The Griffith Project Volume 4: Films Produced in 1910 9780851708058, 9781838710774, 9781839020100

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THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 4 FILMS PRODUCED IN 1910

‘My own hell would be to have a projector and all the films, but no one around to see them with me.’ James Card (1915–2000), Founding film curator at George Eastman House

IN MEMORIAM

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 4 Films Produced in 1910

G ENERAL E DITOR Paolo Cherchi Usai CONTRIBUTORS Eileen Bowser, Ben Brewster, André Gaudreault, Lee Grieveson, Tom Gunning, Sumiko Higashi, Steven Higgins, Lea Jacobs, J.B. Kaufman, Charlie Keil, David Mayer, Russell Merritt, Jan Olsson, Scott Simmon, Kristin Thompson, Yuri Tsivian A SSISTANT E DITOR Cynthia Rowell

A BFI book published by Palgrave Macmillan

First published in 2000 by the British Film Institute 21 Stephen St, London W1P 2LN The British Film Institute is the UK national agency with responsibility for encouraging the arts of film and television and conserving them in the national interest. Copyright © Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2000 Reprinted 2008 Set in Italian Garamond by Ketchup, London

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978 0 85170 805 8 eISBN: 978 1 83902 009 4 ePDF: 978 1 83902 010 0

CONTENTS

Foreword Notes on Contributors Note on Layout

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234. The Englishman and the Girl 235. His Last Burglary 236. The Final Settlement 237. Taming a Husband 238. The Newlyweds 239. The Thread of Destiny 240. In Old California 241. The Man 242. The Converts 243. Faithful 244. The Twisted Trail 245. As It Is in Life 246. Gold Is Not All 247. A Rich Revenge 248. Unexpected Help 249. A Romance of the Western Hills 250. Thou Shalt Not 251. The Way of the World 252. The Unchanging Sea 253. The Gold-Seekers 254. Love Among the Roses 255. Ramona 256. The Two Brothers 257. Over Silent Paths 258. The Impalement 259. In the Season of Buds 260. A Child of the Ghetto 261. A Victim of Jealousy 262. In the Border States 263. The Face at the Window 264. The Marked Time-Table 265. A Child’s Impulse 266. The Purgation 267. Muggsy’s First Sweetheart 268. A Midnight Cupid

269. What the Daisy Said 270. A Child’s Faith 271. Serious Sixteen 272. A Flash of Light 273. As the Bells Rang Out! 274. The Call to Arms 275. An Arcadian Maid 276. Her Father’s Pride 277. The House with Closed Shutters 278. A Salutary Lesson 279. The Sorrows of the Unfaithful 280. The Usurer 281. Wilful Peggy 282. The Modern Prodigal 283. A Summer Idyl 284. Little Angels of Luck 285. A Mohawk’s Way 286. In Life’s Cycle 287. The Oath and the Man 288. Rose O’ Salem-Town 289. The Iconoclast 290. Examination Day at School 291. That Chink at Golden Gulch 292. The Broken Doll 293. The Banker’s Daughters 294. The Message of the Violin 295. Two Little Waifs 296. Waiter No. 5 297. Simple Charity 298. The Fugitive 299. Sunshine Sue 300. The Song of the Wildwood Flute 301. A Plain Song 302. His Sister-In-Law 303. A Child’s Stratagem 304. The Golden Supper 305. When a Man Loves 306. The Lesson 307. Winning Back His Love

308. A Wreath of Orange Blossoms 309. The Italian Barber 310. His Trust 311. His Trust Fulfilled 312. The Two Paths 313. Three Sisters 314. Fate’s Turning 315. The Diamond Star 316. What Shall We Do with Our Old 317. A Decree of Destiny 318. Heart Beats of Long Ago 319. The Lily of the Tenements Bibliography Index of Titles: 1910 Cumulative Index of Titles: 1907-1910

FOREWORD

This is the fourth installment of a multi-year research project commissioned by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Sacile, involving the analysis of all the films where D.W. Griffith was credited as director, actor, writer, producer and supervisor. As in the case of Volumes 1 (1907–1908), 2 (January–June 1909) and 3 (July–December 1909), contributors to The Griffith Project were asked to analyse groups of consecutive films, listed here in their shooting order. Please note that it is the last day of shooting that determines the chronology and perimeters of each volume. Every entry is preceded by a plot synopsis taken from the actual viewing of the print, and by summaries or reviews published at the time of release. The primary source for filmographic information on the Biograph period is D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Company (Cooper C. Graham, Steven Higgins, Elaine Mancini, João Luiz Vieira. Metuchen, N.J. and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1985), by far the best factual source on the subject. We gratefully acknowledge its authors and publisher, with special thanks to Steven Higgins – a longtime friend of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival – who provided invaluable advice on various aspects of the overall project. Contributors to The Griffith Project have occasionally added or amended information contained in the Scarecrow filmography. As the number of surviving prints increases with the Biograph films made after 1909, some observations on this matter are necessary at this point. In film, archival sources may be defined as the complex of all the elements held by moving image repositories and museums (regardless of their status as masters or duplicates). Alternatively, they could be identified as the extant preservation material (closest to the original camera negatives) utilized for the making of viewing copies. In the former sense, every film print – including, for instance, a 16mm duplicate of late generation – is considered an archival source. In the second definition, such term is used only for the ur-elements from which viewing copies are made, such as paper prints, nitrate negatives, positive prints generated at the time of the film’s commercial release and re-release, archival negatives struck before the corresponding nitrate print decomposed, or fine grain masters and modern positive prints or negatives if no other material is available. The second (admittedly more restrictive) approach has been adopted in the context of this project. For example, a 35mm paper print, a camera negative, a nitrate 35mm release print with English titles and a nitrate 35mm release print with German titles are listed as separate archival sources of the same film, as it is presumed that all the known preservation material and access copies in existence derive from one or more of these prints. Therefore, a 16mm generated from one of the above elements (such as many Biograph shorts distributed by Blackhawk in the 1970s for non-theatrical use) is not included in the inventory. On the other hand, a 16mm copy derived from a nitrate 35mm print distributed in Spain would be regarded as an archival source as long as the corresponding nitrate print or 16mm reduction negative are no longer extant. None of these criteria is altogether immune from drawbacks and ambiguities. A comprehensive and reliable census based on the first method is virtually impossible to achieve, as we will never know exactly how many copies were made from a given source. On the other hand, archives often possess 16mm prints of unknown origin, and their generation

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cannot be established without a parallel examination of all the other surviving elements. However germane to the endeavor, this kind of comparative analysis requires an effort which is well beyond the scope of the project. Moreover, the procedure adopted here has the advantage of minimizing the possibility of redundancies, thus providing a preliminary guide for further inquiry in this important area of research. Copies of undetermined origin have been included with the other sources, in the hope that future studies will bring conclusive evidence of their identity. It should be stressed that the presence of an archival source does not necessarily mean that a corresponding access print is actually available. It is possible, for example, that a film preserved in three different archival sources may be seen only in a copy derived from one of these sources, not always the best, nor the most complete. In other cases, a title which survives in the form of a single archival source may not be currently accessible because no viewing print has been made yet. It is our hope that The Griffith Project will generate enough scholarly attention to bring these films to the public view. The Griffith Project would not exist without the generous help of all the individuals and institutions involved in the preservation of Griffith’s work. Our special thanks go to Mary Lea Bandy, Anne Morra and Steven Higgins (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), David Francis, Patrick Loughney, Madeline Matz and Mike Mashon (Library of Congress), who are currently in charge of this massive undertaking, initiated several years ago by Iris Barry and Eileen Bowser at MoMA and by the staff of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress. We also wish to express our gratitude to Elaine Burrows (National Film and Television Archive), Robert Daudelin (Cinémathèque Québécoise), Mark-Paul Meyer and Rommy Albers (Nederlands Filmmuseum), Eva Orbanz (Film Museum Berlin), Eddie Richmond (UCLA Film and Television Archive), Dan Nissen (Det Danske Filmmuseum), Paulina Fernandez Jurado (Fundacion Cinemateca Argentina), Lúcia Lobo (Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro), Julie Buck (L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation), Edward E. Stratmann, Chadwick A. Olson, Karen Latham Everson, Caroline Yeager, Jeffrey Stoiber and all the staff of the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House for their generous help in retrieving and sharing information on archival sources. My colleagues on the Board of Directors of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Davide Turconi, David Robinson, Piera Patat, Livio Jacob, Lorenzo Codelli, Carlo Montanaro, Piero Colussi and Lorenzo De Giusti) were instrumental in turning the Griffith retrospective into a unique opportunity to reassess the extraordinary contribution of D.W. Griffith to the art of film. A condensed version of the debate within the Pordenone team before the project started in October 1997 can be found in Griffithiana, Vol. XXI, Nos. 62-3, May 1998, 4-37. Paolo Cherchi Usai Rochester, February 2000

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

EILEEN BOWSER is a film historian and curator emeritus of the film archives, Department of Film and Video, the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is cataloguer of the D.W. Griffith Collection of papers at the museum, author of The Transformation of Cinema: 19071915, co-author (with Iris Barry) of D.W. Griffith (1965) and editor of Biograph Bulletins 1908-1912 (1973). BEN BREWSTER is the assistant director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. He is co-author (with Lea Jacobs) of Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (1997) and author of many articles on early cinema in Screen, Film History, Cinema Journal, and Griffithiana. PAOLO CHERCHI USAI, senior curator of the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House, is associate professor of Film at the University of Rochester and director of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, established in 1996. Co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and Domitor (Society for Early Cinema Studies), he is an adjunct member of the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress, and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). He is the author of Silent Cinema: An Introduction (BFI Publishing, 2000). ANDRÉ GAUDREAULT is professor of Cinema at the Département d’histoire de l’art at Université de Montréal, where he is responsible for GRAFICS (Groupe de recherche sur l’avènement et la formation des institutions cinématographique et scénique) and is also director of CRI (Centre de recherche sur l’intermédialité). A visiting professor in various universities (São Paulo, Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle, Bologna et Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne), he has published Du littéraire au filmique (reissued in 1999 with a preface by Paul Ricœur), co-author with F. Jost of Le Récit cinématographique; Pathé 1900: Fragments d’une filmographie analytique du cinéma des premiers temps (1993); and Au pays des ennemis du cinéma (1996). LEE GRIEVESON is lecturer in Cinema Studies at the University of Exeter and assistant director of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture. His work on the regulation of early American cinema has appeared in the journals Screen and Cinema Journal and in a number of edited collections. He is currently completing a book entitled The Policing of Cinema, 1907-1915. TOM GUNNING is professor of Art History and member of the Committee on Cinema and Media at the University of Chicago. He is the author of D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (1991) and numerous articles on early cinema (including ‘the Cinema of Attractions’). He was a founding member of Domitor, the international society for the study of early film. His latest book is The Films of Fritz Lang (BFI Publishing, 2000). SUMIKO HIGASHI is professor emerita at SUNY Brockport and visiting professor at UCLA. She is the author of Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era (1994), and has published numerous essays on film history, film as history, and women in silent film. STEVEN HIGGINS is curator in the Department of Film and Video, the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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LEA JACOBS is professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her latest book, with Ben Brewster, is Theater to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (1997). J.B. KAUFMAN is a film historian and a researcher on the staff of the Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University. He has written extensively on silent film and Disney animation and is co-author, with Russell Merritt, of Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992). CHARLIE KEIL is assistant professor of Cinema Studies in the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto. He has written extensively on early cinema in such journals as Iris, Persistence of Vision, and Film History. His essay on Griffith’s Biographs appeared in Cinema Journal, and a forthcoming book on transitional cinema will incorporate a study of the Biograph films as well. DAVID MAYER is emeritus professor of Drama and research professor at the University of Manchester, England. His books include Harlequin in His Element: English Pantomime, 18061836 (1969) and Playing Out the Empire: Ben Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films (1994). He is author of numerous essays on nineteenth and early twentieth-century popular stage entertainments and links with early film. RUSSELL MERRITT teaches at the University of California at Berkeley and has written, with J.B. Kaufman, an account of Walt Disney’s silent cartoons, Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992). JAN OLSSON is professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Stockholm. His latest book, co-edited with John Fullerton, is Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930 (1999). CYNTHIA ROWELL graduated in 1999 from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. She is director of Acquisitions for Milestone Film & Video. SCOTT SIMMON is author of The Films of D.W. Griffith (1993) and other volumes on American film and film preservation. For the Library of Congress, he has overseen restorations of Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1919) and Lois Weber’s Where Are My Children? (1916). He is producer of The Library of Congress Video Collection and, for the National Film Preservation Foundation, Treasures of American Film Archives, a video set of rare films from seventeen U.S. archives. Currently he is visiting associate professor at the University of California, Davis, and is completing a book on the Western. KRISTIN THOMPSON is an honorary fellow in the Communication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her books include The Classical Hollywood Cinema (1985), co-written with David Bordwell and Janet Staiger, Exporting Entertainment: America in World Film Markets 1907-1934 (1985), and Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (1999). She is at work on a study comparing Ernst Lubitsch’s silent German and American features. YURI TSIVIAN is professor of Film at the University of Chicago. Ph.D. in Film Studies from Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema, Leningrad, 1984. Among his books are Silent Witnesses: Russian Films, 1908-1919 (1989), Istoricheskaja recepcija kino (1991), translated as Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception (1994), and, in collaboration with Yuri Lotman, Dialogues with the Screen (1994). His most recent work is the CD-ROM Immaterial Bodies: Cultural Anatomy of Early Russian Films (1998).

NOTE ON LAYOUT

Program sequence number, production company Filmographic information Plot summary from historical source Plot synopsis from actual viewing Critical analysis

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234 BIOGRAPH

THE ENGLISHMAN AND THE GIRL Filming date: 31 December 1909, 4 January 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 17 February 1910 Release length: approx. 975 feet Copyright date: 21 February 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Mr. Thayer); Kate Bruce (Mrs. Thayer); Charles Craig (Arthur Wilberforce); Mary Pickford (The girl); Gladys Egan (Child); Dorothy West, Ruth Hart, ? (Friends); Francis J. Grandon, Mack Sennett, Anthony O’Sullivan (In store); ? (Delivery man); Mack Sennett, Anthony O’Sullivan, W. Chrystie Miller, Francis J. Grandon, Dell Henderson, Dorothy West, Gertrude Robinson, Linda Arvidson (Members of drama club) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection) AND THE JOKE WAS ON— ? “He laughs best who laughs last,” is the truest maxim ever coined, and Arthur Wilberforce, an Englishman, the hero of this Biograph story, enjoys to the extreme, the full strength of it. At Cedarville, there is an Amateur Dramatic Club, composed of the leading histrionic lights of the town. Like all amateurs they tackle only the heaviest of tragedies and classics, which they performed in their own “inimitable” style. On this occasion they were assembled at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Thayer, rehearsing for an elaborate production of “Pocahontas,” with Dorothy Thayer in the role of the Indian maiden. A letter is received from Cousin Tom introducing Arthur Wilberforce, who has lately arrived from England, and who is imbued with the idea that Indians are to be seen on the streets of the big cities in their primitive state, which he assumes is wild, ferocious, and shooting up things. This intelligence Dorothy imparts to the members of the Club, who decide to give him a right royal welcome on his arrival. Arthur soon arrives and Dorothy takes him to the vilage store, ostensibly to get mail, but really to show him off. He is a peculiar looking genius of cockney type, with a form of a lamp-post, and as graceful as a duck; in fact, he looked like the “before” image of a Flesh Food advertisement. Over six feet tall, he is forced, when coming to a sitting posture, to make four folds instead of three of an ordinary human being. Well, the young folks anticipate having the time of their life, and making up in the Indian costumes they have hired for the play, they pounce down on him. Taken unawares, they bind his hands and pretend to be about to despatch [sic] him, when Dorothy rushes in as the Indian maiden and saves him. Laying aside the weapons, the make-believe braves untie Arthur’s hands. No sooner is he free than he grabs up an ax and gun, and in an instant the tables are turned. Through the house he chases them, upturning everybody and everything in the way. Hotfoot they all rush to the village store to hide behind boxes, barrels, and counters. Arthur stalks in, the hero of the day, and after viewing the place, which looks as if a cyclone had struck it, departs with a triumphant air. Having driven the enemy to cover, he struts back to the Thayer domicile, where, in the

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garb of an Indian maiden, he meets Dorothy, who stands regarding him admiringly, as if to say, “Ain’t he grand!” Arthur has by this time discerned the hoax, and fully appreciates the joke, for he has not only the last and best laugh, but realizes that little Dorothy cares for him as he does for her. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], February 17, 1910

In the course of rehearsals for their production of Pocahontas, Dorothy and her friends, all members of the Cedarville Amateur Dramatic Club, learn of the imminent arrival of Arthur, a cousin of Dorothy’s, right from the Old World. When they find out about Arthur’s preconceptions of Indians as savages roaming in American cities, they decide to play a trick on him and, dressed in their stage costumes, simulate an Indian attack. This proves a great mistake on their part, since Arthur takes it so seriously that he soon grabs up ax and gun to face his assailants, who quickly have to beat a retreat. All is well that ends well though, as all is quickly back to order, all the more since Arthur and Dorothy end up in each other’s arms.

Shot at the turn of the decade, the film begins with a shot which, from a scenaristic perspective, will prove a clever anticipation on the action to come. We are shown a rehearsal by the members of the Amateur Dramatic Club of a play where all actors are dressed as Indians. This later spares the director (often the deus ex machina at the time) the trouble of having costumes appear out of nowhere and at the most awkward moment, as in many scripts of the period. Indeed, the play being rehearsed in the first shot has strictly nothing to do with the action of the film, except that of costume provider. At the level of narrative economy, the shot is therefore extremely “profitable”, even though it does not propel the action. It saves a few explanatory intertitles, about which we don’t know anything anyway since they are missing from the working print of the film, as is the insert of the letter announcing the English cousin’s visit. The film nevertheless remains understandable without the intertitles, which cannot be said of much of the production of the period and shows how simple its plot is. Even with intertitles, the film would probably have remained more concise than the Bulletin. It is difficult to imagine indeed how any inserted texts could have been deep and detailed enough to match the amount of information provided by the Bulletin, which explains at great length, and in internal focus with the main character, that the latter, coming from England, believes that in the United States, Indians “are to be seen on the streets of the big cities in their primitive state, which he assumes is wild, ferocious, and shooting up things”. It is thus a film whose subject matter is very simple, not to say simplistic. It does not require any structure other than linear, yet Griffith finds a way to come up with surprising variations on the theme. He seizes on the occasion to practice his editing scales where he could have confined the camera to a passive role. Thus, when he intercuts two adjacent spaces (kitchen and dining room), as it happens several times during the film, he does so in a more complex modulation than strict necessity called for. It is a little as though, from then on, the structure of parallel editing between two adjacent spaces always already existed for him in the virtual repertoire of forms, and that this strict necessity was no longer law. In the end, however, the variations on a theme he devotes himself to lead Griffith to play the virtuoso. One such instance occurs, for example, in the sequence of the chase of the Englishman by the “Indians” when the camera has to follow actorial agents in their movements as they alternatingly and systematically walk back and forth between the dining room 2

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and the kitchen. While it had been led on, almost directed by events until then, the camera suddenly takes off and dizzily draws out the alternation between the two adjacent spaces, on its own narratorial initiative and without any actorial justification. An example of this is the shot that shows the black man in the kitchen, getting over the commotion he has just been through, without the least bit of actorial justification for the camera to move from the dining room to the kitchen. The movement of characters from one space to the other, thanks to relatively smooth cuts, also displays a remarkable narrative fluidity. Speaking of virtuosity, the film actually presents, a few shots before, the outline of a cross-cutting between two spaces (non-adjacent ones this time), which remarkably fulfills an utilitarian function. The camera initially follows Dorothy, who is moving from the dining room (space A) to the kitchen (space B) in order to put on her costume (which she does not immediately do, since she exits the room with the clothes in the opposite direction to the dining room, as if to go change off-screen in another room, which we will not see). The camera then takes off once again to show us what is happening, in the meantime, in the general store (space C): Dorothy’s colleagues finish putting on their costumes (an action they had started off-screen before the shot came up). It should be noticed yet again that the cutaway is often the favorite option when it comes to skipping what is seen as wasted time in a time-consuming action. Besides, the action in question arguably falls into the category of what cannot be shown on the screen, for questions of morals: in this case, a woman undressing. Furthermore, at the level of the script, this short film proves to be quite subtle, considering the context in which the principal and secondary actions take place. Interestingly then, Griffith seems to get into the habit of lightening the action in certain scenes in order to let it “breathe” and give it more depth. This was soon to become one of the precepts of the institution. An instance of this may be found in the first moments of the long shot that shows us the general store for the first time: we are first presented with what is happening in the store (that is, nothing in particular) before the advent of the main action (Dorothy and Arthur’s arrival). The same stratagem is repeated several shots later, when we return to the general store. André Gaudreault

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235 BIOGRAPH

HIS LAST BURGLARY Filming date: 7 January 1910 Location: New York Studio/Coytesville, New Jersey Release date: 21 February 1910 Release length: approx. 995 feet Copyright date: 26 February 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (William Standish); Dorothy Bernard (His wife); Dorothy West (Maid); James Kirkwood (The Burglar); Kate Bruce (His wife); George O. Nicholls (Minister); Stephanie Longfellow (His housekeeper); Francis J. Grandon (Doctor) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative HOW A BABY’S PRESENCE REGENERATES HIM The Scottish poet, Robert Pollock, called children “Living jewels dropped unstained from heaven”, and this esteem is backed by Scriptural evidence, for the Saviour came to us as a child. He ever specialized the child. He taught that a little child should lead them. And so it is; the tiny hand of the baby has ever been the propelling force of the universe. Never was this more vividly portrayed than in this Biograph subject. William Standish, a young inventor, like many of his ilk, has spent time, money, and energy in perfecting a machine in which the engineers to whom he had submitted it are slow in deciding upon, during which time he and his little family of a wife and infant child are in poverty’s clutches. Starvation stares them in the face. The baby gives them the most concern, and after a desperate mental struggle, they decide to leave it clandestinely in the minister’s care. To this end they go to the minister’s house at night, and being the dead of winter haven’t the heart to leave it on the stoop, so Standish climbs through the window and leaves it in the sitting-room on an arm-chair. In the neighborhood there lives a professional burglar, whose wife we see bending over an empty cradle mourning the loss of her child. The burglar, despite his calling, is moved by his wife’s sorrow, and leaves the house dejectedly on an expedition. The open window in the minister’s home looks rather inviting, Standish in his hurried exit neglected to close it, so he enters and begins to explore the place. The cooing of the baby startles him, and after reading the note, Standish had left, an idea strikes him. Why not take the baby. Truly, it is a new kind of loot, but it may mean happiness for his wife. This thought decides him, so he rushes to his home with the child. The bereft wife is raised to the very zenith of joy at its appearance, and the burglar himself becomes regenerated, declaring he is through with his past life and will now live worthy of the blessing God has bestowed. To this end he goes to seek honest employment. Meanwhile, there has been a change in the conditions of the parents of the baby. On their return they find a letter acepting the invention upon a $5,000 yearly royalty, enclosing a check in payment of the first quarter. Thus has fortune smiled and they hurry back to reclaim their child. Of course, the minister doesn’t know anything about it. The whole affair is plunged into absolute mystery, and the poor mother, when taken to the comfortable

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home their new fortune provides, is seriously ill from her mine-wrecking [sic] grief. Now, it happens that the burglar has become the coachman of the doctor who is attending her, and so learns the identity of the foundling. His heart touched by the suffering of the poor woman, he hastens home, dons his burglar attire, steals into the woman’s room, and lays the baby beside her while she sleeps. This act not only restores the suffering woman, but it has softened his hitherto hard and indifferent heart, making for all time, a real man of him. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], February 21, 1910

Mired in poverty and no longer able to endure the hardships that this situation brings upon their baby, a young man chooses, with his wife, to give up the child by abandoning it in a rich household. A burglar who himself has just lost a child, breaks into this house and decides to ease the mourning of his wife by stealing the abandoned baby. Soon after, the young man and his wife receive word of their sudden fortune. They then try to find their child, but their search is in vain. Faced with the desperation of his wife, the young man calls a doctor whose coachman is none other than the burglar, since reformed. When the burglar learns the cause of the young woman’s misery, he realizes the gravity of his crime and convinces his wife that they must return the baby to its parents.

This film is an example par excellence of a montage that takes on a parallel construction, a parallel of two actions, of course, but more importantly, of two contrasting situations. Even if its title indicates the film’s subject as singular (a burglar who is about to commit his last offense), the film is equally concerned, if not more, with the destiny of an honest man who – forced into misery and no longer able to endure the hardships that this situation creates for his baby – choses, with his wife, to give up the child. The parallel construction that continues throughout the film begins with a slight alternation between two introductory situations that complement each other: on one side, an honest but poor couple with a child who is dying of hunger, and on the other, a dishonest couple also without a cent but, above all, mourning the loss of their child. One notices from the outset the austerity of the very first scene. It is, of course, a scene of “POVERTY”, as the first intertitle indicates above all else (constituting as such the very first visual element that opens the film), in which the decor is likely, almost by definition, to be relatively bare. But the austerity of the action itself is also worthy of mention. At the left of the frame, a mother, looking disillusioned and resigned, holds her child in her arms, like a Pietà, while the father, at the right of the screen, busies himself slowly at feeding the wood stove. Here we are faraway from the frenzy provided by the chase film. The composition of the image has the same tone: balanced, steady and restful. The only “development” (here this word is admittedly exaggerated) in the “action” in this shot comes at the very end when the mother holds out an empty bottle to the father, as if to tell him to go find some milk. This is what the man does, but slowly, according to the reflective rhythm that this scene has thus far established. Griffith then makes use of the time necessary for the man to go on his search to allow the spectator to explore another dramatic situation, that could be happening next door or a hundred miles away (the Bulletin describes the location as “in the neighborhood”), and of whose temporal status we are equally unsure, in view of the first situation. The intertitle reads, “THE EMPTY CRADLE – THE BURGLAR’S WIFE MOURNS THE LOSS OF HER BABY.” We are unsure, considering the irruption of this intertitle, which path the film will take. Will the baby that we have just seen be, one shot later, dead and buried, and will this woman who 5

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holds the baby in her arms be the burglar’s wife? Such prognostications are soon dismissed by the visual information divulged in the shot: it involves another woman and another man, in another house. And the baby for which the parents mourn is, in fact, another baby. Here again, the austerity of the shot is rather striking. The decor is very austere, of course (here the couple is poor as well, even if they steal), but the action is also kept to a minimum, as if the emptiness of the cradle projected itself onto the entire scene. The third shot, which brings us back to the initial space, shows the father returning empty-handed and the baby who must go without milk. The seven shots that follow will be devoted to the young parents, who decide to give up their child and abandon it to a better fate in a rich household. The burglar will not return to the screen until the continuation of this episode, when his turn comes to break into the pastor’s house to commit a burglary, which will soon turn into a kidnapping. It is evident that the interposition of the second shot, which shows the scene sketched out in the apartment of the burglar and his wife, and which happens to be the only heterogeneous element (along with the explanatory intertitle that accompanies it) in the long sequence devoted to the misfortunes of a young, penniless family, is an utilitarian gesture in many ways. It functions first as a sort of cut-away, allowing other things to be seen while the father is busy out-of-field, out-of-frame and out-of-scene getting the milk. It is also a structure that allows the two contrasting situations to be put in perspective: on one side, in space A, a family in which the presence of the child will soon be felt – for want of means to feed the little being – as one too many, and on the other side, a family where there is, comparatively, one too few: this baby whose death is unexplained, but from which the mother is having difficulty recovering. The spectator does not know at this point that this “extra” baby in space A will soon fill the empty cradle in space B. This second shot also has the function of injecting some humanity and compassion into a family whose father practices a contemptible “profession”, but nevertheless knows the great strain of losing a loved one. This will be the justification and the explanation, a posteriori, as well as the reversal of situation that will bring the burglar and his wife to prove their humanity, at the end of the story, by returning the child to its parents, and to its mother who is about to succumb to insanity. Furthermore, it is interesting to see how the Bulletin’s synopsis disengages itself from the parallel construction. In fact, there really is no parallel! At the very least, it does not appear to have the same rhythm as the film’s narrative. The Bulletin tells the entire story of the honest couple, without any mention of the burglar and his wife, up until the point when, within the diegesis, the two stories intersect: the parlor of the rich pastor where the child is abandoned by its father and from where it will soon be snatched by the burglar. The narrator of the story’s synopsis is content, like a good verbal storyteller, to resort to a simple juxtaposition of the two situations, as two hermetic units. The rest of the film weaves a strict parallelism: three to four shots of the young couple who, in the face of sudden fortune, try to find their child; one shot of the burglar now reformed; two shots of the first couple; another shot of the burglar having become a coachman; and so forth. André Gaudreault

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236 BIOGRAPH

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT Filming date: 5/8 January 1910 Location: Coytesville, New Jersey/Fort Lee, New Jersey/New York Studio Release date: 28 February 1910 Release length: approx. 981 feet Copyright date: 3 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: James Kirkwood (Jim); Dorothy Bernard (Ruth); Arthur Johnson (John); Edith Haldeman (Child); Anthony O’Sullivan (Woodsman) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A STORY OF A WOODSMAN’S LOVE AND WEAKNESS The despicable habit of drink has directly wrecked more lives than any other weakness that flesh is heir to, and so fascinating are its effects that it is almost impossible to resist when once acquired. In this Biograph subject is shown a man who not only surrendered the prosperity and happiness of his future for it, but indirectly cut short that future. Jim and John, two woodsmen, are rivals for the hand of Ruth. John is an honest unobtrusive fellew [sic], and lets Jim lead in their suit, hence, Jim and Ruth are betrothed. Ruth truly loves Jim, having assumed that John’s little attentions were merely expressions of friendship, so John retires. After the betrothal Jim and Ruth are more in each other’s company and consequently she learns his true character. She is amazed to find that he is a slave to drink, and realizing her hopes of future happiness with him vain, she dismisses him. She is crushed beyond measure, but is thankful she escaped before too late. John learning of the broken engagement, renews his suit and is accepted by Ruth, for she now sees the difference in the two natures. They are married, and we find them five years later happy in their cabin, a child having blessed their union. Off John goes for his work in the woods felling timber. Jim has meanwhile become in a measure a renegade. He whiles his time hunting, looting and in fact, anything that will bring him drink to satisfy his insatiable thirst. He does not know what became of Ruth, nor does he seem to care. It is lunch time in the lumber camp when Jim staggers along to come face to face with John. John good naturedly offers Jim a share of his lunch. This Jim refuses, and, furthermore, picks a quarrel with John, for the meeting has revived the old enmity. Friends interpose, but a challenge to fight later is passed, the meeting to take place the same evening. Jim, appreciating his talent as a sure shot, doesn’t worry, but goes along with his friend to see where he can raise money for drink. They come to a cabin and break in, not knowing nor caring who the occupant is. You may imagine his amazement at finding himself in the presence of Ruth, whom he learns for the first time is married to John. He leaves the cabin and at first is elated at the extent of the revenge he is about to wreak, but later he realizes what disaster it would work for poor Ruth and her little one. These thoughts arouse his better self, so long benumbed by drink, and he resolves to refuse to fight, for his love for her is stronger than his thirst for revenge. But no. That would not do. To refuse to fight would mean

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to be driven from the woods as a coward. He must make a sacrifice. Taking the shells from his gun he extracts the bullets, so he meets John on the field of honor with a weapon charged with blank cartridges. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], February 28, 1910

Noticing that Jim is partial to drink, Ruth breaks off her engagement to him and turns to John, who until then had kept his love for her to himself. They get married and move to a cabin in the forest where John works as a woodcutter. In the meantime, Jim, who has become a hoodlum and is ignorant that his rival has married his former fiancée, runs into John at the lumber camp and challenges him to a duel for the same evening. He then goes to look for money to buy himself alcohol, and breaks into John and Ruth’s cabin. Surprised to find Ruth there, he realizes that she has married John and has given him a child. On leaving the cabin, he looks to the vengeance the duel is going to allow him to wreak. Yet, he eventually thinks better and, ashamed at his own idea and out of the love he still feels for Ruth, decides to spare her husband’s life. He shows up at the duel with a gun loaded with blanks.

This film constitutes a nice illustration of the disparity between written and filmic narrative. Watching the movie after reading its description in the Bulletin, one cannot but be surprised at the difference between the two media. In the written narrative, it appears possible to specify everything, even invisible elements, which the narrator does not fail to do: the reader is not spared any detail, notably with regard to the characters’ intentions or secret thoughts. No such thing in the filmic narrative, the viewing of which does not yield any hint about the fact that “Ruth truly loves Jim” or that she “assumed that John’s little attentions were merely expressions of friendship”. It is just as impossible to figure out that, after rejecting Jim, Ruth “is crushed beyond measure, but is thankful that she escaped before too late”. The film’s structure suffers from the absence of such information, and its first part develops through a series of relatively disconcerting leaps. The initial “sequence” of the film truly sets the scene, but is so crammed with events (an engagement gets sealed, is then broken off, a new one is concluded with another suitor, and so forth) that it could itself have constituted the material for a whole movie. Here, however, it simply serves the purpose of organizing the different elements of the impending drama and is treated too elliptically (in a telegraphic style that was, in fact, banished by the Biograph Company shortly thereafter) to make any understanding of the characters’ deeper motives possible. At any rate, it is almost certain that in this case the constraint of the one-reeler was experienced as a real limitation on the development of the narrative. Indeed, the film’s omission of certain key elements of the plot goes very far. In the second part, it is, in fact, impossible to understand that the two rivals agree to meet in the evening to settle their score, so much so that the issue of missing intertitles in the viewed print comes up as a relevant one. At the level of editing, the film presents very interesting aspects. It should first be noticed that it involves only a few superficial attempts at parallel montage, as efforts in editing were concentrated on other areas. Thus the first (modest) instance takes place when John arrives at the lumber camp and receives his assignment for the day. The character occupies space A, located somewhere on the camp grounds. In the next shot, Jim and his pal are in space B, somewhere in the forest, presumably not very far from the camp. Then, in the next shot, we go back to the space of the lumber camp (which is different from the first one) where 8

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John is seen taking his lunchbreak. This is where the two actorial groups converge and Jim and his mate enter the space occupied by John, with no shot change. Another more substantial instance of parallelism takes place in the alternation between the two contiguous places of the interior of the cabin and its surroundings, especially at the moment when Jim and his cohort commit their crime. In this scene, some passages from the outside to the inside (and vice versa) are of a strictly narratorial order, while others are actorially justified, as a character goes through the door. It should indeed be pointed out that in order to represent certain movements through the door, there seems to have been quite a lot of work at the editing stage on the communication between shots – all the more since in both sets the door is shown frontally in the background. This always poses a certain challenge for the cuts, which prove very fluid here. There is a moment in the film when the ubiquity of the camera shows the subtlety which it enables the filmic narrative to attain. When Jim leaves the cabin, he seems elated by the thought that on the same evening he is going to be able to take his revenge. An intertitle then appears: “JIM’S LOVE FOR RUTH STRONGER THAN HIS THIRST FOR REVENGE. THE SACRIFICE”, soon followed by a shot showing Jim as he joins his mate (in a space we will refer to as A) and explains to him, or so we assume (thanks to the Bulletin!), that he has given up the idea of killing John. His accomplice disapproves of his decision and leaves the frame. Jim then proceeds to fiddle with his gun, and we understand that he removes a bullet from it, but nothing indicates his actual intention to us (except for the fact that he is ready to sacrifice himself, but how?), and the intertitles, at least until then, do not disclose any information on the matter. (Help! Is there a lecturer in the theatre, please?) The next shot shows John in space B, as he is back to the cabin and, standing outside, peeks through the window to make sure everything is fine. Following the character’s gaze, the camera then moves to space C (the interior of the cabin), where everything is quiet and John’s wife is cradling their child. We then return to B: John, reassured about his beloved ones, leaves the frame to go to the site of the duel. Another intertitle then appears (“NOT TO FIGHT WOULD MEAN TO BE DRIVEN FROM THE WOODS AS A COWARD”), followed by a shot where John is shown arriving in space A, in which he joins Jim for the fatal fight. We have thus come full circle through a steadfastly symmetrical editing pattern (A-B-C-B-A) which flies in the face of linearity, since Jim removes the bullets from his gun before the intertitle explaining (at least in part) the meaning of his gesture. It should also be noticed that the shot in which Jim starts fiddling with a bullet from his gun seems to more or less tie in with the shot that brings us back to A, right before John enters the frame (it is nevertheless not possible to know whether he fiddles with just one of his bullets or each of them – this latter hypothesis is the one privileged by the Bulletin). From the perspective of the shooting, it is probably one and the same shot, which was cut into two segments in order to insert in the interval thus creating the three shots of the gaze through the window (B-C-B) and the intertitle. André Gaudreault

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237 BIOGRAPH

TAMING A HUSBAND Filming date: 10/12 January 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 24 February 1910 Release length: approx. 986 feet Copyright date: 26 February 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Elinor Kershaw (Lady Margaret); Arthur Johnson (Her husband); Dorothy Bernard (Lady Clarissa); ? (Her fencing partner); Mack Sennett, Francis J. Grandon (Soldiers); Anthony O’Sullivan, Guy Hedlund (Servants); Ruth Hart, Dell Henderson (Nobles) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative MAN’S INDIFFERENCE CURED BY WOMAN’S WIT The poor wife in this Biograph story felt the truth of those lines of Longfellow – “Why have I been born with all these warm affections, these ardent longings, if they lead only to sorrow and disappointment? How empty, how desolate the world seems about me! Why has heaven given me these affections, only to fall and fade?” Lady Margaret loved her husband with youthful impetuosity and while he deeply loved her, still so engrossed was he with social and business matters that he was often guilty of seeming indifference. She believed that his love has grown cold, and in desperation confides her fears to her best friend, Lady Clarissa, inviting her to visit and advise her. Lady Clarissa arrives and at once hits upon a plan. She dresses herself in male attire, and assumes the role of a lover, sure that will tame Margaret’s husband and bring him to his sense of duty. Clarissa as a young gallant makes quite an impression upon the male companions of the husband and finds her position at times rather embarrassing, especially when invited to join their drinking and smoking fests. Hence she realizes she will put her scheme into operation at once. To this end she blatantly flirts with Lady Margaret. Several times they are apparently surprised together by the husband. But as it is during the entertainment of a house full of guests, he has small chance of resenting the insult. However, he finally catches the young unknown on his knees before his wife. This is too much and a challenge is the outcome. Seconds are selected and the time set. The seconds for the masquerading Clarissa trys [sic] to persuade their “man” from meeting his adversary, stating that the other man has such an advantage over him, he being such a big fellow. This has no effect as Clarissa exclaims, “I will fight him, sir, though he were as tall as a tower.” The seconds leave despairing for their friend, as it seems suicidal. They return again with another plea and find their “man” in the arms of the wife. This enrages them, and having witnessed his perfidy, refuse to act, reasoning that the field of honor is too good; he should be slain on the spot. They convey to the husband their impression and the cause of it, which throws him into a frenzy of fury. Into the house they go with swords in hand bent on instantly despatching [sic] the vile wretch. Lady Clarissa sees them coming and locks the door, which she realizes will prove but a slight obstruction to the raging husband, so she, frightened, dons her

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conventional habiliments, and when the door yields to their battering, in rushes the husband to learn the truth of the situation and appreciate the guilt of his own negligence. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], February 24, 1910

Neglected by a husband too engrossed by his activities and social obligations, a woman convinces a girlfriend to dress as a man and make love to her openly in the hope to arouse her spouse’s jealousy. Dressed as a male, her friend causes a commotion among the couple’s acquaintances. When the husband eventually catches the newcomer making overtures to his wife, he challenges his rival to a duel.

