Henry C. De Mille

Henry Churchill de Mille (September 17, 1853 – February 10, 1893) was an American dramatist, book writer, and Georgist whose Broadway credits include Men and Women, The Main Line; or, Rawson's Y, The Charity Ball, Lord Chumley, and Meet the Wife. He was the father of film pioneers Cecil B. DeMille and William C. deMille, and the paternal grandfather of dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille.

De Mille was born on a farm in Washington, North Carolina, the son of businessman and politician William Edward de Mille (1824–1873) and Margaret Mutter Blount Hoyt de Mille (1835–1911). He earned his BA and AM degrees from Columbia College in 1875 and 1879, respectively, having initially studied for the ministry before turning to education. He served as vice-principal at the Lockwood Academy in Brooklyn and taught several semesters at the Columbia Grammar School in Manhattan. His path toward the theater began through amateur performance and later work as an actor with A. M. Palmer's organization, after which he returned to teaching at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

By 1882, de Mille had joined the Madison Square Theatre, where he reviewed and revised submitted plays, an experience that brought him into contact with playwrights Steele MacKaye and David Belasco. His first original play, John Delmer's Daughters, or Duty, opened at the Madison Square Theatre on December 10, 1883, and closed within a week. Three years later, on September 18, 1886, The Main Line; or, Rawson's Y, a Western melodrama co-written with Charles Barnard, opened at the old Lyceum Theatre. Set at a remote railroad way station and telegraph office — outfitted with authentic railroad tracks — the play received warm notices on its opening night.

De Mille subsequently collaborated with David Belasco on a series of productions that found considerable success with audiences. Their first joint effort, The Wife, a four-act drama, premiered at the Lyceum Theatre on November 1, 1887, under the direction of Daniel Frohman. Lord Chumley, a three-act comedy written for actor E. H. Sothern, followed on August 21, 1888, and The Charity Ball, another three-act drama, debuted at the Lyceum Theatre on November 19, 1889. The collaboration continued with Men and Women, which opened on October 20, 1890, at Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theatre and starred Maude Adams in a story centered on business and politics in America. De Mille and Belasco parted ways by 1891.

Working independently that same year, de Mille produced The Lost Paradise, his adaptation of Ludwig Fulda's Das Verlorene Paradies, through Charles Frohman's company. The production was regarded as among his strongest work. While completing The Lost Paradise, de Mille read Henry George's Progress and Poverty and became a committed Georgist. He intended to write a follow-up piece called The Promised Land, grounded in George's teachings, but did not live to finish it.

In 1876, de Mille married Matilda Beatrice Samuel (1853–1923), a Liverpool native who had emigrated to America at approximately eighteen years of age. Their son William C. deMille was born in 1878, Cecil B. DeMille in 1881, and a daughter, Agnes de Mille, approximately ten years after that. De Mille contracted pneumonia at his home in Pompton, New Jersey, and died there on February 10, 1893, at the age of thirty-nine. Two months after his death, his widow founded the Henry C. De Mille School for Girls in Pompton and established herself as one of the first female play brokers in America, working with playwrights, producers, and actors from an office on Broadway.