Cecil B. DeMille, who died on 21 January, 1959, was one of the first big names from behind the lens.

Cecil Blount DeMille was born on 12 August, 1881, in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and initially acted on and wrote for the stage.

Then, scouting for film locations, DeMille and Samuel Goldwyn chanced upon the Californian suburb of Hollywood, where he shot America’s first feature film, The Squaw Man in 1914.

In a career spanning more than 40 years, DeMille set the standard for other Hollywood directors, shooting comedies such as Male and Female , and epics such as The Sign of the Cross and The Greatest Show on Earth , which won the best picture Oscar in 1952.

His popularity was at its zenith during the 1920s when he directed “The Ten Commandments” in 1923 and “King of Kings in 1927, which in stark contrast to the period’s usual moral themes, featured scenes of sex and violence.

He returned to “The Ten Commandments” in 1956, remaking it in sound and Technicolor, and it is for such set-piece scenes as Charlton Heston’s Moses parting the Red Sea followed by a cast of thousands that Mr DeMille’s direction is widely revered.

Never the best director of individual actors, his talent lay in the creation of truly cinematic films, daubing sweeping brushstrokes across broad historical canvasses to produce scenes that have gone down in the annals of film iconography.

Mr DeMille suffered a heart attack scaling a ladder for a scene in “The Ten Commandments” but was back directing within a week, much to the annoyance of his doctors.

Three years later, he finally succumbed to heart disease aged 77, although even then he had been in negotiations with MGM to direct Ben Hur .

From his beginnings as an unknown stage director thrust into the fledgling Californian movie business, through the advent of talkies and on to the astonishing cinematic feats of Hollywood’s golden age, Mr DeMille personified the ambition of 20th century American filmmaking.

His prodigious output saw him direct some 80 films, almost two a year throughout his career, and although the Academy recognised his efforts with an honorary Oscar in 1950 and the Oscar for best picture in 1952, his only directorial gong was the Golden Globe for The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952.

Mr DeMille had been, however, a founding father of Paramount Pictures, and it was in the Paramount-produced Billy Wilder movie, Sunset Boulevard , that the DeMille name became forever identified in popular imagination as shorthand for Hollywood director.