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B AS IN BARNUM 263 plot. He insisted that a mind that could reject such a sum of money could be capable of enormous evil. Nothing dastardly took place, and when we moved out of Sarasota, still unpunctured by some occult treachery, the per- plexed DeMille marked the occasion as historic. Hollywood had always evaluated people in terms of dollars. Here it had failed for the first time in memory. He had called Samson * a story of the power of prayer." On the sets, on tour, the "tag" became a motto. For such tags and labels DeMille possessed a rare sensitivity. He had a way of reaching right into the heart of a situation and coming up with a phrase that seemed to expose the story's inner meaning. The Greatest Show on Earth was, to most of us, an actionful circus picture, but to DeMille it was an institution of co-opera- tive creeds and races—"a sort of United Nations that works." At every turn he pelted audiences and press people with the concept. This, and every other picture of his, had to be sold on a theme, and we knew that his "United Nations under the Big Top" idea, while a nice editorial thought, was not dramatic enough. De- Mille knew it, too, and almost daily let it be known he was expecting one of us to come up with another key theme for Greatest Show. With the hundreds of production details we knew he was grappling with at the moment, this problem would remain with him, a small nagging voice, until he or someone unearthed the answer that satisfied him. 'Why did I make this circus picture?" he kept asking. Almost daily two or three replies flowed from our typewriters into his office. This went on for quite some time. Abruptly one day we were advised by memo that the boss himself had the answer. "Mr. DeMille has the idea which will keynote the entire pub-