Here is a story whose director probably felt was in need of a solid contextualization. The film opens with an intertitle (“LADY MARGARET BELIEVES HER HUSBAND’S LOVE IS GROWING COLD”) followed by a first shot which strictly illustrates the situation in question (and therefore enables the spectator to judge the husband’s indifference). This initial shot is singular in two respects. First of all, it runs beyond a minute and is, in fact, quite a long and relatively static shot in which actions succeed one another in a fairly contrived manner (the husband’s indifference is strongly emphasized, as he is first absorbed in reading, then welcomes a group of visiting friends). Its second noticeable quality is that it is partly conceptual. It appears as though the narrator had meant to endow the actions it shows with an iterative, exemplary and emblematic value. As though, to a certain extent, the meaning of these actions was not: “Here is how things happened, on such or such a day”, but rather: “Here is how things would usually happen at Lady Margaret’s.” Perhaps for fear that spectators may still not have grasped the idea, the second shot lays it on thick, again running for over a minute, after a projective intertitle whose text (“SHE CONFIDES HER FEARS TO HER BEST FRIEND, LADY CLARISSA”) describes an action that will not occur until the end of the shot. At the beginning of the shot, the husband is so absorbed in the reading of a letter that he comes close to nudging his wife in the face, as she desperately watches out for each of his movements, trying to attract his attention. Taming a Husband is, thus, a film whose beginning is relatively static but whose rhythm later changes. But let’s talk now about intertitles, and their usefulness when it comes to expressing subtle meanings which are difficult to put on film. The first intertitle explains to the spectator that Lady Margaret believes that her husband is indifferent to her. It allows the narrator, who has access to the characters’ thoughts, to assume a position of internal focus and share the characters’ feelings with the spectator. Yet the focus of the Bulletin’s printed narrative goes even beyond this, and adds a nuance which is absent from filmic narration, since the scriptual “narrator” knows (and informs the reader about it) that, even though appearances are against him, the husband has nevertheless loved his wife all along (“and while he deeply loved her, still so engrossed was he with social and business matters that he was often guilty of seeming indifference”). All the same, intertitles could have passed on the same information. In fact, intertitles continue to stand at the periphery of shots in 1910. They are not granted the same privilege as inserts, namely to be edited within shots. Let us take shots 2, 3, and 4, which are particularly interesting in that they precisely allow us to see the advantage inserts have over intertitles in the editing line. Shot 3 is indeed an insert of the letter which Lady Margaret is seen writing in shot 2, and which she seals in shot 4 (shots 2 and 4 almost form a continuum and show the same framing – they probably are sections of one and the same shot, which was cut so that an insert could be included). The same pattern recurs in the following scene: the insert of the letter reappears in the middle of the shot in 11

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which Lady Clarissa receives it and reads it, with a cut occurring at the very moment when she reads it. In both cases, then, the appearance of the letter in close shot occurs at a crucial moment of the action (that is, the moment when Lady Margaret has finished writing it, in the first case, and at the very moment when Lady Clarissa reads it). The unique privilege which allows for the inserts to be synchronous with the action is nevertheless denied to that other type of insert which the intertitle is. This is a particularly sensitive matter when the intertitle involves dialogue. Indeed, intertitles presenting dialogues or simple lines are always placed at some distance from the moment when these are supposed to be spoken in the course of the diegesis. They are generally to be found before the action itself, always edited between two distinct shots – and not, as is the case here, in a single shooting unit which was cut during the editing. There is an example of such a case later in the film, when Lady Clarissa says: “I WILL FIGHT, SIR, THOUGH HE WERE TALL AS THE TOWER.” Since the intertitle had to be placed, out of necessity, between two shots, it is out of phase with the action, which it precedes by a few seconds. How can such a disparity between inserts and intertitles be accounted for? It is as though the rule were that visual elements could interrupt the chain of images, but sound (in the form of written lines of dialogue) could not. Admittedly, in the case of inserts of letters, we are faced with a visual element emerging in a chain which is itself of a visual nature (the expressive material then remains homogeneous), whereas the insertion in the editing line of an intertitle with dialogues involves the irruption of a heterogeneous element, one which is no longer visual, but belongs instead to the domain of sound. It is as though the spectator had the possibility to share synchronously with the characters their cognitive experience as long as this experience comes through vision, but was denied this possibility when cognition is related to sound. Cinema had been heading for that direction for quite some time, at any rate, with the numerous films relying on subjective shots in the early years of the century (and their characters looking at different scenes thanks to optical devices or devices involving the gaze – keyholes, telescopes, magnifying glass – shown in the midst of the main action, as is the case with inserts). Taming a Husband also presents other characteristics that are particularly relevant in relation to editing. As the action tightens up, the film demands quite an exceptional connectedness between shots. In the case where represented spaces are relatively contiguous to each other in the diegetic world of the film, this contiguity is conveyed in the very editing of the images, which produces link shots that allow to follow characters in continuity as they pass from one shot to the next (and from one room to the other). Such is not the case, however, for the moment when Clarissa receives the letter sent to her, since the spaces in question are not connected on a diegetic level. There is, on the one hand, the space of the room in the castle, in which Lady Margaret settles down to write the letter and, on the other hand, the fencing room in which Lady Clarissa practices until a servant hands her the letter. In this case, therefore, there is no diegetic contiguity: a distance separates these spaces, and in keeping with the new “syntax” which is being set up, it is necessary, at the level of editing, that distance also be inscribed in the relationship between the shots. In fact, this is exactly what happens: shot 4, in which Lady Margaret seals the letter, ends with the servant in charge of its delivery to her friend, leaving the room. In the next shot (shot 5), though, the servant (probably Lady Clarissa’s) does not arrive with the missive right away; before that happens, Lady Clarissa has the time to prepare for her fencing practice and actually begin it. A direct cut from the letter sent to the letter received would have been out of place here, as it would have misrepresented the distance between the two spaces. The narrator chose instead to expand narrative time, and the few moments when Lady Clarissa practices her activity keep a loose account (but keep an account still) of the time needed for the letter to reach its addressee. 12

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To this effect, the narrator is, to say the least, very single-minded. The sixth shot, which should in principle (I say “in principle”, since in my viewing copy there clearly is an interposed shot obviously extraneous to the action in progress – so as to avoid the husband’s ire, Lady Clarissa tries to hide under a piece of furniture – and which, in all likelihood, belonged to the final segment of the film) be joined to the one where Lady Clarissa, on receipt of the letter, decides to leave immediately (with the servant preceding her on the way) and shows her arriving at her friend’s, once again preceded by a servant. The role of the servants is unobtrusive and secondary, as they stand in the background, but it is nevertheless a coherent and continuous one, which supports the purposes of the editing. It is thanks to this type of minute details that narrative finesse (achieved through script work and mise en scène) was soon to be reckoned with. The insertion of intertitles appears to fulfill, on occasion, a somewhat utilitarian function. This is especially true in the one which reads as follows : “THE PLAN – LADY CLARISSA ASSUMES THE ROLE OF A LOVER.” Indeed, this intertitle could easily have been placed one or two cuts before the moment when it appears in the film, but its apparition is delayed so that it may take on the role which would soon be reserved to the institutional cut-away. Its occurrence at this point in the film enables it to elide, with no abrupt cut, the time spent by the character to change clothes. Another noticeable aspect here is the empty frame before and after the intertitle: characters take the time to exit (in order to change clothes) and, when we come back to the same frame after the intertitle, the frame still is empty (not for long, but empty nevertheless). Continuity is truly made of many little things. The difference with the previous years is quite striking. In 1910, editing is being refined and, in the case of certain films at least, every cut and every joint are thought out. Another interesting aspect of editing is the circulation of the two women between the only two rooms we see of the castle, and whose contiguity had only been suggested until then. Here, contiguity is expressed in the form of continuity editing which I doubt, following on the remark I just made about the finesse of editing in the film, could have been accidental. Frames communicate in a remarkably fluid manner. A paradigm seems in the course of being set up. The only hint at the obsessional figure of parallel editing which the film presents happens at the moment when the duel is about to take place: the interplay between the two contiguous spaces inside the castle and a third place, outside the castle, where Lady Margaret’s husband is waiting for the preparations for the duel to be completed, undergoes a stricter parallelism toward the end. At that point the husband, whose fury reaches a climax, wants to do battle without waiting for the duel, as the “man” who courts his wife does so too insistently for his liking. The three spaces are then made to alternate in a more systematic way, especially the two contiguous rooms. These are separated, in another obsessional Griffithian figure, by a door which of course is eventually locked in order to put off the crucial moment (in fact, the displaced shot mentioned above belongs to this syntagm). On the whole, the action of the film consists of a series of displacements (of the characters at the profilmic level, of the camera at the filmic level) between two contiguous rooms. The most interesting “sequence” at the level of editing is located toward the end, after the jealous husband has challenged the “lover” to a duel, at the moment when his seconds find out about “the young man’s perfidy”. There is a first actorial movement from room A to room B: the camera follows the seconds and the disguised woman as they move from one room to the other. Thus there is communication between shots, and it is this communication which justifies the cut. Once the seconds have left room B (and returned to room A), the camera gains some autonomy, since it returns to A only after a few seconds, for strictly narratorial reasons. Subsequently, the camera moves one more time from room A to room B, but with13

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out any actorial movement occurring between the two rooms. What we have here, therefore, is narratorially motivated, although it remains justified actorially through a diegetic act of listening. The seconds think they can hear the two “lovers” smooching on the other side of the door that separates A and B, and the camera follows the direction of the listening. Then, independently from the actors’ movement, the camera goes back to A, as the seconds decide to open the door and get in room B again. The camera follows them there with a change of shot based on actorial communication between the two sites of action, then follows them once again when they return to A to leave the castle in order to inform the deceived husband. After an intertitle, the seconds enter the space occupied by the husband (C) and report to him. Gaining a definitive autonomy in this systematic alternation, the camera brings us back, on its own narratorial initiative, to space B where the “lover” is busy locking the door separating A from B, then returns to C, still on narratorial motives (the husband and his group leave the frame and try to reach the lover in B), to finally revert to an actorial justification as the camera shows them arriving in A. An A-B-A-B series of shots ensues, as (following a typical Griffithian narrative tradition) the two acting ensembles occupy disjointed (although contiguous) spaces. The narrative project then amounts to the attempt, on the part of either one of these groups, to take hold of the space occupied by the other acting group in order to carry out its threat. Which, in fact, will not be necessary here, since Lady Clarissa’s trick will be revealed before it is too late. André Gaudreault

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238 BIOGRAPH

THE NEWLYWEDS Filming date: 14/26 January 1910 Location: New York Studio/Los Angeles, California Release date: 3 March 1910 Release length: approx. 981 feet Copyright date: 7 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: Arthur Marvin, G.W. Bitzer Cast: Arthur Johnson (Dick Harcourt); Mary Pickford (Alice Vance); Florence Barker (Dora Dean); Charles H. West (Harry); Frank Powell, Henry B. Walthall, Dell Henderson (Friends); Kate Bruce (Maid); George O. Nicholls, ? (Parents); Alfred Paget, W. Chrystie Miller, Mack Sennett, Dorothy West, Anthony O’Sullivan, Guy Hedlund, Dell Henderson, Frank Evans, Gertrude Robinson, Charles Craig, Ruth Hart (On train); William A. Quirk, Francis J. Grandon, ? (Conductors); Alfred Paget, Jack Pickford, Frank Opperman, Henry B. Walthall, Frank Powell, Robert Harron (At station reception); Gladys Egan (Child on street) REISSUE TITLE: Little Grains of Rice (1916) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (1916 reissue); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative (incomplete) Two of the most delectible toys of Cupid are the womanhater and the manhater, and the antimatrimonial clubs are to him roaring farces. He may play with you as a fisherman plays with trout, but you are hooked eventually. Dick Harcourt was betrothed to little Alice Vance, and it looked as if the villagers would soon hear the tintinnabulation of wedding bells reverbrating through the flower-clothed vales of Southern California. The world is bright for Dick, the flowers take on brighter hue, the birds sing sweeter and mental sunshine possesses him, when suddenly he is seized with an omnious convulsion. He asks himself, “Can this be indigestion?” No. Little does he know that it is a premonition of a prank of Cupid, for down the lane we see approaching, Alice. To our question, “Alice, where ar’t thou going, pretty maid?” “To give Dick the mit, sir,” she said. This she does, hurling poor Dick from the seventh heaven of delight into the depths of despair by giving back the engagement ring. In the glorious country of oranges he has picked a lemon. At that moment he becomes a woman-hater, and in resentment joins the anti-marriage club. Meanwhile a similar tragedy is enacted at the home of Dora Dean, who is cruelly jilted by her sweetheart, Harry. Here, of course, we have the man-hater. They are unknown to each other and by strange coincidence determine upon a little trip to induce forgetfulness. This has not the desired effect, and a homecoming is resolved upon. Aha! Cupid is still busy – that’s the trouble, and by fortuity the bruisedhearted couple board the same train. Dora, with her extreme loathing for men, refuses to share a seat with anyone. Dick is seen absentmindedly sauntering to the station and runs against a child laden with grocery parcels, spilling a bag of rice over the sidewalk. The child in anger throws a handful of rice at Dick, grains of which repose on his hatbrim and shoulders.

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After paying the damage, he continues on to the railroad station entering the coach wherein is seated disgruntled Dora. Her’s [sic] is the only seat with but one occupant and although she has refused to share it with others, a handsome fellow like Dick has some weight. Another laugh for Cupid. Shortly after the train stops one of the passengers discovers the grains of rice on Dick’s hatbrim. A bride and groom – well! Congratulations are in order. Denials useless. On the train there happens to be a member of the anti-marriage club, who telegraphs ahead the news that Dick is a traitor, requesting the club members to be at the station to give him a reception. Oh, such a reception. Headed by a rube band, the members carry signs reading, “Another Good Man Gone Wrong,” “Marriage is a Good Thing, Nit!” etc. A carriage, to which is hitched a razor-back mule, is waiting. Into the carriage is forced Dora, and on the rail-back of the mule is placed Dick. Through the town they parade towards Dora’s home. Two things may be imagined – the consternation of the Dean family on the arrival of this bizarre caravan; also poor Dick’s condition after his ride on this animated fence rail. This, however, is not the worst of it, for when Dick calls to apologize for the scene in which he was an unwilling actor he finds that a wealth of wedding presents have been received by the groomless bride. He is blamed for it all and her intention is to throw them out, but Dick impresses her that such a course would be shameful – Cupid still busy. Well, the presents are not disturbed nor are the address cards reading, “To Mr. and Mrs. Richard Harcourt,” changed. Cupid lands a knockout. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 3, 1910

Dick and Dora, after recently being jilted by their respective fiancés or sweethearts, share a seat in a passenger train. Because of a misunderstanding, other passengers mistake them for newlyweds. One of them is a member of the anti-marriage society whose ranks Dick had swiftly joined after his unhappy love affair. Thinking that Dick has broken his pledge, the passenger in question wires other members of the club about Dick’s defection. They organize a reception at the arrival of the train to express their disapproval of his conduct. Faced with the wealth of wedding presents they are receiving from everyone, Dick and Dora end up deciding to get married!

The film opens, as was quite customary at the time, with a very long establishing shot (of about two minutes). It is packed with different actions which succeed one another at a furious pace. In this shot alone, indeed, Dick takes the time to get out of the house and settle down to read a newspaper; his fiancée then arrives, announces her intention of breaking off their engagement to him and leaves abruptly; Dick expresses his dismay to a group of friends as they show up; they then suggest that he become a member of their anti-marriage society; Dick accepts and signs up. Nothing less! Other shots in the film will not prove as artificially (and with so little subtlety) laden with so many events. The contextualization actually continues in the following shots since, after notifying the spectator of Dick’s misadventure, it is then necessary that Dora’s parallel story also receives exposition. The crosscutting that ensues (a bit of an overstatement here, since nothing at that point indicates any strict simultaneity between the two stories) is then founded on parallel actions, which serve to precisely establish the situation: on the one hand, Dick’s misadventure with his fiancée, and on the other, Dora’s own problems with her fiancé, as both are jilted by their respective sweethearts. Two spaces thus alternate without communicating with each other: space A, where Dick’s misfortune takes place, and space B, where Dora’s own happens. It is an alternation based on a strictly narratorial order, since the two 16

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characters do not even know each other, the two spaces are separate, and the shots do not communicate. The parallelism in question here is indeed that of two similar actions which have nothing to do with each other, except for the fact that they are precisely quite similar. What we have in short here is two parallel “stories” which will eventually intersect. The convergence between the two stories is hinted at as early as shot 4, as Dora prepares for a railroad trip, which Dick will do himself in shot 5. It is worth noting that this form of parallelism is developed over the course of a number of shots, since we move successively from space A (Dick’s) to space B (Dora’s), then return to A, then to B before the narrator brings us back to A and decides to follow Dick’s story rather than Dora’s (with which, at any rate, it will soon intersect). Shot 3 is remarkably minimalist, as it includes almost no narrative information (in contrast to shot 1, which was crammed with it). In a little less than twenty seconds, Dick comes back in the frame, expresses his disappointment, sees a chair and sits on it, a dumbfounded air on his face. Yet, this shot is essential from a narratorial viewpoint, since it makes it possible for some time to go by in Dora’s story, and bridges the gap between shot 2 (where she meets with the same fate as Dick’s and collapses into tears) and shot 4 (where she is dressed up, ready for her departure). This last shot, in turn, serves as a cut-away to give Dick time between two states, from his stupefaction in shot 3 to shot 5, where he is shown in the same space but much later, after he has made the decision to leave and has packed. The script seems to involve a number of minor incoherences. In shot 4, Dora is obviously leaving for a long time. The scene of her departure looks like a farewell to tearful parents rather than like a mere goodbye. Since the train where she meets Dick is the one bringing both of them back home, we have to assume that, on a diegetic level, quite some time has elapsed. Yet the film does not mention anything in that respect. On a visual level, nothing indicates to us the passage of the time spent travelling. On the contrary, the spectator may be led to believe that Dick and Dora meet on their outbound train. When Dick runs into the girl carrying rice (this rice is to play a decisive role since it will cause the misunderstanding among other passengers, who will believe they are dealing with newlyweds), we are in shot 6, which looks like a continuation of shot 5 where Dick was about to leave his home; in fact, he wears the same clothes and is still carrying his suitcase. The Bulletin is more precise on that account, and contradicts this reading: both characters have left, separately, for “a little trip to induce forgetfulness”. It should be pointed out that nothing here alludes to the fact that both departures (as well as unhappy love affairs, for that matter) occur at the same time, although the Bulletin explains that “[m]eanwhile a similar tragedy is enacted at the home of Dora Dean”. As each of them realizes that the trip “has not the desired effect” (to induce forgetfulness), they decide to go back home. It is precisely on the inbound train that they meet, in a relatively long shot, which the insertion of a telegram nevertheless interrupts. Interestingly enough, this insert, interestingly, is edited within the shot, rather than at its periphery (either before the shot or after it). As I have said elsewhere (see my analysis of Taming a Husband in this volume, DWG Project, #237), inserts of written messages (contrary to intertitles involving information related to sound such as dialogues, individual lines, and so forth, since intertitles are still, at that period, not placed within shots) have the rare privilege of being placed at the very moment of their occurrence in the diegesis. One of the passengers has identified Dick as a member of the anti-marriage society, and immediately proceeds to send a telegram in order to inform his colleagues of Dick’s supposed “betrayal”. The content of the message is thus brought to the attention of the viewer through an insert which occurs at the very moment when the character is writing. The camera cleverly anticipates the arrival of the two main characters by bringing us to 17

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the station where, informed by the telegram, members of the society arrive and prepare to “welcome” Dick. The camera then switches back to the train, inside the car where the characters are seated, as the conductor announces the imminent entry into the station. Return to the station: the “reception committee” is ready as the train approaches. Once it has come to a full stop, the camera reverts to the inside of the car as passengers are getting ready to exit, wrapping up a fine display of narrative fluidity. André Gaudreault

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239 BIOGRAPH

THE THREAD OF DESTINY Filming date: 28 January 1910 Location: San Gabriel Mission, California Release date: 7 March 1910 Release length: approx. 977 feet Copyright date: 9 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Myrtle); Francis J. Grandon (Gus); Henry B. Walthall (Estrada); Linda Arvidson (Hotelkeeper’s wife); W. Chrystie Miller (Priest); Mack Sennett, Charles H. West, Anthony O’Sullivan, Charles Craig, Alfred Paget, Frank Opperman, George O. Nicholls (In bar); Dorothy West (On street) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative, intertitles only (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate negative, titles only (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate negative A STORY OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST The thread of Destiny may be knotted and tangled, but fate will eventually unravel the skein. Life’s woof is most times unsymmetrically decussated, and at times we are floundering in a mesh of positive contradictions, from which patience alone can extricate us, and patience is the dominant trait in the nature of the Latin-American, the golden radiance of the ever present sun no doubt being the cause. Little Myrtle, the orphan girl of San Gabriel, stands at the window of her cabin contemplating the beautiful sun before her; the valley out between the hills bedecked by the hand of Flora, iridescent in the morning light, a veritable Iris. Her pure soul goes out in love to the trees, the flowers and the sun, which is responded in the exhilaration of their perfume. Yet she is obsessed with an insatiable yearning. An orphan, she does not know paternal love; her pure, tender heart does not concur with those around her, for the village is made up of a people abjectly material. There is but one to whom she can evince her generous, affectionate nature, the wife of the innkeeper, who is ill. Each morning she gathers flowers and brings them to her. On this morning we see her flower-laden, making her way to the inn. On the road she meets a Mexican stranger, Estrada. Their hands touch while he assists her in recovering some of the flowers she has dropped. She experiences a thrill, such as she has never felt before, and yet she doesn’t know why. However, her heart seems lighter, the world brighter, as she continues on to the inn to cheer and comfort the suffering woman. As she is about to leave, she is insulted with the advances of Gus Walters, a drunken tough. He is about to seize her when Estrada enters and rescues her from the peril, seeing her safely out of the place. Later, Estrada is induced to take a hand in a poker game, which is really a subterfuge to start a quarrel. He is accused of cheating, and they determine to lynch him. Seeing the chances extremely against him, he picks up a chair, and whirling it around him, makes his way to the door. He dashes down the road, and by climbing a tree, manages to throw his pursuers off his trail. In detour he finally comes to a cabin, which he

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enters as refuge, to find it the home of Myrtle. Her wit saves him. She makes him bind her hands and feet, disarrange the place, and then hide under a pile of stuff. The appearances are convincing to the story she tells the posse of being robbed by Estrada, who had proceeded on out of reach. They are satisfied that the Mexican has eluded them and so search no further, going back to the inn. Gus hangs back and returns to Myrtle’s cabin to wreak revenge, thinking she is unprotected, but he is mistaken, of course, and being off guard, he is easily overpowered and bound. He is afforded the felicity of witnessing Myrtle and Estrada plight their troth, and leave for the mission chapel to be married. Still they are charitable, for before they leave they place in Gus’ mouth a cigarette and light it for him that the hours of bondage might not hang heavy. Off they go to the mission where they are bound for life in holy marriage. Gus, meanwhile, has freed himself, and rushing back to the inn tells of the girl’s ruse. As they look from the window they see Myrtle and Estrada leaving the priest and strolling down the road as the twilight bells of the Angelus toll. This awakens the boys to their better selves and they exclaim, “Let em go. Gus, the drinks are on you.” Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 7, 1910

On her way to help the innkeeper’s sick wife, Myrtle, an orphan of San Gabriel, encounters Estrada, a young, Spanish-looking man. In her bewilderment, Myrtle drops the flowers she has picked for the sick woman, practically at Estrada’s feet. The moment inspires a mutual affection; Myrtle even gives him a flower before running off. At the saloon, Myrtle tends to the sick woman and escorts her to her room. Afterwards, when she is alone in the saloon, Myrtle becomes the victim of unwelcome advances from Gus, a local rough. Estrada, who happens to drop in, intervenes. Facing a knife, Gus is forced to leave. Later, Estrada is coaxed into playing cards with a group of local gamblers; the game ends in altercation. During the ensuing commotion, Estrada manages to sneak off, but the gamblers give chase. Estrada successfully tricks the pursuers and seeks refuge in a house that turns out to be Myrtle’s. Together they outwit the gamblers. Once again, however, Gus butts in, this time threatening Estrada with a gun while claiming to defend Myrtle. Unimpressed by his gallantry, she overpowers Gus by sneaking up from behind with a gun. He is tied up, while the couple walks off to the Mission to be wed. Eventually, Gus manages to escape from the cabin only to find out at the saloon that Myrtle and Estrada have married at the Mission. The gamblers tease Gus, while the lovers walk out of frame to their new destiny.

According to The Moving Picture World (January 29, 1910, p. 120), D.W. Griffith and an entourage of fifty from the Biograph Company left New York by train on 19 January 1910. The arrival in Los Angeles on 23 January was reported by The Nickelodeon (February 15, 1910, p. 102). When the Biograph Company decided to set up winter quarters in the Southland, other film companies were already busy shooting in the Los Angeles area, attracted by an environment that offered a veritable smorgasbord of scenic opulence basking in perennial sunshine. In 1910, the Selig Company was a seasoned veteran in California, whilst the New York Motion Picture Company, just like Biograph, was a West Coast debutante. Biograph had, in fact, earlier ties to the Southland after establishing one of the first film exchanges in Los Angeles in 1907. The news item in The Nickelodeon did not mention Griffith; the only person singled out was R. H. Hammer, Biograph’s corporate secretary. The newspapers in Los Angeles were avid promoters of the industrial assets of the region and foresaw a future filmmaking hub in the area, if not the gradual relocation of the entire industry during the teens. An anonymous reporter in Los Angeles Daily Times (“In the 20

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Motion Picture Swim”, February 1, 1910, Section II, p. 14) appreciates the commercial implications of the – given some poetic license – fact that “almost all of the pictures of this country are being made here”. (Part of the article was reprinted in The Moving Picture World, February 19, 1910, p. 256. It was mistakenly attributed, without a date, to the Los Angeles Examiner.) The reporter, mentioning Biograph’s recent arrival in passing, had apparently picked up most of the background information about filmmaking from Fred J. Balshofer and the New York Motion Picture Company. In the article, moving images shot in the Southland are read as a form of (in-)voluntary promotion of Southern California’s unique features of climate and natural splendor to behold for the rest of the country and the world. The indexical dimension of the medium’s registration could not escape celebrating the natural assets framed by the camera. The weather, the air, the lingering atmosphere of a former boomtown attracted scores of tourists and convalescents to spend time or recuperate in and around Los Angeles. Like the victims of consumption or those who took advantage of the unique resort environment, the Biograph Company was headed for “the sunny and picturesque land of Southern California”, according to the dictum in The Moving Picture World. For local interest groups, the paramount significance of filmmaking was in the main defined by the cornucopia of breathtaking vistas, a versatile raw material to capitalize on pictorially, free of charge. For the filmmakers, the challenge was to devise story lines able to narratively cash in on the backdrops offered by the coast line, the valleys, mountains and orange groves surrounded by a cultural mix of ethnographic paraphernalia. A telling detail in the article from the Los Angeles Daily Times is an observation on acting style that underscores the headway domestic players allegedly had made in relation to French stage acting. Film acting is given credit for this changing of guards. “As a result [of American film acting] there is being trained a school of pantomimists who have already outdistanced the French, who held undisputed possession of this class of entertainment until the advent of motion pictures.” Irrespective of the validity of this claim, the locale for making it, out West, serves as a marquee for a discourse on national cinema that highlights genres and pictorial qualities defined in terms of picturesque western settings and story lines rooted in the landscape. In the process and by definition, such claims strike a distance from the qualities associated with French cinema and particularly the Pathé brand. The polemics and discursive clashes around 1910 – brandishing alleged representational transgressions attributed to Pathé on the one hand, and italicizing the wholesome features of the American cinema on the other – are convincingly mapped in Richard Abel’s book, The Red Rooster Scare. Only a few seasons earlier, the primitiveness of American cinema had been contrasted in the trade press to the superior French craftsmanship that to an overwhelming extent grazed the American nickelodeon screens. The term pantomime above is, of course, not to be taken literally. In 1910, the American school of film acting housed an array of styles, often in both juxtaposition and tandem within single films. Overall, however, American cinema relied less on pantomime proper than their Gallic colleagues did. Griffith’s titles from 1910 anthologize a panoply of acting styles. Certain films indeed subscribe to pantomime and a histrionic code of acting, even if the players exhibit a variety of execution modes ranging from forte to fortissimo. Hands and arms often carry a heavy signifying load, and physical asides are often married to soliloquies proper. Notwithstanding this predilection, verisimilar protocols run parallel to the histrionics instead of favoring the expressiveness of the face and shifting forms of subtle byplay. The signifying range here operates from piano to pianissimo. By choice, Griffith refrained from using cut-ins and close framing and therefore had to direct attention to props or faces by alternative means. This at times accounts for a “loud”, physical acting style to communicate emotions and advertise upcoming events or intentions (see Roberta Pearson’s book, Eloquent Gestures, for an in21

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depth account of acting styles in Griffith’s oeuvre). Camera movements are virtually nonexistent. Instead, some shots are layered with acting in several planes, but in clear hierarchy vis-à-vis the camera. Players relegated to the background are prop-like and atmospheric. Business in the background is by and large almost impossible to notice, but sometimes proves to be highly significant when a player moves to the foreground. A case in point is when Myrtle in The Thread of Destiny emerges from the background to the foreground armed with a gun when an intruder holds her lover at gunpoint. Such surprising effects result from a layered style abstaining from integrating the planes by cut-ins and scene dissection. The dominating stylistical figure is still the innovative use of parallel editing, discussed at length by Tom Gunning in D.W. Griffith and the Origins of the American Narrative Film. Griffith both shaped and exhausted the parallel paradigm before he, on a regular basis, added scene dissection to his repertoire. His parallel editing included purely abstract relations chartered without a clear relation in time and space between the series: distant but simultaneously evolving events or series stitched together beyond character intervention; adjacent spaces running parallel in time, but with the initial discrete spatial relations bridged by character movements. A particularly rewarding effect is provided by the many sound cues used to suture such adjacent series (for instance, in The Converts). Sound cues are also used to relate planes within shot compositions (for instance, the opening shot of In Old California). Off-frame character movements, however, are responsible not only for collapsing initially distinct spatial areas, but also for redefining shot scales, particularly when characters exit pass the camera (cf. Jesionowski, pp. 78–85 passim). Such off-movements tend to be suspended for a short interval. The characters are held at the edge of the frame, which engineers an effect of decentering seldom seen in a cut-in. Griffith’s method, indeed, preserves the integrity of the frame’s spatial context, while many early cut-ins instead display a contextual otherness when ripped out of the scene’s grounding and shot against a neutral background unrelated to the overall spatial context. The decentered position is part of a strategy that favors diagonal movements from background to foreground exhausting and taking advantage of the entire frame area. Biograph’s shooting in Los Angeles commenced on 26 January on a film already underway, The Newlyweds. The first title shot from scratch in California was The Thread of Destiny; the camerawork lasted one day only, 28 January. In the opening shot of The Thread of Destiny, Mary Pickford’s character, Myrtle, is placed in the background of a cabin looking longing outside through a window. According to the Biograph Bulletin, she is an orphan and “obsessed with an insatiable yearning”. After turning around and moving forward, Myrtle yawns and stretches her arms – it’s early morning – and finally picks up a hat placed on a stool. Before exiting, Myrtle places her hand on her heart and sighs, thereby adding additional meaning to the longing gaze; prior to leaving she points off frame. Outside, her lissome body language and radiant smile oozes energy and zest, but she momentarily stops on her way pass the camera to once again stretch her arms in an after-sleep gesture. The camera is placed so high that her head almost floats out of frame in the right foreground corner. Deliberately, it seems, the actors are encouraged to pause before leaving the frame, even during chase scenes. Such moments, without the stillness and pictorialism of the tableau proper, project the narrative over to the next shot via a telling gesture that, sometimes at length, telegraphs complex emotions and/or narrative blueprints on the level of character. Occasionally, these condensed moments gesturally amount only to a stenographic indication of upcoming action, which is often instantly confirmed by an off-frame movement, a signing-off prior to taking leave of the shot. More importantly, such moments of suspended movements in the direction toward the camera introduce an alternative register of character psychology due to the intimacy of shot scale that in the main 22

