DeMille X 2: The Ten Commandments (1923 & 1956)

In Hollywood, remaking classic movies more than once has a long and venerable history.  Consider that such classics as “The Mark of Zorro,” “The Prisoner of Zenda,” “A Star is Born,” “Huckleberry Finn,” and “Stella Dallas” have all been made more than once – and using the same title.  Occasionally, a film will be remade under a different title, such as “The Shop around the Corner” (1940) morphing into a 1949 musical called “In the Good Old Summer Time. Then there is 1939’s “Love Affair,” starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne being remade under the same title by Warren Beatty in 1994, and also filmed as “An Affair to Remember” (starring Cary Grant and Debra Kerr) in 1957 and “Sleepless in Seattle,” (starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan) in 1993.

It is indeed rare when a director will remake a movie he’s already shot. In 1933, the young Frank Capra turned a Damon Runyon short story called “Madam La Gimp” into the hit film “Lady for a Day” starring Warren William and May Robson. 28 years later, in what would turn out to be the last film he ever directed, Capra remade the film as “Pocketful of Miracles,” starring Bette Davis and Glenn Ford.  Rarest of all is when a director will remake one of his pictures using the same title.  Such is the case with Cecil B. DeMille, who both directed and produced The Ten Commandments twice: in 1923 and then, 32 years later, in 1956 .Both were blockbusters; both were immensely profitable; both bore the unmistakable fingerprints of DeMille whose genius lay not so much in directing films as in being a master-level showman.

It was DeMille’s first big biblical feature, and it forever changed the direction of his career and his legacy as a director.

Prior to 1923, DeMille had become known for sex and society films with titles like Old Wives for New (1918), Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), and Why Change Your Wife? (1920). A particular DeMille trademark was scenes involving naked women in bathtubs. So when he held a contest in 1922 for fans to name the theme of his next film, it was a bit of a surprise when he chose the suggestion, “If you break the Ten Commandments—they will break you” as the guiding quote for his new epic. Many wondered if DeMille was the proper director to create a film about a scriptural story held sacred by both Jews and Christians.

In order to drive home the point of the continuing importance of the Decalogue, DeMille and his scenarist, Jeanie MacPherson created a two-part story in which the Israelite Exodus acts as a frame for a modern morality tale about two brothers, their pious mother, and their differing views on the relevance of the Commandments in the Roaring Twenties.

In a 90-minute feature, this meant DeMille had no time to spare, with about 45 minutes to tell the story of the Exodus and Moses’ receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. So the 1923 version is missing many classic scenes from the 1956 film, like the basket on the Nile, the burning bush, and Moses’ discovery of his Hebrew origins. (Not to mention the love triangle between Moses, Rameses, and the throne princess Nefretiri.) The story picks up at the plagues and jumps quickly to the Exodus and the parting of the Red Sea.

Theodore Roberts plays Moses, locking horns with Charles De Rouchfort as Pharaoh. At age 60, Roberts plays a considerably older prophet with a long Father Time beard, but still pulls off a dynamic performance. DeRochefort is beefy and formidable, but possesses none of the Oriental androgyny and cold arrogance of Yul Brynner. In this version Moses’ sister Miriam (Estelle Taylor) conspires with Dathan( Lawson Butt to build the golden calf—an unfair narrative invention which negates Miriam’s role as a woman-hero of the Old Testament. In the orgy scene, DeMille lets loose his lady-in-the-bathtub fantasies, filming Miriam writhing on the calf idol as the Israelites descend into graphic decadence.

The outdoor scenes in “Egypt” were filmed on a massive set built on the Guadalupe-Nipomo dunes(18)about 80 miles north of Santa Barbara County. For the weeks of filming on the California coast, DeMille constructed a tent encampment of 3500 actors, technicians, and extras, divided into 14 companies of men and 7 companies of women, and governed by strict rules against alcohol, gambling, fraternizing, and coarse language. Among the extras were 225 Orthodox Jews, hired to “look like their ancestors.”  DeMille, who himself was the son of a Jewish mother – the British Mathilda Samuel – thought the Orthodox Jews would make “the most authentic Israelites.”  Hollywood legend has it that on their first day on set, the extras were forced to fast because the commissary served ham for dinner.

