- 4 weeks ago
This documentary recounts the making of one of the greatest and most successful films of all time, from its pre-production to its premiere.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00Ladies and gentlemen, young and old.
00:00:09The Ten Commandments is the culmination of DeMille.
00:00:12It's the movie he'd been moving slowly towards throughout his career.
00:00:18It changed the course of a lot of things,
00:00:21including, to a certain degree, Hollywood history.
00:00:23Ten Commandments became the quintessential epic film
00:00:27and the quintessential C.B. DeMille film.
00:00:29When you think C.B. DeMille, you think Ten Commandments.
00:00:31He got to make it twice, after all.
00:00:37One of the most important things to DeMille was his audience.
00:00:40He respected them.
00:00:42In so many ways, Cecil B. DeMille was the real McCoy
00:00:46and probably the best representative and best champion
00:00:50of the motion picture industry that there was.
00:00:53He was making Bible stories real.
00:00:56He was taking my Sunday School lessons and putting faces and emotions to them.
00:01:05This is the necklace that I wore in the Ten Commandments.
00:01:09It's an emotional experience.
00:01:14Mr. DeMille, he was an extraordinary man to work for.
00:01:17DeMille used to say, this is a movie that's going to live beyond me and you and everyone else.
00:01:24This is a movie that's going to be seen all over the world and it's universal.
00:01:28Moses is one of the world's greatest human beings and holy to the point of seeing God
00:01:35and receiving from him the law by which men may live in peace and freedom.
00:01:41The Ten Commandments.
00:01:42The Ten Commandments.
00:01:58DeMille, as far as dad went, invented the film industry as we know it.
00:02:02He came out to Hollywood in something like 1913 to make the Squaw Man
00:02:06with a couple of guys named Samuel Goldfish, a.k.a. Sam Goldwyn, and Jesse Lasky.
00:02:11And they came here when it was just frontier, really.
00:02:18Paramount was home for DeMille. He was one of the founders of Paramount.
00:02:21Learning the stories of the Bible, both Old and New Testament, from his father as a young man,
00:02:28led him in later years, when he could afford it, to tell those stories on film.
00:02:37The first Ten Commandments was both modern and biblical.
00:02:42The Ten Commandments, I think he thought of as a missed opportunity.
00:02:56He realized that, when he looked at the picture again,
00:02:59the second part of the picture is the part that doesn't really quite work.
00:03:02And I think he realized that he might think about expanding the biblical prologue
00:03:15and just doing the whole hog version of the Ten Commandments,
00:03:19a strictly biblical story.
00:03:27By the early 1950s, Cecil B. DeMille had proven himself to Paramount Pictures
00:03:31and to Adolf Zucor.
00:03:34Adolf Zucor was the corporate umbrella of Paramount Pictures.
00:03:38The relationship between DeMille and Zucor was a progressively uneasy one.
00:03:47And in spite of the tremendous success of Samson and Delilah,
00:03:52by DeMille's own admission, there was still suspicion
00:03:56about how a religious subject would fare at the box office.
00:03:59You are the chosen one.
00:04:02I know nothing of your God.
00:04:04Paramount was frightened because there was no budget.
00:04:07It was simply uncharted territory in terms of special effects.
00:04:11Not only that, DeMille wanted to shoot a lot of location work in Egypt.
00:04:15But he was in as good a position by the time he made the Ten Commandments,
00:04:21or perhaps much better position in his career than he had ever been.
00:04:25It's a motion picture for everyone.
00:04:28With a heart and a sense of humor.
00:04:31He was an award-winning filmmaker, having finally gotten the best picture for The Greatest Show on Earth and the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award.
00:04:41DeMille was at his zenith.
00:04:44You know, they had great faith in DeMille.
00:04:45And when he told them the story, they believed in it, and they believed in him.
00:04:51It was a tremendous risk, but because of him they took it.
00:04:55As many of you know, the Holy Bible omits some thirty years of Moses' life.
00:05:00The story, of course, comes from the Bible.
00:05:04There's not a book in the world that has more drama than the Bible.
00:05:07You don't have to go hunting for it, it's there.
00:05:09But what he did have to hunt for, of course, was the missing years.
00:05:13And the love that Nefertari had for him, and the rivalry between Ramses and Moses.
00:05:19To fill in those missing years, we turn to ancient historians, such as Philo and Josephus.
00:05:26Henry Nordlinger was his research guy, a Swiss who'd been at MGM.
00:05:31Nordlinger started plowing through, not biblical sources,
00:05:36but sources that derive from three hundred years, five hundred years, a thousand years after the events described in the Bible.
00:05:43To come up with some semblance of a narrative for those missing thirty years.
00:05:48He had many screenwriters and research assistants on the Ten Commandments.
00:05:51All of these ideas, all of this story construction, and all of these characterizations of Moses went into a final coherent motion picture story to present to the public.
00:06:02DeMell always said that he made his movies at his desk.
00:06:07What he meant was that the preparation was so tremendous, and you could take as long as you wanted to prepare for a movie,
00:06:12because it was the cheapest part of making that movie was preparation.
00:06:19If there was anyone outside of DeMille who was responsible for the way the Ten Commandments looks and is, it's Henry Wilcoxon.
00:06:29He was truly Mr. DeMille's right hand.
00:06:31He would be in makeup and shoot a scene in the day, and then by the afternoon he would be back being associate producer.
00:06:39The reason Henry Wilcoxon was his associate producer was he could paint and he could draw.
00:06:44Henry would sit in the commissary next to DeMille, and they would be discussing what somebody would wear,
00:06:51the kind of background, the props, that sort of thing.
00:07:02I remember going to the commissary every day and looking at Mr. DeMille at his amazing table where he sat in the middle,
00:07:11and Henry Wilcoxon and Henry Nordlinger and all of his people were all around him.
00:07:16And there was the gigantic Holy Bible that was on the table, so you could look things up.
00:07:23Then after Henry had made a sketch, they would call in either Johnny Jensen, William Majors.
00:07:30In the case of the Ten Commandments, they hired Arnold Freeburg for the run of the movie,
00:07:35and they would realize in oils and watercolors, the costumes, the headdresses, the jewelry, the shoes,
00:07:42all of those things that you see in a DeMille movie.
00:07:48Norma Desmond is coming in to see you, Mr. DeMille.
00:07:52Norma Desmond?
00:07:54She must be a million years old.
00:07:56I hate to think where that puts me. I could be our father.
00:08:00Mr. DeMille was an actor. He had started out on the stage in New York.
00:08:04Both he and his brother began acting and directing their own things on the stage.
00:08:11So, as a result, he loved his actors.
00:08:17I, of course, worked first for Mr. DeMille in Greatest Show, which was an enormous break for me.
00:08:24And I don't really know why he cast me.
00:08:28I was driving off the lot one day, having finished my first film,
00:08:32and he was standing on his front steps there with a group of his people.
00:08:37And I had met DeMille. Everyone met DeMille.
00:08:40Every new actor, you would have coffee with him in his dining room.
00:08:44So, there he was. And so, as I drove by in a convertible with a top down,
00:08:49I waved at him and he nodded back.
00:08:55I was told afterwards that he turned to his secretary,
00:08:58who did not really take down every word he said, but she knew what to take down.
00:09:02And he said, who was that?
00:09:05And she looked in her book and she said, he's a Broadway actor.
00:09:09Uh, his name's Charlton Heston. He did, uh, just finished a picture for Hal Wallace.
00:09:15You ran it, uh, ten days ago, you didn't like it.
00:09:18And he said, I like the way he looked just now.