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makes facial expressions slightly more legible even if the scale only hovers between shots from the knee up and medium shots. For Griffith, this was an avenue that eventually leads to The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and one of the musketeers taking the trajectory to its closest extreme. In the absence of cut-ins, a strategy of grinding characters moving forward to a halt potentially grafts one acting style onto another, with striking differences in execution between the players. Movements between planes call for shifts in delivery. Acting up front merits another expressive register than acting from the mid-plane or background of the frame. Pickford, for example, is often somewhat gestural away from camera, but when she approaches the lens she, instead, makes use of her expressive face. The suspended movements paved the way for differences in coming to acting terms with the frame’s constellation of planes, in the process displaying the players’ preferred mode(s) of register and/or their acting pedigree. Consequently, and due to shifting priorities, the gestural repertoire rubs shoulders with less vocal modes of reporting character subjectivity and motivating narrative trajectories. As a medley leading over to the next shot, gestural or mimic asides preserve spatial as well as temporal continuity in a clear cause-and-effect pattern staked out on character level. When there is a temporal and spatial gap between the shots, the pointing is often suppressed; the hiatus, instead, conveys an emotional quality. For example, Myrtle points from shot 1 to 2, but not from 2 to 3. The spatio-temporal ellipsis between the latter shots is confirmed by her having picked some flowers during the interval. Similarly, there is no pointing from shot 3 to 4, which shows Myrtle at a later stage of her walk – and then the flowers, emphasized earlier, take on additional meaning. Thus, the film so far displays two literally straightforward modes of deploying editing. In the first case, the temporal and spatial proximity of the shots are underscored by a gestural aside pointing off frame; in the second, when the edit deletes chunks of time and space, the pointing off frame is suppressed. In the latter alternative, characters become “victims” of the narrative process rather than agents demonstrating for the narrator and spectator in which direction he or she is headed. Griffith’s alternative to editing patterns that, with or without gaps, unequivocally push the story forward in time and space is the laterally-directed parallel editing. In parallel editing, the intertwining of multiple, but spatially discrete threads of narrative gravity brackets the projective power of characters. By serializing tracks or threads, the process of signification – the story’s thread of destiny or destination – is taken out of the characters’ hands and relegated to a syntagmatic order implying an invisible narrative agency or orchestration. At times, though, sound cues or sight links institute patterns of alternation that suggest a certain amount of character grounding. In the film under consideration, the parallel tracks are, with one notable exception, geared to simultaneity only. The final series of shots, in contrast to the dominating pattern, are, however, wrought together by way of a unilateral sight link from within the saloon. This link is introduced by the film’s most vocal and insisting pointing off frame, performed in unison by a “choir” of saloon patrons. After exiting from inside the cabin, and in the following shot walking away from it, Pickford in shot 3 cheerfully emerges from deep in the background moving in high spirits along a dirt road lined by a wall. A group of men provides a lazy atmosphere by sitting by or leaning against the wall, many of them are smoking. The wall is probably “fencing in” the Mission’s yard. Myrtle stops when she reaches full shot, and to underscore the early-morning atmosphere, she again yawns before kneeling down to pick some more flowers. After moving forwards, she stops twice before exiting the frame, once more conveying an inner well of unchannelled energy and longing. Due to her moving close up against the camera, the expression is clearly legible. The next shot is carefully orchestrated to set up the premise for the story. An Indian, struggling with a heap of branches he carries on his back, passes 23

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the camera. When his blocking presence is dispersed, a young man, in traditional Spanish costume (Walthall), moves forward and stops at an intersection of the dirt roads; he leans against a wall in medium-close shot, foreground left. Soon a young woman dressed in Spanish costume approaches him proposing a walk. She indicates the preferred direction with her head, but Estrada rejects the proposal by shaking his head. We see her walking slowly toward the background along the dirt road. Given what transpires at the end of the shot, she might be Estrada’s fiancée or hopes to be. Myrtle then enters mid-frame right and approaches Estrada from behind. She more or less drops her flowers at his feet, and he darts down before she reacts. On his knees, he returns the flower. Embarrassed and thrilled, she faces the camera and after hesitating removes a flower from its long stem and gives the lily to Estrada before running off. Her face reveals infatuation, and Estrada is also taken by the chance meeting. Before following in Myrtle’s direction, he looks several times in the direction of the Spanish girl, that is, toward the background. Later, we find Myrtle merrily hurrying toward the camera, this time she proceeds along a house marked Saloon. She passes between a group of men; one lifts his hat, one moves slightly to the left to give her free passage. The men later resurface as card players inside the saloon. Myrtle stops on the threshold, in full shot, before entering. Inside, she comes from the background and on her way to the innkeeper’s wife, seated in profile at a table in the foreground, she passes the bar, tended by the sick woman’s husband. Since it is still early, there is only one patron at the bar. The woman is pleasantly surprised when Myrtle sneaks up on her from behind; again Myrtle holds a pose before making her presence known. After receiving the flowers, the woman starts coughing. Myrtle suggests, by pointing off frame right, that it would be better for her friend to retreat to bed. She supports the woman when escorting her off; the innkeeper pats his wife’s shoulder when she passes. Myrtle returns immediately to pick up the flowers and re-exits. Simultaneously, the two men walk toward the invisible background door. Their exit is prepared by a gesture off frame right by the patron. When Myrtle later returns, the saloon is therefore empty. Soon enough a man, Gus, enters and wastes no time before approaching Myrtle. He shakes her hand as she backs off, but instead of getting free of him, he grabs her. In the middle of the struggle, a cut-away shows Estrada approaching the saloon. He stops at the threshold and inhales the fragrance from the lily in his hand before entering. Inside, Estrada, without having time to identify the girl, throws Gus to the left holding him at bay with a knife while taking the perpetrator’s gun and giving it to the girl without taking his eyes off Gus. Gus is forced off via the background entrance threatening to get even with Estrada later. When things settle down, the young ones recognize each other. The surprise of the delayed recognition inspires jerky movements in both. The mutual attraction is highly visible, and the bewildered Myrtle runs off expressing gratitude several times. She stops outside, more radiant than ever. This leaves Estrada alone inside and, furthermore, gives him time for a brief pantomimic aside reconfirming his infatuation and summing up recent events. After this is “said” and done, the innkeeper returns, and later the men from outside enter in preparation for a card game. Estrada is invited to join them and he accepts. At this point, there is a cut-away to pick up Myrtle reaching her cabin. She stops in full shot and turns back toward the camera before entering; this mirrors shot 2 but in reverse. Inside, she is full of energy and her body language echoes her movements from shot 1, but now her longing, previously vague and abstract, has a specific object of desire. Back at the card game – parallel editing is almost always a distinctive narrative building block in Griffith’s films – Estrada flares up and accuses the dominant man in the group of cheating. In the ensuing commotion, Estrada manages to escape from what almost is developing into a lynch mob. On the threshold outside – Estrada exits in the foreground frame left through an entrance not shown previously – he has time for a short interval before rushing off. 24

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After he has tricked his pursuers, Estrada seeks shelter in a cabin that “happens” to belong to Myrtle. Before he enters, there is a cut-away back to the pursuers finding a piece of fabric from Estrada’s trousers. They realize that he has fooled them during the chase. The group resumes the chase, now running in the correct direction. Inside Myrtle’s cabin, the young ones hastily prepare a theatrical game to outwit the expected “mob”. When Estrada’s foes arrive, they find Myrtle tied to a pole while the sought-after is nowhere to be seen. He is, in fact, hiding under a blanket behind a sofa. The men untie Myrtle, and she tells them that Estrada probably has escaped through the window. Outside her cabin, Gus arrives when the posse prepares to again chase Estrada – a futile undertaking. Gus, after some thinking by way of pantomime – delivered in medium shot after he has taken a few steps toward the camera as if to join the posse out of frame – refrains from joining his friends. Instead, he turns around toward the cabin. Inside, the couple rejoices after having successfully diverted the onslaught. Myrtle’s first reaction is to pull the blinds. Since the object of her desire now is inside, she no longer needs to project her longings by looking outside through the window. More prosaically, the motivation is, of course, to prevent gazes from outside to detect Estrada. The desire scenario unfolds rapidly and she seemingly agrees to marry Estrada after he has expressed his feelings. He takes her hand and, more importantly, she does not pull back as when Gus grabbed it; she even accepts that Estrada kisses her hand and arm. Myrtle stands with her back toward the pole when embracing Estrada. Seemingly, she is willing to be tied in matrimony to him. Gus breaks into this romantic scene pointing his gun at Estrada. Myrtle, in alarm, darts to the background, and picks up a gun. In the absence of a cut-in, this can only be apprehended in retrospect when she moves forward and puts the nozzle in Gus’s ear. Once again, Estrada removes Gus’s gun, and prepares to tie him to the pole. A cut-away takes us back to the saloon and the posse entering after their unsuccessful mission, which is communicated to the innkeeper by way of “washout” gestures. Back in the cabin, Gus is tied to the pole, and the animated couple mocks him by placing a cigarette in his mouth. Myrtle even lights it for him before she and Estrada embrace once more. Estrada points off frame before they leave for the Mission to be joined in holy matrimony. Outside, they break off their movement when in medium shot to once again embrace and again Estrada points off frame before they continue. In the following shot, they arrive outside the Mission and ring the bell. A padre shows them inside. At this point, a cut-away returns us to the cabin and Gus who frees himself from the ropes. He lunges outside, and this time there is no time for a hiatus. In the next shot, he dashes into the saloon telling what has transpired in colorful, broad gestures. The Mission can apparently be seen from the saloon, because suddenly all the saloon patrons surge frame left pointing off frame. Introduced via a collective sight link, the newlywed couple steps outside accompanied by the padre. This is followed by a quick shot showing the chaotic saloon. Back again outside the Mission, the padre gives flowers to Myrtle, hence partaking in the circulation of flowers that set the attraction in motion. Back at the saloon, the leading gambler is prevented from trying to shoot Estrada. He puts back the gun, and instead everybody turns to the bar for a round of drinks. At the Mission, the couple walks off frame right – Estrada points off before they set out. Standing foreground left, the padre blesses them while the couple leaves the frame. He stands there awhile looking after the couple before returning inside, which is followed by a fade out. Jan Olsson

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240 BIOGRAPH

IN OLD CALIFORNIA Filming date: 2/3 February 1910 Location: Hollywood, California Release date: 10 March 1910 Release length: approx. 991 feet Copyright date: 12 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Frank Powell (Governor Manuella); Arthur Johnson (Cortes); Marion Leonard (Perdita); Henry B. Walthall (Her son); Mack Sennett, Francis J. Grandon, Charles H. West, Alfred Paget, Anthony O’Sullivan, Charles Craig (Soldiers); Charles H. West, Frank Opperman (Governor’s servants); W. Chrystie Miller (Indian messenger) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print A ROMANCE OF THE SPANISH DOMINION No land nor period was more given to romance than Spanish America in the early part of the nineteenth century. The influence of the warm constant sun, without excessive a idity [sic], was conducive of lethargy, and lethargy is the seed of romance. The dreamer is the romancer. This Biograph story starts some time before the Mexican independence was proclaimed in California, which occurred in 1822. Perdita Arguello, the pretty Spanish senorita, is beloved by Jose Manuella, a wealthy young Spaniard, who has migrated to the new world in search of adventure. A man of fine qualities, he surrenders claim upon the girl when he finds her heart given to Pedro Cortes, a handsome troubadour of the village. Cortes is just the sort of fellow to impress a thoughtless unsophisticated girl with his gentle persuasive manner together with his talents as a musician. Of a poetic temperament, she yields to his plea and marries him. But what a calamity! Twenty years later we see the result of her folly. Cortes proved to be a worthless dipsomaniac and reprobate, spending his time and the money she earns at the tavern. The most unfortunate feature is that they have a son, now nearly nineteen years old. Perdita realizes that the environs and example of the father are not favorable to the boy’s well-being, hence she resolves to save him. It is at a time when Baja and Alta California are in conflict, and Manuella, Perdita’s former lover, is now Governor, so she appeals to him to provide a future for her son. The Governor takes the boy into his own company. But is there any wonder that the son of such a dog as Cortes should prove himself to be a despicable whelp? He is not long in the service when the blood of his father asserts itself. Drunkenness is one of the first offenses. Next theft of the meanest order, that of robbing his sleeping comrades-in-arms. Perdita has despatched [sic] a letter of thanks to the Governor, which he is reading as the drunken boy is brought before him. The tone of the letter induces Manuella to be easy with the boy that she might live in ignorance of his real nature. However, later she writes that she is dying and believing her son has made a name for himself, she asks to be allowed to see him before she dies. As the Governor reads this letter the boy is brought before him, having been caught thieving. Manuella is thoroughly disgusted with the boy, but in order to have his mother die happy, he decorates him, making him appear before her as a hero.

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When she breathes her last the medals are torn from his breast and he is sent to prison where the punishment he justly deserves is inflicted. In this subject are shown a series of most beautiful scenes of Southern California, which are photographically perfect. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 10, 1910

The young Perdita turns down Manuella’s proposal in order to marry the troubadour Pedro Cortes. Twenty years later, we find her prematurely aged and miserable, living only for her son. Fearing the influence of the drunkard Pedro, Perdita pleads with Manuella to take on the young man as a soldier in his company. It turns out, however, that the young man drinks during sentry duty and, even worse, steals from his fellow soldiers. The Governor is disgusted when these events are reported, but when he simultaneously receives a missive from the dying Perdita, he decides to help her fulfill her wish to see her son once more. The Governor even decorates the unworthy son before escorting him to Perdita. She dies during the visit believing her son to be a hero. The Governor immediately strips the son of the medal and orders his soldiers to put the mock hero in prison. Before leaving Perdita’s deathbed, the Governor shows his love and respect for the only woman in his life.

In the historical prologue to In Old California, two lovesick men gravitate around young Perdita (Marion Leonard). Manuella (Frank Powell), later Governor, displays his class background by his sophisticated demeanor and gentlemanly acceptance of having his proposal turned down. In the background, Pedro (Arthur Johnson) serenades the young lady and provides an atmosphere of romance that captures the young woman’s heart. When Manuella, sad but dignified, retreats, Pedro advances to the middle of the frame immediately winning Perdita’s hand. Already from the outset, pantomime and gestural delivery are given prominence. Manuella’s class-inflected histrionics are, however, checked. Pedro is more directly physical in his acting, refraining from “double talk” by way of pantomimic reporting or emoting. His frame of mind is shown physically. The two planes of action are connected by sound cues when the two voices – representing two different cultures – compete for Perdita’s heart. After the opening shot, an intertitle transports us twenty years ahead. Perdita, aged and miserable, now lives only for her son, played by Henry B. Walthall. They are both terrorized by Pedro’s drinking habits and general abusiveness. In shot 2, Perdita is seated frame left, while the tipsy Pedro roams the frame. Soon the son returns, probably from work; Pedro can’t wait to lay his hands on the son’s money. The latter unsuccessfully tries to hold on to a few coins, but Pedro is ruthless and after taking them all throws the son down in a chair, and shoves his wife back in the other chair before leaving the house, supposedly for the cantina. Mother and son are adamantly relegated to the respective sides of the foreground by Pedro’s centrifugal shattering of the family, physically manifested by his violent behavior. The physical distance in the frame between Perdita and her son in the wake of Pedro’s aggression prepares for her venturing into pantomime proper and asides. Meanwhile, the victimized son is sitting on the chair pensively playing with his hat. Perdita’s hands that once held the little boy now a young man – this seems to be her opening “remark” when he returns home – convey despair over her own and the son’s fate. She directs attention to the son, sitting depressed and forlorn after being stripped of his earnings. She redirects us to her off-screen husband by pointing toward the door, and she laments her own predicament and lost life. She frantically seeks a way out for the son and finally comes up with a solution. After some deliberations in order to convince herself, this by pantomimically voicing pros and cons, she curbs her asides and reports to her son that she plans to place him under the Governor’s 27

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command. They both exit in a good mood after yet another brief pantomime – the son makes room for this when walking off frame. When they return from respective sides off frame after changing clothes, the son is full of admiration for his mother’s elegant outfit. Manuella is now Governor and we encounter him in the courtyard outside his palace. It is a busy scene with guards and all sorts of people making themselves useful. Manuella conducts his business at a small table in the foreground frame left. When mother and son arrive, the frame has been somewhat cleared and Manuella is standing turned off frame. The recognition provokes a shock-like start in him. The two that never became a couple are for a brief moment alone in the foreground, while Perdita’s son in the mid-plane admires the palace and looks at a guard marching to and fro in the background. He is then introduced, and later the Governor summons an officer to escort the young man to his new station in life as a soldier. Perdita here establishes a form of alternative family, when she appeals to her rejected lover to take on responsibility for her son. The Governor is visibly overwhelmed by the impact of what has transpired at the end of the shot. He actually needs to hold on to the table before recomposing himself. A cut takes the recruit and us to a group of soldiers up in the mountains. The officer in command is instructed to find a proper uniform for the young man. Back home kneeling on the floor, Perdita prays, grateful for the happy outcome of her mission. The shot initiates a pattern of alternation. In proverbial fashion, an intertitle draws attention to the son’s bad blood, which is demonstrated by three escalating examples. From Perdita on the floor, we encounter the son and his fellow soldiers playing dice, which is pretty harmless. Back to Perdita in the cabin and her husband returning home. Pedro is upset over her conniving and again physically harasses her. After being shoved, she is back in the chair foreground left, pantomimically complaining. Back to the mountains and her son on sentry duty and an upgrading of the level of transgressions. During his sentry duty, he pulls out a flask, quickly downs its content and throws it away off frame. It seems as if he tries to prevent the camera from actually “seeing” the drinking. He initially turns his back toward the camera, and when drinking, standing in profile, holds his hands to hide the flask and then instantly disposes of it. Back home, Perdita writes a letter to the Governor. She expresses gratitude and hopes her boy will prove worthy of his new station. Inserted into the parallel pattern that was triggered by the bad-blood intertitle, an ironic code comes to the fore. In the next shot, the tipsy son is removed from his post and brought back to the Governor to be disciplined. This coincides with the arrival of the letter and the Governor’s pleased reading of it, which is abruptly curtailed when the drunken soldier is presented. Manuella’s love for Perdita amounts to a new chance for the son, but the latter’s mocking gesture behind the Governor’s back gives little hope of reform. Back in the mountains, the rascal is caught red-handed when stealing from a sleeping comrade-in-arms. The shot forms a tableau before the group moves off frame. During the tableau, the culprit is placed in the middle of the frame and held by a group of soldiers. In the background, another group is consoling the victim, and frame left, the officer in command points his accusing fingers towards the guilty party. Back home, Perdita is dying; she is now placed frame right where the son used to sit. She writes to the Governor asking for an opportunity to see the son one more time. Again, the Governor is in the process of reading a letter from Perdita – this time in a sad frame of mind – when the son of the father proper is brought in front of the other father figure. The Governor manages to control his rage in the face of his sorrow for his loved one, now dying. Moreover, he decides to bring back the son to her in glory, that is, in uniform. And in a further twist of irony, Manuella decorates the scoundrel with one of his own medals. In the final shot, the Governor, the son and a group of soldiers visit the dying Perdita. Initially, the Governor pays his respect and then introduces the son – and directs Perdita’s attention to 28

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the medal. When embracing the young man, Perdita dies. After a few solemn moments and after crossing himself, the Governor strips the unworthy of his mock glory and orders his soldier to arrest the rascal. When the room is cleared, the Governor lingers behind for a few moments, once more bemoaning and “expressing” the tragedy that has affected all their lives, not least his own loss of family life. He pats the dead Perdita’s head and hair, and kisses her hands before folding them on her chest. Finally, he holds on to her blanket, and then slowly and gently places it over her head. His tender gestures in the closing shot form part of a series where, in passing, he pats Perdita’s hands – when she embraced her son before he left to join the Governor’s troupes and during Perdita’s final embrace of the son just before she died. These stolen moments of affection form a nostalgic code disclosing his life-long love and affection for Perdita. Jan Olsson

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241 BIOGRAPH

THE MAN Filming date: 4/5 February 1910 Location: Los Angeles Studio/Sierra Madre, California Release date: 12 March 1910 Release length: approx. 983 feet Copyright date: 22 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Frank Powell (Steve Clark); Florence Barker (Mildred, his wife); Francis J. Grandon (The Wanderer) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A TRAGEDY OF THE SIERRAS Ambiguous as the title of this Biograph production may at first glance seem, yet there is a most powerful argument evinced showing the many qualities in man all of which are dominated by selfish thoughtfulness. So long as his wishes are gratified he is at peace with the world, but should – but why enlarge upon a subject so familiar. At times we may feel inclined to blame the woman, but must admit it was the man, and yet we see an exhibition of the true man for a time, but later we see what induced it. Withal the woman is the real sufferer. Steve Clark, a prospector in the Sierras, was possessed of a querulous disposition, irritable, peevish and quarrelsome, his pretty young wife, Mildred, being quite the reverse. Amiable to a fault, she tries, by numberless little attentions to awaken in Steve the tenderness her sweet nature yearns for, but to no purpose. Her every advance of affection repulsed. You may imagine the result of this flower withering for want of love’s sunshine, though watered by the tears of hopelessness. Here we find the man’s egotistical indifference. Clark starts out for his claim in the mountains and on the road meets a newcomer of an extremely opposite disposition. Lighthearted and happy, he sings as he wanders on. Meeting Clark, he asks the way to the camp, which information is given in a grouch. The stranger continues on, singing as he goes, and the first shack he strikes is Clark’s. Entering, he asks for a drink, Mildred is so taken with his lighthearted mien that she insists upon his partaking of a meal. She has never enjoyed the society of one of his nature, and so is impressed. He is so deeply struck by her beauty and affability that he prevails upon her to leave her odious environs and go with him. Is this man’s quality of benevolence, or is it selfishness? Mildred, unaccustomed as she was to such tenderness, finally yields, and they leave together. Steve returns later, and finding her gone, and evidence that she had gone with a man, he starts after them. Meanwhile, the eloping couple have made their way into the mountains and halt to take refreshments. Among the articles in their pack is some canned meat. Of this the stranger eats heavily. The result is ptomaine poisoning. It looks pretty bad for him when Steve comes up, and then Mildred anticipates death for both; but no. Clark seems to have become suddenly good-tempered and intimates he will save the sick man. Sending his wife ahead, he shoulders and carries the helpless stranger back to the shack, and tenderly cares for him. Is this an exposition of man’s humanity to man?

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Hardly. The stranger having recovered, purports making his departure, when Steve, in response to the stranger’s expression of gratitude draws forth two revolvers, pointing to the woods outside. Forced to do so, the stranger accompanies Steve. A few minutes later Steve returns with two guns, his churlish smile telling the tale. He then orders Mildred out and while he sits with a satisfied air, smoking his pipe, she views the result of the meeting. Here is the man as an open book. The subject comprises a series of the most beautiful scenes ever shown while the final one is positively the most artistically unique view attempted. Biograph Bulletin, [?]

Mildred lives with her husband, the prospector Steve Clark, in an out-of-the-way cabin in the mountains. She is affectionate and considerate, but her husband shows little if any concern for her, let alone love. A newcomer of friendly disposition and good humor one day runs into Clark and later finds Mildred by herself at home. Lonely and lovesick, she is overwhelmed by his lively attention and apparent affection, and when the newcomer suggests elopement, she gives in. When Steve returns, the cabin is abandoned. He realizes what has happened and sets out to trail the couple. During the flight, the man, poisoned by something he eats, collapses at the moment Steve detects them. Mildred runs off, but Steve decides to bring the lover back to the cabin. He orders his bewildered wife to nurse the sick man. The lover recovers and some time later is ready to leave the cabin. The nursing has however been part of a strategy for revenge and Steve provokes a duel. Mildred hears the shooting from inside the cabin. After finishing the job, the smirking Steve returns inside forcing his wife outside to discover the body of her dead ex-lover. The film ends with her horror when finding the body.

The psychological impetus for the story, set in an overwhelming mountainous landscape, is formulated already in the opening intertitle – “THE LOVELESS HOME”. Shot 1 proceeds to demonstrate the validity of the statement, but in an oblique manner showing the husband’s cold-hearted indifference to his wife’s display of love. At the outset, the prospector Steve is seated at a table in his and his wife Mildred’s cabin. During the meal, her attempts at physical contact are either ignored or dismissed by her husband, much to the chagrin of Mildred. After finishing the meal, Steve lights his pipe, prepares to go outside taking his prospecting equipment, and demonstratively rejects her gesture of embrace. Her sight link follows him outside to the backdrop of breathtaking mountains and Steve resolutely walking away. In shot 3, we find him entering the frame from behind the camera, walking away from it before exiting frame right as he crosses a dry creek. His direction away from the camera prepares for the introduction of a new character, a prospector who, according to a presentational intertitle, sings as he walks, in obvious contrast to Steve’s sullen demeanor. The newcomer walks toward and then passes the camera. The two men meet in this shot – the new man still proceeding toward the camera, while Steve is walking in the opposite direction. Steve wastes no time in talking to the stranger. The shot lasts until both are out of frame. This chance meeting reverses the direction away from the camera. In the next shot, mirroring the set-up from shot 3, the man enters frame right and passes the camera before reaching the cabin in the next shot. The scene inside, similar to but in terms of human interaction radically different from shot 1, is full of excitement. Mildred warms to the stranger’s upbeat antics and winning charm. Initially, he asks for something to drink, but the scene ends at the table mirroring the opening shot, but with an emotional difference. After a quick cut-away to Steve, the man once more visits the cabin. The time frame is 31

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a bit unclear; this second visit might be later the same day. The intertitle laconically informs – “LATER SHE YIELDS TO HIS PLEADINGS”. The visit is introduced via a combination of sight links and sound cues, a practice Griffith returned to in many films from 1910, this time apprehended from within the cabin. Mildred notices the man coming, tries to conceal her excitement, but, at the same time, wants to look her very best. Without wasting time, the man details plans for eloping, to which Mildred after some hesitation finally subscribes. They hasten away from the cabin leaving everything behind. Busy hands and arms deliver the gist of the dialogue: his declaration of love and persuasion, her shy enchantment marred by misgivings before finally succumbing to the temptation. The set-up from shot 3 shows the couple’s progress on the mountain trails. Meanwhile, Steve returns home and finds the cabin empty. He walks outside, but finds no Mildred. A cut-away shows the couple pushing ahead in the mountains. After some sleuthing back inside, Steve discovers Mildred’s apron on the floor and a cigar on the table. After checking his gun, he sets out in pursuit of the deserting wife and her lover. The couple stops for a meal, while Steve briskly trails them. Mildred’s lover collapses due to ptomaine poisoning, which happens to coincide with Steve’s arrival on the scene. After assessing the situation, Steve refrains from using his gun, first aimed at the man and then at Mildred. In panic, Mildred runs away. Steve, however, decides to carry the man back to the cabin, where a surprised Mildred gratefully accepts Steve’s order to nurse the man. Steve’s smirking expression during the scene inside the cabin freezes when he steps outside onto the porch and flashes his gun. He proceeds to an adjacent spot, gun in hand, where he rehearses for the showdown he has in store for the man when recovered. An intertitle announces the recovery and the man’s intention to leave. Inside, he bids Mildred farewell when Steve enters. The latter kicks the door shut by his heel and the sound cue breaks up the farewell scene. Steve rejects the man’s hand instead mercilessly provoking a duel at the designated space outside. The camera lingers inside when the two men step outside. Mildred’s reactions filter the grim experience off frame. Shortly, Steve returns pleased with the macabre success of his plotting. To rub in the horror of the outcome, rehearsed in solitude and executed off frame, Steve forces Mildred to take in the finality of the fatal scene – a spectacle in shocking Grand Guignol style. Outside, she backs into the place and nearly stumbles over the dead body bent over a boulder – this according to Steve’s execution both without and with the victim. Mildred reacts with shock and revulsion. With her eyes transfixed on the dead body, she backs out of the frame with her outstretched hand the last to leave the frame. The shot is held to display the tableau-like spectacle of the dead body. The final scene is indeed cruel and merciless. It seems as if the lesson administered by the unsympathetic Steve is, if not celebrated by the voice giving us the intertitles, at least confined within a realm of narrative reason. The designation of the man as “perpetrator” allies the voice with Steve. By closing in on the dead body, the narrative blocks access to Mildred’s fate and Steve’s frame of mind beyond the moment of revenge. Leaving Steve and Mildred off frame and the title character lifeless in the final tableau closes the latter’s story, but leaves the threads of the married couple’s destiny open-ended. The story is simple and economically told using few camera set-ups and only one interior. Mildred’s passionate nature is played out against the natural splendor of the wilderness and mountains. Bitzer’s camera effectively underscores the harsh beauty of the vistas and places the two men’s contrasting personalities in dialogue with the landscape. One rejoices when walking in the mountains, the other is blind to both his loving wife in the cabin and the beauty of the scenery surrounding him. He only displays emotions when his “possessions” are stolen; prior to that Mildred seems to have no value for him. Jan Olsson

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242 BIOGRAPH

THE CONVERTS Filming date: 8/9 February 1910 Location: Los Angeles Studio/San Gabriel Mission, California Release date: 14 March 1910 Release length: approx. 986 feet Copyright date: 16 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Linda Arvidson (The woman); Henry B. Walthall (The man); Charles H. West, Mack Sennett, ? (His friends); Arthur Johnson, Dell Henderson, George O. Nicholls (In bar); Robert Harron, Charles Craig, Frank Opperman (Bystanders); Dorothy West (Leaving bar); Kate Bruce (In doorway); Anthony O’Sullivan (Minister); W. Chrystie Miller (Old man); Alfred Paget (Chauffeur); George O. Nicholls? (On street); ? (Servant) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative STRANGE TRANSFORMATION OF TWO SOULS “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.****** In Him was life; and the life was the light of man. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” John i. 1-5 Powerful, indeed, is the influence of the Word of God, and various are the ways in which it has been promulgated. Even the sinner has been made to bear witness of the Word, for the Saviour drew near unto him the publicans and sinners, despite the murmuring of the Pharisees and Scribes, saying, – “Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-and-nine just persons, which need no repentance.” The fallen have been made to rise from the morass of sin to go forth to give testimony of the Light, as is shown in this Biograph subject. We see here a young man living a life of self-indulgence and idleness, and we know that the idle shall be food for evil, and in this case even to the mockery of God’s word. Bored, he seeks something novel, and his reckless companions suggest he masquerade as an evangelist and preach outside the dance hall of this western town. This appeals to him as a most unique diversion, so off they go, he dressed as a minister, to start their little gospel meeting. Arriving outside the hall, he begins his discourse. Inside we find those poor creatures who walk in the Darkness, but we must forgive them for they know not what they do. The young fellow, being of an emotional nature, and an eloquent speaker, the Word rings truth, though uttered by false lips. So impressive is it that one of the poor wretches of the place is irresistably drawn to his side while her very soul drinks in the Word which seems to sooth. The young man regards this a huge joke, though he dissembles before the girl. The girl leaves the hall and goes to her room, where weeping, she kneels and prays. Her soul breathes forth that penitential plea “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” As the words fall from her lips there comes a feeling of peace she has never before experienced. Thereupon she resolves to give her life in repentance. Leaving her room she cries, “Unto the fallen will I carry the Word that restored me. I will teach the unjust thy ways: and the wicked shall be converted unto

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thee.” She now becomes a setlement house worker, and one day during her mission work she comes face to face with the young profligate, now intoxicated, whom she had thought a priest. At first, she is shocked at the discovery of this man’s baseness, and turns away from him. “Still,” she reasons, “was it not through him I saw the Light and heard the Word?” Her plain duty is to save him, but the bitter hurt of a guilty conscience causes him to slink from the spot. Rushing to his home he now fully realizes what a contemptible dog he has been, for in the girl, he saw what good a man can do, and yet how low he will fall all through his own choice. His heart aches with the misery of his own degradation, and his hope for peace seems vain. Finally, he rushes out, determined to find the girl and throw himself at her feet for forgivness, but he is shown a better way, for meeting her as she is assisting a poor old man who had fallen on the road, their souls meet in one resolve, “Thou shalt open our lips, O Lord: and our mouths shall declare thy praise.” Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 14, 1910

A young man is bored beyond belief. No diversion seems even remotely interesting until he comes up with a highly original idea for an outing: he will masquerade as an evangelist and pretend to preach outside a dance hall. He and his friend arrive at the place, and soon a group of people has gathered around “the evangelist”. Inside, a dance-hall girl overhears the words from outside. She is magnetically attracted by the sermon and takes it in earnest. Furthermore, she decides to start a new life. As a settlement worker, she later preaches outside places of ill repute. One day when preaching, she encounters “the evangelist” and is shocked when she notices that he is fairly inebriated. The young man is, however, not drunk enough to be unaffected by the encounter and runs off in shame. Confused, she seeks moral support and the young man seeks her, initially without success. When he is helping an old drunkard, he suddenly notices that she is lifting the man from the other side. The moment of recognition carries promises of mutual reform and affection.

