Jesse Louis Lasky (September 13, 1880 β January 13, 1958) was an American pioneer motion picture producer who was a key founder of what was to become Paramount Pictures, and father of screenwriter Jesse L. Lasky Jr.
Jesse Louis Lasky (September 13, 1880 β January 13, 1958) was an American pioneer motion picture producer who was a key founder of what was to become Paramount Pictures, and father of screenwriter Jesse L. Lasky Jr.
Paramount on Parade is a 1930 all-star American pre-Code revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H. Knopf, Frank Tuttle, and Victor Schertzingerβall supervised by the production supervisor, singer, actress, and songwriter Elsie Janis.
Featured stars included Jean Arthur, Richard Arlen, Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Jack Oakie, Helen Kane, Maurice Chevalier, Nancy Carroll, George Bancroft, Kay Francis, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Gary Cooper, Fay Wray, Lillian Roth and other Paramount stars. The screenplay was written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, with cinematography by Victor Milner and Harry Fischbeck.
Cecil Blount DeMille (/ΛsΙsΙl dΙΛmΙͺl/; August 12, 1881Β β January 21, 1959), often known in popular culture as Mr. DeMille, was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history, with many films dominating the box office three or four at a time. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants.
Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts and raised in New York City, DeMille began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later began to write and direct stage plays, a few with his older brother William de Mille, and some with Jesse L. Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story was commercially successful, and the film marked Hollywood as the new home of the U.S. film industry. Based on continued film successes, DeMille founded Famous Players Lasky which was later reverse merged into Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and commercial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for 25 years.