Willam C. DeMille (July 25 1878 - March 8 1955) was a screenwriter and film director from the silent movie era through the early 1930s. He was also a noted playwright prior to moving into film.

DeMille was born in Washington, D.C. to Henry Churchill DeMille (1853–1893), an Episcopal lay minister and playwright from North Carolina, and Matilda Beatrice Samuel (1853–1923), who was born to a Sephardic Jewish family in England but converted to her husband's faith. He was the elder brother of the versatile Cecil B. DeMille, who altered the spelling of his last name when he went to Hollywood, claiming that it fit better on marquees. (William continued to be known as "deMille," while his daughter Agnes chose "de Mille.") William received a bachelor's degree from Columbia University followed by graduate studies at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, at schools in Germany, and a second stint at Columbia studying under Brander Matthews.

In 1903 he married Anna Angela George, the daughter of notable economist Henry George. Anna bore William two children, choreographer Agnes de Mille (named after a younger sister who died in childhood) and actress Peggy George. Professionally, their life was stable. A successful Broadway playwright, William's works were regularly produced by the flamboyant impresario David Belasco. One notable production, The Warrens of Virginia (1907) featured future film star Mary Pickford and Cecil, both struggling actors playing minor roles. Cecil eventually moved to Hollywood and William followed suit. Though not as famous today as Cecil, he was one of the silents' most respected directors. And though most of his silents have been lost, 1921's Miss Lulu Bett shows a delicate touch in the telling of an impoverished spinster's misfortunes in a small town.

One of the writers involved in the film was Clara Beranger. At about this time, William also met Lorna Moon, an established New York author who also wrote sophisticated Hollywood comedies. In 1998, Richard de Mille, who had grown up in Cecil's household, revealed in the memoir My Secret Mother, Lorna Moon that William C. deMille was his father and screenwriter Moon his biological mother. Richard had been adopted by Cecil B. and Constance DeMille to avoid a family scandal. Apparently, William's wife never knew the truth of Richards's birth.

In addition to his filmmaking fame, William deMille was an early member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (His brother was a founding member.) He co-hosted the 1st Academy Awards and solo-hosted the 2nd Academy Awards. He also served as the president of the academy briefly. DeMille helped found the USC Film School in 1929, and after his East Coast theatrical career failed to revive in the early 1930s, he was active on the faculty there until his death. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6101 Hollywood Blvd.

DeMille died in 1955 while living in Playa del Rey, California and was interred in the Hollywood Cemetery.

The director 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, D. C., on July 25, 1878. His father, Henry Churchill De Mille, was a playwright who had six plays produced on Broadway from 1887 to 1890, 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 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 the legendary Broadway impresario David Belasco, the play, the cast of which included his brother C.B., featured the Broadway debut of a young Canadian actress 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 his 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. "The Woman" was a political thriller about a group of representatives and the governor of New York who, like the scheming politicos in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," concoct a stratagem to discredit a representative who outspokenly opposes a piece of legislation they favor. The drama entails confrontation, negotiations, calumnies, and double dealing. The play 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 unique 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. W.C. 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 but 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 the Famous Players-Lasky studio (later Paramount), eventually becoming a director of the corporation that his brother co-managed as part owner. (Their mother Beatrice DeMille wrote a dozen screenplays for the studio from 1916-17.) Even among such monumental egos as Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky, C.B. lorded it 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. plied the crafts 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 his brother, but few of his silent pictures - the medium he did most of his work in - survive. "Variety," the bible of show business, in its review of W.C.'s adaptation of Leonard Marrick's highly-regarded comic novel Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920), 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. With the coming of sound, W.C. disparaged the talkies as inferior to silents, a not-uncommon prejudice at the time, and started making fewer films. Many critics and film-makers 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" (co-directed by Arthur Hopkins), was shot in New York in 1933. W.C. attempted a return to the theater. His play "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 Myer's 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 Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" Agnes went on to win the 1947 Tony Award for Best Choreography for their Brigadoon. The combination of the talking picture and the Great Depression doomed the Great White Way as a venue for truly popular entertainment. In the 1920s, there had been over 70 Broadway theaters offering the spoken theater a minimum of eight shows a week. By the mid-`30s, many Broadway palaces had been converted into movie theaters, as 42nd Street began its decent into a slum dominated by all-night-long grind houses. With the advent of the 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.