‘The Ten Commandments’ Child Star Kathy Garver Reveals How a Lamb Peed On Her, and Other Behind-the-Scenes Stories
Kathy Garver is the only actor in Hollywood who can claim that an animal who peed on her lap just may have helped land her a larger role in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Ten Commandments.
The always delightful Garver, who went on to bigger fame as Cissy in Family Affair (1966-71), took some time to share some fun memories and behind-the-scenes stories about filming the 1956 epic The Ten Commandments.
Garver, who was just 8 when filming began, starts by taking us back to her first day on the set, where she was originally only supposed to be an extra.
“I was a newbie in the business. I had been singing and dancing since I was 3, but I had only been on one movie set, which was The Night of the Hunter [1955], and that was quite an experience. So, this was my second movie set, but it was very different,” she recalls. “The first thing I remember is walking into the wardrobe department and they had these very scratchy striped robes that I was to be wearing. I’ve always loved clothes, so I thought this was pretty cool.”
Courtesy Kathy Garver
From there, she went to makeup and could detail the sponges and the makeup that was dipped in water and used to paint her skin darker, and how thrilling it was to walk onto a set filled with dirt and sand. While she met with the other child extras, she took some time to explore.
“I’m an explorer at heart and very curious about everything. So [before the scene], I had gone with [someone], I don’t remember exactly who I was with, but we went down, and we looked at the stable because they had animals there. And that was very exciting to me because I was basically a suburban girl, so to see farm animals — any kind of animals — was exciting. I saw the goats and the donkeys, and there was one pregnant donkey, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to see a baby donkey.’ I didn’t see it there, but I kept going down to that stable every day I was on the movie set to see if that little baby was born. And, then it was time to do my scene,” Garver explains.
As cameras were ready to roll, they took their places for the Exodus scene, which occurs toward the middle of the movie. Garver makes her first appearance on the stone staircase, where she is searching for her doll Rebecca. She’s frantically questioning “Where’s Rebecca?” when a disembodied hand appears and curtly hands over her doll, saying, “Here’s Rebecca.”
“I was to be in a wagon, a little rickety wagon,” she details. “And I was given a baby lamb to hold. I said, ‘Oh, well, this is just really fun.’ I had this little lamb in my arm, which was excited too, because it peed.”
Paramount Pictures
Garver didn’t scream or make much of fuss, but her face might have given it away. “I didn’t want to make a big ruckus about it, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what do I do? Do I tell somebody?’ But there was a lot of activity around and people getting set to make the scene. I thought, ‘Oh, OK. I’ll just kind of sit here and take it.’ And I tried to blot it up a little with the blanket.” But then she heard a man’s voice from above giving direction.
“I’m looking ahead and enjoying riding on the wagon, and the lamb — we were friends now. And then suddenly, I hear this voice and it says, ‘Keep that little girl’s face out of the camera,’” Garver laughs.
At first, she thought it might be God or one of his angels — but the voice was coming from a crane above instructing assistant director Henry Wilcoxon to put blankets around her so they wouldn’t see her face. After that, Wilcoxon asked Garver and her mother to wait.
After cameras stopped rolling, “God came down,” Garver shares. The God, however, was director Cecil B. DeMille, and he confronted her, asking if she enjoyed working on the movie. Garver enthusiastically shared how much she was loving it (smartly opting to leave out the fact that a lamb just peed on her, and that her costume was soaked in urine). It’s all she needed to do to garner more screen time.
“It was decided that he [DeMille] was going to write scenes into the movie for me,” Garver shares. “And Wilcoxon says to my mother, ‘Your daughter’s going to be on this movie a lot longer.”
Garver was paid for six weeks of shooting, despite not being there daily.
Courtesy Kathy Garver
“I think his movies are believable because he would pluck somebody out that was an extra, or somebody that caught his attention, and he would write a scene that people could relate to,” Garver adds about DeMille.
In this case, she was the pluckee, and later appeared in one of the film’s most memorable scenes — the parting of the Red Sea.
“So, my scene in the closing of the Red Sea is when I’m on this papier-mâché mountain,” Garver tells. “When he said ‘Action,’ all the water came down. The water was in great big vats, all on the catwalk, all around the set. All the water was to come down. I was to go from my place on the mountain into Nina’s arms [Nina Foch, who played Moses’ mother], and then she would lead me down the mountain and keep going. And then there was this scene when Charlton Heston comes up to me and he says, ‘Are you afraid?’ And I said, ‘No, but Rebecca is.’”
Courtesy Kathy Garver
Garver has an autographed photo of her and Heston in that scene which she has now cherished for some 70 years.
“I could feel his power, his energy, his care, his concern, him actually listening,” she says of Heston, whom she remained friends with until his death in 2008. “I thought, this is somebody special.”
And that he was.
Remind
Today, Garver is busier than ever. In two weeks, she’s heading to Indiana to film The Thing About Pickles, where she plays Pickles’ mother: “It’s like Osage County meets Steel Magnolias.” In May, she’s shooting an emotional family fantasy movie titled Gus, where her character is married to a ventriloquist called Mr. Magic. And then she’s off to Florida for the holiday movie A Mother’s Christmas Wish. She’s also got a new book coming out this fall called Romancing With the Stars, about long-term Hollywood relationships — a combination of romance and travel, which she coauthored with Doug Hartline.
You can keep up with Kathy Garver through her website kathygarver.com and on social channels like Facebook and Instagram. She also has a monthly newsletter.
Hollywood Heaven
April 2021
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