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DeMille as Anti-Communist Ogre

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

Chapter 7 shows how Cecil B. DeMille’s reputation declined from a high-water mark of the late 1960s to being reviled as a director and individual from about 1985 due to the impact of the coverage of ... More

Chapter 7 shows how Cecil B. DeMille’s reputation declined from a high-water mark of the late 1960s to being reviled as a director and individual from about 1985 due to the impact of the coverage of the meeting. It addresses the first of one of the central myths emerging from the accounts of the meeting: that DeMille named people to HUAC and Joseph McCarthy. From a review of documents at the DeMille archives and HUAC papers, it is clear that DeMille never testified to the committee and refused on two occasions to do so. He did have an indirect relationship with the committee through the FBI, to whom he gave information on suspected Communists. Due in part to these myths, along with claims of anti-Semitism, DeMille’s cinematic reputation was dismissed for many years, even though the factual basis for the image was weak. The chapter demonstrates how his reputation revived from the late 1980s, as his supporters developed a new and competing image of a cinematic pioneer. It concludes that DeMille now has two images, which are competing for attention among film historians and critics.Less

The Screen Directors Guild Meeting

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

Chapter 3 looks at the SDG meeting in detail, using sources such as the meeting transcript to provide a thorough account. DeMille capitulated from the beginning and accepted that Mankiewicz was ... More

Chapter 3 looks at the SDG meeting in detail, using sources such as the meeting transcript to provide a thorough account. DeMille capitulated from the beginning and accepted that Mankiewicz was victorious. Early in the meeting, he seconded motions for the recall ballots to be destroyed. No debate existed between DeMille’s supporters and others, as DeMille simply had no support. The meeting was essentially a sustained attack on DeMille for his actions in recalling Mankiewicz. George Stevens’s attack on DeMille created a demand that DeMille be removed from office. With demands for DeMille’s resignation at their height, John Ford defended DeMille, and his speech stopped the drive to have DeMille resign. Even with Ford’s intervention, the meeting continued to demand the board’s removal. Ford initially defended the board then reluctantly admitted that events had spun out of control and it had to go.Less

The Aftermath

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

The aftermath of the SDG meeting saw the introduction of the loyalty oath that had been sought by DeMille. Mankiewicz and the SDG board introduced the measure, and it was ratified by directors. The ... More

The aftermath of the SDG meeting saw the introduction of the loyalty oath that had been sought by DeMille. Mankiewicz and the SDG board introduced the measure, and it was ratified by directors. The loyalty oath stayed in place for sixteen years until it was removed by the U.S. Supreme Court. After the meeting, Ford successfully attempted to heal the rift between DeMille and the Guild over the next three years.Less

Mankiewicz and the Making of the Myth

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

From the 1960s through the 1980s Joseph L. Mankiewicz participated in several interviews and documentaries to provide evidence to bolster his own version of events, which helped rebuild his ... More

From the 1960s through the 1980s Joseph L. Mankiewicz participated in several interviews and documentaries to provide evidence to bolster his own version of events, which helped rebuild his reputation, darken DeMille’s, and celebrate Ford’s. The story about DeMille mocking Jewish directors through the way he portrayed their accents is a fabrication that appears to be based on the actions of Senator Gerald Nye in 1940 at an America First isolationist rally. The book explores how an unrelated incident became part of the narrative for the SDG meeting.Less

Just Imagine

Richard Barrios

in A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film

Led by the smash hit of Fox's Sunny Side Up, starring Janet Gaynor, original musicals fared well in the early sound era. Such originals as Marianne tended to be more cinematic than the stage ... More

Led by the smash hit of Fox's Sunny Side Up, starring Janet Gaynor, original musicals fared well in the early sound era. Such originals as Marianne tended to be more cinematic than the stage adaptations, although routine could also be the order of the day in such uninspired pieces as Honey and Tanned Legs. The most distinctive entries came near the end of the era: Fox's Just Imagine, a science-fiction musical comedy set in the future of 1930, and MGM's Madam Satan, a combination sex farce, operetta, and disaster epic directed by Cecil B. DeMille.Less

