The Cost of Spectacle: Film Production as Commodity Fetishism

The Ten Commandments revived DeMille's sagging reputation as a filmmaker at a time when critics were lampooning his society dramas as outré spec-

tacles. Adele Whitely Fletcher observed in Motion Picture Magazine , "Just when humorists were finding in the DeMille tales of distorted society life ample material for their somewhat mordant jesting, he comes forth and blazes his name on the roster of the great." Fletcher herself had quoted an amusing line from Life when she previously objected to the director's excessive use of flashbacks: "Cecil B. DeMille has sent to India for seven hundred dancing girls, sixty-eight elephants, fourteen Bengal tigers and five maharajahs to be used in the dream episode of his forthcoming production of Sinclair Lewis' novel 'Main Street.'"^[32] An analysis of the critical reception of DeMille's texts in another leading fan magazine, Motion Picture Classic , is representative of industry discourse and reveals why his reputation, which had consistently been equated with the advance of cinema as an art form, declined in the early 1920s.

In September 1919 Frederick James Smith announced a list of the ten best films of the preceding twelve months in Motion Picture Classic and cited four DeMille features: Don't Change Your Husband, For Better, For Worse, The Squaw Man (a remake of the famous original), and We Can't Have Everything . Smith repeated an earlier assessment in which he claimed, "Just now there's no director as satisfying as . . . DeMille" and praised him for "the most consistent directorial advance." A year later in August 1920, Smith listed DeMille's Male and Female and Why Change Your Wife? as well as Erich von Stroheim's Blind Husbands among the ten best films and noted, "Our biggest disappointment. . . lies in the fact that David Wark Griffith has contributed nothing material to the screen during the [past] twelve months." Perhaps most revealing was his complaint about DeMille: "Lavish and picturesque is his style, but the human note. . . is not there . . . . DeMille is running rife in boudoir negligee. His dramas are as intimate as a department store window." Continuing in the same vein a year later, the critic found "little real warmth and feeling" in Forbidden Fruit "because there is little of either in the DeMille method." Harrison Haskins had made a similar observation in Motion Picture Classic when he assessed the industry's "big six directors" in 1918: "DeMille falls short in sympathy . . . . He interests, but he doesn't make you feel. " When Smith reviewed Fool's Paradise in 1922, he described the film as a "mess of piffle" and declared, "Cecil deMille is fast slipping from his luxuriously upholstered seat as one of our foremost directors." After a five-year tenure as Motion Picture Classic's film critic, Smith yielded his byline to Laurence Reid, who promptly dismissed Adam's Rib (1923), a society drama featuring a flashback to prehistoric times, as "hokum." Assessing the top directors in 1923, namely, D. W. Griffith, DeMille, Thomas H. Ince, Rex Ingram, Eric von Stroheim, and Ernst Lubitsch, Harry Cart echoed in the fan magazine what had become a refrain in the industry: DeMille has "a silken finish that no other director has ever been able to approach" but his films "always impress you as a story told on a yachting party to well-bred hearers."^[33]

A filmmaker whose earlier classics included titles such as Carmen, Chimmie Fadden Out West, Kindling, The Golden Chance , and The Cheat , that could scarcely be dismissed as set decorations with little human emotion, DeMille had become associated with camp and kitsch productions. Although the early Jazz Age films comprised a novel departure much imitated in the industry, critics responded to the director's continuing orchestration of spectacle with varying degrees of amusement, complaints about commodification, and, ultimately, boredom. An apostle of the consumer culture, like the ad men whose texts he influenced, DeMille gave every indication that he had been thoroughly seduced by film production as a form of commodity fetishism. Although it is impossible to ascertain how the exact figures for the costs and grosses of his features were calculated, the director kept a list, dated April 27, 1928, that gives evidence of the transformation of his filmmaking style in the postwar era. This statistical data is worth considering as an index of change signifying an increased obsession with producing spectacle in an extraordinary film career.

Average cost per feature (excluding Joan the Woman as a studio special) during DeMille's tenure as director-general of the Lasky Company remained fairly constant in nominal terms. The total figures are as follows: $15,450.25 in 1913 (for The Squaw Man ); $17,210.84 in 1914; $16,516.87 in 1915; and $17,760.88 in 1916. Assuming that these sums were not adjusted for inflation and using 1914 as a base year, I conclude that the director's production costs actually declined each year in terms of real dollars. After the merger with Famous Players in 1916, DeMille made two films starring Mary Pickford, whose exorbitant superstar salary inflated budgets so that Romance of the Redwoods (1917) and The Little American (1917) will not be taken into account here. Starting with the production of Old Wives for New in 1918, however, DeMille embarked on a series of all-star features as society dramas that meant relatively low overhead in terms of actors' salaries but escalating expenditures with respect to set and costume design. Average costs per film for each year in the postwar period are as follows: $59,587.36 in 1918; $144,639.88 in 1919; $258,130.04 in 1920; $258,001.05 in 1921; $396,271.89 in 1922; $1,475,836.93 in 1923, the year of The Ten Commandments ; and $405,516.49 in 1924. Adjusting these figures for inflation and excluding the year 1917 due to Pickford's salary, I conclude DeMille's production budgets increased at an annual rate as follows: 118 percent in 1918 (compared to 1916); 129 percent in 1919; 60 percent in 1920; 58 percent in 1921, a year when a worldwide depression actually meant deflation of the dollar; 55 percent in 1922; and 257 percent in 1923 (for The Ten Commandments ). Costs for 1924, DeMille's last year with Famous Players-Lasky, were similar to those accrued in 1922.^[34]

