Page:Screenland October 1923.djvu/18

18 ''The high pylon of Pharaoh's palace, designed for Cecil de Mille's "The Ten Commandments," in course of construction. When finished it was a hundred feet high and a thousand feet long.''

failure face Cecil de Mille's The Ten Commandments, now being done so luxuriously in California that it may eventually cause the famous director to change his studio base of operations? That remains to be seen. Anyway, de Mille is spending a fortune.

Will Doug Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad be a superb adventure or a financial winner? Anyway Doug has gone ahead to build the ancient city of the Thousand and One Nights adventures as he fancies it—without regard for cost.

What of the dozen or so other big "specials," already completed or under way?

Is this waste?

typical incident is only one reason for the colossal wastefulness of picture producing. In no business in the world is the overhead so tremendous and the wastefulness so wanton—except perhaps in our government at Washington. It's an amazing business!

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are thrown away annually in the making of motion pictures.

''The same setting as shown above—in its completed form and as it appears in "The Ten Commandments." The royal procession is about to exit''