Julia FayeFilmography

The Ten Commandments

Actors: James Coburn, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo

Synopsis: Based on the Holy Scriptures, with additional dialogue by several other hands, The Ten Commandments was the last film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The story relates the life of Moses, from the time he was discovered in the bullrushes as an infant by the pharoah's daughter, to his long, hard Read More

The Greatest Show on Earth

Actors: Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is a lavish tribute to circuses, featuring three intertwining plotlines concerning romance and rivalry beneath the big top. DeMille's film includes spectacular action sequences, including a show-stopping train wreck. The Greatest Show on Earth won Read More

Here Comes the Groom

Actors: Bing Crosby, Jane Wyman, Alexis Smith, Franchot Tone, James Barton

Synopsis: Here Comes the Groom was the second collaboration between director Frank Capra and star Bing Crosby. Though not as "socially relevant" as previous Capra productions, the film is a thoroughly likeable yarn about a happy-go-lucky newspaperman named Pete (Bing Crosby). In order to legally adopt a Read More

The Lawless

Actors: MacDonald Carey, Gail Russell, Lalo Rios, Johnny Sands, John Hoyt, Lee Patrick

Synopsis: The Lawless was director Joseph Losey's second feature-length film. The story concerns a group of Mexican-American migrant workers who are subjected to all sorts of abuse and intolerance by their California bosses. A violent clash between whites and Latinos at a dance results in a torrent of Read More

Where Danger Lives

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, Claude Rains, Maureen O'Sullivan, Charles Kemper

Synopsis: Faith Domergue, the latest of Howard Hughes' protegees, made her film debut in 1950's Where Danger Lives. Domergue plays Margo Lannington the wife of Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains), an elderly millionaire possessed of a sadistic streak. Robert Mitchum co-stars as Jeff Cameron, a poor soul who Read More

Sunset Boulevard

Actors: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard ranks among the most scathing satires of Hollywood and the cruel fickleness of movie fandom. The story begins at the end as the body of Joe Gillis (William Holden) is fished out of a Hollywood swimming pool. From The Great Beyond, Joe details the circumstances of Read More

Copper Canyon

Actors: Ray Milland, Hedy Lamarr, MacDonald Carey, Mona Freeman

Synopsis: Set just after the close of the Civil War, a former Confederate officer (Ray Milland) joins a vaudeville target-shooting show to avoid detection by the Union army. Working his way West, he falls in league with a group of Southern copper-miners being harassed as they try to make a living. ~ John Read More

Samson and Delilah

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, George Sanders, Angela Lansbury, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: Samson and Delilah is Cecil B. DeMille's characteristically expansive retelling of the events found in the Old Testament passages of Judges 13-16. Victor Mature plays Samson, the superstrong young Danite. Samson aspires to marry Philistine noblewoman Semadar (Angela Lansbury), but she is killed Read More

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Actors: Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, Cedric Hardwicke, William Bendix, Murvyn Vye, Henry Wilcoxon

Synopsis: Though the Mark Twain original has been refashioned into a Bing Crosby vehicle, this 1949 musical adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a lot more faithful to the Twain original than either of the two previous film versions. Crosby plays Hank Martin, a turn-of-the-century Read More

Red, Hot and Blue

Actors: Betty Hutton, Victor Mature, William Demarest, June Havoc, Jane Nigh

Synopsis: Taken (as far as possible) from the Cole Porter musical comedy of the same name, Red, Hot and Blue stars Betty Hutton as an ambitious chorus girl. Hutton gets a job with a musical comedy bankrolled by gangsters, and is the wrong girl at the wrong place when one of the show's backers (William Talman Read More

Chicago Deadline

Actors: Alan Ladd, Donna Reed, June Havoc, Irene Hervey, Arthur Kennedy

Synopsis: Tough reporter Ed Adams (Alan Ladd) wants to get the full story behind the apparent suicide of a young woman. It seems that the girl left behind a notebook with a list of seemingly unrelated names. Adams tracks down each one of the persons cited in the notebook, slowly but surely putting the Read More

The Big Clock

Actors: Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, Elsa Lanchester, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: John Farrow's movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer (and produced by future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum), is a near-perfect match for the book, telling in generally superb visual style a tale set against the backdrop of upscale Read More

Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell, John Lund, Virginia Bruce, William Demarest, Richard Webb

