Cecil Blount DeMille (/ˈsɛsəl dəˈmɪl/; August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959) was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. He was an active Freemason and member of Prince of Orange Lodge #16 in New York City.[1][2]
DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York City. He began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later moved to writing and directing stage productions, some with Jesse L. Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was also the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story made it commercially successful, and it first publicized Hollywood as the home of the U.S. film industry. The continued success of his productions led to the founding of Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and commercial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for twenty-five years.
DeMille directed The King of Kings (1927), a biography of Jesus, which gained approval for its sensitivity and reached more than 800 million viewers. The Sign of the Cross (1932) is said to be the first sound film to integrate all aspects of cinematic technique. Cleopatra (1934) was his first film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. After more than thirty years in film production, DeMille reached a pinnacle in his career with Samson and Delilah (1949), a biblical epic that became the highest-grossing film of 1950. Along with biblical and historical narratives, he also directed films oriented toward "neo-naturalism", which tried to portray the laws of man fighting the forces of nature.
He received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director for his circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. His last and best-known film, The Ten Commandments (1956), also a Best Picture Academy Award nominee, is currently the eighth-highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. In addition to his Best Picture Awards, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his film contributions, the Palme d'Or (posthumously) for Union Pacific (1939), a DGA Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He was the first recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, which was named in his honor. DeMille's reputation had a renaissance in the 2010s, and his work has influenced numerous other films and directors.
Cecil Blount DeMille[note 1] was born on August 12, 1881, in a boarding house on Main Street in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where his parents had been vacationing for the summer.[6] On September 1, 1881, the family returned with the newborn DeMille to their flat in New York.[6] DeMille was named after his grandmothers Cecelia Wolff and Margarete Blount.[7] He was the second of three children of Henry Churchill de Mille (September 4, 1853 – February 10, 1893) and his wife, Matilda Beatrice deMille (née Samuel; January 30, 1853 – October 8, 1923), known as Beatrice.[8] His brother, William C. deMille, was born on July 25, 1878.[9] Henry de Mille, whose ancestors were of English and Dutch-Belgian descent, was a North Carolina-born dramatist, actor, and lay reader in the Episcopal Church.[10] DeMille's father was also an English teacher at Columbia College (now Columbia University).[11] He worked as a playwright, administrator, and faculty member during the early years of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, established in New York City in 1884.[12] Henry deMille frequently collaborated with David Belasco in playwriting;[13] their best-known collaborations included "The Wife", "Lord Chumley", "The Charity Ball", and "Men and Women".[11]
Cecil B. DeMille's mother, Beatrice, a literary agent and scriptwriter, was the daughter of German Jews.[14] She had emigrated from England with her parents in 1871 when she was 18; the newly arrived family settled in Brooklyn, New York, where they maintained a middle-class, English-speaking household.[15]
DeMille's parents met as members of a music and literary society in New York. Henry was a tall, red-headed student. Beatrice was intelligent, educated, forthright, and strong-willed.[16] The two were married on July 1, 1876, despite Beatrice's parents' objections because of the young couple's differing religions; Beatrice converted to Episcopalianism.[16]
DeMille was a brave and confident child.[17] He gained his love of theater while watching his father and Belasco rehearse their plays. A lasting memory for DeMille was a lunch with his father and actor Edwin Booth.[18] As a child, DeMille created an alter ego, Champion Driver, a Robin Hood-like character, evidence of his creativity and imagination.[19] The family lived in Washington, North Carolina,[20] until Henry built a three-story Victorian-style house for his family in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey; they named this estate "Pamlico".[21] John Philip Sousa was a friend of the family, and DeMille recalled throwing mud balls in the air so neighbor Annie Oakley could practice her shooting.[22] DeMille's sister, Agnes, was born on April 23, 1891; his mother nearly did not survive the birth.[23] Agnes would die on February 11, 1894, at the age of three from spinal meningitis.[24][note 2] DeMille's parents operated a private school in town and attended Christ Episcopal Church. DeMille recalled that this church was the place where he visualized the story of his 1923 version of The Ten Commandments.[26]
On January 8, 1893, at age 40, Henry de Mille died suddenly from typhoid fever, leaving Beatrice with three children. To provide for her family, she opened the Henry C. de Mille School for Girls in her home in February 1893.[27] The aim of the school was to teach young women to properly understand and fulfill the women's duty to herself, her home, and her country.[28] Before Henry de Mille's death, Beatrice had "enthusiastically supported" her husband's theatrical aspirations. She later became the second female play broker on Broadway.[29] On Henry de Mille's deathbed, he told his wife that he did not want his sons to become playwrights. DeMille's mother sent him to Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University) in Chester, Pennsylvania, at age 15.[30] He fled the school to join the Spanish–American War, but failed to meet the age requirement.[11] At the military college, even though his grades were average, he reportedly excelled in personal conduct.[31] DeMille attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (tuition-free due to his father's service to the academy). He graduated in 1900, and for graduation, his performance was the play The Arcady Trail. In the audience was Charles Frohman, who would cast DeMille in his play Hearts are Trumps, DeMille's Broadway debut.
