DeMille's Abandoned TEN COMMANDMENTS Movie Set 100 Year Old

[Music] is [Music] i was actually looking forward to this drive today it's taking us we're basically going about three hours outside of los angeles to guadalupe now cecil b demille back in 1923 decided to make the original ten commandments movie and made it out in the guadalupe dunes and was supposed to remove everything when he was done filming this was an epic epic project and when he was done instead of removing everything he just buried it in sand and it sat out there until 2011 when a bunch of archaeologists went out there and found it and we're going to go see the archaeological site today i tried to do this once before and they had massive flooding so we just went to the local museum in town and saw some of the sphinx pieces that they had found in the archaeological dig but i actually want to go out to the site today so we're going to do that let's do it days with jordan the lion cecil b demille and you all begins now this is one of those fun adventures that i brought my friend breck out with me on and when i was visiting him in texas he actually brought that up and said man i really wish we could go back out and see that together what we didn't get to see in the dunes so i'm gonna do it i'll just have to watch there's a sign for guadalupe 12 miles by the way i said this was three hours outside of los angeles probably would have helped if i said three hours north up the coast right over here they have a map of california and they have a finger pointing exactly to where we are for reference believe it or not we've made it to guadalupe now we just have to go over to the guadalupe dunes preserve where they set up this gigantic set they had countless extras this set was massive let's go see it all right here's our place see the last time we came out here they had had a big big couple of i think it was like two weeks worth of rains and so that gate was what was locked and they said that this road had some dip points where people couldn't get out of it so that's why they had blocked off the road so we're looking good we're further than we were last time [Music] i'm super excited there's a great documentary on this called the lost city of cecil b demille and it follows peter brosnan the man who kind of gets all the credit and spearheaded all this he had read tesla b demille's autobiography and in there demille described that he hoped if they were ever poking around the dunes out here they didn't think that um some egyptians had been out here i'm guessing this was what the problem was right here what i'm driving through there was a pretty big dip right there now it's crazy this is as close as you can get you're not even really supposed to even stop here but i uh i went and talked to the park ranger and told her i want to come out and look at this and she said even when you're allowed to go into the dunes [Music] because part of the season right now the dunes are closed off because of some of the wildlife is pregnant and has nests they said they never let anybody here but this is the actual site of you can see all that white debris and everything and all the stuff going across the top that was it this was i mean this was epic proportions when they filmed this cecil b demille you know he grew up religious and catholic and he was someone who wanted to bring stories of the bible to life because he thought nothing could be bigger and more epic than that and so he ended up wanting to do the ten commandments which was just a huge undertaking they had like these hundred foot tall sets and they were giant he had all these like a row of sphinxes leading into the temple and it was just a magnificent thing they had to build the a lot of the sphinxes had to be built in uh sections and then reassembled once everything got out here but cecil b demille ended up hiring a lot of the locals in the guadalupe area to be extras and so they would come out here and he would film day after day full of scenes right up there on that that hill and he would have 250 tents for men extra actors and 250 tents for women he had a round-the-clock kitchen for people to get food and coffee and then they set out making this epic film now there's all kinds of you know what happened to this for years it was like you know people didn't even know that it was hidden out here and then like i said mr peter brosnan found out by reading cecil b demille's book that it was buried out here at least that's what he thought so he started contacting people he found an archaeologist that waited for like 20 years for them to try and excavate this site every time they would get clearance something would fall through either they would you know be told they had to have a specific permit or they would be told they didn't have to have a permit then as soon as they were getting ready to come out they would have to get a permit and then the um chumash indians claimed that this was their land and that created a problem one of the times they were like the day before they were going to come out here a woman ended up funding it from texas and just said i heard about your story and i'll pay whatever it costs to excavate this and for you guys to do this and so they started i think the plan originally started he found out about it in like 84 85-ish or something and then for like 25 years they worked on trying to come up here and find these pieces and so finally they got two weeks to come up and do it and they started finding the nose and the chin and enough to assemble a sphinx and know that they were on the right path and so over here you can see there's just sticking out of the ground over here this sorry this is as close as we get and you know thanks to the park rangers she was nice enough to even let me come here you can see all kinds of wood pieces because it was basically all the stuff was made out of like plaster and wood and and it was all painted like orange