70 Fun Facts About Cecil B. DeMille

DeMille was born in a Massachusetts boarding house where his parents were escaping the summer heat of which home city?

New York: his father had brought four private pupils along to Ashfield to tutor in Latin, Greek and mathematics, and the family was back in the city by the start of September.

Which director says the first film he ever saw was DeMille's 1952 circus epic The Greatest Show on Earth?

Steven Spielberg thought his father was taking him to a real circus and was angry to find only a film; its train wreck stayed with him, and as a boy he crashed his own electric trains for a home movie.

Which cult director's 2000 comedy Cecil B. Demented takes its title from a pun on DeMille's name?

John Waters's comedy follows a guerrilla director who kidnaps a Hollywood star and forces her to act in his underground movie; Patricia Hearst, herself once kidnapped, plays a small part.

DeMille's father wrote plays with which Broadway impresario, whose Madame Butterfly became a Puccini opera?

David Belasco later hired the young DeMille to write a play, then staged it in 1911 as his own The Return of Peter Grimm and denied him the author's credit.

DeMille recalled tossing mud balls in the air as a boy for which Wild West show star, a neighbor, to shoot?

Annie Oakley was, by his account, a neighbor of the family in New Jersey; DeMille later put Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok on screen in his 1936 Western The Plainsman.

Before his 1900 Broadway debut, DeMille trained at which school, where his late father had taught?

American Academy of Dramatic Arts took him in 1898, the year he tried to leave a Pennsylvania military college to fight in the Spanish–American War and was turned away as under age.

Which Broadway producer, later lost on the Lusitania, cast DeMille in his 1900 stage debut, Hearts Are Trumps?

Charles Frohman saw him in his drama-school graduation play and gave him a small part; DeMille later wrote that he had become an actor simply in order to eat.

DeMille's first stage hit with producer Jesse Lasky was a 1912 operetta named after which state?

California opened in January 1912; less than two years later the pair's new film company sent DeMille west by train to make his first picture in the real one.

DeMille said which early film, seen on Sixth Avenue, showed him that movies could tell a story?

The Great Train Robbery was a 1903 Western; a decade later DeMille, who had never directed a film, set off across the country to shoot a Western of his own.

DeMille said he and Jesse Lasky sketched their new film company over lunch in 1913, on the back of what?

A restaurant menu at the Claridge Grill, by his account: tired of stage flops, DeMille had talked of going to Mexico to join a revolution until Lasky proposed making films instead.

DeMille's debut, The Squaw Man (1914), is usually given what place in Hollywood history?

Earliest full-length feature shot there, by most accounts: the Western was an instant hit that returned many times its cost and secured the future of DeMille's new company.

Where did DeMille first plan to shoot The Squaw Man before deciding it lacked a Western look?

Flagstaff, Arizona struck him as colorless and dull, so he got back on the train for Los Angeles; the tales of a blizzard or a range war driving him out are legend.

What did DeMille rent to serve as the studio for The Squaw Man?

A barn, or half of one: the cast dressed in the horse stalls, and the building was later moved to the studio's new lot and now houses a film museum.

Squaw Man star Dustin Farnum chose what over a quarter of DeMille's company?

A cash salary: DeMille loved to tell how Farnum took $250 a week over a quarter-interest in the company that grew into Paramount Pictures, though the star's contract also gave him a quarter of the film's profits.

Which actress bought DeMille's longtime Los Feliz estate in 2017 for $24.5 million?

Angelina Jolie paid $24.5 million for a hilltop villa that had cost DeMille just under $28,000; he lived there until his death in 1959.

DeMille said that when exhibitors complained his shadowy lighting hid half the actors' faces, he named it after which painter?

Rembrandt lighting was the name he wired to his partner Sam Goldwyn, who replied in relief that for Rembrandt lighting the exhibitors would pay double.

Which 1915 Sessue Hayakawa film won DeMille acclaim for its shadowy lighting?

The Cheat casts Sessue Hayakawa as a rich merchant who brands a society woman on the shoulder when she tries to buy her way out of their bargain, with much of the screen left in shadow.

What did DeMille call his mountain retreat, a sanctuary where only snakes could be shot?

Paradise was the ranch he bought in 1916, three years into his film career; in 1963 his family turned it over to a foundation that cares for abused children.

