Cinema: DeMille’s 60th

DeMille’s 60th

(See front cover)

When William Shakespeare was ready to write the story of Cleopatra, he needed nothing more than pen, ink, paper and his own lively genius. Three centuries later George Bernard Shaw required no more equipment for the same task. But when Paramount put Cecil Blount DeMille to work on this well-worn old tale, that old-time director could not even get started without $750,000, a majority of the unemployed actors in Hollywood, ten crates of real grapes by airmail from South America, an $800 history book and a month of conferences aboard his yacht. Last week, after four more months spent in actual production, the result of Director DeMille’s elaborate functionings was placed before the public as Cleopatra.

Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) first arrives in the presence of Julius Caesar (Warren William) rolled up in a Persian rug. Later she puts on her familiar transparent skirt and brassiere, proceeds to seduce her conqueror in short order, accompanies him to Rome. When Caesar is assassinated, Cleopatra scuttles back to Egypt.

Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) is a dog fancier. He arrives in Egypt with two hungry Great Danes which sniff contemptuously around Director DeMille’s lavish furnishings. With Antony, Cleopatra’s technique is less subtle than with Caesar. She inveigles him aboard what the newspaper advertisements of this picture titillatingly refer to as her LOVE BARGE, gives him fancy hors d’oeuvres, wine in silver cups and clamshells full of pearls, served by classic chorus girls emerging from a fishing net as naked as Censor Joseph Breen will allow. During dinner, there is entertainment, with dancers dressed up like leopards and a premiere danseuse performing on the head and shoulders of a bull.

A DeMille picture without a battle scene would be as deficient as one without a bathtub. In Cleopatra, the bath in which Roman senators are shown scraping their elbows with strigils while plotting to kill Caesar is the biggest that has ever appeared in a DeMille picture, but the battle scene fails to set any record. This is because Antony’s officers have deserted him and he has nothing left but a few re-painted chariots and a regiment or two of Egyptians. When these have been hacked, speared and ground to death under an enormous spiked wheel, Antony is left all alone. He stabs himself, lives long enough to quote to Cleopatra Shakespeare’s “I am dying, Egypt, dying!” Cleopatra puts on her best clothes and calls for a basket, out of which she takes an asp.

The asp that bites Claudette Colbert in this DeMille production is a real one. Studio officials expressed surprise when the director deviated so far from realism as to permit the extraction of its poison sac before it struck.

When Cecil DeMille decided to address himself to Cleopatra, the first thing he ordered was a French military survey of Egypt in 16 volumes. That work set the style for the production. When he learned that Romans cooled their banquet wines in snow, he refused to have marble dust, the usual studio equivalent, called for frost scraped from the studio refrigerator pipes. For Cleopatra to nibble, Paramount ordered ten crates of real grapes. When they went bad, after the California grape season, ten more crates were shipped from Argentina.

Cleopatra is fairly faithful to history. But it has one appalling drawback. It lacks the emotion of a religious theme. Most DeMille pictures have to do with such pious subjects as The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932). “A religiouspicture never failed,” says the man who was decorated with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in 1928. With the Bible to inspire him, he is able to conjure up breath-taking scenes of sadism, warfare and mass debauchery on the part of ancients who did not believe in God. Since Cleopatra has nothing to do with Christianity, it lacks most of the emotional impact DeMille usually gets into his pictures. The best substitute for emotion is spectacle but even here De Mille is not up to scratch. Audiences that expect nothing less than a World War from him are likely to be disappointed that the most spectacular shot in Cleopatra is one of the inside of her barge with 500 oar handles moving slowly to the thumping rhythm of a large firegong. Eight thousand extras were supposed to have been hired for the picture, but the biggest crowd scene is a rabble of only a few hundred in the Forum.

A handsome, well-written but misguided expedition into a realm which properly belongs to Shakespeare, Shaw and history, Cleopatra is important for two reasons. One of the most expensive pictures of the year, it will probably clear all expenses. It is the 60th work of the only director in Hollywood who managed to walk the tight rope from silent to sound films without losing his megaphone or his mannerisms.

