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.
MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, JOHN—AND CECIL 125 hanced by orchestra music which, it was explained, blended with "the moods of the water/' Instead of the usual drop- curtain, Grauman planned a junior-miss size Niagara Falls illu- minated by colored lights. He wrote a personal note to Calvin Coolidge asking the President to push a button in Washington to signal the start of the waterfall curtain. An aide regretfully declined. A corps of damsels was imported from San Francisco's Chinatown to act as usherettes, lending an attractive, though sharply un-Biblical, flavor to the proceedings. One of DeMille's cardinal rules was an early start at a premiere to insure a fresh, bright-eyed audience. As a showman he considered it a basic precept—no picture should be called upon to fight off the blight of boredom brought on by lengthy preliminaries. As it developed, he spent one of the unhappiest nights of his life at Grauman's premiere of The King of Kings. Speaker after speaker felt it proper to shower much rosy prose on DeMille's dauntless spirit, to a point where DeMille was sure he was going to be stoned out of the theater. He sensed that the patience of the elite $ll-a-seat assemblage was growing thinner by the moment. With each pleonasm of praise for DeMille's rare fortitude in undertaking such a speculative venture, the perspiring object of this mass affection became more desperate. It was near 11 P.M. when The King of Kings main title flashed on the screen. That DeMille's feelings were justified was indi- cated by comments in the New York Mirror review: Their faces looked muscle-slacked. Many eyes were sleep- laden, as though rudely aroused from slumber. No enthusiasm. Loquacious disappointment, spiced with such startling comments as "H. B. Warner s beard seemed moth-eaten."... and from one facetious soul: "No love interest" At a later opening in another town, there was one speaker, DeMille himself. He said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, if you will look at this picture and see with eyes that see and understand-