THE CHRISTOPHER PROGRAM

And if everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be. Hello friends. I'm Yul Brynner and I'm here to introduce this special Christopher program. And now here is Father James Keller, founder of The Christophers. Yul, I wish I had your voice. God bless you for being with us again. Thank you, Father. Thank you very much, Yul. Friends, I'm very grateful to Yul Brynner for coming on this special Christopher program because it's a bit different from our usual presentations. In it, we're making a special awards to the men who did the great work on this outstanding production of The Ten Commandments. It's the greatest motion picture ever filmed and we pay tribute to you, too, Mr. Brynner for the extraordinary job of acting which you did in playing the role of Pharaoh. Just before presenting the awards, may I add a brief word why we are devoting this entire program to this particular film of The Ten Commandments. It is not because it's it is Mr. DeMille's greatest or because it is the longest, most costly, most monumental movie in the history of movie making as one magazine called it, but rather because it dramatizes with great reverence, power, and effectiveness one of the greatest stories of the Bible and one which needs retelling in a special way in our day. Every man, woman, and child should make it his or her business to see this stirring film because the master movie maker of Hollywood has devoted his great genius to the holy task of making the Ten Commandments better known and respected among countless millions over the earth. We are convinced that this great film provides eloquent proof of the Christopher thesis of what one individual with God's help can do to change the world for the better. But before any further ado, I really feel we ought to make the awards and we're going to start off with the writers. Mr. Enos McKenzie, one of the four writers. Mr. McKenzie. It's a great joy for us to present this award to you, this Christopher award, Mr. McKenzie. Thank you, Reverend Reverend sir. It's a beautiful plaque. In accepting the assignment to write The Ten Commandments, myself and my collaborators assumed a great great responsibility. So, it is a particular satisfaction to us to feel now that in the very competent opinion of your society, we may not have failed entirely in the task. Well, all we do is pay tribute to you. Thank you very much, Mr. McKenzie. Mr. Jesse Lasky Jr. Mr. Lasky. It's an honor for us to give you this little tribute. Thank you, Father. This is kind of a double honor for us. As writers working with Mr. DeMille, we uh first had the privilege of uh working on a story that was written on the pages of history 3,000 years ago. And now to receive this award is kind of a greatest thing. Thank you. Mr. Jack Gariss. Mr. Gariss, it's a uh privilege for us to cite you, too. You did the work, all we do is give a little tiny plaque. Well, thank you, Father. It's been inspiring indeed to work with Mr. DeMille and the other writers upon such a picture as The Ten Commandments. Well, God bless you and may you write many other great pictures. And Mr. Frederick M. Frank, Mr. Frank, we have an award for you. Congratulations on the splendid job that you did. Thank you, Father. It's been a very gratifying experience to have had a small share in bringing this immortal story to the screen. God bless you. And Mr. Henry Wilcoxon, the associate producer, who was at the right hand of Mr. DeMille all through. Mr. Wilcoxon, congratulations to you. Thank you, Father. Thank you, sir. I've had the privilege of being uh associate producer to Mr. DeMille who now for 9 years. During that time, I've often heard him say in speaking of his contribution to motion pictures that he is just one link in a chain forged by many hands. Uh as perhaps one of those links, thank you very much, Father. Well, God bless you. Congratulations on your wonderful work. Thank you, sir. And now uh we're saving the last award for the man who did the great work. And it's with uh great pride and satisfaction that we make our humble tribute to Mr. Cecil B. DeMille. God bless you, Mr. DeMille, for the wonderful work you've done. And this is the very tiny little tribute Father Keller, this is very dear to my heart. Appreciation is very wonderful, but understanding is vital. I I'm deeply grateful for this. It It moves me very deeply, but the opportunity to produce this subject is what I am thankful for. Please sit down if you will, Mr. DeMille, because I I want to But, tell our friends that uh I heard you give a talk here in New York at the Plaza Hotel at a luncheon as one of the finest talks I've ever heard in my life. I sent for a copy of the talk and I was so impressed by it that I asked Mr. DeMille if he would come on our program and repeat at least portions of it. And there are several little points I want to touch on afterwards, particularly about the Bible reading in your home that you went through with Mr. DeMille is now 75 years old. He only looks 60, but but he's a he's certainly made the world better for his being in it. Mr. DeMille, would you uh refer to the these points that I've touched on there? I'll just read it from the script if you will. I'd be very glad to. The Ten Commandments given on Mount Sinai are not laws. They are the law. They are the expression of the mind of God for his creatures. They are the charter and guide of human liberty. For there can be no liberty without the law. The motion picture The Ten Commandments is the most modern picture that I have ever made because the