Cecil B. DeMille, the Ten Commandments, and Texas Court Houses


Frank Rich in an article in the New York Times talks about the moral and political hijacking of a poor, near-dead woman in Florida (whose husband wants her to die naturally) by the religious right. He starts the article with a very interesting comment about the crusade of the director Cecil B. DeMille in the 1950s to both promote his film the Ten Commandments and to do his bit for the American fight against godless communism, to place thousands of concrete "replicas" of the Ten Commandments (as if anyone actually knows what they looked like) on the lawns of Court Houses across the nation. Rich writes:

"As DeMille readied his costly Paramount production for release a half-century ago, he seized on an ingenious publicity scheme. In partnership with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nationwide association of civic-minded clubs founded by theater owners, he sponsored the construction of several thousand Ten Commandments monuments throughout the country to hype his product. The Pharaoh himself - that would be Yul Brynner - participated in the gala unveiling of the Milwaukee slab. Heston did the same in North Dakota. Bizarrely enough, all these years later, it is another of these DeMille-inspired granite monuments, on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin, that is a focus of the Ten Commandments case that the United States Supreme Court heard this month."

This is both sad and amusing.

Frank Rich in an article in the New York Times talks about the moral and political hijacking of a poor, near-dead woman in Florida (whose husband wants her to die naturally) by the religious right. He starts the article with a very interesting comment about the crusade of the director Cecil B. DeMille in the 1950s to both promote his film the Ten Commandments and to do his bit for the American fight against godless communism, to place thousands of concrete "replicas" of the Ten Commandments (as if anyone actually knows what they looked like) on the lawns of Court Houses across the nation. Rich writes:

"As DeMille readied his costly Paramount production for release a half-century ago, he seized on an ingenious publicity scheme. In partnership with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nationwide association of civic-minded clubs founded by theater owners, he sponsored the construction of several thousand Ten Commandments monuments throughout the country to hype his product. The Pharaoh himself - that would be Yul Brynner - participated in the gala unveiling of the Milwaukee slab. Heston did the same in North Dakota. Bizarrely enough, all these years later, it is another of these DeMille-inspired granite monuments, on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin, that is a focus of the Ten Commandments case that the United States Supreme Court heard this month."

This is both sad and amusing.

Posted: Fri - March 25, 2005 at 10:22 PM        

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