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61 Th~ Plainsman A Paramount Picture. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Screenplay by Waldemar Young, Harold Lamb, and Lynn Riggs. Material compiled byjeanie Macpherson, based on stories by Courtney Ryley Cooper and Frankj. Wilstach (additional, uncredited writing by Wallace Smith, Stuart Anthony, and Virginia Van Upp). Art direction: Hans Dreier and Roland Anderson. Musical direction: Boris Morros. Original music: George Antheil. Photography: Victor Milner, AS.C. Film editor: Anne Bauchens Picture started: july 21, 1936. Picture closed: September 8, 1936. Picture reopened: September 13, 1936. Picture closed: September 23, 1936. Length: 10, I54 feet (twelve reels). Cost: $974,084.85. Released: january I, 1937. Gross: $2,278,533.33 Cast: Gary Cooper (Wild Bill Hickok), jean Arthur (Calamity jane), james Ellison (Buffalo Bill Cody), Charles Bickford Uohn Lattimer), Helen Burgess (Louisa Cody), Porter Hall Uack McCall), Paul Harvey (Yellow Hand), Victor Varconi (Painted Horse),john Miljan (Gen. George Custer), and Frank McGlynn Sr. (Abraham Lincoln) In early 1936 Paramount commissioned a review of its business activities . The report was not particularly flattering regarding DeMille's track record in the past three years: The Sign ofthe Cross This Day and Age Four Frightened People Cleopatra The Crusades Totals: Paid DeMille $310,000 40,000 50,000 50,000 75,000 $525,000 Estimated Net $517,000 profit 12,000 profit 305,000 loss 215,000 profit 795,000 loss $358,00010ssl Nor was the report particularly favorable toward Paramount's dealings with DeMille. The Crusades had been made under a two-picture contract , with the second scheduledpicture to be Samson andDelilah. DeMille had been advanced $60,000 of the $75,000 due under the contract for 293 294 / C~cil B. D~Mill~'s Hollywood Samson and Delilah and had spent $142,000 in preliminary costs, exclusive of studio overhead charges, preparing the script and getting ready for production before it was decided to abandon the project. On February 10, 1936, Paramount president John Edward Otterson and vice president Watterson R. Rothacker began negotiations with DeMille for a nine-picture contract. The negotiations did not result in a new agreement, but Otterson ordered that DeMille be paid $3,000 per week by Paramount until further notice. Adolph Zukor intervened and finally worked out an arrangement whereby DeMille would keep the advances he had received and produce a Western to be titled Buffalo Bill at a cost not to exceed $600,000, exclusive of star Gary Cooper's salary. DeMille was to receive an additional advance of $36,000 against 50 percent of the profits, grouping Buffalo Bill with The Crusades in a revision of the original two-picture deal, and was to be responsible for any costs exceeding the $600,000 budget. "The result," concluded the report, "is that DeMille and his unit actually cost the company $269,300, excluding overhead, from the date CRUSADES was completed to May 16, 1936 while Paramount was trying to make up its mind." Although The Crusades performed rather respectably at the box office , it would never recoup its costs. The studio wanted DeMille's big pictures, but they also wanted to curb expenses and avoid a repeat of the overruns on The Crusades. In canceling Samson and Delilah Paramount avoided what it perceived would be another expensive historical drama. And by insisting that DeMille work with Gary Cooper, the company hoped to add star power and box-office insurance. Although B-Westerns and stars like Gene Autry, Buck Jones, and George O'Brien were popular with movie audiences, big-budget studio Westerns had been more or less in limbo since the box-office failures of The Big Trail (Fox, 1930), Billy the Kid (M-G-M, 1930), and Cimarron (RKO-Radio, 1931).2 Buffalo Bill, a film to be based on the life of William F. Cody, no doubt appealed to DeMille because he claimed to have met Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill as a small boy when Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show came to New York. But RKO's Annie Oakley (1935) dealt with Cody's later years as a showman, and so DeMille turned to his earlier years as a frontier scout for the basis ofhis story. Inspired by the film version ofThe Last Frontier (Metropolitan-P.D.C., 1926), which was based on a 1921 novel by Courtney Ryley Cooper, DeMille decided to weave history and fiction into a rousing, idealized Western adventure pitting gun runners [18.118.1.232] Project MUSE (2024...

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