Although Zukor noted in retrospect that DeMille was an exception to "those who had little respect for the men in the business end of the industry," the director's escalating production budgets caused tension that

led to a final rupture. As his filmmaking became increasingly focused on the consumer culture as spectacle, DeMille's correspondence with his longtime colleague, Lasky, became a series of negotiations about budgetary matters. At the end of 1918, the year in which he began to produce society dramas, DeMille wrote to Lasky about a $12,000 cost overrun for Don't Change Your Husband and claimed, "The average cost of my pictures to date . . . is $62,243."^[35] Less than two years later, in the midst of protracted negotiations for a new five-year contract with the corporation, he wired Lasky:

I urge the contract provide for an expenditure of not less than one hundred and seventy-five thousand . . . per picture exclusive of weekly advances, the reason . . . being that Male and Female . . . cost one hundred and sixty-thousand. . . and cost of productions has gone up so that I do not want to feel that I must scrimp and pinch . . . and you know my productions are greatly dependent upon their lavish handling.^[36]

A shrewd businessman, the director formed Cecil B. DeMille Productions as a partnership in 1920 to negotiate with Famous Players-Lasky for a percentage of net profits realized from the distribution of film rentals worldwide in addition to his usual weekly advances. Such a procedure resulted in considerable friction between the two organizations regarding production costs, accounting methods, audits, and division of profits. DeMille Productions, interestingly, branched out into real estate, securities, and other profitable forms of speculation in addition to filmmaking.^[37]

While his attorney, Neil S. McCarthy, dealt with details regarding the relationship between his partnership and the corporation, DeMille continued to press Lasky regarding the budgets of his feature films. Despite a global recession, he wired in May 1921, "the increased magnitude of recent pictures not only of our own but of other companies make it necessary [sic ] for me to have . . . a minimum of three hundred thousand for each production not including the sixty five hundred dollars weekly" (his advance against a percentage of profits). The Executive and Finance Committee of Famous Players-Lasky countered with a memorandum that limited the director's expenditures to $290,000 including his weekly advances. Due to an economic downturn in the industry and to an anticipated reduction in film rentals, the memo stressed that it would be impossible for a picture to gross $900,000, the minimal amount required to show a profit. A decision to reduce the salaries of studio staff and actors and to cut production costs indicated the gravity of the situation at this time.^[38]

A month later, Zukor, noting that DeMille had exceeded his budget for Fool's Paradise , stipulated in a modification of the director's contract that the negative cost of his next three productions was to be limited, excluding his weekly advances, to $150,000, $250,000, and $300,000, respectively. DeMille, calling attention to his reputation as "the most consistent money-maker in the business," wired in September, "I cannot and will not make pictures

39. Correspondence from Jesse L. Lasky, vice-president of Famous Players-Lasky 
and DeMille's colleague for many years. (Photo courtesy Brigham Young University)

with a yard stick." Despite Zukor's contractual stipulations, Lasky continued to run interference for the director by securing approval from the Executive Committee for higher production costs even though he had warned him in October, "The company's policy for the next few months will be a most conservative one. There will be no expansion of any kind and. . . investment in theatres, etc. will be gotten rid of, so we can accumulate as much cash as possible." As Lasky confided in a more personal vein in his correspondence the following year, "you are luckier than I am, old fellow, as you can

always depend on me to go to the front for you. . . but I haven't anyone to help me out in my problems with the company."^[39] In sum, DeMille's determination to acquire a greater percentage of the profits of his features as well as escalating production costs exacerbated his relationship with Zukor and placed Lasky in a precarious position as a middleman. Such a tenuous situation could not withstand the unprecedented cost overruns of The Ten Commandments .

