The Bible in film religious epics produced as vehicles for its biggest stars. "Samson and Delilah" was the biggest moneymaking movie of 1949 and is considered the picture that sparked the biblical-epic film craze of the 1950s. It was followed by two of 1951’s biggest box-office hits, "Quo Vadis" and "David and Bathsheba". Charlton Heston starred in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur". According to author Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, in the 1950s and 1960s, during the era of the production code, "the most acceptable cinematic path for movies to incorporate sex and violence was the biblical epic". Basing a film on the Bible
The Cheat (1915 film) cast once again as the sexually predatory Asian man. A copy of "The Cheat" is preserved at the George Eastman House. This surviving version is the 1918 re-release footage which includes changes to the Hishuru Tori character. "The Cheat", which is now in public domain, was released on DVD in 2002 with another DeMille film "Manslaughter" (1922) by Kino International. The Cheat (1915 film) The Cheat is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, and Jack Dean (1874-1950), Ward's real-life husband. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the