00:09:22Let's have him in to talk about the circus picture. Bingo.
00:09:32Ten Commandments was the talk of the town.
00:09:34I think there were a lot of actors who were up for it.
00:09:36His dad said he had to get in line.
00:09:38Henry sat up one night and he was going through all of his art books
00:09:42and he came across Michelangelo's statue of Moses.
00:09:46And he said, oh my God, it looks just like Chuck Heston.
00:09:50And so he said, I think Charlton Heston would be a great Moses.
00:09:54Here is a photograph of the original statue in Rome.
00:09:59Notice, notice the likeness to Charlton Heston, who plays Moses in the Ten Commandments.
00:10:04Dad used to blame his nose on the fact that he got the part.
00:10:09He said he had a broken nose he got playing football at New Trier High School.
00:10:13And if you look at the wonderful Michelangelo sculpture of Moses in the chapel in Rome, it's just fantastic.
00:10:21Magnificent, it's the quintessential Moses.
00:10:24That statue was in a replica, a small one, was in DeMille's office.
00:10:29And DeMille called him and said he'd like to meet with him.
00:10:32He didn't send him the script.
00:10:33He didn't tell him what part he was up for.
00:10:35He went in and met with DeMille and they talked about various things.
00:10:39But as Dad said, there wasn't much he could say because he hadn't read the script.
00:10:42You'd never get to read a script.
00:10:44And he just listened and said, well, Mr. DeMille, that sounds like a magnificent project.
00:10:48And I'd be thrilled to be any part of it.
00:10:51And a little time goes by and he gets a call back.
00:10:54Still no script. Still he doesn't know what role.
00:10:57Meantime, Dad uses the opportunity to do his research.
00:11:00He reads Breasted's History of Egypt.
00:11:02He reads the Old Testament.
00:11:03He reads everything he can get his hands on.
00:11:05And at least then he can talk with some knowledge and passion.
00:11:08And this time DeMille showed him elaborate little drawings and big paintings that he'd done.
00:11:14And models that had moving pieces in it of the various sets that he had planned.
00:11:20You could tell he was really enthusiastic. DeMille had a passion for this.
00:11:24And I think some of that sort of rubbed off on Dad.
00:11:27So eventually he did get the part as Dad likes saved by a nose.
00:11:35The Ten Commandments had an astonishing cast.
00:11:38The Deliverer is Moses.
00:11:41When you consider Edward G. Robinson, who was one of the greatest movie stars of all time.
00:11:47So let it be written. So let it be done.
00:11:50And of course, Yul Brynner, who played this magnificent kind of haughty, sneering Ramses.
00:11:57I was with Grandfather. He said, let's go back to New York.
00:12:01There's an actor I want to see there.
00:12:02So we hopped on the train, went to New York and went to see the King and I.
00:12:08And in intermission, we went back to see Yul and Grandfather walked in and he said,
00:12:13Mr. Brynner, how would you like to play the world's most powerful man?
00:12:17And Yul said, Mr. DeMille, I'd like that very much.
00:12:20We had to save the part for him because he was booked for the King and I.
00:12:24We had to wait till that had its run.
00:12:25Is God, is God.
00:12:30And Yul brought a presence that Grandfather saw, of course, in the King and I,
00:12:35this dynamic ruler who was vulnerable and he used that very well.
00:12:40General of generals, commander of the Egyptian host, a man of mud.
00:12:50A lot of people say Anne Baxter was over the top.
00:12:52For its time, that was appropriate drama.
00:12:55Who else can soften Pharaoh's heart?
00:12:58He wanted either Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn.
00:13:02Grace Kelly could not be loaned out from MGM.
00:13:05They would not loan her out.
00:13:07So that left Audrey Hepburn.
00:13:10But the problem was is that her figure was not the classical Egyptian figure that we see on the walls and in the paintings.
00:13:18Oh, Moses.
00:13:20Moses.
00:13:22Oh, Moses.
00:13:23Anne Baxter.
00:13:24Anne Baxter.
00:13:25Well, first of all, she's a wonderful lady.
00:13:26She's a very, very nice person.
00:13:29She, she brought to the role, I would never change it because it was so successful.
00:13:37But it was, it was almost campy.
00:13:39This is for my wedding night.
00:13:42Because you wouldn't think of an Egyptian queen being like that.
00:13:47I'm surprised you noticed me.
00:13:49And yet she was very human, especially when grandfather showed the romance between the Ethiopian and Moses.
00:13:57And such a beautiful enemy.
00:13:59And you see Anne Baxter, who is very jealous of this beautiful woman, going like this.
00:14:06And it's very human.
00:14:07She made a lot of that very difficult role human.
00:14:11Marry her if you can, my son, but never fall in love with her.
00:14:16Nina Foch is someone that probably most people would not have chosen.
00:14:22And yet, the part, to her, must have seemed a golden one.
00:14:26Would you undo all that I have done for him?
00:14:29I have put the throne of Egypt within his reach.
00:14:32To be able to have that wonderful confrontation with Moses' mother, played by Martha Scott,
00:14:38that is played out so beautifully, and there's so much pathos.
00:14:42What can you give him in its place?
00:14:44I gave him life.
00:14:46Martha Scott played Dad's mom two times, both in Ben-Hur and in Ten Commandments.
00:14:52And they were in two plays together as well.
00:14:55Dad said the plays were flops, but the films were pretty big hits.
00:15:00Everybody gets a moment.
00:15:07But by casting an actress like Judith Anderson, it's not just a name.
00:15:12There's a reason she's Judith Anderson.
00:15:14She's got that power.
00:15:15You prepare for a marriage that will never be.
00:15:18She compels attention.
00:15:20And even in a small part where she doesn't have that much to do, except motivate the plot, basically.
00:15:25Because it's Judith Anderson, your eye goes to her.
00:15:28The whole film is cast like that.
00:15:30Like John Carradine.
00:15:31And that's not just a tired old man playing Pharaoh.
00:15:35That's Sir Cedric Hardwick.
00:15:36And he's very good.
00:15:38And he's very sympathetically written, even though the plot tells us that he's working the children of Israel to death.
00:15:43But at the same time, we like him.
00:15:45Well, the city's being built and I'm winning this game.
00:15:48So don't interrupt us with trifles.
00:15:50You lose a throne because Moses builds a city?
00:15:53Casting Vincent Price as the builder, Baca, there's a lasciviousness to the character.
00:15:58He's always eyeing Deborah Padgett, looking Deborah Padgett up and down.
00:16:02You are no man's slave.
00:16:04The hour of deliverance has come.
00:16:06Not for me, Joshua.
00:16:07John Derrick, who of course became famous for a lady that he married, but was a magnificent actor, plays Joshua.
00:16:14He really holds up a large part of the film.
00:16:16He's terrific in that picture.
00:16:19Is the holy mountain forbidden to men?
00:16:21Yes.
00:16:22And I am afraid for him.
00:16:24Yvonne de Carla was the most wonderful, professional, delightful lady you ever could know.
00:16:31But I thought it was very strange casting.
00:16:34And I questioned the grandfather about it and he said, no, I see something in her that is wonderful.
00:16:41It's up to me to get it.
00:16:43And she is magnificent as his wife.
00:16:50Will my father free the slaves?
00:16:53Prior to the Ten Commandments, I was an actor.
00:16:55I'd already been at working, so there was film on me.
00:16:58But even though I had done work, I still went through the normal process of casting, you know, with all the other little kids in town.
00:17:04We came to the DeMille game.
00:17:05The casting door was right there.
