County: Beaufort Marker ID: B-28 Original Date Cast: 1951
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DeMille Family Home of motion picture producer Cecil B. DeMille & his father, playwright Henry C. DeMille, stood five blocks west.
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Market Street in Washington
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orth Carolina lays claim to several members of the deMille family, show business pioneers. Playwright Henry C. deMille was born on September 17, 1853 in Washington, North Carolina, the son of William Edward and Margaret Blount deMille. The Civil War disrupted young deMille’s life. His father left to fight for the Confederacy and the family moved to Greenville as Washington became Union occupied territory. At the conclusion of the war, with the Washington area utterly devastated, deMille was sent to live with his grandfather, Thomas A. deMille. In 1867 he entered Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn, and four years later entered Columbia University. He graduated with A. B. and A. M. degrees in 1875, and taught school at Lockwood Academy and Columbia Grammar School. Throughout his life, deMille remained devoutly Episcopalian. He briefly considered becoming a clergyman in the late 1870s but instead turned to theater, a passion that had been ignited years previously at Adelphi Academy. From 1886 until his death from typhoid fever in 1893, deMille wrote some of the most popular plays in American history such as The Wife, Lord Chumley, and The Lost Paradise. DeMille married Matilda Beatrice Samuel at St. Luke’s Church in Brooklyn in 1876. They had a daughter who died in early childhood and two sons, William C. and Cecil B. deMille. William, born on July 25,
1878, in Washington, North Carolina, and Cecil, born on August 12, 1881, in Ashfield, Massachusetts (while his mother was vacationing), both followed their father into the entertainment industry. The boys both attended private schools in New Jersey including the Henry C. deMille School named for their father. In 1895, Matilda took William to Europe while Cecil stayed in America at the Pennsylvania Military School. William spent a year in Freiburg, Germany, studying at a private academy before returning to the United States and entering Columbia University. After graduation he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and took postgraduate courses at Columbia. In 1902 he returned to teach at the Henry C. deMille School. William began writing plays in 1901, when he wrote his first work, A Mixed Foursome. Several more plays followed including Strongheart and The Woman. In 1914, William left playwriting and moved from New Jersey to California persuaded by his younger brother to enter the motion picture industry. Cecil had entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts while his brother was at Columbia. Like his father and brother, Cecil began his career writing plays and short stories. He helped organize the Standard Opera Company and founded the DeMille Play Company with his mother. In 1913, Cecil moved to California REFERENCES
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William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, II, 51-53—sketches by Louise L. Pitman Cecil B. DeMille and Donald Hayne, The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille (1959) Anne Edwards, The DeMilles: An American Family (1988) Phillip French, The Hollywood Moguls (1971) Gene D. Phillips, The Movie Makers: Artists in an Industry (1973) Louis D. Giannetti, Masters of the American Cinema (1981) Official Cecil B. DeMille website: http://www.cecilbdeMille.com/
