Everyone in Hollywood loves Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) for its lavish production values and the money this timeless film has earned — some three billion adjusted for inflation.
Yet, the underlying story has far fewer fans.
Admittedly, it’s not always easy to do what’s right, to follow the Commandments, especially when it comes to the indissolubility of marriage — no more so than in Hollywood where fame and wealth, and all the attendant pleasures, towers, and glittering ephemera often seem far superior to the freedom that comes from following God’s law, written not only on those stone tablets but in the human heart as well.
But, then, it takes grace. And, by 1915 — some 3,300 years after Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:1) — two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., began carrying on an adulterous affair at a time when divorce still carried a social stigma.
As often is the case, there were extenuating circumstances. Fairbanks was a child of divorce — his mother, Ella Adelaide Marsh, a Roman Catholic and Southern belle from an affluent family, originally from New Orleans, widowed young, then married an abusive husband she divorced. Her third husband, the alcoholic H. Charles Ullman, father of Douglas, abandoned the family when Douglas was five — the marriage annulled, after which Ella raised her two sons in the Catholic faith as a single mother. Mary, also Catholic, wed Owen Moore, a fellow actor, much too young and much too fast, and he, too, was a raging alcoholic, the marriage “in name only.”
Yet, no annulments were sought. As predicted, fans, if not the Church, gave them a moral pass. “Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks,” writes film historian Jeanine Basinger, “represent the birth of superstar celebrity; their success, their talent, and their marriage to each other made them the first King and Queen of Hollywood, and they have never been superseded.”
Bigger picture: These mega-big stars set a mega-bad example. The pastor who married them, Reverend J. Whitcomb Brougher of Temple Baptist Church, was openly castigated for doing so — Archbishop John J. Cantwell of the Catholic diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles issuing a statement calling divorce “the greatest of all modern evils.”
Had Mary and Douglas sought clarification on their earlier relationships and found them to be non-sacramental, freeing them in the eyes of the Church to enter into a new marital union, they would have not only set a good example, but perhaps their nuptials would have endured when the “talkies” upended their careers and inevitable jealousies arose. But by 1933, their marriage, too, ended in divorce, reinforcing the cultural trend.
Hollywood had started making films about divorce as early as 1910. By the roaring 20s, divorce was all the rage in films such as The Primitive Lover (1922); Grounds for Divorce (1925); Forbidden Waters (1926); A Reno Divorce (1927), highlighting the scandal of divorce; Children of Divorce (1927), starring Clara Bow and Gary Cooper, showing the damage wrought by parents’ divorces.
At the dawn of the 30s, as the Depression set in and tight finances strained marriages to the breaking point, during what is termed “the pre-code era” (1930-1934), film infused the culture with an acceptance of divorce, notably in The Divorcee (1930), a convention-breaking film starring Norma Shearer, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a woman who, refusing to accept her husband’s infidelity, lives as a divorced woman; A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Katherine Hepburn’s film debut in this George Cukor-directed film about a woman who leaves her mentally-ill husband; and Merry Wives of Reno (1934), a comedy featuring frequent trips to Reno for legal separations.
Oh, the power of Hollywood.
And, though Hollywood also produced films that discouraged divorce, especially during the era of the Production Code (1934-1956) administered by Catholic Joseph Breen — including The Road to Reno (1931/1938); The Unfaithful (1947), showing how infidelity destroyed a marriage; and The Opposite Sex (1956), a musical comedy remake of The Women (1939) about divorces occurring among a social circle — the die was cast.
Indeed, Brief Encounter (1945), a British film directed by David Lean about two married people who fall in love was not subject to the Code and the adulterous affair was allowed to continue on screen, though it ultimately ended.
But that, then, was the reality of people’s lives and, not surprisingly, the norm also among the cast and filmmakers of The Ten Commandments (1956) — the director, Cecil B. DeMille, a prime example. He had many mistresses, with his wife’s approval, including Julia Faye, who played Elisheba, the wife of Moses’ older brother Aaron. Mind you, DeMille was also quite devout, reading the Bible every day, but did not respond to the grace to see why the Sixth Commandment was critical to his spiritual life.
One star, though, took a different path. Charleton Heston, who famously played Moses, was faithful to his wife, Lydia Clark, from 1944 to the day he died in 2008. “I found the right girl the first time,” he said, “and I was smart enough to realize it.” By the time wealth and fame came, Lydia had created a stable home life and infidelity could not penetrate their marital fortress. As Heston, a life-long Episcopalian, said, “I’ve never cheated and never wanted to. I actually like being married — and nothing is worth risking that.”
“He was definitely a man of faith,” his son Fraser told Christianity Today (3/31/2011). “He believed in all the fundamental Christian values, and he just loved the stories from the Bible.” And, he had the grace to live its lessons.
