"In Billy Wilder's film ""Sunset Boulevard"", in which Gloria Swanson often said the line, ""All right, Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up"", who played Cecil B DeMille?"
Cecil B. DeMille of his pictures, it would be very silly of me, as a producer of commercial motion pictures, to demean for an instant his unparalleled skill as a maker of mass entertainment." DeMille appeared as himself in numerous films, including the M-G-M comedy "Free and Easy." He often appeared in his coming-attraction trailers and narrated many of his later films, even stepping on screen to introduce "The Ten Commandments". DeMille was immortalized in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" when Gloria Swanson spoke the line: "All right, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my closeup." DeMille plays himself in the film. In the 1940s,
Samson and Delilah (1949 film) been afraid of open spaces -- or themselves. But in all my 35 years of picture-making experience, Mr. Mature, I have not until now met a man who was 100 percent yellow." DeMille's legendary status led him to play himself in Billy Wilder's film noir "Sunset Boulevard". The film is about a fictional silent film star named Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson) who, no longer active, once worked as an actress for DeMille. For the scene in which Desmond visits DeMille at Paramount, an actual set of "Samson and Delilah" was reconstructed to show the director at work. The