Cecil B. DeMille began his career as an actor on the stage in the theatrical company of Charles Frohman in 1900. He debuted as an actor on February 21, 1900, in the play Hearts Are Trumps at New York's Garden Theater.[32] In 1901, DeMille starred in productions of A Repentance, To Have and to Hold, and Are You a Mason?[33] At the age of 21, Cecil B. DeMille married Constance Adams on August 16, 1902, at Adams's father's home in East Orange, New Jersey. The wedding party was small. Beatrice DeMille's family was not in attendance, and Simon Louvish suggests that this was to conceal DeMille's partial Jewish heritage. Adams was 29 years old at the time of their marriage, eight years older than DeMille.[34] They had met in a theater in Washington D.C. while they were both acting in Hearts Are Trumps.[35]
They were sexually incompatible; according to DeMille, Adams was too "pure" to "feel such violent and evil passions".[36] DeMille had more violent sexual preferences and fetishes than his wife. Adams allowed DeMille to have several long-term mistresses during their marriage as an outlet while maintaining an outward appearance of a faithful marriage.[37] One of DeMille's affairs was with his screenwriter Jeanie MacPherson.[38] Despite his reputation for extramarital affairs, DeMille did not like to have affairs with his stars, as he believed it would cause him to lose control as a director. He related a story that he maintained his self-control when Gloria Swanson sat on his lap, refusing to touch her.[39]
In 1902, he played a small part in Hamlet.[33] Publicists wrote that he became an actor in order to learn how direct and produce, but DeMille admitted that he became an actor in order to pay the bills.[33] From 1904 to 1905, DeMille attempted to make a living as a stock theatre actor with his wife, Constance. DeMille made a 1905 reprise in Hamlet as Osric.[40] In the summer of 1905, DeMille joined the stock cast at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado. He appeared in eleven of the fifteen plays presented that season, although all were minor roles. Maude Fealy would appear as the featured actress in several productions that summer and would develop a lasting friendship with DeMille. (He would later cast her in The Ten Commandments.) [41]
His brother, William, was establishing himself as a playwright and sometimes invited DeMille to collaborate.[19] DeMille and William collaborated on The Genius, The Royal Mounted, and After Five.[42] However, none of these were very successful; William deMille was most successful when he worked alone.[42] DeMille and his brother at times worked with the legendary impresario David Belasco, who had been a friend and collaborator of their father.[43] DeMille would later adapt Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West, Rose of the Rancho, and The Warrens of Virginia into films.[44] DeMille was credited with creating the premise of Belasco's The Return of Peter Grimm.[42] The Return of Peter Grimm sparked controversy, because Belasco had taken DeMille's unnamed screenplay, changed the characters, and named it The Return of Peter Grimm, producing and presenting it as his own work. DeMille was credited in small print as "based on an idea by Cecil DeMille". The play was successful, and DeMille was distraught that his childhood idol had plagiarized his work.[45]
DeMille performed on stage with actors whom he would later direct in films: Charlotte Walker, Mary Pickford, and Pedro de Cordoba. DeMille also produced and directed plays.[46] His 1905 performance in The Prince Chap as the Earl of Huntington was well received by audiences.[40] DeMille wrote a few of his own plays in-between stage performances, but his playwriting was not as successful.[42] His first play was The Pretender-A Play in a Prologue and 4 Acts set in seventeenth century Russia.[40] Another unperformed play he wrote was Son of the Winds, a mythological Native American story.[47] Life was difficult for DeMille and his wife as traveling actors; however, traveling allowed him to experience part of the United States he had not yet seen.[48] DeMille sometimes worked with the director E. H. Sothern, who influenced DeMille's later perfectionism in his work.[48] In 1907, due to a scandal with one of Beatrice's students, Evelyn Nesbit, the Henry de Mille School lost students. The school closed, and Beatrice filed for bankruptcy.[49] DeMille wrote another play originally called Sergeant Devil May Care, which was renamed The Royal Mounted. He also toured with the Standard Opera Company, but there are few records to indicate DeMille's singing ability.[50] DeMille had a daughter, Cecilia, on November 5, 1908, who would be his only biological child.[50] In the 1910s, DeMille began directing and producing other writer's plays.[51]
