Cecil B. DeMille shot Hollywood's first full-length feature, then ruled the box office
In 1914 a former stage actor named Cecil B. DeMille made The Squaw Man, the first feature-length film shot in Hollywood. Its success helped turn a Los Angeles suburb into the capital of American movies, and DeMille went on to make 70 features, often with several topping the charts at once.
DeMille was born on 12 August 1881 in a boarding house in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where his parents happened to be spending the summer, and grew up in New York. His father Henry was a playwright who worked with David Belasco and taught at Columbia College; his mother Beatrice, daughter of German Jewish immigrants from England, became only the second woman to work as a play broker on Broadway after Henry died of typhoid in 1893. On his deathbed Henry had said he did not want his sons writing plays.
The son ignored that wish in spirit. After the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his tuition was waived because of his father's service there, he debuted on Broadway in 1900 in Hearts Are Trumps. He later admitted he acted mainly to pay the bills, not, as publicists claimed, to learn directing. Even the family name was stagecraft: he wrote it as DeMille because it looked better on a marquee, while keeping de Mille in private life.
Film made him. After The Squaw Man he founded Famous Players-Lasky, which later merged into Paramount Pictures alongside Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky. The 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, his first biblical epic, held Paramount's revenue record for 25 years, and he said he first pictured its story inside Christ Episcopal Church in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where his family worshipped. The King of Kings (1927) is credited with reaching over 800 million viewers, and Samson and Delilah became the top earner of 1950.
Recognition from peers came late. His first Best Director nomination arrived with The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), a circus drama that also won Best Picture. His 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments, his final film, ranks eighth among all-time earners once inflation is factored in. The Golden Globes named a lifetime honour after him and made him its first recipient, and his standing enjoyed a revival in the 2010s.
Source: Cecil B. DeMille
