Historically, the motion picture industry has been good at telling exciting tales that also reinforced cultural, ethnic, racial, and gender stereotypes. Some of the films mentioned in this blog post may fit that description.
But the horses working alongside the actors and film crews didn't know about stereotypes; they were just doing their jobs.
This story is about the horses.
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Some Arabian (and Not Really Arabian) Horses
in Silent Films, 1921-1926
Part Five
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Illustration for an article on the 1923 silent epic "The Ten Commandments"
in the Kansas City Star, 23 November 1924 |
In previous installments of this series, we've looked at some real Arabian horses (W. K. Kellogg's Jadaan, and the Arabian horses of Richard Walton Tully) that appeared in silent films, as well as several horses that simply played the part of Arabians without being Arabian horses themselves. To silent-era Hollywood, "Arabian horse," most of the time, meant "exotic."
As well, filmmakers tended to use movie horses that lived near the locations where the films were being shot. But not Cecil B. DeMille.
When we uncover the history of the 1923 silent classic "The Ten Commandments," we see the director, and Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Pictures, going way over the top to source the horses for Pharaoh's army and buy Pharaoh's own horses.
But that was the way DeMille, and his fantastic chariots, rolled. This story took an unexpected twist when I discovered the real names of two of the horses that pulled Pharaoh's chariot in 1923, and the young woman who loved them.
As we search for details, it's important to remember a few things:
Sometimes filmmakers would use a particularly handsome horse for closeup shots, and another of similar appearance as a "stunt double" for scenes where a horse had to run fast and/or perform dangerous stunts.
In newspapers, books, and magazines back then, the word "thoroughbred" with a lower-case "t" often meant "purebred," as opposed to a registered Thoroughbred.
Local newspapers often did not run stories on motion pictures until the film was shown in local theaters, sometimes more than a year after the initial release date.
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Before we start talking about the equines billed as Arabian horses in the 1923 film "The Ten Commandments," we need to bear in mind:
We're not talking about this "Ten Commandments," directed by Cecil B. DeMille in 1956 --
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Charlton Heston (Moses) and Yul Brynner (Rameses) starred in Cecil B. DeMille's
blockbuster 1956 film "The Ten Commandments." |
We're talking about this one, directed by Cecil B. DeMille in 1923:
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Charles De Roche (Rameses) and Theodore Roberts (Moses)
starred in Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 silent film
"The Ten Commandments." |
We can set aside our mental picture (with sound) of Yul Brynner as Rameses saying, "So let it be written. So let it be done," and of Charlton Heston aging gracefully as Moses. The actors are different, the color and the sounds will be in our imagination, as we travel back to 1923 to look at the hundreds of horses in the "mad spectacle" of this early equestrian epic, and particularly the horses that played the "Arabians" that pulled Pharaoh's chariot.
(Hint: they were not Arabians. Perhaps their true identities have been hiding in plain sight for almost a century!)
The Ten Commandments (1923)
Cecil B. DeMille's first retelling of the story of Moses and Pharaoh was the 1923 silent film "The Ten Commandments." Filmed in Southern California, it was a massive hit with a massive budget; the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation website reports that "The Ten Commandments" cost $1,475,836.93 and grossed $4,169,798.38, not adjusted for inflation.
And, as with several other silent films, some of the horses in "The Ten Commandments" were billed in newspaper and magazine stories as "Arabians."
Unlike DeMille's 1956 film with which we're more familiar, this early version of "The Ten Commandments" was comprised of two segments. Part One, the Prologue, recounted the tale of Moses and the Children of Israel leaving Egypt pursued by Pharaoh's army which drowns in the Red Sea. Part Two, the Story, was a contemporary tale about the importance of keeping the Ten Commandments.
The sets for the Prologue were built on the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes on the Central California coast. DeMille's crew erected a 120-foot tall temple, 100-foot Gates of Rameses, five huge Sphinxes, and a 750-foot city wall. A separate tent city compound, dubbed "Camp DeMille," housed the 5,000 horses, camels, sheep, goats, and donkeys rented for the Exodus scenes; a hospital, a kitchen; tents for 3,500 cast members, and a ten-piece orchestra (led by conductor Ruth Dickey) that played during the filming during the day, and in a recreation tent at night. (DeMille believed mood music helped the actors prepare for their scenes. Since it was a silent film, the sound of the instruments didn't affect the production.)
