Cecil B. DeMille

Cecil Blount DeMille was born on August 12, 1881, in a boarding house on Main Street in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where his parents were vacationing, and was brought to the family's New York flat on September 1 of that year. He was the second of three children born to Henry Churchill de Mille, a North Carolina-born dramatist, actor, and lay reader in the Episcopal Church, and Matilda Beatrice deMille, a literary agent and scriptwriter of German-Jewish heritage who had emigrated from England in 1871. His older brother, William C. deMille, was born on July 25, 1878. DeMille was named after his grandmothers Cecilia Wolff and Margarete Blount. The family surname had been spelled de Mil before DeMille's grandfather William added "le" for visual symmetry; as an adult, Cecil adopted the spelling DeMille, believing it would read better on a marquee, though he continued using de Mille in private life.

Henry de Mille taught English at Columbia College and 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. He frequently collaborated with David Belasco, their best-known joint works including The Wife, Lord Chumley, The Charity Ball, and Men and Women. DeMille developed his love of theater watching his father and Belasco rehearse, and recalled a lunch with his father and actor Edwin Booth as a lasting memory from childhood. The family lived at an estate called Pamlico in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where John Philip Sousa was a family friend and neighbor Annie Oakley practiced her shooting. Henry de Mille died suddenly from typhoid fever on January 8, 1893, at age 40, leaving Beatrice to support three children. She opened the Henry C. de Mille School for Girls in February 1893 and later became the second female play broker on Broadway.

DeMille's mother sent him to Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania, at age 15. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts tuition-free, owing to his father's service to the institution, and graduated in 1900. His graduation performance was the play The Arcady Trail, and Charles Frohman, who was in the audience, cast DeMille in Hearts are Trumps, marking his Broadway debut. DeMille went on to appear on Broadway from 1900 to 1907, with credits including After Five, The Royal Mounted, the comedy The Naked Genius, The Warrens of Virginia, and The Prince Chap. In addition to performing, he also worked as a book writer for Broadway productions. He later began writing and directing stage plays, some in collaboration with his older brother William and others with Jesse L. Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer.

DeMille transitioned from the stage to film, directing his first picture, The Squaw Man, in 1914. It was the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood, and its commercial success helped establish Hollywood as the center of the American film industry. Building on subsequent successes, DeMille co-founded Famous Players Lasky with Lasky and Adolph Zukor, which was later reverse merged into Paramount Pictures. Between 1914 and 1958, he directed 70 features spanning silent and sound formats, including social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. He is recognized as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history.

His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments, released in 1923, was both a critical and commercial success and held the Paramount revenue record for 25 years. DeMille directed The King of Kings in 1927, a biography of Jesus that reached more than 800 million viewers. The Sign of the Cross in 1932 is considered the first sound film to integrate all aspects of cinematic technique, and Cleopatra in 1934 was his first film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Samson and Delilah, released in 1949, became the highest-grossing film of 1950. The circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952 earned DeMille his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director and won both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture — Drama. His 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments, also a Best Picture nominee, became his final and best-known film and ranks as the eighth-highest-grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation.

Among his many honors, DeMille received an Academy Honorary Award for his contributions to film, the Palme d'Or posthumously for Union Pacific, 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 was also an active Freemason and member of Prince of Orange Lodge No. 16 in New York City. He died on January 21, 1959.