YES, MR.DEMILLE (1959)

144 Yes, Mr. DeMille which could do the picture immense good. The publicist had hardly touched on the more important aspects of his triumph when the microphones thundered DeMille's pent-up wrath to every corner of the sound stage. The loel canto outburst went on endlessly against "the crime of interrupting a $50,000- a-day set to chatter about some idiotic magazine article " Obliquely, DeMille had let the errant performer know that he was in no mood for tomfoolery, while the startled rookie stood by too shocked to move. All that remained for Mr. DeMille to do was to repair the shattered spirit of the shorn lamb. This he always undertook personally, favoring him with pleasant remarks but never men- tioning the episode directly. DeMille went to the newcomer's office to which he had repaired, dazed and wounded, less than an hour after the ordeal. The boss sat down, exhibiting the greatest charm and affability, "I know you understand how DeMille works/' he murmured. Tm afraid it's a kind of martyr- dom for a great cause, and we all must give a little bit of ourselves." Soon the recruit begin to see a great deal of logic in the way DeMille represented it: a sacrifice to expiate for the sins of others! A high form of charity, was it not, and he considered it so until he had witnessed a succession of these disciplinary attacks and found himself struggling to keep the faith. At times they were awesome, even to us, but more so to visitors on the sets who of course could not understand why a trifling mis- demeanor should evoke such wrath and went away feeling sorry for the staff. One of the granddaddies of these outbursts occurred at Sarasota at the Ringling Brothers circus grounds, where we were filming The Greatest Show on Earth. One of the scenes required a bit of doing because it involved a full circus train departing from winter quarters with tardy performers boarding it helter-skelter. The "traffic"—movement