00:17:06And I remember coming and there was hundreds of kids out there, you know, and so I just got in line with everybody else.
00:17:11The process for casting, my part, was just a process of elimination.
00:17:16The first pass I made, and then the second pass, and then I had two interviews with DeMille.
00:17:20Is it true that Egyptian girls paint their eyes?
00:17:24Yes. Very few have eyes as beautiful as yours.
00:17:28I had seen Samson and Delilah and, of course, The Greatest Show on Earth.
00:17:33I was in love with DeMille movies.
00:17:34And then when I was 15, my mother happened to take a friend of mine to Paramount because they were looking for six daughters of Jethro.
00:17:44And she was auditioning for one, and my mother thought, gee, I have a daughter who looks kind of like this.
00:17:49And my mother did some fast talking to a secretary in the casting department and pulled out a wallet shot, and I got an interview.
00:17:56It must have taken, I think, three months from my first interview until the time when I could interview for Mr. DeMille.
00:18:04And I did my performance, my little reading, and then the door opened and in walked Mr. DeMille.
00:18:10I remember shaking hands with him and giving him a firm handshake, as I was told to do.
00:18:16At one point, DeMille asked, would you mind if we took Eugene down to makeup and tried a skull cap on him?
00:18:20And so I was escorted down to makeup, and they put the skull cap on, and it was really tight.
00:18:25And it was really hot.
00:18:26And I can remember I was walking between the stages, and, oh, look, there's Mr. DeMille, and he was up in a window from his office looking down onto the lot.
00:18:34And so I looked up at him, and I went to wave to him, and I don't know what happened, but the circulation had been cut off or something, and I just went and passed straight off and passed out.
00:18:43Mr. DeMille said, you have no experience in movies. You've never acted before.
00:18:48And if I give you this part, I'm going to be taking a big chance on you, because this is a teenager, and you're going to be the link with the teenagers in the audience.
00:18:58And he said, when you finish your rehearsal every day, I want you to come to whatever stage I'm working on and watch me make movies.
00:19:06You need to know how movies are made, and you need to know how I make movies.
00:19:10And the other thing, the other part of the agreement was, if I need to yell at you, I want you to give me your word that you will let me yell at you, and it's not going to upset you.
00:19:21And I said, yes. And he said, will you shake? And I shook hands. And he said, okay, Lulua, then you've got the part.
00:19:28And he always called me Lulua, even after the movie was over. He always called me Lulua.
00:19:34Even though I passed out from the skullcap, I don't think that was a reason for them to go without a skullcap.
00:19:40It just didn't look right. And so everybody's head was shaved.
00:19:44The whole shaving of the head for a little boy, it wasn't anything I looked forward to.
00:19:48But once I saw myself as the character in the movie, it was great fun.
00:19:57We started to learn the dance, and Ruth Godfrey choreographed it.
00:20:01And in between the rehearsals, we would be called in to the costume department and wonderful Edith Head, Dorothy Jenkins.
00:20:10And we would get fittings, and they would be assigned to each girl according to our figure shape and the character of the parts we were playing.
00:20:18The costumes are almost composites. Not one designer created the head-to-toe outfit.
00:20:30Mr. Freeberg did a lot of the paintings. John Jensen did sketches.
00:20:34And they took elements from each of those and combined them. So you had Dorothy Jenkins, who worked on the film. Dorothy had a fantastic reputation for being a stickler to historical accuracy.
00:20:46So it was a true collaborative effort. It was Arnold Freeberg, Ralph Jester, John Jensen, Dorothy Jenkins, and Edith Head.
00:20:54I think that DeMille's attention to detail and his really overall big picture of the scope of what ancient Egypt was, was so true to life.
00:21:07And I think in order to really bring that to people, they really did amazing layers of research into every facet of life, including what kinds of skins and bags were used by the peasants.
00:21:20We have the boards that were used for the fittings. The process was they would photograph the sketch that was done with notations by Mr. DeMille or by the costumer involved, and then that would go to the tailoring shop where they would start to construct the outfit.
00:21:38One of the costumes we have the records on took five months for Ann Baxter. So it was a long process.
00:21:45DeMille greatly admired Heston. Heston was extremely bright. DeMille was very impressed with his intelligence, his knowledge, and the way he approached the role with great seriousness.
00:22:04Dad thought that playing the role of Moses was both a challenge, a responsibility, and an honor.
00:22:13You know, Moses, he was not divine. He was a prophet. He was revered by, and still is, by three of the great religions of the world, which is quite unusual. It may be almost unique.
00:22:24He was, in the Bible, the only prophet to meet God face to face, whom the Lord knew face to face. That's what the scripture says.
00:22:34So I think all of those elements were going through Dad's mind when he was both preparing for this picture and, of course, later on when they went to Egypt.
00:22:42Mr. DeMille always wanted to shoot in Egypt because he had had to shoot here in Guadalupe for the first Ten Commandments.
00:23:02He knew that it was a chance of a lifetime. He said he wanted to shoot the movie on the very places where Moses and the Pharaohs and the chosen people had trod.
00:23:11So grandfather, myself, my little brother, Joe, and my mother and father got on an ocean liner and went to Egypt.
00:23:20Here in the historic harbor of Alexandria in Egypt, where the vessels of ancient civilizations once made their landfall, a luxurious ocean liner steams in to drop anchor.
00:23:30For Cecil B. DeMille had come to Egypt to keep an appointment with destiny.
00:23:35When we got off that ocean liner in Egypt, the first thing he wanted to do was see the set.
00:23:40Because the advanced man had been there and had built this tremendous set.
00:23:45We came around from the back, past the pyramids, went way past the set.
00:23:49I remember just getting goosebumps all over it. You couldn't believe it. You couldn't believe it. It was so beautiful.
00:23:55And he was very pleased.
00:24:02And in back of that set was the commissaries, the horse staples, the wardrobe.
00:24:07Every piece of business was there, just like the slotted Paramount.
00:24:12It was all in back of those gates because extras had to be fed. They had to be watered. Their animals had to be watered for the exodus. They had to have food. It was a huge city.
00:24:25Mom and dad were both going to go. And that was quite a trip in those days. It took 30 hours of air travel and four refueling stops to get there.
00:24:36Lydia had been for more than a year doing a play on Broadway. But finally she realized that her entrance each night was being preceded by her unborn son.
00:24:48And so she realized that she really had to quit. But she then looked forward to coming with me on the Egyptian location.
00:24:56But her doctor said no. She was too deeply into her pregnancy and it would be inappropriate and dangerous for her to go climbing around at Mount Sinai.
00:25:05Dad had to go by himself and he flew there and he woke up the next day to discover the Great Pyramid of Cheops across the desert.
00:25:14And they gave him a horse to ride to the first location. They were still under construction of course.
00:25:20DeMille arrives in his black car and he opens the door and he just stands there and looks at it for a while.
00:25:27And he turns to his assistants and he goes, paint it. And dad turns to one of them and he goes, he's a pretty tough old bird isn't he?
00:25:35He said, oh he's not so tough. He just expects a great deal. A very great deal.
00:25:44Our trip to Mount Sinai was more than a motion picture making expedition. It was the climax of a great spiritual experience for all of us.
00:25:56When they went to Sinai, it took them two or three days of travel by Land Rover just to get from Cairo to Sinai.
00:26:03And DeMille would stop every hour or so and scout out a little location to be shot on the way back.
00:26:08When they got to Sinai, they climbed the mountain like an expedition.
00:26:12They had a crew. They paired the crew down to about ten guys.
00:26:15And they went on foot. They had porters and they carried their own food and water.
