Beatrice was intelligent, educated, forthright, and strong-willed. However, one word is especially appropriate. He adapted several of Belasco's screenplays into film. Despite a cast led by Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, the 1958 film, The Buccaneer was a disappointment. Work period (start) 1899; Work period (end) 1959; Country of citizenship: "[265] Said fellow director William Wellman: "Directorially, I think his pictures were the most horrible things I've ever seen in my life. Cecil Blount DeMille. Cecil B. DeMille began his career as an actor on the stage in the theatrical company of Charles Frohman in 1900. He is from USA. [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. Cecil B. DeMille didn't make the kind of movies that wind up in French film festivals. In the silent era, he was renowned for Male and Female (1919), Manslaughter (1922), The Volga Boatman (1926), and The Godless Girl (1928). After the death of William deMille, DeMille revealed to Richard DeMille that William was his father and he had been born to William and a mistress. (Born, August 13, 1881 - died January 21, 1959) Cecil Blount DeMille's career plowed relentlessly forward living and dying again and again in waves - on the crests and in the troughs of the "American Dream.". DeMille lent Roosevelt a car for his campaign for the 1932 United States presidential election and voted for him. [215][216][217] He also cast established stars such as Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, Paulette Goddard and Fredric March in multiple pictures. [101], After five years and thirty hit films, DeMille became the American film industry's most successful director. [49] DeMille had a daughter, Cecilia, on November 5, 1908, who would be his only biological child. However, the idea failed due to lack of funding and commitment. [107] Aside from The King of Kings, none of DeMille's films away from Paramount were successful. (TV Special) Self - Cecil B. DeMille Award Recipient 1963-1964 Password (TV Series) Self - Celebrity Contestant / Self - James Stewart vs . [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. [153] Besides filmmaking and finishing his autobiography, DeMille was involved in other projects. [204] As DeMille's career progressed, he increasingly relied on artist Dan Sayre Groesbeck's concept, costume, and storyboard art. In his address, he compares the exodus of the Israelites under Moses's direction to that of the Mormon . [225][226] DeMille was credited by actor Edward G. Robinson with saving his career following his eclipse in the Hollywood blacklist. Perhaps Cecil B. DeMille is more responsible for this than are today's preachers.' 13. [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. Cecil DeMille's famous niece was named for her. (He would later cast her in The Ten Commandments.) This allowed for the rapid production of his films in the early years of the Lasky Company. [72] DeMille's next project was to aid Oscar Apfel and directing Brewster's Millions, which was wildly successful. Although he is one of the most commercially successful film directors of all time, Cecil B. DeMille has for a long time been considered at best a director of . DeMille had adopted him to avoid revealing the affairs to William's wife. . Cecil B DeMille Bio Details. [304] Additionally, in 1958, he received an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from Temple University. He had completely adapted to the production of sound film despite the film's poor dialogue. An annual award, the Golden Globe's Cecil B. DeMille Award recognizes lifetime achievement in the film industry. [320], Filmography obtained from Fifty Hollywood Directors. Early Life During the French New Wave, critics began to categorize certain filmmakers as auteurs such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Raoul Walsh. 72 pictures of Cecil B. DeMille. [166] [note 11], Due to his frequent heart attacks, DeMille asked his son-in-law, actor Anthony Quinn, to direct a remake of his 1938 film The Buccaneer. [78] In December 1914, Constance Adams brought home John DeMille, a fifteen-month-old, whom the couple legally adopted three years later. This was, according to DeMille, the lowest point of his career. DeMille used clips from his own films in Land of Liberty. [231] Cecil B. DeMille has influenced the work of several well-known directors. [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. [203], DeMille often edited in a manner that favored psychological space rather than physical space through his cuts. Immediate Family: Biological son of Gus Gonzales and Ada Piper. Date of birth. LOS ANGELES -- Cecilia de Mille Harper, daughter of pioneer film-director Cecil B. de Mille and one of the first child movie actresses, has died after a long battle with . Cecil Blount DeMille (August 12, 1881 - January 21, 1959) was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. 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. Cecil B. DeMille was a master of spectacle. Right here at FameChain. With his editor, Anne Bauchens, DeMille used editing techniques to allow the visual images to bring the plot to climax rather than dialogue. [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. 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 . In that respect, he was better than any of us. Any problems on the set were often fixed by writers in the office rather than on the set. Many of these displays were thought to be staged, however, as an exercise in discipline. He received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director for his circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Drama. [124] DeMille followed this epic uncharacteristically with two dramas released in 1933 and 1934. DeMille would stick to his large-budget spectaculars for the rest of his career. Still, the members unanimously approved it. He directed 70 feature films, beginning in the silent era . [139] DeMille was anti-communist and abandoned a project in 1940 to film Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls due to its communist themes despite the fact he had already paid $100,000 for the rights to the novel. Its interracial love story made it commercially successful and it first publicized Hollywood as the home of the U.S. film industry. DeMille also produced and directed plays. 