As we'll see, the filming of the chariot chase scenes took cast, crew, horses, and chariots from the Dunes to other wet and/or sandy parts of the state.
It appears that members of DeMille's family were on the set sometimes, too. One young member of the family had a vested interest in the chariot pursuit scenes, as we will soon see.
Horses for Pharaoh's Army
Even by today's standards, the cinematography, in the "Ten Commandments" scenes with the Egyptian army pursuing Moses across the desert, is spectacular. Director DeMille literally called in the cavalry, using hundreds of soldiers and their horses from the U. S. Army Presidio in Monterey, California to stage the pursuit. The Redlands, California Citrus Belt Bulletin said that Capt. Nelson M. Imboden headed the soldiers-turned-ancient Egyptians:
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| Redlands, California Citrus Belt Bulletin, 5 September 1923 |
The Waterloo, Iowa Press gave even more details about the pursuit, with two additional California filming locations: the Mojave Desert and Balboa Beach.
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| Waterloo, Iowa Press, 12 February 1925 |
"Spectators will be interested to learn that the preliminaries of the chariot race occupied a month of hard unflagging work...
"It took a fortnight to break the army horses to the chariots, after which began the rehearsing for the rides required in the picture.
"Before the camera also were the hair-raising upsets, as when a bunch of horses, chariots, and drivers come tumbling down an almost vertical embankment to seeming death. The straightaways were then staged on the hard asphaltum bed of the Muroc dry lake [now called Rogers Dry Lake] in the Mojave desert. Finally the spectacular entry into the sea was made at Balboa Beach."
But the valiant cavalry horses were not ready for their closeup; it was important to DeMille for Pharaoh to have very special horses, billed as "black Arabians." And as it turns out, someone else had a vested interest in Pharaoh getting very special movie horses as well.
Horses for Pharaoh's Chariot
Which horses were the "Arabians" that drew Pharaoh's chariot?
Published accounts mention DeMille buying two different pairs of chariot horses, for different high prices. I took some screen grabs from an online copy of "The Ten Commandments" so we can get a look at the horses in this post. I'll put a link to an online copy of the film, in the notes at the end.
Charles Higham's 1974 biography of DeMille states that the animals in "The Ten Commandments" included "a fine pair of black stallions bought at a cost of ten thousand dollars to draw Pharaoh's chariot in the pageant." (empahsis mine)
A few pages later, Higham notes:
"The film's most dangerous scene was the giant pursuit of the Exodus by the charioted army of Egypt, played by members of the Eleventh Cavalry. They made a heroic spectacle in their golden tunics, metal cuirasses gleaning in the sun, their gilded helmets tossing with multicolored plumes. In the [cara]van of the chase was a span [pair] of black thoroughbreds which DeMille had bought in Kansas City for fifty thousand dollars..." (emphasis mine)
Since the same source mentions two different selling prices, I had to assume two different pairs of horses helped Pharaoh chase Moses in different parts of the film; first, in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes on the Central California coast, and second, across an inland dry lake bed in the desert. This is backed up by newspaper and magazine accounts of the day, that give two separate sources for the black horses.
A newspaper article in the August 23, 1923 edition of the Logan, Utah Journal elaborated, saying that DeMille's "men were sent to Kansas City and points in Tennessee and Kentucky before a pair of spirited thoroughbreds could be found" to pull Pharaoh's chariot. (Note the lower-case "t" in "thoroughbred.")
The Santa Ana (California) Register newspaper carried a long article about life in Camp DeMille; the Dunes location looked like a military encampment for the thousands of animals and human "extras." This story includes the $10,000 selling price.