The House Un-American Activities Committee Arrives in Hollywood

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

The opening chapter deals with the political background of the loyalty oaths in Hollywood. The focus then shifts to the internal politics of the Screen Directors Guild and its initial response to the ... More

The opening chapter deals with the political background of the loyalty oaths in Hollywood. The focus then shifts to the internal politics of the Screen Directors Guild and its initial response to the HUAC investigations. The SDG board protested against the initial HUAC investigation in 1947, leading to a great deal of political tension between conservatives and liberals. This initiated Sam Wood and Cecil B. DeMille’s coup against liberal directors in 1947 to take control of the Guild, which was cemented by the conservatives gaining control of the board in the following elections.Less

Putting a Presbyterian in Charge of Hollywood

William D. Romanowski

in Reforming Hollywood: How American Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies

This chapter begins with Will H. Hays, an eminent Presbyterian layman and powerful leader in the national Republican Party, becoming the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and ... More

This chapter begins with Will H. Hays, an eminent Presbyterian layman and powerful leader in the national Republican Party, becoming the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1922. It traces Hays’s efforts to position the Protestant establishment, via the Federal Council of Churches and women’s organizations, as a bulwark against legalized censorship. Hays expected in turn that this alliance would increase his power over film producers and also placate his critics. Favoring industry self-regulation and averse to legalized censorship, the Federal Council of Churches cooperated with the Hays organization in mutually beneficial endeavors that culminated in the production of Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings in 1927.Less

The Myth of the Screen Directors Guild Meeting

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

The SDG meeting of October 22, 1950, is a famous event in Hollywood history for all the wrong reasons. It is legendary because Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, along with many ... More

The SDG meeting of October 22, 1950, is a famous event in Hollywood history for all the wrong reasons. It is legendary because Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, along with many other celebrated directors, played prominent roles. Even small anecdotes from the meeting, such as Ford declaring, “My name is John Ford. I make westerns,” have entered Hollywood folklore. The meeting was convened to discuss the forced recall of Mankiewicz as SDG president by its conservative board headed by DeMille. The catalyst for the recall was a debate about a loyalty oath for Guild members, which was also linked to a union-sanctioned blacklist. Mankiewicz apparently protested to the media about the way the SDG’s board was operating—in particular, its use of an open and signed ballot to push through the measure. In response to the attempted recall by DeMille and other conservatives, Mankiewicz and his supporters took legal action and called a general meeting to discuss the issue. Several hundred directors packed into the Beverley Hills Hotel on October 22, 1950, to do just that.Less

The First Movie: Amos Is the Hero

Ethan Mordden

in All That Jazz: The Life and Times of the Musical Chicago

This chapter explores the background and production history behind Cecil B. DeMille’s adaptation of Watkins’ play. Chicago was a story that Hollywood had wanted to film, and it particularly attracted ... More

This chapter explores the background and production history behind Cecil B. DeMille’s adaptation of Watkins’ play. Chicago was a story that Hollywood had wanted to film, and it particularly attracted Cecil B. DeMille, because he liked to amuse his public by mating wicked doings with farce: exactly as Chicago did. However, DeMille did not share Watkins’ didactic fervor. Rather she used Chicago as a Breughelesque hellscape where, just outside the courtroom windows, the population raged with lawbreaking fever. What DeMille saw in the play was something so latent Watkins herself had not used it: the tale of a troubled marriage. In other words: of a decent and loving guy married to a sociopath.Less

The Return of Our Epic America, 1938–1941

J.E. Smyth

in Reconstructing American Historical Cinema: From Cimarron to Citizen Kane

This chapter examines the trend in historical filmmaking in the U.S during the period from 1938 to 1941. This period represents a return of the film industry to epic America. Some of the most notable ... More

