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He was her mentor, while she was for many years his mistress (a liaison which was tolerated by De Mille's long-suffering wife Constance Adams ). [202] DeMille was unique in using this technique. DeMille asked David Niven to star in the film, but it was never made. Consequently, he formed the DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom in order to campaign for the right to work. DeMille plays himself in the film. "[35] DeMille had more violent sexual preferences and fetishes than his wife. [126] DeMille was a conservative Republican activist, becoming more conservative as he aged. However, Beatrice introduced Lasky to DeMille instead. [208] DeMille had an authoritarian persona on set; he required absolute attention from the cast and crew. [75] Additionally, this was the only film in which DeMille shared director's credit with Oscar C. Constance Adams DeMille (April 27, 1873 July 17, 1960) actress and wife of filmmaker Cecil Blount DeMille. [63] The Lasky Company wanted to attract high-class audiences to their films so they began producing films from literary works. A censorship board called the Hays Code was established. [272] DeMille's reputation had a renaissance in the 2010s. In addition to his use of volatile and abrupt film editing, his lighting and composition were innovative for the time period as filmmakers were primarily concerned with a clear, realistic image. [39] In the summer of 1905 DeMille joined the stock cast at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado. [175][176] His personal will drew a line between Cecilia and his three adopted children, with Cecilia receiving a majority of DeMille's inheritance and estate. However, his earlier films The Captive, Kindling, Carmen, and The Whispering Chorus are more serious films. [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. [102] Many of his films featured scenes in two-color Technicolor. [242] Another common theme in DeMille's films is the reversal of fortune and the portrayal of the rich and the poor, including the war of the classes and man versus society conflicts such as in The Golden Chance and The Cheat. [83], DeMille's most successful film was The Cheat; DeMille's direction in the film was acclaimed. He was so eager to produce the film, that he hadn't yet read the novel. Cecil B. DeMille was born on August 12, 1881 in Ashfield, Massachusetts, U.S., United States, is Film Director, Producer. [86] A large collection of DeMille's materials including scripts, storyboards, and films resides at Brigham Young University in L. Tom Perry Special Collections. Chromium. [129] DeMille also liked Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, finding him charismatic, tenacious, and intelligent and agreeing with Roosevelt's abhorrence of Prohibition. He had a band of assistants who catered to his needs. [16] He gained his love of theater while watching his father and Belasco rehearse their plays. Movie posters. It was commercially very successful. Compared to other directors, few film scholars have taken the time to academically analyze his films and style. Cecil B. DeMille real name: Cecil Blount DeMille Height: 5'11''(in feet & inches) 1.8034(m) 180.34(cm) , Birthdate(Birthday): August 12, 1881 , Age on January 21, 1959 (Death date): 77 Years 5 Months 9 Days Profession: Movies (Director), Also working as: Producer, Director, Editor, Screenwriter, Actor, Father: Henry Churchill de Mille, Mother: Matilda Beatrice deMille, Married: Yes, Children: Yes He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. [118] His first three sound films were produced at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Eventually, he became manager of the agency and later, a junior partner with his mother. [13] She had emigrated from England with her parents in 1871 when she was 18; the newly arrived family settled in Brooklyn, New York, where they maintained a middle-class, English-speaking household. The sets and effects were so realistic that 30 extras needed to be hospitalized due to a scene with fireballs and flaming arrows. Date of Death: January 21, 1959. Adams was 29 years old at the time of their marriage, eight years older than DeMille. Born in 1881, DeMille made his directorial debut with "The Squaw Man" (1914), a story he remade in 1918 and 1931 . The selection is made by the HFPA's board of . [47] In 1907, due to a scandal with one of Beatrice's students, Evelyn Nesbit, the Henry deMille School lost students. Hot! Derided then . people have heard of the Ten Commandments. Mini Bio (1) Julia Faye's career is inextricably linked to director Cecil B. DeMille. [130] While DeMille was host, the show had forty million weekly listeners, gaining DeMille an annual salary of $100,000. This concerned the executives at Paramount; however, the film turned out to be the studio's highest-grossing film. DeMille was variously declared 'the master of the religious epic', 14. the 'arch apostle of spectacle', 15. and the 'King of the epic Biblical spectacular', 16. as also Jeakins admitted that she received quality training from him, but that it was necessary to become a perfectionist on a DeMille set to avoid being fired. Cecil B. DeMille was a master of