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| Santa Ana Register, 23 June 1923 |
In the lowlands to the north are the corrals for the live stock -- 4000 animals -- horses with coats that glisten like satin, cows, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, guinea hens, burros, camels and dogs... Among the horses is a magnificent span [pair] of black beauties purchased, especially for the production by DeMille, at a cost of $10,000. These are the horses that draw Pharaoh's chariot in the pageant.
We're getting close to identifying one of the pairs of black horses. The online archive of the Mexico, Missouri Ledger quotes the Paris, Missouri Appeal newspaper, dropping a few famous names in its report on the horses in the film:
"The pair of wonderful black horses that were driven by Pharaoh in 'The Ten Commandments' were from the Longview Farms, near Kansas City. They were trained under John Hook's supervision and were taken to Hollywood by Curt Hill, for delivery to the motion picture concern that made the films."
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| Mexico, Missouri Ledger, 19 November 1925 |
But that's not all. An article in the Mexico, Missouri Intelligencer stated that Rameses' chariot in the film was pulled by "black, prancing Arabian horses" that were "sired by Arabian stock brought to America a generation ago," and were "originally owned" by a farmer named John Alexander Hamilton, who lived in Mexico, Missouri. This article doesn't name a price for these horses, only that they were purchased "at a very high figure."
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| Mexico, Missouri Intelligencer, 8 January 1925 |
Are these the two different pairs of black horses for Pharaoh's chariot described in the biography of DeMille?
Saddlebred Cities
Notice the location for the purchase of both pairs of horses: Missouri.
Both Longview Farm in Lee's Summit outside Kansas City, and the town of Mexico, 16o miles away, were not the kind of places you'd expect to find black Arabian horses for your silent movie.
But they were exactly the places you would have gone to find black Saddlebred horses. Local newspapers could not have mentioned the names "Longview Farm," "John Hook," and "Hamilton" in relation to horse sales, without local readers understanding the context.
Longview Farm and horseman John T. Hook are the stuff of legend among Saddlebred lovers. The Kansas City Public Library website tells the farm's story:
Originally from Shelby County, Kentucky, self-made millionaire and philanthropist Robert Alexander Long moved to Kansas City in 1891. As founder of the Long-Bell Lumber Company, he became the most successful lumberman in the country, and the wealth he amassed led to the construction of several of the city’s enduring landmarks, including Liberty Memorial, the R.A. Long Building at 10th Street and Grand Avenue, and Corinthian Hall, now known as The Kansas City Museum. Twenty miles southeast of downtown, Long’s legacy continues in what remains of the once glorious Longview Farm.
"Long’s idea for a beautiful, self-sustaining farm began as a childhood dream. In 1912, he started planning for the property in earnest, despite having moved his family into their city home at Corinthian Hall just two years earlier. Drawn to the landscape of southern Jackson County between Hickman Mills and Lee’s Summit, he purchased over 1,500 acres of farmland reminiscent of his Kentucky home...The final product quickly became known as “the world’s most beautiful farm...
"Despite achieving his dream, Long reportedly lost some interest in the farm and preferred to stay in his city home. It was his younger daughter, champion horsewoman Loula Long Combs, who took up permanent residence and sustained Longview’s prestige. Part of the original intent for the country estate was to accommodate Loula’s large stock of horses, which had outgrown the stables at Corinthian Hall. Thus, one of Longview’s landmark structures was the Show Horse Barn, an elegant 45,000-square-foot stable and arena..."
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| Longview Farm (public domain) |
John T. Hook (1877-1960) was well-known in the 1910s and 1920s as a superb rider and trainer of Saddlebred horses. The Mexico, Missouri Ledger newspaper noted:
"In 1913 Mr. Hook was invited to become manager of the saddle horse division of the nationally known Longview Farm of R.A. Long at Lee’s Summit and in accepting that great honor, this young Missouri horseman began twelve years in one of the most important positions in the saddle horse world. Mr. Long had a great stable of fine horses and it was there that Mr. Hook began that champion building program that has won for him the distinction as the man who has developed more horses of this caliber than any other in the United States."
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John T. Hook on the Saddlebred stallion My Major Dare.
