Acting
The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.
Shortly after his marriage, a millionaire begins an affair with another woman. His wife tries to win him back by starting an affair herself.
Frederick, Prince of Pilsen, rebelling against his coming marriage with Princess Bertha of Thorwald, meets Hans Wagner, a brewer, and his daughter Nellie. The brewer, mistaking the prince for the son of a friend, asks him to join in a banquet. Hans becomes intoxicated, dresses up in a uniform, and is then mistaken by a coachman for the prince and brought to the palace
When her cotton crop is burned, Barbara Pelham, a beautiful southern girl, comes to New York to find work as a fashion designer, staying with Mrs. Kemp, a woman she meets on the northbound train. In Mrs. Kemp's house, Barbara encounters Peter Heffner, a wealthy stockbroker, and discovers from him that she has taken up residence in a whorehouse. There is a police raid, but Barbara escapes arrest and returns home. Heffner's son, Neil, goes south to inspect some family property and there meets Barbara, with whom he falls in love. They decide to be married, and she accompanies him to New York, where she meets the elder Heffner for a second time. He denounces her as a whore, but Barbara goes to Mrs. Kemp, who explains the misunderstanding to everyone's satisfaction.
A colonel of the French army in North Africa believes his brother, a sensitive musician, to be in love with the colonel's wife and so arranges for his brother to be drafted into the colonel's own corps. Unknown to either is the fact that the colonel's wife is actually an Arab spy.
Malena's apparent frigidity toward her husband Kenneth is a result of injustice done in an earlier incarnation when he was a knight and she was a gypsy headed for burning at the stake. This becomes evident when their unconscious minds travel back from a train wreck in the American plains to Elizabethan England.
A refined criminal keeps his life secret from his daughter. When he gets trouble from the police after shooting one of his underworld associates, he enlists in the US Army and goes to fight in France during World War I. While in France, he serves alongside a young man who is in love with his daughter.
Captain Slocum of the Hesperus arrives on shore in a New England village to find that the girl he loves has been tricked into marrying John Hazzard in his absence. Heartbroken and bitter, the captain, with his daughter, Gale, and second mate, Singapore Jack, returns to sea. He rescues from a burning vessel John Hazzard, Jr., son of his rival, and though he tries to keep the boy from Gale, a romance develops. ...
Don Counsel, a New Yorker who is traveling through southern Florida, is being framed by Ernest Riever for a murder he did not commit. Riever is holding the real killer captive on his yacht while detectives are searching for Counsel. Pen Broome, who lives with her father (Henry James) on their rundown estate, tries to help Counsel out. Riever's men find Counsel and trap him in a ballast bulkhead, but Pen rescues him.
Elaine Kent weds Kenneth Billings, a young man who has a taste for wild living. She attempts to reform him and his exasperated father disinherits him. Now that he is without money, Kenneth starts a dye business and he proceeds to throw himself into it with the same amount of effort he once spent on the high life. As a result, he overworks until he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