Synopsis: A man who dreams of seeing the future discovers the horrible burden that it can carry in this film noir suspense story. Suicidal Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) is prevented from killing herself by her fiancée Elliot Carson (John Lund). When they consult psychic John Triton (Edward G. Robinson Read More

Joan of Arc

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, José Ferrer, Selena Royle, Ward Bond, Robert H. Barrat, Jimmy Lydon, Francis L. Sullivan, Cecil Kellaway, Rand Brooks

Synopsis: Director Victor Fleming's final film features Ingrid Bergman as a vivid and luminous Joan of Arc, the 15th-century French peasant girl who led the French in battle against the invading English, becoming a national hero. When she was captured, tortured, and ultimately executed by the English, she Read More

Welcome Stranger

Actors: Don Beddoe, Bing Crosby, Lillian Bronson, Joan Caulfield, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank Faylen, Elizabeth Patterson, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: A curmudgeonly small-town doctor resents the presence of a new younger physician and his newfangled ways. He is especially dismayed by the new doctor's tendency to sing, a behavior the older fellow deems inappropriate. When the new doc meets a pretty young school teacher, romantic sparks fly. Read More

Fear in the Night

Actors: Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley, Kay Scott, Ann Doran, Robert Emmett Keane

Synopsis: One of several low-budget mellers directed by scriptwriter Maxwell Shane, Fear in the Night was based on the short story Nightmare by William Irish (pseudonym for Cornell Woolrich). In his first starring role, DeForest Kelley plays Vince Grayson, a young man who has a terrible nightmare wherein he Read More

Unconquered

Actors: Gary Cooper, Paulette Goddard, Howard Da Silva, Boris Karloff, Katherine de Mille, Ward Bond

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's first postwar production, the $5 million Technicolor historical spectacular Unconquered lacks only the kitchen sink. The story begins in England in the 1760s, as Abigail Martha Hale (Paulette Goddard), unjustly accused of a crime against the Crown, is sentenced by the Lord Chief Read More

Blaze of Noon

Actors: Anne Baxter, William Holden, Sonny Tufts, William Bendix, Sterling Hayden

Synopsis: In this aerial melodrama, four brothers working as stunt pilots for a flying circus leave their jobs to become mail pilots. Because their job requires that they constantly travel, they are advised to not settle down with wives and kids. Still, one pilot falls in love and marries. Unfortunately Read More

The Perils of Pauline

Actors: Betty Hutton, John Lund, Constance Collier, William Demarest, Billy De Wolfe

Synopsis: The third of four films bearing the title of The Perils of Pauline, this musical biopic purports to tell the life story of famed silent serial queen Pearl White. Right at the beginning, however, an introductory title informs the audience that what follows is merely "suggested" by incidents in White Read More

California

Actors: Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Fitzgerald, George Coulouris, Albert Dekker

Synopsis: California began life as a remake of Paramount's silent western epic The Covered Wagon, but by the time it emerged on-screen in 1946, the project had metamorphosed into a standard Technicolor frontier "spectacular", concentrating more on star power than anything else. Set during the 1848 mass Read More

Masquerade in Mexico

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Arturo de Cordova, Patric Knowles, Ann Dvorak

Synopsis: The Technicolor musical Masquerade in Mexico is Mitchell Leisen's remake of his own Midnight. Stranded in Mexico City without a dime, glamorous Angel O'Reilly (Dorothy Lamour) is rescued by wealthy Thomas Grant (Patric Knowles). But Grant's motivations are anything but altrustic. In order to get Read More

The Story of Dr. Wassell

Actors: Gary Cooper, Laraine Day, Signe Hasso, Dennis O'Keefe, Carol Thurston

Synopsis: The genesis of The Story of Dr. Wassell is said to have been a story told by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to director Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper stars as Corydon M. Wassell, a real-life country doctor from Arkansas who worked as a medical missionary in China in the years prior to WWII. Read More

Casanova Brown

Actors: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Anita Louise, Patricia Collinge

Synopsis: When he finds out his ex-wife has just had his child and plans to give her up for adoption, a timid English instructor dashes to the child's rescue and attempts to care for her in a hotel room. Before too long, however, his new fiancee and his ex confront him and he must decide what he will do. Read More

So Proudly We Hail!

