BEST KNOWN AS THE DIRECTOR of such spectacular films as The
Ten Commandments and King of Kings, Cecil B. DeMille lived a
life as epic as any of his cinematic masterpieces. As a
child DeMille learned the Bible from his father, a theology
student and playwright who introduced Cecil and his older
brother, William, to the theater. Tutored by impresario
David Belasco, DeMille discovered how audiences responded to
showmanship: sets, lights, costumes, etc. He took this
knowledge with him to Los Angeles in 1913, where he became
one of the movie pioneers, in partnership with Jesse Lasky
and Lasky’s brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn).
Working out of a barn on streets fragrant with orange
blossom and pepper trees, the Lasky company turned out a
string of successful silents, most of them directed by
DeMille, who became one of the biggest names of the silent
era. With films such as The Squaw Man, Brewster’s Millions,
Joan the Woman, and Don’t Change Your Husband, he was the
creative backbone of what would become Paramount Studios. In
1923 he filmed his first version of The Ten Commandments and
later a second biblical epic, King of Kings, both enormous
box-office successes. Although his reputation rests largely
on the biblical epics he made, DeMille’s personal life was
no morality tale. He remained married to his wife,
Constance, for more than fifty years, but for most of the
marriage he had three mistresses simultaneously, all of whom
worked for him. He showed great loyalty to a small group of
actors who knew his style, but he also discovered some major
stars, among them Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, and
later, Charlton Heston.
DeMille was one of the few silent-era directors who made a
completely successful transition to sound. In 1952 he won
the Academy Award for Best Picture with The Greatest Show on
Earth. When he remade The Ten Commandments in 1956, it was
an even bigger hit than the silent version. He could act,
too: in Billy Wilder’s classic film Sunset Boulevard,
DeMille memorably played himself. In the 1930s and 1940s
DeMille became a household name thanks to the Lux Radio
Theater, which he hosted. But after falling out with a
union, he gave up the program, and his politics shifted to
the right as he championed loyalty oaths and Sen. Joseph
McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunts.
As Scott Eyman brilliantly demonstrates in this superbly
researched biography, which draws on a massive cache of
DeMille family papers not available to previous biographers,
DeMille was much more than his clichéd image. A gifted
director who worked in many genres; a devoted family man and
loyal friend with a highly unconventional personal life; a
pioneering filmmaker: DeMille comes alive in these pages, a
legend whose spectacular career defined an era.
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