Biography

A regular face in the films of director Cecil B. DeMille, Wilcoxon was good friends with DeMille in real life. The friendship between them was described as a surrogate father/son relationship in Scott Eyman's DeMille biography, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille (2010).

Associate producer of DeMille's last two films, The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and The Ten Commandments (1956), which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Greatest Show on Earth won.

Appeared in six DeMille films: he starred in Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935), and Samson and Delilah (1949), and played supporting roles in Unconquered (1947), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and The Ten Commandments (1956).

Wrote his autobiography, "Lionheart in Hollywood", with Katherine Orrison.

Three daughters by wife Joan Woodbury: Wendy Joan (b. December 28, 1939), Heather Ann (b. May 8, 1947), and Cecilia Dawn (b. May 25, 1950).

[on Claudette Colbert, his co-star in Cleopatra (1934)] Have I said before what an accomplished actress Claudette is? Well, she is. And, as a result, the hiccup scene really works well, and is my favorite scene with her.

I like Cleopatra (1934) very much, but I think I like The Crusades (1935) a little better. I think Crusades is one of the best pictures DeMille ever made. It really holds up; it doesn't date at all. As you know, Loretta Young played Queen Berengaria, and I played Richard the Lionhearted. But they were both very good pictures, no doubt about that.

[on Cecil B. DeMille] There was an immediate rapport between us, and our relationship was more than director and star; there was a great friendship, and a great mutual respect. I loved the old buzzard. You either hated him or you loved him, there was no half-way measure at all. He liked me because I never "yessed" him, and contrary to popular opinion, DeMille hated yes-men. There were a lot of people around him who were yes-men because he was such a powerful producer-director, but they wouldn't last. He'd always say, "I don't want 50 little DeMilles running around - it's bad enough to have one!"

It's all the same, you know, this whole acting business. Television, motion pictures, the theater - it's all acting with very slight differences. The approach to character is always the same. You simply must remember the fourth wall.

The fourth wall is an expression that refers to the object of your acting. The three walls in a theater are obvious. There's the wall behind you, and the wings on either side - and the fourth wall is the audience.