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, George Reeves, Barbara Britton

Synopsis: Paramount's So Proudly We Hail, like MGM's Cry Havoc, is a tribute to the Red Cross nurses trapped behind enemy lines in the early days of the Pacific war. Claudette Colbert is the self-sacrificing head nurse, struggling to minister to the wounded and to keep her staff (including Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake Read More

Reap the Wild Wind

Actors: Ray Milland, John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Raymond Massey, Robert Preston

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolor historical spectacle Reap the Wild Wind was to have starred Gary Cooper, but Cooper's prior commitment to Goldwyn's Pride of the Yankees compelled DeMille to recast the leading role with John Wayne. The film, set in the mid-19th century, centers around Key West Read More

Northwest Mounted Police

Actors: Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Preston S. Foster, Paulette Goddard, Robert Preston

Synopsis: Cecil B. De Mille directed this lavish all-star spectacular paying tribute to America's neighbors to the North. In 1885, as Louis Riel (Francis J. McDonald) tries to organize Indians and French settlers into a fighting force that will battle against the ruling British, Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers (Gary Cooper Read More

Remember the Night

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Willard Robertson

Synopsis: A romantic comedy drama directed by former art director Mitchell Leisen and based on a skillful Preston Sturges screenplay. Barbara Stanwyck stars as Lee Leander, a New York City shoplifter who is arrested just before Christmas after trying to filch an expensive piece of jewelry. Her trial delayed Read More

Union Pacific

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston, Lynne Overman, Brian Donlevy

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille takes us back to the 1860s, then rebuilds the first intercontinental railroad in Union Pacific. The real-life spectacle is occasionally interrupted by the fictional adventures of railroad overseer Joel McCrea, postmistress Barbara Stanwyck (with an incredible Irish brogue), and Read More

You and Me

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, George Raft, Robert Cummings, Barton MacLane, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: This film is one of acclaimed director Fritz Lang's less noted achievements, a mixture of romance, comedy, drama, and satire. It includes three songs by the famed Kurt Weill, including "The Right Guy for Me." George Raft plays Joe Dennis, an ex-convict working in a department store. The store's Read More

Till We Meet Again

Actors: Herbert Marshall, Gertrude Michael, Lionel Atwill, Rod La Rocque, Guy Bates Post

Synopsis: In this taut WW I espionage thriller set in 1914, an English actor falls in love with a German actress. When the war erupts, the two are torn apart and begin working as spies for their countries. They encounter each other, but now they are enemies. Fortunately their love is too deep and is soon Read More

Only Yesterday

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, John Boles, Edna May Oliver, Billie Burke, Jimmy Butler, Benita Hume, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: Distantly related to Frederick Lewis Allen's non-fiction book of the same name, Only Yesterday uses fictional characters to trace the years between 1917 and 1929. Wealthy New Yorker John Boles recalls a long-ago affair with southern belle Margaret Sullavan. She gave birth to his child without ever Read More

The Squaw Man

Actors: Paul Cavanagh, Lupe Velez, Eleanor Boardman, Roland Young

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's third remake of his debut film, this was the first sound version of Edwin Milton Royle's stage western melodrama. The story centers on a British captain who heads into the American West after taking the blame for his embezzling, blue-blooded cousin to protect the reputation of Read More

Dynamite

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, Charles Bickford, Julia Faye, Muriel McCormac

Synopsis: Filmed in 1929 and released early in 1930, Dynamite was Cecil B. DeMille's first all-talking feature. As one observer has noted, this 128-minute opus has enough plots for seven pictures. The basic storyline here involves spoiled heiress Cynthia Crothers (Kay Johnson) who will lose her fortune if Read More

Not So Dumb

Actors: Marion Davies, Elliott Nugent, Raymond Hackett, Franklin Pangborn, George Davis

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1923, the George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly stage comedy Dulcy was remade as a talkie in 1929 under the new title Dulcy. Marion Davies stars as Dulcinea, the illogical, cliché-spouting young housewife created by newspaper humorist Franklin P. Adams. Hoping to help her fiance Read More

The Godless Girl

Actors: Tom Keene, Lina Basquette, Marie Prevost, George Duryea, Eddie Quillan, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: Completed as a silent film, Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl was quickly converted into a part-talkie by the simple expedient of tacking on a 10-minute coda, wherein the characters discuss the weather. The film begins as a condemnation of the atheistic movement then prevalent on high-school and Read More

The Yankee Clipper

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Elinor Fair, John Miljan, Walter Long

