90 | Sight&Sound | April 2020BOOKS
THE LOST WORLD
OF DEMILLEBy John Kobal, University Press of Mississippi,
448pp, ISBN 9781496825230
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
Cecil B. DeMille’s name
is as synonymous with
Hollywood as it is possible
to be. He is well remembered
as the director of biblical
blockbusters and adventure
films – including The King of
Kings (1927), Cleopatra (1934)
and The Ten Commandments
(1956) – but also has the movie-lore cachet of
giving his name to an honorary Golden Globe
and being immortalised in Billy Wilder’s Sunset
Boulevard (1950) as the final director of its fading
star, Norma Desmond. That’s the long shot. In
close-up, DeMille is revealed as a fascinating
figure whose best work was achieved in the silent
era, and whose taste for extravagant splendour
and big-budget action existed alongside a capacity
for technical innovation, a keen appetite for
adult storytelling and a killer eye for detail.
The history of The Lost World of DeMille is
itself something of an epic. It was written by
film historian, author and collector John Kobal,of confidential paperwork, which gave up the
secrets of not only DeMille’s pointed personal
opinions about his peers, but of how he hired
private detectives to spy on the unions and
how he feared repercussions if these memos
were leaked. “Three men who talked too much
were killed in Chicago,” reads one note.
There have been other DeMille books
published in the time since Kobal’s death, but
this one has a personal touch, not least because
of its characterful prose. There is at least one
poignant moment when the book shows its
vintage, too. In an aside fairly early on, Kobal
mentions that DeMille’s audacious drama The
Cheat (1915) is an exception to the rule that
“these days, silent films are rarely screened.
Prints are too poor. Too many allowances have
to be made for the primitive conventions of
storytelling. Their reputations rest in books.” One
can only hope that Kobal would be pleased by
the recent improvements in the silent screening
landscape, which mean that the early chapters
of this book will be just as hungrily received as
those that deal with DeMille’s sound films.renowned for his vast library of photographs
and film stills. Kobal died in 1991, just a few
months after completing this biography. It
was never published, and 25 years later his
younger sister Monika reclaimed the text, which
ran to 1,100 pages, and sought a new deal. It
now sees the light of day via the University
Press of Mississippi, which requested that the
manuscript be significantly shortened, and so
the book is now around half the length. There
are many rare and beautiful photographs
from the Kobal Collection illustrating the text,
though this is a work of biography and ardent
scholarship rather than a picture book.
Kobal was the first researcher to be allowed
free access to DeMille’s personal archive, which
was kept after his death at his Los Angeles
home, 2000 DeMille Drive. Though he also
interviewed several people who had worked with
the director, it’s this archival research that really
makes the book distinctive. The first chapter is a
very evocative account of Kobal’s time looking
through DeMille’s materials. Kobal’s survey of
the house’s contents includes the peacock robe
worn by Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah
(1949), antiques originally used as props in
DeMille’s films, “bibles of every description”, a
wall hung with weapons, sheaves of production
designs and still photographs, as well as “a recipe
for chicken gumbo from Mary Pickford”. Most
thrilling for the aspiring biographer was the caseMerrily we roll along: Cecil B. DeMille (centre) shows his capacity for technical innovation on the set of Dynamite (1929)Books
This is a portrait of a genius,
mildly misunderstood, with
an enviably long career and a
fever for cinematic splendour
Reviewed by Pame( 6) btlh