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Who Is Cecil B. DeMille?

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Cecil B. DeMille, Classical Hollywood, and Modern American Mass Culture

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Abstract

This chapter explores the ideological powers of mass culture as expressed through DeMille’s late-career politics and films. The chapter takes its title from Ayn Rand’s popular libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged, which famously asks, “Who is John Galt?” DeMille’s early friendship and correspondence with Rand reveals deep contrasts between their ideological goals. Unlike Rand and those who supported ideological censorship through the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, DeMille never countenanced witch-hunts, black-lists, and clearly differentiated his views on “closed shop” regulations (which he opposed) from collective bargaining (which he supported). A brief comparison of DeMille’s film Unconquered to Rand’s The Fountainhead segues to the ways that the director’s public personality shifted as a result of these ideological pressures. Once hailed as an innovative commercial artist, by the 1940s his role as mass culture’s “Mr. Hollywood” politicized his image and caricatured his work with profoundly negative consequences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Anne Conover Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (New York: Anchor Books, 2010), 58–59. For “very inexperienced,” see BYU, Box 315, Folder 5. For Rand’s hiring, in June 1926, see BYU, Box 264, Folder 10.

  2. 2.

    For Rand’s comments see BYU, Box 315, Folder 5. For phone messages see BYU, Box 308, Folder 6; Box 316, Folder 6.

  3. 3.

    For the “story of Ayn Rand” see BYU, Box 390, Folder 6. Rand’s letter to DeMille, September 5, 1946, quoted in Michael S. Berliner, Letters of Ayn Rand (New York: Plume, 1997), not paginated.

  4. 4.

    BYU, Box 418, Folder 3.

  5. 5.

    Screen Guide for Americans (Beverley Hills, CA: The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, 1945), 1, 10, 12.

  6. 6.

    Sarris , The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), 91. See also Eyman, Empire of Dreams, 7, 369, 396, 470.

  7. 7.

    For “arch ogre,” see Koury , Yes Mr. DeMille, 317. For “struggle for freedom,” see BYU, Box 390, Folder 6.

  8. 8.

    The New York Times (October 11, 1947) 11:2.

  9. 9.

    For “might question” see BYU, Box 418, Folder 3. Staiger , Perverse Spectators, 31. For more on the analytical development and contextual limits of film and cultural theory, see the Introduction.

  10. 10.

    Julia L. Foulkes, “Politics and Culture in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Halttunen, Companion, 225.

  11. 11.

    May, The Big Tomorrow, 25, 28, 33. Susman , Culture as History, 80–85. Barton quoted in Denning, The Cultural Front, 43–44.

  12. 12.

    Muscio , Hollywood’s New Deal, 14, 131, 142, 147.

  13. 13.

    Alan Brinkley , “World War II and American Liberalism,” in Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch, eds. The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness During World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 323, 324.

  14. 14.

    May, The Big Tomorrow, 140–141, 156–157; Wall , Inventing the “American Way,” 5, 106, 112–127.

  15. 15.

    Thomas Schatz, “Hollywood: The Triumph of the Studio System,” in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, ed., The Oxford History of World Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 234.

  16. 16.

    Johnston quoted in May, The Big Tomorrow, 176.

  17. 17.

    For the basic contours of prior restraint in the commercial film industry, see Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 4–5, 16; Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), xiii–xiv; Stephen Vaughn, “Morality and Entertainment: The Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code,” Journal of American History, Vol. 77 No. 1, (June, 1990): 39–41. For examples of expressions of “outrage,” see Gerald Gardner, The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934 to 1938 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987), xi–xxii, 205.

  18. 18.

    Sarris , Primal Screen, 108. For the notion of “art for art sake” as a false concern, see Kendrick, The Secret Museum, 149, 171–186.

  19. 19.

    Vaughn, “Morality and Entertainment,” 39–65.

  20. 20.

    Hayne , Autobiography, 298.

  21. 21.

    For DeMille’s suggestions see BYU, Box 241, Folder 20. For Lasky response, see MHL, Adolph Zukor Collection, Folder 4, “Correspondence 1921.”

  22. 22.

    For “worse than stupid,” see BYU, Box 276, Folder 27. For DeMille’s correspondence related to censors and other opponents to The King of Kings, see BYU, Box 263, Folder 13; Box 272, Folder 9; Box 274, Folder 13; Box 284, Folder 2; Box 284, Folder 3.