The Converts presents a melodramatic story permeated by an array of relatively checked pantomime routines. On the main title card, the story is subsumed under the heading “TRANSFORMATION OF TWO SOULS”. Those affected are a loose woman (Linda Arvidson), whose reform and subsequent sobriety – in a wide sense – is triggered by a young man (Henry B. Walthall), who kills time and ennui by debasing God’s sacred words, in a tonguein-cheek discourse taken in earnest by the woman. The 16mm copy of the film from the Library of Congress consists of thirty shots and ten intertitles; there is no end title and it seems as if a closing intertitle is missing. The narrative trajectory, launched in the first shot, is saturated by signs of blasé dispersed in a busy pattern of exits and entrances around the protagonist that eventually inspires an idea in him on how to cure his boredom. It all takes place in a parlor with invisible doors left and right. There is an armchair in mid-foreground and two small tables, one with an oil lamp, the other, in the background, with a small figurine. The man enters frame left with driving gloves in his right hand, crosses the room before momentarily stopping frame right, and in the process throws the gloves away. He sits down in an air of spleen. A driver, dressed for an outing, enters frame right, only to be dismissed as advertised by the disposal of the gloves earlier. A manservant, carrying a tray with a decanter and a port glass, enters frame left. The man takes the glass, but, on second thought, puts it back on the tray, dismissing the manservant. Two friends enter frame left in high spirits and, flanking the armchair, propose some form of diversion. The man is far from thrilled, which is expressed via talkative hands and a frown. The manservant reappears 34

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in the background introducing a clergyman. The man gets rid of the visitor by giving him a coin. The visit, however, inspires an idea in him, first signaled by an eye-opening expression that he rapidly translates into a pantomimic chain in order to “explain” a masquerading scheme to his friends. The manservant is summoned and they all exit frame right. Cut on movement. The situation, the mental frame and the blueprint for, at least temporarily, overcoming the predicament, is conveyed by way of body language and pantomimic eloquence. Hands and arms are preferred signifiers – gloves thrown, glass accepted and returned, a coin offered, proposals rejected. When finally an idea for turning the tide transpires, the outline is sketched by jumping out of the armchair followed by an explanation of the masquerading project primarily by ways of arms and hands. The shot is followed by an intertitle bridging the temporal gap before returning to the same camera set-up. Intertitle 1 – “THE WORD RINGS TRUTH THOUGH UTTERED BY FALSE LIPS” – underscores and anticipates the course of affairs triggered by the clergyman’s visit and the ensuing pantomime. The spectators are still somewhat lost as to the content of the proposed plan. The intertitle indicates a spiritual dimension only to frame the mode of delivery as “false lips”. Most intertitles in the film are appropriated from the Bible, except two that respectively outline a course of event and situate a context for work in the spirit of reformation and sobriety. The short time-span between shots 1 and 2 is signaled by the man’s new outfit – he has had time to change – when the party returns to the parlor from frame right. The man is now dressed as an evangelist in preparation for a mock sermon. Before departing, he conducts a compressed dress rehearsal delivered in jesting mood – “false lips” – prior to general exit left and a cut when all are out of frame. Causal links between shots in the film are overall underpinned by some form of business that momentarily halts a movement or exit and thereby highlights a telling detail for a short interval, if not long enough to merit the designation of tableau. In shot 3, just outside the man’s house, we have a similar hiatus breaking up the pace and resuming the final moment of dress rehearsal to further clarify the intentions. Shot 4, for which we have been duly prepared, introduces the first link in a chain of two, connected by the man’s voice and sacrilegious appropriation of the discourse on reform and sobriety. The two threads will be crosscut up until shot 10, or even 12, depending on which criterion is employed. In shot 4, a group of men are hanging around outside a “dance hall”. One of the more devastating reviews (see Variety quote below) prefers to call it a brothel and maliciously transforms the title figures from converts to perverts. The man and his friends enter frame left, while the members of the crowd outside the dance hall either sit on a porch-like landing or stand in the street. One of the poles supporting the roof of the platform dissects the frame, though not symmetrically. The “evangelist” takes off his hat and commences preaching. Via intertitle 2 – “THOSE WHO WALK IN THE DARKNESS” – we are taken inside to a place in desperate need of enlightenment. The track running parallel to the sermon is situated inside the dance hall; only gradually do we become aware that the evangelist’s voice is actually audible inside. The shot inside is layered, displaying a man at a table frame left in the foreground; behind him and partly blocked, there is another table placed right in front of the bar, while yet another group is drinking and dancing in the background frame right. A young woman (Arvidson) enters frame left in the background, she greets the bartender, hugs a big man, frame right on her way to the table in the foreground; she is pretty suggestive in her manner of catching his attention. The man at the table turns around toward her and gives her a glass of liquor poured from a bottle on his table. On the toast we return to the sermon, so far the discourse has not been acknowledged from inside. This ensuing shot merely reminds us about what is going on outside. Back inside, the young woman with the glass in her right hand freezes as she hears the words from outside. She lifts her left arm and points off frame right before 35

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she bends her arm back and in the process of the movement rubs her forehead as if to brush off something unpleasant, thereafter she seemingly recomposes herself. She drinks but her eyes convey distress. Like shot 5, shot 7 ends with a glass on her lips. Irrespective of the fact that the words that are preached are delivered by “false lips”, the reform and sobriety invoked are specifically targeted at the glass at her lips. Gradually, an ironic gap in the narration is opened up by the panic with which she reacts to the words, a panic translated to her tense body language and distressed eyes. In the following shot, the “evangelist” is still preaching with gusto and active arm movements, seemingly enlisting support from above. So far, the crosscutting have the two focal characters placed more or less stationary, but in shot 9 the pull from the words, removes the woman from “the dark” and exposes her to the power of the words in their context of delivery outside. Inside, she moves away from the drunken man at the table, her right arm sinks and finally she hurls the glass with determination on the floor before exiting right. The shattering of the glass and the movement from the dark interior to the light outside prepares her for the (ironic) discourse of sobriety. Outside, the girl enters frame right; she looks forlorn and guilt-ridden and holds on to the pole while looking at the evangelist. He rounds off his mock sermon turning left toward the girl at the pole and in the process establishes eye contact. The “audience” trickles away. He addresses the miserable, but transfixed girl with suggestive upward arm movements before exiting frame left with his two friends. She seemingly crumbles in the face of the gospel unaware of being addressed by false lips. The man and his friends enter shot 11 frame left and exit forward frame right in high spirits. The successful evangelist advertises that he now is ready for a drink. Glasses and drinks circulate in an interesting fashion throughout the text – which, of course, is “natural” in a narrative preoccupied with sobriety. Initially, the man’s spleen is so paramount that even the glass he is offered is part of a general sense of ennui. Later, when his spirits are enlivened, the glass is called for. The woman moves in the opposite direction. Her lifestyle is associated with drinking, and in two consecutive shots she has a glass at her lips. To shatter the glass marks a first step in her moving away from her low life in the dark. When she returns back inside in shot 12, from frame right, the man at the table in the foreground again offers her a glass. She accepts it, but places it prominently in the foreground on the table, and when the patron grabs her wrist, she violently frees herself. When exiting, she reverses her movement from the introductory shot, shot 5, forever leaving the dark. In shot 14, the man and his friends enter frame right outside his door – they stop momentarily before entering still in a jocular mood. The shot mirrors shot 3, including a short pause setting the tone before they step inside. Predictably, shot 15 mirrors shot 2, which concludes this part of the narration when the group enters frame left. The evangelist disrobes while the manservant enters frame left. And as advertised, the group now drinks a glass of port. Balancing the blasphemous trajectory and its ironic implications, intertitle 3 reconnects to a proper religious mode by echoing a holy text that is delivered by an omniscient narrator without false lips: “FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.” This intertitle punctuates one of the crosscut threads, while in the next shot, summing up the meaning of the parallel thread, phrased in words of its own – intertitle 4: “THE GIRL GIVES UP HER LIFE IN REPENTANCE” – a title with both retroactive and proactive meaning. Prior to the intertitle, the young woman returns to her spartan room. She is crying and expresses despair in a pantomimic chain full of regret and resolution to reform – she punctuates enlisting support by kneeling on the floor. After the intertitle, we meet her the following day. She enters frame right modestly dressed and ready to leave. Before exiting frame left, she wipes tears from her eyes, again a short, telling moment leads over to the next shot in which we find her in a room for private devotion, with a cross on the wall. She prays and her kneeling gesture recon36

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firms her resolution to reform. The inserted intertitle (number 5) provides information as to which direction her new life will take: “A SETTLEMENT HOUSE WORKER.” Without wasting any time, the next shot, number 19, shows the young woman exiting from the settlement into a garden, frame right an elderly lady on the threshold points off foreground right. The young woman exits foreground right, while the older woman looks concerned. The gesture and the exit in the direction of the gesture are followed by intertitle 6, which takes us back to an evangelical mood and the (ironic) power of words: “UNTO THE FALLEN WILL I CARRY THE WORD THAT RESTORED ME.” The narrative now introduces someone speaking in earnest, preaching the gospel with true lips. Without ironic framing, she erects her imaginary pulpit at the same place as “the evangelist” once occupied – outside the dance hall. At the pole, a man is brutally dismissing a young woman when the reformed woman enters frame left. She immediately interferes, and the man goes off to the left. The reformed girl points off frame mid-foreground and the two young women exit in that direction passing the camera. Her discourse is momentarily put on hold, while she returns to the settlement delivering the girl to the older lady in shot 21. Intertitle 7 anticipates her encounter with the “evangelist”: “THE GIRL DISCOVERS THE MAN’S BASENESS.” Shot 22 shows the reformed girl, frame left in medium-close shot, preaching outside the dance hall’s main entrance. Plenty of customers pass by, among them the tipsy “evangelist”. He is without doubt a prospective object for the discourse of sobriety. He loses his balance when he recognizes the girl and she is shocked when she sees her spiritual mentor in such a state of disgrace. They are both facing the camera in medium-close shot – the frame has been more or less emptied to focus on their moment of (mis-) recognition. The older lady finally escorts the reformed woman off frame left. The man sneaks off right – drunk, but not drunk enough to be unaffected by the experience. Shot 23 takes us back to the devotional quarters from shot 18. The young woman pantomimically acts out her shock and confusion as she looks towards the cross and seeks spiritual support. The man’s predicament is defined by intertitle 8: “THE BITTER HURT OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.” In shot 24, he enters frame right outside his house. Before he steps inside, there is a brief moment of pantomimic despair. Inside the parlor, shot 25, he throws his hat on the floor, before giving his shame and regret free rein in a pantomimic display. He then exits frame right. In shot 26, he leaves his house in great haste without a hat. Intertitle 9 underscores his anguish and shame: “THE WORLD-OLD SEARCH FOR HEART’S PEACE.” The man’s search for the girl takes him inside the dance hall. He enters frame left mirroring the girl’s movement in shot 5. The same old boozing and sleazy traffic is going on. A tipsy girl is seated at the table foreground left offering the man a glass. Like the young girl before, he rejects the glass and runs out from the dark. The next two shots show his desperate quest. In shot 28, he abruptly enters frame left and exits foreground frame right close to the chest-high camera. In shot 29, he enters background right approaching the camera and gradually closes in to a shot scale between medium shot and “bust”. Intertitle 10 promises resolution and the transformation of the false prophet: “THROUGH LOVE HE IS ANSWERED.” In shot 30, he enters frame right outside a building or gallery and conveys despair with his arms. Suddenly, a man enters frame left only to collapse in front of Walthall’s character. He assists the fallen and from nowhere, as it were, a woman helps out from the other side. The two good Samaritans look at each other for a moment that is supplanted by a true scene of recognition. They are both holding onto the fallen man’s arm while he is bending forwards. They reach out to each other in gratitude and pious love grasping each other’s respective free hand. This process of recognition and misrecognition lacks one distinctive trademark of melo37

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drama proper – we have no true virtue threatened, persecuted, misrecognized and eventually triumphing in all its glory. The catchword here is, indeed, transformation and a movement away from various forms of sins to eventually embrace sobriety and perhaps love. As mentioned above, a trade-press review in Variety was utterly unimpressed by the story; let’s end on that note: The Converts are perverts. The picture tells the tale of a lazy young man suddenly seized with an idea of the “fun” it would be to don the garments of a clergyman, sally forth into the world and preach repentance to sinners. This he does, carrying a crowd of two companions for an audience. Approaching a brothel, the interior of which is shown before and afterwards, one of the fallen women within is attracted by his prayer for the erring. She is drawn by his voice to the corner, where the very poor and skimpy crowd of Biograph “supers” are listening with vacant stares. The pseudo minister leaves her. She returns to her squalid room in the Biograph studio, packs up and leaves, becoming a reformed angel of mercy. The young man returns home with his fellows. It was a good joke, and they will celebrate it by going to Blake’s dance hall, become soused to the neck, and meet the same girl as they leave. This occurs in the picture. Upon the ex-minister recognizing his convert, he suffers a relapse of conscience, though still soused to the neck. Staggering home, he grinds his teeth awfully, beats his breast more awfully (if you can beat a breast more awfully than you can grind teeth) and starts forth to seek the ex-prostitute. He finds her when an old man who was standing just outside the wing of a flimsy set totters on the scene, falling down. From the other wing the former belle of the brothel steps forth. She grabs one arm; he grabs the other. After a while, or about eight and one-half feet, they recognize each other. He holds on to the old man’s wig to keep the latter in position, and makes more eyes. Then this picture is over, and a few intelligent people present laughed. The title of The Converts happens thus. First she is converted, then he is converted, and both being perverts anyhow, what more natural than they should fall in love, especially when the masquerading “minister” is soused to the neck. It’s a lovely picture, one of our very best, and no doubt such as these must have been why everyone recognizes the Biograph stock company at sight; also caused the Biograph to be considered the leading moving picture manufacturers. Such as this are aptly named “moving pictures”. They are moving backwards without a question mark. With the church concentrating nearly all its influence to stop the trend of pictures towards the rear, if not attempting to kill the picture game altogether, and with the police of every city watching the films presented, the Biograph utters a series that must offend every decent person, and more particularly the church. The bare idea of basing a picture upon the gospel, and for captions taking quotations from the Bible. And with that, the interior of the brothel has been so delicately handled! The Biograph forgot but one thing, or neglected to show it. In a small town this picture would be shipped back by an exhibitor if he were sensible and any kind of a showman, before it was put over the sheet in public. The Board of Censors could have revoked it for two or three reasons, but principally on the religious ground. The Patents Co. had better not attempt to run the film renting business until that corporation arranges it so it can run manufacturers first. Otherwise before very long, if this keeps up, there will be no exhibitors to suffer. (Variety, March 19, 1910)

Jan Olsson

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243 BIOGRAPH

FAITHFUL Filming date: 10–12/16 February 1910 Location: Los Angeles Studio/Hollywood, California Release date: 21 March 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 28 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: Arthur Marvin, G.W. Bitzer Cast: Arthur Johnson (John Dobbs [Adonese]); Mack Sennett (Zeke [Faithful]); Florence Barker (John’s sweetheart); Kate Bruce (Her mother); ? (Butler); Dell Henderson, Anthony O’Sullivan (Bystanders); Anthony O’Sullivan, W. Chrystie Miller, William A. Quirk, Dorothy West, Francis J. Grandon (Neighbors) Archival Sources: George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative Faithfulness is without doubt the transcedental quality of the human and animal being, but the hero of this Biograph subject was endowed with that superabundance, as to make it positively odious. He had “Old Dog Tray” beaten to a standstill for his loyalty. You might apply to him omnipresent, ubiquitous and all the other adjectives along that line and then not fully describe his fidelity, for he is “Johnny-on-the-spot” with a vengeance. John Dobbs, a young man in good circumstances, goes a-courting, and returning from the home of his lady fair, his auto runs down Zeke, the vacuum-pated roustabout of the town. Although Zeke was not hurt, he was the recipient of a severe jolt which gave him a temporary case of nerves, which scared John into a fit of earnest solicitude. Imagining the tattered condition of Zeke’s clothing was due to the accident, he not only soothes his imaginary hurts with a balm of silver dollars, but takes him to the store and buys him a suit of “hand me downs.” Zeke is quite unaccustomed to such a bestowal of munificence, and his gratitude is accordingly excessive. So much that he then and there swears eternal friendship; that he will never desert him; that he will stick to John through think and thin. John cries “Holy Smoke! what am I up against?” and jumping into his auto dashes off under the impression that he has left the poor simpleminded Zeke on the sidewalk. But not so, for when he alights at his home, Zeke is there beside him, having hooked on behind the machine as it darted off. Well, John’s troubles have only begun. He can’t move but what Zeke is at his side, his face wreathed in a smile that is childlike and bland, exclaiming – “I can’t be happy away from you.” Thinking he has eluded his zealous friend, John visits his swetheart, and during an interesting moment of their tete-atete, Zeke’s head appears between, earnestly pleading his friend’s cause. This sends the girl away in a huff and John receives a letter later that it is all off between them, as she did not know when she became engaged that she would have to tolerate his idiotic friend. This throws John into such a rage that he feels like a murdering Faithful Zeke. He does however, club him, but Zeke receives the blows with angelic smiles. It is no use. Flight seems the only course, and John beats it. He has covered miles and sinks down from sheer exhaustion. There he sits panting, but happy in the thought of at least evading his tormentor, only to glance up

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and see Zeke’s beatific countenance gazing fondly down at him. “Well, I suppose I must make the best of it.” So he takes Zeke by the hand and resolves to accept his well meant devotion. Henceforth the two are inseparable. Zeke, however, has his good qualities and is always solicitous of John’s welfare. Later, Zeke has opportunity of showing his true value. The house in which John’s former sweetheart resides is afire, and the girl is in great danger of perishing in the flames, when Zeke passes. The whole town is in a panic, and the first thought was the fire company, whose aid is instantly summoned. While the firemen are dashing furiously to the scene, Zeke is playing the brave hero, for seizing a ladder close by he ascends to the window of the girl’s room and carries her down to safety. John has heard of the conflagration and thinking only of the girl’s evident peril, rushes up to find her safely in the arms of Faithful Zeke. Things are squared and the value of Zeke’s devotion recognized and appreciated. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 21, 1910

John Dobbs (Adonese) is in love with a young lady. When his chauffeur takes him home after a rendezvous, the car brushes Zeke (Faithful), a local simpleton. He falls to the ground shaken, but unhurt. Faithful for some reason literally becomes attached to Adonese after receiving both money and a new, but ill-fitting outfit in compensation for the mishap. Faithful is so touched by Adonese’s friendliness and generosity that he follows him everywhere and outwits all Adonese’s efforts to escape the unwelcome affection. To makes things worse, Adonese’s fair lady puts him on hold because of the intrusive companion. Eventually, Faithful’s resourcefulness pays off. He manages to save the young lady when her house is on fire. In the open-ended final shot, the three of them seem to reach a form of understanding in the wake of Faithful’s heroism.

Faithful represents a precursor to Mack Sennett’s trajectory as a comedian, even if the mayhem in this nice little low-key comedy never amounts to Keystonian proportions. The story, instead, provides ample opportunities for fine-grained comic effects. Faithful (Sennett) might be a simpleton, but he certainly knows how to make the car incident he provokes pay off. He invents one “pain point” after another when he discovers Adonese’s (Arthur Johnson) willingness to compensate on a one-for-one basis with a silver dollar for each spot that hurts. The costume Adonese buys for Faithful after the incident underscores the discrepancy between the Faithful’s grown-up body and his infant-like mind. His childish affection, however, gradually takes on a stature of its own, particularly after his resourceful rescuing of Adonese’s fair lady (Florence Barker). Prior to that moment, the despair over Faithful’s omnipresence has to do with its chilling effect on Adonese’s beloved. Faithful’s ubiquitous presence – here, there and everywhere – drives Adonese nuts and is unacceptable to the lady in question. Her “yes” to Adonese’s proposal, prior to Faithful’s intervention, is put on hold in the face of the latter seemingly being a part of the deal. Once introduced, Faithful intrudes in virtually every shot and insists on sharing Adonese’s personal space. One aspect of the comedic touch is that the audience detects Faithful’s presence in the frame before Adonese discovers him. When Adonese celebrates his success in ridding himself of Faithful, the latter bounces back into the frame irrespective of what measures are deployed to remove him. Faithful’s affection is highly physical, which is the hardest part for Adonese to cope with. Being patted and physically “accosted” by Faithful is simply too much. Faithful’s touches provoke Adonese and inspire an escalating level of desperate, but futile attempts to escape from the pest. The story works partly as a series of linked vignettes delaying the initial trajectory, the 40

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courtship. Adonese thinks he has sorted out the incident with the car after buying a new outfit for Faithful. Not accepting to be left behind, Faithful clings to the car when Adonese drives off. Faithful’s high spirits even include a direct address to the camera; he tips his hat while hanging outside the car. When Adonese returns home, Faithful is already waiting for him outside the house. Adonese misreads Faithful’s outstretched hand; he reads the gesture as a request for more money. Faithful takes the offered coin, returns it and insists on shaking hands. After the handshake, Faithful is invited in. From this moment on, his new friend besieges Adonese. When Faithful assists in the courtship, Adonese’s girlfriend is all but intrigued. In a futile attempt to have at least a moment of privacy, Adonese runs to the hills, but Faithful soon joins him. Realizing that there is no escape, Adonese takes Faithful’s hand and together they walk back. Back home a letter from his fiancée awaits Adonese. She needs time to rethink their relation, she writes. When everything seems lost, Faithful saves the day. His quick thinking in a moment of peril is instrumental in bringing the couple back together. During a fire, Adonese’s (ex-)girlfriend is trapped on the second floor. Two men run to the fire station to alert the brigade. Parallel to this, Faithful arrives on the scene. He runs off frame right and immediately returns with a long ladder. When the brigade arrives, he has already climbed inside and rescued the lady in distress. When Adonese arrives at the scene, his girlfriend informs him that Faithful is the hero of the day. Adonese embraces him, and the lady takes his hand. The couple is reunited by Faithful’s heroic effort. Jan Olsson

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244 BIOGRAPH

THE TWISTED TRAIL Filming date: 15–18 February 1910 Location: Sierra Madre, California Release date: 24 March 1910 Release length: approx. 988 feet Copyright date: 28 March 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Molly Hendricks); Arthur Johnson (Bob Gorman); George O. Nicholls (Mr. Hendricks); Kate Bruce (Mrs. Hendricks); W. Chrystie Miller (Grandfather); Mack Sennett, Dell Henderson (Ranch hands); ? (Doctor); Charles H. West, Alfred Paget (Among pursuers); Anthony O’Sullivan (Escort); ? (Coroner); Dorothy West (Girl on farm); Alfred Paget, Frank Opperman (Indians) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection) A STORY OF FATE IN THE MOUNTAIN WILDS Those who have journeyed far along the path of life will, upon looking back, find that the trail was decided in detour, with twists and turns so frequent that we marvel at our being so far advanced without serious calamity, and yet with most of us there has appeared seemingly immovable barriers and menacing dangers. However, in all cases we assume that fate has blazed our trail and we must follow it. Such an illustration is given in this Biograph subject, for it clearly shows that fate ordains all. Little Molly Hendricks is leaving her papa’s California ranch for the East to attend school. Bob Gorman, the formean [sic] of the ranch, a bright young chap, has long had a tender feeling for the girl, but has never had the courage to declare his love. However, now that she is going so far and possibly for so long, he cannot restrain himself and reveals this feeling. His action displeases his employer, Mr. Hendricks, who is of an irascible nature, and his first inclination is to discharge him, but reasoning that the girl is leaving at once and there can be nothing further come of the affair, he curbs his temper on advice of his doctor, who warns him of the result, he being a victim of heart trouble. All goes well until a year later when Molly writes of her intended return, stating she will not tell the day of her arrival, as she wants to surprise them. Bob, learning the news, is beside himself with joy, but the owner quarrels with him, and during the convulsion of his passion succumbs to his affliction. There are no witnesses to the quarrel, and of course the foreman is accused of killing him. On learning of the ranch owner’s death, the hands band together and search for the forman [sic], who, realizing the danger of his helpless position, has flown to the mountains, for hanging he knows is the punishment to be meted. He has succeeded in eluding his pursuers and makes his way high into one of the rocky peaks, where he falls exhausted. From this point he can see almost the entire trail as it winds through the hills. He is not here long when he hears the cry of a woman, and climbing to a point of vantage, is horrified to see Molly who has been making her way homeward over the trail on a burro and is waylaid by several Indians. From where he stands he fires and wounds one of the

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red devils, and in a panic they flee. When he arrives at the girl’s side, he finds her burro gone, and she is suffering a sprained ankle. To take the girl to safety would mean his own death, but his love for the girl induces him to make the sacrifice. They haven’t proceeded far when, confronted by the searching party, one of them takes the girl in charge while the rest take the poor fellow off to the woods to hang him, despite the girl’s entreaties. This, Bob would have suffered had not the timely arrival of the doctor, who had discovered the real cause of Hendrick’s [sic] death, prevented it. Hence, it is by this perilous, circuitous trail that Bob reaches the heart of the ranchman’s pretty daughter. The subject is a series of the most beautiful mountain views ever photographed. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 24, 1910

Bob Gorman, foreman on the Hendricks ranch in the California Sierras, loves Molly Hendricks, despite the disapproval of her father, the ranch owner. When she leaves for school in the East, Bob kisses her goodbye, enraging Hendricks. A year later, Molly writes her parents a letter saying she will return over the mountain trail in the next few days. Bob overhears them reading the letter, and expresses delight, to Hendricks’s renewed anger. After Bob has left, Hendricks’s rage leads to a seizure, and the doctor warns him that, if he does not avoid such overexcitement, he is likely to have a heart attack. Later that day, Hendricks finds Bob moodily slashing at trees with his stick and reproves him. Their quarrel is renewed, and suddenly Hendricks collapses. Mrs. Hendricks rushes up, and finds her husband dead. She accuses Bob of killing him, and calls the ranch hands. Bob runs off and hides in the hills. The hands form a posse to search for him and hang him. Riding over the mountain trail, Molly is attacked by Indians. Bob hears her cries, and seeing the ambush from his hideout, shoots at the Indians and drives them away. When he reaches Molly, he finds she has twisted her ankle, so he helps her to the hideout. The posse cannot find the hideout, but Molly hears their shots, and begs Bob to carry her to them so she can return home. He reluctantly agrees. When he brings Molly to them, they tie him up and prepare a noose, despite her pleas. Meanwhile, the doctor has examined Hendricks’s body, and discovered that he died of natural causes. Mrs. Hendricks tells him the fate the hands have in mind for Bob and he runs to find them, arriving just in time to save Bob’s life. After the funeral, Molly, with the consent of her mother and grandfather, tells Bob she will marry him.

The plot summary above differs from the plot of the print I have seen, being an attempt to reconstruct the plot of the original release, and, presumably, the paper print. There is (at the time of this writing) something of a mystery about the print I viewed. It is in the Library of Congress’s can for the 16mm copy of the copyright deposit paper print, but it does not derive from that print. It has titles indicating it was edited and titled by M.G. Cohen and J.F. Natteford for distribution by Aywon Film Corporation. According to Anthony Slide (p. 34), Aywon bought up Biograph titles after that company’s demise in 1917, and reissued them in re-edited versions. This print is such a re-edited reissue, by the look of it, dating from the 1920s. The images all seem to be in the same order as the original release, but the editors have interpolated a very large number of titles, to the point that it could be released as a two-reeler (the print is the equivalent of 1,194 feet of 35mm, short for two reels, but considerably more than the original 988 feet, and it has titles for a reel division half-way through). These titles change the character names, but also make some significant changes in the plot. Most obviously, they suggest (as neither the images, nor the Biograph Bulletin do) that when she learns of Bob’s supposed killing of her father, Molly urges the posse to string him up rather than pleading for his life. 43

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A more interesting change is the attempt of the titlers at every opportunity to extend the story time (e.g., “THE NEXT DAY …”, “AFTER LONG HOURS OF PONDERING …”, “THE DELAYED CORONER FINISHES HIS LONG JOURNEY FROM THE COUNTY SEAT”), adding hours, days and perhaps weeks into a series of incidents which, if you ignore the titles and look only at the images, takes place on one day (I suspect the fades that add a night to Bob and Molly’s sojourn in the hideout are added in the reprinting). As reconstructed, the action is set on three days. The first two are separated by a long but indeterminate interval, the time Molly is away at school (the Biograph Bulletin says this is a year, and there was probably a title saying the same thing). The last scene, just after Hendricks’s funeral, is presumably a few days after the day of her return. In the first comment I did for The Griffith Project, on Twin Brothers (released 26 April 1909, eleven months before The Twisted Trail), I noted the tendency for Biograph to build its films around a climactic situation, which would occupy most of the reel, with a shorter establishing section to fill in the backstory (DWG Project, #126). The establishing section was typically compressed, foreshortening years of buildup into some typifying incident, while the climax, despite itself occupying as short as possible a story time, was dilated to maximize excitement and suspense. The Twisted Trail clearly exhibits the same structure, with the addition of an epilogue (present in many of the 1909 films, too). The elements of the basic situation – Bob’s love for Molly, and her father’s hostility to the match – are established in two scenes in which she leaves the ranch for school, most of the rest of the film is the climax, and the epilogue consists of one scene in which the lovers are reunited. Whereas the action is simple in the establishment and the epilogue, the climax packs in incident after incident: the receipt of the letter from Molly, the first quarrel between Bob and Hendricks, the first seizure and the doctor’s warning, the second quarrel and Hendricks’s death, the accusation against Bob and his flight and pursuit, Molly’s ride over the mountains, her ambush by Indians, Bob’s rescue, his tending of Molly in his hideout, his carrying her to the posse, the near lynching, the doctor’s establishment of the cause of Hendricks’s death and his rescue of Bob. Obviously, piling so much plot into a single day increases the amount of coincidence – if Bob spends weeks in his hideout, it is hardly surprising that he will be there when Molly is ambushed crossing the hills, and if Hendricks has a weak heart, it is likely he will die of a heart attack days or weeks after the doctor’s warning, but for these incidents to follow immediately on one another as they do is highly implausible. For Griffith in 1910, this piling on of coincidence was clearly a desideratum, increasing the sensational character and moral dignity of the climax. For the re-editors in the 1920s, however, used to the way feature films handled time and familiar with the constant denunciations of coincidence in the screenwriting manuals, the diegetic time of the climactic events had to be dilated in the interests of plausibility. This film is the seventh produced by the troupe which accompanied Griffith to Los Angeles in January 1910. They built an open-stage studio at Grand Avenue and Washington Street for filming interior sets, but mostly sought out scenic locations in the area (Henderson, pp. 94ff). There are only two sets in the five films I have to review, and none in this one. Although the story is obviously that of a Western, with a ranch house, cowboys with their bunk house, and Indian aggressors, the actual setting seems to be an apple farm. The reviewer in The New York Dramatic Mirror (April 2, 1910, p. 17), presumably Frank Woods, complains about the way the characters are lined up across the front in the first scene: “The pretty daughter of a ranchman is going East to school. The buggy is ready and the girl is kissing her mother goodbye. Off to one side the father and the ranch foreman are standing facing front, like soldiers on parade. What were they looking at?” As usual, his objection is to a blocking that introduces significant elements of the story by arranging them in a perspicuous but not realistically motivated way. I would not myself have noticed this 44

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were it not for his comment. At the beginning, all the characters are waiting for Molly to come out of the house, and so are simply standing around in a plausible way (more problematic to me is the way the three across the front block the grandfather and the buggy which is to take Molly away); after Molly’s entrance, the father is standing front centre next to his wife waiting for his farewell kiss, and Bob appropriately stands slightly away from the central group, the outsider waiting his chance. More generally, though, the highly abbreviated form of the one-reel film encouraged blocking that gives the quickest access to the crucial characters and objects, and verisimilitude was constantly sacrificed to this exigency in all films made at this time. Ben Brewster

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245 BIOGRAPH

AS IT IS IN LIFE Filming date: 22/23 February 1910 Location: California Pigeon Farm Release date: 4 April 1910 Release length: approx. 981 feet Copyright date: 6 April 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (George Forrester); Gladys Egan (His daughter, as a child); Mary Pickford (His daughter, as an adult); Mack Sennett (Owner of pigeon farm ?); Marion Leonard (Forrester’s lover); Charles H. West (Daughter’s husband); Frank Opperman (His companion); Anthony O’Sullivan (Worker on farm); Kate Bruce (Maid); W. Chrystie Miller (Old man) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate negative, 1915 reissue (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive THE STORY OF A FATHER’S SELFISH LOVE Shakespeare wrote that “Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man,” which may be true in many instances, but the philosophical will contend that life is what we make it. It is in our power to generate sunshine sufficient to dissipate the threatening clouds of sorrow. Man, by nature is prone to be unreasonable, selfish, and thoughtless, though these traits can be hidden even to our own discerning, still they are there and it is for us to curb them. Love, the most commendable virtue, is itself unreasonable, as this Biograph subject will illustrate, and how parental love can be so extreme as to be selfish. George Forrester has suffered the loss of his beloved wife, the mother of his little ten-year-old child. The child is forced to become his little housekeeper, while Forrester secures work at the pigeon farm. While thus employed, he meets a former sweetheart and renews his attentions, feeling that she might prove a second mother to his child, but no; on serious consideration, he realizes that he could not meet the wants of a second wife, as he finds that her tastes are extravagant, and do his duty to his child, hence he determines to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his child, sending her off to school that she may rise above her present environment, while he toils to make ends meet. Several years later we find the girl returning from school, having now grown to young womanhood. She is surprised and grieved to see such a change in her father. As she views his almost decrepit form, she exclaims: “Worn hands, gray hairs, and all for me. Father, I shall never leave you.” Ah, but what a rash resolution. Little do we know what fate is designing. She, of course, meets “the” young man. They love each other honestly and devotedly, but the father is unreasonably jealous, and tries to keep them apart, but this is impossible, so in a fit of rage he bids the girl to choose between him and her lover. She chooses the lover, feeling that her dear father would relent. He does not, however, and refuses to either sanction her marriage or visit the couple

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afterwards, living his life alone in his little cottage. About two years later, the young wife is so wrapped up in her baby that she considers it a slight on the part of anyone who passes it by without enthusiastic notice. Of course, they all tell her her baby is very cute and pretty, but they rebel at being obliged to think of nothing else. She feels that nobody appreciates her baby, so she decides to brave her fears and pay a visit to her father, hoping that the baby may soften his iron will. Cautiously entering the garden, she finds her father the picture of despair, seated on a bench in the arbor. Approaching him noiselessly, she places her baby on its grandpop’s knees. It was as the young wife hoped, and we leave the scene with the child and the grandchild folded in the old man’s arms. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], April 4, 1910

George Forrester’s wife dies, leaving him with a small daughter. To support the daughter, he finds work on a pigeon farm. While working there, he meets a woman he knew and admired before his marriage, and she shows an interest in renewing their relationship. However, he realises that he will not be able to support both his daughter and this old flame, who has expensive tastes, so he reluctantly breaks with her, and devotes his life to his daughter. When, many years later, the latter returns from school in the East, she is shocked to see how her father has worn himself out in her support, and vows to look after him for the rest of his life. However, she soon meets an attractive young man, and falls in love. When Forrester finds out, he is distraught, and forces his daughter to choose between him and the young man. When she chooses the lover, he breaks off relations with her. Two years later, when his daughter is married and has a baby, she finds that her husband and her new friends are not prepared to devote all their time to the new family member. She goes to her father, and he finds a new solace in his grandchild.

Like most of the California films made in the Winter and Spring of 1910, the impetus for this one seems to have derived mostly from the chance to exploit the scenic possibilities of an exotic location, in this case, a pigeon farm, and like many if not most of those films, it has no interiors. The location seems quite irrelevant to the action – for the story, Forrester could have found any kind of job – but it was clearly a tourist attraction, and still appealed visually to Vlada Petric (p. 455), who went on to make even stronger claims for it: “This fascinating place – with hundreds of pigeons flying continuously through the frame in all directions – functions not merely as a picturesque background for the story, but also as a lyrical component of the narration. Integrated with mise en scène and the dramatic conflict, it contributes a metaphorical meaning to the predominantly sentimental plot.” However, he does not specify the meaning of this “metaphor”, and there seems to be no obvious one. The fact that it is a tourist attraction does, however, give rise to a repetition, for it is among groups of tourists visiting the farm that both father and daughter meet their sweethearts, and this, in turn, gives rise to a more significant repetition noted by Joyce Jesionowski (p. 156), the fact that the two courtships, separated by many years, take place on the same leafy lane, and are introduced by the respective couples traversing another identical scenic space, thus ironically contrasting the father’s retreat into the family with the daughter’s breaking free of it. This film has the same tripartite structure as The Twisted Trail, but differs from it insofar as both the first and the third parts have real action in them, giving an establishing section, a climax, and a resolution in the classic way, rather than the abbreviated backstory, extended climactic action, and brief epilogue typical of the one-reel film. The very opening, with a 47

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title, “THE MOTHER IS GONE”, and a scene with the father and small daughter in mourning, is a typical piece of backstory, but the subsequent action in which the father, having obtained employment to support his daughter, courts a second wife, and then rejects her in favour of caring for his daughter, is more than simply preparatory. And the last section, after Forrester’s daughter’s marriage, is also different from the epilogue to The Twisted Trail. In that film, the reconciliation of the heroine and the hero merely sets the seal on the rescue of the hero from lynching that constitutes the effective resolution. As It Is in Life, given the title, might well have ended with the father left alone. That would be a gloomy ending, and it was already standard film-trade rhetoric that genuine American pictures rejected the morbidity of European films – meaning both that American films would or should be less salacious, and that they should be more optimistic. Frank Woods’s comment on The Twisted Trail in The New York Dramatic Mirror (April 2, 1910, p. 17) that “it would have been a true Biograph ending if the poor chap had been hanged and the girl permitted to discover his innocence and her love too late” specifically associates Biograph with the counter-trend that allowed some unhappy ends, given that the varied program of short films in the nickelodeon program gave room for some films that at least evaded the dictates of the optimistic superego. In As It Is in Life, however, the epilogue, by reversing the logic of the climactic sequence into a happy end, becomes a true resolution. The climax of As It Is in Life is particularly revealing as to the use of intertitles in 1910. Such intertitles, usually called “subtitles” or simply “titles”, were just that – that is, they did not stand in for dialogue or for narrative information which it was impossible, too onerous or otherwise impermissible to represent visually, but rather named the following scene or sequence, in the way the title of a painting, especially a nineteenth-century narrative painting, named its subject. Here the title “CHOOSE BETWEEN US” (in inverted commas) is not simply a description of the scene in moral terms, as “THE POOR AND THE RICH ON THE WAY OF LIFE” is in Gold Is Not All – it does represent a piece of dialogue, spoken by Forrester to his daughter. However, it is separated from the moment in which Forrester utters the words by ten shots; it is a name, but one for a whole sequence – the eleven-shot alternation between two set-ups which constitutes the heart of the film. This starts with Forrester and his daughter sitting in front of their cabin. In the next shot, at the already established meeting point of the lovers, the daughter’s boyfriend sends a man friend to tell her he is waiting to see her. In a return to the front of Forrester’s cabin, the friend enters and gives the message; despite her father’s unhappiness at her departure, Forrester’s daughter leaves to see her boyfriend. Four shots alternate the assignation and Forrester in front of his cabin, more and more concerned, and finally setting out to find his daughter. Back at the scene of the assignation, Forrester enters to see his daughter kissing her boyfriend. He leaves, and returns briefly to his cabin in turmoil (Jesionowski [p. 109] remarks that this protraction of the sequence serves briefly to introduce a recurrent Griffith motif: the “unseen enemy” spying on the couple), then returns to the scene of the assignation, and makes the demand of his daughter. She is distraught, but decides to stay with the boyfriend, and in a final shot he returns to the cabin and weeps. This use of a title to name a series of shots also suggests something about the use of alternating editing at this time. Rather than being a way to propel the narrative forward, which is how we tend to think of it, it is a way of combining disparate scenic material to constitute a single picture, i.e., it is a static, delaying device. Rather than using an emblematic picture at the heart of the film, like the “way of life” scene in Gold Is Not All, the same status is conferred on an eleven-shot sequence. Ben Brewster

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246 BIOGRAPH

GOLD IS NOT ALL Filming date: 18/19/21/24 February 1910 Location: Los Angeles Studio/Pasadena, California Release date: 28 March 1910 Release length: approx. 988 feet Copyright date: 1 April 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Marion Leonard (Mabel, the heiress); Dell Henderson (Tom Darrell, her husband); Gladys Egan (Their child); Linda Arvidson (Ruth); Kate Bruce (Her mother); Mack Sennett (Steve); Kathlyn Williams (Tom’s mistress); W. Chrystie Miller (Grandfather); George O. Nicholls (Doctor); Anthony O’Sullivan, Alfred Paget, Frank Opperman (Servants); ? (Maid); Francis J. Grandon, Henry B. Walthall, Charles Craig, Charles H. West (At party) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm acetate negative A LESSON TO BLIGHT THE SEED OF DISCONTENT Paradoxical as this expression may seem, there never was a truer maxim framed. “Gold Is Not All.” What a moral those four words teach. Can it purchase happiness? Rarely. Can it assure health? No. Can it procure immortality? Never. Can it promise us eternal paradise? Of course not. And yet, we madly struggle to gain it, vainly believing it omnipotent, and capable of inducing conditions Utopian. Alas, this is the most chimerical hallucination of humankind. No clearer illustration of this has ever been shown than in this Biograph production. First is shown the poor looking with wonder and envy on the rich, assuming their lives to be nothing but sunshine. Sunshine, maybe, but such sunshine does not reach the heart. From here begins the parallel most clearly and finely drawn. The young heiress is walking with her sweetheart in the grounds of her mansion, seemingly happy, while on the roadway, with but a wall dividing, stroll the poor young couple. What a contrast. Here are four young souls starting on their paths of life so divergent. What may we assume? The one couple, with wealth and position, hence ease and happiness seems the outlook; the other couple, poor and uncultured, their future would seem sorrow, labor, and privation. But how fallible is the prophesy. Ten years later we meet them again. Mabel, the heiress, has been the wife of Tom Darrell all this while, as has been Ruth the wife of Steve. It is the occasion of a house party at the Darrell Mansion and Ruth’s heart grows sad and envious at the sight of the lavishness of the affair as she views it from a distance. At her humble home she is made to forget it in the true love of Steve. How different with Mabel, Tom has now cruelly deserted her, writing that she has wealth sufficient to make her and the child happy. This seems logical, but is it? Here we find a house of trouble. On the other hand, we find Ruth in her little cottage where love abides. However, she is irresistibly drawn to the gateway of the mansion just as Mabel drives through up to the house. Envy again grips her, but little does she know that this pleasant way leads to a room of tears, for Mabel’s little child is taken seriously ill, with no hope of recovery. What is the value

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of her gold now. “It cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.” Vivid, indeed, is the contrast now – Ruth and her honest devoted husband, with their children playing about them, all happy, healthy and contented; but we see Mabel crouching beside the deathbed of her little one, alone and forsaken. To her aching heart her gold is indeed poor balm. This subject comprises some of the most beautiful scenes ever shown while the photography has never been equaled. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], March 28, 1910

Mabel, a young woman living in a large mansion, is courted by Tom Darrell, a neighbour of the same class. Meanwhile, Ruth, Mabel’s laundress, is courted by the equally lowly Steve. Ruth and Steve watch the wealthy couple’s courtship enviously. Both couples marry; the Darrells have a daughter, and Ruth and Steve a son and daughter. Tom tires of Mabel and his daughter, and runs away with another woman. Later, Mabel’s little girl is stricken with diphtheria and dies, despite her mother’s offering the doctor all her wealth if he can cure her. Meanwhile, Ruth and Steve’s children remain healthy, and their domestic happiness prevents their persisting envy of Mabel’s wealth from embittering them.

