Uncovering an epic: the movie set that was buried for almost a century
There are many fates that can befall a movie set once production wraps, but being buried in the desert to remain undiscovered for close to a century is one that doesn’t come around all too often.
A lot of people put a lot of hard work into creating the backdrops seen on-screen, even if the craftspeople are aware there’s only going to be a finite amount of time for them to be admired. Sets can be torn down, blown up, recycled, reused, or repurposed, but one epic gained near-mythic status.
Hailing from pioneer and founding figure in American cinema Cecil B. DeMille, 1923’s The Ten Commandments was a suitably expensive undertaking given its biblical setting. Although the crew set up shop in San Francisco and Seal Beach for certain sequences, the bulk of the shoot took place at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in California’s Santa Barbara County.
Handpicked for its passing resemblance to the Egyptian desert, once cameras had stopped rolling and the decades began to pass, the sets of The Ten Commandments entered Hollywood folklore. Rumours claimed that they’d been buried in the sand to prevent them from being used again, with those invested in finding out the truth mounting several expeditions to try and uncover the lost artifacts of film history.
The prop head of sphinx was ultimately discovered in 2012, before a more expansive excavation two years later unearthed what many had thought lost forever. Dubbed ‘The Lost City of DeMille’, multiple sphinxes were uncovered in what proved to be a treasure trove for archaeologists and film historians alike.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of site,” project director M. Colleen Hamilton told the LA Times. “I’ve worked on sites all over the country, and I think this one could only happen in California.” An accurate assessment, considering century-old sets don’t tend to be dug up on a regular basis anywhere too far outside of Tinseltown.
Adding yet another enigmatic layer to its mystique, the locals – let’s call them elders to add to the atmosphere – seemed to be completely aware of what was lying beneath the surface, they just didn’t feel the need to have a bunch of outsiders descending upon their hometown to start digging up DeMille’s extravagant Egyptian-era wares.
A member of the local historical society admitted “the old-timers have always known it was out there,” with one of them using the nails they’d found decades beforehand to make mementos for the townsfolk that celebrated its long-forgotten association with The Ten Commandments.
Not many things stay buried forever, though, and more than 90 years after its release DeMille’s biblical adaptation became a major talking point once again when the mysteries over what became of its luxurious sphinxes was answered.