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The town of Mexico, Missouri itself was once noted as the "Saddle Horse Center of the World." It's now the home of the American Saddlebred Horse Museum.
The Hamilton Brothers' Blue Grass Stock Farm, outside Mexico, Missouri, was very well-known for selling and consigning saddle and draft horses and mules.
I can't find reference to a farmer or horseman named John Alexander Hamilton, but there are several Hamiltons who sold horses and mules, around Mexico, Missouri back then: John "Jack" M. Hamilton, James W. "Jim" Hamilton, George Hamilton, and Guy Hamilton. The book War Horse: Mounting the Cavalry with America's Finest Horses notes that Jim Hamilton of Mexico, Missouri was a US Army Remount Service Agent.
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Mexico, Missouri Intelligencer,
28 March 1923 |
The more I looked into these two pairs of black horses, the more I began to wonder: why two pairs? Was one pair for closeups and one for longer shots?
This is the pair of black horses pulling Pharaoh's chariot in front of the Gate of Rameses set, in the sand Dunes near the Central California coast. They appear as sleek as seals.
And here, below, is Pharaoh's chariot racing across the flat dry lake bed in the desert. Are these the same horses? I can't tell. Perhaps their heads look different...
As I was puzzling over the two pairs of black "Arabian" horses from a state where you'd expect to find Saddlebreds, I stumbled across part of the answer in, of all places, the Society section of the August 21, 1923 Fresno Bee newspaper. That's when I remembered:
Cecil B. DeMille's daughter, Cecelia DeMille (1908-1984), simply loved horses.
The Fresno newspaper's "Hotel Chatter" section said that Cecelia and her mother, Constance Adams DeMille, were en route from Hollywood to Northern California for some equestrian events, so 15- year-old Cecelia could show her two black horses.
"'We're on our way to win some prizes at the horse shows at Stockton and Sacramento,' Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille, wife of the noted motion picture producer, said to-day. Mrs. DeMille and her party stopped in Fresno en route from their Hollywood home to Stockton. They were registered at the Hotel Fresno.
"'Cecelia has two horses, Midnight Rex and Black Ball, which we are to enter at the San Joaquin County Fair at Stockton and the State Fair at Sacramento. The horses have never been entered in any fair before, and we are expecting them to win prizes. Cecelia purchased them recently from the Longview Farms....'"
"Cecelia purchased them recently from the Longview Farms," her mother said.
Bingo.
Two of Pharaoh's horses were purchased from Longview Farm, but not just for "The Ten Commandments." They became young Cecelia DeMille's new show horses.
Perhaps the other two horses, purchased from John Hamilton in Mexico, Missouri doubled for Midnight Rex and Black Ball in scenes with a lot of action and/or danger? I have not yet been able to find any additional information on the horses that Hamilton provided.
Previously I had been searching online media sources, and consulting with other equine history researchers with collections of Arabian and Saddlebred materials from decades past, for various combinations of words like "saddle," "chariot," "horse," "Pharaoh," "Arabian," "Arab," "DeMille," "Lasky," "Paramount," "Ten Commandments," "Missouri," and so on.
Now that I knew the horses' names, and that they were actually Saddlebreds, it was much easier to search for Midnight Rex and Black Ball among the thousands upon thousands of newspaper and magazine articles available online that reference "The Ten Commandments." When they were named, Black Ball and Midnight Rex were listed not as "Arabians," but as "champion driving horses."
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| Buffalo Evening News, 25 May 1923 |
The 1914 Register of the American Saddle-Horse Breeders Association shows No. 5769, MIDNIGHT REX, black stallion, small spot on forehead; bred by owner (J. G. Tyler, Edmond, Oklahoma), foaled April 21, 1912. Sire: Jasper McDonald, by Rex McDonald, by Rex Denmark. Dam: Bourbon Jewel, by Model Chief, by Bourbon Chief.
Midnight Rex's grandsire, legendary Saddlebred Rex McDonald, had deep roots in Middle Eastern horse history, through his ancestor the Thoroughbred stallion Denmark (foaled 1839). Denmark, the foundation sire of the American Saddlebred, traces back to the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian. But many generations passed before Midnight Rex, the Saddlebred, was foaled in 1912.