DeMille cast his Moses for the 1956 Ten Commandments after seeing the actor's likeness to which artist's Moses?

Michelangelo's marble Moses helped win the actor the part: the statue's beard was sketched onto his picture, and DeMille said that if he was good enough for the sculptor, he was good enough for him.

Which screenwriter was DeMille's exclusive writer for fifteen years and his long-time mistress?

Jeanie MacPherson came to him in 1914 looking for acting work, having already directed a film herself; he hired her as a writer instead, and she scripted some thirty of his pictures.

DeMille's silent-era trademarks included lion attacks, Roman orgies and what domestic fixture?

Bathtubs: shooting Gloria Swanson's bath in Male and Female, he called out 'Prolong it! Relish the smell of the rosewater', yet by his own account his bathroom at home was plain, without an inch of onyx.

DeMille said the subject of his 1923 biblical epic came from a public contest run by which publication?

Los Angeles Times: its 1922 contest asked the public for film ideas, and the prize letter began 'You cannot break the Ten Commandments, they will break you'; one biographer thinks the project was already under way.

What became of DeMille's Egyptian city set for the 1923 Ten Commandments?

Buried under the sand: DeMille joked that future archaeologists might think Egyptians had reached the Pacific, and since 2012 diggers have recovered pieces of his plaster sphinxes.

By DeMille's own estimate, how many people worldwide had seen his 1927 silent The King of Kings?

800 million was the figure he quoted, and he called it a minimum: he believed the film had been playing somewhere in the world without a day's interruption ever since 1927.

DeMille's The King of Kings (1927) holds what distinction at Grauman's Chinese Theatre?

First film to premiere there: Sid Grauman opened his new picture palace with it on May 18, 1927, and in 1941 asked DeMille back to leave his prints in the forecourt cement.

In 1919 DeMille and some partners started which kind of side business in Los Angeles?

A commercial airline: Mercury Aviation flew thousands of passengers and offered scheduled flights before DeMille and his partners sold it after about two years.

Which comedian once lived in the house next door, which DeMille later bought and joined to his own mansion?

Charlie Chaplin had moved on by the time DeMille bought the house; he linked the two with a long breezeway and used the second as his office and screening room.

DeMille made his first three talking pictures, including Madam Satan, under a 1928 deal with which studio?

MGM got Dynamite, then Madam Satan, whose finale is a costume party aboard a lightning-struck zeppelin, and a third Squaw Man; the last two did poorly, and studio and director parted.

On DeMille's first talkie, the noisy camera left its soundproof booth inside a blanket-lined box nicknamed what?

The blimp let the camera move again: sound engineers had shut it in an immobile booth, and DeMille, insisting that movies should move, had it boxed and padded with bed blankets instead.

DeMille's 1932 comeback at Paramount was which epic of ancient Rome?

The Sign of the Cross, his epic of Nero's Rome, was approved on a $650,000 budget, half of it put up by DeMille himself; it was a hit, and he stayed at Paramount for the rest of his career.

Which DeMille film was his first to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?

Cleopatra lost that night to It Happened One Night, the first film to sweep the five top Oscars, and took home a single award, for Victor Milner's cinematography.

Who played the Egyptian queen in DeMille's 1934 epic?

Claudette Colbert dreaded handling the asp, so DeMille walked up with a five-foot king snake; shown the tiny one meant for the scene, she said, 'Oh, that little thing! Give it to me!'

From 1936 to 1945 DeMille hosted which weekly CBS broadcast of film adaptations?

Lux Radio Theatre carried his voice to as many as 40 million listeners: every Monday from June 1936 he opened the hour with 'Greetings from Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen.'

DeMille lost his radio show in 1945 by refusing to pay the American Federation of Radio Artists a levy of how much?

One dollar was a union levy to fight a ballot measure he supported; rather than pay it, he gave up a broadcast that paid him about $100,000 a year.

DeMille lobbied for which 1947 labor law after his union fight?

Taft–Hartley Act: he testified before the committee drafting it, and it stopped unions costing a worker his job over an unpaid political levy, but it was not retroactive, so his own ban from the air stood.

Which 1939 DeMille Western was awarded the Palme d'Or 63 years late, at Cannes in 2002?

