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AMONG THE LILLIPUTIANS 47 some duty, but one that had to be faced if we were to avoid the sly implication that perhaps there was something amiss in our relationship with the press. It was up to the staff, he said philosophically at luncheon one day, "to protect me from the madmen who are at large. Some of them write for newspapers." For proper ears, DeMille went to great pains to prepare lively interviews. He had a way of weaving into the conversation subtle blows against some of the popular heresies urged against him—polite efforts calculated to convert the cynical visitor. DeMille had pat answers to certain recurring questions: "Have you ever changed the Bible for your stories?... Was your father a minister?... Who influenced you most as a young man?" And if the interviewer was bold: "How do you feel about the fact you have never won an Academy Award?" DeMille was ever on the alert for latent, mischievous motives. Interviews often drew forth his hidden resentments. He de- livered hard, direct blows to shatter myths that had clung to him through the years and which he felt were now out of keeping, He was nothing if not a consummate showman and, understand- ably, made some of his dreams come through at these inter- views. It was part of his showmanship to take fate by the hand in order to reveal to a visitor the unerring and predestined route that led to his present high estate. He lined up the facts of his life, like peaks in a well-plotted story, and sent them to a surg- ing climax. He never stopped trying to put to rest distortions about himself, and freely assigned colorful roles to otherwise meaningless events in his life. As a showman, it was easy for DeMille to recoil from the humdrum. Any man whose life and work influenced millions ought not to be saddled with a lackluster genesis. Better for him to be born full blown on his twenty-first year. DeMille's pride of ancestry was much too strong for anything of the sort. It happened that Cecil's brother, William, did not concur with Cecil's story of their early youth. Perhaps William's memory