The Bible in film religious epics produced as vehicles for its biggest stars. "Samson and Delilah" was the biggest moneymaking movie of 1949 and is considered the picture that sparked the biblical-epic film craze of the 1950s. It was followed by two of 1951’s biggest box-office hits, "Quo Vadis" and "David and Bathsheba". Charlton Heston starred in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur". According to author Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, in the 1950s and 1960s, during the era of the production code, "the most acceptable cinematic path for movies to incorporate sex and violence was the biblical epic". Basing a film on the Bible
Henry Churchill de Mille "The Promised Land", based on the teachings of George, but de Mille died of typhoid fever less than a year later and before it could be finished. In 1876 de Mille married Matilda Beatrice "Bebe" Samuel (1853–1923), a native of Liverpool who had come to America with her parents when she was about eighteen. Their son William C. deMille was born in 1878, Cecil B. DeMille in 1881 and daughter Agnes de Mille some ten years later. While at home in Pompton, New Jersey, de Mille contracted pneumonia and died there after a brief struggle on February 10, 1893. He