Egyptian Ruins in California’s Dunes and the Birth of Art Deco
The Film:
In 1923 Cecil B. DeMille filmed the Ten Commandments, a film he’d make again in 1954 with full color and sound. At the time, its sets were the largest ever made; the walls of The City of the Pharaoh were 720 feet long, 120 feet high and required 1,500 laborers to create. When filming was complete Cecil ordered the sets toppled and buried to prevent rival film crews from using them. The film itself was hugely successful and more than recovered the cost of production making over $4 million.
The Designer:
In 1906, designer and illustrator Paul Iribe launched the satirical journal Le Témoin (The Witness), a weekly anti-fascist publication produced with artists Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, and others. Two years later, Iribe became famous among the design community after illustrating a brochure of Paul Poiret’s new fashion collection with clean, elegant lines and flat color. Shortly after, Iribe opened his own studio and began designing fashion, fabrics, and home furnishings, Mesopotamian inspired works art historians would later cite as the beginning of the art deco movement. Iribe then moved to New York after WWI and began working for Vogue. By the 1920’s, he’d traveled west to take part in that new moving picture business where one of his first jobs was designing the giant sets for DeMille’s 1923, Ten Commandments. After designing and directing several films in Hollywood, he moved back to Paris and designed a jewelry collection for Coco Chanel, a woman he would be romantically linked to although never marry. He died in 1935 at 52.
The Ruins:
In 1998 I heard about “The Lost City of DeMille,�? as it has come to be known, and insisted I see it for myself. This was in the early days of the internet and all I had to go on was “it was filmed 100 miles north of LA in dunes near the ocean.�? I got out my maps and the only dunes I could find were near a small town called Guadalupe. So I told my college roommate we were going on an adventure to see some real fake Egyptian ruins. He was game and we headed off up the coast. Nearly 200 miles later (not 100) we were there. (Well, I’m leaving out us getting lost and the car sinking in the sand.)
The exact location was easy to spot. It was the one dune covered in plaster debris. The sand was so soft we could reach our arm in and feel the whole set right under us. But we didn’t even need to dig; whole areas were exposed, including a hand (of Ramses?) lying on the sand. Because the film was shot in a duo-tone process, giving some range of color but not the full spectrum, the sets were painted in color, color that was still intact on unexposed pieces.
I’ve since read that excavations were underway, and a team was brought in with ground-penetrating radar that revealed as much as two-thirds of the set were still burried. So a month ago (September 2006) I went back to see the progress. Sadly, there is no progress; the dunes look the same. Only now you can’t even see what was there because the Ten Commandments ruins share the dunes with the Snowy Plover, an endangered bird. The entire area is roped off now with signs every 20 feet all the way to the ocean.
This is all well and good, save the birds, protect the set, but nothing seems to be happening in terms of raising money for an excavation. I’m not surprised Hollywood doesn’t care, they’ve never seemed too interested in their own history, but you’d think the art and design world could pool resources to uncover Iribe’s sets. Considering his chairs from the same period sell for $15,000, and an Iribe cabinet auctioned at Christie’s earlier this year was valued at $750,000(!), you’d think his set would be worth something to someone. Until then, if you want to see the sets you’ll have to settle for the artifacts on display at the charming craftsman style bungalow that houses the Dunes Center in Guadalupe.
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October 10th, 2006 at 6:29 am
Time for another road trip? WOOHOO!!