“Another sociological discussion is presented in this film – the third of its class that the Biograph has produced. The other two were The Red Man’s View and A Corner in Wheat which were at the time pronounced in these reviews daring departures from the conventional field of motion picture literature, being editorials rather than fiction. This picture is full as successful as the other two” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 9, 1910, p. 17). A Corner in Wheat (1909) is one of the best known of the Biographs today, and, if The Redman’s View (1909) is less well known, Frank Woods’s linking of the two as sombre accounts of social injustice (a link he had already made in the Mirror’s review of A Corner in Wheat, as Tom Gunning reminds us in his discussions of these films [see DWG Project, #214 and 216]) is obvious enough. To present-day sensibilities, however, the “editorial” claim of Gold Is Not All seems too preposterous, or at least too old-fashioned, to allow the film to stand beside the other titles in the way Woods implies. Is this a sign of the greater realism of the earlier films (outside the editorial offices of the Wall Street Journal, most people probably still believe that the rich grind the faces of the poor, as the whites do those of all other races, but even in those offices, few believe the poor are happier than the rich) or simply of the persistent prestige of pessimism over optimism? Whatever the answer, it is important to stress that in 1910 the two positions could be parts of a respectable moral critique of unbridled capitalism (a kind of “antimandevilleanism”), one eagerly embraced by the spokesmen of the film industry. The Moving Picture World review of Gold Is Not All (April 9, 1910, p. 553) claims “such pictures should assist in creating a sentiment that will place a true value upon wealth in its relation to human happiness and its influence upon life”, and Woods calls it an “excellent sermon”. However, when Linda Arvidson came to discuss the making of the film fifteen years later (pp. 158–60), she was clearly embarrassed by its naivety, and says that the wealthy Pasadenans who lent the house which appears as that of the rich couple in the film (and their butler to be one of the servants), had no moral qualms about their wealth – “you know a person can have money and still be a respectable citizen in the community”. Indeed, Woods distances himself from the message as “a half truth that has long been used by the wealthy and well-to-do to convince the poor and lowly that they should be contented with their lot”. He also notes, however, that “we need not subscribe fully to the sentiment that the Biograph philosopher teaches, but we must recognize the clever form with which 50

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the argument is presented”. Formally, at least, it is arguable that Gold Is Not All is on a level with, or even superior to, A Corner in Wheat. In formal terms the affinities with A Corner in Wheat are clear enough. Both films rely on alternation to compare the lives of characters from different classes, lives which are causally linked only by the abstract economic laws that make one group rich, the others poor, and by the providential order that “accidentally” punishes the rich (and, in Gold Is Not All, at least, rewards the poor). The result is a reduction in emphasis on a narrative chain of cause and effect: the poor couple in Gold Is Not All have no connection with the rich one, except that they are about the same age, live in the same neighbourhood, and the poor woman does the rich couple’s laundry. This downplaying of narrative causality is what Woods refers to when he calls the films “editorials rather than fiction”, and Tom Gunning (op. cit.) infers from Views and Film Index’s description of their stories as “allegories” (for they are, of course, stories, just as much as The Lonely Villa or most other Biographs). Gunning notes the way in which pointing or looking offscreen in The Redman’s View introduces a new space and time with what might seem scant concern for spatio-temporal causality; the link is motivated rather by its symbolic appropriateness. In the same way, in Gold Is Not All, the poor characters regularly turn and look offscreen “at” the previous scene, but there is no implication that that scene is actually visible from where the characters now are; the look indicates that the character is thinking about, and more specifically, envying the lot of the characters in the other scene. This special kind of causality is typical of narrative painting, where the different elements depicted have a relationship which is not simply one of effective cause to the unfolding of the story in time; some are direct traces or effects of events that have preceded the moment chosen for depiction, and others imply causal sequences which will give rise to events in the future, but many have more emblematic or moral relationships to the sequence constituting the story. Gold Is Not All has this kind of pictorial logic; indeed, as Barry Salt pointed out (in a National Film Theatre, London, program note for August 17, 1976), it is built round a single scene which is very like a painting. It is introduced by a title – “THE POOR AND THE RICH ON THE WAY OF LIFE” – which is, as titles in films in this period so often are, not the filling in of narrative elements (speeches of characters, spatio-temporal connectives, or chunks of action not represented visually), but rather a “title” in the sense of a name for the scene that follows. The scene shows the wall bounding Mabel’s estate, with a dirt road outside the wall to the left of frame, and the park inside to the right. Mabel and Tom enter near the rear inside the park, and conduct their courtship; Steve and Ruth enter at the rear on the road, also courting. Mabel and Tom come forward, and do not see Ruth and Steve, but Ruth and Steve look over the wall and see the rich couple (their position always slightly to the rear of the other couple motivates – realistically, given the basically frontal stance of all the characters, but also by the theatrical convention that upstage characters can witness unseen the actions of downstage ones – the discrepancy of knowledge). Mabel and Tom exit front right; Ruth and Steve express envy, and exit dejectedly front left. A painting with the same title and much the same composition is conceivable, but the sequence of events, slight as they are, is crucial as to how this scene works: first an empty setting, then one couple’s arrival, then the other, their mutually oblivious courtship, then the poor couple’s seeing and envying the rich, then the exit, oblivious, of the rich couple, and that, dejected, of the poor, finally leaving the empty space as at the beginning of the shot. The rest of the film, however, does not simply recapitulate this picture; rather, it constitutes the other wings of a polyptych, which reveal that the envy felt by the poor couple is unjustified, as the rich marriage fails where the poor one succeeds. As I argued in “A Scene at the ‘Movies’”, the film sets up a hierarchy of knowledge, where the unhappy rich are unaware of the poor, the poor 51

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are aware of the rich, but misconstrue their situation, and only the spectator knows the full story, and its ironies. Where this film thus differs from A Corner in Wheat is in its hierarchy of knowledge, with the rich entirely unaware of anything but their own fate, the poor aware of the wealth of the rich, but not of their unhappiness, and the audience aware of both, whereas in the earlier film every group of characters is oblivious of its connections with the others. This is where I think the superiority of Gold Is Not All lies – there is not enough cement in the structure of A Corner in Wheat to hold its various parts together. My preference here is of a piece with my general preference for domestic Griffith over epic Griffith, for True Heart Susie (1919) over The Birth of a Nation (1915), but the problem is exacerbated by the brevity of the onereel film. With no time to develop the invisible connections between the characters, the films collapse into a set of separate stories. The same problem is found in another ambitious Biograph, Pippa Passes (1909); the innocent Pippa’s song providentially deters each of its accidental auditors from committing some contemplated sin, but in the fifteen-minute film (as opposed to Browning’s five-act play), the stories of the auditors are unconnected to each other, and only linked to Pippa’s by accident (or rather abstract providence). Although Woods (op. cit.) admired this pictorial form of the film, he reproved the players for another pictorial device: “When the young daughter of the poor comes first in contact with the lady of fortune the two gaze at each other overlong – a trick that the Biograph players sometimes carry to an extreme.” Woods simply censures this as one of the lapses from realism that he constantly criticizes in films from all companies, but as Eileen Bowser has pointed out (1990, pp. 88–89), this is not just a quirk of the actors but an instance of a traditional stage device, the tableau. Ruth and her mother pause at the gate of Mabel’s mansion as the latter comes out to go for a walk. Mabel, as always, ignores the gaping Ruth, but she drops her handkerchief and Ruth picks it up and hands it to her. She gazes at the girl in surprise, then takes it, thanks her and briskly walks off. The pause is motivated by surprise, and by the embarrassment which the rich characters in the film always demonstrate when they are forced to recognize the existence of the poor for a moment, so it is not really open to Woods’s criticism, but it does create a picture, the moment of hesitancy setting up a moral comparison between the indifferent rich and the envious poor. As Lea Jacobs and I have argued in Theatre to Cinema (pp. 48–54), true stage tableaux are quite rare in the one-reel film, and are certainly held for a much shorter period than they were on the stage, but these momentary hesitations at junctures in the narrative which point up moral contrasts are quite common in one-reelers, at any rate in Biograph one-reelers, as those who have been following The Griffith Project should by now be aware. The film has one of the rare sets in these first California pictures – a room inside the rich couple’s mansion. When first seen, this is a sitting room, but toward the end of the film Mabel’s daughter’s sick-bed is set up in it. Obviously, the house we have seen in the exteriors is large enough to have lots of rooms more suitable than this one for a child’s sick-room. It may be that, at this date, the Los Angeles studio was not large enough, or the company did not have sufficient flats and furniture, to build two sets for one film. However, it is characteristic that interior spaces only have multiple sets when something hinges on the relations between them – if characters spy on one another from room to room, or barricade themselves into one room while others try to force their way in from another, and so on. In The Country Doctor (1909), which has the relatively similar denouement of one child dying from diphtheria while another child survives, there is similarly only one set inside the doctor’s house. However, this set represents only the child’s room, and therefore does not stretch verisimilitude in the same way (in The Country Doctor, the poor family, too, have only one set, but it is plausible that a sick child would be moved into the warm kitchen in such a hum52

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ble cottage). Studio constraints may have influenced the decision not to have a parallel interior of the poor couple’s cottage in Gold Is Not All – though it is also plausible that a poor family living in California would spend as much as possible of their domestic time out of doors – but are probably not the main reason for the odd conflation of sitting-room and sick-room. In my discussions of The Drive for a Life (1909) and One Busy Hour (1909) [see DWG Project, #133 and 134), I noted that the paper prints of those films (which lacked intertitles) had some scenes where time was elided by a jump cut. In One Busy Hour, a character exited into a newspaper office to submit an advertisement, and immediately re-entered from the office, without any time lapse for him to file his copy; on the other hand, at a similar juncture in The Drive for a Life, where the messenger boy is dispatched with the poisoned sweets, and the hero immediately arrives at the house from which they were sent, there was an intervening title – “LATER – THE DISCOVERY” – in the release print to cover the gap. I wondered whether there were always such titles, and remarked that I could not think of an example of a jump cut in a release print as opposed to a paper print. Gold Is Not All (one of the Biographs I know best, which just goes to show how frail memory is) has such an example, however. In the National Film and Television Archive print, (deriving from a virtually complete release print) as well as the paper print, in one of the scenes on the sitting-room set, a servant is standing at the rear left door as the parents and daughter enter from their party, and remains there while Mabel and her daughter exit right, and Tom writes a letter, calls for a servant (a second servant who enters front left), gives him the letter which he takes off front left, whereupon Tom leaves by the rear left door. Without any transition, the next scene is on the same set from the same angle, but the servant is no longer there (so he vanishes like a Méliès trick figure) and the light level is slightly lower (the studio scenes in these films use only diffused sunlight, so presumably this one was filmed after the sun had gone in, or sufficiently later in the day for there to be less light from the sun – the difference does not seem to be great enough for a deliberate reduction of the light by adding further muslin diffusers over the set). Mabel re-enters, rings for a servant, who enters front left as before, and gives her Tom’s letter, which she reads. Thus it was not impossible for Biograph to use a jump cut for a time lapse. Ben Brewster

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247 BIOGRAPH

A RICH REVENGE Filming date: 25/26 February 1910 Location: Edendale, California Release date: 7 April 1910 Release length: approx. 980 feet Copyright date: 11 April 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: William A. Quirk (Harry); Francis J. Grandon (Bill); Mary Pickford (Jennie); Anthony O’Sullivan (Merchant); Mack Sennett, Frank Opperman (In store); George O. Nicholls (Oil speculator); Charles H. West (Henchman) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative with spliced-in intertitles of 1916 reissue (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master A COMEDY OF THE CALIFORNIA OIL FIELDS Vengeance is ethical, as it is directed by fate, and is invariably just in resultance; but revenge is generally the designing of a fevered brain, and is nearly always resilient, inflicting chagrin, if not disaster, upon the perpetrator. While the instance in this Biograph comedy meted not disaster, still it produced chagrin a-plenty. Harry and Bill, two young ranch-owners, are deeply smitten with the charms of pretty little Jennie, the belle of the neighborhood. Jennie is as lively as a cricket, never serious a moment, hence the solemn tones in which Bill declares his love frightens her; but Harry, jolly and light-hearted, seeming to consider life a huge joke, appeals to her, and she accepts his proposal. They are married and start on their new life’s journey more like a couple of kids “playing house” than serious, sober married folks. Bill, of course, is enraged at being thrown down, and swears to be revenged. Hence, he bides his time. First off, he induces the villagers and store-keepers to boycott Harry by refusing to buy the products of his farm. Harry’s farm, like many others in California, is irrigated by means of a flume, the gate of which opened, sends water through ditches to all parts of the ranch. Into this flume Bill pours several barrels of chemically treated oil, which ruins the productive quality of the land so saturated. Harry and Jennie are in sore straits, and cannot imagine why their land is so bald. While they are thus bemoaning their helplessness, an oil speculator is seen to drive along the road. He suddenly pulls his horse up for a delightful odor has titillated his olfactory nerve. Leaping out of his carriage he makes for the field. Jabbing his proboscis into the center of one of the rows, he sniffs. “Oil, by gosh! and the poor fools don’t know it. Here’s a find.” Rushing up to the house, where he finds Harry and Jennie still sitting on the veranda in deep despair, he offers them $10,000 for their land. They are so flabbergasted they cannot but nod their heads. The speculator promises to call in an hour with the money. An hour has elapsed and no speculator; then they feel that it has been but a dream. However, after consulting several clocks they find that they indicate time so divergently that there may still be hope, and this thought is prophetic, for in a few minutes the man arrives with the wad of “long green.” “Ten thousand dollars! What’ll we do with it?” It doesn’t take long to decide,

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for in a short while they have togged up and procuring an automobile, they start for the East. As they bowl along the road they see the speculator with his laborers just about to start digging when Bill comes up, and proves he has been done, for instead of an oil field he has a “lemon patch.” Harry and Jennie, by this time, are out of reach. Bill’s move was indeed a Rich Revenge slightly twisted. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], April 7, 1910

Jennie is courted by two suitors, the earnest Bill and the light-hearted, but rather shy Harry. Bill proposes in a heavy-handed way, and Jennie rejects him. Overhearing this, Harry plucks up the courage to propose, and does so, offering Jennie to share his life on his irrigated farm. Bill is furious and vows vengeance. He persuades local wholesalers to boycott Harry’s vegetables, and the couple find themselves without a livelihood. Not content with this, Bill decides to ruin Harry’s fields by pouring oil into the irrigation ditches. A passing oil speculator smells oil, gets down from his car, and mistakes the oil in the furrows for seepage from an oil deposit. He quickly approaches Harry and offers $10,000 in cash for the ranch. Harry and Jennie agree, and bite their nails until the speculator returns with a bill of sale and the money. They sign, and set out for a new life with the cash. The speculator brings a gang to dig in the fields for the oil. They explain what they are doing to Bill, who tells them he put the oil in the field. The foiled Bill and the disappointed speculator watch the couple leave clutching fistfuls of dollars.

Once again, a specifically Californian theme, but there is little scenically that could not have been found in New Jersey – the irrigation ditches are certainly more prominent than any signs of oil drilling (such as the derricks in Unexpected Help, a story which in no way hinges, as that of A Rich Revenge does, on the oil industry as such). There is also, however, what might be a reference to California’s married property law, far closer to unique at that time than now. Although the ranch seems to have been Harry’s from the start (he points off at it when he proposes to Jennie), it is noticeable that when it is sold to the speculator, after Harry has signed the bill of sale, Jennie also signs it, for she is co-owner by virtue of her marriage to Harry. This is something I do not remember seeing in any other contemporary films, in which the husband always seems to have full disposal of the family property. The reviewer in The Moving Picture World (April 16, 1910, p. 599) admired the irony of the villain’s making the heroes’ fortune by the very act that was supposed to ruin them, but was disturbed by the fact that “the speculator, in no wise interested in the lovers’ quarrel, loses his money”, concluding nonetheless that “the end may justify this slight deviation from what seems the correct path”. Presumably any speculator is in some sense making a profit by offering a price lower than he hopes the goods are worth, and therefore one need feel no moral qualms when he is cheated by circumstances, i.e., speculative capitalism falls outside the moral pale here, just as it did in A Corner in Wheat ( 1909). Frank Woods (The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 16, 1910, p. 18) did not make the same observation, merely claiming that the villain behaved in an implausibly melodramatic fashion, and that no serious oil speculator would buy land merely on the basis of a whiff of oil. He did, however, single out Mary Pickford’s acting, praising “the good acting of the Biograph players, including the pleasingly kittenish playfulness of the little lady that plays ingenue parts (she has a future if she doesn’t permit her head to get swelled)”. Both Pickford and Quirk give rather mannered performances, including business with props. Thus, during the proposal scene, Pickford is knitting, while Quirk carries in an armful of firewood. 55

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At the beginning of the scene, and while Bill is proposing, Harry runs in and out behind them, clutching his armful of firewood; when Bill has left, rejected, Quirk drops the firewood at Pickford’s feet. He proposes, and the two chase each other round the bench, before he points off right, indicating his ranch, and she accepts him. While they are waiting for the speculator to return with the money, Quirk checks and rechecks his pocket watch, then Pickford exits and re-enters with an absurdly large alarm clock, which they compare with the watch. Although Grandon occasionally follows suit (he throws a piece of the firewood off at Harry after the proposal), mostly he resorts solely to conventional gesture (as is suggested by Woods’s comment [op. cit.] that he “plots r-r-r-re-venge”). However, Pickford and especially Quirk, too, still use conventional gesture and the mimed speech deplored by Woods (pointing to his heart to indicate a declaration of love, to the ring finger to indicate marriage, gesturing the height of the crops that will grow in the field), as all the Biograph actors still did (for example, Mack Sennett’s use of the circle drawn in the air to indicate Mabel’s car, and tapping his shoes to indicate that Steve and Ruth have to walk, in Gold Is Not All). Ben Brewster

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248 BIOGRAPH

UNEXPECTED HELP Filming date: [?] March 1910 Location: California Release date: 28 July 1910 Release length: approx. 968 feet Copyright date: 30 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Arthur Johnson (John Bradley); Florence Barker (His wife); Gladys Egan, ? (Children); Dell Henderson, Alfred Paget (Gamblers); George O. Nicholls (Marshall); Francis J. Grandon (At Lucky Jim’s Place); W. Chrystie Miller, ? (Priests); ? (Manager); ? (Passersby); Frank Opperman (On street) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (Dawson City Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative AN EPISODE OF THE OIL FIELDS OF CALIFORNIA We should not place too much confidence in our will power, by going too close to the edge of propriety, feeling sure of our power of resistance. While the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, but our will may most times whip the flesh to be submissive to the spirit, still conditions may occur to make us helpless tools of our inclinations. Hence, absolute avoidance is safer than power of resistance. John Bradley is a trusted clerk with an oil company. Enjoying a fair salary, he is comfortably fixed in a modest little village home with his wife and two small children. Starting from home in the morning, he is accompanied by the two little ones, who always looked forward to each morning’s scamper in the hills with pleasurable anticipation. He is met at the office door by the manager and handed a large sum of money with instructions to carry it to the bank. This is witnessed by a well known local gambler of the town, who being in hard luck, resolves to get that money by hook or crook. Making a short cut across the little town, he manages to intercept John on his way to the bank, and in the course of their conversation invites him to have a drink, as it is half an hour before the bank opens. The invitation is accepted and while in the saloon the gambler tries to inveigle John into a game, but here his will serves him and he resists the fascination. However, he drinks at the serving of the gambler and is the next moment sitting helpless in a chair. The drink was “fixed.” When he awakes they all pretend he lost money at the card table. The influence of the gambler makes this story believed even by the United States marshal to whom he appeals. The poor wife is beside herself with grief when John tells of his misfortune, so she goes about the town imploring her friends’ aid in her husband’s behalf. They, of course, have heard such stories before, and give her little heed until she meets the parish priest and his assistant. They listen to her tale of woe, and having on them pistols, which they carry for protection while passing over the hills, feel sure of getting at the truth of the situation with these terrifying implements. Making their way to the saloon, they take the gambler unawares. Under the menace of these two big six-shooters his hands go up, and while his assistant and the wife hold the guns the old priest searches the gambler regaining the purse of money intact. This the wife joyously

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carries to her husband who takes it off to the bank. The old priest, however, admonishes John, warning him to avoid such chances in the future. It is needless to say that John has been taught a lesson. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 28, 1910

John Bradley says goodbye to his wife and two children and goes to his work as a cashier for a California oil producer. As he reaches the office, the manager comes out and gives him a large sum of money, telling him to deposit it in the town bank. The conversation is overheard by a gambler acquaintance of Bradley’s, who accosts him and suggests a drink and a game, as the bank is not yet open. Bradley accompanies the gambler to a saloon, where he refuses to play, but agrees to stand a round of drinks. One of the gambler’s associates puts knockout drops in Bradley’s drink, and while he is unconscious, the gamblers remove the money. When Bradley comes round and finds it missing, they claim he lost it to them gambling. Thrown out of the saloon, he goes to the marshall’s office to appeal for his intervention, but neither the marshall, nor any other townspeople, will believe him. He returns home and tells his wife what has happened, and threatens to shoot the gamblers. She dissuades him, and goes to try to persuade the gamblers to give her the money and the marshall to intervene, without success. At her wit’s end, she meets the parish priest and his assistant. They believe her story, and drawing the revolvers they use to protect themselves when visiting outlying parts of their parish, they go to the saloon and hold up the gamblers. Meanwhile, the manager goes to Bradley’s house, and when Bradley tells him the story, demands an accounting. The parish priest finds and takes the stolen money, then, leaving his assistant holding the gamblers at gunpoint, goes with the wife and returns the money to the manager. Bradley is reinstated in his position, and he and his wife thank the priest. The latter goes back to the saloon, and relieves his assistant. Putting their revolvers away, the two priests resume their interrupted reading of their missals.

This film was released several months after the other four in the group I have reviewed. D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Company (Graham et al., p. 86), give only a rough date and location for its making, saying that the only information in the Biograph company papers is that the film was made in California. I assume this means it was missing from the Biograph cameraman’s record (which I have not been able to consult), and that the date of March 1910 is based solely on internal evidence. It has background scenes of oil derricks that certainly look like a California oil-field, and the recognizable members of the cast were all part of the company that went on the 1910 California trip (one unrecognized cast member, the child actor who plays the Bradleys’s son, also played Ruth and Steve’s son in Gold Is Not All; if, as seems likely, he was locally recruited, this would add even greater weight to the inference that this film was shot in California within the period of the tour). Why a date in March rather than one any time between late January and mid-April is suggested is unclear. There seems no obvious reason why this subject should have been held over for several months, but if it was missing from the cameraman’s record, perhaps there was no automatic way it would be scheduled for release, and it was forgotten until someone found it on the shelf. Is it just a coincidence that the film is not reviewed in The New York Dramatic Mirror? The Mirror was scrupulous in reviewing films only after their release (to suggest that there was no collusion between the paper’s reviewers and the film producers), but Woods was probably already so close to Griffith (for whom he later worked as scenario editor) that he had advanced access to Biograph films, and hence might well have missed one which the company itself had temporarily forgotten. 58

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As was the case with As It Is in Life, despite the choice of a scenic setting, there is little intrinsic to the story that depends on it taking place in an oil field. Rather, it uses the conventions of the Western (well established in stories, novels, and plays before the genre became a staple of American filmmaking) – in this case the stereotype of the gun-totin” preacher (though, for obvious enough reasons, such preachers are usually dissenters rather than the Episcopalian or Catholic parish priests in Unexpected Help). The film has one of the two sets in my group of films, the interior of the saloon. This is a much cruder set than the sitting room in Gold Is Not All, essentially a roughly painted backdrop of a bar, with two splayed side flats, and a line of tables on the right and a single table in front of the screen on the left. The exterior door, rear left, is concealed by a screen throughout the scenes in the saloon. At one point this is motivated by the gamblers’ need to conceal Bradley from anyone who comes into the bar as they steal his money, but its persistence is puzzling – is there some reason why the area of the entrance to the saloon has to be concealed from the audience? The Moving Picture World reviewer (August 13, 1910, p. 350) interpreted Unexpected Help as a temperance drama (“there is a strong moral lesson … conveyed in the difficulty in which John finds himself as a result of his indulgence in a little drink”). He (or she) also suggests that “the good priest takes the opportunity to read John a strong admonitory lecture on the dangers of gambling”, but there is no sign of this in the paper print – nor would it seem likely, given that the priest has left his assistant holding a gun on the gamblers, and needs to get back to the saloon to relieve him as soon as possible. The alternation between the saloon with the held-up gamblers and the interview between the priest and the marshall emphasizes the tiringly long wait the assistant is forced into, and the gamblers nurse their exhausted arms when they are finally released. The temperance aspect of the film seems very secondary, with the drinking in the saloon quite casual (as compared with the drinking scenes in A Drunkard’s Reformation [1909] or The Lesson [1910]). The interpretation thus seems to be a bit of trade-press wishful thinking (even the reviewer admits “some will recognize this feature of the picture, while others will see only the spectacular hold-up of the gambler”). Ben Brewster

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249 BIOGRAPH

A ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN HILLS Filming date: 1/2 March 1910 Location: Sierra Madre, California/Pasadena, California Release date: 11 April 1910 Release length: approx. 980 feet Copyright date: 13 April 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford, Alfred Paget, Arthur Johnson (Indians); Dorothy West, Dell Henderson, Kate Bruce (Tourists); Charles H. West (The nephew); Kathlyn Williams (Second woman) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined), Paul Killiam Collection; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print CIVILIZATION AS IT APPEALED TO THE INDIAN MAIDEN There is little wonder why the Indian is so stoical and misanthropic towards the white man, when we consider how he has been treated. True we have endeavored to civilize him, but this has only made more vivid his hopelessness. The Indian might have been made the white man’s best friend, but the white man did little to inspire his confidence. This Biograph subject is a powerful illustration of one of the many indignities the redskin suffered. A party of tourists visit the Indian village and are charmed with the pretty little Indian girl, who offers for their consideration ornaments and beads. A book of civilization falls into her hands and naturally the girl is fascinated by the apparent mysticism of it, but her lover, a young brave, tells her “White man’s book no good.” This, however, does not dissuade her, as her slight association with the white people has made their sphere appear to her enthralling, hence when she has the chance of living in their world she is elated. She is adopted by a kindly disposed couple who treat her almost as their daughter, educating her and showering on her every attention. She is happy, but the tyranny of fate conspires, and she is made to realize the bitterness of her condition. The young nephew of her benefactors arrives from college, and is attracted by the little Indian girl, and pays her quite some attention. This the little girl assumes is love for her, and is happy in that assumption for she confides in him, hence what a blow it is for her when later she finds the young man with his fiancee, a young lady of his own race. She pours out her hearts sorrow to her benefactors, who, of course, are amazed that she should have expected it otherwise. Now she finds civilization a gift not yet perfect. Back to her own people she goes, and her former lover upon hearing her plight, vows vengeance. The young brave makes his way to the house of the white people and upon finding the nephew alone in the garden, grapples with him, and would have finished him had not the Indian maiden, who followed him, begged him to spare the white boy. While they are thus engaged, the boy’s fiancee approaches, and learning from the Indian how the fellow had pretended love for the red girl and won her heart, she realizes what a wretch he is and breaks her troth with him, bidding him never to speak to her again. Now, while the young fellow gets his just deserts [sic], still one thing is clear, civilization and education do not improve to a great extent the social status of the poor redskin. The scenes are laid in the heart of the California mountains, and comprise a series of most wonderfully beautiful views. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], April 11, 1910

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An Indian maiden is adopted by a kindly white couple who meet her as tourists visiting Indian territory. She is drawn to white “civilization” and to the couple’s nephew, who trifles with her affections. She is disillusioned when he becomes engaged to a white woman and finds that her adopted parents are shocked by her claim on him. She flees to her Indian home and the brave who loves her. The Indian seeks retribution by fighting the nephew.

The lyrical Indian films made in the forests of New Jersey and New York gave way to the strikingly different scenery of the bare California mountains and deep canyons in Biograph’s Indian and western films. The dramatic potential of depth-of-field compositions was greatly increased by the California terrain. The mountain scenes of A Romance of the Western Hills were filmed on a trip to the Sierra Madre, where The Gold-Seekers would be made a couple of weeks later. Pasadena, home of the old California settlers and a mecca in wintertime for rich tourists, provided exteriors for the wealthy home of the adopted parents. The Moving Picture World critic viewing the film back in New York apparently shared the anti-miscegenational attitudes of the white people in the film. He drew the moral: “Obviously the white man could not love an Indian girl sufficiently to marry her, but he should not trifle with her” (April 23, 1910, p. 641). The Indian brave agrees, and does his best to persuade the girl to have nothing to do with the white race. The fiancée breaks off the engagement when she discovers the poor character of the nephew. The Indian maid shows her rejection of “civilization” by casting off white people’s clothing and reassuming her original native dress. One would like to see the title of “The Book of Civilization” dropped by the tourist and picked up by the Indian maid, but it is difficult to discover, and may not be visible at all even in a better print than the one now available. Whatever the book is, it serves as an expressive tool as it passes from the male tourist (he drops it) to the Indian girl (she picks it up) to the chief (he takes it from her and throws it away) to the brave (he picks it up) and back to the girl (she takes it back). In A Romance of the Western Hills, Griffith again employed the device of the return to the same scene, same camera position, for several different locations, giving meaning to the settings through repetition. These locations include the Indian encampment on the mountainside, the faithful Indian brave at the side of the stream, the patio of the white man’s house, and the garden path with bench where the nephew displays his weak character by lounging lazily with a cigarette. In the latter location, the nephew betrays the Indian maid, is beaten up by the brave, and is rejected by his white fiancée. According to Arvidson (p. 168), Griffith thought Mary Pickford “had a good face for Indians on account of her high cheek bones”. He gave her numerous Indian roles, outfitting her in a straight black wig and brown greasepaint. At the end of the same month that A Romance of the Western Hills was shot, Pickford would be enacting another Indian maiden in the title role of a film version of the Indian romance, Ramona. In some respects, A Romance of the Western Hills is a tryout for the film that Griffith had long wanted to make from Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel about the white man’s mistreatment of the Indian, but he had to wait until Biograph could buy rights from the publisher. Mary Pickford’s Indian girl decides in both of these films to leave white people’s homes for her people and her true Indian love. Eileen Bowser

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250 BIOGRAPH

THOU SHALT NOT Filming date: 3/4/5/11 March 1910 Location: Los Angeles Studio/Pasadena, California Release date: 18 April 1910 Release length: approx. 987 feet Copyright date: 20 April 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Edgar Thurston); Marion Leonard (Laura Edmonds); Kathlyn Williams (Actress); Charles H. West (Friend); George O. Nicholls (Doctor); W. Chrystie Miller, Gladys Egan (On street); Dell Henderson, Linda Arvidson (At party); ? (Butler); Dorothy West (Laura’s friend) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A LESSON IN SELF-SACRIFICE FOR OUR CHILDREN’S SAKE Never in the history of motion pictures has there been depicted as powerful a lesson as in this Biograph production. It is bound to do a world of good for humanity by portraying in a most convincing manner a subject that has for some time past been brought to public notice by column after column in the newspapers, to wit: Tuberculosis, or “White Plague,” as it is sometimes called. Many plans have been devised to prevent its further spread and eventually wipe it out, but in this picture is shown how its perpetuation may be prevented. Edgar Thurston imagines he is suffering from what is usually termed a neglected cough, and resorts to some of the numerous nostroms supposed to relieve such disorder, but without effect. Edgar is engaged to Miss Laura Edmunds, who loves him as devotedly as he does her. Their future seems so promising until Edgar, growing worse, submits to a physical examination which results in the discovery that he has consumption in an advanced stage. The doctor, upon learning of his betrothal, exclaims: “Marry this woman to possibly transmit your weakness to others – thou shalt not.” This intelligence almost breaks Edgar’s heart, but upon the doctor’s urgent persuasions he writes: – “Dear Laura: My physician tells me I have consumption in an advanced stage, and that we must not marry. He is right. Though I love you, good-bye. Edgar.” However, the impulsive hearted [sic] girl refuses to break their engagement. Such is human optimism; or is it egotism? We think it probable for things to occur to others that never could occur to us. We are always immune. This may be Fate’s cunning, but Providence always gives us warning whether we heed it or not. Laura even goes so far as to threaten to hurl herself to death off the edge of a cliff if Edgar insisted in following what she deemed the silly advice of the doctor. The physician realizes that moral suasion is in vain; that more decided means must be adopted. Even Edgar is disposed to treat the doctor’s arguments with polite indifference, until he is shown a pitiful illustration of what might follow his marriage, in the person of a little child inflicted with the dread disease. He is now willing to do anything to avert a deed that to him seems criminal, hence the doctor plans. He feels he must destroy Laura’s faith in Edgar, and to do this he engages an actress to play

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the part of the “Other woman,” dispatching the valet to give the girl an inkling of his master’s double life. The plan succeeds, and though it almost broke their hearts, it surely prevented an aftermath of woe. Here is a subject that is bound to attract widespread attention from the fact that it is a powerful argument on the principles of the medical profession, the Health Board of every community and the worthy Tuberculosis Committee. Aside from this it tells a decidedly interesting story, with photographic quality and scenic beauty never before excelled. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], April 18, 1910

Laura has already accepted an engagement ring from Edgar when he discovers that he has tuberculosis. Persuaded by the doctor that he risks infecting his unborn children, he calls off the engagement, but Laura will not accept that: she threatens suicide. When the doctor points out a little girl who is the diseased result of such a union, Edgar recoils, and agrees to pretend to flirt with another woman to put an end to Laura’s love.