DeMille’s exterior set for the Pharaoh’s city was 750 feet wide by 109 feet high, and included an avenue of 21 plaster sphinxes. He ordered 250 chariots for the chase scene to the “Red Sea,” along with the horses to pull them, and stables to include 5,000 donkeys, sheep, goats, and camels.

DeMille’s enormous ancient Egypt sets has become a Hollywood legend.  The construction of four 35-foot-tall statues of the Pharoah Ramses, 21 five-ton sphinxes, and city walls over 120 feet high was all constructed on the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. When filming ended DeMille simply had this entire Egyptian city set bulldozed and buried. In DeMille’s autobiography he stated:

“If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope that they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization extended all the way to the Pacific Coast of North America.” – “The Autobiography of Cecil B.

The cost of shooting the film quickly spiraled out of control, nearly causing Paramount to pull funding from the film. One desperate missive from producer Adolph Zukor in Los Angeles was sent to “Camp DeMille” by telegraph:

“C.B.—You have lost your mind. Stop filming and return to Los Angeles at once.—A.Z.”

The Ten Commandments was the first studio film to use Technicolor. In order to get in on DeMille’s epic, Technicolor(23) offered to shoot sections of the Exodus scene alongside the regular black and white cameras for free. If DeMille didn’t like the footage, he didn’t have to use it. The Technicolor footage was edited into the mostly black and white film, along with traditional toned tinting and the Handschliegl process of hand-coloring elements of a scene frame-by-frame.

The special effects of the fiery pillar and the parting of the Red Sea are enjoyable for their low-tech innovation. The “pillar” of fire was more of a curtain – actual flames superimposed on the screen through double exposure. The parting of the Red Sea was accomplished by use of molded gelatin set on top of a metal table, melted by gas jets. Running the film in reverse in fast motion achieved the sense of the waters parting and standing at jiggling attention. Certain low-budget effects and anachronisms, like the Children of Israel holding staffs with Stars of David (King David didn’t come along until centuries later) and toy horses and chariots sinking in a shallow tub of water after being “drowned” in the Red Sea, only add to the charm of the feature.

Make no mistake, however, this spectacular telling of a biblical narrative was like nothing anyone had ever seen at the time. According to reports of the New York premiere in the Times, the audience applauded at the parting of the Jell-O sea. The Hollywood opening, held, fittingly, in Grauman’s Egyptian Theater, complete with a Vaudeville-style live prologue, “A Night in Pharaoh’s Palace” must have only added to the spectacle.

With false modesty, DeMille dismissed the film’s unheard-of cost of 1.5 million as the “cheapest picture that was ever made.” As he said in a December 23, 1923 article in the New York Times:

“This spectacle will show people that we have an obligation to the public and that motion pictures can be more than mere stories […] The reason for the spectacle in ‘The Ten Commandments’ is to bring force to the picture […] The idea of the spectacle as it is presented is worth a million.”

Then there is the second part of the movie: the modern tale.  This part shows the usefulness of the Ten Commandments in modern life, based off a story of two brothers fighting for the love of one woman.

 John MacTavish (Richard Dix), Dan MacTavish (Rod La Roque) and a waif of the streets Leatrice Joy whom the MacTavishes have taken in.  Dix, a carpenter, is much under the influence of his Bible-reading mother, (played by Edythe Chapman), but La Roque, who worships the golden calf of quick millions, decides to leave the religious atmosphere of her house, taking Miss Joy with him as his wife. Sally Lung, played by Nita Naldi and described as a “Eurasian adventuress,” wheedles costly baubles from Dan MacTavish, who has grown rich and neglectful of his wife, Miss Joy.  Only the audience knows that Miss Naldi has escaped from the leper colony at Molokai.

 John MacTavish tells his brother Dan that the sustaining fibers he intends to use in constructing a new cathedral are shoddy, but the latter scoffs. When Mother MacTavish visits the new cathedral, it collapses upon her and kills her.

