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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture The Silent Era by Sumiko Higashi Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era by Sumiko Higashi. Film Director, Film/TV Producer (12-Aug-1881 — 21-Jan-1959) SUBJECT OF BOOKS. Robert S. Birchard . Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood . University Press of Kentucky. 2004 . 416pp. Cecil B. DeMille . The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1959 . 465pp. Anne Edwards . The DeMilles: An American Family . London: Collins. 1988 . 248pp. Gabe Essoe; Raymond Lee . DeMille: The Man and His Pictures . New York: Castle Books. 1970 . 319pp. Scott Eyman . Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille . Simon and Schuster. 2010 . 592pp. Sumiko Higashi . Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era . University of California Press. 1994 . 264pp. Charles Higham . Cecil B. DeMille: A Biography of the Most Successful Film Maker of Them All . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1973 . 335pp. Phil A. Koury . Yes, Mr. DeMille . New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1959 . 319pp. Simon Louvish . Cecil B. DeMille and the Golden Calf . London: Faber and Faber. 2007 . 507pp. Simon Louvish . Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art . New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. 2007 . 507pp. Michel Mourlet; Michel Marmin . Cecil B. DeMille . Paris: Seghers. 1968 . 192pp. Hortense Myers; Ruth Burnett . Cecil B. DeMille, Young Dramatist . Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. 1963 . 200pp. Katherine Orrison . Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille's Epic, The Ten Commandments . Lanham, MD: Vestal Press. 1999 . 196pp. Gene Ringgold; DeWitt Bodeen . The Films of Cecil B. DeMille . New York: Citadel Press. 1969 . 377pp. Paolo Cherchi Usai; Lorenzo Codelli . The DeMille Legacy . Rome: Edizione Biblioteca dell'Immagine. 1991 . 589pp. AUTHORITIES. Below are references indicating presence of this name in another database or other reference material. Most of the sources listed are encyclopedic in nature but might be limited to a specific field, such as musicians or film directors. A lack of listings here does not indicate unimportance -- we are nowhere near finished with this portion of the project -- though if many are shown it does indicate a wide recognition of this individual. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS at WOMEN and the SILENT SCREEN VIII. Sumiko Higashi is professor emerita in the Department of History, SUNY Brockport. She is the author of Virgins, Vamps, and Flappers: The American Silent Film Heroine (1978) and Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era (1994), as well as numerous essays on women in film and television, film as historical representation, and film history as cultural history. She addresses fan magazine culture for crossover readers in her last book, Stars, Fans, and Consumption in the 1950s: Reading Photoplay (2014). KATHY PEISS. Kathy Peiss is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she specializes in modern American cultural history and the history of women, gender, and sexuality. She is the author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York (1986), H ope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (1998), and Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (2011). VANESSA TOULMIN. Vanessa Toulmin is Director of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield and Chair in Early Film and Popular Entertainment. Her work has appeared in internationally recognized journals where she has published articles on early film, Edwardian and Victorian entertainments and popular culture, the history of freak shows, carnivals and British fairgrounds, and the culture and society of travelling showpeople. Toulmin is the author of several books, including The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film (2004), Electric Edwardians: The Film of Mitchell and Kenyon (2007), and Pleasurelands: All the Fun of the Fair (2003). Her recent publications include four major works on the architecture and history of Blackpool’s attractions: Winter Gardens Blackpool: The Most Magnificent Palace of Amusement in the World (2009), Blackpool Tower: Wonderland of the World (2011), Blackpool Pleasure Beach: More than Just an Amusement Park (2011), and the Blackpool Illuminations: The Greatest Free Show on Earth (2012). She has also acted as historical consultant for seven major television productions since 2000, including the Mitchell & Kenyon series on BBC 2 and has co-produced five major radio programs with BBC Radio 4 on popular entertainment, history of fairs and early cinema. She recently worked with BBC 4 Timeshift producing two programs on the history of fairs and circuses and has also appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? and Reel History of Britain with Melvyn Bragg. with SPE CIAL GUEST of WSS VIII: SHELLEY STAMP. Shelley Stamp is the author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood (2015) and Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (2000), as well as articles and book chapters on early cinema, censorship and feminist historiography. She is founding editor of Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal and co-editor of two collections: American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (with Charlie Keil) and a special issue of Film History on “Women and the Silent Screen” (with Amelie Hastie). Her expert commentary has been featured on several DVD releases and she has served as a consultant for organizations including the National Film Preservation Foundation, EYE Film Institute Netherlands, and the US cable networks Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she has been a visiting scholar at Bryn Mawr College, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Queen’s University in Canada, and the Hildegard Festival of Women in the Arts. She is Professor of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she holds the Pavel Machotka Chair in Creative Studies. Cecil B. De Mille Biography. Cecil Blount DeMille was born on August 12, 1881, in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the second of Henry Churchill de Mille and Beatrice Samuel DeMille 's three children. His father wrote several successful plays with David Belasco (1853–1931), a famous writer of that time. Actors and actresses often came to the DeMille house to rehearse scenes. When DeMille was twelve, his father died; his mother made money by turning their home into a school for girls. Cecil attended Pennsylvania Military College and studied acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, New York. After graduation he worked as an actor for ten years. He married Constance Adams, an actress, in 1902. They had one child and adopted three more. The man who founded Hollywood. When DeMille was almost thirty, he met Jesse L. Lasky, who was trying to break into motion picture production. DeMille was thinking of leaving show business altogether, but Lasky convinced him to try directing a film. After spending a day at Thomas Edison's (1847–1931) studios in New York City, DeMille left for Arizona to shoot The Squaw Man, a drama based on a Broadway play that was set in Wyoming. When things did not work out in Arizona, DeMille got back on the train and headed to Los Angeles, California. When DeMille arrived in California in 1913, he decided to stay, realizing it was perfect for motion picture making. The sunny weather enabled crews to shoot without having to set up lights, saving time and money. DeMille created the popular image of the big-shot movie director by dressing in an open-necked shirt, riding pants, and boots and by carrying a large megaphone (a cone-shaped device to increase the loudness of the voice) and a whistle around his neck. With the success of The Squaw Man, DeMille had found the perfect location to make movies, he had developed the fashion style that would come to be associated with movie-making, and he had proved he could direct successfully. By 1914 Lasky had moved his entire operation to California and set up a huge studio. Produced first epics. In 1917 DeMille made his first epic (a work that is larger than usual in size or scope), Joan the Woman, the story of Joan of Arc (1412–1431), a saint of the Catholic Church. It was one of the longest pictures made up until that time and was not successful. Over the next few years several of DeMille's films were flops, including The Whispering Chorus, a film that meant a lot to him. DeMille began to concentrate on pleasing audiences with comedies such as We Can't Have Everything and Don't Change Your Husband, which contained both sexual and moral messages. Critics scoffed at these films, but they made money. DeMille also helped to set up the Hays Office, which cracked down on films containing sexual or immoral (socially wrong) content. DeMille worried that if Hollywood did not police itself, Congress would. In 1923 DeMille decided to make another epic. The first version of The Ten Commandments was the most expensive movie made up to that time. In the end, though, it was a blockbuster, making its huge budget back several times over. DeMille continued making expensive epics, including King of Kings (1927). His first sound movie was Dynamite, which did well; a musical, Madame Satan, did not. The Crusades, another one of his epics, was the largest failure in Hollywood history up to that time. End of his career. After World War II (1939–45; a war fought between the Axis Powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allied Powers—England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States), DeMille made Samson and Delilah, which was criticized for its poor special effects and scenes of heavy- breathing sexuality.