While the industrial age struggled with the ravages of tuberculosis in Europe and America, the popular media tried to educate the public according to the best available advice of the medical profession. Newspapers, novels, and movies spread the word. The goal of eradicating a terrible disease gave the movies an important educational role in society while the disease itself provided stirring plot motivation as well. It may be found in a lot of westerns: it was “consumption” that sent the tenderfoot out to the wild west for a cure in the great outdoors. One wonders how many hearts were broken in the belief that it was a hereditary disease, while people continued to live and work in the unsanitary over-crowded conditions of urban slums and poverty. Edison’s various films for the Tuberculosis Association and the American Red Cross (in late 1910, Edison produced The Red Cross Seal) were dutifully educational, led by fictional romances and usually including documentary scenes of slum conditions, hospitals, and nursing, but they were less stirring than a Biograph melodrama. For Griffith, the topic was a wonderful motive for high moral tragedy as well. Such productions served the industry well in its efforts to become a more respectable business. To the Moving Picture World reviewer (April 30, 1910, p. 689), Thou Shalt Not “should be an influential assistant to the health board in every community and help the Tuberculosis Committee in their laudable efforts to restrict the ravages of the white plague. It is a striking illustration of how a disagreeable subject can, by proper handling, be transformed into an artistic success.” The film sets its romantic mood in the beautiful gardens of Pasadena. Pasadena was “where the millionaires sojourned for two months during the Eastern winter” (Arvidson, p. 146). It is a good example of Griffith’s uses of natural settings to add resonance to a scene. The opening scene is set against a hillside with paths and steps along which stroll loving couples in slow dreamy movement. One path makes a striking diagonal across the image. The slow movement does not detract, indeed, it seems to contribute to the love scenes of the protagonists in the foreground. In the Biograph Bulletin description of another film, In Old California, the writer announces that “lethargy is the seed of romance”. So it seems here. The flowers of Pasadena are used throughout as tokens and conductors of feelings: Laura gives one to Edgar to pledge her love; later, Edgar expresses his feelings for Laura to the doctor with a flower in his hand, which the doctor throws violently to the floor to emphasize his injunctions against the marriage; the servant is carrying a gift box of flowers to Laura when he tells her of Edgar’s supposed double life. This box is not opened. We should note the placement of dialogue intertitles. Here, the doctor makes the dra63

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matic announcement: “MARRY THIS WOMAN TO POSSIBLY TRANSMIT YOUR WEAKNESS TO OTHERS? THOU SHALT NOT.” But following the title, we wait for Edgar to jauntily resume his jacket before the doctor speaks the line, a jolt to Edgar. Edgar’s reaction to the speech the spectator has already read is inexplicably delayed. However, the industry practice for two to three years yet to come was to avoid cutting into the shot, even for dialogue. The film ends in one of those lyrical apotheoses common to Griffith’s most serious films. A large cross stands on a high point overlooking a vast spreading landscape, symbol of the Red Cross’s efforts to eradicate tuberculosis. Edgar, followed by the doctor, approaches the cross. The doctor, playing a “God-the-father” role in this film, a doctor who can correctly diagnose tuberculosis with just two or three hearty taps on the patient’s chest, points to the cross, his guiding hand on Edgar’s shoulder. Below them, a troupe of healthy, laughing, young men and women run merrily across the scene in a diagonal movement that echoes the diagonal of the opening shot. Edgar smiles and nods after them: he stands on high moral ground. Eileen Bowser

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251 BIOGRAPH

THE WAY OF THE WORLD Filming date: 12/14 March 1910 Location: San Gabriel Mission, California/Glendale, California Release date: 25 April 1910 Release length: approx. 950 feet Copyright date: 27 April 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Young priest); George O. Nicholls (Old priest); Florence Barker (The Modern Magdalene); Gertrude Claire (Landlady); Dorothy West (Young girl); ? (Her mother); Francis J. Grandon?, ? (Farmers); Francis J. Grandon, Robert Harron, Frank Opperman (Hayers); Gladys Egan (Child); Dell Henderson (Foreman); Alfred Paget, ? (Policemen); W. Chrystie Miller (Bell ringer); Mack Sennett, Charles Craig, Linda Arvidson, Anthony O’Sullivan (At dance) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A LESSON IN CHRISTIAN CHARITY “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.” What a powerful sermon those few words preach against the world’s propensity to ignore Christ’s teaching and example. His hand was ever stretched forth to lead the erring from the path of sin, while by us is presented the prone hand to crush them still deeper into the quagmire of iniquity. This is the moral presented in this Biograph subject. The bells of the old mission chime, but the people heed them not. They are too much engaged, and have no time for prayer. How ungrateful is the worldly. They cannot spare the time to breathe a prayer in thanksgiving for the many blessings God has bestowed, much less to ask His grace to help their fellow men. They are like the publicans satisfied that they are not like others, who are less fortunate. The old priest is deeply grieved over the empty church, when his young assistant decides to follow the Master’s footsteps and go among the people as an example. Donning civilian garb, he goes out into the world to work in the fields. Here he learns the extreme thoughtlessness and selfishness of humanity. There are the two classes – the money seekers and the pleasure seekers. The former are shown in the fields and store-houses, each struggling for himself unmindful of the condition of his neighbor, all driven by an unreasonable employer. The latter class is seen spending their time in a dance resort. The first have a standard of morals dependent upon their success in life, while the others have no standard of morals whatever, for the simple reason that they know no better. The young priest, incog, becomes a worker at the storehouse, dispensing his earnings in charity, while endeavoring to plant the seed of righteousness in the hearts of his fellow laborers, but his endeavors are met with derision. He is almost on the point of giving up when the dance resort is raided by the police and the women of the place flee in a panic, with the exception of one, who turns to the ones who brought her there for protection. Ah, but how like the world, they not only turn from her, but even assist in her ejection from the place and follow her tauntingly down the road, their crowd augmented by many curiosity

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seekers until there is a howling mob at her heels. At this moment the young priest appears and driving off her persecutors, leads the poor unfortunate modern Magdalene away to find some place of healthy safety for her, but again the world shows its unchristian spirit by refusing to receive her. Hopeless, the young priest makes his way back to the mission where he tells the old pastor that “They received me not.” He has hardly uttered the words when the girl appears and prostrates herself before the two holy men to ask their prayers for God’s grace, determined to spend the rest of her life pentitentially. The old father turns to the young curate and exclaims: “Not in vain if one soul is saved.” The scenes of the production are laid at the historic San Gabriel Mission, California. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], April 25, 1910

The mission bells ring but men are too busy with work and revelers are unwilling to interrupt their amusements. An old priest with an empty church is full of sorrow. However, he encourages a young priest to go among the people wearing civilian clothes, and try to live in the image of Christ. The young man gets a job as a laborer in the fields. He tries to show Christian charity by his example: he feeds the poor, protects children, turns the other cheek, and helps a fallen woman. He is misunderstood by the people, and discouraged, goes back to the old priest. The fallen woman comes to them: the young man’s kindness to her has moved her to seek forgiveness and a reformed life. The bells ring in celebration of one soul saved.

This was a film that could be shown in churches on Sunday morning, and be welcomed by the reformers who deplored the lure of the nickelodeons. “It is a graphic sermon, a sermon so strong and preached with such a direct appeal that one can scarcely shake off its influence” (The Moving Picture World, May 7, 1910, p. 738); it was “received by a mixed audience with a spontaneous burst of applause. Such approval is rarely shown after a motion picture exhibition by an audience of that character, and indicates a keen appreciation of what is truly artistic in moving pictures” (p. 737). The narrative structure of The Way of the World recalls that of the religious films, the Passion Plays and the lives of the saints. It consists of a series of vignettes, based on the experiences of the young priest, which might be added to or dropped, or placed in a different order, without appreciably affecting the narrative line. As we have all observed, the early cinema’s styles do not disappear, but survive in various muted or translated forms. This style was of importance in Griffith’s work, contributing to a high seriousness he was trying to achieve in certain films, all the way up to and including Intolerance (1916). The same structure is also used in poetic films such as Pippa Passes (1909), a style that contributes to the film’s lyrical atmosphere and creates a mood by repetition of related episodes. In Griffith’s hands, the format loses the stiffness of the early religious films and becomes more life-like, reflecting, if we dare extend our comparison that far, the changes that once took place from medieval to renaissance art. In The Way of the World, Griffith again creates a circular structure to complete and unite the work from beginning to end, the two priests parting and meeting again by the same stone walls, and the opening and closing shots of the ringing of the bells, seen in striking silhouette against the sky through the openings in the bell tower. Contrast in light and contrast in motion contribute to the emotional effects. The bells toll slowly; the laborers work and the revelers dance in fast, frantic motion, filling the images; they pause, frozen in mid-action, when they hear the bells, only to return to the spasmodic, oblivious pace of their lives. Wild disorder is replaced by a disciplined moral order for a moment by the call of the religious institution. 66

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The characters each have a single note, yet the naturalistic, understated acting of the Biograph actors gives them the ability to go beyond stereotype to effect spectators’ feelings: “one can scarcely shake off its influence”. One feels the innocent young priest’s shock at what he finds. One feels the slap on his cheek. The actor’s approach nearer to the camera now has an expressive purpose. When he extends his arms to form a cross, the movement seems quite natural, and its religious nature suggestive, not literal. The discovery of the old Spanish missions of California inspired a number of religious or quasi-religious films by the filmmakers from the East. The San Gabriel mission supplied the background for The Way of the World as well as The Thread of Destiny and The Converts that season. Arvidson (p. 155) speaks of the charm of the “dim, religious light” that drew them to the setting, and the expressive value of the beam of light from a high window. Eileen Bowser

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THE UNCHANGING SEA Filming date: 16/17 March 1910 Location: Port Los Angeles, California/Santa Monica, California Release date: 5 May 1910 Release length: approx. 952 feet Copyright date: 7 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: “The Three Fishers”, the poem by Charles Kingsley Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Linda Arvidson (Woman); Arthur Johnson (Fisherman); Gladys Egan (Daughter, as a child); Mary Pickford (Daughter, as an adult); Charles H. West (Her suitor); Dell Henderson (Rescuer); Alfred Paget, Dorothy West, Kate Bruce (Villagers); Frank Opperman? (In second village) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative SUGGESTED BY CHARLES KINGSLEY’S POEM “THE THREE FISHERS” There is perhaps no work from the pen of the eminent English clergyman and poet, Charles Kingsley, better known than his tragic poem, “The Three Fishers.” It so tersely illustrates the lot of the honest fisherfolk. While this Biograph subject was suggested by the poem it uses it simply as a preamble or introduction to a story of sympathetic interest. A young married couple are living happily in the little fishing village and at the opening of the story the young husband is one of the Three fishers went sailing away to the West, Away to the West as the sun went down, Each thought on the woman who loved him best, And the women stood watching them out of the town. For men must work and women must weep, And there’s little to earn and many to keep, Though the harbor bar be moaning. As the days rolled by the “three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower * * * [sic] They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,” but no sign of their husbands’ return could be seen. Ah! little did they know that on a distant shore “Three fishers lay out on the shining sands, in the morning gleam as the tide went down.” When the rescue party brings the fishers in they find life in one, the young husband. With the tender care of the folk of this distant land he regains his health, but his memory is a blank. All efforts to recall the past prove futile. Meanwhile, the poor wife, with her baby, sits gazing out to sea, still hopeful of his return, but in vain. The years roll by and her child grows into young womanhood to be courted by one of the young fisherman of the coast village, and it is upon the day that the young couple are preparing for their wedding that the long lost husband, having started out to sea once more lands on the shore of his native village. The familiar scenes restore his memory. It seems to him that it was only on the yesterday that he left, and he rushes eagerly along the coast to

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meet his wife. There she stands, ever hopeful. At first they hardly recognize each other, time having wrought such a change, but enwrapped in each others’ arms they realize fate’s injunction: For men must work and women weep, And the sooner it’s over the sooner to sleep; And good-bye to the bar and its moaning. The scenic beauty of the subject is exceptional, being taken at a fishing village of Southern California. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 5, 1910

In a fishing village, fishermen set out to sea, and wash up as corpses on another shore. One of them who lives lands on a far shore but has lost his memory and does not know his own identity. Over the years that follow his wife never gives up hope, continually looking out to sea for his return. She bears his child and the child grows up to be married and leave home. Chance brings the fisherman back to the shores of his home, where memory returns and reunites him with his faithful wife.

The Unchanging Sea is beautifully simple and simply beautiful, an ode to the ideal of fidelity. Its qualities consist partly of Bitzer’s superb photography of the California seascape and partly of what Frank Woods called “deliberation and repose” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, June 4, 1910, p. 16). The rich tonal range of the photography could only have been fully captured on the old 35mm nitrate film, with its high silver content. The camera stares directly out at the sea, seeing only the shifting light, mists and white caps and bursting surf, and the shine on wet sand. We already have seen Biograph seascapes in After Many Years (1908) and Lines of White on a Sullen Sea (1909), yet neither look quite like this newly-discovered California coast. When the figures of the fishermen and their folk enter the scene, the strong contrast of the dark figures against the brilliance of the surf is eloquent. This is a good example of what Tom Gunning (p. 233) was speaking about when he discussed the “highly-estheticized images” that “function simultaneously on levels of voice and mood … which act as emotional conductors”. The quiet pace, the restraint of the actors, the avoidance of dramatic gestures, the still figures viewed in back-to-the-camera shots, marked a change in American film style in general, according to Frank Woods in the article referred to above. He claimed that constant movement was deemed essential by earlier film-makers. Griffith and his actors had soon mastered the style of “deliberation and repose” and used it for his most artistically ambitious films. In the case of The Unchanging Sea, the style is deemed especially suitable because it is based on a poem, Charles Kingsley’s “The Three Fishers”. The spectator is immediately placed within the poem by the inclusion of lines of poetry in the intertitles, the first such intertitle appearing before the first shot. The director Lois Weber noted (in The Moving Picture World, October 19, 1912, p. 241) that poetry in films provided the one exception to the rule that as few intertitles should be used as possible: in poetic films, the use of the lines may add to the rhythmic pacing and the poetic mood. In The Unchanging Sea, I would say that it does. The eternal theme of women waiting for the fishermen who went out to sea was widely popular in literature and films, and was used several times by Biograph (After Many Years, 69

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Lines of White on a Sullen Sea, Enoch Arden). As in those films, The Unchanging Sea intercuts the shots of the waiting woman with shots of the faraway husband, maintaining the link between them for a lifetime of waiting. When a new suitor comes to her, the woman shakes her head and points out to sea. In the next shot her husband, on the opposite side of the screen from her, looks out to sea, still puzzled by his memory loss, perhaps feeling a stirring in his mind. In the foreground of a shot on the beach, a young man proposes to their grown daughter, a key moment in their lives: yet the waiting wife’s back is turned to them and to the camera, while she searches the empty sea. In the next shot, on the faraway shore, her husband prepares to return to the sea, the action that will lead him home again. Griffith has found images that meet the words of the Kingsley poem: he has, in effect, set them to music. Eileen Bowser

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253 BIOGRAPH

THE GOLD-SEEKERS Filming date: 18/19/21 March 1910 Location: Sierra Madre, California/Los Angeles Studio Release date: 2 May 1910 Release length: approx. 976 feet Copyright date: 5 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Prospector); Florence Barker (His wife); ? (His son); Anthony O’Sullivan, Francis J. Grandon (Prospectors); Dell Henderson (Claim agent); Kate Bruce (Old woman); Mack Sennett (Drunkard); Charles Craig, Frank Opperman (Farmers); Charles H. West, Alfred Paget, W. Chrystie Miller (In claim agent’s office) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative (incomplete) A STORY OF CALIFORNIA IN THE DAYS OF ’49 The maxim, “’Tis darkest just before the dawn,” was certainly verified in the case of the despairing prospector who is the subject of this Biograph story. All his searching for the coveted yellow ore has been fruitless, and he starts out to make his last effort to find pay dirt. The privations he has suffered do not effect him as much as the hardships endured by his patient wife with their little child, a boy of ten years. To see them subjected to hunger and exposure almost drives him mad, and this final effort is almost maniacal. As usual, his endeavors seem to be in vain, until in a fit of rage he hurls his pick away from him and sinks despairingly on the ground. Here he sits hopeless, when he sees something shining in the earth that the pick’s point had upturned when he hurled it from him. He is dazed, and can scarcely believe his sight. However, a pan of the dirt taken to the brook and washed proves he has at last struck pay dirt. Wild with joy, he rushes to his camp to give the news to his wife. She reminds him of the importance of filing his claim at once, and to this end the three – man, wife, and child – go back to the place and he stakes the claim, guarding it, while the wife hurries to the agent’s office to file it, she taking the little boy with her. Two mountain reprobates from a distance see the staking of the claim, and knowing that the first one filling the claim may secure it, try to reach the agent before her, but as she is on horseback and they on foot, she reaches there first. When she arrives she finds the office not yet open and a line of prospectors awaiting the agent’s arrival. The two scoundrels now scheme to get the wife’s place in the line, and to effect this they play upon her sympathy by getting an unconscionable old woman to feign illness and ask to be assisted to her home. This the wife does, the scoundrels following and locking her in a room with her little boy. They go back to the agent to secure his recognition of their claim. After futile efforts to burst the door, the wife lets the baby through the transom on a rope, telling him to run for help. This the little fellow manfully does, and after a time engages the attention of a couple of ranchers who release the poor woman, rushing her to the land agent’s office just as he is about to sign the claim of the scoundrels. The agent listens to the woman’s story, backed up by the ranchers and the baby,

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and signs the claim, handing it to her, at the same time pushing a pistol in the scoundrels’ faces with the injunction, “Now, git,” and they very wisely “got.” Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 2, 1910

A prospector in the gold rush days of ’49 strikes pay dirt after a long struggle. He stakes the claim and stays to guard it while his wife and ten-year-old son hurry off to the claim office to register it. Two scoundrels observe the action, and go in pursuit. Arriving after the wife and her son, they trick her into leaving the queue waiting for the agent to arrive. A woman who pretends to faint is the accomplice who leads the wife to a cabin. The scoundrels lock the wife in, but she ties her son to a rope and lowers him out the window to bring help. She is rescued and manages to register their claim in the last moment.

Although not identified in D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Company, I think the son must be Jack Pickford, who was on this first California trip only because he cried at the prospect of his big sister Mary going on the train without him, according to Arvidson (p. 148). He was the right age for the role, and the only little boy that the Biograph company took with them. The Library of Congress print of The Gold-Seekers was printed much too light, making it quite difficult to appreciate the “picturesque scenery” that, according to the Moving Picture World reviewer (May 14, 1910, p. 785) “enriched” the story. Arvidson (pp. 167–8) speaks of the wonderful mountains and deep canyons of this location, which was in the west fork of the San Gabriel canyon. A better print may one day show it to us, and make it easier to evaluate the film’s place in Griffith’s oeuvre. This first of Griffith’s films set during the California Gold Rush (followed by Over Silent Paths and In the Days of ’49, The White Rose of the Wilds, Just Gold, and others in the years ahead) was not one of the moral dramas that seemed to rise naturally from the historic search for gold in California’s wild western mountains and desert. The Gold-Seekers is simply a thriller. The interest of the film as it now appears to us lies chiefly in the parallel editing that accounts for the thrills of suspense. There are approximately 43 shots, a larger number than usual for early 1910, although it is about average for the whole year’s production, according to Gunning’s tabulation (Gunning, p. 264). These shots are sometimes very brief, involving adjacent rooms and spaces, with the action going back and forth. Interruption and delay adds to suspense, as for example, when the boy running for help asks a drunkard who deliberately ignores him. The point of the suspense in The Gold-Seekers is not a race on foot and horseback to the claim office, the staple of so many westerns; it is the woman’s fight to get free of her captors and to make her way out of the rooms in which she is locked. It is an curious reversal of the images we have seen in other Biographs of women under siege piling up furniture to stave off intruders. The heroine of this film is fighting to get out, and only moves furniture around in order to be able to lower her little boy out the window on a rope. The scene when the wife finally obtains her claim is designed with a note of peculiarly western humor: convinced at last that she is the rightful claimant and the two scoundrels are crooks, the claim agent extends the certificate of ownership toward the bad guys only to smilingly cross his arms and point a revolver at them and extend the document to the wife. The Gold-Seekers appears to me to be rather routine for this point in Griffith’s career, in the midst of so many wonderful films, but I will reserve judgement for a better quality print. Eileen Bowser

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254 BIOGRAPH

LOVE AMONG THE ROSES Filming date: 22–24 March 1910 Location: Hollywood, California Release date: 9 May 1910 Release length: approx. 983 feet Copyright date: 12 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: Arthur Marvin, G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (The Lord); Marion Leonard (The Lady); Dorothy West (Handmaiden); Arthur Johnson (Gardener); Mary Pickford (Lace-maker); Kate Bruce (Her mother); Charles H. West, Alfred Paget, Francis J. Grandon (Footmen) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative with spliced-in 1916 reissue intertitles (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection), probably not derived from 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master A BEAUTIFUL MOTION PICTURE FANTASIA The story of this Biograph production runs along rather novel lines, the personages being more mythical than real. It shows in symbolism the puissant influence of love. The scenic beauty of the subject has never been excelled, if ever equaled. It is a series of floral bowers. In the Kingdom of Never-Never Land there lives a great Lord and Lady each presiding over their own domain. This great Lord goes for a stroll through his estate and coming to purlieu of his own land he is struck by the entrancing beauty of the contiguous estate, so like his own, that the inclination to intrude is irresistible. His peregrination is halted by the appearance of the great Lady, who is indeed as fair as the flowers that clothe her land. He introduces himself and invites her to stroll with him in his gardens. She is in like manner entranced with the beauty of his possessions. How alike in beauty are they; a veritable fairyland. If they were only one, for it seems they should be. This thought is mutual, and the Lord proposes a way – a marriage – and so a betrothal of convenience ensues. They know nothing of love and so are content in the anticipation of being Lord and Lady of all Never-Never Land. Little do they dream of the subtle workings of fate, which is of course the natural egotism of humankind, but nevertheless, the lines are being drawn, for as we have viewed the paradisiacal side of life, we now go to the homely side, by visiting the sad house in Never-Never Land. Here we find sorrow, toiling and want, and yet we find as in the other a betrothal of convenience between the poor little lace-maker and the humble gardener. They reason that their lot may be more bountiful by joining their meager fortunes. The gardener secures a position in the gardens of the Lady and the lace-maker goes out to find purchasers of her handiwork. The Lord meets the pretty lace-maker and is attracted by her beauty, and he learns for the first time what love is. The Lady meets the gardener and is struck by his rugged manly beauty and Herculean strength, so different from the Lord, her neighbor. She also realizes the power of love, for her inclination to be near the gardener is irresistible. Despite the apparent mesalliance in such a step the Lady confesses she can only be happy with the humble gardener. This intelligence the

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Lord receives with ill-concealed delight as it leaves him free to marry the pretty lace-maker. This is briefly the thread of the story of one of the most beautiful and artistic films ever produced. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 9, 1910

With an eye toward merging their respective domains, a rich landowner proposes to his beautiful neighbor, an equally wealthy lady. She accepts, but then falls in love with her gardener. The latter is engaged to a poor lace-maker that, like him, sees this marriage as a mere means to survive. Secretly, she is in love with the landowner whose interest in the lace-maker stretches beyond her handiwork. As love takes the upper hand of convenience, both engagements are broken, but the four hearts are happy: the Lord marries the lace-maker, and the Lady makes the gardener her Lord.

Of the two keywords of this what-and-where title, “where” is no less crucial than “what”. As most California Biographs of this year, Love Among the Roses is highly conscious of the location – a Hollywood rose garden (which costs $50 to rent) belonging to a famous flower artist which Griffith found so incredible as to dub it a Never-Never Land and the story set there a Beautiful Motion Picture Fantasia. The ingenious way in which Griffith ties his narrative to the space in which this fantasia unfolds makes Love Among the Roses stand out among its peers. As far as its action, Love Among the Roses is remarkably undramatic. At face value, it appears to be deserving the verdict that Epes Winthrop Sargent – an advocate of “strong, vital, gripping plots” – would pass on the Biograph skill of storytelling two years later: “There is a succession of eye-pleasing scenes, but no stories … Most Biographs are a succession of tableaux without plot” (Pratt, pp. 102–3). However, as we realize today, within the universe of Griffith’s filmmaking the “plotless” narrative should be seen not as a setback but rather as a legitimate alternative to his own suspense stories. In a recent study, Joyce E. Jesionowski cited Love Among the Roses as “a wonderful example of action-generated space” (a reverse definition – “space-generated action” appears to be as applicable here) explaining her point with the lucidity that justifies quoting at some length: This film is trivial in everything except its facility and grace of movement, and these qualities serve very well to animate a film story that involves exchanges of identities, fortunes, and affections between two pairs of lovers walking through a particular garden on a particular day. Ease and grace are at the heart of this film about fiancé-swapping, and the means of accomplishing a happy resolution is the invisible cutting amongst the characters: from the beginning of the film all entrances are continuations of a previous exit and a lover is picked up or exchanged in transit … Increasingly in Griffith’s work the number of spaces traversed (and therefore the number of shots and the number of cuts between them) has less to do with the display of the plot and more and more to do with the dynamic tension building and resolving within the structure of the world of the film. (Jesionowski, pp. 132–33)

A theoretical concept born some seventeen years later helps to reveal a visual technique that, in the absence of the narrative momentum inherent in “strong and gripping” plots, gives Griffith’s film its singular sense of unity. In 1927, writing about Soviet cinema of his day, Victor Shklovsky introduced a distinction between the “cinema of poetry” and the “cinema of prose”. In a novel or a short story, narrative resolutions mostly depend on the logic of “real-life situations”, whereas in a poem – as in a film by Vertov or Pudovkin – a sense 74

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of movement or closure is often achieved by formal means: “The main distinction between poetry and prose lies possibly in a greater geometricality of devices, in the fact that instead of a series of incident-based content-bound resolutions we are faced with a formal geometric resolution”. For example, the parallelism and the recurrence of images at the end of Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World (1926) signals, according to Shklovsky (p. 177; translation modified for accuracy), a “geometricalization of devices … which, by distant analogy, we may call poetic”. By the same token, one may call poetic the elaborate visual parallelism of dramatically symmetrical scenes which we find in Griffith’s Love Among the Roses – a geometry that, as the film nears its closure, becomes so salient that its shots literally eye-rhyme with each other. For instance, the last four shots of the film form two twin rhymes so clear that one can quote them without the aid of frame enlargements: The Lady’s garden. On the left the distressed gardener is shown sitting with his head lowered and his face buried in his palms. The Lady enters from the right, sees the gardener, pauses. As he looks up at her, the Lady’s arms move toward her heart, then toward the gardener. Incredulous, the gardener repeats her gesture, then kneels down in front of the Lady in a prayer-like gesture of humility. She extends her arms over him, then helps him up and droops her head as if to say “humility is mine”. The gardener opens his arms and the Lady succumbs to his embrace. Cut. The Lord’s garden. On the left the lace-maker is shown sitting in a chair, her face buried in the elbow-rest, the wrist of her arm apathetically hanging. On the right, we see the Lord taking a gallant bow, which makes her look up in disbelief. His right hand lets go of a hat it was holding and gestures her up. As the lace-maker’s palm touches her cheek and she looks around (signs of confusion), the Lord’s right hand gestures toward her heart, then points at the lace-maker. She smiles, clenches her hands, makes two or three steps toward the Lord, and, with eyes downcast, prepares for the embrace. As she does so, the Lord’s left hand lets go of a long staff it was holding, and his arms close around the lace-maker. Cut. In front of the Lady’s mansion. She (on the right) is holding the gardener’s hand (he is standing to the left of her), her free hand raised in the direction of the house. The gardener looks back (past the camera) toward where his former work place had been. The Lady intercepts his glance. Her hand points first at him, then at the off-screen space he was looking at and, with a swing of her wrist, makes a prohibitive gesture. Again, her arm raises toward the house, and as it does so, we see servants and maids, standing in two ranks so as to mark the entrance to the house, take a deep bow. As the group stands frozen in this bow, we see the Lady lead the gardener up the front stair toward the door. Cut. In front of the Lord’s mansion. The Lord is shown standing to the right of the lace-maker, her right hand in his, his right hand holding the staff and the hat. For a moment, his hand lets go of hers, and, as the Lord turns his face towards the camera (the lace-maker follows suit) his left hand, palm down, draws in the air a slow wide arc meaning “all this space”. Then the Lord takes her hand again raising his arm – and hers – toward the entrance to his house (the arm with the staff and the hat goes up, too). As he does so, we see servants and maids standing in two ranks so as to mark the entrance to the house, make a collective curtsey and freeze like that while we watch the Lord and the lace-maker enter the house. The End. A wonderful thing about these four shots is that they are interlocked by means of dual patterning. With regards to characters and locations, the resolution of Griffith’s film is organized according to the standard pattern of crosscutting – A-B-A-B. Layered on the top of it, however, we find a different pattern, A-A-B-B, manifested through visual similarities – or “rhymes” – in staging and gestures. Well before the date, Shklovsky’s metaphor of the “cinema of poetry” finds in Griffith an even closer match than in Vertov. The symmetrical resolution of two love stories echoes in the visual geometry of form. 75

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“The chief interest in this picture is in the sociological questions involved, and the long vista of speculation which opens ahead of one as the actors tell their story”, concludes the Moving Picture World reviewer (May 21, 1910, p. 833). Indeed, those interested in Biograph acting styles will find it amazing to observe Griffith’s actors playing class. Henry B. Walthall and Marion Leonard walk through the film as in a court ballet. Trying to live up to the Herculean epithet of the synopsis, Arthur Johnson makes his robust character look twice his weight and registers frustration by means of breaking objects against his knee. Yuri Tsivian

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255 BIOGRAPH

RAMONA Filming date: 30/31 March, 1/2 April 1910 Location: Peru and Camulos, California, Los Angeles Studio Release date: 23 May 1910 Release length: approx. 995 feet Copyright date: 26 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: Ramona, the novel by Helen Hunt Jackson Camera: G. W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Ramona); Henry B. Walthall (Alessandro); Francis J. Grandon (Felipe); Kate Bruce (Mother); W. Chrystie Miller (Priest); Charles H. West, Dorothy West, Gertrude Claire (In chapel); Anthony O’Sullivan, Frank Opperman (Ranch hands); Mack Sennett (White Exploiter); Dell Henderson (At burial); Jack Pickford (Boy) Archival Sources: George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate positive A STORY OF THE WHITE MAN’S INJUSTICE TO THE INDIAN There are few American novels better known than the story of “Ramona” by Helen Jackson. Intensely thrilling without sensationalism, it most graphically illustrates the white man’s injustice to the Indian. It is a romance with a deep motive, told with such sympathetic tenderness that the reader longs to visit the scenes wherein lived the simple, patient Ramona and the noble-hearted Alessandro, as described by Mrs. Jackson. Realizing what a gratification, both recreative and instructive, the depicting of this favorite novel, with absolute authenticity, would be to the patron of motion pictures, the Biograph Company made the journey to Camulos, Ventura County, California, where were found the identical locations and buildings wherein Mrs. Jackson placed her characters. The house wherein Ramona lived with its vineclad verandas; the inner-court, which is a veritable paradise, the little chapel amid the trees, the huge cross, and the bells from old Spain are all apparently just as Mrs. Jackson saw them, and while the very air breathes romance there is a pious solemnity about the place that is aweinspiring. The production adheres closely to the novel, showing the experiences of Ramona, the little orphan of the great Spanish household of Moreno, and Alessandro, the Indian. It opens with his arrival at the Camulos ranch with his sheep-shearers, showing his first meeting with Ramona. There is at once a feeling of interest noticeable between them which ripens into love. This Senora Mereno, her foster mother, endeavors to crush, with poor success, until she forces a separation by exiling Alessandro from the ranch. He goes back to his native village to find the white men devastating the place and scattering his people. The Senora, meanwhile, has told Ramona that she herself has Indian blood, which induces her to renounce her present world and go to Alessandro. They are married and he finds still a little shelter left from the wreckage. Here they live until the whites again appear and drive them off, claiming the land. From place to place they journey, only to be driven further until finally death comes to Alessandro just as aid comes in the person of Felipe, the Senora’s son, who takes Ramona back to Camulos. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 23, 1910

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Ramona, a stepdaughter of Señora Moreno, the owner of a large Mexican ranch in California, falls in love with Alessandro, an Indian farm hand. She rejects the hand of her stepbrother Felipe, and having learned the secret of her birth – that her real mother was Indian – Ramona runs off with Alessandro and marries him against the will of her stepmother. As the Americans claim more land from the natives, Ramona and Alessandro are forced to retreat into the mountain areas until, driven to madness by despair, Alessandro is killed by a white settler. With a baby on her hands, Ramona is now alone, but is found by Felipe to whose bosom we see her cling in the final tableau.

That Griffith managed to convince the Biograph Company to pay $100 for the rights to use Jackson’s novel was, of course, due to the drawing power of its title which, in the wake of the recent Ben-Hur litigation, they would hardly dare to keep had they decided to simply filch the story. One may also speculate that the very first phrase of the introductory title stating, proudly, that Ramona had been “[A]DAPTED FROM THE NOVEL OF HELEN JACKSON BY ARRANGEMENT WITH LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY” was, among other things, a way of saying that this movie was drawing directly on the literary source rather that on one of its many dramatizations, none of which (in contrast to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to which Ramona was often compared) proved to be successful. As a 1914 critical monograph phrased it, “fifty-three distinct failures to dramatize the story have been recorded” (Davis and Alderson, p. 256), one of which, incidentally, featured Griffith as Alessandro. Griffith did not have much to remember about this production apart from the fact that, while playing Alessandro in Los Angeles, he studied assiduously with a Spanish musician and, on the stage, “sang a couple of serenades in what [he] though to be Spanish” (Henderson, p. 68). Although, despite the pledge of authenticity found in the synopsis, it sometimes appears that, for events and detail, Griffith relied on his memory rather than on a careful rereading of the five-hundred-pages long novel (in the novel, Alessandro plays violin – a prop frequently met in Griffith’s other movies – while in the film we see Henry B. Walthall strumming a mandolin as he sings), he went out of his way (literally so, taking the crew to a place seventy-five miles away from Los Angeles) in order to observe the authenticity of location which, too, was announced in the introductory title: “THE PRODUCTION WAS TAKEN AT CAMULOS, VENTURA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, THE ACTUAL SCENES WHERE MRS. JACKSON PLACED HER CHARACTERS IN THE STORY.” The reason for this was that part of the immense popularity of Jackson’s novel had to do with what was assumed to be its historical and topographic accuracy which, well before the time Griffith and his companions arrived there to film Ramona, had turned Camulos – the non-fictional home of Jackson’s fictional characters – into a veritable cult area and also a place of pilgrimage. It happened due to an unusual care for ethnographic detail on the part of both the writer and her publishers. Early editions of the novel contained illustrations done by Henry Sidham, the artist on staff of Century Magazine, complete with his statement that these sketches “were always made on the spot, with Mrs. Jackson close at hand suggesting emphasis to this object or prominence to that”. Sidham’s decorative chapter headings included story-related memorabilia (such as torn altar-cloth), ethnographic exhibits (Indian baskets) and places of interest like Mission bells or the Camulos chapel. Several editions published after 1887 featured a postscript, “Ramona’s Home: A Visit To The Camulos Ranch, And To Scenes Described By ‘H.H.’”, written by Edward Roberts, and one published in 1916 even supplied original photographs of these places (and more) taken by A.C. Vroman.