so that's what all that debris is up there things that they've uncovered and since 2011 they've been out here looking and trying to find more and trying to find more of the story but yeah cecil b demille it was in his contract that he had 30 days after the filming of this movie to remove all the sets that he would have set up and he just decided to leave him and let the sand cover it over so when peter brosnan decided to look into this he came out and found the landowner for the dunes and the guy brought him out here just pointed right there and was like oh yeah it's all right there but then they had to find out how they could go about unearthing it because as the wind blows you can probably tell how hard the wind blowing is blowing out here as the wind blows the sand moves and it was covering things up so when they came out for the excavation they were going days and only finding you know pieces here and there but then eventually they were finding noses and they were finding parts of the hieroglyphic for the outside of the pyramid and so they knew they were onto something but they they couldn't get it all so it's right there now some of it's in the museum inside the town of guadalupe but most of it still is up here and she told me anytime they can get they come out and they continue the excavation process up there looking around trying to find as much as they can i mean it's so like i just want to climb up there so bad you know you see that stuff and it's like it's so close yet so far but look at that like you can just see chunks of wood hanging out and like all the plaster and everything so it's continuously when they came out to start digging they had to dig like eight feet ten feet down before they were finding anything but now it just sits up there on top and i see a trail she told me that recently they had somebody from the bbc was allowed to go out there and take pictures and look around and so they had done that but uh they said otherwise the the site is completely off limits to visitors i think to me this is just like some of the coolest stuff ever to know that they made this movie in the early part of the 1920s and that they did it they did the ten commandments out here it was a silent version so the wind didn't matter or anything but there is a funny story because they had a high dune and cecil b demille was known for having actors do really crazy things like gloria swanson one movie had a lion a live lion on her back and i mean just he was known for going above and beyond for the shot and so they he wanted someone to he wanted men to race down the dune on horseback and they were all afraid to do it and his uh it was either his niece or his daughter cecilia was here and he said cecilia get up on that horse and show these men how to do it and she said in an interview i got right up there i wrote down the dune and he said there you go boys now do that but i think that's just so cool that something they filmed in 19 like the early 20s is out here and since the set was very tall like i said it was like 100 feet tall when when he decided to bring it down they literally just pulled it down by the back so it literally was standing straight up and then just was laying out here in the desert we got in the dunes yeah i just you know i want to come out and see this i know we can't get very close but the last time i was in town i went to the dune center and they had a little bit so i'll show you from that video what i was able to find in there because the dune center's closed today look at that that's so cool largest movie set in history the lost city there's the front kind of look at how this is all laid out the paw is right here and then the head is right there i know that's the body and here's a little piece of the sphinx also yeah it's cool they they have just a few pieces in here i'm seeing stuff like this it's just it puts me in awe i mean i couldn't even speak when i was looking at those set pieces but it's so cool to see the magnitude of how many people were involved in making this do you see that how many actors and how many cooks and how much coffee and how many building materials it took just to make this thing happen certainly was not the epicness i was hoping for but i'm happy just to even see where it was because where i was looking before i talked to the park ranger i was in the wrong spot so this is a pretty big area got to be thankful for what you can get when you can see it i think all right my friends i hope you enjoyed today's vlog i know i couldn't get very close and i know you're probably like oh i want to see more i'm sorry i tried to show you as much as i could i thought i was going to be able to get closer when i came and even if i came in a different season they basically told me i wouldn't get any closer unless somehow i can talk them into what you might be able to do into taking us out there and kind of escorting us around letting us see things up close but i hope you enjoyed finding about the lost city of demille today cecil b demille and the story of you know epic movies in the early days days with jordan the lion thank you all for watching we'll see you all next time if you're new here please hit the like button please subscribe and we'll see you all next time have a great night [Music] oh [Music] i know [Music]

Channel: Daze with Jordan the Lion

Views: 24,025

Keywords: travel vlogger, urbex, history, tourism, filming locations, travel, jacob the carpetbagger, daze with jordan the lion, jordan the lion, travel guide, vlog, vlogger, vlogging, lifestyle, wolters world, tourist, adam the woo, The daily woo, Graves, Cemetery, Dearly departed, Grimm life collective, Lamont at large, Hollywood graveyard, Famous graves, True crime, Biography, Ten commandments, Abandoned, Movie sets, Cecil b demille, Director, Guadalupe, The lost city of cecil b demille, Dunes

Id: uW9XZnJEZsE

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022