Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

17. Temptation

17 T~mptation Produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company for Paramount release. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Original story and scenario by Hector Turnbull (additional, uncredited writing by Cecil B. DeMille and Jeanie Macpherson). Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff Picture started: July 27, 19 I 5. Picture finished: August 10, 19 I 5. Length: 5,550 feet (six reels). Cost: $22,472.25. Released: January 2, 1916. Gross: $1 02,437.47 Cast: Geraldine Farrar (Renee Dupree), Pedro de Cordoba 0ulien), Theodore Roberts (Otto Muller), Elsie Jane Wilson (Madame Maroff), Raymond Hatton (the baron), and Sessue Hayakawa The third of DeMille's films with Geraldine Farrar, Temptation was the second to be distributed-presumably to separate the release of Maria Rosa and Carmen, the two Spanish-themed films. The film is not known to exist in any archive or private collection. Temptation was the first screenwriting effort of Hector Turnbull, former drama critic of the New York Tribune. Turnbull, recruited to the silent drama by William deMille, went on to marry Jesse Lasky's sister after her divorce from Sam Goldfish. Cecil DeMille's low regard for Turnbull's abilities as a screenwriter became a source of friction when William deMille took charge of the West Coast office and Turnbull was picked to head up the Lasky scenario department in New York. Temptation tells the story ofan aspiring opera singer, Renee Dupree, who is engaged to a struggling composer, Julien. Impresario Otto Muller has eyes for Renee and offers her a role in the upcoming production being written by Julien. When she refuses his advances, Mullerfires both Renee and Julien. Months of poverty lead Renee to temptation and she accepts Muller's proposition, but when she arrives at his apartments for their tryst she finds Muller has been killed by an irate mistress. In a letter to Sam Goldfish, DeMille wrote, "I want to thank you for your letter ... regarding 'The Temptation.' I have extended your congratulations [for ajob well done] to those whom you mentioned-even to Hector Turnbull, which I must admit, I did most reluctantly, as he 64 Temptation / 65 had about as much to do with the writing of 'Temptation' as you did."! Turnbull went on to write The Cheat, which DeMille claimed was "so far superior to his first, Temptation, that to this day film historians, especially in Europe, regard The Cheat as a landmark in the development of the cinema." Yet, The Cheat is praised primarily for DeMille's visual treatment of its lurid melodrama, not for its unenlightened story values. The director never warmed up to Turnbull personally or to his taste in story material. "While there is no question in anybody's mind that the New York office is the seat of government [for this company]," DeMille wrote Lasky, "there is considerable doubt in our minds [here in Hollywood ] that it is the seat of great literary and dramatic discernment."2 ...