Meanwhile, Dan, who has contracted leprosy from Miss Lung, shoots her and flees.  Temporarily hidden from the police in his wife’s bed, Dan is later killed in a speedboat accident as he races for the Mexican border.  The repentant Miss Joy is lectured by John MacTavish on the folly of breaking the Commandments and worshiping the Golden Calf.  She learns her lesson and the film ends with the two embracing atop a building he is constructing.  Fade Out . . .

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The 1956 version, of course, consisted of only one story.  In many ways, DeMille used this movie to spread an anti-Communist message. In an extraordinary gesture left out of the television version, when the curtains parted, DeMille himself appeared on the screen. "The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the state, or are they free souls under God? The same battle continues throughout the world today." In the midst of the Cold War, DeMille's message was clear: Moses represented the United States; the pharaoh represented the Soviet Union. To drive home his point, DeMille cast mostly Americans as the Israelites and mostly Europeans as the Egyptians.

Politics even entered the matter of the Ten Plagues. DeMille depicted three: turning the water into blood, hail, and the killing of the first-born sons. For the blood, he used a garden hose with dyed water. For the hail, mothballs were considered too fragile, so he used popcorn. The tenth plague was often portrayed as an angel with a bloody knife, but DeMille thought the image wasn't scary enough. He chose a green fog that swooped down out of the sky. In the age of duck-and-cover drills, the fog was meant to evoke a nuclear cloud.

As part of his plan to spread biblical values, DeMille persuaded Paramount to pay for granite monoliths of the Ten Commandments to be placed in public squares across the country. Over 4,000 were made. One of these monuments, in Austin, Texas, became the basis for the Supreme Court decision in 2005 that allowed the Ten Commandments on public property if they had a secular purpose. A publicity stunt for The Ten Commandments became the basis of landmark U.S. law.

De Mille put together a first-class cast

Charlton Heston, who had previously worked for DeMille in The Greatest Show on Earth, won the part of Moses after he impressed DeMille (at an audition) with his knowledge of ancient Egypt. Interestingly enough, though Moses most likely lived sometime in the early New Kingdom, it was Old Kingdom Egyptian facts Heston used at his audition that won him his legendary role. Heston's newborn son, Fraser (born February 12, 1955), appeared as the infant Moses and was three months old during filming.

The part of Nefretiri, the Egyptian throne princess, was considered "the most sought after role of the year" in 1954. Ann Blyth, Vanessa Brown, Joan Evans, Rhonda Fleming, Colleen Gray, Jane Griffiths, Audrey Hepburn, Jean Marie, Vivien Leigh, Jane Russell, and Joan Taylor were considered for the part. DeMille liked Audrey Hepburn but dismissed her because of her figure, which was considered too slim for the character's Egyptian gowns. Anne Baxter (who was considered for the part of Moses' wife) was cast in the role.

Judith Ames, Anne Bancroft, Anne Baxter, Shirley Booth, Diane Brewster, Peggie Castle, June Clayworth, Linda Darnell, Laura Elliot, Rhonda Fleming, Rita Gam, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Green, Barbara Hale, Allison Hayes, Frances Lansing, Patricia Neal, Marie Palmer, Jean Peters, Ruth Roman, Barbara Rush, and Elizabeth Sellers were considered for the part of Sephora.[17] Grace Kelly, DeMille's first choice, was unavailable.[17] DeMille was "very much impressed" with Yvonne De Carlo's(39) performance as a "saintly type of woman" in MGM's Sombrero.[18][19] He "sensed in her a depth, an emotional power, a womanly strength which the part of Sephora needed and which she gave it."[20] Sephora is the Douay–Rheims version of the name of Zipporah.

Merle Oberon and Claudette Colbert were considered for the role of Bithiah before DeMille chose Jayne Meadows (who declined) and finally cast Nina Foch (40), on the suggestion of Henry Wilcoxon, who had worked with her in Scaramouche.

For the role of Memnet(41),Flora Robson was considered and Bette Davis was interviewed (DeMille's casting journal also notes Marjorie Rambeau and Marie Windsor)[23] but DeMille chose Judith Anderson after screening Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.)

