By Cynthia Kirk
Broadcast: November 21, 2004
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VOICE ONE:
I'm Sarah Long.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about three people who helped make Hollywood the center of the movie industry.
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VOICE ONE:
When you hear the name Hollywood, you probably think of excitement, lights, cameras and movie stars. Famous actors are not the only important people in the entertainment business. Directors and producers are important, too. Today, Hollywood is full of producers and directors. However, very few are as famous and successful as Hollywood's first motion picture businessmen, Cecil B. DeMille, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis Mayer.
((("There's No Business Like Show Business", CDP-8244)))
VOICE TWO:
Cecil B. Demille
Cecil Blount DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts in Eighteen-Eighty-One. Both his parents were writers of plays. His father died when he was twelve years old. His mother kept the family together by establishing a theater company. Cecil joined the company as an actor. He continued working in his mother's theater company as an actor and a manager until Nineteen-Thirteen. That year, he joined Jesse L. Lasky and Samuel Goldfish to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Goldfish later changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn.
VOICE ONE:
The three men started making motion pictures immediately. They loved working in the movie business. They were deeply interested in its creative and financial possibilities. DeMille, Lasky and Goldfish began working on a movie version of the popular American western play, "Squaw Man." DeMille urged that the movie be made in the real American West. He chose Flagstaff, Arizona. DeMille and the company traveled to Flagstaff by train. When they arrived, DeMille thought the area looked too modern. They got back on the train and keep going until they reached the end of the line. They were in a quiet little town in southern California. The town was called Hollywood. DeMille decided this was the perfect place to film the movie.
"Squaw Man" was one of the first full-length movies produced in Hollywood. It was released in Nineteen-Thirteen and was an immediate success. DeMille is considered the man who helped Hollywood become the center of the motion picture business. He quickly became a creative force in the new movie industry. His success continued with "Brewster's Millions," "The Call of the North" and "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine."
VOICE TWO:
Cecil B. DeMille was among the very few filmmakers in Hollywood whose name appeared above the title of his movie. His name was more important to movie-goers than the names of the stars in the movie. DeMille's movies were known to be big productions. He combined a lot of action, realistic storytelling and hundreds of actors to make some of Hollywood's best movies. He made many kinds of movies including westerns, comedies, romances and ones dealing with moral issues
DeMille gained a great deal of fame with the kind of movie known as an epic. An epic tells a story of events that are important in history. DeMille's epic movies were based on the settling of the American West, Roman history or stories from the Bible. His first version of the historic film "The Ten Commandments" was a huge success among silent films in Nineteen-Twenty-Three. In Nineteen-Fifty-Six, he released a new version of "The Ten Commandments" to include sound. It is broadcast still on American television during the Christian observance of Easter.
VOICE ONE:
Cecil B. DeMille produced and directed seventy movies. In Nineteen-Forty-Nine he received a special Academy Award for "thirty-seven years of brilliant showmanship." He died of heart failure in Nineteen-Fifty-Nine.
One of DeMille's last films was "The Greatest Show on Earth." It won the Academy Award for best picture in Nineteen-Fifty-Two. It was about people who performed in the circus. Some people say it was a fitting subject because Cecil B. DeMille often was called the greatest showman in Hollywood.
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