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 . [68] He continued to Los Angeles. [273], As a filmmaker, DeMille was the aesthetic inspiration of many directors and films due to his early influence during the crucial development of the film industry. [271] DeMille was immortalized in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard when Gloria Swanson spoke the line: "All right, Mr. DeMille. The actor had 10 Globes nominations and five wins, including a special award for his vocal work on . [130] From 1936 to 1945, he produced, hosted, and directed all shows with the occasional exception of a guest director. He had a band of assistants who catered to his needs. The Warrens of Virginia (1915) $500 /week. Cemetery Name: Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He called this place, "Paradise", declaring it a wildlife sanctuary; no shooting of animals was allowed besides snakes. [58], Desiring a change of scene, Cecil B. DeMille, Jesse Lasky, Sam Goldfish (later Samuel Goldwyn), and a group of East Coast businessmen created the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in 1913 over which DeMille became director-general. [244] Another minor characteristic of DeMille's films include train crashes which can be found in several of his films. Cecil Blount DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, while his parents were vacationing there, and grew up in Washington, North Carolina. Eventually, the Guard was enlarged to a battalion and recruited soldiers from other film studios. [91] Although DeMille considered enlisting in World War I, he stayed in the United States and made films. [44], DeMille performed on stage with actors whom he would later direct in films: Charlotte Walker, Mary Pickford, and Pedro de Cordoba. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. Cecil B. DeMille American film director (1881-1959) . The first, for radio contributions, is located at 6240 Hollywood Blvd. Birthday: August 12, 1881. Date of death: 21 Jan 1959. Martin Scorsese recalled that DeMille had the skill to maintain control of not only the lead actors in a frame but the many extras in the frame as well. DeMille told the actor that he was "one hundred percent yellow". [205], Composer Elmer Bernstein described DeMille as "sparing no effort" when filmmaking. [191] Plot and dialogue were not a strong point of DeMille's films. DeMille did not believe a large movie set was the place to discuss minor character or line issues. DeMille plays himself in the film. Apfel. DeMille filming the "big Indian raid" of Call of the North. [281] However, not everyone received DeMille's religious films favorably. ", "10 Great Films that Influenced Alfred Hitchcock", "The Construction of a Christ-figure within the 1956 and 1923 Versions of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments", "The International Film Magazine, Sight & Sound, All films", "Hollywood Heritage volunteers preserve the Industry's earliest incarnation", "National Register of Historic Places Program", "Cecil B. DeMille Film Festival July 2 & 16", "After 54 years, it's the end for DeMille Middle School", "Vietnamese Language Roundtable showcased effectiveness of dual-language immersion program at DeMille Elementary School", "Apollo 11-Technical Air to Ground Voice Transcription", "Cecilia DeMille Presley Joins National Film Preservation Foundation Board of Directors", "BYU special collections archives houses extensive Cecil B. DeMille memorabilia", "BYU Hears: "Understand the Law of God", DeMille Advises 1957 Graduates", "5th Annual DGA Awards Honoring Outstanding Directorial Achievement for 1952", "5th Annual DGA Awards: Honoring Outstanding Directorial Achievement for 1952", "Jeff Bridges to Receive Cecil B. DeMille Award at 2019 Golden Globes", "Academy Alum Cecil B. DeMille, The Founding Father of Hollywood Filmmaking", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", "Robert Townsend Directing 'Brewster's Millions' Reboot", "The Only Son/Cecil B. Demille [motion picture]", "DVD Extra: The first, and best 'Chicago' (1927)", "Rare 1949 Photographs Show the Making of 'Sunset Boulevard', "Screen: 'The Ten Commandments'; De Mille's Production Opens at Criterion The Cast", Cecil B. DeMille's Early Films' Costs and Grosses by David Pierce, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cecil_B._DeMille&oldid=1141568133, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 18:28. Furthermore, DeMille's film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Story. Few words can describe the monumental Cecil B. DeMille. 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 The Captive (1915) $500 /week. [301][302], Cecil B. DeMille received many awards and honors, especially later in his career. Sunset Blvd. [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. This occurred with Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah. She would die one year later. [73] Furthermore, DeMille influenced about half of Spielberg's films, including War of the Worlds. 1. [296] During the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin refers to himself in one instance as "Cecil B. DeAldrin", as a humorous nod to DeMille. [36] One of DeMille's affairs was with his screenwriter Jeanie MacPherson. Cecil B. DeMille. [41] However, none of these were very successful; William deMille was most successful when he worked alone. [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. [31] In 1901, DeMille starred in productions of A Repentance, To Have and to Hold, and Are You a Mason? It was commercially very successful. [109] Western and frontier American were also themes that DeMille returned to throughout his career. The original story Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is about two teenagers, Romeo and Juliet, who fall in love and their families' feud ends with death of Romeo and Juliet. [275] Scorsese said he had viewed The Ten Commandments forty or fifty times. 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.