Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard
Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard
Cecil B. DeMille was one of Hollywood's most successful and consistent
directors, and yet since the rise of "auteurist" criticism, he has been
resigned to the critical doldrums, considered at best a decent showman
and at worst a pandering sellout.
Film editor and historian Robert S. Birchard ("King Cowboy: Tom Mix
and the Movies") has now made a long overdue attempt to correct that
view.
Birchard's exceedingly well-researched book tells DeMille's story
through the films themselves rather than through a standard biography
format. By means of behind-the-scenes stories we learn about DeMille the
tyrant and DeMille the benevolent who liked to work with the same cast
and crew again and again. Birchard analyzes the filmmaker's political
leanings and crosses it with his behavior at certain events (like a
couple of particularly fiery Director's Guild meetings).
Birchard also provides financial information, and we learn that
DeMille was not always in the black and did not always please his
employers. Likewise, he was not always drawn to spectacles, and made all
kinds of films over the course of his career, including Westerns,
comedies and melodramas.
Through expert detective work, Birchard studies only the cold, hard
facts and makes careful inferences about why DeMille may have chosen a
certain film or cast a certain actor or made a certain decision Ð all of
which only serves to deepen and enrich an artist formerly seen as
shallow and useless.
This is a truly superb book, written in an original and refreshing
style that fills a definite void. Hopefully with the help of these
pages, future scholars won't make the mistake of misjudging or
dismissing DeMille any longer.
Sept. 17, 2004
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