Free Republic

It is nothing short of amazing to see how far movies have evolved since their earliest days to today. Movies at their earliest inception were state of the art, impressive spectacles that people dressed up for and flocked to see, for a fraction of the cost of attending performance-based arts like plays, concerts, and vaudeville acts. When silent movies came on the scene, the art of storytelling entered a new age, an age that, if done right, would have an impact that would be frozen in time, and become immortalized. Very few films from the silent era have high profile...

It is an extraordinary thing when a movie becomes so meaningful, timeless, and impactful, that it remains relevant and popular while its audience grows with each new generation. In the case of Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments, there are a multitude of reasons for that. The Ten Commandments has two significant components that work in its favor. For one; consider the source. The Biblical book of Exodus explicitly chronicles the sovereignty of God, as well as His intercessory involvement in freeing His chosen people, the Hebrews. It is an integral part of Hebrew history, and plays a vital...

Archaeologists working in sand dunes on the central California coast have dug up an intact plaster sphinx that was part of an Egyptian movie set built more than 90 years ago for Cecil B. DeMille's epic "The Ten Commandments." The 300-pound sphinx is the second recovered from the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes.

Hidden for more than 90 years beneath the rolling sand dunes of Guadalupe, California, an enormous, plaster sphinx from the 1923 blockbuster movie "The Ten Commandments" has been rediscovered and is now above ground. The public will be able to see the sphinx on display as early as next year, once it has been reconstructed a necessity since it became weather-beaten during its stint beneath the sand, said Doug Jenzen, the executive director of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center, who oversaw the recent excavation.

Few matters have initiated more litigation in the courts than the presence of Ten Commandments monuments and other displays of the Decalogue across the country located on public property. The presence of most of these is the result of a joint campaign by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, working with Hollywood Royalty and movie-magnate, the late great Cecil B. DeMille. Today the radical left has erroneously argued these displays are an unconstitutional violation of the "separation of church and state" and disparage them as nothing more than a publicity stunt by DeMille to hype his movie at the time, The...

Cecil B. DeMille was smarter than Mel Gibson. In 1927, when DeMille filmed his version of the life of Christ, "The King of Kings," he covered all the theological bases by placing on the payroll a Protestant minister, a Catholic priest and a rabbi. Gibson, director and co-author of "The Passion," billed as the most authentic version of the life and death of Christ ever filmed, refused to have the high priests of official religion vet his vision and, the way things are going, they're going to crucify him. Though "The Passion" won't be released until Ash Wednesday in April,...

ALEXANDRIA, MINN. -- Retired Judge E. J. Ruegemer is 101 now, his eyesight failing, his hearing impaired, his walk halting. But he remembers with absolute clarity the juvenile delinquent whose ignorance of right and wrong spurred the judge to start a movement in 1946 to place thousands of monuments and plaques with the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, schools and parks across the nation. For decades, his campaign, aided by the Fraternal Order of Eagles and a Hollywood film mogul, won Ruegemer praise and respect. "Now, they're being removed in so many places. It saddens me because it does society good...

By Mary Zeiss Stange, Mary Zeiss Stange teaches religion and women's studies at Skidmore College and with her husband has a bison ranch in Montana. The separation of church and state has always been a fiction in this country, but never more so than when, in the 1950s, Cecil B. DeMille teamed with the Fraternal Order of Eagles to kick off donations of 4,000 6-foot granite tablets depicting the Ten Commandments to municipalities nationwide. [snip] The Eagles donated the monument to the seat of Custer County in 1968, and no one paid it much attention. But when a Christmas Nativity...