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Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood
In Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, Robert S. Birchard offers a detailed and definitive chronicle of the most successful filmmaker in early Hollywood history, going behind studio gates and beyond DeMille's legendary persona. In his forty-five-year career, DeMille's box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. DeMille had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah , DeMille also created Westerns, realistic "chamber dramas," and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies. He set the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanded absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians.
Drawing extensively on DeMille's personal archives and other primary sources, this biography provides a comprehensive and compelling portrait of how Cecil B. DeMille's work changed the course of film history, and a fascinating look at how movies were actually made in Hollywood's Golden Age.
Drawing extensively on DeMille's personal archives and other primary sources, this biography provides a comprehensive and compelling portrait of how Cecil B. DeMille's work changed the course of film history, and a fascinating look at how movies were actually made in Hollywood's Golden Age.
- GenresFilmNonfiction
494 pages, Hardcover
First published June 29, 2004
About the author
Robert S. Birchard
8 books54 followersRobert S. Birchard is an award-winning film editor who brings an insider’s perspective and a great affection for the people who work in the picture business to his chronicles of the movies. He is the author of Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, Early Universal City, Silent-era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara, and King Cowboy: Tom Mix and the Movies and a contributing writer to the omnibus volumes M-G-M When the Lion Roars, Don Miller’s Hollywood Corral, The Encyclopedia of Early Film and Hollywood: The Movie Factory. His articles on Hollywood filmmakers have appeared in American Cinematographer, Statement, Film History, The Moving Image, Griffithiana, Daily Variety and Los Angeles Times Calendar. He is a past president and current board member of the preservation organization Hollywood Heritage, Inc. and is current president of the Cinecon Classic Film Festival which presents the annual Cinecon Classic Film Festival and contributes to film preservation projects.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 28, 2013
Published in 2004, Cecil B DeMille's Hollywood by Robert S Birchard is neither a biography of Cecil B DeMille nor a history of Hollywood. It's a listing of DeMille's movies, starting with his first, early silent, Squaw Man in 1914 and finishing with his last movie, the blockbuster, The Ten Commandments (1958.)
This is not a book for beginners. It is not a narrative history but it does provide some of the history of Hollywood, in its way. The early films especially, are enlightening for the speed with which they were made and the settings, lighting, and camera techniques early directors developed as they went along. The public couldn't get enough of the new "movies" in the first decade of the 20th century. DeMille made 15 full length feature films in 1915. Other directors were just as busy.
Basically, the book is an annotated filmography, with much detail and some enlightening commentary about each movie. If you want to know who the cameraman was or who did the final editing on any DeMille film, how long it took to film and whether it made money, this book will tell you. Illustrated with stills from all of DeMille's films, the book gives you a good idea how DeMille molded the careers of early stars. And in later years DeMille went to considerable trouble to make sure these people were hired for bit parts or as extras when these same actors had trouble finding work elsewhere. He was loyal to the people who helped him build his own career.
Not that he was especially known as a kindly man. He was a despot. But he was also an exceptionally good director. He did not tell actors what to do -- he set the scene, provided the dialogue, set up the camera, and left the rest to the people on stage. This was a challenge, but for really good actresses, like Gloria Swanson, it was what they needed to achieve some of the best performances of their careers.
The early history of the movies, the companies created by Lasky and Goldfish and the other pioneers, the development of film, cameras, and other technology, the move from New Jersey and New York to Los Angeles and eventually Hollywood, the identifying and developing of first-rate actors and directors, not to mention script writers, cameramen, and others behind the scenes -- for all this you need another book. David Thomson's The Whole Equation (2004) and Jeanine Basinger's The Star Machine (2007) are your best bets. But if you are really interested in DeMille, Birchard's book is invaluable.
This is not a book for beginners. It is not a narrative history but it does provide some of the history of Hollywood, in its way. The early films especially, are enlightening for the speed with which they were made and the settings, lighting, and camera techniques early directors developed as they went along. The public couldn't get enough of the new "movies" in the first decade of the 20th century. DeMille made 15 full length feature films in 1915. Other directors were just as busy.
