When Moses Went Through DeMille

Cecil B. Demille had a problem. He had already cast all the roles for his forthcoming blockbuster about the Exodus story, The Ten Commandments, but he had yet to find a suitable voice for God. According to the Bible, it was when standing before the burning bush at Sinai that Moses, by then a shepherd in Midian, was first addressed by the divine. Who, then, could provide a voice that was suitable for the Almighty? Scott Eyman’s biography of DeMille, Empire of Dreams, informs us that the great director was flummoxed:

They tried individual actors, they tried a chorale. They tried voices underwater, they tried voices amplified in canyons. There was even some thought about using mechanical means, as with an organ, with the sound department organizing the tones into words. “We tried everything, and everything was wrong,” said DeMille.

In the end, DeMille’s quandary was solved by his chief researcher, Henry Noerdlinger, whose solution speaks volumes, literally and figuratively, to Jews around the world preparing to celebrate Passover again this year.