Cecil Blount DeMille was born in Ashfield, Mass, in 1881. His father was Henry-Churchill DeMille, who collaborated on plays with the late David Belasco. When Henry DeMille died, his widow first turned her home into a girls’ school, sent young Cecil to Pennsylvania Military College. his older brother William to Columbia. Later she founded the DeMille Play Com pany, originally formed to supply the in creasing demand for DeMille-Belasco plays, which did a flourishing agent’s business for 20 years. Young Cecil studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, set out to be an actor. After a few seasons on the stage, he became manager of his mother’s business, met Producer Jesse L. Lasky, collaborated with him on an oper etta called California. Lunching together one day in the summer of 1913, Lasky asked DeMille, “Why don’t you go into motion pictures?” Replied DeMille: “I will if you will.” A friend named Sam Goldfish joined them. The three pooled about $5,000 each.

For a studio they rented a Hollywood stable. Their first picture was The Squaw Man, which DeMille has since made twice. Two years later Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. was a rival to Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film Co. at the top of the industry and Cecil DeMille was about to make his first expensive spectacle, Carmen, with Geraldine Farrar. His most expensive was The King of Kings which cost about $2,000,000. The Ten Commandments made most money ($2,500,000).

His important pictures have contained bathing facilities ranging from a bathtub with gold faucets in Why Change Your Wife to the pool in Cleopatra which covers an acre and is used for background in one short shot. In The Sign of the Cross, Claudette Colbert went swimming in milk. The fabulous DeMille bathtub is a symbol not of cleanliness but of luxury. Everything in a first-rate DeMille picture is on a grand scale. He was the first director to realize that, since seeing is believing, anything is possible in the cinema. In the DeMillennium of the cinema industry before talkies, DeMille seldom made a picture that cost less than $1,000,000 or one that contained a cast of less than 10,000. By widening the dramatic scope of the cinema, talkies have made spectacles, as such, less satisfying. Youngsters who were in diapers when DeMille was at the peak of his power may sit spellbound before Cleopatra but oldsters who remember his great works with mass in motion will probably feel that, by his own standards, he has foisted off on them a “cheater”—the industry’s word for a picture intended to look much more costly than it is.

The DeMille technique is as peculiar as his ideology. He is almost the only director in Hollywood who still uses a megaphone. Bald, ruddy-faced, he wears riding breeches and puttees made especially for directing. On a silver chain he carries his “finder,” a glass similar to the lens of the camera. Visitors are welcome on a DeMille set. He enjoys giving tirades for their benefit. During Cleopatra, he noticed an extra wearing a belt that was historically incorrect. Standing in front of his microphone, he bawled to his secretary: “Take a confidential memo to the production department,” and proceeded to give that department a thoroughgoing tongue-lashing in public. When he found that his British discovery, Henry Wilcoxon, was losing 4 lb. a day carrying his 110 lb. of armor, he made him drink two quarts of milk daily at lunch. DeMille offered his adopted daughter Katherine a part in the picture. She refused. He imported his niece Agnes from England to dance on the bull. Even more frightened of her uncle than of the bull, she walked out.

In his office DeMille has a bearskin rug. Its purpose, he says, is to trip visitors so that he can test their poise. In his mansionesque Paradise Ranch, he has an immense Wurlitzer organ which he cannot play. He collects jade, says, “The greatest luxury I have is the ability to dress in clean clothes complete from the skin out every day.” His favorite pastime is sitting on the bottom of the ocean. To this end his 106-ft. schooner Seaward carries a special 80-lb. helmet and metal shoes. Says DeMille: “It’s a great way to keep in condition. … I always return to the surface completely refreshed. . . .”