DeMille was reluctant to cast anyone who had appeared in 20th Century Fox' The Egyptian,[24] a rival production at the time. Several exceptions to this are the casting of John Carradine and Mimi Gibson (in credited supporting roles) and Michael Ansara and Peter Coe (in uncredited minor roles), who appeared in both films.

For other major roles, DeMille cast Yul Brynner as Rameses, Debra Paget as Lilia, Sir Cedrick Hardwicke as Sethi, John Derek as Joshua, Edward G. Robinson as Dathan, Douglas Dumbrille as Jannes, Vincent Price as Baka, and Martha Scott as Yochabel.

There were, for the time, some spectacular special effects. The illusion of the Red Sea parting was achieved by large "dump tanks" that were flooded, then the film was shown in reverse. The two frothing walls of water were created by water dumped constantly into "catch basin areas" then the foaming, churning water was visually manipulated and used sideways for the walls of water. A gelatin substance was added to the water in the tanks to give it more of a sea water consistency. Although the dump tanks have long since been removed, the catch basin section of this tank still exists today on the Paramount lot, directly in front of the exterior sky backdrop, in the central portion of the studio. It can still be flooded for water scenes, but when not being used in a production, it is an extension of a parking lot.

As with the 1923 film, the sets(52) for this production were also immense(53).Remember, even the most intimate scene in a movie has anywhere between 35 and 50 people standing behind the camera and around the set.  It is anything but intimate.The chief of the special effects department,William Sapp was not involved with creating the burning bush; instead it was handled by one of his assistants. Sapp was critical of the result, pointing out that it was not a "burning" bush at all, but a glowing one. He claimed had he crafted the bush it would have burned on-camera. For the rest of his career in Hollywood, Sapp was bitter about that effect.

The Infant Moses was played by Charlton Heston’s 3-month old son Fraser Clarke Heston.  Now 65 years old, this is the only film in which Fraser appeared on screen.  He has gone on to have a fairly successful career as a producer/director, and has been married to the same woman for 40 years . . . rare by Hollywood standards.

A few factoids:

1, 644 publications referred to by Henry Noerdlinger in research for the script. These sources included: the Midrash Rabbah, an ancient compilation of rabbinic commentaries; the Qur'an; Philo's "Life of Moses;" and the writings of Josephus and Eusebius.

Five years in the making: 1951-1956

161 days of production: 44 days in Egypt.

One year in post-production, editing special effects; editors worked 16-hour days, seven days a week.

5,000 camels, 5,000 water buffalo, about 4,000 oxen, 2,000 geese and 2,000 ducks were used during the Egypt shoot.

8,000 to 14,000 extras were used in the movie.

The Exodus from Egypt was shot in three 10-minute takes, each using one reel of negative film; it took two hours to reassemble all the extras back to the starting point after each take.

200,000 gallons of water a day used on location in Egypt; wells were drilled on the site.

12 of Paramount's 18 sound stages were used.

A giant 200,000-cubic-foot pool was built in the middle of the Paramount parking lot, with 12 smaller tanks on either side. They sequentially released a total of 360,000 gallons of water to create the parting of the Red Sea sequence.

25,000 feet of film was shot using four specially made VistaVision cameras.

DeMille was 73 years old when they shot on location in Egypt. He lost 21 pounds during that shoot. He was 75 when the movie finally premiered. He suffered two heart attacks during the making of "The Ten Commandments."

$13.2 million to make. Initial box offices receipts were $64 million.

The movie was previewed in only one location, Salt Lake City, in August 1956.

The Ten Commandments received 7 Oscar nominations: for best picture, best color cinematography, best art/set direction in color, costume design, editing and sound.  Despite all the nominations, it received but a single Oscar: for best special effects.  (The Best Picture Oscar went to Michael Todd’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”)

DeMille was 73 years old when undertook the enormous responsibility of both directing and producing the Ten Commandments.  He would continue working on the picture for more than 2 years, He suffered two heart attack during filming, and yet was only away from the set for 3 days.  It would turn out to be the last picture he directed.  He died two years later, on January 21, 1959, having created what at the time was the second most successful motion picture in history.