DeMille was poor and struggled to find work. Consequently, his mother hired him for her agency The DeMille Play Company, and taught him how to be an agent and a playwright. Eventually, he became manager of the agency and later, a junior partner with his mother.[52] In 1911, DeMille became acquainted with vaudeville producer Jesse Lasky when Lasky was searching for a writer for his new musical. He initially sought out William deMille. William had been a successful playwright, but DeMille was suffering from the failure of his plays The Royal Mounted and The Genius. However, Beatrice introduced Lasky to DeMille instead.[53] The collaboration of DeMille and Lasky produced a successful musical called California, which opened in New York in January 1912.[54] Another DeMille-Lasky production that opened in January 1912 was The Antique Girl.[55] DeMille found success in the spring of 1913, producing Reckless Age by Lee Wilson, a play about a high society girl wrongly accused of manslaughter starring Frederick Burton and Sydney Shields.[56][57] However, changes in the theater rendered DeMille's melodramas obsolete before they were produced, and true theatrical success eluded him. He produced many flops.[58] Having become disinterested in working in theatre, DeMille's passion for film was ignited when he watched the 1912 French film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth.[59]
Desiring a change of scene, Cecil B. DeMille, Jesse Lasky, Sam Goldfish (later Samuel Goldwyn), and a group of East Coast businessmen created the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in 1913, over which DeMille became director-general.[60] Lasky and DeMille were said to have sketched out the organization of the company on the back of a restaurant menu.[61] As director-general, DeMille's job was to make the films.[61] In addition to directing, DeMille was the supervisor and consultant for the first year of films made by the Lasky Feature Play Company.[62] Sometimes, he directed scenes for other directors at the Feature Play Company in order to release films on time.[62] Moreover, when he was busy directing other films, he would co-author other Lasky Company scripts as well as create screen adaptations that others directed.[62]
The Lasky Play Company sought out William deMille to join the company, but he rejected the offer because he did not believe there was any promise in a film career.[63] When William found out that DeMille had begun working in the motion picture industry, he wrote DeMille a letter, disappointed that he was willing "to throw away [his] future" when he was "born and raised in the finest traditions of the theater".[64] The Lasky Company wanted to attract high-class audiences to their films, so they began producing films from literary works.[65] The Lasky Company bought the rights to the play The Squaw Man by Edwin Milton Royle and cast Dustin Farnum in the lead role.[63] They offered Farnum a choice to have a quarter stock in the company (similar to William deMille) or $250 per week as salary. Farnum chose $250 per week.[66] Already $15,000 in debt to Royle for the screenplay of The Squaw Man, Lasky's relatives bought the $5,000 stock to save the Lasky Company from bankruptcy.[67] With no knowledge of filmmaking, DeMille was introduced to observe the process at film studios. He was eventually introduced to Oscar Apfel, a stage director who had been a director with the Edison Company.[68]
On December 12, 1913, DeMille, his cast, and crew boarded a Southern Pacific train bound for Flagstaff via New Orleans. His tentative plan was to shoot a film in Arizona, but he felt that Arizona did not typify the Western look they were searching for. They also learned that other filmmakers were successfully shooting in Los Angeles, even in winter.[69] He continued to Los Angeles. Once there, he chose not to shoot in Edendale, where many studios were, but in Hollywood.[70] DeMille rented a barn to function as their film studio.[71] Filming began on December 29, 1913, and lasted three weeks.[72] Apfel filmed most of The Squaw Man due to DeMille's inexperience; however, DeMille learned quickly and was particularly adept at impromptu screenwriting as necessary.[73] He made his first film run sixty minutes, as long as a short play. The Squaw Man (1914), co-directed by Oscar Apfel, was a sensation, and it established the Lasky Company. This was the first feature-length film made in Hollywood.[74] There were problems with the perforation of the film stock, and it was discovered the DeMille had brought a cheap British film perforator, which had punched in sixty-five holes per foot instead of the industry-standard of sixty-four. Lasky and DeMille convinced film pioneer Siegmund Lubin of the Lubin Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia to have his experienced technicians reperforate the film [75] This was also the first American feature film; however, only by release date, as D. W. Griffith's Judith of Bethulia was filmed earlier than The Squaw Man, but released later.[76] Additionally, this was the only film in which DeMille shared director's credit with Oscar C. Apfel.[62]
The Squaw Man was a success, which led to the eventual founding of Paramount Pictures and Hollywood becoming the "film capital of the world".[77][78] The film grossed over ten times its budget after its New York premiere in February 1914.[73] DeMille's next project was to aid Oscar Apfel in directing Brewster's Millions, which was wildly successful.[79] In December 1914, Constance Adams brought home John DeMille, a fifteen-month-old, whom the couple legally adopted three years later. Biographer Scott Eyman suggested that this may have been a result of Adams's recent miscarriage.[80]