William Churchill de Mille, the older brother of Hollywood legend
Cecil B. DeMille (W.C. retained the
family spelling of his name) and father of Tony Award-winning
choreographer Agnes de Mille, was born in
Washington, North Carolina, on July 25, 1878. His father,
Henry C. DeMille, was a playwright who
had six plays produced on Broadway from 1887-90, while his mother,
Beatrice DeMille, the former Matilda
Beatrice Samuel, wrote one play in collaboration with
Harriet Ford, "The Greatest Thing in the
World," that played on Broadway in 1900. It was perhaps inevitable that
after graduating from Columbia University W.C. would become a
successful Broadway playwright
His first play, "Strongheart," debuted on January 30, 1905, at the
Hudson Theatre and ran for 66 performances, closing on February 20th of
that year. It was revived at the Savoy Theatre on August 28th and
played for 32 performances before closing on September 20th. His farce
"The Genius" played in repertory at the Bijou Theatre for 35
performances starting on Halloween Day 1906, while his next play,
"Classmates," written in collaboration with
Margaret Turnbull, was more
successful, totaling 102 performances after opening at the Hudson on
August 29, 1907.
His true first hit, "The Warrens of Virginia," debuted at the Belasco
Theatre on December 3, 1907. Produced by legendary Broadway
impresario David Belasco, the
play--the cast of which included deMille's brother Cecil--featured the
Broadway debut of a young Canadian actress named
Mary Pickford. Transferring from the
Belasco to the Stuyvesant Theatre on May 4, 1908, the play racked up a
total of 380 performances. W.C. collaborated with brother C.B. on
the writing of "The Royal Mounted," which debuted at the Garrick
Theatre on April 6, 1908. Co-directed by C.B. and
Cyril Scott, the play closed after only 32
performances.
Three years later W.C. had another hit play, "The Woman," which opened
at the Republic Theatre on September 19, 1911. This was a political
thriller about a group of representatives and the governor of New York
who, like the scheming politicos in
Mr. Smith geht nach Washington (1939),
concoct a stratagem to discredit a representative who outspokenly
opposes a piece of legislation they favor. The drama had everything--confrontation, negotiations, calumnies and double dealing. It is unique
as W.C. focuses on how people themselves affect politics, not on how
politics affects them. The power relations between the individual
characters reflects their governmental machinations. W.C.'s handling of
points of view is interesting in that he allows each of the characters'
voices to come through clearly, without prejudice, so the audience is
not tipped to which ones are right or wrong. He constantly turns the
tables on the audience, forcing them to redefine their perceptions of
the characters, as no character in the play is innocent, the heroes and
villains in politics proving to be one and the same. Though "The Woman"
was a hit, playing for 247 performances, it would be another two years
before a play of his was back on the boards. "A Tragedy of the Future"
played in repertory with four other plays at the Princess Theatre for
115 performances beginning on May 14, 1913. "After Five," his next play
(written in collaboration with C.B.), debuted at the Fulton Theatre on
October 29, 1913, but was a flop, lasting only 13 performances. He
would not appear on Broadway again for almost 16 years.
W.C. might have remained a Broadway playwright all his life if he had
not joined his kid brother in Hollywood. He launched his movie career
in 1914 at Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount Pictures), eventually
becoming a director of the corporation that his brother co-managed as
part owner (their mother Beatrice wrote a dozen screenplays for
the studio from 1916-17). Even among such monumental egos as
Adolph Zukor and
Jesse Lasky, C.B. loomed over the Paramount
lot, as he was the most successful director of his era, the Steven Spielberg of the first half of the 20th century. While at Famous
Players-Lasky-Paramount W.C. fulfilled the roles of director,
screenwriter and producer, evolving into a highly respected member of
the Hollywood community.
Many in Hollywood considered him a first-rate director, as good as--or
at times better than--his brother, but few of his silent pictures, the
medium in which he did most of his work, survive. "Variety," the bible
of show business, in its review of
Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920),
W.C.'s adaptation of 'Leonard Marrick''s highly regarded comic novel,
proclaimed, "Here is a better picture than has been made by any
director . . . at any time."
At Paramount C.B. was ennobled with the title Director-General, whereas
W.C. was called, affectionately, "Pop" by his co-workers. Unlike his
brother, W.C. focused on presenting intimate stories rooted in strong
human values. He never earned a reputation for being a visual director,
unlike C.B., who was a master of spectacle and mise en scene and had to
be forced by the Paramount board of directors to address contemporary
subjects.
Although by the late 1920s "talkies" were displacing silent films, W.C.
disparaged them as inferior to silents, a not-uncommon prejudice at the
time, and started making fewer films. Many critics and filmmakers
believed that the moving picture had reached the apogee of its maturity
as a lively art in the mid-'20s, and were not happy to see all the
craft developed to convey meaning through pictures junked in favor of
what they considered a novelty--sound. His last film,
His Double Life (1933)
(co-directed with Arthur Hopkins), was shot
in New York in 1933.
W.C. attempted a return to the theater. "Poor Old Jim" played in
repertory with three other plays as part of the 1929 Little Theatre
Tournament, but that would prove to be his last stint as a Broadway
playwright. He produced and staged
Henry Myers comedy "Hallowe'en" in
1936, but the play lasted only 12 performances at the Vanderbilt
Theatre. Broadway would soon belong to a new generation, including his
daughter Agnes De Mille, who would achieve Broadway immortality for her
revolutionary choreography for
Richard Rodgers' and
Oscar Hammerstein II's "Oklahoma!"
Agnes went on to win the 1947 Tony Award for Best Choreography for
their "Brigadoon".
The combination of the advent of talking pictures and the onset of the
Great Depression doomed the Great White Way as a venue for truly
popular entertainment. In the 1920s there were over 70 Broadway
theaters offering a minimum of eight shows a week. By the mid-'30s many
of the palaces had been converted into movie theaters, as 42nd Street
began its descent into a slum dominated by all-night-long grindhouses.
With the advent of realism and social commitment displayed by such
innovative theatrical companies such as the Group Theater, the stage
would soon succumb to a revolution hostile to the old-time playwrights
who had sparked the lights on Old Broadway. The musicals survived, but
Broadway was no longer a place where crowds of theater-goers moved from
theater to theater, shopping for a show.
William C. De Mille served as the second president of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He died on March 8, 1955. He was 76
years old.
