Writer, Producer, Agent and Mentor (And Mom to the DeMille Boys)

The surname DeMille (or de Mille) brings up thoughts of the famous line from Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s Sunset Boulevard “Mr. de Mille, I’m ready for my close up” which references silent screen director Cecil. Perhaps people remember his brother, William, who started as a playwright and became a Hollywood director and joined 3^rd wife Clara Beranger in founding the film school at the University of Southern California. And sometimes the surname conjures of memories of Tony Award-winning choreographer Agnes de Mille (daughter of William/granddaughter of Beatrice). From now on it should bring up the writer, producer and mentor who worked frequently in both Broadway and Hollywood – Beatrice DeMille. (From here on out we will call her Beatrice to avoid confusion).

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Born Matilda Beatrice Samuel in Liverpool, England on January 30th, 1853. Immigrating to the United States Beatrice and her family landed in New York so she became an actress sometime in the early 1870s. In 1876 she met and married, Henry de Mille, who would grow up to be a playwright having six plays produced on Broadway between 1887-90. Before that, however, they needed to earn a living so they both taught courses at a local prep school and worked as traveling actors in the summer theatres while Beatrice gave birth to William (1878) and Cecil (born 1881).

For a decade everything went well for the family. In 1887 Henry began writing with David Belasco and their play made it to Broadway, as did his next 4. Beatrice gave birth to a long-awaited daughter, Agnes, in 1891. Then tragedy struck. In 1893, Henry died from typhoid fever. Beatrice immediately started her own prep school for girls in a wing of their home. Then Agnes died of spinal meningitis two years later.

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Somehow Beatrice survived the double grief and even began to use her writing skills to earn more money than the prep school could provide. In 1900 she co-wrote The Greatest Thing in the World with Harriet Ford, which made it to Broadway. Seeing that writing could be unstable, and being good at mentoring others, Beatrice also began work as an agent and hired her son Cecil to help out. By 1913 Beatrice had created a company – the DeMille Play Company (named for her, not for her yet-to-be-famous sons) – so successful she could sell it to finance Cecil’s first film. Then she negotiated his partnership with Jesse Lasky, which gave birth to Paramount Pictures.

Now ensconced in the new motion picture industry she continued wearing two hats – of writer and writer’s agent, specifically focused on furthering the careers of young female writers. Beatrice is credited with 12 films written and produced in 1916 and 1917 – all in her 50s. She often collaborated with other women such as Jeanie Macpherson and Eve Unsell to boost their careers and she launched the career of screenwriter Beulah Marie Dix (read more about her in next month's column).

Beatrice Samuel DeMille died on October 8^th, 1923. For all she accomplished, she has a 4-sentence biography on IMDb. 

If you’d like to learn more about the history of women in screenwriting, and about the craft of screenwriting while earning your MFA, our low residency Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is currently accepting applications.