Cecil B. DeMille

The oldest work the catalogue holds for Cecil B. DeMille is The Cheat of 1915, where the AFI lists him as Prod [Dir]. In February 1916 members of the Japanese Association of Southern California petitioned against the film being shown, and when Paramount reissued it in 1918 Sessue Hayakawa's character was made Burmese and renamed Haka Arakau. In 1923 he shot the biblical portion of The Ten Commandments at Guadalupe, two hundred miles north of Los Angeles; the film opened with a title saying that the modern world had defined God as a religious complex and had laughed at the ten commandments as old-fashioned, and that out of that laughter came the thunder of the World War. The Exhibitors Herald of 17 November 1923 drew attention to the use of colour in the biblical portion. He made the same story again in 1956, as The Ten Commandments, with Edward G. Robinson.