Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era

Cecil B. DeMille, best remembered as the director of biblical epics, was, in his early days as a filmmaker, an exemplar of genteel culture. In 1913, when DeMille co-founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, the movie industry was struggling to attain cultural legitimacy and attract high-class patrons. During the Progressive Era, DeMille artfully inserted cinema into middle-class culture. By the 1920s, he had become a trendsetter, producing films the advertising industry used to shape a consumer culture based on female desire. In this work - which blends cultural history and cultural studies - the author examines how DeMille articulated middle-class ideology across class and ethnic barriers to appeal to an increasingly female audience. Based on research into the DeMille Archives and other sources, the book provides an analysis of the director’s early features with respect to the dynamics of social change. Further, by demonstrating the congruence of cultural forms such as feature films, theatre, Orientalist world’s fairs, and department store displays, Higashi shows the relationship of the emerging popular culture to highbrow modes of expression.