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Cecil B. DeMille, 1881-1959
Born Ashfield, Massachusetts
Director Cecil B. DeMille's repertory boasts such classic films as Cleopatra (1934), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and The Ten Commandments (1956), but his significance began in the 1910s and 1920s when he helped found the Hollywood movie colony. He directed dozens of early movies -- including The Squaw Man (1914), Carmen (1915), Male and Female (1919), The Ten Commandments (1923), and The King of Kings (1927) -- and helped establish Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, and Paulette Goddard by casting them repeatedly in his pictures. DeMille later appeared as himself in Sunset Boulevard (1950), and the film ends with Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) famously saying, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." This photograph, taken by his cinematographer Karl Struss, depicts DeMille in his ornate studio office.
Karl Struss, 1919 |