Who will Receive this Year's Cecil B. DeMille Award?

One of the highlights of "Pre-Awards" Season is the announcement of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Award for lifetime achievement, the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The timing of the announcement has changed somewhat through the years, but recently has stayed firm at 9:00 a.m. PST on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving week. This year, it's slightly off that schedule and will be announced tomorrow, Thursday, November 12.

The Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Golden Globe was first given in 1952, to namesake Cecil B. DeMille himself. Producer/Director DeMille was one of the most successful filmmakers of Hollywood's Golden Age and in 1952 he made the film that would win Oscar's Best Picture, The Greatest Show on Earth. Who won the second DeMille award? Walt Disney.

In the early years of the award, the recipient was generally a producer/studio head, but starting with Maurice Chevalier (1959's recipient) performers have worked their way up, to the point that the award has been given exclusively to them since 1978 (with a few "hyphenates" among them, such as Clint Eastwood), until Steven Spielberg's 2008 win.

So, who do you think will be given this year's Cecil B. DeMille Award? The most likely candidate of the last several years has certainly been Meryl Streep. Streep is second in Golden Globe nominations only to Jack Lemmon (19 to his 22). She's had a string of high profile hits as of late critically and commercially, too.

Here is a link to the Cecil B. DeMille Award on the HFPA's website.

And here is a handy one-page list on Wikipedia.

What is your guess for this year's DeMille?

Notables who have yet to receive the honor include: Woody Allen, Julie Andrews, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Glenn Close, Tom Cruise, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert DeNiro, Gerard Depardieu, Robert Duvall, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Dennis Hopper, George Lucas, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Martin Scorsese, Sylvester Stallone, Meryl Streep, John Travolta, and Denzel Washington.

... My perennial guess is HFPA favorite (12 noms, 3 wins) Michael Caine. This year, though, in light of Spielberg's win last year, I'm choosing Francis Ford Coppola as my prediction for this year's DeMille Award recipient.