YES, MR.DEMILLE (1959)

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174 Yes, Mr. DeMitte mirrors/' His contract with Paramount usually called for a percentage of a picture after his share of the production cost had been liquidated by income. Therefore, any expense or salary paid by Paramount to DeMille's staff was reflected in his ultimate share of the proceeds. This necessarily caused him to eye Paramount^ expenditures rather closely, particularly in areas where such expenditures had no direct or visible effect on the picture itself. He detested "hidden costs," but would author- ize any amount whatsoever that could be seen on the screen. Any other expenditure was a waste. He was faced one day with deciding how much "in-between salary" should be paid a staff member, a veteran of more than forty years of continuous service. It was Paramount^ policy to keep DeMifle's production assistants on the studio payroll between pictures, periods that often ran as long as two years. For this particular assistant Paramount suggested a weekly salary of $150, which would cut the assistant's regular stipend in half. DeMille said he saw no reason for that figure, reduced it to $100. The employee was a woman, an expert in her field, performing a task of which no one else in the DeMille organiza- tion was capable. She had devoted her professional life to the boss, yet his bizarre sense of equity, recoiling at anything other than what he deemed a fair consideration, compelled him to take an action that was in painful conflict with his sentiments, On another occasion, a battle of claims and counterclaims featured a negotiation over a contract between Mr. DeMille and the writer. We had committed ourselves to prepare a series of syndicated newspaper articles to appear weekly under the title, "Cecil DeMille Speaking." It was proposed by Miss Rosson that I should prepare a contract in letter form, setting forth what I felt the agreement should provide. In the first several drafts, I suggested that we should divide equally whatever proceeds were derived from my articles about Hs life. This did not strike him as equitable, proposing instead