Demille, Henry Churchill

(1850-1893)

   North Carolina native Henry Churchill DeMille, who had originally intended a career in the ministry, took a position as a play reader for the Madison Square Theatre in 1882, the year before his first play, John Delmer's Daughter (1883), flopped. Collaborating with Charles Barnard, DeMille scored his first success with the melodramatic The Main Line (1886), a play so popular that he revised it, retitled The Danger Signal in 1891, in collaboration with Rosabel Morrison to ensure its continued popularity. DeMille's greatest triumphs, The Wife (1887), Lord Chumley (1888), The Charity Ball (1889), and Men and Women were all written with producer David Belasco. After his partnership with Belasco ended, DeMille adapted The Lost Paradise from Ludwig Fulda's Das verlorene Paradies. With his wife, Beatrice Samuel, a successful agent, DeMille fathered playwright William C. deMille (who altered the family name) and legendary motion picture director Cecil B. DeMille.