This chapter examines the trend in historical filmmaking in the U.S during the period from 1938 to 1941. This period represents a return of the film industry to epic America. Some of the most notable films produced and released during this period include Stagecoach, directed by John and written by Dudley Nichols, Jesse James, directed by Henry King and written by Nunnaly Johnson and Union Pacific, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.Less

The Origins of the Screen Directors Guild Meeting

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

Chapter 2 examines the background to the loyalty oath dispute. Once in power, the conservatives moved to introduce the loyalty oath for all SDG members. It examines the successful introduction of the ... More

Chapter 2 examines the background to the loyalty oath dispute. Once in power, the conservatives moved to introduce the loyalty oath for all SDG members. It examines the successful introduction of the loyalty oath and then the opposition by some quarters to the oath within the SDG. The divisions with the Guild eventually caused the conservatives to recall Mankiewicz, who began a countercampaign to save his position.Less

The 1940s: Growing Up

Tom Mankiewicz

in My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey through Hollywood

This chapter revolves around Mankiewicz growing up in Los Angeles. He writes about the successes and failures of his family - mother's psychological problems, dad's infidelities, brother's resentment ... More

This chapter revolves around Mankiewicz growing up in Los Angeles. He writes about the successes and failures of his family - mother's psychological problems, dad's infidelities, brother's resentment toward father and brother. Dad Joe has a great career going but not without problems like the battle at the Director's Guild over the Hollywood witchhunt - making directors sign an allegiance to their country. Joe disapproves of this and battles Cecil B. DeMille.Less

Ford’s Heroic Stand

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

The central myth developed about the SDG meeting was that John Ford stood up to DeMille and stopped his drive to recall Mankiewicz and introduce the loyalty oath. However, Ford’s role before, during, ... More

The central myth developed about the SDG meeting was that John Ford stood up to DeMille and stopped his drive to recall Mankiewicz and introduce the loyalty oath. However, Ford’s role before, during, and after the meeting shows that he was basically a conciliator trying to reduce and minimize political friction between DeMille and other sections of the SDG. Beginning with Peter Bogdanovich’s interview of Mankiewicz in 1967, where he embellished and exaggerated Ford’s role, an increasingly flattering version of these events has developed. This has fed into a huge literature that has extolled Ford’s role at the meeting. The constructed incident now strongly influences thinking about Ford’s politics, and this view has influenced film criticism. The chapter also discusses how there was an initially cautious, or sometimes hostile, response to Ford’s cinema by liberal critics partly due to Ford’s conservatism and his support for Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater.Less

Epilogue

Brian Taves

in Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer

Upon Thomas Ince's death on November 19, 1924, the studio shut down only briefly, to ensure that employees would not suffer from being thrown out of work. However, by the end of November, eighty-five ... More

Upon Thomas Ince's death on November 19, 1924, the studio shut down only briefly, to ensure that employees would not suffer from being thrown out of work. However, by the end of November, eighty-five employees had been laid off. No new movies were started, but several were still shooting or in the editing phase, and contracts required their delivery. Ince's wife, Elinor, quickly took an active part in the company's direction. In January 1925, Cecil B. DeMille resigned as director general of the Famous Players–Lasky Corp. He announced the formation of Cinema Corporation of America, a $10 million concern, in association with PDC, where he was vice president in charge of production. DeMille immediately needed a studio property, allowing the Ince headquarters in Culver City to be sold to him on favorable terms, for $500,000, with a $50,000 cash down payment, renaming it the Cecil B. DeMille studios.Less

Two Paradigmatic Tales, between Genres and Genders

W. Anthony Sheppard

in Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination

This chapter focuses on multiple versions of the Madame Butterfly narrative in Hollywood film and on multiple versions of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 silent film The Cheat. One focus is on the ... More