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These book-carried visits to Ramona’s home were quick to turn into actual ones – something that helps to better understand the careful choice of locations in Griffith’s screen version. To believe Davis and Alderson, “[f]or several years subsequent to the publication of ‘Ramona,’ 1884, tourist excursions to California were mainly those conducted by a Boston firm, and were composed of New England people. Camulos ranch, the home of Ramona, was one of the California places of greatest interest to them; and, by special arrangement, the Southern Pacific train stopped at the ranch for a sufficient time to permit the tourists to visit the home of Ramona” (Davis and Alderson, pp. 106–7). As the legend of The True Story of “Ramona” has it, the real owner of the Camulos ranch, Senator del Valle, was quite indignant with the New Englanders: “They were rude”, he asserts, “and wholly ill-mannered. They picked the flowers and fruit, swarmed over the yard and gardens, took valuable articles for souvenirs, and invaded the dwelling uninvited; and, on one occasion, when in the room described in the novel as having been the sleeping apartment of Ramona, the woman threw herself on the bed, exclaiming, ‘Now I can say I have laid on Ramona’s bed.’” (Ibid.) Evidently, Griffith was fully aware of the genius loci of the ranch. The chapel where Henry Walthall meets Ramona is the very building that we see on one of Vroman’s photographs; in a shot that follows, the future lovers run into each other at the famous South Veranda and Raised Platform, or Loggia; included are also the Mission bells, looking much the same as they appear on one of Sidham’s chapter headings. In a sense, Griffith fulfils what Tom Gunning, drawing on a contemporary publicity slogan, has termed the “world-within-yourreach” promise of early actualities – movies’ ability to serve as an affordable substitute for tourism. This film, however, also contains a scene that, as presented by Griffith, finds no counterpart either in the text of the novel, or in any of its illustrations. In this scene, Alessandro is seen in the foreground, placed between the camera set up on the top of a hill and as he is watching, helplessly, the whites devastate his native village in the valley below. In 1913 Griffith would include this scene in the list of his cinematic discoveries under the heading of “distant views” [Pratt, p. 105] (although, as Kemp R. Niver [p. 132] remarked, Griffith had used a similar device before Ramona – in his 1909 In Old Kentucky). Such staging in depth, was, indeed, a tour de force both on Griffith’s part and on the part of Bitzer. “The burning huts, the hurrying people and the wagons of the whites are clearly visible, though they appear but as mere specks in the distance”, wrote The New York Dramatic Mirror (Pratt, p. 84). We are more used to reading such praises in contemporary reviews of Italian epics speculating to what extent Griffith’s mega-shots in Intolerance (1916) and The Birth of a Nation (1915) might have been influenced by those; at the time of Ramona, however, even in Italy the taste for distant views was still a thing to come. Yuri Tsivian

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256 BIOGRAPH

THE TWO BROTHERS Filming date: 25/26/29 March, 4 April 1910 Location: San Juan Capistrano, California Release date: 12 May 1910 Release length: approx. 993 feet Copyright date: 14 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Eleanor Hicks Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: Arthur Johnson (Jose); Dell Henderson (Manuel); Kate Bruce (Their mother); Marion Leonard (Red Rose); Charles H. West (A suitor); Henry B. Walthall (Pedro); Mack Sennett, ? (Pedro’s men); W. Chrystie Miller (Priest); Florence Barker, Linda Arvidson, Mary Pickford, Charles H. West, Alfred Paget, William A. Quirk, Dorothy West, Anthony O’Sullivan, Gertrude Claire (Mexicans) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford collection); 35mm nitrate positive, 1915 reissue (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate negative, fragment (AFI Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate negative from release print; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate print (German intertitles) IN THE DAYS OF THE PADRES One of the most peculiar paradoxes of nature is the extreme dissimilarity that often exists in two brothers. Brought up in the same environment, with the same chances, they are often as opposite in character as it is possible for human beings to be. In Camarillo, principality of the Spanish Dominion, there lived two such brothers, Jose and Manuel. Born in a noble Spanish family and reared by a mother noble in both station and character, they were vastly different morally. Jose was a dutiful son and upright young man, while Manuel was the black sheep. It was on Easter Sunday morning during the processional that Manuel appears in an intoxicated condition and foully ridicules the priests and acolytes as they enter the chapel of the old mission. At this the mother’s pride is hurt beyond endurance and she exiles her profligate son from her forever. Manuel is shunned as a viper and while making his way along the road, meets Pedro, the notorious political outlaw, who sympathizes with him, and offers him inducements to join him, and so takes him to his camp. Meanwhile, Jose woos and wins the Red Rose of Capistran and the day for the wedding is set. Manuel finds the life in the outlaws’ camp palls, and drawn by irresistible memories, he visits his home village. Here he is shot in the arm by his brother, who hounds him, and escapes further injury by hiding among the ruins of the mission, where he is discovered later by the Rose and her girl companion, who relieve his agony by dressing his wounded arm. He goes back to the outlaw camp with a firm purpose of revenge. The wedding of Jose and the Red Rose has taken place and the young couple start for their new home with their friends, by the coach. On this coach is also the rich dowry chest. This the outlaw learns and here appears the brother’s chance for revenge, so gathering together the band to pursue the wedding party, they overtake the coach, but not until Pedro has fallen and Manuel assumes leadership. Jose is dragged from the conveyance

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and brought before his brother, who is about to dispatch him, when the bride and her friend rush up. He now sees that they and his succor when wounded at the mission are the same, hence he allows all to go on their way unharmed. The little friend of the bride who assisted in aiding the wounded brother at the mission, fell in love with him at first sight, and at this second meeting she makes clear her feeling for him. He, on the other hand, is struck by the artlessness of the pretty little Senorita and later finds himself her willing slave, and it is with amazement that the villagers see her lead Manuel into the chapel. Thus he finds love the master to curb and finally dissipate his impious inclinations. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 12, 1910

Unlike his brother José whom we see reading the Bible in the very first shot of the film, Manuel is addicted to drinking and shuns going to the church. Banished from the house by their mother, Manuel joins a band of outlaws while José proposes to Rose. On an unannounced visit to the village, Manuel is shot by José. Rose and her girl companion find the injured stranger, bind the wound and help Manuel to escape. During the revenge attack on José and Rose’s wedding coach, Manuel recognizes the bride’s friend with whom he falls in love. This newfound adoration prevents fratricide and helps Manuel to regain faith.

On 8 April 1911 – approximately one year after the shooting of The Two Brothers – The Moving Picture World published an essay by Richard V. Spenser who offered a number of reasons why, of all places, it was Los Angeles that had become a film-producing center. As one of such reasons, the essay mentions a rich choice in historical locations. Indeed, Californian landscapes could be used both as a setting for Wild West stories and as a backdrop for stories set in the Cultural Past – not unlike landscapes of Italy which, before long, would become crucial for the success of Italian costume films. Spenser writes: “Within the [twentymile] radius and near Pasadena are two historical missions, San Gabriel and San Fernando. Here were photographed The Two Brothers (Biograph) and The Padre (Selig), and other films the story of which was written around the aged missions” (Pratt, p. 89). Although, according to other sources, The Two Brothers was shot in San Juan Capistrano, Spenser’s main point is well taken – a picturesque ruin where Marion Leonard and Mary Pickford stumble upon the wounded Manuel serves well to remind us that the action takes place “in the days of the padres”, that is, under the Spanish Catholic rule. On a different time scale, too, Griffith’s film comes closer to life than a Biograph normally would. According to the synopsis, the story begins on Easter Sunday morning with a processional to which Manuel appears in an intoxicated condition and, although the synopsis does not state it explicitly, judging by the crowd scene, also ends on an Easter Sunday of, say, the following year, with the amazed villagers watching the girl lead the reformed drunkard into a chapel. This last shot of the film looks a little too clumsily staged for a Griffith film – the two main players enter into the picture moving almost backwards – as if the cameraman had missed the “action” signal letting Pickford and Henderson be carried past him by the crowd, and the actors were commanded to redo it on the run. An incident like that was likely to happen if Griffith had decided to use a real Easter processional that was taking place on the location, a probability confirmed by the filming dates – we just have to assume that, instead of having a day off, the shooting crew agreed to work on 27 March, the Easter Sunday of the year 1910. If this was indeed the case, the story of The Two Brothers can be said to have been written not only around a real old mission, but also around a real event. 81

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The 1911 article by Richard Spenser also mentions that film companies working in Los Angeles, including Biograph, found the place suitable for taking Westerns (Pratt, p. 89), this being one of the first times that the term “Western” has been used for films. Though not a Western in a strict sense of the word, The Two Brothers – this “excellent dramatic film”, according to a Moving Picture World review (May 28, 1910, p. 888) – contains quite a few elements that would become typical for this genre coming, ostensibly, from the bag of tricks brought into the picture by the troupe of performing cowboys that Griffith engaged as stuntmen. In one scene, as a group of outlaws gallops away at full speed, the last of the horsemen leans down to pick up a sombrero dropped by a companion. Later on, there is a long equine chase behind a wedding coach – “and the director was yelling, ‘A dollar for a fall, boys, a dollar for a fall.’” – remembered Linda Arvidson (p. 167) who was cast as one of the household. Real locations proved interesting not only because of their historical aura, but also as an occasion to experiment with cinematic space. One can hardly find an architectural space that would help to create more palpable perspective than the colonnaded inner-yard gallery that the Mexicans call “the veranda”. Griffith and/or Marvin and Bitzer use one more than once, to full advantage. In the beginning of the film the intoxicated brother enters the space, shaking up the sleepy atmosphere of the Mexican patio with three or four immobile figures prodding each of its columns and a nodding padre in the center – which helps to characterize him as a likeable good-for-nothing. Later, in a scene in which the virtuous but unpleasant brother proposes to Rose, we see a diagonally framed veranda stretching to its full length (in a direction opposite to the first scene), with a group of Mexicans dancing in its far end as the main action unfolds in the foreground – an exploration of distant action that recalls the famous long shot in Ramona. Yuri Tsivian

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257 BIOGRAPH

OVER SILENT PATHS Filming date: 5/6 April 1910 Location: San Fernando, California Release date: 16 May 1910 Release length: approx. 980 feet Copyright date: 18 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Marion Leonard (Daughter); Dell Henderson (Wanderer); W. Chrystie Miller (Father); Arthur Johnson (Marshall); Alfred Paget (Deputy ?) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master A STORY OF THE AMERICAN DESERT The sorrow, affliction and calamity induced by the insatiable thirst for gold more than counterbalances the joy and comfort its possession assures. There is no rose without its thorn; there is seldom gold without its curse. In the heart of the American desert we find an old miner with his only daughter, he toiling day after day at his rocker-cradle in quest of the precious ore, while his pretty daughter keeps his camp and makes it as comfortable as it is possible in this wilderness. Having secured quite a store of nuggets, his daughter persuades him to return to civilization where they may enjoy the fruits of their labor. Both are happy in the anticipation of what seems a bright future, and the girl starts to prepare their final meal at the camp. While she is away at the spring getting water, a desert wanderer appears at the camp, and at the sight of the old man weighing his gold is seized with cupidity. He himself had toiled long in the wilds, but with no success, so he demands that the old man divide his gains with him. This, of course, the miner decries, and the wanderer uses force. In the struggle the old man is knocked down, and striking his head, expires. The wanderer realizes he has caused the old miner’s death, and is filled with horror, but assuming he is alone in the desert, takes all of the gold and hurries off. What a sight greets the girl at her return. From the very zenith of joy she is plunged into most profound grief. However, she buries her dear old dad, and at his grave vows to bring to justice the man who caused his death. Meanwhile, the culprit has in his terror lost his way, and would have perished had he not been rescued by the girl as she is making her way to San Fernando. They are, of course, unknown to each other and during their ride an attachment springs up between them, particularly on the man’s side. He falls deeply in love with his rescuer. When they reach town, she tells her story to the sheriff, who warns her to be silent as her father’s slayer will surely turn up in the town. Later the wanderer proposes marriage to the girl and to further his suit tells her he has sufficient gold to make them happy, showing her the bags. At the sight of them she nearly swoons, but upon regaining composure, pretends to accept. He thereupon takes her in his arms, and while so engaged she stealthily secures his revolver, breaks away from him and marches him off to the sheriff with the gun pointed at his head. The sheriff takes him in hand to meet the punishment he deserves, while she goes back to the grave of her father where we leave her as she says “I did it, Dad.” Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 16, 1910

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A miner strikes it rich in the desert and prepares to return to civilization with his devoted daughter. A wanderer overcome with avarice seizes the hard-earned claim and kills the old man in the process. The girl discovers the dreadful aftermath and swears revenge on her father’s murderer. On the way back to town, she unwittingly falls in love with the culprit, but recognizes the stolen gold as he boasts of his wealth while proposing to her. Pretending to embrace him, she pulls out his gun and escorts the criminal to the sheriff.

Much like Love Among the Roses made two weeks earlier, the subtitle and the very story of this picture respond to the mood of a location quite different from the rose garden in which Griffith’s “Beautiful Motion Picture Fantasia” was set. Tom Gunning writes: “The desert provided an environment unlike anything in Griffith’s previous films and inspired dark naturalistic treatments of humanity’s battle against the elements. A strong series of films set in the desert – Over Silent Paths (1910), The Last Drop of Water, Under Burning Skies, The Female of the Species, Man’s Lust for Gold (all 1912), and Just Gold (1913) – pit greed, jealousy, and endurance against a hostile environment” (Gunning, p. 274). Gold mining, severe nature, a tough moral dilemma and its characteristically uneasy resolution in the course of which duty takes the upper hand of personal attachment – all this makes Over Silent Paths reminiscent of Jack London, an habitual source of inspiration for Griffith’s Biographs. To believe Linda Arvidson’s book of memoirs, the lone miner and his daughter had come by prairie schooner from their far-away Eastern home (Arvidson, p. 161). This may have been the case, but, in keeping with the headlong manner of Biograph shorts, the expository title not only omits the prehistory, but also skips over the toil and hardship referred to in the opening sentences of the synopsis by taking us to the heart of the matter: The miner’s daughter “persuades him to return to civilization”. Such narrative economy often puts the strain of explaining on actors, and in the opening scene we find Marion Leonard force her father to sit down, point her finger at him, mime a rocker-cradle movement and follow it by a gesture of impatience. Although, later into the film, she will once or twice recur to such telegraphic acting (for example, for us to know that the image of her dead father is stronger than that of her happy future, she will point with her outstretched arm “towards the past”, drop both hands and draw them aside in a frustrated gesture indicating the grave), Leonard’s main business in the film alternates between resolute action and shock mostly expressed through wringing her arms and lifting them towards heaven. This must be what the Moving Picture World reviewer meant by writing that in this film “[t]he acting is sympathetic, so much so that one involuntarily wants to offer sympathy when the young woman finds her father murdered. And again, the feeling of exaltation springs up when one sees the girl forcing the murderer to go to the sheriff’s office to be arrested” (The Moving Picture World, May 28, 1910, pp. 888–9). Indeed, Marion Leonard is at her best when she has things to do – drive the prairie schooner, bind the wanderer’s injured head, or steal a gun from his pocket and aim it at him. Scott Simmon (p. 120) calls Over Silent Paths a Western and its heroine a “spitfire” – a type that weaves her way through most of Griffith’s subsequent action films. Yuri Tsivian

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258 BIOGRAPH

THE IMPALEMENT Filming date: 21/23/28 April 1910 Location: New York Studio/Stamford, Connecticut Release date: 30 May 1910 Release length: approx. 987 feet Copyright date: 31 May 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: Arthur Marvin, G.W. Bitzer Cast: Frank Powell (Mr. Avery); ? (Mrs. Avery); Florence Barker (Virgie); Charles Craig, Charles H. West, Dell Henderson, Henry B. Walthall (At first party); Alfred Paget (Butler); Kate Bruce (Maid); Francis J. Grandon (Doctor); Dell Henderson, Henry B. Walthall, Guy Hedlund, Verner Clarges, Charles H. West, Dorothy West (At second party); Frank Evans (Servant) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative (incomplete) A VICTIM OF HIS OWN INDIFFERENCE Man’s perfidy is nearly always resilient, and he is made to suffer most, though he may bring grief to others. In this Biograph story, he is the absolute victim of his own indifference and perfidy to an extreme degree. Walter Avery is blessed with a most dutiful and loving wife, whose every endeavor and thought is to make him happy, but he being a man of the world, finds domestic life dull, and his wife’s attentions boring. Hence, it is with eagerness that he accepts invitations to the different social functions. Accompanied by his wife, he attends a social gathering and there meets a young dancing girl, society’s favorite entertainer. He is immediately obsessed with an infatuation for the girl, and it is evident that his feeling is reciprocated. Mrs. Avery’s suspicions are aroused and she accuses him of undue attentions toward the dancer. He, of course, denies her accusations and cajoles her into believing that his thoughts are always and only for her. Nevertheless, the time comes when she sees positive proof of his perfidy in a letter to him from the girl inviting him to attend a dinner at her home given in his honor, hoping he will not fail to grace the occasion. When he is about to leave for the dancer’s home, Mrs. Avery picks up a bottle of poison, threatening to take her life if he goes. Regarding this threat merely a jealous woman’s trick to keep him home, he not only treats it with derision, but pours the contents of the bottle into a goblet, remarking that it would be more convenient to take that way, and off he goes. When he is gone the true aspect of the situation dawns on her. She realizes for the first time what a despicable wretch he is, and not worth the effort to save him, so she dashes the glass with its contents to the floor. However, the strain of the ordeal through which she has passed proves too much for her, and she falls in a swoon to the floor. Meanwhile, Avery has reached the home of the dancer, and is toasted at his entrance. By strange coincidence, the glass handed him is identical with the one he handed his wife. He at once becomes conscience-smitten [sic] that his wife may have carried out her threat. Rushing back to his home he finds his wife in a swoon, but he thinks her dead. Dead, and he caused it! At this moment he becomes a veritable maniac. Dashing

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madly out of the house he re-enters the dancer’s home like a fiend. The guests are thrown into a panic as he shrieks – “I killed my wife – I killed my wife!” and falls across the table dead, struck down by the relentless avenger of injured virtue. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], May 30, 1910

Bored by a wife who is too eager to please (she even puts a cigar in his mouth and lights it!), Mr. Avery falls for a dancer who sends a letter inviting him to a party she is throwing in his honor. When the wife reads over his shoulder a telltale salutation “My dear boy”, she threatens to poison herself if he goes. Not someone to be deterred by a melodramatic trick, Avery takes the vial, pours the poison into a wine glass – why not do it with some panache if she is indeed serious – and leaves, but not without misgivings. At the party, the dancer offers wine in a glass that looks exactly like the one he handed to his suicidal spouse. This triggers an attack of repentance and Avery rushes home to find the wife in a swoon that he mistakes for her threat fulfilled. Madly, he bursts into the dancer’s party, confesses assisted suicide and dies.

This was the first film that Griffith’s team made upon their return from the West Coast – filmed and set almost entirely indoors after the predominantly outdoor California movies. Linda Arvidson thus described the effect such moves had on the crew members: “When once again we had donned our working harness, how stuffy and cramped the studio seemed! Four months in the open had ruined us; four months with only a white sheet suspended above our heads when we did ‘interiors’ on our lot and the sun was too strong. We felt now like toadstools in a dark cellar, with neither sun nor fresh air” (Arvidson, p. 173). Although this passage more likely describes the return from their second (longer) trip that took place in early 1911, one does feel somewhat similar when, after watching Love Among the Roses, The Two Brothers, Ramona and Over Silent Paths, one is confronted with the crowded premises of The Impalement, particularly so because Linda Arvidson’s metaphor aptly matches the mood of the story this movie tells. Its story, together with Florence Barker’s way of enacting it, is perhaps the most curious thing about this otherwise undistinguished film. We easily recognize in it the rudiments of the vamp movie to be later canonized in Helen Gardner’s films and in A Fool There Was (1915), a film directed by Frank Powell, the star and the villain/victim of The Impalement. Named, ironically, Virgie, “society’s favorite entertainer” takes all the initiative in provoking the adultery, and the way Florence Barker shows her ruinous intention is by using a gesture from the vocabulary of many vamps to come. Alone in her room, she stretches her arm towards the camera, open palm turned up, looks at her hand and smiles. Then slowly, as if to entrap a sleepy fly, her fingers draw into a fist which she promptly brings to her lips and kisses. In the final scene, after Powell, conscience-stricken, freezes in an improbable death posture (his spine bent over a tall coffee table, his face upside-down turned towards the audience), Florence Barker makes a step towards the body, smiles triumphantly and repeats the possessive gesture. As soon as her outstretched hands have closed into two fists, she draws them towards her breast – “he is mine”. At this moment, one of the guests approaches the culprit from behind, locks his arms round her waist and forcefully turns her toward the door. Holding his arm straight, he points the index finger at the door and remains so until she exits, submissive but not repentant – a sad toadstool banished from the kingdom of toads. Yuri Tsivian

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259 BIOGRAPH

IN THE SEASON OF BUDS Filming date: 27/28 April 1910 Location: Stamford, Connecticut Release date: 2 June 1910 Release length: approx. 990 feet Copyright date: 6 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: Mack Sennett (Henry); Mary Pickford (Mabel); Charles H. West (Steve); W. Chrystie Miller (Uncle Zeke); Kate Bruce (Aunt) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection), possibly not derived from 35mm Mary Pickford Collection nitrate negative A PASTORAL COMEDY DRAMA Spring, the season of buds, is cupid’s [sic] busy session. The perfume-laden air breathes romance, the birds sing out their love songs and the landscape is clothed in floral raiment to make a perfect setting for cupid’s [sic] plots and counterplots. It is in this season that little Mabel arrived at her Uncle Zeke’s farm. Henry and Steve, two farmhands, are chums, having spent the years of their adolescence together on Uncle Zeke’s farm. They have never experienced any love but brotherly love, until the day they first meet Mabel, when both become deeply smitten. They hustle off to their room to spruce up to make an impression on the pretty little niece of Uncle Zeke. Henry is assuredly the favored one, and so gains the mild enmity of Steve. Their strong friendship, however, precludes their becoming enemies, and Steve bows to the inevitable. Henry purchases a neck chain and cross as a betrothal present for Mabel, but as she is coy and he is bashful, she to draw him out writes with a switch in the sand L-O-V-E, which Henry spells L-U-C-K. Mabel pretends to be angry at his stupidity and leaves him standing at the gate puzzled as to what has caused her anger. Later, to make him jealous, and so more determined, she plays the coquette by flirting with Steve. Henry takes her teasing seriously, and decides to leave for some distant town. He packs his grip and before leaving writes the following to Steve: – “I see she likes you best, and as I love her dearly, I leave here for good.” Steve finds and shows this note to the folks, and so poor little Mabel is almost heartbroken at the awful result of her coquetry, for she did love the honest fellow. It is too late, however, for Henry had departed for parts unknown. He secures work at a general store in a distant village, and while his thoughts go back to little Mabel, she never hears from him. Later on she accepts Steve and they are married. Steve is a dutiful husband and Mabel now loves him truly. After working along for several years in this distant place, Henry is seized with a longing to revisit his old home. He does not dare hope. [sic] but–. Well, he decides to return and as he approaches the little farm he meets Mabel and Steve, her husband, with their little child. The greeting at first is a bit strained, but recovering, Henry is cordially invited to the house. This he declines with the excuse that he must hurry back to the train. Mabel at first is grief-torn, but gazing at the good-hearted Steve fondling their baby, she

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feels that the right thing happened. Steve has endeavored and succeeded in making her happy, and so he will always. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 2, 1910

Henry and Steve are two farmhands on Uncle Zeke’s farm. When Mabel comes to her uncle’s for a visit, the old friends become rivals for her affections. Mabel likes Henry better, but in an attempt to make him jealous, she flirts with Steve. Henry leaves, believing that Mabel favors Steve. Years later, Henry returns to find Mabel and Steve married, with a child. He leaves once more, and Mabel comes to see that she has made the right choice after all.

Almost immediately upon returning from their first winter trip to California (January–April, 1910), the Biograph Company, under D.W. Griffith’s direction, began filming a series of stories authored by Stanner E.V. Taylor. Taylor, who had directed at least one Biograph release in mid-1908 while Griffith was still an actor with the company (Over the Hills to the Poorhouse), was married to Marion Leonard. Once an important star in the Griffith stock company, Leonard began appearing less and less prominently in Biograph films as Griffith turned to such younger actresses as Mary Pickford to fill his leading roles. When the company returned to New York in early April of 1910, Leonard left, perhaps recognizing that her type no longer figured in Griffith’s plans. She appeared in only one more film at Biograph, The Call to Arms, filmed in June. Whether her departure had any bearing on the fact that her husband’s stories were suddenly being used is impossible to say; the Biograph Company’s “Story Register” predating 1910 no longer exists, so we have no way of determining how many of Taylor’s (or anyone’s) stories were filmed before then. Still, the coincidence is a curious one. In the Season of Buds, filmed entirely on location in Stamford, Connecticut on 27 and 28 April, 1910, was exactly the kind of story in which Marion Leonard could never have been cast. The character of Mabel, played with delicacy by Mary Pickford, is a young coquette, a girl who ineptly tries to manipulate a young man and who pays the price by marrying “second best”. Pickford portrays Mabel as a child-woman, one who has no real understanding of how deeply her actions can wound another. Still, she is not evil, nor even particularly bad; she is merely young – too young to foresee the consequences of her actions. Such a role needed the innocence of a Mary Pickford. At thirty years old, Marion Leonard could never have been convincing as such a girl (if she had been offered the part at all). Throughout 1910, one can see Griffith moving gradually to younger and younger actresses, until, early in 1911, he casts a fourteen-year-old Blanche Sweet in The Lonedale Operator. At that point, the stage is set for the emergence of the classic Griffith heroine, typified by Sweet, Mae Marsh and, most importantly, Lillian Gish. What makes In the Season of Buds so successful, aside from the casting, is the sophistication with which Griffith stages it. He uses a minimum of locations, striving to invest each with a variety of meanings. For every happy moment that occurs in a pastoral setting, a sad one soon follows in the same space, giving the film a parable-like quality not otherwise found in its simple plot. This situating of psychology in a particular environment was a hallmark of Griffith’s developing style and, even though In the Season of Buds was a small film, its simplicity is highly charged. Steven Higgins

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260 BIOGRAPH

A CHILD OF THE GHETTO Filming date: 29/30 April, 2/4 May 1910 Location: Rivington Street, New York City/New York Studio/Westerfield, Connecticut Release date: 6 June 1910 Release length: approx. 989 feet Copyright date: 8 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Stanner E.V. Taylor [“Officer Riley – Man”] Camera: Arthur Marvin, G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy West (Ruth); Kate Bruce (Her mother); Dell Henderson (Proprietor); Charles H. West (His son); W. Chrystie Miller (Old man); George O. Nicholls (Officer Quinn); Henry B. Walthall (Farmer); Clara T. Bracey (Farm woman); Gladys Egan, ? (Girls with flowers); Anthony O’Sullivan, Charles Craig, Guy Hedlund, Henry Lehrman, J. Waltham (In sweatshop); Ruth Hart, William J. Butler, Alfred Paget (In second shop); ? (Landlady); Francis J. Grandon (Doctor); Frank Evans (Policeman) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print AN INNOCENT VICTIM OF FATE’S CUNNING The hand of Providence is ever ready to aid the helpless and afflicted; to stay the incitant of injustice – though conditions may appear contradictory. The longest way around is sometimes the surest, and as the sting of the whip urges the beast of burden, so the slings and arrows of fortune urge us to greater endeavor. At the visitation of the Angel of Death in the little home taking off the poor widowed mother of little Ruth, the poor orphan realizes she must henceforth fight life’s battle alone. From her squalid room in Rivington Street, New York, she goes through the Ghetto looking for work. After a time she secures a bundle of work at a shirt factory to take home and finish. She completes the lot and starts back to receive the pittance with which her labor is to be rewarded. As she enters the office, the scapegrace son of the proprietor is imploring money of his father, who positively refuses to accede. The youth is desperate and while the father is examining Ruth’s work, he extracts several bills from his father’s wallet, which lays on the desk. The loss is discovered and the boy fearing detection, contrives to have Ruth blamed by slyly placing the notes in her work bundle where they are found in the search. Officer Quinn is sent for, but before he arrives Ruth seizes upon a chance to escape, realizing her inability to prove her innocence in face of the convincing evidence, and makes her way to her room, but as her name and address are on the books and her face has been seen by the officer, he finds little difficulty in trailing her. She eluded him, however, by going down the fire-escape and boarding a trolley car bound for the suburbs. All trace of her is lost by the officer in the congestion of Rivington Street, and when the car makes its last stop she is well out of reach of her pursuers. On she trudges until she faints from exhaustion and is found later by a young farmer who brings her to the house and puts her in the care of his mother. Here she is treated as one of the family, and her hitherto sorrow clouded existence changes to sunshine. Here she learns to smile. As time goes a strong attachment grows between the young farmer and herself until a betrothal is imminent. At this time Officer Quinn is accorded a vacation, and with a friend goes for a day’s fishing at the brook that borders the farm. Desiring some milk, he goes to the house to procure it. The young farmer and Ruth are standing by the well, he on the point of proposing, when Quinn appears. The

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farmer offers to get him some milk, and while awaiting his return the officer is struck by the seemingly familiar face of Ruth. After he returns to the water’s edge, he still puzzles, until at last it dawns on him who she is, and he goes back with the intention of doing what he deems his duty, but the couple are now betrothed, and a glance in her honest face convinces him of her innocence, and instead of arresting her, he wishes them luck. The subject is of a most interesting nature, while the scenes in the Ghetto are the most realistic ever attempted. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 6, 1910

Ruth, an orphaned young woman who is threatened with eviction from her tenement apartment, obtains piecework from a shirt factory. When she attempts to collect her wages, she is falsely accused of robbing the manager and flees. Officer Quinn pursues her to her home, but loses her in the crowded ghetto. She makes her way to a farm outside the city where she meets and falls in love with a young man. Not long after, Quinn encounters her there while on a fishing trip. She pleads with him to let her remain on the farm and, seeing that she is truly innocent, he relents and lets her go.

What began as a story by Stanner E.V. Taylor entitled “Officer Riley – Man” – a story which, by its very title, made the policeman its focus – became in Griffith’s hands the tale of a wronged young woman who manages to leave behind the grinding poverty of the Lower East Side of New York City for the revitalizing simplicity of the country. From its very first shot, in which Ruth is seen at her mother’s deathbed, A Child of the Ghetto centers its attention on her and her desperate circumstances. The film’s second intertitle (“RIVINGTON STREET NEW YORK – THE STRUGGLERS”) situates the story quite specifically in the Jewish ghetto of lower Manhattan. The anonymous reviewer in The Moving Picture World (June 18, 1910, p. 1048) noted that “interest in the surroundings represented in this picture will be quite as strong, perhaps, as in the story,” and it must be said that the location shooting on Rivington Street is quite unlike anything Griffith had ever done before. While crowded city streets had served as a setting for other of his Biograph films – most notably The Christmas Burglars, filmed at 8th Avenue and 14th Street in November of 1908 – in this film every attempt was made to conceal Dorothy West’s presence on the street, without the audience losing sight of her or her movements. The shots are brief and appear to have been almost stolen, perhaps with a hidden camera, yet they are convincing, not least because West blends in so well with the crowd, making her evasion of Officer Quinn believable. Indeed, George Nicholls, as Quinn, is somewhat less effective on the street, for the simple fact that he is such a looming physical presence. Once the action moves to the countryside, the treatment of the story becomes somewhat more conventional and less dynamic, yet it is effective all the same. Westerfield, Connecticut provides the perfect bucolic setting for the girl’s redemption. Griffith’s use of farm locales is tightly focused, giving his performers just the right backdrop for their burgeoning romance, and making the sudden appearance of Quinn, though inevitable, jarring nonetheless. The story’s resolution is predictable, yet well-played, as Quinn grabs and looks closely at his quarry, perhaps for the first time, and sees in her eyes that she is innocent. The stuff of melodrama, to be sure; still, when acted with simplicity and conviction within the loving confines of a rural homestead, it works beautifully. Griffith was always acutely aware of how his locations influenced his actors’ performances, as well as his audience’s appreciation of the tale he was trying to tell. In A Child of the Ghetto, he managed to weave together two worlds that could not have been more unlike each other and, in the process, rejuvenated an old-fashioned melodrama. Steven Higgins 90

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261 BIOGRAPH

A VICTIM OF JEALOUSY Filming date: 6/7 May 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 9 June 1910 Release length: approx. 987 feet Copyright date: 11 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Stanner E.V. Taylor [“Victims of Jealousy”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: James Kirkwood (The husband); Florence Barker (The wife); Mary Pickford (Her friend); ? (Artist); Mack Sennett, Anthony O’Sullivan (Milliners); Verner Clarges (Minister); Ruth Hart (Maid); Charles H. West, Charles Craig, Alfred Paget, Joseph Graybill, Henry Lehrman, Edward Dillon, Grace Henderson (At reception); ? (Dancer); Charles Craig, Joseph Graybill, Guy Hedlund (In office); Dorothy West (Visitor); Alfred Paget (Artist’s servant); William J. Butler (Valet) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master SHOWING IT TO BE THE WORST OF HUMAN WEAKNESS “All other passions have their hour of thinking, and hear the voice of reason, but jealousy breaks at the first suspicion into frenzy and sweeps the soul in tempest.” These lines of Francis were never more clearly demonstrated than in this Biograph story. It shows the extreme unreasonableness of a person obsessed with this, what might be termed disease. The young husband’s irrational jealousy makes him suspicious of every attention bestowed upon his wife. Even the Minister, who performed their marriage ceremony, making a pastoral call annoys him. They attend a social gathering, and his ill-concealed perturbation at his young wife’s affability with all present spoils her evening’s pleasure, and finally induces her to ask to be taken home. Arriving home, a stormy scene ensues, and there might have been a separation but for the wife’s subtleness in placing within his range delicate reminders of her own gentleness. He is awakened from his present dementia and promises never to act so foolishly again. The next morning as he is about to leave for his office, he is sincere in his protestation of faith, but upon returning to his library to secure some business papers, he hears a man’s voice issuing from the reception room, and upon entering finds his wife’s milliner, who has come with her hat. He orders the man out and unjustly upbraids his wife. Not only that, he instructs his valet to watch. This, of course, is fine for the valet as he sees gain it [sic] it. During the afternoon lady friends of the wife call and beg her to accompany them to the art studio to look over some paintings they think [sic] of purchasing. While at the studio, her friends are called away for a few moments and ask her to wait until they return. Meanwhile, the valet has learned of the wife’s visiting the studio and so informs the husband. The intelligence throws him into a frenzy, and rushing home, secures a revolver and loads to avenge his fancied wrong. The wife’s sister sees this and hastens to apprise her of her danger. Up to now the friends have not returned and the wife is place in a very embarrassing position, but the sister hurries her into an adjoining room, from which she escapes by another door for home. Unfortunately, the wife in her haste dropped her scarf

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which the husband recognizes, and dashing into the adjoining room, just as the other door closes behind his wife, finds his sister-in-law who claims the scarf. Returning home he finds his wife, who confesses that she really was at the studio, and relates the details which are corroborated by her friends who now appear. The wife’s patience is tried to the limit and she determines to leave him at once, so it is only upon his solemn promise never again to mistrust her that she remains. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 9, 1910

A young husband is irrationally jealous of his wife, believing every man is a threat to his marriage. One day, the wife visits an artist’s studio with some friends. The husband’s valet, who has been following her, reports back to his employer that she is with another man. He grabs a gun and leaves, but the wife’s sister gets there first and shields the wife with the story that it was she, not her sister, whom the valet saw. The chastened husband returns home, but his wife admits to her whereabouts and decides to leave him. The husband promises to do better and, in the end, they are reconciled.

This film is a straightforward morality tale in which a husband’s overwhelming and selfdestructive doubts concerning his wife’s faithfulness nearly causes the ruin of his marriage. For such a film to work, especially within the time constraints of a single reel, it must dispense with all unnecessary plot complications and focus its narrative energies directly on the married couple. This Griffith does, yet even so, he is unable to make A Victim of Jealousy transcend its limitations. In part, the fault lies with the performances of James Kirkwood and Florence Barker as the husband and wife. Kirkwood, especially, fails to do more than sneer and clench his fists, giving every indication of jealousy without ever convincing the audience of the sincerity of his emotion. This is puzzling, inasmuch as Kirkwood was, at the time, one of Griffith’s most talented performers, an actor from whom emotionally nuanced performances could be expected. Florence Barker, as well, is inadequate to the task. The humiliation to which the wife is subjected is deep and scarring; in light of this, Barker’s performance requires conviction and clarity, qualities necessary to make the audience believe in her speedy reconciliation with her husband. Unfortunately, she plays her part hesitantly and, in so doing, misses an opportunity to create a memorable female character. It falls to Mary Pickford, as the sister-in-law, to make the strongest impression in A Victim of Jealousy. Her protection of her sister’s reputation, not to mention her sister’s very life, is utterly logical and believable within the confines of this overwrought story, and she plays her part with intense conviction. It would be hard to underestimate the importance of this fact, for in 1910 Griffith was at a crossroads in the development of his stock company, as well as in his growing understanding of just what it was he wanted and expected in each actor’s performance. As he gradually sought to build character from the inside, leaving behind the demonstrative and starkly coded gestures of his own theatrical training, Griffith had to retrain the older members of his stock company in this quieter, yet more intense style, while finding fresh new performers whom he could mold without the fear of old habits interfering. Some were able to make the transition; others moved on to rival film companies that were more accepting of their acting style. Kirkwood made the shift, though not without some difficulty; Barker moved on, comfortable in her talents; Pickford, though strong-willed and highly trained, gave herself over to Griffith and his methods. With these three perform92

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ers, in this year, one can track Griffith’s developing sense of what screen performance was and could be. Finally, it is interesting to call attention to the fact that the original story for this film, as bought, was “Victims of Jealousy”. How much more suggestive is the use of the plural in the original, than is the final release title. Steven Higgins

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262 BIOGRAPH

IN THE BORDER STATES Filming date: 3–14 May 1910 Location: New York Studio/Delaware Water Gap, New Jersey Release date: 13 June 1910 Release length: approx. 990 feet Copyright date: 15 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Charles H. West (Young father); ? (Young mother); Gladys Egan, ? (Children); W. Chrystie Miller, Dorothy West (At farewell); Henry B. Walthall, Frank Evans, William J. Butler, Guy Hedlund, Edward Dillon (Confederate soldiers); John T. Dillon, Alfred Paget, Mack Sennett, Henry Lehrman (Union soldiers); Verner Clarges?, Dell Henderson (Union officers); ? (Sentry); Francis J. Grandon (Surgeon) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative OR A LITTLE HEROINE OF THE CIVIL WAR There is no more powerful agency to stem the tide of affairs than the hand of the child. It has even smoothed the wrinkled front of grim-visaged war, and in this Biograph subject is shown how the presence of a child averted a double fatality. The young father starts with his company of Union soldiers for the front, bidding his wife and two children a tearful adieu. A few days later a foraging party of Confederates are surprised and scattered by the Union forces. One of their number is driven in the direction of the home of the young father. Reaching the well, he finds the child of the Union soldier in the act of drawing a bucket of water. The Confederate begs her to shield him, and despite her prejudice she hides him in the well, stands guard and throws his pursuers off the trail when they arrive. The Confederate is truly grateful and would kiss the child, but this she will not allow, pointing to his uniform. She feels she has done her humane duty, and so orders him to go, and thus he is enabled to rejoin his comrades. At the Union headquarters the young father is given sealed orders and despatched [sic] upon a perilous errand which necessitates his passing through the Confederate lines. He makes his way through the line by disabling the sentinel, but he has not gotten far before the Confederates start after him. Making his way to a thick wood as the dusk comes on, he manages to elude them in the darkness of the night, although these man hunters scour the woods armed with torches. The next morning he manages to reach his own home, and falls exhausted on a couch from fatigue and the wound he received during the pursuit. There are only the two children, one of whom rushes off to the Union quarters for aid, leaving the youngest with the father. The little one has hardly barred the door when the pursuing Confederates arrive. The father, realizing the hopelessness of his position, tells the little one to bring a lighted candle with which he burns the papers intrusted to him. The Confederate whom we first saw at the well, is in command of the party, and forces his way alone into the room where the wounded father lies. Discovering the papers which he coveted destroyed, he is furious and is on the point of

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finishing the helpless soldier, when the child halts his action. He then finds himself face to face with his little savior of a few days before, and when the other Confederates enter he pretends the father is dead and the papers destroyed; so they leave. Later the Union forces arrive with an army surgeon who places the father on the road to recovery. Our little Miss has proven herself the heroine of the day. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 13, 1910

The father of a young family goes off to fight for the Union. Soon after, a lone Confederate soldier, pursued by a Union search party, happens by the house and asks the younger daughter of the family to hide him. Reluctantly, she agrees to do so. Meanwhile, the father is given a dangerous assignment to carry orders through enemy lines. He is chased by a band of Confederates, which is led by the soldier the little girl had earlier helped. The father comes to his own house and is taken in by his daughters. As the older one goes for help, the younger girl helps her father burn the orders so that they do not fall into enemy hands. When the Confederate soldier breaks through the door and attempts to kill the father, he recognizes the girl, protects the father from the others in the search party, and leaves. An army surgeon arrives and treats the father as the little girl is celebrated as a heroine.

