Cecil B. DeMille Pictures for Producers Distributing Corporation release. Produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by Jeanie Macpherson and Beulah Marie Dix, from a play by Beulah Marie Dix and Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland. Art directors: Paul Iribe, Mitchell Leisen, and Anton Grot. Photography: J. Peverell Marley. Film editor: Anne Bauchens
Picture started: June 22, 1925. Picture finished: August 19, 1925. Length: 9,980 feet (ten reels). Cost: $477,479.29. Released: November 15, 1925. Gross: $522,665.77
Cast: Joseph Schildkraut (Kenneth Paulton, the bridegroom), Jetta Goudal (Malena, his bride), William Boyd (Rev. Jack Moreland), Vera Reynolds (Bess Tyrell), Trixie Friganza (Aunt Harriet), Casson Ferguson (Adrian Tompkins), Julia Faye (Dolly Foules), Charles Clary (doctor), Clarence Burton, Charles West, and Sally Rand
While in New York pondering his future, DeMille was approached by Henry Creange, an executive with Cheney Silks. Acting in a semiofficial capacity for the French government, Creange proposed that DeMille, and perhaps other American filmmakers, make pictures in Europe. The films would be made with an American director and star, and the rest of the cast and the production facilities would be European, allowing exploitation as European product on the Continent and American product in the States.
But DeMille put consideration of this proposition aside when he received a report from his business manager, John Fisher, about financier Jeremiah Milbank, who had recently taken over W. W. Hodkinson, Inc., the struggling distribution company that Hodkinson had established after his ouster from Paramount. The newly reorganized company was known as Producers Distributing Corporation. DeMille met with Milbank in New York, and, according to the director, they came to an understanding only when he outlined his plans to make a film about the life of Christ to the deeply religious Milbank. DeMille somewhat idealized his memory of the situation. The inspiration for The King of Kings would not emerge for another year, but Milbank and DeMille found much in common. Producers Distributing Corporation needed product, and DeMille needed an organization that could finance his future productions.
DeMille and Milbank came to an agreement that created the Cinema Corporation of America as a holding company for Producers Distributing Corporation (P.D.C.) and a new entity, Cecil B. DeMille Pictures, Inc., which would be controlled by DeMille and Milbank’s Realty and Securities Company. After the agreement was set, DeMille arranged to purchase the Thomas H. Ince Studio in Culver City, which was for sale after Ince’s untimely death at age forty-four.1
After the shock of being fired, DeMille made a relatively amicable exit from Famous Players-Lasky, but his departure was complex enough to require a separate contract covering various details. Famous Players-Lasky agreed to release Leatrice Joy and Rod LaRocque from their contracts, if they chose, so that they could sign with DeMille Pictures. The two companies agreed to a “favored nation” status with regard to cooperation, and Famous Players-Lasky also agreed to give DeMille $50,000 worth of camera and lighting equipment and to release certain key personnel should they also choose to make the move. On February 1,1925, DeMille wrote Jesse Lasky:
There are a number of people in the Coast studios who have been associated with me for many years, even before the formation of the Lasky Company, who may desire to continue their association with me personally. While these people have not expressed themselves, the situation may arise, and I should like to know your attitude in regard to them:
George Dixon, the stage manager, who has been with me for almost eighteen years. Bessie McGaffey, head of the Research Department. Hattie, the hairdresser, who has a contract with you, but who has been regarded as one of my organization.2 There is also a carpenter named Lee Moran, who was not associated with my unit in any way, but whom I would like to take in place of [George] Dixon, if you decide that you do not wish to release Dixon. Our contract gives us the right to take a designer, wardrobe woman and draper and I will take two women that I placed in the wardrobe myself, unless they prefer to remain with Famous. The man from [Roy] Pomeroy’s [trick effects] department and the man from the prop making department I will select after I get on the Coast and discuss the matter with [Famous Players-Lasky studio manager Victor H.] Clark[e] and the heads of those two departments, so that I will in no way cripple those departments.3
DeMille told Lasky that the camera equipment he was taking was valued at $29,000, and he requested some Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapor lamps, prints of his personal productions, and some miscellaneous furniture to make up the $21,000 difference. On February 4, Lasky replied that it was already his understanding that DeMille would take the lights and that this would settle the equipment issue. Lasky wrote:
We are quite willing to turnover to you, not by way of any trade, but as a courtesy which we are glad to show you, the library of prints of your own subjects….
