73] Furthermore, DeMille influenced about half of Spielberg's films, including War of the Worlds. [153] Besides filmmaking and finishing his autobiography, DeMille was involved in other projects. An annual award, the Golden Globe's Cecil B. DeMille Award recognizes lifetime achievement in the film industry. DeMille's mother sent him to Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University) in Chester, Pennsylvania, at age 15. DeMille told the actor that he was "one hundred percent yellow". He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies. Despite his loss, DeMille continued to lobby for the TaftHartley Act, which passed. [207] Costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, who worked with DeMille on The Ten Commandments (1956), said that he was skilled in humiliating people. [138] Audiences liked its highly saturated color, so DeMille made no further black-and-white features. Biography - A Short WikiDirector of the epic 1956 film The Ten Commandments, which featured Charlton Heston as Moses.
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