00:26:20They had camps. They slept in sleeping bags. It was freezing cold at night.
00:26:24DeMille went miles off the road and climbed a mountain.
00:26:27And they ended up having dinner with the abbot of St. Catherine's Monastery,
00:26:31which is the monastery built to honor Moses and Mount Sinai.
00:26:36Dad had two ideas on Sinai inspirations.
00:26:39The first was that he should come down from Sinai barefoot.
00:26:44Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.
00:26:49Dad said to DeMille, Mr. DeMille, I don't think he'd stop to put his shoes back on, having just met God.
00:26:54So he comes down barefoot. DeMille thought that was a good idea.
00:26:58And he also thought he would try on another more risky idea, which he discussed with the abbot as well.
00:27:05I said, you know, Mr. DeMille, it seems to me that if you hear the voice of God, you hear it inside yourself.
00:27:13I said, I'd like very much to do the voice of God in the burning bush.
00:27:18And he said, well, Chuck, you've got a pretty good part as it is.
00:27:22But the abbot fortunately was intrigued by that. He said, I think that's an interesting idea.
00:27:28So Mr. DeMille said, well, we'll see about that.
00:27:31Therefore, I will send thee, Moses, unto Pharaoh.
00:27:36But as it came to pass, I did get to do the voice of the burning bush.
00:27:40The voice reading the Ten Commandments was done by someone else.
00:27:46Perhaps Chuck can tell you himself something of my taking him on the pilgrimage up Mount Sinai.
00:27:53Well, I can only say in all sincerity that I've certainly never had a more challenging role in films than that of Moses.
00:27:59And I believe after the two months we've spent in Egypt that I could have had no more fitting beginning on which to base the characterization than to do the first scenes of the picture on the ground where Moses was.
00:28:18The day of the great exodus scene. It must be one of the great spectacle scenes in the history of filmmaking.
00:28:27At that moment, tens of thousands of people were being marshaled at locations that encompassed the map of Egypt.
00:28:33Herds of cattle, hundreds of camels were being assembled for the great mass movement of the exodus.
00:28:39They brought in Fellaheen and Bedouins and citizens of Cairo from miles around.
00:28:46There are so many.
00:28:48Dad arrives in costume and in makeup with the staff of Moses wearing the Levite robes.
00:28:54And he walks through eight thousand people to the head of the line.
00:28:58And as he walked through, he said the Fellaheen would whisper, Musa, Musa, Musa.
00:29:04Because they knew who Moses was.
00:29:06They may not have known anything about Hollywood, but they sure knew who Moses was.
00:29:09And he said it just made the hair stand up in the back of his head.
00:29:12And he gets there and he doesn't look around.
00:29:15He stands out in the desert a little ways apart and waits for the shot and the extras and the animals to be ready.
00:29:21The scene is too large for Mr. DeMille to start with the customary command of action.
00:29:25Only the bark of a gun could be heard by the vast throng.
00:29:29And he turns around and he says to the people of Israel, remember this day.
00:29:34When the strong hand of the Lord leads you out of bondage.
00:29:44And he turns and without looking back, he marches off into the desert and into legend.
00:29:50And dad said at that point, he just, he wasn't even thinking about acting.
00:29:54He was just being, he was just there.
00:29:56And they all followed.
00:30:04The scene is filmed and then the welcome and familiar lunch one hour.
00:30:08Look at that stampede.
00:30:10Statistics on the food consumed naturally were of truly DeMillean proportion.
00:30:16There's a famous story that happened supposedly during the exodus.
00:30:31They had several cameras going and the story goes that after the first take, DeMille turned to the first camera and said,
00:30:37well, what did you get? How did it look?
00:30:39And the guy said, CB, I'm so sorry.
00:30:41The film jammed in the camera. We didn't get anything.
00:30:43He says, well, we have two other cameras.
00:30:45And he turned to the second one and said, well, how did you do, Fred?
00:30:48And Fred said, well, it was great until an ox cart fell over right in front of the lens and we couldn't reset.
00:30:53We didn't get anything after the first 30 seconds.
00:30:56And he said, well, we still have the long shot.
00:30:58And he gets the megaphone and he calls up on top of the hill.
00:31:01What about you?
00:31:03The guy said, anytime you're ready, CB.
00:31:07I don't think it's true, but that's a good story.
00:31:11During the exodus, DeMille started going up the ladder that led to the very top.
00:31:20And the gates were 107 feet high.
00:31:23And Henry Wilcoxon was right behind him.
00:31:26And he said about halfway up, DeMille turned green, stopped and started panting.
00:31:33It was obvious he was having a heart attack.
00:31:35He's a 73-year-old man on location in Egypt with the most expensive movie ever made in Hollywood.
00:31:40What's going to happen if the director has a heart attack?
00:31:43One of two things.
00:31:44The studio has a replacement director out on the next plane, or worse, they shut the picture down and put in an insurance claim and everything vanishes.
00:31:57He never told anyone and told everybody that he had dysentery because if the word got out he'd had a heart attack,
00:32:03it would have been disastrous for movie, publicity, everything.
00:32:06But he had a bad heart attack.
00:32:09The doctor said, if you go back to that set, Cecil, you will die.
00:32:15And Cecil said, then I will die.
00:32:17But I have to be at that set.
00:32:19And he said, you can't go.
00:32:21And my mother put her hand on the doctor's arm and said, if he wants to kill himself, my father will kill himself.
00:32:28And they arranged, the doctor and the male, how to not work as hard as he'd been working, how to sit, how to make other people do it.
00:32:39They had no problem knowing exactly what it was supposed to look like, how he wanted it, where everybody should be positioned, because they had all those paintings, they had all those watercolors.
00:32:52The mother directed several scenes, everybody pitched in, so he could remain quiet.
00:32:58Of course, he was there and overall director.
00:33:01People stopped going to DeMille for decisions.
00:33:03They went to my mother for decisions.
00:33:05It just all went like some magic clockwork just kicked in.
00:33:10But I think DeMille's life was shortened by the movie because of the heart attack.
00:33:16And then after that heart attack, never to be able to stop.
00:33:20He never rested.
00:33:22He would preferably die rather than stay home and not make films.
00:33:26Arrival in New York from Egypt, a veteran producer director, Cecil B. DeMille.
00:33:41He has been making location scenes for his new version of the Ten Commandments.
00:33:45The long shots of the Exodus were obviously shot in Egypt.
00:33:49They spent weeks at Paramount later on getting closer shots of intimate action of actors.
00:33:54All the stuff that humanized the sequence and made the sequence more dramatic and more emotional.
00:34:02My litter can carry him.
00:34:04The fact that he called H.B. Warner in for the Exodus, that is so touching.
00:34:09He made King of Kings with Mr. Warner and he loved him, like he loved all of his actors.
00:34:15But he loved Warner especially.
00:34:17H.B. Warner, he was a very old man when they made the Ten Commandments, very frail, dying.
00:34:22He couldn't walk. The big man in the Exodus carried him.
00:34:25He couldn't remember the lines.
00:34:27So DeMille said, just say what you want.
00:34:31You know what you are. You know where you're going.
00:34:34And he said these wonderful lines.
00:34:36I am poured out like water. My strength dried up into the dust of death.
00:34:52When we came home from the Egyptian shoot, then Mr. DeMille wanted to cut all the footage he had up to that point and see where he was, which takes quite a bit of time.
00:35:02And also they had some sets to finish and so forth.
00:35:05So I had time to do, I did one of my few comedies, which was quite good too, called The Private War of Major Benson.
00:35:18I was the baby Moses and here's how it happened.
