Cecil B. DeMille’s ‘Amazing Vision’ for Filmmaking

Susan King chronicles some of the advancements of Cecil B. DeMille – a pioneer of filmmaking along with D.W. Griffith but worked well into the studio era.

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The only time Cecil B. DeMille’s granddaughter saw the pioneering film director annoyed was when his body began to fail him. “He was a bull,” said Cecilia DeMille Presley. “He exercised every day.”

So even a heart attack didn’t stop him during production in Egypt of what would be his final movie as a director, the lavish 1956 biblical epic “The Ten Commandments,” starring Charlton Heston as Moses, a film that has become an Easter mainstay on ABC.

Presley, who grew up in her grandfather’s mansion in Los Feliz, said the heart attack was more serious than people thought. But DeMille and his family kept it under wraps. “He knew if word got out, it would be an absolute publicity nightmare. Mother took over,” Presley noted, referring to Cecil’s daughter, also named Cecilia. “She directed the film until he got better.”

Presley and photographer-film historian Mark A. Vieira have collaborated on a lavish new coffee table book, “Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic,” which features a treasure trove from the filmmaker’s archives of concept paintings, images of costumes, props and breathtakingly beautiful still photographs from his first film, the 1914 western “The Squaw Man,” to “The Ten Commandments.”

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