  23. 23.

    For Hughes , see BYU, Box 506, Folder 16. For other examples of DeMille’s open contempt for the censors in 1934, see BYU, Box 314, Folder 6; Box 315, Folders 3, 4. For DeMille’s defense of Sign to Lord , see BYU, Box 506, Folder 21. For “the so-called crusade,” see BYU, Box 315, Folder 4.

  24. 24.

    For Union Pacific, see BYU, Box 547, Folders 6, 7; Box 353, Folder 14.

  25. 25.

    Garth Jowett , “‘A Significant Medium for the Communication of Ideas:’ The Miracle Decision and the Decline of Motion Picture Censorship, 1952–1968,” in Couvares, ed., Movie Censorship and American Culture, 260. Powdermaker, Hollywood, the Dream Factory, 77.

  26. 26.

    For exchange with Little, see BYU, Box 651, Folder 18. For DeMille’s justification of cinematic sex, see MHL, Hedda Hopper Paper, Folder 549. For “used to feel” and “with those Catholics,” see Koury , Yes Mr. DeMille, 273.

  27. 27.

    Malcolm Boyd, “God and de Mille in Hollywood,” The Christian Century 76 (February 15 1959): 230–231.

  28. 28.

    For “closed loop,” see Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 399. For “expression of that law,” see Hayne , Autobiography, 240, 299. DeMille’s speech to the Screen Producers’ Guild is reproduced in Essoe and Lee, DeMille, 16–17.

  29. 29.

    For romantic notions, see de Mille, Dance to the Piper, 12–13; de Mille, Hollywood Saga, 25–28. St. John provided DeMille the most consistent access to the public’s imagination about his films. See BYU, Box 240, Folder 29; Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 120, 241–242; Louvish , A Life in Art, 170–172. These initial impressions lasted a lifetime, and DeMille’s office was forced to repeatedly issue statements, as in 1937, that the director no longer wore puttees or a sidearm when on the set; see BYU, Box 329, Folder 17; Box 315, Folders 3, 4.

  30. 30.

    BYU, Box 1229, Folder 2. New York Times (July 15, 1918) 9:3.

  31. 31.

    For two examples of his self-promotion through sales conventions, see BYU, Box 241, Folder 5; Box 250, Folder 15.

  32. 32.

    For collaborations and “must recognize,” see BYU, Box 259, Folder 17. For premiere, see BYU, Box 261, Folder 3.

  33. 33.

    For exaggerations about his “collaboration,” see BYU, Box 1, Folder 1; Box 295, Folder 15. Even as late as the 1939, “Peter Grimm” was billed on Lux Radio Theater as a play written “with” Belasco ; BYU, Box 383, Folder 14. Agnes de Mille claimed he “spent his life proving, first, that he was as smart as his older brother, second, that he was as smart as Belasco , and third, that he was smarter than anyone else,” in Agnes de Mille, Portrait Gallery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 164. For DeMille’s conception of Belasco , see Hayne , Autobiography, 8, 58–62.

  34. 34.

    For DeMille’s extensive preparations for interviews, see Koury , Yes Mr. DeMille, 46–48. For interviews, see BYU, Box 315, Folder 4; Box 314, Folder 2; Box 315, Folder 3; Frank S. Nugent , “Sixty Reels of DeMille,” The New York Times Magazine (August 10 1941), 10.

  35. 35.

    For red ornamentation, see BYU, Box 324, Folder 15. For historical revisions see Mary B. Mullett, “How Cecil De Mille Works and What He Knows About Us,” American Magazine 100 (July 1925): 34; BYU, Box 238, Folder 14; Box 315, Folder 4; Box 324, Folder 15; Box 383, Folder 14; Collie Small, “Man in the Middle of a Spectacle: Concluding Rock of Hollywood: Cecil B. de Mille,” Collier’s (March 4 1950): 30–31, 49–50; Frederick Van Ryn, “When you see Paramount, Remember De Mille,” The Reader’s Digest 41 (September 1942): 35–38.

  36. 36.

