Autobiography, Volume 10Cecil B. DeMille was an American filmmaker. Between 1914 and 1958, he made a total of 70 features, both silent and sound films and is acknowledged as a founding father of the cinema of the United States and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. He made silent films of every genre: social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. DeMille began his career as a stage actor in 1900 and later moved to writing and directing stage productions, some with Jesse Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. After more than thirty years in film production, DeMille reached the pinnacle of his career with Samson and Delilah (1949), a biblical epic which did "an all-time record business. He went on to receive his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director for his circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Drama. His last and most famous film, The Ten Commandments (1956), also a Best Picture Academy Award nominee, is currently the seventh-highest-grossing film of all time. In addition to his Best Picture Award, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his film contributions, the Palme d'Or (posthumously) for Union Pacific, a DGA Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, which was later named in his honor |
Contents
David Belasco was practically a member of our family | 21 |
Mothers energy and resourcefulness | 34 |
We were married August 16 1902 | 51 |
Copyright | |
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