Richard deMille liked to hide behind the facade of a slightly chilly academic, but it was a pose. Despite our very different generations and politics, I always found him the most endearing of men, always impeccably turned out in a jacket, often quite funny, with a raptor’s eye for the surface silliness of the Hollywood society he was born into but always felt slightly distant from.
Richard was the illegitimate son of William de Mille – the father of Agnes de Mille, the brother of Cecil B. de Mille. William was a very fine director in his own right, and had a fling with one of his writers, a woman named Lorna Moon. About nine months after Richard’s birth, Cecil took the foundling in (and what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall during that conversation between Cecil and his wife.) The public cover story was that Cecil and Constance, who had already adopted two orphans to go with their natural child Cecilia, had adopted yet another.
The two brothers made a pact. William was to have nothing to do with the boy beyond conventional conversations at family gatherings. Whichever one of them died first, the survivor was to tell Richard the truth about his parentage.
When William died in 1955, Cecil came to Richard, told him that his father was his Uncle William, and that his mother was an author. As proof, he handed William a book.
“To William de Mille, tenderly. Lorna Moon.”
It’s a story out of Dickens, really, complete with a happy ending, and one Richard told superlatively well in his book “My Secret Mother.” Talking to Richard about his book some ten years ago led us to a friendship that resulted in my undertaking the authorized biography of Cecil B. DeMille, a book that will be completed in a few months.
Richard died last week at the age of 84. The harsh fact that he will not be able to read the pages that resulted from the trust he and his niece placed in me – to tell the story of his adopted father with honesty and, perhaps, understanding – will be a continuing sadness in my life.
I miss Richard’s voice, the way he had of slightly stuttering at the beginning of a sentence, then recovering and proceeding without any further hurdles.
I miss his belief in me.
Most of all, I miss him.