00:35:21Just before we were to leave to go to Egypt, Mr. DeMille said, Mrs. Eston, he said, I understand you're not going to be able to join us in Egypt after all.
00:35:31When do you expect your child to be born?
00:35:34And she said, in February.
00:35:37And he said, if it's a boy, he can play the part.
00:35:41And so our son was born in Presbyterian Hospital.
00:35:47He must have had someone planted in the hospital because the first communication we had, I had barely picked up my newborn son when a telegram came saying, congratulations, he's got the part.
00:36:02So he beat him out.
00:36:04So he must have had that rigged.
00:36:06So if it was a boy, they could send that.
00:36:09And he got several hundred dollars paid.
00:36:12Not bad.
00:36:16So, indeed, I was cast.
00:36:18I didn't need much of a wardrobe fitting.
00:36:20But I showed up on the appointed day on the lot at Paramount and they had the set of the Nile River rigged in one of the sound stages.
00:36:31The nurse who acted as the state-mandated social worker took me from my mother Lydia and brought me onto the set.
00:36:38And dad was there in his bathing suit just to supervise, I guess, and make sure they didn't drop me.
00:36:43And she walked down to the end of the little pier.
00:36:47And I said, okay, I'll take him now.
00:36:48She said, oh, no, sir.
00:36:50She said, I have to have him all the time.
00:36:53And I looked at her the way I looked at Pharaoh and I said, give me that child.
00:37:00And she did.
00:37:02And I put him in the basket and he was doing fine.
00:37:06And Nina came in.
00:37:08Later on I noticed the basket seemed to be sort of lower in the water than it had been.
00:37:14So the shot's a very quick shot.
00:37:16And I went over and opened the basket.
00:37:19And he was about three or four inches deep in water.
00:37:22Didn't matter to him.
00:37:24But could have had a different ending, though.
00:37:29What kingdom has sent you?
00:37:32The kingdom of the Most High.
00:37:36I remember doing the scene where Moses comes back from the desert.
00:37:41I can remember that like yesterday because I just felt so regal.
00:37:46I mean, I was the prince.
00:37:48I think DeMille actually got a kick out of it.
00:37:50He would say, you're very proud.
00:37:52You're the king's son.
00:37:53You stand straight.
00:37:54You stand tall.
00:37:55And so when I walked up to Moses' staff, I wasn't afraid of him.
00:37:58And that was because DeMille said, you're not afraid of him.
00:38:01Your father's the king.
00:38:03You have nothing to fear.
00:38:05My son, stand beside me.
00:38:09Yul Brynner actually related to me.
00:38:11And that was very helpful in terms of creating that character, who I was.
00:38:14And, you know, because I was his son.
00:38:16Charlton Heston was absolutely remarkable in terms of being kind to me and enjoying me.
00:38:22He'd pick me up.
00:38:23He'd carry me.
00:38:24You know, he was fun to be around.
00:38:26I first met Mr. Heston when we were both in the makeup room at the same time.
00:38:32And because I was underage, we couldn't work more than a certain amount of hours.
00:38:37And Mr. DeMille was showing the rushes of the previous day's shooting to the other members of the cast.
00:38:43But I was not allowed to come in because of the limit of how many hours I could work.
00:38:47So Mr. Heston said to me,
00:38:49Well, you know, I get to see the rushes at lunchtime.
00:38:52And you and your mother can come with me.
00:38:54And that way you can see them.
00:38:56I mean, he was just so thoughtful.
00:38:58And so that's how my mother and I got to see the rushes.
00:39:00Just a wonderful man.
00:39:02How did he do that?
00:39:03Often times I would go to the set and I would just gravitate right over to DeMille's chair.
00:39:09He had a PA system set up, you know, and he would tell people, okay, so we're going to do this, we're going to do that, you know.
00:39:17So one day he just puts the microphone, he says, okay, James, call quiet on the set, we're going to do rehearsal.
00:39:21Push the microphone right in front of me and I go, quiet on the set, you know.
00:39:24And so we're going to do rehearsal, we're going to do rehearsal, rehearsal.
00:39:28And so it just goes off for a little while and Edward G. Robinson came over to DeMille and he goes,
00:39:33Mr. DeMille, he says, you know, this is kind of irritating to have this little kid calling quiet on the set.
00:39:38I do remember DeMille says, yes, Mr. Robinson, I realize how serious the film we're making or something of that nature, you know.
00:39:45And so Mr. Robinson just walked away.
00:39:48Tell Ramesses I'm coming back to my house.
00:39:50Grandfather came home worried and I asked him why and he said that Edward G. Robinson was giving him a portrayal of Dathan that he didn't understand and he was very worried about it.
00:40:00Who am I to deny the word of the master builder?
00:40:03And I said, well, grandfather, why don't you talk to him about it?
00:40:06He said, I would never presume to talk to somebody as brilliant as Eddie.
00:40:10What I bring is worth much.
00:40:12I thought, that's very strange to hear, but that's DeMille.
00:40:16But when he saw Eddie's performance, he realized that it was the wicked humor that Eddie had brought to the part of Dathan that made it.
00:40:25Grandfather was elated about that performance.
00:40:28Eddie, you know, was blacklisted.
00:40:30And DeMille hired Edward G. Robinson.
00:40:33And in Eddie's autobiography he said, DeMille saved my career.
00:40:37You have not yet obeyed the Lord.
00:40:44Let my people go.
00:40:47I love the plagues.
00:40:49I was so frightened when I first saw the movie.
00:40:51Stretch out my staff against the waters.
00:40:54With William Sapp, who was the person who did these special effects, with turning the Nile red, Bill Sapp is in the water.
00:41:02He had a garden hose.
00:41:03It had the dye in it.
00:41:05He pushed the garden hose right up against the wall that was containing the water.
00:41:10The staff goes down, pull the garden hose.
00:41:12No magician's trick will set your people free.
00:41:15He came up with the double chambered pot.
00:41:19And so you start out with clear water.
00:41:21And then the second chamber kicks in and lets the red water out.
00:41:31My favorite thing, the hail.
00:41:37Popcorn.
00:41:38William Sapp.
00:41:39He says, I went up into the rafters with two of my guys.
00:41:42And he said, and we had a sifter.
00:41:44And he said, and we dropped it.
00:41:46Dropped it, dropped it, dropped it, dropped it, dropped it.
00:41:48The people have been plagued by thirst.
00:41:50They've been plagued by frogs.
00:41:52The scene that they shot, that Bill Sapp worked very hard on, that they shot that's not in the movie, is the frog plague.
00:42:00The frog plague consisted of hundreds of little rubber frogs that William Sapp made himself in the prop department.
00:42:09And this was a daunting assignment to characterize the plague of the frogs.
00:42:15Much effort was built to construct these frogs that would then jump up on Ann Baxter's bed.
00:42:21It didn't work.
00:42:22And in spite of all the time and money expended on doing it, if it didn't work, he didn't want it.
00:42:29And the only thing left is one of Bill Sapp's wonderful frogs.
00:42:34And he's falling apart, but he was indeed made for the movie.
00:42:39I thought one of the most brilliant sequences is where the fog comes down from the sky and then splits, almost like snakes coming down and then rolls on the ground.
00:42:54It was very difficult to do, to keep that low enough to film it like that, but it's very effective.
00:43:00He's dead.
00:43:04Me playing dead started well before I ever got on the set.
00:43:07They had decided early on they were going to make a wax figure of me.
00:43:10So she hands me off to him and he goes and takes me.
00:43:13And I remember just laying there with my head back and they would call a cut.