spectacle. [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. [124] DeMille followed this epic uncharacteristically with two dramas released in 1933 and 1934. Cause of death. [52] The collaboration of DeMille and Lasky produced a successful musical called California which opened in New York in January 1912. [236][189][237], Aside from his Biblical and historical epics which are concerned with how man relates to God, some of DeMille's films contained themes of "neo-naturalism" which portray the conflict between the laws of man and the laws of nature. [165] This film would be his last. [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. [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. DeMille did not believe a large movie set was the place to discuss minor character or line issues. He began his career as a stage actor in 1900. [147], DeMille's next film, Samson and Delilah in 1949, became Paramount's highest-grossing film up to that time. He said he was rather against union leaders such as Walter Reuther and Harry Bridges whom he compared to dictators. With this year's Oscar nominations soon to be announced, we take a look back at his cinematic extraganzas. He also toured with the Standard Opera Company, but there are few records to indicate DeMille's singing ability. He related a story that he maintained his self-control when Gloria Swanson sat on his lap, refusing to touch her. . (He would later cast her in The Ten Commandments.) He called this place, "Paradise", declaring it a wildlife sanctuary; no shooting of animals was allowed besides snakes. (TV Special) Self - Cecil B. DeMille Award Recipient 1963-1964 Password (TV Series) Self - Celebrity Contestant / Self - James Stewart vs . He then appealed to the California Supreme Court and lost again. [93] [note 5] In 1922, the couple adopted Richard deMille. [292], In summer 2019, The Friends of the Pompton Lakes Library hosted a Cecil B DeMille film festival to celebrate DeMille's achievements and connection to Pompton Lakes. Profile of the Hollywood directing legend who became known for his "spectaculars." Learn how DeMille helped establish Hollywood as the movie-making capital o. *mother - Ashkenazi Jewish. Married Life. His tentative plan was to shoot a film in Arizona, but he felt that Arizona did not typify the Western look they were searching for. is the 10th plague, in which the Angel of Death is imagined as a thick . A lasting memory for DeMille was a lunch with his father and actor Edwin Booth. [207] Costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, who worked with DeMille on The Ten Commandments (1956), said that he was skilled in humiliating people. [141], In 1942, DeMille worked with Jeanie MacPherson and brother William deMille in order to produce a film called Queen of Queens which was intended to be about Mary, mother of Jesus. [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. She had a Southern drawl which she never lost. [134] William Keighley was his replacement. View the most popular Cecil B. DeMille pix. [143] [note 9] In 1938, DeMille supervised the compilation of film Land of Liberty to represent the contribution of the American film industry to the 1939 New York World's Fair. DeMille liked to sail and dive; he had several boats throughout his lifetime. Ashfield, Massachusetts, USA. 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. Although less critically revered than D.W. Griffith, DeMille actually played a more important role in . (1950) $10,000. The surgery caused him to suffer from sexual dysfunction for the rest of his life, according to some family members. Furthermore, DeMille argued with Zukor over his extravagant and over-budget production costs. Paramount Pictures 1956 release of the Academy Award-winning, Cecil B. DeMille-directed epic and international success, "The Ten Commandments," is more than likely the most famous religious-drama of all time. He went before the Paramount board of directors, which was mostly Jewish-American. [132], DeMille sued the union for reinstatement but lost. [304] Additionally, in 1958, he received an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Temple University. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts honored DeMille with an Alumni Achievement Award in 1958. However, his final films maintained that DeMille was still respected by his audiences. [120] After his contract ended at MGM, he left, but no production studios would hire him. U.S. State: Massachusetts. 