Cecil B DeMille Biography

They called him ‘The Man Who Commanded Moses’. For forty of Hollywood's golden years the words ‘Director’ and ‘Cecil B. DeMille’ all meant the same thing. In his trademark leather puttees and jodhpurs he commanded film armies of thousands through his long, astonishing reign as king of Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille's greatest spectacle was his own incredible life.

No maker of the high-tech special effect spectaculars of today hesitates to salute Cecil B. DeMille as the godfather of the art. He was not only the wellspring of the unforgettable special effects that generate huge box office, but of the promotion genius that is the real engine of modern Hollywood.

He was one of the first people to realise that one great special effect, one great battle sequence; one great piece of film to put in a trailer could help to sell an entire film.

C.B. DeMille was the first to turn the director's name into a sales tool, putting his highest on the marquee, outranking both the studio name and the picture's title.

Sin was another sales tool. DeMille believed that you needed to convey the effect of it before you could show the redemptive values of salvation. And so he delighted in showing sin, sex and nudity in the midst of his morality.

DeMille's point of view was, "Not what does it cost, but what is it worth." He was convinced that an actress playing a princess would perform better on a $5,000 saddle than a $200 saddle, and that the audience would see the difference in both saddle and performance. And so his dozens of epics ranging from the flickering ‘Squaw Man’ to the towering ‘Ten Commandments’ spared neither cost nor genius on their way to huge box offices.