00:43:16And then once you come back to the medium wide shot, that's the wax figure.
00:43:20Mr. DeMille, he always had a lot of visitors to the set.
00:43:31Mr. DeMille loved an audience.
00:43:33And I can just tell you it was like Grand Central Station on that set.
00:43:38When I was nine years old, they showed Cleopatra by Cecil B. DeMille.
00:43:45I was mesmerized by this film.
00:43:49And out came Samson and Delilah.
00:43:55And there he was again.
00:43:57And I thought, I've got to write this man a letter.
00:44:01He's changing my life.
00:44:03And I sent him a letter and it wasn't more than three weeks later.
00:44:09My mom said, oh, you have a...
00:44:12Such a great line.
00:44:14She says, oh, you have a letter from Paramount.
00:44:17It's in on your stepfather's desk.
00:44:20I opened this thing up and, oh, this wonderful letter from Cecil B. DeMille himself.
00:44:26Signed in his own hand.
00:44:28It was like he typed it out himself.
00:44:30I thought, all right, I want to go on the set of the Ten Commandments.
00:44:36So I called Paramount.
00:44:38They said, fine.
00:44:40Come next Monday or next Friday at 10 o'clock.
00:44:45I couldn't believe it.
00:44:48So I took the bus into Hollywood.
00:44:51And I walked into the sound stage.
00:44:54And it was like stepping into the land of Oz.
00:45:00It was amazing.
00:45:02A god of gold.
00:45:03A golden calf.
00:45:05It was the set at the bottom of the base of Mount Sinai with the golden calf.
00:45:11When I met Mr. DeMille on the set, he'd been watching me the past three days or so.
00:45:19He said, you seem to be here a lot.
00:45:21And I said, yes, but I could never be here enough.
00:45:25Where could I bring you except to Egypt?
00:45:30Where there is death?
00:45:31No, where there's food.
00:45:33The golden calf sequence combined with the giving of the Ten Commandments is a great example
00:45:41of the importance of juxtaposition in film.
00:45:44You have this marvelous kind of orgiastic scene of the golden calf and the bacchanalia
00:45:49and the wine and it's sexy and all these people dancing and the music is going.
00:45:54And then you have God giving the law to Moses.
00:45:57Thou let out not make unto thee any brave anyway.
00:46:02There's always been this controversy about who dubbed the voice of God for the giving of the commandment
00:46:07seen on Mount Sinai.
00:46:08And various people said it was DeMille himself.
00:46:10But if you really listen to the thing, it's clearly not DeMille's voice.
00:46:14Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
00:46:18They tried everything.
00:46:21DeMille said they tried choruses, you know, male choruses.
00:46:24They tried dubbing different actors.
00:46:26Honor thy father and thy mother.
00:46:30The actual voice of God was dubbed by a little actor named Delos Jukes, who shows up in a couple dozen films in the late 50s and 60s.
00:46:39He never claimed any credit for it.
00:46:44The finger of God is really effective.
00:46:47Bill Sapp was behind the mountain.
00:46:50And he had the actual granite that he had brought from Egypt.
00:46:54And he outlined the words with gunpowder.
00:46:58When you see the words begin to flame out, that's Bill Sapp back there with his gunpowder, making it go off.
00:47:06And then you have John Fulton making the finger of God with the animation cells.
00:47:12Get me down, for my people have corrupted themselves.
00:47:19When we were doing that scene, the raucous orgies going on, now they'd do it naked.
00:47:30You couldn't do it naked yet, but you had to come pretty close.
00:47:33And they were rolling around, and they did this for a couple of days.
00:47:37And, of course, I'm not in the scene now.
00:47:39But one day, they were all having a great time the first day or so, but the third day had got a little old.
00:47:45And one of the girls went up to the first A.D. and she said, Rusty, who do you have to get off this picture?
00:47:57That's the best Ten Commandments story I know.
00:48:05DeMille was probably the best director of extras that ever lived.
00:48:09He was brilliant at it, whether it was 50 or 5,000, he knew how to deal with them.
00:48:14So he was giving his daily instructions to the extras.
00:48:17And in the back of the room, there was a couple of extras who were talking.
00:48:21And DeMille took the mic and he said,
00:48:24Those young ladies in the back with the green, yes, you miss, and the white robes.
00:48:31I notice you've been talking together.
00:48:34I've been trying to explain to everybody what I want in this next shot.
00:48:37Why don't you come down and tell us what you've been talking about?
00:48:40Then they came down finally and she took the mic and she said,
00:48:44I was just saying to my friend,
00:48:46I wonder when that bald-headed old son of a bitch is going to call lunch.
00:48:50And of course there was a huge laugh.
00:48:53And DeMille took the mic back and he said, lunch.
00:48:56See, so he won really.
00:48:59It was a marvelous way to get out of it.
00:49:02No fool.
00:49:03Principal photography was finished on the Ten Commandments August 13, 1955.
00:49:16The Ten Commandments did not premiere until the fall of 1956.
00:49:21That gave something in the neighborhood of 14 months of post-production.
00:49:25And they used every single day of it.
00:49:28The editorial department was working 16-hour days, seven days a week.
00:49:33Post-production is very difficult.
00:49:35Cutting a film of that size with that amount of film is daunting.
00:49:40But Annie Baukens, who was his editor for 40 years, I think.
00:49:44They got along so well and knew each other so well.
00:49:48And she would bite his head off if she thought he was wrong.
00:49:52And he'd listen.
00:49:55By the time the 1950s arrived,
00:49:57and there were many special effects technologies that could be utilized,
00:50:01he was right there at the head of the pack,
00:50:04wanting to utilize these new techniques and technologies in his film.
00:50:11Stone will break.
00:50:13There are 2,000 slaves on the ropes.
00:50:15The lessons to be learned about filmmaking from Ten Commandments are everywhere.
00:50:21Just looking at the way things were crafted,
00:50:23even down to the early special effects that were talked about so much,
00:50:27you can understand sort of the history of special effects watching it.
00:50:32DeMille said Gordon Jennings was the best special effects man he ever worked with.
00:50:35Gordon Jennings brought the temple down, and Samson and Delilah.
00:50:38He did the train wreck in The Greatest Show on Earth.
00:50:43He was very good.
00:50:50But Gordon died on a golf course in 1953.
00:50:52Well, you've got this big special effects movie,
00:50:55so they got John Fulton, who was very good.
00:50:57He had done The Invisible Man for James Whale at Universal years before,
00:51:00and done a beautiful job on it.
00:51:02He did The Burning Bush, and the way he did it,
00:51:06he did a light effect that was done as they were filming it in the camera.
00:51:12Afterwards, in post-production, there were certain things that were animated in.
00:51:17For instance, the pillar of fire, and when the popcorn is dropped on Yul Brynner,
00:51:23then you see fire go shhh.
00:51:26That was laid in afterwards.
00:51:33John Fulton, he was the one who was matching the Egyptian stuff with the American shots.
00:51:40He married those two pieces of film all through the movie.
00:51:45Behold his mighty hand!
00:51:50You're marrying the Red Sea that was shot in front of Paramount Studios in the tank.
00:51:55The parting of the Red Sea has to be one of the great special effects sequences of all time.
00:52:11Mill's idea was that Moses calls upon God, God calls upon clouds.
00:52:19As the sequence begins, we see the clouds in the background,
00:52:22and with each successive shot, the clouds get a little closer together,
00:52:27and get closer and closer and closer together.
00:52:29At the penultimate moment, they combine, move down,
00:52:33slam into the Red Sea, and divide the waters.
00:52:38That was probably one of the most operatic scenes that DeMille did.
