Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

45. The Ten Commandments

45 Th~ T~n CommanJm~nts Famous Players-Lasky for Paramount release. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by Jeanie Macpherson, from a suggestion received through a contest in the Los Angeles Times. Art directors: Paul Iribe and Francis McComas. Assistant director: Cullen B. "Hezie" Tate. Photography : Bert Glennon, Edward S. Curtis, J.F. Westerberg, J. Peverell Marley, Archie Stout and Donald Biddle Keyes. Technicolor photography: Ray Rennahan. Technical director: Roy Pomeroy. Film editor: Anne Bauchens Picture started: May 21, 1923. Picture finished: August 16, 1923. Length: I1,756 feet (fourteen reels). Cost: $1,475,836.93. Released: December 4, 1923 (Hollywood premiere). Gross: $4,169,798.38 Cast: Prologue-Theodore Roberts (Moses), Charles deRoche (Rameses), Estelle Taylor (Miriam, sister of Moses), Julia Faye (Pharaoh's wife), Terrence Moore (Pharaoh's son), James Neill (Aaron, brother of Moses), Lawson Butt (Dathan, the Discontented), Clarence Burton (taskmaster), Noble Johnson (The Bronze Man). Modern story-Edythe Chapman (Mrs. McTavish), Richard Dix Uohn McTavish), Rod LaRocque (Dan McTavish), Leatrice Joy (Mary Leigh), Nita Naldi (Sally Lung), Robert Edeson (Reading, an inspector), Charles Ogle (doctor), and Agnes Ayres (The Outcast) Athree-page ad for Paramount Pictures in the December 8, 1923, issue of Motion Picture News proclaimed: RICHES, RICHES, RICHES-Never before in the history of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation has Paramount offered to exhibitors a greater line-up of pictures than the ten that are now coming: To the Ladies, The Call of the Canyon, Big Brother, West ofthe Water Tower, Don't Call It Love, Flaming Barriers, The Humming Bird, Pied Piper Malone, Shadows ofParis, The Next Corner. Nearly all of these pictures have been completed, and all of them have been screened sufficiently to allow us to promise, in the name of Paramount, that each one of them contains every element for tremendous box-office success. 178 The Ten Commandments / 179 What makes the ad remarkable is what it doesn't say. Cecil B. DeMille's production ofThe Ten Commandments premiered atGrauman's Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles on December 4, 1923, and was scheduled to open at the George M. Cohan Theatre in New York on December 21 in its first engagements. With a final negative cost of nearly a million and a half dollars, The Ten Commandments was the most expensive picture ever produced by Famous Players-Lasky-it may have been the most expensive picture produced by anyone up to that time. Cecil B. DeMille was the studio's number one box-office director. His nearly unbroken string of hits made Paramount Pictures the envy of the industry . Yet there was no mention of The Ten Commandments in the Paramount trade ad. DeMille's picture was featured in an ad on the inside back cover of the December 22 issue of Motion Picture News, but the space was taken by the Precision Machine Company to announce: THE TEN COMMANDMENTS a Paramount Production opens at the COHAN THEATRE New York City with SIMPLEX Projectors If the makers of Simplex projectors thought The Ten Commandments was worth a cross-plug, why didn't Paramount find the picture worthy ofa mention in any ofits trade ads during the entire month ofDecember 1923? Motion Picture News didn't even review the film until lateJanuary 1924. It is true that The Ten Commandments was a road-show attraction and not scheduled to play regular engagements for weeks or months to come. It might be argued that trade advertising was of little value during the early stages ofthe film's release. Still, one might expect Paramount to prime the publicity pump for the general release to follow. Why did the company virtually ignore the 1923 DeMille special? To put it simply, Cecil B. DeMille was in the doghouse. Although DeMille had been promised the opportunity to make another large-scale production ever since Joan the Woman, by 1923 the 180 / C~cil B. D~Mill~'5 Hollywood goal seemed further away than ever. Elsewhere, big pictures were again meeting with box-office success. Even economy-minded Universal announced The Hunchback ofNotre Dame (1923) as a big-budget Super Jewel, and (if publicity was to be believed) allowed Erich von Stroheim a virtually unlimited budget on his "million dollar picture" Foolish Wives (1922). All of these movies owed a great deal to Cecil B. DeMille's pioneering efforts, but at Famous Players-Lasky, DeMille himself felt constrained by...