To say that Cecil Blount DeMille survived most brilliantly the earthquake of the talkies is not to imply that he is still, as he was in 1924, the cinema’s No. 1 director. Although it is true that most of his confrères inject into their work as little individuality as the day crew of an automobile assembly line, DeMille is not the only one who has a method of his own. Any directory of directors should include Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven, Farewell to Arms), Frank Lloyd (Cavalcade, Berkeley Square). Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front), Ernst Lubitsch who is currently making The Merry Widow. There are at least a dozen or so others whose pictures have, constantly or intermittently, been distinctive if not distinguished, whose names on a marquee are likely to mean more than their actors’.*

No. 1 director for 1934 is Columbia’s Frank Capra (Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night). A chunky Italian with short fingers and round, glossy eyes, he has a fine sense of human comedy, an aptitude for “gags” that dates back to the days when he was “gagman” for Hal Roach’s Our Gang. He has collaborated on all his hits with Writer Robert Riskin, considers that no good actor can become a has-been, asks his cast for advice before making a scene but seldom follows it. His opinion of Clark Gable: “As soon as he walked into the studio I knew he was a comedian. It was written all over his face.”

Howard Hawks is a specialist in action stories with a technical background (The Dawn Patrol, Scarface, The Crowd Roars). Lean, tall, with grey hair and a young face, he inherited a fortune which he lost in silent pictures, gained enough experience to make another. He always works with his writers preparing stories. Patient, diligent, tactful, he calls his actors by their first names. They call him Mr. Hawks. His wife is Norma Shearer’s sister Athole. He plays good golf, drives a green Duesenberg, loses weight every time he makes a picture.

Lowell Sherman’s best picture was Morning Glory but his specialty is sophisticated comedy-drama. Recently he signed a contract with Universal for whom he is now making The Night Life of the Gods. It calls for $5,000 per week if he directs, $7,500 if he also acts. Instead of rehearsing each scene under lights, Sherman rehearses the whole picture for two weeks before shooting. He has a spiky mustache, a bald dome of a head which give him the appearance of a considerate Mephistopheles. He wears linen knickerbockers and short socks. Artistic pretensions he especially despises. When Director John Stahl put up a sign “No Visitors” on his set. Director Sherman had a sign painted for his set: “See the Great Sherman At Work At Last. All Visitors Welcome. One Dollar a Head.”

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s W. S. (“Woody”) Van Dyke (White Shadows in the South Seas, Trader Horn, Eskimo) dislikes being pigeonholed as a “location-director.” Yet such he was until he made The Prizefighter and the Lady last autumn. Since then he has made Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man, both smash hits. He rarely makes more than two “takes” of a scene; many directors make a dozen. He is a reserve captain in the Marine Corps. Most of his friends are military officers. Military maneuvres are his hobby and he maps out his pictures like a general planning a campaign. Parties in his house, which is filled with trophies from Africa, the South Seas and Alaska, are among Hollywood’s most successful. He looks like a rough top-sergeant but speaks politely with clipped military accents. He tries to get Myrna Loy for his pictures and is principally responsible for her stardom.

Moon-faced, round-eyed, George Cukor looks like Producer David Selznick in a convex mirror. Irritated by jokes about the resemblance, he recently reduced 40 lb. in 25 weeks. Pictures full of lavender emotion are his specialty. He made Little Women and A Bill of Divorcement for RKO. He dresses to match in blue ensembles, starched linen trousers in shades of mauve and cerise. An excellent craftsman, temperamental to the point of hysterics, he fumes and fusses for perfection. His next picture will be David Copperfield.

King Vidor says: “I can’t make a picture unless I have a feeling about it.” His slowness in communicating his feelings during story conferences irritates writers and producers. He cannot write dialog or construct a story himself but has a talent for squeezing the last drop of emotion out of any well-written scene. He came to Hollywood with his wife Florence 18 years ago in a rattletrap Ford, stealing gas and tires on the way, bringing with him a camera record of the trip. Since then he has made such silent pictures as The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1927), talkies like Cynara (1932), Hallelujah (1929), The Champ (1931). At present his feelings are concerned with Our Daily Bread.

* Above directors in Hollywood’s economic, if not in its esthetic, scale are producers who hire directors, assign them to pictures, tell them how much to spend and are, to some extent, respon-sible for their work. Three of the most widely publicized producers in Hollywood: MGM’s Irving Thalberg, Twentieth Century’s Darryl Zanuck, Universal’s Carl Laemmle Jr.