We forwarded you yesterday original contracts of Leatrice Joy, Rod LaRocque, Lillian Rich and Vera Reynolds. While you only requested the first two, you will want the others sooner or later.4
DeMille’s departure, it seems, afforded Famous Players-Lasky an opportunity to trim the payroll of some DeMille players who were perceived to have limited prospects. However, it took several more days before Lasky came to a decision on some of DeMille’s other personnel requests. Finally on February 13 Lasky allowed that “We are willing to let you have George Dixon, Lee Moran, also Hattie, the hairdresser, although we are sorry to lose her. We want, and expect to keep, Bessie McGaffey, so I hope you will refrain from talking business with her. We will turn over the magnavox [public address system] outfit to you with the understanding that you will agree to lend it to us whenever we need it. As we would not use it often, this will be no inconvenience to you I am sure. …”5
With much pomp and civic display the Ince lot was formally rechristened DeMille Studio on March 2,1925. DeMille’s connection with Famous Players-Lasky officially ended a few days later with a telegram from Jesse Lasky to Victor H. Clarke:
Regarding deMille weekly advances we served notice on deMille January ninth and his sixty days brings termination of contract to March eleventh. Contract provides that as an advance producer shall be entitled to receive on account of percentages on Saturday November seventeenth, 1923, sum of $6,731.00 and on Saturday of each and every week there after during term of this agreement same amount. Therefore check on March seventh which is last Saturday of term is last one DeMille is entitled to receive….6
One issue that became a sore point with DeMille was whether his new company had a contract with actress Bebe Daniels. In January 1925, just before DeMille arrived in New York on the first leg of his aborted European vacation, Jesse Lasky had been negotiating with Daniels over a new contract. “However we could not agree on terms,” wrote Lasky, “and when she told me she could get more money and better conditions from other producers than I was offering her I advised her frankly that she was a free agent and she could go and negotiate elsewhere without any hard feelings on my part.”7Lasky advised DeMille that he was free to negotiate with Daniels.
Mr. Lasky approved my negotiating with Bebe Daniels for a contract to extend from the termination of her employment with Famous Players…. I started negotiations with her and same were carried to satisfactory conclusion on or about February ninth at which time [P.D.C. executive John] Flinn and I made definite agreement with Daniels … she agreeing to give us option on her services on such terms until February twenty first. On or about February nineteenth she was asked for an extension of one week’s time which she granted and on February twenty sixth I notified her through her New York office that we elected to exercise our option.8
Everything was set, but in early March Daniels began raising issues over what DeMille called “four minor points.” On March 16 he offered to take care of her fan-mail expenses up to fifty dollars per week, if she would concede the other points. But Daniels still wouldn’t sign the formal contract. Ten days later DeMille learned that Robert T. Kane, acting as her representative, approached Jesse Lasky and asked “what the differences were between Famous Players and Bebe. After a discussion he informed me if I would make one concession she would rather work for Famous Players as conditions had arisen which made it almost imperative she live in east.”
DeMille was incredulous because throughout his negotiations with Daniels and her attorney she had stressed her need to return to California for her health. DeMille was blunt in expressing his disappointment in Robert Kane. “For your private information,” DeMille wired Lasky, “Robert Kane was endeavoring to make a connection with me which did not materialize and I assume he is endeavoring to sell Daniels elsewhere as a result of this although I am rather surprised at this action as I financed his last picture without compensation of any kind.”9
To attorney Nathan Burkan in New York, DeMille reported, “At that time [when I was negotiating for Daniels’s services] a certain gentleman expected to be working in the west for the coming year but a recent change in business plans has made it necessary for him to work in the east and this is the sole reason in my opinion for Daniels trying to break her contract.”10
DeMille advised Burkan that he was “very anxious” to secure the services of comedian Raymond Griffith, and that if Famous Players-Lasky wanted Daniels, he would be willing to trade Daniels for Griffith. On April 4, 1925, Burkan wired DeMille with details of a meeting he held with Adolph Zukor: “He states … that she has changed her mind and wants to continue with the Famous Players. That while terms of a contract between her and Famous Players have been agreed upon it has not yet been signed and in view of your claim that you have a contract with her they will suspend doing anything further…. If she is willing to work for you Famous will give her up. Zukor said he would not exchange [Raymond] Griffith for Daniels as he thot Griffith had greater potentialities.”11
DeMille continued to push for an acceptable trade with Famous Play-ers-Lasky for another actor, but on April 8,1925, Nathan Burkan advised DeMille: “Am of the opinion you have no valid claim upon Daniels services…. My opinion is based upon the fact that the contract could not be performed within one year from the date it was made and accordingly is void under the statute of frauds.”12
DeMille’s disappointment was mollified somewhat when he was advised by his distribution people that “Bebe Daniels has fair box office strength in the smaller towns but means very little in the cities,”13 but he and Milbank were attempting to establish a major studio that could compete with Famous Players-Lasky and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and to attract attention they needed more star power than Rod LaRocque and Leatrice Joy could provide.
