Royalty Checks

 

For many years, publishers would make arrangements with movie studios to publish books of their popular movies. These movie editions would be illustrated with photographs from the movie and were called "photoplay editions."  As one of the writers of the 1923 movie "The Ten Commandments," Cecil B. DeMille would receive royalty checks from the publisher of the photoplay edition of his movie, Grosset & Dunlap. DeMille framed one his royalty checks as an author and combined it with a check he received as producer-director of this film because the payment difference amused him. His publishing royalty was thirty-seven cents, while his producer-director check was over $350,000. He kept these framed checks, he said, as a reminder that he had chosen the right profession.