Basically, the book is an annotated filmography, with much detail and some enlightening commentary about each movie. If you want to know who the cameraman was or who did the final editing on any DeMille film, how long it took to film and whether it made money, this book will tell you. Illustrated with stills from all of DeMille's films, the book gives you a good idea how DeMille molded the careers of early stars. And in later years DeMille went to considerable trouble to make sure these people were hired for bit parts or as extras when these same actors had trouble finding work elsewhere. He was loyal to the people who helped him build his own career.
Not that he was especially known as a kindly man. He was a despot. But he was also an exceptionally good director. He did not tell actors what to do -- he set the scene, provided the dialogue, set up the camera, and left the rest to the people on stage. This was a challenge, but for really good actresses, like Gloria Swanson, it was what they needed to achieve some of the best performances of their careers.
The early history of the movies, the companies created by Lasky and Goldfish and the other pioneers, the development of film, cameras, and other technology, the move from New Jersey and New York to Los Angeles and eventually Hollywood, the identifying and developing of first-rate actors and directors, not to mention script writers, cameramen, and others behind the scenes -- for all this you need another book. David Thomson's The Whole Equation (2004) and Jeanine Basinger's The Star Machine (2007) are your best bets. But if you are really interested in DeMille, Birchard's book is invaluable.
June 3, 2016
This is a hell of a time to start reviewing Bob's books, but i seldom review books that i own (because i don't need to remember if i've read them). That i own so many is a tribute to Bob's research and writing skills. This one, in particular, is THE book on De Mille films, with lots of background information and description on each. Indispensable if you are interested in De Mille.
December 5, 2019
An excellent chronicle of Cecil B. DeMille's film career, with an entry on each of his features. I might have wished for a little more critical assessment of the movies, but the background info provided about the productions is often fascinating and, after all, critical appraisals are available elsewhere.
July 20, 2021
It is tremendous to see that the University of Kentucky Press is republishing Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood. First released in 2004, Robert Birchard’s book helped spur a renewed interest in Cecil B. DeMille, which had begun to grow around 1985. Cecil B. DeMille’s reputation had been trashed from the 1960s to the 1980s as a commercially crass director with savage right-wing tendencies.
Any fair-minded reader of the book Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood would see immediately that DeMille was far more than Charlton Heston parting the sea in The Ten Commandments (1956). The first thing that is immediately evident from the book is how many silent films DeMille created from 1915 to 1924. More than one critic has argued that DeMille was at his best during this time.
The second thing is just how little of his output was biblical epics. The biblical epics are his signature films, but they are hardly a major part of his career. If you count both versions of The Ten Commandments, King of Kings, and Samson and Delilah, the biblical epics add up to four films. Out of 70 films in a career spanning over 41 years, these cannot be considered an accurate summing of the director’s cinema.
Full review at https://cinemahistoryonline.com/2021/...
Any fair-minded reader of the book Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood would see immediately that DeMille was far more than Charlton Heston parting the sea in The Ten Commandments (1956). The first thing that is immediately evident from the book is how many silent films DeMille created from 1915 to 1924. More than one critic has argued that DeMille was at his best during this time.
The second thing is just how little of his output was biblical epics. The biblical epics are his signature films, but they are hardly a major part of his career. If you count both versions of The Ten Commandments, King of Kings, and Samson and Delilah, the biblical epics add up to four films. Out of 70 films in a career spanning over 41 years, these cannot be considered an accurate summing of the director’s cinema.
Full review at https://cinemahistoryonline.com/2021/...
June 13, 2022
Don't waste your money. To begin with the Kindle text itself is terrible. Apparently scanned with OCR nobody bothered to proofread the result, one typo after another. Irritating. Little useful information on life snd work of DeMille. It's a book of statistics: when the film was made, who participated (screenplay, cameraman, editor, and so on), cost, profit, etc..There is an occasional laudatory comment about DeMille himself--again little useful information. You would do better reading a Wikipedia article.
Kindle should withdraw this title till they least clean up the textual errors. Then if you want to waste your money, go ahead.
Kindle should withdraw this title till they least clean up the textual errors. Then if you want to waste your money, go ahead.
May 13, 2009
An excellent reference, especially on some of the harder to see early DeMille films of the 1910's. Birchard writes in English, not in academese, which is refreshing for a scholar in the often gobbledygook-laden realm of film studies.
December 30, 2017
sorry posted on wrong book!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews