Anti-Semitic?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Cecil B. DeMille
will_am_i — 11 years ago(April 18, 2014 01:58 AM)
Wikipedia's article on him has this curious line:
Later in life, DeMille, a lauded film director, respected member of the Hollywood film community, admitted he didnt like the Jewish peoplein Los Angeles, though he was unable to relinquish the knowledge that he was one of them.
The citation for this is a Barbara Stanwyck biography, "A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: True-Steel", by Victoria Wilson. Can anyone who has read the book shed more light on his feelings about Jewish people? Was it just Jews in Los Angeles that he disliked, and why? -
cwente2 — 11 years ago(April 18, 2014 02:57 PM)
First, I'd like to know who initially claimed to have heard this comment.
Second, it seems unlikely that an anti-Semitic DeMille would ever have made
Samson and Delilah
and
The Ten Commandments
(twice) if he "didn't like the Jewish people".
Third, if it's true there was some Jewish blood in the man, the aforementioned comment would have revealed an unlikely dislike of himself.
Fourth, his business partners throughout his career were largely Jewish (Goldwyn, Zukor, Lasky ).
No. Don't think the accusation has much credibility. -
puirt-a-beul — 9 years ago(October 31, 2016 05:37 AM)
That in itself doesn't mean that it wasn't made, of course, nor that DeMille never said it. It just means that Wikipedia is avoiding controversy.
But if DeMille
did
say it, it seems likely he was talking about specific dominant personalities in the industry, rather than Jewish people in general. You only have to listen to the narration of his remake of
The Ten Commandments
, which DeMille wrote and spoke, to know that he wasn't anti-Semitic.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment. -
hammer4 — 9 years ago(October 31, 2016 09:41 AM)
It's also quite possible that it isn't in the Wikipedia article because it isn't a valid quote. That was the point of my post. The original poster partially used Wikipedia as a source for this alleged quote, but it isn't in the Wikipedia article on De Mille. Perhaps it was there at one time and subsequently removed because its validity was seriously called into question.
I've never known Wikipedia to ""shy away from controversy".