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. Character actor H. B. Warner was fifty, but looked Thirty was cast as Christ, and gives a gently . [84] While on a European vacation in 1921, DeMille contracted rheumatic fever in Paris. [293] Two schools have been named after him: Cecil B. DeMille Middle School, in Long Beach, California, which was closed and demolished in 2010 to make way for a new high school;[294] and Cecil B. DeMille Elementary School in Midway City, California. [248], According to Sam Goldwyn, critics did not like DeMille's films, but the audiences did and "they have the final word". Cleopatra (1934) was his first film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Memoir of DeMille titled 'The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille' was published in 1959. However, the films of his silent era were often thematically different from the films of his sound era. Heart Ailment. Despite a cast led by Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, the 1958 film, The Buccaneer was a disappointment. [55][56] However, changes in the theater rendered DeMille's melodramas obsolete before they were produced, and true theatrical success eluded him. [300] In 1963, the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation donated the "Paradise" ranch to the Hathaway Foundation, which cares for emotionally disturbed and abused children. [107] Aside from The King of Kings, none of DeMille's films away from Paramount were successful. While visually appealing, this made the films appear more old-fashioned. [279][280] DeMille received more than a dozen awards from Christian and Jewish religious and cultural groups, including B'nai B'rith. [62] When William found out that DeMille had begun working in the motion picture industry, he wrote DeMille a letter, disappointed that he was willing "to throw away [his] future" when he was "born and raised in the finest traditions of the theater". Cecil B. DeMille began his career as an actor on the stage in the theatrical company of Charles Frohman in 1900. [185] Similar to Belasco, DeMille's theatre was revolved around entertainment, rather than artistry. Consequently, he focused his efforts on his films' visuals. Adams allowed DeMille to have several long term mistresses during their marriage as an outlet, while maintaining an outward appearance of a faithful marriage. His family's, DeMille's niece and William deMille's daughter. [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. [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. Apfel. [61] Moreover, when he was busy directing other films, he would co-author other Lasky Company scripts as well as create screen adaptations that others directed. [154] In 1954, Secretary of the Air Force Harold E. Talbott asked DeMille for help in designing the cadet uniforms at the newly established United States Air Force Academy. [140][note 8] While concurrently filmmaking, he served in World War II at the age of sixty as his neighborhood air-raid warden. [50], DeMille was poor and struggled to find work. [261][262] He was known for his unique, working wardrobe which included riding boots, riding pants, and soft, open necked shirts. [243] In relation to his own interests and sexual preferences, sadomasochism was a minor theme present in some of his films. DeMille developed a plan with his doctor to allow him to continue directing while reducing his physical stress. Discover the real story, facts, and details of Cecil B. DeMille. He suffered from a post-surgery infection from which he nearly did not recover, citing streptomycin as his saving grace. Perhaps Cecil B. DeMille is more responsible for this than are today's preachers.' 13. Now he wants to make the life of Moses. Heart Ailment. . DeMille had considered making the film himself. The gathering drew 93,000, with short speeches by, While the film was a huge success, DeMille regretted that he could not share the success with his wife who had developed, The estate cycled through several different homeowners for the next 30 years until it was bought by American actress. Radford, Bill. Between 1913 and 1956, he made a total of 70 features, both silent and sound films.He is acknowledged as a founding father of the cinema of the United States and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. Here is all you want to know, and more! [228] DeMille was often criticized for making his spectacles too colorful and for being too occupied with entertaining the audience rather than accessing the artistic and auteur possibilities that film could provide. DeMille claimed that MacPherson was not a good writer, but she received credit in his films because she gave him many ideas for the screenplays. [213] DeMille did receive help in his films, notably from Alvin Wyckoff who shot forty-three of DeMille's films;[80] brother William deMille who would occasionally serve as his screenwriter;[82] and Jeanie Macpherson, who served as DeMille's exclusive screenwriter for fifteen years;[214] and Eddie Salven, DeMille's favorite assistant director. Biography: Cecil B. deMille is one of the most important and successful filmmakers Hollywood has ever produced. [156] DeMille did not have an exact budget proposal for the project,[158] and it promised to be the most costly in U.S. film history. [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. Many of these displays were thought to be staged, however, as an exercise in discipline. Consequently, DeMille's television and radio appearance ban lasted for the remainder of his life, though he was permitted to appear on radio or television to publicize a movie. [5] DeMille was named after his grandmothers Cecelia Wolff and Margarete Blount. DeMille toured with the circus while helping write the script. Friday 12 Aug 1881. He produced or directed about 80 movies - including The Ten Commandments (1956), a movie in the 'epic' genre for which he is probably best known today. [53] Another DeMille-Lasky production that opened in January 1912 