I'm ready for my close up, Mr DeMille

Hi gang!  

First of all, I recently realized that this blog is a year old!  I am humbled and honored that anyone AT ALL is still reading it!  You guys are seriously the best.

Another thing that honors me is when anyone feels they want to join me in this endeavor.  

So for this post, I am VERY happy to present my blogguest, the inimitable Lisa Franklin. We have known each other for probably 25 years now (maybe a bit more but a girl doesn't have to divulge ALL her secrets).  We bonded over old movies and crazy evenings in shitty SF music clubs.  She writes beautifully and has an amazing sense of humor, as you will see below.  

She is a person that makes me laugh so hard I ache and fills me with love.

Here, she gifts us with a glimpse into a family tradition.

xoxo....hashtagSueslife

The Ten Commandments

Passover in my family always involves several rituals.  When my children were small, no Seder service was complete without the re-enacting of the plagues.  Each plate had a paper bag next to it full of afflictions and scourges.  At the appropriate time during the Passover dinner when reading out loud about the plagues, we would reach into our bags and then…  Mayhem reigned!!  Ping-pong balls were thrown at each other across the table while we recited “fiery hail”!  “Three days of darkness” – don your sunglasses!  Rubber bugs were bandied about (sometimes onto plates of Gifilte fish (ick), and haroset (yum!) during “pestilence”.  The little plastic cows we each had next to our plates were knocked over during “livestock disease”.  Frogs were flung and imaginary lice were scratched! 

Another ritual was equally as important to our family:  the watching of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956).  It was on TV every year around the time of Passover and Easter.  Years ago during the kids’ Easter break, when we were all on vacation in Raleigh, N.C. - all 5 of us piled into one room in a Motel 6 eating Ramen made in the coffee maker - we turned on the T.V., and there it was!!  As dependable as an argument over pool toys!

And this spring, to our absolute delight, my daughter and I were privileged to see all 3 hours and 39 minutes of this movie spectacle (presented by TMC) on the big screen!  The film was shown how it was originally presented in movie theaters in 1956 - Cecil B. Demille came on the screen first talking about the extensive research that went into the film.  The film score included a musical prelude, intermission, and audience exit music.  

Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner play the two warring brothers fighting not only for their father’s attentions, but those of Nefretiri, played lusciously by Anne Baxter. Charlton is at his chiseled best as Moses.  Yul Brynner, at his uber-manliest, plays the pharaoh, Ramses.  Woo friggin’ hoo!  Head shaved, he struts, he poses, his muscles bulge and pecs glisten as he refuses to let Moses’ people go.  Anne Baxter is magnificent as the lover of young Moses (the fun Moses – before he has that chat with the burning bush and becomes absolutely no fun at all.)

The Pharoah’s daughter is childless and plucks a basket from the river.  In it is a baby (played by Heston’s real son), an infant set onto the Nile because Ramses’ father (Pharaoh, Sr.) issued an edict that all first born male babies should be put to death.  The pharoah’s advisors had warned Pharoah, Sr. that a Jewish leader had been born that would free all the slaves.  Pharoah takes no chances and orders all Jewish male babies murdered. Moses’ mother sets baby Heston afloat.

Moses grows into the manly man of Charlton Heston.  Ramses hates Moses because he is favored by Ramses’ father and Ramses fears that Moses will be chosen as the next ruler of Egypt.

Anne Baxter’s Nefretiri is promised to Ramses, but she has the hots for Moses in a big way.  Apparently saying Moses’ name 2 times in a row in a low husky voice in every other sentence while clasping his oiled biceps is the best way to display her passion.  (“Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!”) Baxter is costumed in rich, flowing fabrics and jewelry and owns the screen, big or small, when she steps onto it.  She is, by far, my favorite character.

Ten Commandment Tidbits

•  10 years in the planning, 3 years in research, 3 years in writing and more than a year in the actual shooting, this version was the biggest undertaking in the history of film at that time.  At least 14,000 extras and 15,000 animals were used in the film.
•  Edward G. Robinson (who was actually blacklisted at the time) plays Dathan, the slimey slave trader
• What???  Lily Munster (Yvonne DeCarlo) plays Moses’ shepherdess wife, Sephora.
• Notice the short but illuminating interaction between Nefretiri and Moses’ wife bonding over the fact that once Moses had that tete a tete with the burning bush, his reed for both of the women went limp:

Nefretiri: You need have no fear of me. 
Sephora: I feared only his memory of you. 
Nefretiri: You have been able to erase it. 
Sephora: He has forgotten both of us. You lost him when he went to seek his God. I lost him when he found his God.

• Yul Brynner did extensive weight lifting, since in many scenes he would be bare chested (and we thank Yah-weh for every scene).
•  “Every year since 1973, the American TV network ABC airs this film on Easter, or Passover. In 1999, when for some reason ABC chose not to televise it, they received numerous irate phone calls from people accustomed to watching it every Easter than they have for any other film they have ever telecast.” - Wikipedia
• The parting of the Red Sea took 3 years to execute and one million dollars of the film’s thirteen million dollar budget.
• There is a 1923 silent version of “The Ten Commandments” also directed by Cecil B. DeMille.  Because it was filmed prior to the 1930 Hayes Code (which put restrictions on film for “morality” reasons) it is supposed to be pretty racey.  Breasts popping out of thin fabrics, titillating sexuality. 
• Charlton Heston talked DeMille into using his own voice for the voice of God.  Heston believed Moses would have heard God’s voice in his own head. 
• According to Charlton Heston's autobiography, the filming of the orgy scenes was so arduous that one disgruntled female extra exclaimed, "Who do I have to f*** to get OUT of this movie?"

Watch this extravaganza while feasting on Matzah (unleavened bread) and Haroset (chopped apples, nuts, and wine).  Best paired with a 2016 Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine.  Le Chaim!