We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
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1. OUR first meeting was in the winter of 1946. There was nothing epic in his manner. His voice did not sound like thunder from Mount Olympus. He stood at the door to his office, a foot propping it open, with a warm, interested, almost shy smile. "Please come in." It wasn't what one might have expected by way of greeting, no outburst ripping open the gates of Hollywood or flaying the souls of extras. A warmth filled the visitor, a feeling that he was the most important person DeMille was to see that day. Was this the legendary DeMille, the bruising, blistering Alexander of the sound stages, who practiced deliberate cruelties on players and his staff out of sheer love of exhibitionism? Was this the cine- matic disciple whose fervor for the Bible had sent him shinnying like an enraged Crusader up the walls of a cardboard Antioch; whose Biblical dramas woven with human passion were pace described as "a fraud that enabled immorality to hide behind the protection of the Holy Book"? His office was not a small-scale model of the Roman Colos- seum. No gladiator or thick-set Thracian toting a lead shield was in evidence nor even one assistant chained to the walL Nothing in his meticulous dress or manner would have sent Caesar to his knees. The office was in total disarray—sketches, pictures, clippings, books, small-scale models, assorted statuary, occupied the chairs, leather couch and the immense desk. The walls of satiny walnut 11