struggle between the forces of Pharaoh and those represented by Moses is still being waged today. Are men free souls under God or are they the property of the state? Are men to be ruled by law or by the whims of an individual? The answer to these timely questions were given some 3,000 years ago on Mount Sinai. Today we are very likely to think of the Ten Commandments as a bit archaic. The Ten Commandments are not outmoded relics of a barbaric age. They are as true and valid and real as the day they were burned into tablets of stone by the finger of God. For in the final analysis, we do not break the Ten Commandments. They break us if we disregard them. The life of Moses was a life of struggle and defiance, of daring and sorrow, a life of love and battle, of sacrifice and murder, a life of achievement and disaster, of humiliation and glory. Moses was one of the world's greatest human beings. And human he was to the point of sin and holy to the point of seeing God face to face. Moses says in the picture, "He revealed his word to my mind, and the word was God." And so at the burning bush, we hear a voice paternal and compassionate. In the giving of the Ten Commandments, however, the Bible is explicit. This was no still small voice. These were commands, not pleas. In Deuteronomy 5:22, we are told that God spoke the law out of the midst of the fire of the cloud and of the thick darkness with a great voice. The God of the Bible is not a wishy-washy God. He is a God of love, but of a love that burns. If there is even a note of anger in the voice of God as we have portrayed it, let that remind us that anger can be a virtue. Anger against injustice, anger against tyranny, anger against any violation of the rights of man or the worship of God. Our modern world defined God as a religious complex and laughed at the Ten Commandments as old-fashioned. Then through the laughter came the shattering thunder of great world wars, each more terrible than the last. And a blood-drenched, bitter, divided world no longer laughing cries for a way out. There is but one way out. It existed before it was engraved upon tablets of stone. It will exist when stone has crumbled. That is why we made the Ten Commandments and why I came here and ask you to use this picture as I hope and pray that God himself will use it for the good of the world in which your children and your children's children will live their lives. For it is how they follow the Ten Commandments that will determine whether tomorrow's children will die in bondage or live in liberty under the law. It's very inspiring. Friends, I don't really though know that most of you realize, I think very few do, that in making this great film which represented not less than about $13 million Mr. DeMille is not taking one cent above costs. Is that correct? All the share of the money that comes to me goes into a trust which is for religious educational and scientific purposes. Well, God bless you for it. That's another contribution you've made. You're a fine example of what one person can do, which is the Christian hypothesis. I'm just going to have a visit with the Mr. Wilcoxon now. I want to him to explain about the background film that you took over in uh around Mount Sinai. And then a little later, we just want to have a few words from you on the replica of the Ten Commandments. Mr. Wilcoxon, uh I uh look at you and think of all the experience that you've had. And if you could just tell our audience something of this background of the film, uh you took this footage over there, but just a little word on it is Yes, I'd be glad to, Father. We had uh what's called an IMO camera, a little hand camera. And this uh photographer that we had would take this hand camera and stand behind the uh cameras and in that way get backstage pictures. Well, Mr. Wilcoxon, if we could see the film now and if you would come in on it. I'd be glad to, Father. As I see it, I'll try to remember what it was. Very good. Here's Mr. DeMille and his staff picking out locations for the scenes where Moses crosses the desert. There you see Charlton Heston at the Wadi Feiran, one of the few places where there's any foliage at all on the Sinai Peninsula. There Mr. DeMille is with the father in charge of the little ruined monastery that was built by Constantine. It's called the Vineyard of Wadi Feiran. There's a long shot of the Monastery of St. Catherine. There's the monastery garden. One of the fathers is sprinkling Mr. DeMille with holy water, blessing him before the very first day shooting. This uh was taken at the base of Mount Sinai itself, and you see the cameras being set up for the very first shot of the picture. There's myself standing in. Part of the production crew. Oh, there's uh Loyal Griggs taking a reading with his light meter. Tremendously high readings you get in that uh sunlight out there. The distance between here and the base of the mountain is almost 4 miles, believe it or not. It is very, very misleading the distances across the desert. And dries out pretty much. This is the gates of the great city of Perameses. You see the scaffolding so that they have not quite finished painting it yet. There are the 65-ft high Colossi. Again, Mr. DeMille looking through the viewfinder. This uh set here is 110 ft high. And the entire set is little over 1/4 of a mile long. Look at the size of the figures of the men there. Here you see the soldiers guarding the gate prior to the Exodus shot. One of the little boys on the Exodus. We had thousands and thousands of people in the Exodus. Nobody knows exactly how