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.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
48 Yes, Mr. DeMille was faulty; in their young days many exciting episodes moved the family along a path aimed toward Cecil's ultimate rise in the film world. Numberless little gems of wisdom influenced and shaped the budding career. Where, indeed, was William when their father read a chapter of the Bible and American history each evening at bedtime? Cecil vividly remembered his brother and himself at their father s knees. But not William, the soft- spoken, pipe-smoking scholar who early fled from film making to a university professorship. How was it William did not recall those nights at the paternal knee beneath the flicker of candles? Nor did he know anything about the family crisis that was des- tined to shape the future Cecil, when, after much ado, their mother persuaded their father to abandon his ideas about be- coming a mininster and to devote himself to playwriting on Broadway. And Bill should have observed these things because he was older. Cecil fluently recalled all of them. True or not, what harm could be done in giving these events their proper and fateful place in history? Here again, it was DeMille the showman, re- sponding to an intuitive faculty for drama, the kind of drama the public wants, and, more important, having those things ac- cepted that pleased and edified him most. In the fall of 1951 DeMille was visited by a European writer whose mission was to obtain material for a book on important Americans. Much planning took place, and we sat for hours in DeMille's office as he rehearsed replies to questions we were certain the visiting writer would ask. It was a perfect occasion to banish a lot of doubt in the minds of staff members. We were never quite certain whether the facts in the last interview were final or official, changing as they did from time to time. So it was somewhat risky to send out press releases based on previous interviews. Some releases returned to haunt us—usually by a demand from "up front" as to where we had gotten such facts.