I have not yet been able to find a pedigree for Black Ball, sometimes spelled Blackball in print sources.
The Omaha, Nebraska World Herald contradicted the reported selling prices for Midnight Rex and Black Ball, saying they cost $1500 apiece.
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| Omaha Morning World Herald, 27 May 1923 |
The Chicago Tribune reported that Famous Players-Lasky, the producers of "The Ten Commandments," bought Black Ball and Midnight Rex "for $3,000 apiece."
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| Chicago Tribune, 3 June 1923 |
Combining this information with what Constance DeMille told the Fresno Bee, I have to wonder if Cecelia went with her father's horsemen to pick out her two new black Saddlebreds at Longview Farm. Or did her father's representatives bring the horses to California and she fell instantly in love with them?
Whatever the case, Midnight Rex and Black Ball must have been rushed back to California, because filming for the Prologue of "The Ten Commandments" in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes first began about the same time they were purchased.
Midnight Rex and Black Ball were not injured, when an accident occurred on the set of "The Ten Commandments" in early June, during filming in the Guadalupe Dunes. However, six people and several other horses were hurt in the pileup in the deep sand.
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Santa Maria, California Times, 4 June 1923.
Chariot driver Noble Johnson was one of Hollywood's
busiest African American actors during the silent era.
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"In the forefront of the melee was Charles De Roche, playing Rameses, the great general of Egyptian antiquity. With Noble Johnson he drove a chariot of gold, drawn by 'Blackball' and 'Midnight Rex,' two famous show horses bought by Cecil B. DeMille just for this picture."
Filming concluded, and by August 1923 we see Cecelia DeMille and her black Saddlebreds at the San Joaquin County Fair horse show in Stockton. The Los Angeles Times entertainment section reported they were touring various horse shows on the Pacific Coast.
The Times reported the horses' selling price at $1500 each.
The DeMille equine entourage got top billing in this Stockton newspaper article:
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Stockton, California Daily Evening Record,
1 August 1923 |
Cecelia and Black Ball, here spelled Blackball, were featured in a photo montage in the paper.
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| Cecelia DeMille and Black Ball, 1923. |
I don't see results for the show in Stockton, but Cecelia and Midnight Rex won their class at the State Fair in Sacramento in September.
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| Sacramento Bee, 7 September 1923 |
By October 1923, we see Midnight Rex, Black Ball, and Cecelia DeMille in horse shows in Southern California. Here the horses are together, with their stylish heads and sleek coats, and minus their "Egyptian" costumes.
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| Los Angeles Daily News, 4 October 1923 |
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| Los Angeles Times, 20 October 1923 |
Cecelia rode and drove "Pharaoh's horses" individually and as a pair in five gaited harness classes. Together, they won the five gaited pairs class at the 1923 Los Angeles County Fair.
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| Pomona Progress-Bulletin, 19 October 1923 |
Most of the images of American Saddlebreds from the 1920s that we see are still photographs, paintings, and etchings: horses, riders, and drivers captured in a fraction of a second, with only our imaginations to animate them into action.
Now that we have uncovered this hiding-in-plain-sight story, we can watch Midnight Rex and Black Ball in action in 1923's "The Ten Commandments," peacocks of the desert, dressed in shining gold and colorful feathers, and imagine the girl who loved them standing just out of camera range.
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Cecelia DeMille went on to have a stellar career as a horsewoman in Southern California.
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Cecelia DeMille on another of her Saddlebreds, Lady Beautiful,
in Sportologue magazine. |
Several years after leaving Longview Farms in Missouri, John T. Hook, who had trained Midnight Rex and Black Ball, ended up in Southern California working for Carnation Farm and its massive string of show horses. One of the regular riders of Carnation horses in shows was -- you guessed it -- Cecelia DeMille. She also maintained her own string of show horses. That story needs to be the subject of another blog post.