Synopsis: One of the most readily available features of the silent era, The Yankee Clipper is happily also one of the best. A pre-Hopalong Cassidy William Boyd plays Hal Winslow, the scion of a prominent Boston shipbuilding family. Manning the helm of the Yankee Clipper, Winslow prepares to race The Lord of Read More

The Main Event

Actors: Vera Reynolds, Rudolph Schildkraut, Julia Faye, Charles Delaney, Robert Armstrong

Synopsis: No relation to the 1979 Barbra Streisand-Ryan O'Neal vehicle of the same name, Main Event was one of the first efforts of the newly-formed DeMille Pictures Corporation (as in "Cecil B.") Nightclub dancer Glory Frayne (Vera Reynolds) falls in love with championship boxer Red Lucas (Robert Read More

The King of Kings

Actors: H.B. Warner, Dorothy Cumming, Ernest Torrence, Joseph Schildkraut, James Neill

Synopsis: Having scored big-time box office with his first Biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), Cecil B. DeMille hoped to top this success with his 1927 The King of Kings. Inasmuch as he was now dealing with the life of Christ, DeMille had to be careful to serve up equal amounts of showmanship and Read More

Fighting Eagle

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Phyllis Haver, Sam de Grasse, Max Barwyn, Julia Faye

Synopsis: This Cecil B. DeMille-produced swashbuckler was based on Brigadier General, a story by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. Set during the Napoleonic era, the film stars Rod La Rocque as young adventurer Etienne Girard, who becomes involved in the political intrigues fomented by the Read More

Chicago

Actors: Phyllis Haver, Victor Varconi, Eugene Pallette, Virginia Bradford, T. Roy Barnes

Synopsis: Based on a real-life incident, Maurine Watkins' semi-satirical novel and play Chicago was first brought to the screen in 1927. Phyllis Haver was ideally cast as gum-chewing dance-hall girl Roxie Hart, who shoots her lover full of holes and then is forgiven by her faithful -- if not entirely honest Read More

His Dog

Actors: Joseph Schildkraut, Julia Faye, Robert Edeson, Sally Rand

Synopsis: Former D.W. Griffith cameraman Karl Brown held the directorial reins for His Dog. Joseph Schildkraut stars as a roughneck gardener who squanders his monthly pay at the local tavern. While weaving his way home one night, Schildkraut rescues a wounded collie then takes the dog home with him, despite Read More

Corporal Kate

Actors: Vera Reynolds

Synopsis: Vera Reynolds is Corporal Kate in this WWI comedy-drama. Shipped off to the front to entertain the troops, Irish-Catholic showgirl Kate and her Jewish pal Becky (Julia Faye) encounter all manner of merry misadventures. Things get serious, however, when both Kate and Becky fall in love with the Read More

The Volga Boatmen

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Elinor Fair, Robert Edeson, Victor Varconi, Julia Faye

Synopsis: One feels that if Cecil B. DeMille had been assigned to direct the one-character play Krapp's Last Tape, he'd have added 15,000 extras and a flood. A typically overbaked (and immensely entertaining) DeMille effort, The Volga Boatman was "inspired" by a Konrad Bercovici novel. Set in the months Read More

Hell's Highroad

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Edmund Burns, Robert Edeson, Julia Faye, Helene Sullivan

Synopsis: Judy Nichols (Leatrice Joy), a poor girl from Chicago, has decided she cannot marry without money. Her sweetheart, Ronald McKane, a struggling civil engineer (Edmund Burns), is encouraging her to join him in New York, but she only goes when she is bequeathed an inheritance. Unfortunately, the Read More

Golden Bed

Actors: Lillian Rich, Vera Reynolds, Henry B. Walthall, Rod La Rocque, Theodore Kosloff

Synopsis: This was Cecil B. De Mille's last film for Paramount (at least for a few years). Irene Rich plays Flora Lee Peake, a cool beauty who, like Lorelei, lures men to death and destruction. Flora Lee weds the Marquis De San Pilar (Theodore Kosloff) and saves the old homestead. The Marquis finds her with Read More

The Road to Yesterday

Actors: Joseph Schildkraut, Jetta Goudal, Vera Reynolds, William "Hopalong" Boyd, Julia Faye, Trixie Friganza

