de Mille, Henry C(hurchill)

de Mille, Henry C[hurchill] (1855?–93), playwright. De Mille came to New York from his North Carolina home with the intention of studying for the clergy, but his exposure to the theatre changed his plans. After graduating from Columbia, he joined the faculty of the Columbia College Grammar School, where he helped write school plays. His work came to the attention of the Frohmans at the Madison Square Theatre, and he was hired as a play reader. De Mille's first play to be produced professionally was John Delmer's Daughters; or, Duty (1883) a story of overreaching social climbers. It failed to run but his railroad melodrama, The Main Line; or, Rawson's Y, written with Charles Barnard, was an immediate hit and was played around the country for many years. With playwright‐producer David Belasco he wrote four very successful plays: The Wife (1887), Lord Chumley (1888), The Charity Ball (1889), and Men and Women (1890). Departing from Belasco, de Mille adapted Ludwig Fulda's Das verlorene Paradies as The Lost Paradise (1891), an early serious look at labor‐management problems that was highly praised. His modern editor, Robert Hamilton Ball, has noted, “The factor which determined the nature of these plays was the stock company. For that purpose they were admirably suited. They gave great and enduring pleasure to a large number of people. Moreover, Henry de Mille would have gone much farther, had he not died before he was forty years old.” De Mille was the father of Cecil B. and William C. de Mille, and the grandfather of Agnes de Mille. His wife, Beatrice, was a well‐known playwrights' agent. Biography: The De Milles: An American Family, Anne Edwards, 1988.