YES, MR.DEMILLE (1959)

70 Yes, Mr. DeMille before long he delighted his father's old friend with some creditable ideas. Within a few years, Mrs, DeMille made a logical move. She opened an office in New York to handle Bill's plays and hold herself forth as a mother confessor to young aspirants to the stage and advisor to struggling playwrights. Cecil was worked into the new life, too, with roles in this and that, but mostly in productions that passed through the DeMille Play Agency. Cecil had shed the curse of all boys of the era, Lord Fauntleroy suit and long curls, but he was not entirely free of the horrible tyranny. For some reason, the casting directors tabbed the future strong man of the movies as a pretty-boy-in-lace type. In perfumed attire and decanting lyrical prose, Cecil pranced about the stage in the lead of plays like The Prince Chap and Lord Chumley. Cecil tried his hand at playwriting and came up with The Return of Peter Grimm, or possibly the idea. The authorship of that once reigning favorite may never be determined. DeMille said Belasco paid him $5,000 for it. Belasco claimed he bought an idea only, that he himself constructed the play, developed the characters, and wrote the dialogue. The dispute got into the papers. Belasco demanded retrac- tion of a statement crediting DeMille as part author. "In view of the fact that my play has not yet been presented in New York—and may possibly prove a failure there—I think it is only fair that I should be held exclusively responsible for my own work." Neither position tallied with Neil McCarthy's memory of the matter. McCarthy, for years DeMille's attorney and investment associate, said DeMille took the first draft of Grimm to Belasco's office. 'Then he would come in once every week or ten days and read each new part to Belasco. When he had finished it Belasco wanted to produce it but he told DeMille he couldn't pay him much because he had practically the same story sent him from an author in Germany. There were curtains in