00:52:42The three women, you know, doing that, this total opera.
00:52:46But it's effective.
00:52:48It was filmed much like it had been filmed in the 1920s version,
00:52:54where you have this trough,
00:52:58and then these tons, tons of water come rushing down.
00:53:05Now you can run the film backward, and they unfold.
00:53:08We found the plates for it, and basically they just shot water at a tremendous rate,
00:53:19until it sort of backed up and created this backwash.
00:53:24And then they shot it sideways.
00:53:26And that backwash is actually the wall of water that you see, you know, rising up out of the Red Sea.
00:53:31It's just a different perspective.
00:53:33And then they turned around and went to the other side of the B-tank out here at Paramount,
00:53:38and did the same thing.
00:53:39Tilted it the other way, boom, you have another wall of water.
00:53:43And then you have the actual studios, which is the marriage of two sound stages,
00:53:48an RKO soundstage and a Paramount soundstage.
00:53:51They were back to back, and they broke the wall down.
00:53:53And so you have that long, long, long, long shot of everybody going down through the middle of the water.
00:53:58But if you had been on the set that day, they're walking down between two blue screens.
00:54:04They're not walking down between the water.
00:54:06It's remarkable that they were able to put all those layers together.
00:54:10And it actually started with just a very placid shot of the Red Sea in Egypt.
00:54:16That's the basis for the shot.
00:54:28One of the wonderful stories about the Ten Commandments and making careers was Elmer Bernstein.
00:54:41Victor Young had always done his scores, but Victor was ill, and he was just not up to this.
00:54:46But he said, I have a young man, Cecil, that I think you'll like a lot.
00:54:50So he met Elmer.
00:54:51He came to Hollywood in 1951, found some early success, and he did a picture called Sudden Fear,
00:55:02in which he did some unusual things in the score, at least by standards of that day.
00:55:08So his agent decided that this was maybe an interesting score that people should hear,
00:55:12so they arranged a screening and invited all the heads of music.
00:55:15Meanwhile, shortly thereafter, my father discovers that he's not very employable in Hollywood,
00:55:21that he's being named as a communist or communist sympathizer in The Hollywood Reporter.
00:55:27So he found work in other areas, among which he was a rehearsal pianist for Oklahoma.
00:55:33And then he got a call from a man from Paramount who said,
00:55:37I can offer you a one-week contract.
00:55:39It is only for doing incidental music, songs and dances,
00:55:43but it's for a very big picture, The Ten Commandments.
00:55:51What happened was, DeMille needed some dances and chants and things which he needed to shoot to in the film.
00:55:59I was never going to be the person to do the film.
00:56:03The film originally, the music was going to be done by Victor Young,
00:56:06who had worked with DeMille before and had done the score for The Greatest Show on Earth.
00:56:10During the course of the shooting of the film, Victor became seriously ill and spoke to me on the lot one day.
00:56:18And he said, look, he said, I'll never be able to do this film.
00:56:22He said, if you have any way of getting to do it, go for it.
00:56:26He said, you won't be interfering with me at all.
00:56:29Ultimately, it was not I who made the representation, but it was the then head of the music department.
00:56:35He really liked the relationship that had grown up between DeMille and myself during the shooting of the film.
00:56:44Because DeMille was not the easiest person to get along with.
00:56:47He was a perfectionist and demanded perfection at every level at all times.
00:56:52Roy just took a shot.
00:56:54He went to DeMille and said, do you think Elmer Bernstein might be the person to do the score for this film?
00:57:00And DeMille, in a very characteristic way, turned to Roy and said, do you think he could be another Wagner?
00:57:07And Roy said, I don't know about that.
00:57:11Well, he might be okay to do the score for this film.
00:57:15And so DeMille then called me into his office and he said something so really endearing.
00:57:20He said, do you think you could stab me for another six months?
00:57:22It was a joke, of course. And I thought that would be fine.
00:57:29But he asked him if he was a member of the Communist Party, to which my father answered truthfully, no.
00:57:35And DeMille reportedly responded, well, that's good enough for me.
00:57:39I think the moral of all that is DeMille was a very practical person.
00:57:42Let's talk about the creative process for a moment on the Ten Commandments.
00:57:51As I've said before, DeMille was a perfectionist.
00:57:54I played every single piece for him on the piano before it was orchestrated.
00:57:59So he heard every single piece of the score in advance.
00:58:02He was very canny, however, because I was a concert pianist and I could play these things in a very flashy and florid manner.
00:58:13And very often he would say, no, just play me the tune.
00:58:17Sometimes he'd say with one finger.
00:58:20But even so, he might change his mind when he heard the thing orchestrated and saw it in the film.
00:58:27And I would say about probably 30% of that score was rewritten after he heard it.
00:58:42The exodus of the Jews coming out of the city.
00:58:45And it's a huge mass of people and they're moving very slowly and ponderously.
00:58:50And my father's original theme for that was somewhat slow and stately.
00:58:53And DeMille said, no, I want it fast.
00:58:57To which my father responded, but I'm not going to match what's on the screen.
00:59:01Won't that be a mismatch?
00:59:02And DeMille said, no, if you write the music faster, they will look faster.
00:59:10And indeed, that's what happened.
00:59:12And he took that lesson with him.
00:59:14He mentioned it several times to me over the years.
00:59:16I would say that the work on the Ten Commandments was singularly the most exciting project of my entire life.
00:59:27DeMille called the public his best critics.
00:59:39And for the major preview for the Ten Commandments, he traveled all the way to Salt Lake City, Utah, to preview the Ten Commandments there.
00:59:46And he was asked by some people, why are you going to Salt Lake City to preview a film that has to pass the test of audiences all around the world?
00:59:56He replied, if the audiences of Salt Lake City, Utah like this film, I know that it will play anywhere.
01:00:02Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool.
01:00:10The response to the Ten Commandments by Salt Lake City audiences was absolutely overwhelming, as the preview cards attest.
01:00:19And it must have made DeMille feel so good that he couldn't wait for the film to get out in general release.
01:00:25The New York world premiere of the Ten Commandments, from the cast of Paramount's VistaVision presentation, a $13 million classic which will be seen on theater screens for years to come, a who's who of great Hollywood stars.
01:00:45Charlton Heston, arriving with Mrs. Heston, enacts the role of Moses from his youth to leading his people out of bondage.
01:00:51When Dad saw his performance, essentially he said it was generally impressive, often quite good, but not quite what it needs to be.
01:01:01I think he felt that he was slightly underwhelming as Moses, that he could have been better, which is ironic because everyone thinks of that as being his iconic role, and it is, no question.
01:01:13It tells you a little bit about the nature of what sort of man he was. He always thought he could do better.
01:01:18As he said, DeMille may have expected perfection, but what he did expect was your best. And I think Dad did his best in that part.
01:01:26Ann Baxter, seen in the Ten Commandments as Princess Nefertiri.
01:01:35Edward G. Robinson, who plays the treacherous overlord Dathan.
01:01:39I remember when I went to the premiere, that was a big deal for me, because I'd never been to a premiere of a movie.
01:01:45And they shaved my head again, and I went to the premiere, and I had a little tuxedo, and had a limousine. It was great fun.
01:01:52In the opening scene of Ten Commandments, DeMille walks through a curtain and presents the film on screen.
01:02:06This may seem an unusual procedure.
01:02:08But DeMille was DeMille, and he could do it, and he got away with it in a way that is not pretentious. It's wonderful.
01:02:14You go, oh my God, it's C.B. DeMille talking to me, his audience.
