DeMille once defined religion as "faith in God and belief in Divinity. I don't think that the practice of forms is necessary in religion." If we look past form, past kitsch, past cheap sex, past arrogance, and take DeMille's religious fervor and earnestness at face value, "The Ten Commandments" emerges as a strange work of faith by an almost delusional autocrat. Attacked by critics who belittled his spirituality and sincerity, DeMille is a tragic figure -- an absurd tragic figure.

"I know I'm made fun of," he told Donald Curtis near the end of his life. (Curtis was both a bit player in the film and, later, a minister.) "I know they call 'The Ten Commandments' 'The Sexodus' ... But my ministry was making religious movies and getting more people to read the Bible than anyone else ever has."

But the skepticism that undermined DeMille's career-long religious project continues to color his legacy. In addition to the famous case of Judge Roy Moore's Alabama courtroom, there have been numerous recent battles over granite replicas of the Ten Commandments displayed on public property -- in Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas, New York, and other states. In December 2002, Slate reported that nearly half of the monoliths being disputed by the ACLU were from a set of 4,000, donated in the late 1950s by a peculiar partnership: the nonsectarian charitable organization the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and the film director Cecil B. DeMille, who "wanted to promote his movie." A great many articles written about the contested Eagle monoliths implied or stated outright that DeMille's involvement was strictly promotional. As proof, they noted that actor Yul Brynner (Pharoah Ramses in the film) had spoken at the very first monolith's dedication ceremony, in Milwaukee in 1955. Charlton Heston dedicated another in North Dakota.

"They've got it all wrong," Sue Hoffman told me, exasperated. Hoffman has spent the last two years researching a book on the history of the Eagle monoliths. She has tracked 160 of them and is confident the figure 4,000 is exaggerated. She also says she confirmed that the actors who appeared at dedications -- there were only three -- donated their time. The program was decentralized and grass-roots-based. Local Eagle aeries raised the money for each monolith, and their exact locations were agreed upon with local governments. Furthermore, Ten Commandments monoliths continued to be placed through the 1960s, well after the film's release. Though the dedications coincided with local openings of the film in some cases, and the Eagles endorsed the movie in a mailing to their members, she says the DeMille-Eagles partnership was hardly the publicity juggernaut alluded to in the media.

DeMille, though, was smart enough to reach out to the Eagles while his film was still in production.

In 1954, DeMille was filming in Egypt. Everything about the production was epic, especially for its time. (Fifteen thousand extras and crew members contributed to the Exodus scene.) Egypt's splendor, the "Holy Ground," and possibly his own extravagant sets had inspired a spiritual reaffirmation in DeMille. Another likely cause was the heart attack that struck the 73-year-old director on Take 3 of the Exodus shoot. (Again, a convoluted story: Some claim that DeMille recovered after a few days of heavy praying. The version in DeMille's "Autobiography" is, uncharacteristically, the less romantic one: To save the production, he defied his doctors and took a "calculated risk.")

DeMille heard about the Eagles printing keepsakes of the Ten Commandments for juvenile courts and schools around the country. (Hoffman suspects these earlier versions are partly responsible for the figure 4,000.) In a letter written at the foot of Sinai and published in the Eagles' magazine, DeMille, with his typical melodrama -- the fervor that feels like artifice, but might be fervor -- endorsed the program:

"To guide young people in today's complex world," he wrote, "we need all the light that expert knowledge and advanced scientific techniques can give. But most of all we need the Divine Code of Guidance which was given to the world ... the Ten Commandments. They are older than Moses, older than this mountain, because they are not laws: they are the law."

He telephoned the program's conceiver, Minnesota Juvenile Court Judge E.J. Ruegemer. Ruegemer, who is now 102, could not be reached for this article, but has recounted elsewhere that DeMille sought to expand the program. He proposed brass plaques. Ruegemer suggested full-blown sculptures, hewn from Minnesota granite.

Elkhart, Ind., a small "City With a Heart," erected a Decalogue in front of its City Hall on Memorial Day, 1958 -- roughly a year and a half after the film's release. In 1998, a passing cyclist enlisted the Indiana Civil Liberties Union to sue the city for the removal of the Decalogue -- and damages -- arguing that its display violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The case was brought all the way to the Supreme Court, which, in 2002, refused to hear it. The monolith was removed and placed on private property. (Hoping to avoid a similar lawsuit, Milwaukee voluntarily removed its Eagle monolith -- the one Yul Brynner had dedicated -- from in front of City Hall.)

William F. Buckley Jr. claimed in 2001 that the planned defense in the Elkhart case hinged on DeMille's less-than-altruistic involvement. (Buckley, too, claimed DeMille was "promoting his movie" and that the DeMille-Eagle partnership was a way to "combine publicity for 'The Ten Commmandments'" with the elevation of public morals.) The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative group representing Elkhart, would argue, in Buckley's words, "The Ten Commandments tablets had nothing to do with the propagation of religion ... It had to do with commerce!" It was a piece of film marketing. Elkhart resident Bob Weaver helped assemble the Elkhart Ten Commandments Committee to defend the monument's display. He confirms that this defense was considered, but abandoned. Weaver felt DeMille's involvement -- whatever it was -- was inconsequential to both the case and the monolith's meaning. (He referred to the film as "Moses or whatever.")

Perhaps because DeMille's involvement had no official bearing on the case, assumptions of his self-interest were never questioned and therefore never fully went away. In a recent phone interview, Elkhart defense attorney David New (not of the ACLJ) referred to the monoliths in passing "as part of 'The Ten Commandments' promotion" and "to promote the film." Even the amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court by the ACLJ cited DeMille's involvement as "perhaps self-serving."

But as with much of what DeMille left behind, the "truth" of the tireless showman's intentions is perhaps unknowable: It's hard to argue that the monoliths were the publicity blitz they're portrayed as, though they surely did something. DeMille likely knew that such a large-scale charitable act, done alongside the Eagles, would help his image as the benevolent public servant he claimed and wanted to be. Which is not to say he wasn't. According to James D'Arc, DeMille donated all profits from the film "The Ten Commandments" to charity, and signed residual profits entirely over to his cast and crew -- to whom ABC has written almost annual checks for over 30 years and will again after Sunday's broadcast.

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