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's century-hopping extravaganza The Road to Yesterday begins in the present (1925, that is). Wealthy Joseph Schildkraut can't understand why his wife Jetta Goudal is so cold to him. Goudal senses that Schildkraut had once done her dirt....in a previous life. Likewise unhappily Read More

Feet of Clay

Actors: Vera Reynolds, Rod La Rocque, Victor Varconi, Ricardo Cortez, Julia Faye

Synopsis: While this Cecil B. DeMille production has many of the elements common to his pictures -- lavish, expensive sets and costumes, a high falutin' society background, and domestic turmoil -- it doesn't quite hit its mark. Part of the reason for this is the dream sequence. Instead of something Read More

Triumph

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Rod La Rocque, Victor Varconi, Charles Ogle, Theodore Kosloff

Synopsis: After the spectacular epic The Ten Commandments, filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille returns to the drawing room for this pleasingly straightforward drama. King Garnet (Rod La Rocque) is the idle son of factory owner David Garnet (George Fawcett). He is in love with Ann Land (Leatrice Joy), the factory's Read More

Changing Husbands

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Victor Varconi, Raymond Griffith, Julia Faye, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: Leatrice Joy has a dual role, as Gwynne Evans, a restless young wife who longs to go on the stage, and as lookalike actress Eva Graham, who wants nothing more than peace and quiet. The two women meet up and agree to change places. Oliver Evans (Victor Varconi) is glad to see that his wife has Read More

Adam's Rib

Actors: Milton Sills, Elliott Dexter, Theodore Kosloff, Anna Q. Nilsson, Pauline Garon

Synopsis: No, this society drama is not related in any way, shape or form to the 1949 Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy comedy. It's one of Cecil B. DeMille's most critically savaged pictures. At 34, Anna Q. Nilsson was a bit young to play the neglected middle-aged wife of business man Michael Ramsay (Milton Read More

The Ten Commandments

Actors: Theodore Roberts, Charles de Roche, Estelle Taylor, Richard Dix, Julia Faye, Rod La Rocque

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's first screen version of The Ten Commandments is only peripherally a Biblical story. The film's first 45 minutes recaps the struggle between Moses (Theodore Roberts) and Rameses (Charles de Roche) over the liberation of the Hebrews. Only after the Lord has imposed a series of Read More

Nobody's Money

Actors: Jack Holt, Wanda Hawley, Harry Depp, Robert Schable, Walter McGrail

Synopsis: Jack Holt stands out in this adaptation of the William LeBaron stage hit. A pair of con artists have published a book under the fictitious name of Robert Douglas. Now the IRS, the publisher, and various other organizations are after them and they must somehow come up with a "Robert Douglas." They Read More

Nice People

Actors: Wallace Reid, Conrad Nagel, Bebe Daniels, Julia Faye

Synopsis: Although director Cecil B. DeMille was known for his Biblical spectaculars and florid comedy-dramas about domestic relations, it was his older brother William C. DeMille who had taste and class. His pictures were smaller and more intimate, and they were also often more sophisticated. This picture Read More

Saturday Night

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Conrad Nagel, Edith Roberts, Jack Mower, Julia Faye

Synopsis: Even with its share of sumptuous sets and domestic mixups, this comedy-drama was not typical for director Cecil B. DeMille. Plus, the class-conscious attitude reflected the attitudes of the pre-World War I era -- mores started changing during the 1920s. A young society couple, Iris Van Suydam Read More

Manslaughter

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Leatrice Joy, Lois Wilson, John Miltern, George Fawcett

Synopsis: This Cecil B. DeMille morality play came at just the right time -- the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle scandal and William Desmond Taylor murder were both still fresh in the public's mind. Leatrice Joy plays Lydia Thorne, a rich society girl who is addicted to thrills. Because of her reckless driving, she Read More

Trip To Paramountown

Actors: Wallace Reid, Marion Davies, Thomas Meighan, Betty Compson, May McAvoy

The Affairs of Anatol

Actors: Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson, Elliott Dexter

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille's much-maligned cinemadaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's The Affairs of Anatol holds up better than its reputation suggests. Wallace Reid stars as New York socialite Anatol DeWitt Spencer, who after only a few day's marriage has become bored with his new bride Vivian (Gloria Read More

