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Directed The Squaw Man in 1914, the first full-length feature shot in Hollywood, a commercial success that helped establish the town as the new center of American filmmaking. Over the next four decades he became the industry's most reliably profitable director, working at the scale of biblical epic in The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings (1927), the latter reportedly seen by more than 800 million people. He co-founded Famous Players-Lasky, the studio that became Paramount Pictures, giving him a hand in both the art and the business structure of the studio system he helped build.