    For the essays attacking DeMille, see Van Ryn, “Hollywood Miracle Man: The Joyous Saga of Cecil B. De Mille,” Liberty (May 31, 1942) 30–36; Van Ryn, “When you see Paramount, Remember De Mille,” The Reader’s Digest 41 (September 1942): 35–38; John Durant , “DeMille: Colossus of Celluloid,” The Saturday Evening Post, 215 (February 6 1943): 24–25, 55. For response, see BYU, Box 370, Folder 1; Box 375, Folders 5, 6.

  37. 37.

    BYU, Box 375, Folder 6.

  38. 38.

    For DeMille’s handwritten letter, which went unpublished, see BYU, Box 375, Folder 5. For “The Case for Hollywood,” see Box 375, Folder 6.

  39. 39.

    For “yelling ouch,” see Box 375, Folder 6. For Foundation origins and major corporate contributors, see Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 399.

  40. 40.

    Koury , Yes Mr. DeMille, 12, 16, 19.

  41. 41.

    BYU, Box 405, Folder 5.

  42. 42.

    For Koury’s politically charged notes, see BYU, Box 405, Folder 5. For Koury’s Syndicate essays, see BYU, Box 421, Folders 1, 2, 3. For “not right,” see BYU, Box 421, Folder 3. For “fictionalized,” see BYU, Box 421, Folder 2. Rosson and Hayne could see Koury’s stratagem and wrote frequently to warn DeMille to establish clear lines of responsibility. See BYU, Box 405, Folder 5. Koury unsuccessfully tried to return to DeMille in 1956, but was blocked by Frank Freeman, see BYU, Box 499, Folder 9.

  43. 43.

    For DeMille’s expressed voting record, see BYU, Box 411, Folder 9. de Mille, “Goodnight, C.B.,” 131; emphasis added. As late as 1934, DeMille’s phone records reveal almost no partisan political activities. See BYU, Box 316, Folder 6; Box 322, Folder 7. As Louvish writes, “his old liberal concerns for society’s underdogs… metamorphosed into a set of moral rather than economic criteria.” Louvish, A Life in Art, 297.

  44. 44.

    For “radical” see Koury , Yes Mr. DeMille, 132. For “close analogy” see Higham, DeMille, 216. For “multitudes” see BYU, Box 506, Folder 13.

  45. 45.

    For battles with the IRS , see BYU, Box 240, Folder 31; Box 256, Folder 12; Box 260, Folder 2; Box 332, Folder 11. For Lasky’s travails, which left him destitute, see Box 492, Folder 7. For personal loans during the depression, see BYU, Box 404, Folder 14. For “the government takes,” see BYU, Box 410, Folder 1.

  46. 46.

    For DeMille’s handwritten comments, see BYU, Box 343, Folder 4. For his first public support of the Republican party, see BYU, Box 324, Folder 11. For vilification of the New Deal, see BYU, Box 342, Folder 13.

  47. 47.

    Birchard , DeMille’s Hollywood, 262. For “youth of America,” see Pratt, “Forty-Five Years,” 143. For plot construction, see BYU, Box 509, Folders 5, 6; Box 510, Folders 9, 10; Box 511, Folders 1, 2. The film was thought to be based (perhaps too closely) on Fritz Lang’s M (1931); see BYU, Box 511, Folder 2. DeMille actually worked with teens to provide convincing dialog, sadly to little avail. See BYU, Box 510, Folder 10.

  48. 48.

    For “don’t have to work,” see BYU, Box 551, Folder 8. For “collectivist trend,” see BYU, Box 405, Folder 8. For examples of Republican vitriol directed against FDR, which found its way into the DeMille files, see BYU, Box 307, Folder 10; Box 384, Folder 10.

  49. 49.

    “AFRA and Mr. de Mille,” The New Republic 112 (February 5, 1945): 164–165.

  50. 50.

    Hayne , Autobiography, 367, 387. See also Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 376–377. For his rejection of the anti-union label, see BYU, Box 390 Folder 2. For indictment of labor leaders, see Cecil B. DeMille, “Must Union Members Give Up Their American Rights?” The Reader’s Digest 47 (July 1945): 93–94. As late as 1973, one DeMille biographer falsely assumed the director was both an absolute opponent of unionization and prominent HUAC witness, see Higham, DeMille, 278.

  51. 51.

