Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

In 1990, filmmaker Peter Brosnan set out to find a legendary Egyptian city that was lost to time and buried by sand dunes. After years of battling local officials, he finally was given the approval to begin an archeological dig. What he found were 35-foot tall statues of the Pharoah Ramses II and enormous sphinxes weighing over 5 tons. Where did they make this discovery? Near Santa Barbara. Learn more about the lost city of Cecil B. DeMille on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1990, filmmaker Peter Brosnan set out to find a legendary Egyptian city that was lost to time and buried under sand dunes. After years of battling local officials, he was finally given the approval to begin an archaeological dig. What he found were 35-foot-tall statues of the Pharaoh Ramses II, and enormous sphinxes weighing over five tons. Where did he make this discovery? In Santa Barbara County just north of Los Angeles. Learn more about the lost Egyptian city of Cecil B. DeMille on this episode of Everything Everywhere, daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and

tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Travel Photography Academy. If you've listened to enough episodes of this podcast, you'll notice that I often interject places that I've visited. That's because I spent over 10 years of my life traveling around the world almost nonstop. During that time, I went from being a complete novice in photography to winning almost every major travel photography prize in North America. When I learned how to do travel photography, I did do it the hard way. It took years of time and lots of travel. That's why I created the Travel Photography Academy, so you can learn from me in much less time, spending much less money.

It's an online video course which I shot on location in France, Spain, and the United States, and I cover everything you need to improve your travel photography. So, if you want to take your photography to the next level and get better photos on your next trip, visit Travel Photography Academy.com or click on the link in the show notes. This story begins with the Hollywood Film Director and producer Cecil B. DeMille. He was one of, if not the biggest, names in Hollywood during the age of silent movies. He began his career making small movies, which were mostly melodramas and personal stories. However, later in his career, he shifted towards larger scale epic films, which became his

signature style. DeMille's films were incredibly successful financially, and he's considered the father of the modern motion picture industry. He had five films, which were the highest grossing films in the year they were released, a record only broken by Stephen Spielberg. The critics weren't fond of DeMille, but the audiences loved his films, and in the end, that's all that really mattered. In 1923, he was at the height of his success and looking for his next film.

He had created a public contest where people could submit ideas. The winning idea for the film came from one F.C. Nelson of Lansing, Michigan. Their proposal began with the following sentence, quote, You cannot break the Ten Commandments. They will break you. DeMille took up the challenge and decided to make a film about the Ten Commandments. Just to be clear, we're talking about the 1923 silent version of the Ten Commandments, which was directed by Cecil B. DeMille, not the 1956 color-talking remake of the Ten Commandments, also directed by Cecil B. DeMille, which starred Charlton Heston. The film we envision would be in two parts.

The first part would be the biblical story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, and the second part would be a modern story with four characters who all have different views on the Ten Commandments. The second part of the movie would be relatively easy to produce. The first half of the film, however, was to be one of the most ambitious productions in film history. In particular, the big scene was to be that of the exodus of the Israelites leaving Egypt. To film this, they first needed a location that looked like Egypt, or at least looked like what everyone thought Egypt looked like. DeMille selected the Guadalupe Nipomo Sand Dunes, which is located in Santa Barbara County, which is about 166 mile drive from Los Angeles. This was to be the largest film set ever constructed at the time.

A crew of over 1,600 people and 1,300 animals were put to work building the massive set. It became known as the city of the pharaoh. The focus of the set was a massive 110-foot-high, 800-foot-long gate that the leaving Israelites would be walking through. There would also be four 35-foot-high statues of the Pharaoh-Ramseys II and 21 statues of Sphinxes. However, this was a film set and not a natural Egyptian city. It wasn't built out of stone, but rather it was made out of plaster and wood. It only needed to exist for the few weeks in which the filming would take place. The scenes shot in the Guadalupe Dunes were actually really impressive.

Much of it was shot in Technicolor too, and The Ten Commandments was the first major Hollywood film to use this color technique. There were 2,500 actors who were brought up to appear as extras in the film. They were housed in a giant tent city on the dunes for two months. There wasn't such a thing as CGI back then, so if you wanted to film, thousands of people fleeing, you needed thousands of people. He told his actors, quote, Your skin will be cooked raw. You will miss the comforts of home.

You will be asked to endure perhaps the most unpleasant location in cinema history. I expect of you your supreme efforts, unquote. Filming took place between May 21st and August 16, 1923. The film was quite successful. It had a box office of $2.5 million, which was the second highest grossing film of the year. Critics loved the first part of the movie which showed ancient Egypt, but didn't care for the second part so much. However, they thought the first part was so good that it was worth the price of admission. At the end of filming, they had gone way over budget, so they didn't have anything left for the demolition of the set.

DeMille had spent $1.4 million on the production, making it the most expensive movie ever made at that point. A legend held that DeMille didn't want anyone else to use the set, so we blew it up with dynamite and bulldozed it under the doom. However, the reality was that the set was simply abandoned. The truth was hinted at in DeMille's biography when he wrote, quote, If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happened to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization extended all the way to the Pacific coast, unquote.

After the set was abandoned, it was simply forgotten. Over the years, the plaster began to fall apart, and it was quickly covered by the moving dunes. However, it wasn't totally forgotten. Stories about the lost film set in the dunes had always floated around. In the early 1980s, 60 years after the film was shot, a documentary filmmaker named Peter Brosden decided he wanted to find the film set. However, it wasn't as easy as just going and digging in the sand.

He needed to get permission from the local authorities to search, which proved to be very difficult. He needed a permit to conduct an archaeological dig as well as an environmental audit. He joined with archaeologist John Parker, and in 1990 they finally got approval to search the sand dunes with a ground-penetrating radar. What they found was that the set was still beneath the sand. Even after the radar showed that the set was still there, Brasden faced problems getting permits and funding. The western snowy plover, which nests in the area, caused problems getting digging permits. If he wasn't having problems with permits, he was having problems with funding. Many people from all walks of life offered assistance, but getting people to actually commit proved difficult.

Eventually in the mid-1990s, he gave up the idea of doing the excavation because he couldn't raise the necessary $175,000. For 15 years, nothing happened. Occasionally, TV stations or newspapers would contact him and ask him about the film set under the dunes, but there wasn't sufficient interest to actually conduct a proper archaeological dig. However, after an interview with the Los Angeles Times, an anonymous donor came forward who offered to fund the project. In 2012, they were finally able to start digging and found the remains of one of the Sphinx statues. It wasn't in great shape, but they were able to recover the head of the Sphinx, which is now on display at a local museum in the town of Guadalupe.

The rest of the set is still down there, and thankfully the sand that covers it does a good job of keeping it preserved and removing moisture. There are currently efforts to raise money to excavate more of the set, but that will have to wait on funding. It might seem odd doing an archaeological dig on something which is a lot. less than 100 years old. But this is actually the oldest film set that exists. Film sets were never designed to be permanent, so it's actually a really important part of history. Films have become an enormous part of our culture, and this film set, buried in the sand, is one of our only links to early film history. You can actually see the Technicolor version

of the 192310 commandments on YouTube. Make sure you view the color version and not just the black and white version to get an idea of what the original audiences saw. The film entered the public domain in 2019, so the YouTube version is totally legit. Peter Brosnan finally released his documentary. It was called The Lost City of Cecil Bita Mill, and it can be viewed today on Amazon Prime Video and other streaming platforms. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer

credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show.