Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil B. DeMille

Author: Cecilia de Mille Presley

Publisher: Running Press Adult

Published: 2014-12-16

Total Pages: 1006

ISBN-13: 0762455373

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Colossal. Stupendous. Epic. These adjectives, used by movie companies to hawk their wares, became clichélong ago. When used to describe the films of one director, they are accurate. More than any filmmaker in the history of the medium, Cecil B. DeMille mastered the art of the spectacle. In the process, he became a filmland founder. One hundred years ago, he made the first feature film ever shot in Hollywood and went on to become the most commercially successful producer-director in history. DeMille told his cinematic tales with painterly, extravagant images. The parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments was only one of these. There were train wrecks (The Greatest Show on Earth); orgies (Manslaughter); battles (The Buccaneer); Ancient Rome (The Sign of the Cross); Ancient Egypt (Cleopatra); and the Holy Land (The Crusades). The best of these images are showcased here, in Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic. This lavish volume opens the King Tut's tomb of cinematic treasures that is the Cecil B. DeMille Archives, presenting storyboard art, concept paintings, and an array of photographic imagery. Historian Mark A. Vieira writes an illuminating text to accompany these scenes. Cecilia de Mille Presley relates her grandfather's thoughts on his various films, and recalls her visits to his sets, including the Egyptian expedition to film The Ten Commandments. Like the director's works, Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic is a panorama of magnificence-celebrating a legendary filmmaker and the remarkable history of Hollywood.


Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

Author: Robert S. Birchard

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2004-06-29

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 0813138299

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A look at the wide-ranging work of the Golden Age genius who made The Ten Commandments and other blockbusters—and helped found the American film industry. Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood is a detailed and definitive chronicle of the director’s screen work that changed the course of film history—and a fascinating look at how movies were actually made in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Drawing extensively on DeMille’s personal archives and other primary sources, Robert S. Birchard offers a revealing portrait of DeMille the filmmaker that goes behind studio gates and beyond DeMille’s legendary persona. In his forty-five-year career DeMille’s box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. He had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories, and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah, DeMille also created Westerns, realistic “chamber dramas,” and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies—while setting the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanding absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians. “Far and away the best film book published so far this year.” —National Board of Review


Empire of Dreams

Empire of Dreams

Author: Scott Eyman

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2013-09-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780743289566

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The authoritative biography of the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille: “if this were a movie, it would get four stars, two thumbs up, and an A” ( The Dallas Morning News ). • Hollywood history: Cecil B. DeMille was among the earliest filmmakers who discovered some of the biggest stars in film, including Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, and later, Charlton Heston. DeMille’s greatest successes came with biblical spectacles, notably The Ten Commandments and King of Kings . When he finally won an Academy Award for best picture with The Greatest Show on Earth, he had been making films for forty years. • A fully realized portrait : DeMille has often been reduced to a caricature: a hack who made empty epic spectacles, a right-winger and McCarthy supporter during the blacklist, and a tyrannical director who abused his actors. Eyman instead presents a balanced account of a remarkably rich life. • An authoritative biography : Scott Eyman is the first biographer to have access to DeMille’s letters and other personal papers for publication. Eyman settles for nothing less than the real man, as he did in his biographies of John Ford and Louis B. Mayer. The result is a unique history of Hollywood’s earliest years and the rediscovery of a major filmmaker.


Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture

Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture

Author: Sumiko Higashi

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1994-12-02

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780520914810

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Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture demonstrates that the director, best remembered for his overblown biblical epics, was one of the most remarkable film pioneers of the Progressive Era. In this innovative work, which integrates cultural history and cultural studies, Sumiko Higashi shows how DeMille artfully inserted cinema into genteel middle-class culture by replicating in his films such spectacles as elaborate parlor games, stage melodramas, department store displays, Orientalist world's fairs, and civic pageantry. The director not only established his signature as a film author by articulating middle-class ideology across class and ethnic lines, but by the 1920's had become a trendsetter, with set and costume designs that influenced the advertising industry to create a consumer culture based on female desire. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped material from the DeMille Archives and other collections, Higashi provides imaginative readings of DeMille's early feature films, viewing them in relation to the dynamics of social change, and she documents the extent to which the emergence of popular culture was linked to the genteel tradition.


Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil B. DeMille

Author: Simon Louvish

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2008-03-04

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9780312377335

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Examines the life and work of the motion picture director best known for his biblical sagas, including "Samson and Delilah" and "The Ten Commandments," discussing his complex personal life and the paradoxes existing within his films.


Written in Stone

Written in Stone

Author: Katherine Orrison

Publisher: Vestal Press

Published: 1999-03-30

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1461734819

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From concept stage through production in Egypt to release of the film: Katherine Orrison carefully recreates the behind-the-scenes story of Cecil B. DeMille's beloved epic.


Cecil B. DeMille and the Golden Calf

Cecil B. DeMille and the Golden Calf

Author: Simon Louvish

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780571229000

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Cecil B DeMille is Hollywood's most enduring legend, remembered, and often reviled, for his grandiose Biblical sagas, such as "Samson and Delilah" and his 1956 version of "The Ten Commandments". This title offers a re-examination of Hollywood's most monumental founder.


The Gold Coast

The Gold Coast

Author: Nelson DeMille

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2001-04-01

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 0759522626

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The Great Gatsby meets The Godfather in this #1 New York Times bestselling story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal. "[Demille is] a true master." - Dan Brown, #1 bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world. Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, The Gold Coast is Nelson DeMille's captivating story laced with sexual passion and suspense.


The DeMilles, an American Family

The DeMilles, an American Family

Author: Anne Edwards

Publisher: First Glance Books

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13:

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A sweeping, multigenerational account of DeMille family history written in a lively, intimate style, this book is copiously illustrated. Also included are personal interviews with celebrities who knew and worked with the DeMilles.