When Zukor wired Lasky in April 1923 that he was convinced there should be elements of "love and romance" in The Ten Commandments , he also expressed concern that production costs had exceeded $700,000 even before shooting commenced. DeMille volunteered to waive his guarantee to a percentage of the film's profits but not his weekly advances. Zukor remained unimpressed. According to the director's account of events, as expenditures neared $1 million, a bill for $3,000 for the pharaoh's magnificent team of horses sent Elek J. Ludvigh, a corporation attorney, marching into Zukor's office and exclaiming, "You've got a crazy man on that. Look at the cost." Since DeMille served as a board member or an official of several California banks and was acquainted with A. P. Giannini, founder of the financial institution that became the Bank of America, he was able to outflank Zukor and raise $1 million to buy the production outright. A rupture between the two men was momentarily avoided as Zukor backed down, but DeMille's mounting expenditures, which eventually totalled $1.5 million, plunged the corporation into a severe financial crisis. The director agreed in the fall to a retroactive clause in his contract that would reduce the percentage of his profits from five previous productions. Less than two weeks later, Lasky informed DeMille that beginning on October 27, the studio would be closed for a period often weeks "on account of the excessive and mounting cost of production and . . . overproduction of pictures throughout the industry." DeMille responded immediately with a memo in which he listed salary reductions and layoffs affecting his staff. The director's decision to retain technicians at half-salary totalling thirty or forty dollars a week, surely a modest sum, and to dismiss clerical workers, seamstresses, and maids who earned even less gives an indication of the magnitude of his expenditures for sets, color processing, and special effects.^[40]Motion Picture News headlined the story of the layoff of hundreds of Famous Players-Lasky employees not only at the West Coast studio but also in the New York home office, the Long Island studio, and Paramount's exploitation staff in the field. Carl Anderson, president of Anderson Pictures Corporation, astutely summed up the situation in the industry:

One unit pitted its resources against another, thinking to win favor by the lavishness of their productions . . . . Some producers have been on a wild orgy of spending . . . . There had to come a time when top-heavy production costs would tumble of their own weight . . . . As far back as June, 1921, the. . . Motion

Picture Theatre Owners of America [warned] that production costs were too high.^[41]

A short piece about Famous Players-Lasky's denial that DeMille was resigning from his position as director-general of the West Coast studio appeared, interestingly, on the same page.

Although The Ten Commandments became a commercial success with gross earnings almost triple its cost, Zukor was determined to curb DeMille's threat to the financial integrity of Famous Players-Lasky when it reopened in January 1924. Since the director's five-year contract was due to expire in 1925, Zukor encouraged him to film his next feature, The Golden Bed (1925), at the Long Island studio so that they could both spend time with each other that would be "mutually beneficial and enjoyable." Unfortunately, that studio's facilities proved to be inadequate. As usual, Zukor employed Lasky as a go-between in negotiations and suggested that DeMille accept a lower weekly advance—S3,500 a week as part of negative costs negotiated in advance—and agree to a fifty-fifty division of profits between DeMille Productions and Famous Players-Lasky. Less than two months after this offer was tendered, trade journals simultaneously announced DeMille's departure from Famous Players-Lasky and D. W. Griffith's signing of a long-term contract with the studio in January 1925. After purchasing the Thomas H. Ince Studio in Culver City, DeMille began a new, independent, and short-lived phase in his career as the head of his own production company. But his situation was now comparable to the unenviable fate of Samuel Goldwyn upon the latter's ouster when the Lasky Company merged with Famous Players in 1916. As the director later recalled, "Mr. Goldwyn found himself without any organization at all—flat—nothing . . . . You cannot go out and pick up an organization."^[42] DeMille negotiated a contract between his new studio and Producers Distributing Corporation, an organization that almost immediately merged with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit of theaters, but he secured neither the financial backing nor distribution outlets to which he had become accustomed. Furthermore, in a replay of his production of The Ten Commandments , he spent two million dollars on The King of Kings and precipitated another severe financial crisis that led to his downfall.

Five years after he founded the DeMille Studio, the director abandoned his venture and began a brief tenure at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a corporation that challenged the hegemony of Famous Players-Lasky toward the end of the silent era. Unfortunately, he made three sound films, including two remakes—Madam Satan (1930), a society drama featuring the Ballet Mécha-nique as well as a zeppelin, and a third version of The Squaw Man (1931)—that were financial disasters. In 1932 he returned to Famous Players-Lasky, now Paramount Publix Corporation, at a time when both Lasky and Zukor were being outmaneuvered in the latest executive power struggle. Although

DeMille, on the verge of bankruptcy and in the midst of litigation with the Internal Revenue Service, survived to win box-office if not critical acclaim with The Sign of the Cross (1932), the decline of his career in the interim underscores the importance of his earlier relationships with Lasky and Zukor. Undeterred in his obsession to mount increasingly lavish spectacles, DeMille had been seduced by film production as a form of commodity fetishism. As such, he represented a nonrational component in the industry in contrast to the sober-minded business sense that Lasky and Zukor brought to film as an entrepreneurial enterprise. DeMille thus contributed to the evolution of filmmaking as commodification in an Orientalist form, that is, the exercise of hypnotic power through the sheer accumulation of objects displayed as spectacle.^[43] Indeed, the militaristic connotation of his title as director-general of Famous Players-Lasky signified that the orchestration of stupendous visual display was essentially another aspect of Western imperialism. The filmmaker, not coincidentally, wore jodhpurs and puttees as part of his costume on the set to project an authoritarian image. As opposed to the bureaucratic cost accounting procedures of entrepreneurialism, the Orientalist dimension of filmmaking as an irrational expression of power poses an interesting legacy for the industry today in its phase of multinational corporate competition that transcends geographical boundaries.