When Cecil B. DeMille walked away from the studio he helped form, Paramount Pictures, he gained a feeling of total independence he hadn't felt in quite a long time. He had been battling with Paramount's president, Adolph Zukor, about a number of his elaborate films that went over budget. Once he left, DeMille established his own production company in 1924, financing both his and low-budgeted films, labeled production pictures, under his DeMille Pictures Corporation umbrella. He gathered a team of working colleagues from his Paramount days and gave them the freedom to come up with creative projects, no matter how far out and harebrained they were.
As film historians note, DeMille was a great director but a poor businessman. To take one example, the December 1926 "Cruise of the Jasper B" was as wacky of a movie as can be imagined. The plot itself almost defies explanation. A rich young man, Jerry Cleggett (Rod La Rocque), is facing losing everything, including a large inheritance, if he doesn't marry by his 25th birthday on the family's old Jasper B ship. At the same time, another young woman, Agatha Fairhaven (Mildred Harris), stands to gain her father's inheritance when he dies. Trouble is, the uncle on her father's side is cut out of the will. Mr. Fairhaven's nurse is in cahoots with Agatha's uncle and tosses the father's will out of the window, only to land on Agatha's bare back that happens to be wet. The will sticks on her back for quite some time, with the ink imprinting on her skin. The uncle eventually gets hold of the will and rips it up, only to discover she's got a copy of it on her back. He and the nurse begin to chase her with a wet sponge in an effort to wipe it clean. That's when Agatha and Jerry meet and forge an alliance of love and romance.
To show how much freedom DeMille gave his team, he okayed the production. Writers Tay Garnett, who wrote "The Postman Always Rings Twice," and Zelda Sears, who possessed an impressive resume of scripts, including Norma Shearer's "The Divorcee," were no amateurs to the business of scriptwriting. The cast in "Cruise of the Jasper B" were no slouches either. Actress Mildred Harris, Charlie Chaplin's first wife, a very busy actress in Hollywood at the time with some pretty impressive credentials, signed on to the project. And Rod La Rocque, the male lead, who married Hungarian actress Vilma Banky a year later, would successfully make the transition to sound movies before becoming a real estate broker in 1941.
As film historians note, DeMille was a great director but a poor businessman. To take one example, the December 1926 "Cruise of the Jasper B" was as wacky of a movie as can be imagined. The plot itself almost defies explanation. A rich young man, Jerry Cleggett (Rod La Rocque), is facing losing everything, including a large inheritance, if he doesn't marry by his 25th birthday on the family's old Jasper B ship. At the same time, another young woman, Agatha Fairhaven (Mildred Harris), stands to gain her father's inheritance when he dies. Trouble is, the uncle on her father's side is cut out of the will. Mr. Fairhaven's nurse is in cahoots with Agatha's uncle and tosses the father's will out of the window, only to land on Agatha's bare back that happens to be wet. The will sticks on her back for quite some time, with the ink imprinting on her skin. The uncle eventually gets hold of the will and rips it up, only to discover she's got a copy of it on her back. He and the nurse begin to chase her with a wet sponge in an effort to wipe it clean. That's when Agatha and Jerry meet and forge an alliance of love and romance.
To show how much freedom DeMille gave his team, he okayed the production. Writers Tay Garnett, who wrote "The Postman Always Rings Twice," and Zelda Sears, who possessed an impressive resume of scripts, including Norma Shearer's "The Divorcee," were no amateurs to the business of scriptwriting. The cast in "Cruise of the Jasper B" were no slouches either. Actress Mildred Harris, Charlie Chaplin's first wife, a very busy actress in Hollywood at the time with some pretty impressive credentials, signed on to the project. And Rod La Rocque, the male lead, who married Hungarian actress Vilma Banky a year later, would successfully make the transition to sound movies before becoming a real estate broker in 1941.
