Courtesy of University Press of Kentucky
One or two Hollywood directors worked as long as Cecil B. DeMille, but unlike him, they spent their last years with low budgets or in the grindhouse. DeMille died of a heart attack three years after the release of a blockbuster, The Ten Commandments (1956). Forty-three years earlier, he directed the first feature film made in Hollywood, an unfortunately named western, The Squaw Man (1913). DeMille went on to helm more than 70 films, many of them hits.
Robert S. Birchard’s Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood has been reissued in paperback by University Press of Kentucky. It’s a detailed study of DeMille’s films, their production and reception, their profits and (occasional) losses. DeMille’s Hollywood provides insight into how Hollywood began.
DeMille came from a failing career in middle-brow theater at a time when the nickelodeon was displacing vaudeville in the entertainment marketplace. He brought showmanship and an understanding of popular taste to the nascent medium of cinema. As Birchard memorably put it, DeMille early on “decided to give up on art and offer the public what it wanted: SEX, SIN, and SATAN with a half reel of REDEMEPTION thrown in for good measure.”
Birchard did commendable archival research to build an account of the director’s career that will stand. DeMille’s Hollywood is also valuable for its understanding of the workings of the movie industry during the silent era and the golden age that followed.
