Canadian-born Katherine Lester DeMille (1911-85) was in an orphanage in 1922 when she was adopted by Cecil B DeMille. This led to the good fortune of being given the role of a princess in a major Hollywood picture (The Crusades [1935]) as a birthday present.
DeMille began her acting career on the stage, and worked as a film extra under the name Kay Marsh, in an attempt to avoid nepotism. This did not prevent her father from casting her as one of Henry VIII’s wives in Madam Satan.
Her birth mother was Italian, and DeMille’s dark features helped to secure her the role of Pancho Villa’s wife in Viva Villa! (1934). She secured a contract at Paramount and, later, at Twentieth Century-Fox. Her career was unspectacular, but she tended to garner good reviews, and certainly got by on more than her family connections. She rarely played the lead, but one of the exceptions was her last credited role in The Judge (1949), made for Ida Lupino’s Emerald Productions