Consideration was given to signing Elinor Glyn as a “supervisor” for a series of pictures. Glyn was best known as the author of such lurid novels as Three Weeks (1907) and His Hour (1910), which became the basis for some highly popular screen adaptations in the 1920s. She managed to parlay her success into a lucrative contract with Metro Pictures. Nathan Burkan outlined her deal to DeMille:
Under Metro contract Glyn receives one third of their profits of each picture with a guarantee that such share of the profits will not be less than forty thousand dollars within twenty-four months from date of release. In addition she receives forty two hundred sixty dollars for writing scenario and three hundred dollars [per week] for supervision during making of pictures. Guarantee and payment aggregate approximately fifty thousand dollars per picture. Three Weeks grossed in the United States approximately six hundred thousand dollars. His Hour four hundred ten thousand dollars. Reliably informed that Glyn one of the very best draws on Metro program and world gross per Glyn program picture should be approximately seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.[Glyn] Should like a proposition whereby she has a percentage participating interest in the picture with a very substantial guarantee. Suggest you formulate very best possible proposition having in mind compensation now being paid by Metro and their desire to continue her services at a substantial increase. Her idea is to make three or four specials.14
DeMille decided to pass on making an offer to Glyn because he believed “her best paying material were her well known books and from now on [I] feel she would be making originals.”15
The Producers Distributing Corporation DeMille Pictures combination was on shaky ground from day one. Following its founder’s original design for Paramount Pictures, the old W.W. Hodkinson company had acted as a distributor for various producers but never established its own production arm or theater chain. Hodkinson’s ham-handed tactics also alienated a number of potentially lucrative customers.
“As you probably know,” P.D.C president Frederick C. Munroe advised DeMille,
Cincinnati is completely controlled by Ike Libson and in the past our company has sold him practically nothing. Some years ago he had a disagreement with Hodkinson which he never got over and on that account also because of the fact that our product was not anything very great, he has never had a friendly feeling toward us—quite the contrary. Last year we sold him six or eight pictures for Cincinnati and he went along month after month refusing to give us play dates until we threatened him with the Film Board of Trade and he then gave us play dates. In addition to Cincinnati, Libson has houses in Indianapolis, Louisville, Dayton, Ohio, Akron, Ohio, and Columbus, Ohio. In some of these other towns we have played a few pictures with him but never have sold him anything like the majority of our product 16
William H. Morgan, hired away from First National Pictures to serve as P.D.C.’s new sales manager, was able to patch up the old wounds with Libson; he obtained a contract for twenty-three pictures in Cincinnati and thirty-two pictures for Dayton. But while P.D.C. was making some head way pushing the forthcoming DeMille Pictures product to theaters in midsized cities like Buffalo and Syracuse, the company was still without a first-run outlet in Chicago.
