Famous Masons

American filmmaker. Between 1913 and 1956, he made seventy features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the Hollywood film industry, the most commercially successful producer-director in cinema history. DeMille began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later moved to writing and directing stage productions, some with Jesse Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille?s first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was also the first feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story made it a phenomenal hit and it ?put Hollywood on the map.? The continued success of his productions led to the founding of Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and financial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for twenty-five years.