Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1923 - Feb 1924)

A Letter from Location Julia Faye writes of the pleasures of working ankle deep in sand far from home and hairdressers where Cecil De Mille's company made scenes for "The Ten Commandments." To Myrtle Gebhart Camp Cecil De Mil'le, Guadalupe, California. June 9, 1923. Dear Myrtle: Did you ever get sand in your hair ? If so, I need hardly explain to you one of the principal pleasures ( ?) of being on location where the wind blows, and on a spot completely surrounded by towering and insecure sand dunes. It has all been wonderful here in two ways: first, there is the huge setting for which twenty-five hundred people are playing children of Israel and Egyptians at the time of the oppression of the Jews by Pharaoh and Rameses II. ; then, there's Camp Cecil De Mille, the young city which sprang up in six weeks on a spot where no humans had ever before lived, I guess. Perhaps even more interesting than the set and the work before the camera is this annex-to-Hollywood, set suddenly down on the Pacific sea-shore. It is a tent city but a city with electric lights, fire department, police department, a huge restaurant, plumbers, electricians, a school for the youngsters and a well-equipped hospital ! Our tents are wired and we each have a little electric stove with a cord and push-button thing that I tuck under my pillow. When I wake up in the cold mornings I just punch the button and get forty more winks while the tent warms up. But, oh Myrtle, that sand! Of course, it all looks very artistic on the screen. There never was anything more charming than windblown draperies. But, unfortunately we, and not the camera, get the full effect of the wind and flying sand. And at such moments for some reason we don't think so much of our "art." I can tell you that when we get back my hair dresser is going to have a good half-day's work. If you should be able to come up here, prepare to bid those bobbed curls of yours a fond and lasting good-bv, for the combination of sand and salt air is fatal to wavy hair, be its kinks, natural or otherwise. You probably won't believe it, but at four-thirty we are up and out of our narrow cots. A very noisy bugler makes sure of this. We are quite military up here. We are all divided into companies, each with an assistant director at its head, and we march to and from meals in quite the army style. Our military atmosphere, however, goes further than this, because camped with us are two troops of the Eleventh United States Cavalry and a battery of Field Artillery. These boys are going to drive our chariots. They are marvelous horsemen and, what is still more interesting to us girls', equally marvelous dancers. We dance every evening in the large tent called "Pop's Place" (honoring Mr. Liner, who is our camp manager). Here little Ruth Dickie holds forth with a group of musicians, who operate as a classical orchestra on the set during the day time and as a very peppy jazz band at night. Returning to the soldiers — what a gorgeous time we girls have when they declare "Soldiers' Tag Dance !" Really, in one such "tag," I danced with not less than fifty, and the most marvelous thing was that not a single one stepped on my feet. You will admit that you can't say this of all the civilian boys around Hollywood. Some days we work before the huge set and other days we travel down to the ocean to film scenes of the exodus of the children of Israel to the Red Sea. The Continued on pnp;e 95