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Cecil B. DeMille and his daughter
Cecelia DeMille in 1928 |
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Conclusion: Filmed in 1923, "The Ten Commandments" is another example of horses billed as "Arabians," not being purebred Arabians, in a silent film. At least two, and possibly all four, of Pharaoh's horses were actually Saddlebreds.
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One of the articles above, referring to the other pair of black horses bought in Mexico, Missouri, said that the horses were "sired by Arabian stock brought to America a generation ago." If "a generation ago" is 20-30 years (plus or minus) before 1925, that could include some of the Arabian horses famously imported to the US for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. More Arabians were brought to the United States by political cartoonist Homer Davenport in 1906. (I'll put some links to more information at the end of this post.)
But if "a generation ago" means "a generation that is no longer with us," it's easier to narrow down Arabian ancestors of Saddlebreds. In The Arabian: War Horse to Show Horse, Gladys Brown Edwards says:
The first group importation of undeniable Arabians [in the 1800s] was that of A. Keene Richards of [Georgetown] Kentucky, who made two trips to the Near East and personally selected the horses.... The horses were brought over in 1853 and 1856, including several colts and stallions but only two mares.
The CMK Arabians website contains some articles (link at the end of this post) on Richards and his colleague, the artist Edward Troye, and the results of the importations:
Keene Richards’ labors were in great measure lost [because of the Civil War; Richards was a slave-owning, ardent Secessionist], except such of the scattered fragments and some few specimens which remained that were half the blood of Mr. Richards’ Arabians, which are, in a great degree, responsible for the present excellent race of saddle horses which originally came from Kentucky, as shown by the Denmark saddle horse stud books, now the American Bred Saddle horse. The tail carriage, reliable dispositions, good necks and general excellence, as well as their power to transmit a fixed type, can be traced to no other source. (emphasis mine)
One of Keene Richards' Arabians that shows up in several Saddlebred pedigrees from the early 20th century is the gray stallion Mokhladi (spelled in various ways), 14.1 hands high, imported in 1853. It's possible he was the the "Arabian stock" referred to in the newspaper account.
As mentioned above, the foundation sire of American Saddlebreds was a Thoroughbred stallion named Denmark, foaled in 1839; he had Arabian ancestors. His influence was so great that it was not uncommon to see Saddlebreds referred to as "Denmark horses."
But again, I have not yet been able to trace these other black horses beyond that news story. I'll keep looking.
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After "The Ten Commandments" was filmed in 1923, DeMille had the Egyptian set dynamited and bulldozed under the sand. Within the last several years, archaeologists finally excavated it. DeMille's granddaughter, Cecilia DeMille Presley, supported the production of the 2016 documentary The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille. I'll put some links to some sources in the notes below.
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| Pharaoh's horses are lost in the confusion as the Eleventh Cavalry, bedecked as the Egyptian army, prepares to head out across the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in pursuit of Moses. |
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Pharaoh and his horses are swallowed up by the Red Sea, in the 1923 "Ten Commandments." For the film, special effects artists combined footage of the horses and drivers shot at Balboa Beach with a miniature set of the walls of the Red Sea collapsing. The walls were made of melting Jell-O and water.
In Part Six of our series, we'll see how horses from the royal houses of post-World War I Europe made their Hollywood debuts.
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Thanks
Many thanks to Carol Woodbridge Mulder, Tobi Lopez Taylor, Dolores "Dee" Adkins, and Shay Canfield for their assistance in preparing this series.
The Ten Commandments (1923)
You can watch the 1923 version of "The Ten Commandments" here:
The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille (2016)
You have to create a free account to see it (with ads):
Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center
The Dunes Center has artifacts from the site of "The Ten Commandments."
DeMille Biography
Higham, Charles. Cecil B. DeMille. London: W. H. Allen, 1974
Longview Farm, in Lee's Summit, MO:
Actor and horseman Noble Johnson
Arabians at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair
Homer Davenport's Arabians
A. Keene Richards' Arabian Horses
American Saddlebred Horse Museum
...Not to be confused with the American Saddlebred Museum at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. (I have reached out to the ASHM to see if their collection holds any more details on this story.)
1911 Register of the American Saddle-Horse Breeders Association
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