Union Pacific was entered for the first Cannes festival, which the outbreak of war cancelled in 1939; in 2002 a jury watched seven of the original entries and picked it over The Wizard of Oz.

DeMille first used three-strip Technicolor in which 1940 film?

North West Mounted Police, with Gary Cooper as a Texas Ranger chasing a fugitive into Canada, was the studio's biggest hit of 1940, and DeMille never made another black-and-white feature.

DeMille planned to film which new Hemingway bestseller in 1940 before handing the project back to Paramount?

For Whom the Bell Tolls was bought for him, reportedly before he had read it; he gave it up, and Sam Wood, once his assistant director, made the 1943 film with Gary Cooper.

DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind (1942) featured which elaborate special-effects creature?

A giant squid, its tentacles made of sponge rubber, attacks two divers in a sunken wreck; one of them dies saving his rival from it, and the effects won an Academy Award.

Which horror star played Guyasuta, chief of the Senecas, in DeMille's frontier epic Unconquered (1947)?

Boris Karloff, the Englishman who had played Frankenstein's monster, was asked by DeMille to study the Seneca language for the part; DeMille's daughter Katherine played the chief's daughter.

Which actress lost a part in DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth by refusing a fire scene in Unconquered?

Paulette Goddard would not stand among the hurled fireballs; DeMille had her taken off the set and did not speak to her for years, and her angling for a part in his circus film got her nowhere.

Which star of a 1949 DeMille epic balked at fighting a lion barehanded, leaving a stuntman to play the scene?

Victor Mature, cast as the strongman hero, recalled calling 'Nice kitty' as DeMille urged him closer; a stuntman finally tackled the lion and was clawed down the arm.

Who played Delilah in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949)?

Hedy Lamarr wore a cape of peacock feathers for the temple scene, made from the molt of the birds DeMille kept on his ranch; he and designer Edith Head long disputed who had gathered them.

DeMille filmed The Greatest Show on Earth partly at the Ringling circus's winter quarters in which Florida city?

Sarasota: Paramount paid the circus some $250,000 for its title and facilities, and DeMille, in his late sixties, travelled with the show before filming began there in 1951.

In DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, which star plays Buttons, a clown who never removes his makeup?

James Stewart sent word that he wanted the part and took a fraction of his usual fee, having dreamed since boyhood of playing a clown; the makeup hides a doctor on the run from the police.

DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth took Best Picture for 1952 over which Western among its fellow nominees?

High Noon went home with four Oscars, including Gary Cooper's for best actor, but not the top one; DeMille, nominated as director for the only time, lost that award to John Ford.

Which Paramount founder, who fell out with DeMille in the 1920s, championed his 1956 Ten Commandments when studio executives wavered?

Adolph Zukor, by DeMille's account, leapt from his seat when one executive suggested giving the film another name and made it clear it could be called nothing but The Ten Commandments.

Which composer, later famous for The Magnificent Seven, scored DeMille's 1956 Ten Commandments?

Elmer Bernstein, then little known, was hired only for the dance music; when DeMille's usual composer Victor Young proved too ill to take the job, the newcomer was handed the whole score.

Which Little Caesar star said DeMille restored his career by casting him as Dathan in The Ten Commandments?

Edward G. Robinson had been shunned by the big studios during the Red Scare; he wrote that DeMille, as fierce an anti-communist as any in the industry, judged him wronged and gave him back his self-respect.

Who played Rameses opposite Moses in DeMille's 1956 The Ten Commandments?

Yul Brynner was starring on Broadway in The King and I when DeMille came backstage at the interval and offered him the part; they shook hands on it, Brynner said, within seven and a half minutes.

DeMille's 1956 The Ten Commandments won its only Academy Award in which category?

Best Visual Effects, then called Special Effects, went to John P. Fulton for sequences such as the Red Sea crossing; the epic's six other nominations, Best Picture among them, all lost.

To part the Red Sea in DeMille's 1956 epic, water was poured into a tank and the film then what?

Run in reverse, 360,000 gallons dumped into an outdoor tank seem to draw apart; water cascading down a huge ramp on the backlot, filmed with the camera on its side, supplied the towering walls of the sea.

ABC, which first showed DeMille's 1956 Ten Commandments in 1973, made it a tradition at which time of year?