many there were. We did not rent them by the individual, we rented them by the tribe. As you can see, and there you see them with all their cattle. The Bible speaks of their having gone out with very much cattle. Mr. DeMille is talking to Bob Goldstein, the property man. He had a tremendous job to do. I imagine he had to assemble over 100,000 props for the Ten Commandments. Here we have Yul Brynner as the Pharaoh Rameses in his chariot with him his driver, Major Abbas. There's Mr. DeMille conferring by one of the camera cars. You see two of the cameras on top of the scaffolding there. There's the line of chariots. There's the Pharaoh's chariot driving out. And this is taken from under one of the parallels of the chariot starting out on their chase of the children of Israel. Uh friends, that background film will give you some idea of the enormous job they had in filming The Ten Commandments. Now, we have the privilege of having with us on this program the man who the one individual who did the research, Mr. Henry Noerdlinger. Is that right, Mr. Noerdlinger? God bless you very much. Why don't you just call me Henry? It's much simpler. You're from the your University City of Southern California, I believe. Actually not, but I have written a book and the University of Southern California has recently published it and I would like to present you with this copy. Moses and Egypt. Yes, sir. I was told about this, but I wish you would tell our audience what it represents. Well, actually it represents a documentation of the fabulous amount of research that we did. And in it you will find any question that may arise in your mind after seeing the picture. But before we could write this book, we had to study a tremendous amount of material and just to give you a few statistics, we read some 1,900 books. We photographed some 3,000 archaeological artifacts, monuments, and things of that sort. We consulted with 30 museums all over the world. The most important book we studied, of course, was the Holy Bible. Next to it, the Quran, which is the Holy Scripture of Islam. And this is merely a compilation of all the This is a compilation. Of course, I haven't even mentioned Egyptian archaeology, which is a field all to itself. Well, I wish you would come on our program sometime and and give a a little longer illumination on this whole subject because I think it represents a tremendous project just the research alone before the picture could be done. Father, it would be an honor and a privilege. Thank you very much. Well, God bless you, Henry. Thank you. Now, let us have a another visit with Mr. DeMille. I've asked him to explain some of the what you call props. This is your Bible, isn't it? Yes, this is one of them, Father. Then I wish before anything else you would say how in your home you read two chapters out of the Bible every day. Is that correct? Um my father was a lay reader in the Episcopal Church and my mother was a teacher in Lockwood's Academy, Brooklyn. Mhm, good. And uh it was before the days of movies or television. Mhm. So uh they read a chapter of the Bible to us every night. A chapter of the Old Testament and a chapter of the New Testament. Mhm. Well, it's a it's a wonderful thing that your parents insisted on that. Otherwise, you might not have done the Ten Commandments. It's a great privilege to have been able Mhm. to make these subjects, to carry the word of God to people throughout the world. Bible tells us that uh when Moses came down from the mountain Karen came from his head. Mhm. Well, Karen is translated as in two ways. The uh It's the Hebrew word for horns. And that is why Michelangelo put uh horns on his statue of Moses. People have been wondering about this for centuries and it's very simply answered because Karen also means rays of light. Mhm. And you'll see here that Doré some of these other artists used used rays of light coming into Um. Moses' head. It's just a question of the translation. These tablets are actually part of Mount Sinai itself. These are the red granite of Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is a most inspiring mountain going 7,000 ft straight into the air. This writing is the Canaanite language that happened that was used at the end of the Bronze Age. It is before there was any Hebrew writing. And the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet and our own alphabet all come from this writing. You see for instance here, if you take this and just turn it a little bit, you get the letter A there. Oh, yes. And you can start turning it around, you'll get the letter W and the letter M. Very good, yes. Well, that that is the birth of our alphabet. The Phoenicians, yes, they were were Canaanites. Mhm. And they carried the this language, this writing, all through the shores of the Mediterranean. This is on the map. Here here is the Mediterranean and they carried it from this country all around so that it touched here into Greece. By the way, this this is an interesting map because this this gives you our trip. Here is the land of Goshen. Mhm. And it might interest you to know that uh the Suez Canal as just recently dug is not the first Suez Canal. Mhm. It was dug before Moses. Mhm. This is Mount Sinai here and this is the Sinai Peninsula. And uh we followed as nearly as is known the route that Moses took which was from the land of Goshen here across the Red Sea into the wilderness of Shur and the wilderness of Sin down to Mount Sinai. How any man could lead a nation through that without food or water, you will know that it must have come by divine means