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67. Unconquered
- The University Press of Kentucky
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67 Unconqu~r~d A Paramount Picture. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Screenplay by Charles Bennett, Fredric M. Frank, and jesse Lasky jr., based on the novel by Neil H. Swanson (additional, uncredited writing by jeanie Macpherson and Norman Reilly Raine). Photography: Ray Rennahan, A.S.c. Art direction: Hans Dreier and Walter Tyler. Second-unit director: Arthur Rosson. Music: Victor Young. Film editor: Anne Bauchens Picture started: july 29, 1946. Picture finished: November 8, 1946. Picture reopened for pickup shots: November 25-26, 1946. Additional pickup shots: December 10 and December 30, 1946. Added scene shot May 5, 1947. Second-unit location work: june 5-23, 1946, at Cook Forest, Pennsylvania; and july 15 to August 4, 1946, at Ashton and McCall, Idaho. Length: 13,194 feet. Cost: $4,371,593.62. Released: October 3, 1947. Gross rentals: $6,665,992.36 (gross receipts: $4,633,486.25). Unrecouped balance (loss): $1,717,978.82 (to March 31, 1951) Cast: Gary Cooper (Christopher Holden), Paulette Goddard (Abby), Howard Da Silva (Garth), Boris Karloff (Guyasuta, chiefofthe Senecas), Cecil Kellaway Ueremy Love), Ward Bond Uohn Fraser), Virginia Campbell (Mrs. Fraser), Katherine DeMille (Hannah), Henry Wilcoxon (Capt. Steele), Sir C. Aubrey Smith (Lord Chiefjustice), VictorVarconi (Capt. Simeon Ecuyer), and Raymond Hatton (Venango scout) On August 16, 1944, Cecil B. DeMille received a letter from the American Federation of Radio Artists (A.F.R.A.) informing him that the board of directors of the union had voted to assess its members one dollareach to fight Californiaballot Proposition 12-a so-called "right to work" initiative that would have abolished the closed shop in California. The assessment was due and payable by September 1,1944; members not paying the assessment were subject to suspension from the union. DeMille favored Proposition 12, and he believed A.F.R.A. "was demanding, in a word, that I cancel my vote with my dollar. Even if I were opposed to Proposition 12, I asked myself, did my union, did any organization, have the right to impose a compulsory political assessment upon any citizen, under the pain of the loss of his right to work?" DeMille refused to pay the dollar, but in an effort to reach a compro329 330 / Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood mise he offered to make a gift to the union ofone dollar for every member in the Los Angeles local if the union would agree to return the dollar assessments to the members. "The union refused," DeMille wrote. "I saw then that the fundamental issue was not Proposition 12. It was an issue of union power: the power to control the individual member's political freedom through control of his right to work." DeMille was suspended by A.F.R.A. and banned from appearing on radio. He made his last Lux Radio Theatre broadcast on January 22, 1945, giving up a salary of $100,000 a year. He sued the union for reinstatement but lost in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the State District Court of Appeals, and the California Supreme Court. He soon formed the DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom to campaign for right-to-work legislation throughout the country.! It was against this backdrop that DeMille began work on Unconquered , a tale of slavery and indentured servitude set in the American colonies during the surveying of the Mason-Dixon line and the siege of Fort Pitt. DeMille was inspired by the novel The Judas Tree, by Neil H. Swanson. What intrigued him was the fact that in Britain at the time condemned white prisoners were given a choice of hanging or slavery in the colonies for a term of fifteen years. Paramount bought the screen rights to The Judas Tree for DeMille; but as with The Story ofDr. Wassell, a new work was commissioned to establish literary credentials for the film. According to a confidential memo by DeMille's associate producer , Sidney Biddell, Neil H. Swanson was hired to write a new novel of not less than eighty thousand words to be based on the screenplay then being written by Norman Reilly Raine. Doubleday Doran was set to publish , and Swanson would receive an advance of$5,000 from the publisher. The money for the advance would actually come from Cecil B. DeMille Productions and Paramount, but was to be paid by the publisher. DeMilleParamount were to be repaid the advance from the first $5,000 ofroyalties; but they agreed to put...