Sherry Chandler

Send Out for Some Pillars and Cecil B. DeMille

Remember that granite Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the capitol in Austin? Texas, that is, home of born-again George W. Bush and Tom DeLay of the ethics-free Congress? The monument that is the subject of a law suit brought, I think, by a homeless lawyer? Well, in today’s NYTimes online (still free but you have to register), Frank Rich has an interesting back story about the origin of that monument. It all has to do with DeMille’s 1956 epic movie, named, you guessed it, “The Ten Commandments:”

As DeMille readied his costly Paramount production for release a half-century ago, he seized on an ingenious publicity scheme. In partnership with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nationwide association of civic-minded clubs founded by theater owners, he sponsored the construction of several thousand Ten Commandments monuments throughout the country to hype his product. The Pharaoh himself - that would be Yul Brynner - participated in the gala unveiling of the Milwaukee slab. Heston did the same in North Dakota. Bizarrely enough, all these years later, it is another of these DeMille-inspired granite monuments, on the grounds of the Texas Capitol in Austin, that is a focus of the Ten Commandments case that the United States Supreme Court heard this month.

Bizarre, indeed. The ironies radiating off this story are so thick that I wouldn’t begin to try to comment. And yet, somehow, it is all so typically American…

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