The holy tablets made for the director of the Biblical epic The 10 Commandments will be sold at a major sale of Hollywood memorabilia next month.
Lights, Camera, Legacy: The Cecil B. DeMille Collection will be hosted by Heritage Auctions on July 15.
DeMille is one of the foundational figures of Hollywood and probably history’s most successful producer and director.
He made a speciality of the epic and, a deeply religious man, often returned to bible stories.
Cecil B DeMille in a film about the movie The Ten Commandments with the tablets of stone in the background.
His 1956 movie The Ten Commandments is a wonderful example of his mastery of big themes, big images, and big stars.
In it, Charlton Heston played Moses, wielding the two stone tablets on which God gave the 10 Commandments to the Hebrew people in some of the most striking and parodied moments in cinema history.
In true Hollywood style, Heston was actually carrying plastic models. But DeMille commissioned an extremely authentic pair of his own to be used in publicity and later for education.
The director was legendary for his attention to detail. Much of The Ten Commandments was shot in Egypt, and DeMille ordered his tablets be made from red granite quarried on Mount Sinai. He brought in academics from the University of Chicago to help him create authentic text on his stones.
DeMille created an authentic relic of the Biblical tablets. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
The DeMille tablets are listed for sale with no estimate, but demanding an opening bid of $60,000 to compete for them.
Alongside them are costumes, props, cameras, concept artwork and more from some of DeMille’s best-known films.
DeMille was a pioneer who used the best artists to bring his vision to the screen. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
Heritage cataloguer Bradley Harding picked out some of the preparatory artwork as worthy of attention. He said: “He was one of the first filmmakers to use fine artists to help convey his visual approach for a production. These artists, who came from a variety of professional backgrounds, were tasked with creating storyboards, sketches, and most notably, elaborate paintings that would highlight key components of scenes. Artists such as Wilfred Buckland, Ken Reid, John Jensen, and Dan Sayre Groesbeck, would create stunning watercolor and gouache renderings that would have shaken the art world had they been released to the general public.”
The Cecil B Demille sale is listed online now with a live sale and close on July 15.
