Cecil B. DeMille Script Collection. ...

Description

Cecil B. DeMille Script Collection. The most celebrated pioneer of sex and spectacle in Hollywood history, producer/director Cecil B. DeMille receives rightful recognition in this massive lot of scripts: The Sign of the Cross (censorship dialogue script, November 17, 1932; as well as its revised censorship dialogue script, which conformed to the Joseph Breen-era Production Code, dated May 26, 1944); This Day and Age (first rough draft, April 19, 1933); This Day and Age (second "buff" script, May 10, 1933); Four Frightened People (first script, August 11, 1933); Four Frightened People (censorship dialogue script, December 16, 1933); Four Frightened People (continuity and dialogue master copy, January 12, 1934); Cleopatra (first script, January 15, 1934); Cleopatra (unspecified draft, February 27, 1934); The Crusades (release dialogue script, July 19, 1935); Reap the Wild Wind (first master scene script, October 28, 1940, signed by writers Jesse Lasky and Alan LeMay); Reap the Wild Wind (censorship dialogue script, January 16, 1942); Reap the Wild Wind (release dialogue script, February 10, 1942); and Samson and Delilah (unspecified draft, dated September 7, 1948). Additionally the lot includes two certificates of authorship for Cleopatra, signed by writers Vincent Lawrence and Waldemar Young; several pages of billing stipulations for DeMille's Union Pacific, along with a Paramount inter-office memo dated March 27, 1939; shooting schedule for DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940); and certificates of authorship for Reap the Wild Wind, signed by Jesse Lasky, Jr. and Alan LeMay. Fun to read DeMille decadence as detailed in script (e.g., from the Roman Circus scene in The Sign of the Cross: "Medium Shot, Door slides up. Alligators come out...nude girl stretched across sand...alligator's mouth opens..."). A splendidly "epic" archive, in Very Good to Excellent condition.

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