in some way. Well, why did he lead them down here to go up there? Well, that's what the uh order that God gave him. He didn't tell him to go in that direction. That's a very good answer. downs of Mount Sinai because they needed what they had just as Moses needed it. Yeah. Moses, when he was driven from Egypt, had to come down here to the land of Midian where he met Jethro and where he married Jethro's oldest daughter. Mhm. Mhm. And then he herded his flocks at the foot of Sinai. I herded Jethro's flock. At the foot of Sinai until he married her. And then he saw this bush that burned and was not consumed. And went up and when you see the picture, that is actually Mount Sinai every foot of the way that he goes. Well, this is very fascinating. It's been wonderful of you to uh take time off from your busy schedule, Mr. DeMille. And I hope you live another 75 years to do I don't think you'll do anything greater than the Ten Commandments. God bless you and it's been wonderful to have you. Thank you. I tell you again it was a privilege to be here and a privilege to make this work. God bless you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Now friends, as our final privilege on this program on the Ten Commandments, we are going to have the good fortune of a visit with Sir Cedric Hardwicke. And he's not going to just going to sit here and do nothing. I'm going to ask Sir Cedric if he would be good enough to read the Ten Commandments right out of the Holy Bible. But first of all, please, Sir Cedric, first of all I'd like to him to tell you just a word about his part in this great picture. He played the role of Seti, the father of Ramses, and I was very much touched when I saw the film how you combined strength with tenderness. It could have been a very cold role you played, but you played exceptionally well, Sir Cedric. Well, that's very high praise to me, Father Keller. It was a very great pleasure to to to play it. And of course it was a very great privilege to work with Mr. DeMille who really was dedicated to this particular picture. And it was a very interesting part. It was the part of course of Ramses' father. Yes. And uh his sister, Seti's sister, discovered Moses in the bulrushes and adopted him. And then of course the big scene is where Seti discovered that he was the son of a Hebrew slave. Mhm. Well, you did a marvelous job and I don't think we can end our our little picture on the Ten Commandments any better than to have you read the Ten Commandments, if you will, Sir Cedric. Thank you, Mr. Hal B. Wallis I hope I do justice to them. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or in the earth below or in the waters below the earth. You shall not bow down before them or worship them. You shall not take the name the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain. Take care to keep the Sabbath day as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. No work may be done then, whether by you or your son or daughter or your ox or ass or any of your beasts or the alien who lives with you. Honor your father and mother as the Lord your God has commanded you. That you may have a long life and prosperity in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear dishonest witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not desire your neighbor's house or field nor his ox or ass, nor anything that belongs to him. Very wonderful. I am very much impressed by the way you read the Ten Commandments, and they are very great lesson to all of us. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll just have a word before we close. Thank you, Cecil B. Friends, in presenting to you this special Christopher program on Mr. Cecil B. DeMille's great motion picture, The Ten Commandments, I hope that you, personally and individually, will devote some of the same purpose, devotion, and effort in applying the great lesson of this motion picture to modern life as he did in the making of this great and extraordinary film. You would do well to encourage as many people as you can to see it, and so learn or relearn a great lesson that is so much needed in our day. But, don't be content merely to agree with this great theme and do nothing about it. No, show a personal interest in applying these great revealed truths of love in every facet of public as well as private life. Do something positive and constructive to improve the world in which you live, especially by raising the standards that vitally affect the destiny of all of us. Government, education, labor relations, literature, and entertainment. If you do, you will start to be a Christopher or Christ bearer, and you will be playing a vital part in changing the world itself for the better. Yes, you will be lighting your own little candle instead of cursing the darkness. Now, in the Christopher movement, we have no meetings, no memberships, no dues. Furthermore, we provide free monthly literature to over a million people each month. All you need do is simply send a postcard to The Christophers, New York 17, New York. May I conclude with a simple prayer. Oh God, the great and omni- omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, before whom we are all to appear after this short life to render an account of our works, grant that we may always walk in the ways of thy commandments, so that after our departure from this world, we may experience a merciful judgment and rejoice in everlasting happiness through Jesus Christ our Lord. God bless each and every one of you. And if everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be.