    For DeMille’s diverse and active collusion in setting industry-wide wage scales, see BYU, Box 249, Folder 6; Box 263, Folder 20; Box 268, Folder 2; Box 294, Folder 3; Box 295, Folder 1; and MHL, Adolph Zukor Collection, Folder 10. For “relationship of trust,” see BYU, Box 272, Folder 9.

  52. 52.

    For his speech, see Cecil B. DeMille, “A House Divided: Equal Opportunity for All,” Vital Speeches 13 (December 15 1946): 151–153.

  53. 53.

    DeMille, “A House Divided,” 153. The “Toledo Plan” (aka, the Toledo Industrial Relations Charter) was widely offered as an alternative to the role once played by the War Labor Board during World War II. For a discussion of the plan and Ruffin’s role, see The Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations Bulletin, Volume 45, Number 16 (October 29, 1947). See also James B. Atleson, Labor and the Wartime State: Labor Relations and Law During World War II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998). For 1952 reference, see MHL, Hedda Hopper Papers, Folder 549 “Cecil B. DeMille.”

  54. 54.

    For the Waldorf Statement and an outstanding overview of these events, see Vaughn, “Political Censorship During the Cold War : The Hollywood Ten,” 237–257, in Francis G. Couvares, ed., Movie Censorship and American Culture (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).

  55. 55.

    Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 7. In his autobiography, DeMille admitted The Volga Boatman (1926) alone should have landed him before HUAC. See also Hayne , Autobiography, 271; Lasky, Jr., Whatever Happened to Hollywood, 148. For his sympathies with the USSR, as expressed through his correspondence with Louis deBoer, see BYU, Box 1, Folder 3.

  56. 56.

    For “liberal fringe,” see BYU, Box 403, Folder 12. For “befogged liberals,” see The Dallas Morning News (11/2/1947): II-7. DeMille’s greatest complaint about HUAC was its inability to address foreign restraint of trade and copyright infringements. See BYU, Box 445, Folder 18. For DeMille’s tacit support of HUAC , see Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 382.

  57. 57.

    For “on every side” see BYU, Box 343, Folder 4.

  58. 58.

    “Right to Work Law Advocated by DeMille in Address” The Dallas Morning News (10/30/1947): I-1.

  59. 59.

    For “misunderstood,” see Hayne , Autobiography, 407.

  60. 60.

    Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 157–181, 195, 256–257.

  61. 61.

    For 1947 discussion, see Box 410, Folder 1. See also Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 399–401.

  62. 62.

    Bigoted dog-whistles like this are neither uncommon nor without the power to delegitimize opponents. Given the heightened emotions of this confrontation, it is reasonable to conclude that DeMille’s pronunciation was intended to accentuate the “foreign” sound of these names. Still, among those he supposedly called out was Billy Wilder (sounding like “Villiam Vilder”), a man for who he had publicly expressed profound respect and admiration. It should also be noted that DeMille showed something of an affectation, bordering on class fetishism, toward the use of “proper” diction. See, for example, his instructions to Paramount contract actors, in 1936, on word use and pronunciation in BYU, Box 324, Folder 15, or, better yet, his precise voice-over narration used in every film he released after 1940.

  63. 63.

    For his definitive account, see Kevin Brianton, Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2016) and Eyman , Empire of Dreams, 401–412. DeMille and Ford corresponded often over the phone throughout July, 1950. See BYU, Box 421, Folder 5. As late as 1953, DeMille worked to marginalize the use of openly anti-Semitic comments in the industry. See BYU, Box 453, Folder 13.

  64. 64.

    For meetings with Joseph McCarthy, see BYU, Box 445, Folder 18. DeMille and Eyman quoted in Eyman, Empire of Dreams, 400, 404, 410. See also Orrison, Lionheart in Hollywood, 197. For DeMille’s efforts to highlight press attacks by publications like the Daily Worker, see BYU, Box 421, Folder 5; MHL, Hedda Hopper Papers, Folder 549, “Cecil B. DeMille.” For public response to his August announcement, see BYU, Box 421, Folder 5.

  65. 65.

    For book notes and correspondence with Rand , see BYU, Box 421, Folder 5.

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  1. Department of History, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

    David Blanke

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Blanke, D. (2018). Who Is Cecil B. DeMille?. In: Cecil B. DeMille, Classical Hollywood, and Modern American Mass Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76986-8_6

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