Cecil B. DeMille

Born in Ashfield (Massachussetts), on August 12, 1881, Cecil Blount DeMille (few people know where the “B.” comes from) was the son of Henry Churchill DeMille and Matilda Beatrice Samuel, a couple of playwrights. His father died when Cecil was still 12 years old, and his mother survived by founding a school and a theater company. The boy studied at the Pennsylvania Military School, and intended to go to the front lines of the War with Spain for Cuba, but was rejected for not being of legal age.

Disappointed, he decides to follow his brother William to New York, to study acting with him at the Academy of Dramatic Arts. When he finished, and thanks to the help of his parents’ friends from the theater world, he got signed as an actor on Broadway, in titles like “A Repentance” or “Hamlet”. He even entered the prestigious company of Mary Pickford , later a great movie celebrity.

DeMille soon directs his own productions and writes several works (“Son of the Wind”, “The Stampede”, “After Five”) alone or together with his brother William. He also works for a long time as manager of his mother’s company.

In the second decade of the 20th century, the cinema had just been born. Many of DeMille’s friends in the theater world had decided to try their luck investing in the big screen, and DeMille was finally encouraged to follow in his footsteps.

Thus, he founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Company with Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn, which would later join Adolph Zuckor’s Famous Players, giving rise to Paramount, one of the ‘majors’ that survives today. DeMille, highly experienced in narrative and directing actors due to his extensive theatrical career, was destined to shoot the company’s first great successes, after making his debut as director and producer in 1914 with The Fugitive , a western with Dustin Farnum , an actor with some celebrity for then, as a British officer traveling to the American West to retrain as a rancher. In The Call of the North, a guy wanted to avenge his father’s death. Already from these first productions the hallmarks of the filmmaker became clear: a very careful narrative structure, and a prodigious direction of actors. Since then, the public filled the theaters to see his films, and he would not abandon him.

The best actresses of the silent era fought to place themselves at his command, such as Geraldine Farrar – Temptation , Joan of Arc (1917) -, Blanche Sweet – The Girl from the Golden West -, the aforementioned Mary Pickford – The Little American – and about All of his greatest discovery, the great Gloria Swanson , with whom he repeated on numerous occasions with titles such as To Men , Don’t Change Your Husband , The Force of a Love and Mr. Spring. Many years later, in 1950, when Swanson played a disgraced silent film star much like himself in Billy Wilder ‘s masterful Twilight of the Gods , the character was looking forward to shooting again with DeMille, who he appeared briefly playing himself. “Okay, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” said the protagonist between delusions.

Almost all of DeMille’s films with Swanson are morality dramas about marriage that challenged absurd social conventions. Male and Female stands out , an adaptation of a work by JM Barrie , in which he insisted that Swanson film a scene with a real lion behind him. The animal had been taken from a zoo that wanted to get rid of it because of how dangerous it was. “I was very scared,” recalled Gloria Swanson. “Then I went to the premiere of the movie and someone sitting in front of me was saying that the lion was very noticeably not real.”

On August 16, 1902, the director married Constance Adams, an occasional actress, who was by his side for 57 years, despite the fact that her husband had two lovers, Jeannie Macpherson, a silent film interpreter, and Julia Faye , that he always had a role in all his movies. They say that he sometimes took them both on her yacht, and although Constance knew of her existence, she preferred to stay by her side for the sake of her four children. Of all of them, only Cecilia de Mille was a biological daughter, since the other three were later adopted. One of the sisters, Katherine DeMille , married actor Anthony Quinn , despite her parental opposition.

“Give me any two pages of the Bible and I’ll make a movie with them,” said the filmmaker, who turned to big-budget blockbusters with The Ten Commandments (1923) , his first approach to the story of Moses, which already included a spectacular trick to show how the waters of the Red Sea parted. It was such a huge success that a few years later DeMille was encouraged to adapt the evangelical texts in the luxurious King of Kings (1927) . To avoid controversy he chose an actor, HB Warner, who had an unblemished reputation. But then a woman who had had a torrid relationship with the actor appeared, and who decided to blackmail DeMille, threatening to ruin the production. It is believed that the filmmaker agreed to give him a huge sum of money as long as he left the country.

In addition, he signed a contract with such HB Warner and Dorothy Cumming (the Virgin Mary) by which they could not appear in tapes that ruined their biblical image for five years, and prohibited them from engaging in activities that would give an inappropriate image during filming, Like going out to clubs at night. During filming she stopped by to visit David W. Griffith , and DeMille instinctively handed her the megaphone and made her shoot some shots of a group of individuals at the foot of the Cross.

With the advent of sound, DeMille alternated some drama ( Dynamite ) with several westerns ( Buffalo Bill , The Unconquerables or Union Pacific , with which he won the Palme d’Or in Cannes) and adventures ( Canadian Mounted Police , Pirates of the Caribbean Sea , Florida Privateers ). Of course he continued to be very active in the field of period shows. In The Sign of the Cross he reconstructed the time of Nero and his wife Poppea, played by Claudette Colbert , who was also the protagonist of Cleopatra , one of the best versions of the life of the queen of Egypt, and withThe Crusades (1935) got even the Muslim audience to applaud the film for the respect with which it had treated them. Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr were Samson and Delilah in a film that still looks great today.

His circus film The Greatest Show on Earth was the first film Steven Spielberg saw , at the age of 4, and he was so dazzled that he decided to devote himself to directing. That film already had Charlton Heston , whom he turned into Moses in his second approach to the character, The Ten Commandments (1956) , his last work. He was already 75 years old when he filmed it, but DeMille was a demanding man both with himself and with his actors. He suffered a heart attack during filming, but three days later he joined a complicated shoot in which, for example, he brought together 20,000 extras in the scene where the exodus of the people of Israel begins.

The film was so successful – it was one of the most watched films of all time – that even Pope Pius XII received him, and Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill praised his work. But the filming had greatly deteriorated his health, and although he wanted to have shot another blockbuster in a big way, another heart attack ended his life on January 21, 1959, at the age of 77.