Snob

Actors: Wanda Hawley, Edwin Stevens, Walter Hiers, Sylvia Ashton, W.E. Lawrence

Synopsis: Kathryn Haynes (Wanda Hawley) has been raised to look down on everyone whose ancestry doesn't go back to the American Revolution, or who doesn't at least have the cash to make up for it. So she gets her comeuppance when she goes away to college and falls for star quarterback Bill Putnam (William Read More

Forbidden Fruit

Actors: Agnes Ayres, Clarence Burton, Theodore Roberts, Kathlyn Williams, Forrest Stanley

Synopsis: Mary (Agnes Ayres) works as a seamstress for the wealthy Mallory family to support herself and her worthless husband Steve (Clarence Burton). James Mallory (Theodore Roberts) seeks to seal a deal with millionaire oilman Nelson Rogers (Forrest Stanley). When the millionaire is left without a dinner Read More

Fool's Paradise

Actors: Dorothy Dalton, Mildred Harris, Conrad Nagel, Theodore Kosloff, John Davidson

Synopsis: Although this expensive drama was "suggested by" a short story, The Laurels and the Lady, by Leodard Merrick, one can't help but think filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille would not be satisfied until he made it completely his own. After returning from World War I, Arthur Phelps (Conrad Nagel) meets Poll Read More

Great Moment

Actors: Gloria Swanson, Milton Sills, Arthur Hull

Synopsis: Author Elinor Glyn knew how to generate publicity, and she created quite a bit when Paramount decided to film this story. In one scene, the girl (played by Gloria Swanson) has been bitten by a rattlesnake, and to save her, her co-star (played by Milton Sills) must suck the poison out of the wound Read More

Something to Think About

Synopsis: During the late teens and early '20s, filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille reveled in much cinematic pomp and circumstance, mixing epic past-life fantasies with James M. Barrie in Male and Female and blending high society with sex in the domestic scenarios of Don't Change Your Husband and Why Change Your Wife? Read More

Male and Female

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Gloria Swanson, Lila Lee, Bebe Daniels, Theodore Roberts

Synopsis: Don't let that title fool you: Male and Female is really James M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, as interpreted by Cecil B. DeMille. Thomas Meighan plays Crichton, the very proper butler in the British household of Lord Loam (Theodore Roberts). When masters and servants go on a yachting Read More

A Very Good Young Man

Don't Change Your Husband

Synopsis: This was Gloria Swanson's first film for director Cecil B. DeMille and it went a long way in establishing her as a star. Considered deliciously racy in its day, Don't Change Your Husband is an amusing battle between the sexes that takes place in the sumptuous upper-class society of the post-WWI Read More

Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots

Actors: Harrison Ford

Synopsis: Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots began life as an Augustus Thomas play, originally written as a vehicle for Margaret Illington. The film version starred Constance Talmadge as the feather-brained wife of the level-headed Mr. Leffingwell (played by the "original" Harrison Ford). As the fashionable young Read More

The Squaw Man

Synopsis: Cecil B. DeMille made The Squaw Man three times; this silent version was the second one. While the 1914 Squaw Man bears more historical significance (as it went a long way in establishing Hollywood as the heart of the film industry), this 1918 version is, by far, the better film, with higher Read More

The Whispering Chorus

Synopsis: The Whispering Chorus was arguably the closest Cecil B. DeMille ever came to making an "art" picture. Stalwart DeMille supporting player Raymond Hatton gave the performance of his career as embezzling bank clerk John Trimble. Hoping to escape punishment for his crimes, Trimble arranges for an Read More

Old Wives for New

Synopsis: The first of Cecil B. DeMille's series of sophisticated romantic comedy-dramas, Old Wives for New was adapted from a novel by David Graham. Elliot Dexter stars as David Murdock, who after several years of marriage has grown as tired of his wife Sophy as she has of him. Casting about for new female Read More

Till I Come Back to You

Synopsis: During World War I, every director made at least one film about the battles going on in Europe, even Cecil B. DeMille. These pictures were rarely very distinguished, and this drama was certainly one of DeMille's lesser efforts. Florence Vidor plays Yvonne, a Belgian girl who marries a German man Read More

The Woman God Forgot

Synopsis: With the exception of Joan the Woman, which contained a "contemporary" subplot, The Woman God Forgot was Cecil B. DeMille's first all-out historical spectacular. The story is set in Mexico during the reign of Emperor Montezuma (Raymond Hatton). Upon his arrival on Mexican soil, Spanish Read More