Passover/Easter: the film tells the Exodus story that Passover commemorates. ABC first showed it in February 1973, made the Easter season its regular slot, and left it off the schedule in 1999.

What happened to DeMille in 1954 after climbing a 107-foot ladder on his Egyptian set?

He had a serious heart attack at 73 and was told to stay in bed for weeks; fearing what the news would do to the film, he was back at work on the set almost at once.

A crewman on which 1969 mission radioed Houston a pun on Cecil B. DeMille's name from Earth orbit?

Apollo 11: about ninety minutes after launch, as the crew readied a TV transmission, Houston heard that 'Cecil B. deAldrin', a play on Buzz Aldrin's name, was standing by for instructions.

Which son-in-law did DeMille ask to direct the 1958 remake of The Buccaneer, his last production?

Anthony Quinn, then married to DeMille's adopted daughter Katherine, never directed another film; DeMille, too ill to take the chair himself, was credited as supervising the production.

When he died, DeMille was preparing a film about the founder of which movement?

The Boy Scouts: Robert Baden-Powell was to be played by David Niven; DeMille was also planning a film of the Book of Revelation, but he died before either reached the cameras.

In which 1950 film does DeMille play himself, greeting Norma Desmond on the Paramount lot?

Sunset Boulevard films him on a rebuilt set from Samson and Delilah, greeting Gloria Swanson's faded star as 'young fella', his real nickname for her from their silent days together.

Which ceremony presents the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement?

Golden Globe Awards organizers say they wanted an internationally known name for their new honor, turned to DeMille, and handed him the first one in 1952.

DeMille's niece Agnes de Mille became famous in which field?

Dance and choreography: her cowboy ballet Rodeo (1942) won her the job of choreographing Oklahoma! on Broadway, where her dream ballet wove dance into the plot.

The Secretary of the Air Force asked DeMille to help design what for the new academy in Colorado?

Cadet uniforms: DeMille took on the Academy's wardrobe in 1955, best known for its parade dress, and the Air Force thanked him that year with its Exceptional Civilian Service Award.

DeMille sat on the board of the anti-communist committee that launched which Cold War radio station?

Radio Free Europe went on air in 1950 under the National Committee for a Free Europe, which looked like a citizens' group but was quietly funded by the CIA until 1971.

Which director of historical epics did The Guardian call 'a Cecil B DeMille for the digital age' in 2014?

Ridley Scott: the tag came as he released Exodus: Gods and Kings, his version of the Moses story DeMille filmed twice, after Gladiator had set him on a run of classical and medieval epics.

Whose three-month-old son did DeMille cast as the infant Moses in The Ten Commandments?

Charlton Heston: DeMille booked the part as soon as he heard Heston's wife was expecting, and Fraser, born in February 1955, was three months old when he went before the cameras.

DeMille's 1938 adventure The Buccaneer follows which pirate who helped Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans?

Jean Lafitte: the Gulf Coast smuggler and his men fought under Jackson in 1815, and the battlefield now lies inside a national park that carries the pirate's name.

DeMille was entombed in 1959 at which cemetery, whose spare land became Paramount's lot?

Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, now called Hollywood Forever, sold its unused south end to the studios, so DeMille rests next door to the Paramount lot where he made his epics.

DeMille modeled biblical scenes on engravings by which artist, also famous for illustrating Dante's Inferno?

Gustave Doré's illustrated Bible was a reference DeMille kept returning to: he studied its plates for the look of The King of Kings and again when picturing Delilah two decades later.

Which star, best known for westerns, played a sea captain in DeMille's 1942 adventure Reap the Wild Wind?

John Wayne: his Captain Jack Stuart is talked into wrecking his own ship, loses the heroine to Ray Milland and dies saving his rival, in one of Paramount's biggest hits of the year.

DeMille's 1935 epic The Crusades follows which king on his march toward Jerusalem?

Richard the Lionheart, played by Henry Wilcoxon: the real king twice marched to within a few miles of Jerusalem but never took it, settling in 1192 for a truce with Saladin.

Which actress did DeMille marry in 1902 after they met on tour in the play Hearts Are Trumps?

Constance Adams, eight years his senior, stayed married to DeMille for 56 years; they raised one daughter of their own, Cecilia, and adopted three more children.