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Henry Churchill DeMille Much lias 1нчч1 written about his two famous sons, William anil Cecil, but comparatively little is known of the father, who was a dis¬ tinguished mail in his own right. E butchers or bakers or candle¬ stick makers if you must,” Henry Churchill DeMille often told his growing sons, “"but stay out of the theatre!" Like most growing boys. William and Cecil paid little heed to father’s advice. Tho result of disobedience, interestingly enough, was not grief, but success of the most spectacular kind. Half a century after father’s death the sons stand on the pinnacle of success in tho theatrical world; Wil¬ liam, the elder, as playwright and professor of drama, and С. B. as motion picture producer No. One. Much is heard of the DeMille sons. The father is rarely mentioned. Yet in his own lifetime he was quite a personage; as distinguished in his field as his sons were in theirs, and us much a devotee of the theatre. It was no doubt because lie knew too well what u jealous mistress the dramatic art is that he warned his sons to give her a wide berth. Born in Washington, N. C. A native North Carolinian, of whom his compatriots know too little, Henry Churchill DeMille was born in Washington, N. C., ninety years ago. Young Henry grew up with idea of entering the ministry, the in¬ evitable choice of the brilliant student of his day, but he was scut north to 1-' educated and somewhere along the line ho changed bis mind. A period of school-teaching fol¬ lowed his graduation from Columbia University, and meantime he married a brilliant Englishwoman. Matilda Samuel, who bad come from Liverpool to teach in the United States. Mrs. DeMille was intensely interested in dramatics and she is given credit for suggesting to her husband, during a period when ill health had interrupted his regular work, that by writing for the stage he could preach to a wider audience than ho could ever roach from any pulpit. DeMille returned to his teaching at the Columbia College Grammar School. He watt on fire with the idea that had been suggested by his wife and it was only a matter of time tin* By PAULINE WORTHY til he was attracting attention by hie amateur play-writing and plny- prodtiction in the school. David I tela sco became interested in his work and when Belasco became manager of the Madison Square Theatre in 1882 he offered DeMille the position of play reader for that theatre. Period of Intense Activity A decade of great activity now be- Sn for Henry DeMille; first at tho adison Square and then at the Lyceum Theatre. These were years not only of reading, writing and re¬ vising plays but of sometimes acting in them, as well as teaching acting on tho sido. With tho exception of "The Main Line" which was written with Charles Barnard, and ‘‘The Lost Paradise" which was based on an older German drama, all of the DeMille plays were written in collaboration with David Belasco. The two made a wonderful team and DeMille’s sons always point out that the partnership was in¬ variably written DeMille & Belasco rather than the other way around. One of the interesting features of that collaboration was that the DeMille- Belasco plays wore always play wrought before they were play written. Belnsco’s was the dramatic construction. DeMille did tho actual writing. When the whole of a play had been plotted, ground-work laid for action development, and various characters decided upon, the two would betake themselves to the empty theatre and proceed to stage the play between them, devising speech to til situation and letting the dialogue de¬ velop ns they went through the action. Thus lines wore written not to be acted but to suit the acting. Never forgetting his original desire to combat evil and point men toward a better life, every play in which Henry DeMille had a hand grew out of some social or economic theme, lie was far too clever, however, to al¬ low such themes to make his plays top heavy and he became adept in using a social or economic evil to furnish the motives out of which he devised situations and spun plots. The fact that the results were sensationally popular was proof enough that people liked entertainment which made them think ns well as feel. First Play, “The Wife” The first play to grow out of the DcMille-Belasco partnership was “The Wife” which not only ran for 2Я9 consecutive performances during the I885-SC theatre season in New York but lived on for thirty active years iu the stock companies of the nation. The last. "Men and Women" lied its genesis in a bank scandal which rocked New York in the late 'eighties. (Incidentally this was the first play in which Maude Adama ever bad an important part.) Beween “Tho Wife” and “Men and Women" came "Lord Chum ley" which wo* written especially for E. II. Sothorn. and which ran off and on for ten year*; and "The Charity Ball" which was more popular on the road than any of the others. These plays were written to Ik- acted and they naturally lose much in the reading. Also they had a contempo¬ rary angle which is not readily com¬ prehensible these many years later, but drama lovers may still find pleasure in reading them in the col¬ lect ion published a year or two ago by ilir Princeton University Press. When at the early age of forty DeMille died at his home in Pompton, New Jersey (February 10. 1893), lie left in rough notes a play entitled "The Promised Land,” which in¬ dicated that although already well and popularly known he was actually only on the threshold of much greater achievement. "The Promised Land" was his “dramatic sermon” treatment of ideas suggested by Henry George V "Progress and Poverty,” and in a letter to Henry George, DeMille wrote a sentence about himself which might well have been used as his own epitaph, i.e. "I never do anything bv halves, and am half-hearted in no cau.*e that I embrace.”