was The Antique Girl. He attempted to create a guild of a half a dozen directors with the same creative desires called the Director's Guild. "[266] Producer David O. Selznick wrote: "There has appeared only one Cecil B. DeMille. [36][note 6], Film started becoming more sophisticated and the subsequent films of the Lasky company were criticized for primitive and unrealistic set design. DeMille's mother sent him to Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University) in Chester, Pennsylvania, at age 15. DeMille did not like the first draft of the biography, saying that he thought the person portrayed in the biography was an "SOB"; he said it made him sound too egotistical. Cause of Death. Work period (start) . Birthday: August 12, 1881. To provide for her family, she opened the Henry C. DeMille School for Girls in her home in February 1893. Cecil Blount DeMille was a legendary. A deficiency in chromium may cause high blood sugar; however, deficiency is very rare. Cecil Blount Demille, known as Cecil B. DeMille, was a pioneering film director - in both silent and sound movies.Starting in 1913, he became a dominant force in the Hollywood film industry for 40 years. William deMille would later convert from theater to Hollywood and would spend the rest of his career as a film director. Large gallery of Cecil B. DeMille pics. DeMille himself directed twenty films by 1915. 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. However, DeMille's second remake at MGM in 1931 would be a failure. Cause of Death: Heart failure due to a series of heart attacks. Frequent actors and actresses on the show included Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Loretta Young, Don Ameche, and Fred MacMurray. 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. An example is the Bible which has been remade into many different movies including The Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille and The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. [81] The most successful films during the beginning of the Lasky Company were Brewster's Millions (co-directed by DeMille), Rose of the Rancho, and The Ghost Breaker. Soon after, in 1959, he had another heart attack, which led to his death. [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. The Sign of the Cross (1932) is said to be the first sound film to integrate all aspects of cinematic technique. He directed and produced four films on his own, working with Producers Distributing Corporation because he found front office supervision too restricting. [274] DeMille has influenced the careers of many modern directors. [91] Although DeMille considered enlisting in World War I, he stayed in the United States and made films. DeMille's designs, most notably his design of the distinctive cadet parade uniform, won praise from Air Force and Academy leadership, were ultimately adopted, and are still worn by cadets. [271] DeMille was immortalized in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard when Gloria Swanson spoke the line: "All right, Mr. DeMille. This allowed for the rapid production of his films in the early years of the Lasky Company. Robin Williams, 2005. [44], DeMille performed on stage with actors whom he would later direct in films: Charlotte Walker, Mary Pickford, and Pedro de Cordoba. [37] Despite his reputation for extramarital affairs, DeMille did not like to have affairs with his stars, as he believed it would cause him to lose control as a director. 10 June 2021. [320], Filmography obtained from Fifty Hollywood Directors. Cause of death. Furthermore, DeMille's film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Story. 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. [207], DeMille made stars of unknown actors: Gloria Swanson, Bebe Daniels, Rod La Rocque, William Boyd, Claudette Colbert, and Charlton Heston. Groesbeck's art was circulated on set to give actors and crew members a better understanding of DeMille's vision. Robin Williams won the Cecil B. DeMille Awards in 2005. [225][226] DeMille was credited by actor Edward G. Robinson with saving his career following his eclipse in the Hollywood blacklist. Find out about Cecil B DeMille's family tree, family history, ancestry, ancestors, genealogy, relationships and affairs! December 26, 2014 at 3:45 p.m. As the keeper of her grandfather Cecil B. DeMille's legacy, Cecilia de Mille Presley is used to fielding calls from people who want to ask her questions, recruit . But he put on pictures that made a fortune. View the latest Cecil B. DeMille photos. Beatrice became a play broker and author's agent, influencing DeMille's early life and career. However, he did take a few months to set up a movie theater for the French front. Cecil B. DeMille's final film, another version of The Ten Commandments , is his most widely seen work, thanks to Easter-time television programming, but it is not one of his most respected. Cause of death: Heart failure: Nationality: American: Occupation: Producer, director, editor, screenwriter, actor: Years active: 1913-1959: Spouse(s) Constance Adams (1902-1959) Partner(s) Jeanie MacPherson Julia Faye: Parent(s) Henry Churchill DeMille Beatrice Samuel: Cecil Blount DeMille (August 12, 1881 - January 21, 1959) was an .