This chapter focuses on multiple versions of the Madame Butterfly narrative in Hollywood film and on multiple versions of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 silent film The Cheat. One focus is on the relationship between music in these films and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and on how the Butterfly narrative was reworked to project developing perceptions of race and gender. The relationship between operatic and cinematic Orientalist representation is explored in the 1932 Madame Butterfly and the 1962 My Geisha. DeMille’s “The Cheat” inspired works stoking fears of the “Yellow Peril.” The story was transformed into a play (1918). Camille Erlanger’s “Forfaiture,” the first opera to be based on a film, premiered in Paris (1921). A silent film was released in 1923 and a sound film in 1931. In 1937, a French film starred Sessue Hayakawa, the Japanese actor who played the “villain” in 1915. This offers an opportunity to compare the role of music and realization of Orientalism in four genres.Less

Reproducing Carmen in the United States: Geraldine Farrar, the Met, and Beyond

Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz

in Carmen and the Staging of Spain: Recasting Bizet's Opera in the Belle Epoque

Chapter 9 explains that Carmen proved an ideal vehicle for the new technologies of the twentieth century, embraced by the new recording artists whose prestige was borrowed from the operatic world. ... More

Chapter 9 explains that Carmen proved an ideal vehicle for the new technologies of the twentieth century, embraced by the new recording artists whose prestige was borrowed from the operatic world. The young American opera star Geraldine Farrar, building on the legacies of Emma Calvé and Maria Gay, enjoyed an unprecedented and unmistakably modern celebrity as Carmen, born of her ability to exploit the confluence of operatic performance, recordings, and the silent film industry. In this context, the Metropolitan Opera’s attempt to stage a genuine Spanish opera in the guise of Enrique Granados’s Goyescas was undermined by comparison with the vibrant New York traditions of Carmen in the winter of 1915–16, when the fashion for all things Spanish was so intense that Carl Van Vechten dubbed it “the Spanish blaze.”Less

Metropolitan Women: Geraldine Farrar and Marion Talley Silence Opera on Screen

Jennifer Fleeger

in Mismatched Women: The Siren's Song Through the Machine

Making their screen debuts little more than a decade apart, Geraldine Farrar and Marion Talley, both singers with the Metropolitan Opera Company, reveal the degree to which changes in the cinematic ... More

Making their screen debuts little more than a decade apart, Geraldine Farrar and Marion Talley, both singers with the Metropolitan Opera Company, reveal the degree to which changes in the cinematic representation of the opera diva can be traced to larger cultural and technological shifts in the reproduction of music. Farrar’s earnings on her silent films were enormous, thanks not only to her devoted fan following, but also to the way that her film image relied on signifiers of her opera roles. Marion Talley‘s first film, a short for Warners’ new sound-on-disc system, the Vitaphone, flopped. Although it seems unbelievable that a silent screen diva would be more popular than an audible opera singer, the shift from live to recorded sound in film exhibition unraveled the requirements for representing singing women.Less

1935

Anthony Slide

in "It's the Pictures That Got Small": Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age

In these diary entries written between January and July 1935, Hollywood screenwriter Charles Brackett talks about Win or Lose, a script that he was working with Louise Long but was pulled out ... More

In these diary entries written between January and July 1935, Hollywood screenwriter Charles Brackett talks about Win or Lose, a script that he was working with Louise Long but was pulled out suddenly; his teamup with Frank Partos for the horror film Terror by Night; his meeting with Cecil B. DeMille in relation to the movie The Crusades; his wife Elizabeth's nervous breakdown; his decision to sell the house in which he was born in Saratoga Springs, New York; Marc Connelly's divorce from wife Madeline, who was rumored to have an affair with Marc's best friend, Bob Sherwood, whom she eventually married.Less

Conclusion

Kevin Brianton

in Hollywood Divided: The 1950 Screen Directors Guild Meeting and the Impact of the Blacklist

Drawing together the strands present in the book, discussing how historians build on false ideas of previous ones, the conclusion calls for a more grounded approach to history.