Stone Tablets Handed Down by Paramount
Cumberland's Commandments. To promote his huge, and hugely expensive, 1956 epic The Ten Commandments -- at the time, the most expensive movie ever made -- veteran Paramount Pictures producer/director/showman Cecil B. DeMille partnered with the Fraternal Order of Eagles to erect granite Ten Commandments monuments nationwide. This was great, low-cost publicity in every corner of the land, even if DeMille, Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner were not on hand for the unveilings (as they mostly were not). And the erections continued for many years, long after the movie's initial theatrical run. I don't know how many of these originally were erected in Maryland, but apparently only two remain, both in Western Maryland, and both erected after the movie's premiere 8 November 1956. One is in Memorial Park in Frederick, and was erected in 1958; the other, erected in 1957, is on the lawn of the Washington Street courthouse in Cumberland. Interestingly, the best current tally of these...