01:02:18There will be an intermission. Thank you for your attention.
01:02:23And he sets the tone. Then he goes through those curtains, and they start the movie up again. They start that music.
01:02:30I mean, I would love that as a doorbell at my house.
01:02:46You see the Paramount Mountain. It's that the Paramount Mountain has been repainted by Arnold Freeburg, and it's looking very much like Mount Sinai.
01:02:54And it says, a C.B. DeMille production, and that music behind it, and you are swept up from the very first moment.
01:03:03And God said, let there be light. And there was light.
01:03:11And DeMille's voice comes in from time to time as narrator, another unusual device.
01:03:17Man took dominion over man. The conquered were made to serve the conqueror.
01:03:22And it just works. It's hard to explain why. His voice doesn't take you out of the movie. It's just kind of charming and personal.
01:03:31DeMille had been critically passe since about 1932, 1935, because he simply was impervious to changing tastes.
01:03:42His standing within the critical community was low.
01:03:44And the fact that he was immensely successful commercially also worked against it.
01:03:50Because as we all know, nobody who really makes a lot of money in the movies could possibly be any good.
01:03:57To his utter shock and amazement, the reviews on the Ten Commandments were very, very good.
01:04:02It was an enormous success. It cost $13.2 million. Its first go around, it grossed $64 million.
01:04:13I'm sure DeMille didn't expect the runaway success it was.
01:04:16And of course, around the world, it spoke to people and it was one of the biggest international hits ever.
01:04:25Grandfather took 10% of his own part of the movie and divided it up among the hundred people that had been so valuable to him.
01:04:33I paid out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and been happy with every check I wrote because of their hard work and their expertise.
01:04:47He received millions of letters after the Ten Commandments was out there across America, across the world.
01:04:53And one of his favorite letters was the letter that said, this movie made God real to me. That was his mission. That was his job. And that's what that movie does. And it's done it for me.
01:05:10The Academy Award ceremonies that account for the films of 1956 must have been a real disappointment to DeMille.
01:05:18Seven nominations, one win for special effects was hardly the payback, I suspect, that Cecil B. DeMille expected close to the close of his career.
01:05:37Cecil B. DeMille is a filmmaker who brought many gifts to the world, 70 feature motion pictures.
01:05:43But these are gifts that keep on giving. And that's one of the great things about this marvelous high definition restoration presentation of the Ten Commandments.
01:05:58When I came here, there was a new emphasis on the importance of Paramount's history, which I was thrilled to be a part of and thrilled to find out that one of the first restorations we were going to do was the Ten Commandments.
01:06:10Because it so defines the history of Paramount Pictures in so many ways.
01:06:16Man shall be ruled by law, not by the will of other men.
01:06:20Of course, the story itself is timeless. And then the way he shot the film, all of the technical choices he made, shooting it in VistaVision, so you had that huge frame that could capture so much of the image both technically and just sort of viscerally.
01:06:34So it simply is a much higher resolution and able to capture so many more rich, vivid colors.
01:06:41It's a wonderful format because it's twice as big as a normal film frame. And it's also not anamorphic. There's nothing squeezed about it. It's just a flat surface. And you can get a lot of things in focus on a plane.
01:06:55We scanned it at 6K resolution from the original camera negative. So we were able to capture exactly what was on the film back and represent it today in a way that it's really never been seen before.
01:07:07The other part of restoring the film itself in addition to the digital restoration work of the actual film, we wanted to look at the other parts that made up the film and what was left.
01:07:26Standing next to me right here is Martha Scott. This is the dress she wears when she puts Moses into the rushes. The dress is made out of a very lightweight burlap, kind of soft fabric, like a sackcloth.
01:07:45Right here we have the lovely Deborah Paget. This is a costume she wears when she's with Dathan. Now this is a crimped organza with a gold lurex thread that's woven into this.
01:07:57Behind me we have Ann Baxter wearing the costume that she wears when we first meet Ann Baxter, the very flowy white silk chiffon. And that is real gold striping put into the fabric.
01:08:08And next to her is Nina Foch. That is the beautiful gold cape that is lined with a purple fabric that is what she wears when she goes to Yosha Bell's home when the black death is creeping into the village.
01:08:22The further we looked, the more we found just by opening up drawers and recognizing from the film the motifs of the jewelry and actually pulling it out and finding it.
01:08:31The most priceless and my favorite probably are these two iconic pieces, the vulture headdress that Ann Baxter wore as an aphrotarian. She wore with this piece, this golden pectoral, which is made up of 2,113 separate pieces.
01:08:50The greatest number of pieces that we have for one of the actors or actresses are the Ann Baxter pieces. But what we have is a cross section of almost every single actor.
01:09:01We have on this end of the table this fantastic multicolored headdress which is the Ethiopian king and it's got a gorgeous green jewel in the center of it.
01:09:10And then all these beautiful fabric pectorals that you see here are all the Ethiopian nobles and dignitaries who came to the throne room to present their gifts and goods to the Pharaoh.
01:09:22We have this one beautiful piece from Charlton Heston that is one of a pair of his arm bracelet and you can still see that we have the fantastic original aging.
01:09:33Yule Brenner, we have one of his great arm cuffs and it is gold plated and it's gold leather lined.
01:09:40But sadly in our department when it was being rented because all of this stuff again was in a working costume department, someone has rented it and painted it with silver spray paint.
01:09:50Edward G. Robinson, one of a pair of his gauntlets here.
01:09:54And this piece here you see it's smaller than the other pectorals. This was the child's pectoral necklace that Eugene Mazzola wore as the son of Pharaoh when he was in the throne room when Moses first came back to see the royal family and demand that his people be freed.
01:10:10Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go.
01:10:16Certainly Moses is one of the great figures in history and it was a challenge to play it. I like to think I had some success in it.
01:10:33And it was very exciting to work on. I played kings and cardinals and presidents and tyrants. Most of the time they get killed.
01:10:44But there are wonderful parts and certainly Moses was one of the greatest wonderful part. This is a man that had a hand in creating a new nation, freeing a people with a little help from God.
01:11:02The whole film has a sense of this is something special. This is not mass produced. DeMille's working in a commercial medium, but he's fine tuning things to such a delicate extent.
01:11:13This is something really remarkable if you think about it. Because it's a handcrafted movie with a very specific political, moral and social message, there's no comparison in terms of the emotional and artistic impact.
01:11:27The movie is timeless because the story is timeless. Whether you're religious or not religious or it doesn't make any difference. This story is a real story about an incredible man.
01:11:39So let it be written.
01:11:40So let it be written.
01:11:41So let it be written.
01:11:46This is the staff of Moses, which was a prop given to my father by Cecil B. DeMille on completion of the production of Ten Commandments.
01:11:59I suppose it's one of the most famous props in movie history. It's become a symbol. It's iconic with my father. When you think of my father being in Ten Commandments, you often see him holding the staff.
01:12:11I grew up with a staff that lived in my father's study and he was happy to have people hold it and take it out. It's obviously a treasure possession now, but it was a part of my childhood.
01:12:22We're standing here in the tank set at Paramount Studios, which was built for the Ten Commandments, where they filmed the famous parting of the Red Sea sequence.
01:12:35And in a way, it's kind of the spiritual home of my family.
01:12:40When my dad passed away, he left behind a letter for my sister and I and made a request for us to pay our respects to visit certain sites around Los Angeles that meant a lot to him.
01:12:55This was one of them. Paramount kindly cleared the parking lot for us so we could walk out and sort of say our goodbyes here.
01:13:03And this is where we are today. We're just honored to be here.
01:13:10you
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