Still, DeMille was enthusiastic about the prospects of his new company, and with a touch of self-satisfaction he reported to Jesse Lasky, “I am not only up to my ears in work, but my ears have entirely disappeared, and even the shock of new hair upon the top of my head is not discernible when I get behind the pile of papers upon my desk. However, it is all terribly interesting work and I have much the same feel as I had when our shoulders were to the same wheel in the little old studio.”17
The plan for DeMille Pictures was to produce a series of program pictures at a cost of around $200,000 each and for Cecil B. DeMille to produce one or two special productions a year. The rest of the P.D.C. program was to be filled out with pictures from Metropolitan Studios, another subsidiary of Cinema Corporation of America, as well as a few additional features from comedy producer Al Christie and other independentcompanies.18
From the beginning DeMille Pictures had trouble with its series of programmers. With the expense of a large studio and staff, as well as star salaries, the overhead costs were high, and in the first season the company only produced eleven films. One of the studio’s first pictures, The Coming of Amos, a tongue-in-cheek modern day romantic adventure, cost some $238,000, and DeMille explained that the $38,000 overage was “due to week of bad weather on location and carrying part of initial cost of opening studio.”19
When a proposed deal with producer Sam E. Rork failed to pan out, DeMille begged to take up the slack, asking Frederick C. Munroe to “give some consideration to the possibility of my doing two extra pictures at this Studio as this would be of great assistance to me in the distribution of overhead which is of necessity very heavy for twelve pictures to carry, and yet it would be dangerous to reduce the burden and still produce the quality of production that we must maintain to compete with Paramount and Metro.”20
The limits of cooperation between Famous Players-Lasky and DeMille were tested on several occasions. On matters of mercy there was some agreement, but not always on matters of business. On June 15, 1925, DeMille advised Jesse Lasky that the mortgage on Theodore Roberts’s house was due on the coming Wednesday. The character actor who had appeared in so many pictures for Lasky was ill and unable to work. DeMille suggested to Lasky that they go in fifty-fifty and pay off the mortgage. The following day Lasky replied, “Have arranged with company to continue paying Theodore Roberts same sum he now receives as long as he live sand is unable to work. Beyond this can do nothing.”21
But DeMille found that his old company was not always willing to live up to its contractual obligations. On July 3, 1925, DeMille wired Nathan Burkan that he had reviewed ad clippings from several Chicago papers regarding The Ten Commandments and noted, “[M]y name appears in very small type reading quote DeMille’s Triumph unquote and in two instances my full name in very small type and no mention what ever of picture being a Cecil B. DeMille Production.” DeMille asked Burkan to advise Famous Players-Lasky that they were in violation of his contract:
The advertising clause in my contract dated November sixteenth nineteen hundred twenty-three with Famous Players-Lasky Corporation refers to and incorporates the advertising clause contained in my previous contract dated August sixteenth nineteen hundred twenty … which latter clause reads as follows: “Each and every of the pictures delivered under the terms of this contract shall be advertised and publicized by the distributor to the same extent and in the same general manner as is indicated by the advertising and publicity given to the photoplay entitled Male and Female directed by Cecil B. DeMille, and in all publicity and advertising the name of Cecil B. DeMille shall receive such attention and prominence as was given to it in the advertising and publicity of Male and Female and each and every of the said pictures shall be announced as a Cecil B. DeMille production.”22
Famous Players-Lasky, it would seem, did not want the public to confuse the phrase “a Cecil B. DeMille Production” with Cecil B. DeMille Pictures, Inc., and create the false impression that The Ten Commandments was anything but a Paramount Picture.
DeMille was also irked at an internal promotional film made for the 1925 Paramount sales convention. In the film actor Ford Sterling showed returning director Marshall Neilan the current glories of Paramount. At one point they came upon an empty chair with Cecil B. DeMille’s name printed on it and a funeral wreath on the seat. “Whatever became of him,” Neilan is said to have asked via subtitle. “Oh, he’s gone down the road to yesterday,” Sterling replied. The rather nasty joke outraged many Paramount exhibitors at the convention, and there was a minor scandal until some ten days later when Marshall Neilan took credit for the film, apologized for any unintended insult, and assured the industry that Adolph Zukor and Sidney R. Kent had no prior knowledge of the film’s contents before it was shown at the convention.23
The Road to Yesterday was DeMille’s first special production for the new company. The story involves two couples, newly weds Kenneth and Malena Paulton and the spoiled Bess Tyrell who is first attracted to and then spurns Jack Moreland, a poor minister. Kenneth has a disfigured arm and Malena cannot stand to be touched by him—elements DeMille had used previously in For Better, For Worse and Feet of Clay. While the four are en route to Chicago, they are involved in a train crash and are catapulted back in time to seventeenth-century England, where they learn that their current troubles have been simmering for many generations. DeMille had long been attracted to the themes of mysticism and reincarnation that were the basis of the source play, but he attributed these elements to Christian rather than occult forces. The film contains many of his favorite elements—trial by fire, love and sacrifice at great personal loss, and the spectacular wreck (which owes much to the “realistic” stage craft of late-nineteenth-century American theater)—however these elements were blended somewhat arbitrarily, and little effort was made to smooth the transitions between the first-and third-act modern story and the second-act flashback.
Reaction to the New York trade showing of The Road to Yesterday was positive, but the film did not find an audience. Perhaps because the new Producers Distributing Corporation could not market the picture properly, or perhaps because audiences were tired of historical flashbacks, film rentals on The Road to Yesterday were decidedly meager, and DeMille bid farewell to the flashback as a story device.24