Cecil B Demille

Cecil B Demille, In accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award Sunday night, Morgan Freeman showed all the characteristics with which he’s long graced the movies.

He was sharp, honed and sure. He was dignified, certainly, but also mischievous, as when he interrupted his speech to take notice of a famed musician in the front of the crowd at the 69th annual Golden Globes.

Actor Morgan Freeman poses backstage with the Cecil B. Demille Award during the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012, in Los Angeles.

“Hi, Elton,” Freeman said with a glint in his eye.

The 74-year-old Freeman has been on the lifetime achievement circuit lately. In the past year, he’s received American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award and the People’s Choice Awards’ first-ever movie icon award. The Cecil B. DeMille award follows five Oscar nominations (and one win for his supporting performance in “Million Dollar Baby”) and five Golden Globe nominations, including a win for his lead performance in “Driving Miss Daisy.”

But Freeman, whose earring has long been a feature of his stately visage, has never been one for self-indulgent flattery, always wary of the calcifying effect of being labeled a legend. So he kept it brief and to the point Sunday, noting that the clip reel of his still quite busy career made him appreciate the people with whom he had worked and “how much fun I’ve been having.”

“If you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life,” he said.

Freeman was, naturally, not speaking in the past tense. He is currently shooting the third season of his Science Channel series “Through the Wormhole” and later this year will reprise his role in the highly anticipated Batman blockbuster “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Freeman — who has played God in the films “Bruce Almighty” and “Evan Almighty” — has sometimes chafed at being pigeonholed as “Mr. Gravitas,” his catchall name for his more grandiose roles. His deep, melodious voice has made him a popular narrator, most famously in the 2005 documentary “March of the Penguins.”

Few have matched Freeman’s dignified screen presence, but one of them helped introduce the actor Sunday night: Sidney Poitier.

“In my humble opinion, sir, you are indeed a prince in the profession you have chosen,” said Poitier, a previous DeMille honoree, who himself received a standing ovation. “We thank you, Mr. Freeman, for raising the level of excellence yet another notch.”

Helen Mirren followed Poitier’s serious tribute with a more relaxed introduction: “I’m going to lower the tone,” she warned.

“He’s made over 50 films and I’ve only been in one of them,” said Mirren, who co-starred in the 2010 action film “Red” with Freeman. She then did a brief, waddling audition for “March of the Penguins” and pleaded, “I could have been a penguin.”

Freeman warmly responded to Mirren, but it was clear Poitier’s words were deeply meaningful.

Cecil B. DeMille Award

Cecil B. DeMille Award, Cecil Blount DeMille (August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959) was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies. Among his best-known films are Cleopatra; Samson and Delilah; The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture; and The Ten Commandments, which was his last and most successful film.
DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts while his parents were vacationing there and grew up in Washington, North Carolina. While he is known as DeMille (his nom d’oeuvre), his family name was Dutch and is usually spelled “Demil”. His father, Henry Churchill DeMille (1853-1893), was a North Carolina-born dramatist and lay reader in the Episcopal Church, who had earlier begun a career as a playwright, writing his first play at age 15. His mother was Beatrice DeMille (née Samuel), whose parents were both of German-Jewish heritage. She emigrated from England with her parents in 1871, when she was 18, where they settled in Brooklyn, New York. According to biographer Carol Easton, Beatrice grew up in a middle-class English household.

DeMille’s parents met while they were both members of a local music and literary society in New York. She was attracted to Henry, a tall, redheaded student who shared her love of the theater. While he was “slender and mild-mannered,” she had dark good looks that “must have seemed to him exotic,” writes Easton. She was also intelligent, educated, forthright, and strong-willed, and they were mutually attracted to each other. They were also both born in 1853. She would later convert to Henry’s faith when they married. Henry worked as a playwright, administrator and faculty member during the early years of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, established in New York City in 1884.

In 1893, at the age of 40, Henry contracted typhoid fever and died, leaving Beatrice with three children, a house, and no savings. Cecil was 11 at the time. Until Henry’s sudden death, they had both loved the theater, and she “enthusiastically supported” her husband’s theatrical aspirations. Recognizing his love of the theater and his efforts to become a playwright and producer, she wrote at his funeral,

“May your sons be as fine and as noble and good and honest as you were. May they follow in your steps . . . ”
Within eight weeks after the death, to provide an income for the family, Beatrice opened an acting workshop, the Henry C. De Mille School for Girls, in her home. She would later become one of the few successful women theater promoters on Broadway.

DeMille attended Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania from the age of 15. He had an elder brother, William, and a sister Agnes, who died in childhood. Cecil DeMille’s famous niece was named for her. He is credited with providing its name, and both Cecil (Class of 1900) and William (Class of 1901) graduated from the Academy, which they attended on scholarship. The Academy honored Cecil with an Alumni Achievement Award.