Cecil B. DeMille Christian and Jewish heritage to convey a message of tolerance. "The Crusades" was the first film to show accord between Christians and Muslims. DeMille received more than a dozen awards from Jewish religious and cultural groups, including B’nai B’rith. In 1954, he was seeking approval for a lavish remake of his 1923 silent film "The Ten Commandments". He went before the Paramount board of directors, which was mostly Jewish-American. The members rejected his proposal, even though his last two films, "Samson and Delilah" and "The Greatest Show on Earth", had been record-breaking hits. Adolph Zukor, the chairman of the board,
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