C. B. DeMille: 70 Annotated Films

C. B. DeMille: 70 Annotated Films Roberts. Birchard. Cecils. DeMille's Hollywood. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004. index. Illustrated. 430 pp. $39.95 cloth.

Of all the great Hollywood pioneers, Cecil B. DeMille has been the one most commonly neglected and slighted, his importance marginalized. Maybe DeMille was too much of a crude American original, as adept as D. W. Griffith at exploiting ingrained prejudice. The Cheat (1915), for example, is probably as racist in it premise and implications as The Birth of a Nation was, though on a more epic scale. Griffith insulted a more vocal minority that would shame his reputation 50 years after his death, when the Directors Guild of America erased his name from its annual award. Had academic film history been starting rather than ending under the influence of political correctness, Griffith might not have fared so well from the beginning, no matter whether he invented and reformed film narrative through the not-so-subtle development of parallel montage. Next to Griffith who started about six years earlier, DeMille was the second great pioneer. D. W. Griffith became an icon, however, while DeMille ended up becoming a sort of cartoon stereotype of Hollywood directors. Ironically, in terms of box office, the cartoon was ultimately more successful than the icon commercially.

Perhaps Griffith fared better than DeMille with the critics because Griffith was not such an obvious vulgarian, ready to find his way into viewer's hearts through the imagined bathtubs of antiquity. But surely critical hostility goes deeper than DeMille's cynical Biblical vulgarity. Looking at such a DeMille feature as This Day and Age (1933), liberal viewers (a tribe responsible by and large for the writing and conceptualization of "film history," something of an oxymoron, since many film "historians" are not real "historians," by either training or inclination) could easily conclude that this law & order propaganda vehicle that approves the lynch-mentality thinking of a group of well-meaning but ignorant high school nazis intent on depriving a local thug of his civil rights could only have been made by a rabid Republican archconservative. Robert Birchard admits that the film "has been branded a fascist tract," but he then attempts to dodge that bullet by calling the film an "allegory." Such a fancy label, however, cannot obliterate the film's disrespect for individual rights, when the "boys" exact a confession out of a criminal by dangling him by his ankles over a pit of rats. Birchard also dodges the ghastly implications of the film's message by hiding behind production details. Repulsive though this film may be, it was effectively made on not much of a budget. Like D. W. Griffith, DeMille certainly knew how to manipulate emotions at the expense of discretion and tact.

The book's Preface poses questions such as "What set DeMille apart?" His vulgarity and his cynicism, perhaps his detractors might say, but that's too facile an answer; it could also be his business sense and his talent. "Why did he remain successful," when others did not? Because he was better qualified than others to think like a mogul, or maybe because he kept his finger on the national pulse and compromised his "vision" accordingly? Because his Right-leaning tendencies protected him during the era of Cold War hysteria? Is there any other reason why The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)-which wasn't, really, so "great," despite its inflated title-should have won the Best Picture Oscar? Because it was politically correct for its time, or at least nonpolitical? Or because the Company town takes care of its own?

No one would argue that DeMille was not himself famous and even a celebrity. ("Ready for your close-up, C. B.?") What American directors were commonly known by the public by name? Chaplin and Hitchcock, surely, but also DeMille, the showman, more so than David Wark Griffith or Erich von Stroheim, or even Orson Welles. And yet books on any of these other directors outnumber books on DeMille by at least ten to one. I located over 20 Chaplin titles in my own personal library, for example. The Timothy Lyons Chaplin Guide to References and Resources (1979) lists 95 Chaplin books published between 1920 and 1975. Tom Leitch's splendid Encyclopedia of AIfred Hitchcock (2002) includes a Hitchcock Bibliography that runs to 70 titles. Robert S. Birchard claims that "there has been no shortage of biographical interest in Cecil B. DeMille over the years," but the bibliography hardly substantiates that claim. Five books are listed devoted to the director and his work, including DeMille's 1959 autobiography. Since the body of DeMiIIe scholarship is so underwhelming, that is surely the strongest argument for publishing Birchard's book.

No doubt, then, another book on the director can be justified. The Preface raises questions that should be answered, but are not: Was DeMille "misunderstood by his critics" or merely a reliable Hollywood hack? If the latter, why publish the book? Because it concerns "DeMille's Hollywood?" If so, how was AlA Hollywood different from anyone else's? Was the Andrew Sards placement of DeMille on "The Far Side of Paradise" deserved? Or judicious? The short Preface hardly suffices to introduce the work appropriately before Birchard gets to his admitted "notes" on the films.