Whenever D.W. Griffith filmed a story set during the American Civil War, he brought to it a conviction borne of family history, a history that was told to him over and over again by his father. As a proud participant on the Confederate side of the war – or, as it was styled by the southern states, The Lost Cause – Griffith’s father was in a position to influence permanently and profoundly his son’s sense of history, both personal and national. It did not matter that Griffith’s Biograph films usually portrayed the northern side of the conflict; what he always tried to convey was the intimacy of the war, the fact that families were torn apart and brought together by the war, and that individual acts of heroism often made the difference between victory and defeat. In the Border States, D.W. Griffith’s fourth Civil War film, is set in that part of the country with which he was most familiar, for he was born and raised in the border state of Kentucky. The film shifts the focus of the war, somewhat improbably, onto a little girl. Gladys Egan plays the young daughter of a Union soldier who finds herself in the awkward position of helping a Confederate soldier evade capture. She does so reluctantly, having taken pity on the man even though he wears the uniform of her sworn enemy, and in so doing she sets in motion a series of events that will allow her to save her own father’s life. It is easy to see how the story will develop from its first scenes, so the pleasure one derives from the film is not in its plot, but rather in those privileged moments when Griffith elaborates and extends the story visually. The very first shot, in which we see the family bid farewell to the father as he leaves to join his regiment, opens in a brief tableau, as though Griffith were recreating a print by Currier and Ives, the well-known lithographic company that specialized in mass-produced images of an idealized American past. The location photography at the Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey allowed Griffith to make use of the region’s vernacular architecture, still looking much as it had fifty years before. Even more telling, however, was his use of the gap itself. In the Border States marked the Biograph Company’s first trip to this area, one to which they would return several weeks later to film two pastoral subjects (What the Daisy Said and Serious Sixteen). The high cliffs and lush woodlands afforded Griffith a variety of settings in which to place his actors for psychological, as well as for purely pictorial effect. 95

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In the end, it is this growing sophistication in the use of landscape that makes In the Border States so important as a transitional work for Griffith. Two years later, in The Informer, another Civil War story, he and his troupe would return to the Delaware Water Gap and realize fully the potential only hinted at in the earlier film. Steven Higgins

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263 BIOGRAPH

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW Filming date: 10/14 May 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 16 June 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 18 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Verner Clarges (Mr. Bradford); Henry B. Walthall (Ralph Bradford); Joseph Graybill (His son); Vivian Prescott (Mira); Francis J. Grandon (Artist); Dell Henderson (Butler); George O. Nicholls (Bartender); Grace Henderson (Governess); Mack Sennett, James Kirkwood, Charles Craig, Edward Dillon, Dell Henderson (At first club); Charles H. West, Alfred Paget, William A. Quirk, Guy Hedlund, Henry Lehrman (At second club); Clara T. Bracey (Landlady); Edward Dillon (Valet) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive A STORY OF FILIAL DISOBEDIENCE The contaminating influence of reckless associates is shown most convincingly in this Biograph subject. It also shows the difference between sacred and profane love and how the latter will almost invariably overwhelm the former. Ralph Bradford, the son of a widowed father, had been given every advantage an indulgent parent could bestow. Having graduated at the University, he is, as his father was before him, elected a member of the Graduate Club. According to the old custom he is given his membership cup – an ornate stein. After the toast is drunk, the stein is placed on the shelf in its order to be used by him only at these club gatherings. The father is indeed proud of his boy, as he has up to now realized his earnest hopes, morally, mentally and physically, with a very promising future before him. Among Ralph’s friends is an artist, upon whom he calls frequently. One morning on making a call he finds his artist friend at work upon a canvas, using as his subject Mira, a beautiful young professional model. Ralph is at once struck by the young girl’s beauty and begs an introduction. This acquaintance ripens into an irresistible infatuation, and he becomes a daily visitor and finally proposes marriage, which the girl accepts, truly gratified for his attentions, and gratitude is the seed of love. His father, however, has wondered what his attraction has been at the studio, and so follows him, entering just as the proposal is made. He is amazed, and emphatically expresses his disapproval, telling Ralph he must choose between the model and himself. Ralph decides to marry the girl and he is disowned, although it nearly breaks the father’s heart. In his new sphere, Ralph is affected by the contamination of his new associates, and several years later we find him a victim of drink. But one thing is to be said for the wife, she is ever faithful and patient, wearing her life away in the service of their little child. In the depths, Ralph unable to support his wife and child, deserts them. Poor Mira is so ill that she realizes her lease of life is short, hence as a last resort, writes to Ralph’s father, begging him to save her child from the public orphan asylum. The note touches the old man and he responds

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just as Mira breathes her last. As the child grows up, he in a way fills the void made by Ralph. He certainly is a consolation, and the old grandfather loves him as he did Ralph. Years later he graduates and is elected to the club with the same ceremony as was his father. During the festivities a face is seen peering in the window – the face of a tramp. The young fellows in a lark bring in the tramp to have some fun with him. He is no sooner in the room, when he is struck with horror. In this room twenty two years before he was the central figure of just such a gathering. The tramp is Ralph. On the shelf is the stein – his stein. As he reaches for it the young man hurls him aside, saying “That cup is my father’s.” His son! What a blow. In his condition he dare not reveal his identity. A moment later the old man enters and the recognition is mutual. Sinking in a chair Ralph begs that he may be allowed to drink from his cup, and as he raises it to his lips he falls back dead. What a meeting of father and son. Ralph pays the penalty of his disobedience. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 16, 1910

Like his father before him, Ralph is admitted to the Graduate Club upon completing his studies at the university. He is presented with a commemorative stein to mark the occasion. Ralph meets an artist’s model and, over his father’s objections, he marries her and is disowned by the old man. Eventually, he becomes a drunkard and deserts his wife and their baby, who is taken in by Ralph’s father when the young mother dies. The grandson is raised with the same advantages as his father, graduates from the same university and is admitted to the same club. During the festivities, Ralph stumbles by the club, is seen through the window by his son and his friends, and is brought inside. He attempts to drink from his old stein, but is shoved aside by the boy, who does not know him. The old man enters and recognizes Ralph. All three are reconciled as Ralph dies.

It is impossible to discuss any aspect of The Face at the Window without having to acknowledge that Griffith had done most of it before, and often better. A promising young man’s descent into a degraded life, the corrupting influence of drink, an estranged family reunited and reconciled in the nick of time – these plot elements, among others, were staples of Griffith’s melodramatic repertoire. Though intricately plotted, the film feels rushed in both its preparation and its execution. The sets appear slapdash and the blocking of the action within them is awkward. Henry Walthall tries mightily to bring conviction to his role as a weakling and a drunkard, but he too often falls back on simplistic gestures and facial contortions to convey his character’s desperation. Verner Clarges and Joseph Graybill as, respectively, the father and grandson fare little better, Graybill especially having little more to do than appear carefree. Interestingly, it is Vivian Prescott as Mira, the artist’s model and deserted wife, who provides The Face at the Window with its one redeeming feature. Prescott was not a subtle actress and this, her first appearance in a Biograph film, was hardly an auspicious debut role. Nevertheless, she manages the transition from bohemian to impoverished mother quite well and her scenes with Walthall in the artist’s studio, as well as her confrontation with the young man’s father, reveal her potential strengths as a screen performer. Vivian Prescott showed great promise in this film, and it would lead to many future roles under Griffith’s direction over the next two years. Steven Higgins

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264 BIOGRAPH

THE MARKED TIME-TABLE Filming date: 17/18/25 May 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 23 June 1910 Release length: approx. 996 feet Copyright date: 25 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Frank E. Woods Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Mr. Powers); Joseph Graybill (Tom Powers); Grace Henderson (Mrs. Powers); ? (Messenger); Clara T. Bracey (Maid); W. Chrystie Miller, Alfred Paget, Charles H. West, Mack Sennett, Dell Henderson, Francis J. Grandon, Edward Dillon (In gambling hall); Verner Clarges (In office); John T. Dillon (Policeman); William J. Butler, Frank Evans (In station); Wilfred Lucas (Office doorman) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print WHERE MATERNAL LOVE WAS BLIND There is nothing so holy as a mother’s love, and yet it may breed disaster. How often do we see a young man vicious and reckless, all because of the advantage he has taken of the kindly indulgence induced by his mother’s affection for him. One would suppose that such love would prove talismanic and lead its object to flights worthy of it, but alas, not always. Mr. John Powers, a broker, and his wife are at breakfast, awaiting the appearance of their only child, Tom, a young man of twenty-two. Glancing over the morning paper, Mr. Powers is astounded to read the heading: “Wild Prank of Spendthrift Youths. They wreck a tenderloin bar and then settle with proprietor – Tom Powers the leader.” At this moment, Tom appears for breakfast and receives a severe reprimand, for this is not the first unsavory incident that has been brought to the father’s notice, his mother always having been the intercessor in the quarrels between father and son, her love for the boy being the power. Despite the scolding he has received, he brazenly asks his father for money. This, the father sternly refuses, and the boy goes to his mother, who gives it to him, begging him to mend his ways, which, of course, he promises to do. However, it is the same thing over again. He goes straight to the gambling parlor, where he losses [sic] it all. To make matters worse, he receives a letter from a companion, stating that if he doesn’t pay him what he owes, he will make trouble. Here he faces more disgrace, so he appeals to his mother, who in turn appeals to the father, but in vain. Tom is now beside himself with terror, and learning that the father is to leave on a midnight train for another city to transact a business deal, having the large amount of cash with him, the boy forms a desperate plan. Knowing his father will have several hours to wait before train time, he disguises himself to burglarize. The mother, seeing the burglar at the window, and not knowing his identity, secures the money from the wallet while the father dozes, relying upon the chance of the burglar being blamed for it. To deceive the burglar as to the contents of the wallet, she places in it in lieu of the money, the marked time-table they have been consulting. The boy now enters and in extracting the wallet, arouses the father. An alarm is given and word received that a suspect has been caught. You can readily imagine the

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amazement of the father when he is called to identify the suspect, his own son. The wallet is shown and one glance at its contents – the marked time-table – reveals to his mind the truth. Turning to the police, he denies the property as being his, nor does he identify the suspect. Returning home, he asks his wife for the return of the money, which she does, not daring to look in his face. But he realizes her feelings, and takes her in his arms, knowing that her maternal love overwhelmed discretion. At this moment a messenger enters with a note which reads: “Dear Father and Mother: Goodbye. I am off for another land to start a new and better life. Forgive me if you can. I shall return worthy of your name. Your son Tom.” The subject is a lesson to parents who do not fully realize the contaminating influence of city life. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 23, 1910

Young Tom Powers has a wild, irresponsible lifestyle which is condemned by his father but indulged by his well-meaning mother. Tom is pressed to pay his gambling debts, but his father refuses to give him the money. Later, the father plans a business trip on which he will be carrying a large amount of cash. In desperation, Tom disguises himself and surreptitiously enters the house to steal his father’s wallet. Seeing the “burglar” but unaware of his identity, his mother removes the money from the wallet and substitutes the timetable on which Tom’s father had marked his itinerary, [intending to give Tom the money] and blame the theft on the “burglar”. Tom is later apprehended by the police, and his father, called to the station, opens the retrieved wallet and finds the timetable inside. Instantly realizing what has happened, he allows his son to go free. Tom is sobered by the incident and goes away to make a fresh start in life.

If this little film is one of Griffith’s less notable efforts, he must be excused on the grounds of an unwieldy plot situation. Week by week Griffith was demonstrating his ability to convey ever more subtle and complex ideas through his evolving cinematic technique, but The Marked Time-Table presents him with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Not only must Grace Henderson spot the “burglar” (who is not visible to the camera at the time), conceive her plan, and register that she is making a sacrifice for her son; later George Nicholls is obliged to find the timetable in his wallet, instantly realize what his wife has done and why, instantly decide on his course of action, and convey to his son the reason he pretends not to recognize him – all within a few seconds, in medium shot, and without telegraphing any of this information to the police in the same shot! To help him out, Griffith uses a couple of cinematic devices. One is an obvious choice: a close-up of the eponymous timetable (which we recognize because we’ve already seen it in close-up, earlier in the film). The other device is more interesting: just as the policeman hands the wallet to Nicholls, Griffith cuts to Grace Henderson placing the money in her son’s (Joseph Graybill’s) bedroom, and to an insert of her explanatory note. These shots convey information that the audience needs at some point in the story, but Griffith chooses to insert them just as Nicholls finds the timetable in his wallet. The effect is not only to satisfy the mechanical requirements of the story, but to establish a link between Henderson’s action and Nicholls’s thought process. This is cutting based on an idea, a device which dates back to After Many Years (1908). Griffith has already revived it in such films as The Golden Louis and A Convict’s Sacrifice (both 1909), and it will continue to resurface throughout the rest of his career. Otherwise, Griffith and his cast remain anchored in stage tradition. The actors alternate between restrained naturalism and broad “asides” to the audience. The Bulletin synopsis 100

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implies that Graybill has no further contact with his parents after his parting message is delivered, but in the film Graybill does play one final scene with Henderson, allowing him an opportunity to indulge in some conscience-stricken breast-beating. After he does leave, Henderson strikes a dramatic pose as if delivering a curtain speech. On a more superficial level, mention might be made of the mirror that hangs in the parlor set. It’s placed so deliberately that one half-expects it to play a part in the story, but it never does. It is, in fact, hung at a steep angle from the wall so that it reflects little more than the floor and the actors’ legs. Placed flat against the wall, it might have given us an historically invaluable glimpse of Billy Bitzer in action! Coincidentally, the name “Tom Powers” would also be given to James Cagney’s character – another misunderstood boy who turned to crime – in the landmark gangster film The Public Enemy (1931). J.B. Kaufman

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265 Biograph

A CHILD’S IMPULSE Filming date: 19/26/27 May 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 27 June 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 30 June 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: Vivian Prescott (Mrs. Thurston); Charles H. West (Raymond Hartley); Mary Pickford (Grace); Joseph Graybill (The other man); William J. Butler (Butler); Guy Hedlund (Farmer); Frank Evans (Turk); William J. Butler (Passerby); Frank Evans (Policeman); Robert Harron (Country boy); Mack Sennett (At train); Verner Clarges, Charles Craig, Alfred Paget, Dell Henderson, Edward Dillon (At first party); George O. Nicholls, Clara T. Bracey, Gladys Egan (On farm); Alfred Paget, Henry Lehrman, Dorothy West, Edward Dillon, Dell Henderson, John T. Dillon, Anthony O’Sullivan (At second party) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master; 35mm nitrate positive HOW SHE AVERTED AN IMMINENT WRONG Many are the occasions where we are impressed with the egregious power of the little child in the affairs of life. They are indeed God’s greatest representatives, for no agency has worked more good. The tiny hand of the child has ever pointed the way along the path of righteousness, and has ever been the powerful influence in our high standard of morals. In this Biograph subject is shown how a little child saves two souls – one from moral destruction, the other from mental anguish. Mrs. Thurston, a socially ambitious widow, is holding one of her famous Bohemian parties. To these functions are invited the leading lights of the several professions – actors, artists, musicians, etc. Surrounded by these men and women of art and letters, she was at first entertained, but they soon palled and bored. On this evening in particular, she is especially possessed of ennui, until the appearance of Raymond Hartley, a wealthy young bachelor, who is introduced into the circle by a newspaper man. An attachment immediately springs up between the widow and Raymond, and it must be said that the latter is more sincere than the former, for Raymond calls upon her and proposes marriage, which she is only too willing to accept. His friends, however, upon finding out the seriousness of the situation, go and warn him against her, accusing her of being a flirt. He, of course, will not believe until he, himself, later finds their accusation true. His friend and chum suggests a stay in the country to cure him of this ominous infatuation. Selecting a quiet out of the way place they go enjoining the valet to keep secret their whereabouts. Almost upon their arrival, he meets Grace, the daughter of the farmer. Her simple, artless manners, with her rustic beauty fairly captivate him and make him forget the widow entirely. He now experiences a higher and holier love, so he sends word to his valet to send on his trunks as he intends protracting his stay indefinitely, and later proposes to Grace and gains consent. The widow, meanwhile, has waxed uneasy as she is most anxious to make this rich match, realizing what Raymond’s

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wealth would do for her. At his residence she gets little information from the valet, but espying the trunk tagged, she slyly notes the address. Off she goes in her auto, and finds Raymond on the roadside in a state of elation over his prospects. Feigning illness, she elicits his sympathy, and soon the old infatuation possesses him. Back to the city he goes with the widow, after dispatching a note to Grace of his departure. What a shock this is to the poor girl, and her little sister, while she doesn’t quite understand why, feels that the return of Raymond is urgent. The trunks have arrived and the little one finds the return stub still intact. Getting her toy bank, she extracts her savings and finds she has sufficient to pay fare [sic] to the city. Surreptitiously she starts, and when in the city a policeman directs her to Raymond whose valet states he is at the widow’s. Here the child enters into the midst of a Bohemian gathering. One look into the child’s sweet face, so much in contrast to the features around him, and but the sound of one word of her pleading, is enough to decide him, so picking up the child in his arms he dashes from the place, hurling aside the widow, who would detain him. Back to the farmhouse he rushes and throws himself appealingly at the feet of the poor heart-crushed Grace. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 27, 1910

In an effort to forget his infatuation with a flirtatious widow, Raymond goes to the country, where he meets and falls in love with Grace. Anxious to strengthen her hold on his fortune, the widow follows him to the country. She soon finds him, the old infatuation reasserts itself, and Raymond returns with her to the city. Grace is heartbroken, but her younger sister pursues Raymond to the city and finds him at one of the widow’s parties. The sight of this innocent child in such decadent surroundings reawakens Raymond’s better nature, and he renounces the widow for good and returns to the country and to Grace.

One of the most interesting things about this film is its opening scene. Through hindsight it plays like a miniature preview of A Fool There Was, with Vivian Prescott as a loose prototype of Theda Bara. (Perhaps not coincidentally, A Fool There Was would be directed in 1915 by Griffith protégé Frank Powell, who had appeared in numerous Biographs in 1909 and who had already begun to direct by the time this film was made.) To be sure, the widow’s “Bohemian party” seems rather sedate and harmless, but we’ve already seen how the restrictions of Biograph’s one-reel format forced Griffith to compress volumes of plot and nuance into a tightly-constructed, economical package. If we read between the lines, as audiences in 1910 surely did, it’s not hard to see the widow’s eccentric apartment, her action of sprinkling rose leaves on Charles West’s head, and the anguished suitor who rushes from the room as Biograph shorthand for an exotic, decadent adventuress with a devastating effect on her cast-off lovers. Of course, this is hardly an isolated phenomenon. The groundwork for the “vamp” cycle was already being laid in American popular culture at this time, and Griffith was familiar with it. (Russell Merritt and Scott Simmon brought my attention to this point.) Predatory female characters had already appeared in some of his films, and would continue to do so in the next few years, perhaps most notably in The Mothering Heart (1913) and the first version of The Battle of the Sexes (1914). Further, he had encountered such characters (in the plays of Ibsen and others) in his earlier career on the stage. And he would undoubtedly have been aware of the stage version of A Fool There Was, which had opened in New York in 1909 with Katherine Kaelred as the Vampire and which had included, among other things, the motif of the sprinkled rose leaves. 103

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(That motif carried some pop-culture baggage of its own. The rose leaves can be traced at least as far back as Elinor Glyn’s 1907 novel Three Weeks – and we know from the closing shot of Balked at the Altar [1908] that Griffith was certainly aware of Three Weeks. Sprinkled petals had, rather less effectively, connoted a forbidden romance in Griffith’s The Sealed Room [1909], and they retained their symbolic potency at least as late as the 1920s, as Pola Negri proved in her memoirs when describing her romantic encounters with Valentino.) Having established his “vamp” character in this film, Griffith is just getting started. The plot becomes a standoff between decadent Vivian Prescott and innocent country girl Mary Pickford, and no one with any familiarity with Griffith (at least circa 1910) needs to be told the outcome of that conflict. To Mary’s credit, however, she doesn’t rely on plot mechanics but gives an engaging performance. In her farm exteriors she seems as vibrant and alive as nature itself, as Tom Gunning has so eloquently described her in The Son’s Return (1909). This is no accident; in An Arcadian Maid, shot a month after this film in a similar rural setting (in the same New Jersey location), she appears hot and thoroughly uncomfortable. Here she seems a beautiful, blooming part of the countryside. Intentionally or not, this bad girl/good girl dichotomy is reinforced in A Child’s Impulse by the sheer mechanics of Biograph filmmaking. If Mary seems at home outdoors, Vivian Prescott is almost exclusively an indoor creature – and that means her scenes are filmed in the cramped confines of the Biograph studio on East 14th Street, where a single set is photographed from a single head-on camera position and action is largely restricted to lateral planes. In some Biographs these pinched interiors contrast awkwardly with the free, lyrical compositions of the exterior shots. In A Child’s Impulse the contrast supports the story: West must choose between Prescott’s confined, artificial world and Pickford’s free, healthy outdoor world. Prescott ventures into the sunshine only once, and then just long enough to locate West, reassert her hypnotic hold on him, and hurry back to her lair with him in tow. Oddly, the weakest element of this film is the child of the title. Perhaps Griffith had already made so many of these redemptive-power-of-children stories that he couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for this one, or perhaps Gladys Egan is simply too old for this kind of thing (although, if she were much younger, her solo journey to the big city might be less than believable). In any case, she merely walks through the role, and even though her character plays a pivotal part in the story, we’re forced to take it on faith. Scott Simmon (p. 54) has made the interesting observation that the Bulletin for this film refers to “the egregious power of the little child”. The popular definition of “egregious” having changed so radically in the intervening nine decades, this now seems an unintentionally candid comment on the overused plot device, and on little Gladys’s perfunctory execution of it. J.B. Kaufman

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266 BIOGRAPH

THE PURGATION Filming date: 24/27/28 May 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westerfield, Connecticut Release date: 4 July 1910 Release length: approx. 988 feet Copyright date: 6 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Stanner E.V. Taylor [“Had It Not So Turned”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Gertrude Robinson (The girl); Joseph Graybill (The boy); Mack Sennett, Edward Dillon (The misguided youths); Dell Henderson, Grace Henderson (The girl’s parents); Francis J. Grandon (The attacker); Charles Craig (In office); ? (Elevator operator); William J. Butler (Inspector); Alfred Paget, George O. Nicholls (Policemen); Clara T. Bracey (Maid) NOTE: The subtitle of this film, as it appears on the main title card, is “With Love the Mediator”. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master WITH LOVE THE MEDIATOR Reformation is possible to the most hardened criminal. Many there are who have not had the opportunity of good example, and others who have had, but were indifferent. However, in any case, each must go through the epoch of purgation and suffer tests of their sincerity, the ordeal to be measured according to conditions. The young man in this Biograph story is one of the many misguided youths, who, for the want of healthy moral training, has become a thief. There is something worthy in the boy’s nature, which only needed cultivating. He and his companion get into an uptown apartment house by way of the fire-escape, and entering the apartment of a wealthy business man, find his daughter, while keeping vigil beside the bed of her baby sister, has fallen to sleep. The sight of the girl, a picture of purity and innocence arouses higher thoughts in the young man, so he compels his companion to leave and seek elsewhere. Their exit awakens the girl, and she, in attending the child, notices the hot waterbag needs refilling, and as it is late she goes to the elevator to have this done, when a drunken clubman passes and offers her an insult. The boy is now hiding behind the portieres covering the window, and seeing the girl’s plight leaps to her rescue, hurling the offender down the stairs. The parents of the girl, hearing the scuffle, rush out, and are overwhelming in their gratitude for the young man’s action. The girl herself is impressed. Her father asks that he call at his office that he may more substantially thank him. On the boy’s side, it is a case of love at first sight, so when he reappears at the meeting place of the chums he bids them good-bye forever, determined to put the past behind him. Now for the test. He secures employment from the girl’s father, he, of course, knowing nothing of his past, and in a short time he gains their confidence to such an extent that he becomes the fiance [sic] of the girl. Prospects are now bright, but the purgation is still to be endured, and here fate often conspires cruelly. While on a business errand, the boy meets his erstwhile companion. He tries to induce him to

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take a hand in a job he is to perpetrate the same night. The young man, however, is firm in his high purpose, and refuses to have anything to do with his former associate. A robbery takes place at the office of the boy’s friend, and when the discovery is made next morning, the boy feels sure that his old chum was the thief. The police are informed, but the boy volunteers to try to regain the stolen property. Going to their hovel, he has by subterfuge just succeeded in getting the valuables when the detectives enter. Appearances and record are condemning, so the detective considers the boy a party to the deed and would have him held but for the confession of one of the crooks. Still, it is a sad blow to the girl and her parents, for he must acknowledge his former character. Still determined to stick to the road of righteousness, he begs the man to give him a chance to prove himself worthy of his confidence. This the father grants. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 4, 1910

Two burglars break into an apartment to rob it. One look at the sleeping daughter of the house, and one of the burglars is so smitten that he forces his companion from the apartment at gunpoint, and resolves to go straight. Later, rescuing the girl from an attack, the boy is welcomed into the family’s home. He goes to work for the father’s company and becomes engaged to the girl. The boy’s former companions steal some jewels from the father’s safe, and the boy retrieves them, but not without exposing his own criminal past. The family’s trust in him is now shattered, but the boy asks and receives a chance to prove himself worthy after all.

In a mild way, The Purgation might be considered among the group of films that William K. Everson (pp. 49–50) once described as Griffith’s forerunners of film noir. It has a vaguely fatalistic theme: Joseph Graybill’s repentance and his determination to go straight are quite genuine, but they’re not enough to erase the stigma of his past. Even after he has retrieved the jewels and has been cleared of any involvement in the robbery, it’s made clear that he still is expected to work through some unspecified penance before he will be completely “purged”. Griffith offers only the slightest ray of hope at the end, when Dell Henderson as the father symbolically closes the door behind Graybill and then, thoughtfully, half-opens it again. But The Purgation fails to leave a strong dramatic impression, fatalistic or otherwise, and the problem may be Graybill himself. Despite some good moments he’s just not a strong enough presence to carry a story like this, and his occasional attempts to bolster his performance with anguished displays of conscience don’t help. Interestingly, he has a scene which anticipates the later scene in Intolerance (1916) in which Bobby Harron resigns from the gang – but Graybill is no Bobby Harron (although, as the gang leader in The Purgation, Mack Sennett does offer an uncanny forecast of Walter Long’s performance in the later film). Even if The Purgation disappoints on a dramatic level, we can still enjoy watching Griffith’s craft in action. Plot points which could seem lame or unconvincing are executed here with assurance and polish. One small example among many: Graybill has just seen Gertrude Robinson for the first time, fallen in love, and made his decision to go straight. Now, immediately afterward, Griffith needs to position him in the corridor, unseen, to see her accosted by Francis Grandon so he can step in and rescue her. How to accomplish this? Graybill and Sennett originally enter the corridor by an accepted method for burglars: sneaking through a window. By the time Graybill is ready to leave, he has experienced his conversion. Sennett slips quickly out through the window, but Graybill lingers to gaze at the apartment door 106

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of his beloved. Then, hesitating before the open window (which, as a symbol of the old life, he is loath to use) he hears someone coming and instinctively looks around for a place to hide. His only option is to stand before the window, draw the curtains and hide behind them. So he does – but the approaching footsteps are Grandon’s, and Graybill thus finds a perfect vantage point to witness Grandon’s offense. All this takes a few seconds at most, but subtly enriches the situation (such as it is) with a measure of character and dramatic conviction. It seems likely that many such moments in Griffith’s films were improvised on the set. No matter how strong or weak his story material, during the filmmaking process Griffith could always rely on his instinct for the telling human detail. The Purgation is a case in point. Regardless of the cautionary weight of the story, the scene most viewers will probably remember is the moment in that same corridor, later in the film, when Graybill’s love-struck reverie is rudely interrupted by an impatient elevator operator who just wants him to get on with it! J.B. Kaufman

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267 BIOGRAPH

MUGGSY’S FIRST SWEETHEART Filming date: 20/21/27 May, 3 June 1910 Location: Westfield, New Jersey/New York Studio Release date: 30 June 1910 Release length: approx. 982 feet Copyright date: 2 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Frank E. Woods Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: William A. Quirk (Muggsy); Mary Pickford (Mabel Brown); Edward Dillon, Joseph Graybill (Muggsy’s friends); Grace Henderson, George O. Nicholls (Mabel’s parents); Clara T. Bracey (Muggsy’s mother); Charles Craig (Uplift man) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetemined); Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate negative; 35mm nitrate positive, possibly not struck from the 35mm nitrate negative; 35mm nitrate negative, intertitles only (all from the Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (AFI / Rhode Island Historical Society Collection) TRUE LOVE’S COURSE RAN ANYTHING BUT SMOOTH The most important age of the seven ages of life is the third – “The lover, sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” This is the period at which we dare not call our soul our own. Love is life’s game of draughts, with Cupid as vis-a-vis, and though we play with poignant perspicacity we are sure to succumb to the unerring skill of that little unclothed postmaster. Muggsy has arrived at the third station, and of course is in a susceptible mood when little Mabel Brown passes. Kids together, they always experienced an attraction one for the other, and now, before he realizes it, Muggsy is in love, as is also Mabel. He braves the derision of his youthful companions, who have not as yet been stung by Cupid’s dart, and escorts her home. Arriving at the Brown domicile, Muggsy asks if he might call in the evening; to this she gives consent. During the afternoon Mr. Brown, Mabel’s father, has varnished a chair and put it in the reception room, he thinks, out of harm’s way. At Muggsy’s home there are great doings dressing Muggsy up in his new spring suit. He is mother’s own dear boy and she wants him to look well. The fates conspire against poor Muggsy, for he is ushered into the sitting-room and, of course, sits on the varnished chair, so when he arises he leaves his coat and a portion of his trousers glued thereto. The father helps him out with a suit of his clothes which are about three times too large for him. Thus attired, he reaches home gloomy indeed for he feels that he has lost Mabel forever. However, there is a ray of sunshine in a letter from Mabel, for she sees that Muggsy has been cruelly victimized. On his way to the house he meets Mabel, and together they enter just after the National Uplift Committee has called. This Committee is on a crusade against all things that are degenerating, vulgar, or harmful to the young, and Mrs. Brown joins the movement and consents that they remove anything of that character from her home. They have just started the uplift when the young lovers enter. Seeing these strangers packing the tabooed articles into baskets, they are mistaken for burglars and Muggsy throws them out bodily. When he

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learns the real identity of his victims, Muggsy feels he is in bad again, but the Browns, upon looking through the baskets and finding some of their most treasured articles lifted in the uplift, consider Muggsy the hero of the day. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], June 30, 1910

Tough street kid Muggsy meets refined Mabel Brown and falls in love. Trying to make a good impression on her family, Muggsy calls on her at home twice but embarrasses himself on both occasions – first when he sits on a freshly varnished chair and tears off a large section of his pants, and then when he mistakes a visiting “Uplift Committee” for a gang of burglars and throws them bodily out of the house. But Mabel’s father discovers that the Committee had in fact been removing some of his own valued possessions from the house, and Muggsy is redeemed.

Pressured as he was to turn out finished films to a demanding weekly schedule, Griffith must have been mightily thankful for the team of Mary Pickford and Billy Quirk. The two had first been teamed in mid-1909, possibly as a replacement for the Florence Lawrence-John Cumpson “Jones” series. Since that time, however, they had proven themselves far more versatile than their predecessors. This film was produced less than a year after their first teaming, and took them into comic territory that would never have worked for Lawrence and Cumpson. And, in the tradition of the “Jones” films and the Pickford-Quirk “Harry and Bessie” films, this first “Muggsy” effort spawned a new series of “Muggsy” comedies. It has been noted elsewhere (see Russell Merritt’s insightful notes on the 1909 Sweet and Twenty, DWG Project, #167) that as Griffith’s comedy style evolved, he increasingly blended subtle personality humor into it. Muggsy’s First Sweetheart is a delightful example; Quirk in particular enlivens his performance with a host of subtle moments. When the situation calls for broad knockabout comedy, as when he runs around the house embarrassing everyone present with his partial pantslessness, Quirk delivers; but we can also enjoy small touches like his solicitous gesture of helping Mary mail a letter, his nervousness at entering her house on his first visit – and, on his second visit, his precaution of gingerly testing a chair before he ventures to sit in it! With so much going for it already, Muggsy’s First Sweetheart offers an additional bonus: an attack on busybody reformers, represented here by the “National Uplift Committee”. Griffith’s serious attacks on reformers are of course legendary, culminating most famously in Intolerance (1916); but here, as in the earlier Mrs. Jones Entertains (1909) (likewise written by Frank Woods), we see the subject played for laughs. The comedy is reinforced by the harmless nature of the items “suppressed” by the Committee: a nude statuette, a pipe, and other similarly scandalous objects. It’s easy to imagine Griffith’s delight in this situation: a character who thrashes the agents of reform and is not punished, but rewarded! J.B. Kaufman

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268 BIOGRAPH

A MIDNIGHT CUPID Filming date: 3/4 June 1910 Location: New York Studio/Coytesville, New Jersey Release date: 7 July 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 9 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Charles H. West (Perry Dudley); Mack Sennett (Nick, the unfortunate); George O. Nicholls (Country father); Florence Barker (Country girl); Verner Clarges (Minister); Frank Evans (Policeman); Alfred Paget, William J. Butler (Butlers); W. Chrystie Miller, William A. Quirk, Charles Craig (At store); Edward Dillon, Dorothy West, Grace Henderson, Vivian Prescott, Gertrude Robinson, Joseph Graybill, John T. Dillon, Francis J. Grandon (At party) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master LOVE’S MESSENGER IN A NEW GUISE We will all insist that the tramp is the world’s most odious mendicant. He is apparently an absolutely useless parasite which all are anxious to exterminate. However, here is one poor unfortunate who was the cause of a great good, for he unwittingly plays Cupid and brings felicity into a couple of tedious lives. Perry Dudley, a young man of wealth and position, is the center of attraction with the matchmaking mothers, as he is considered the season’s best catch. The daughters are by no means backward in obtruding themselves to his notice. In fact he is so annoyed and bored by this bevy of fawning females that his life becomes one of ennui. He longs for a change where people are less superficial. While fulfilling one of his social obligations his house is entered by a poor unfortunate tramp, a veritable soldier of misfortune. The poor fellow has a letter in his pocket from friends in his native village from whence he left when but a small boy. The missive asks that he return and he will be taken care of. He is inclined to go, but cannot make the trip on an empty stomach, so his visit to the Dudley mansion is in quest of food. He finds no one at home, and espying a decanter of wine on the table, in lieu of food takes a drink. The wine has both an intoxicating and soporific effect, and when Perry returns he finds his nocturnal visitor on the floor in a profound bacchanalian slumber. As he lifts him to a chair, Perry sees the letter, which he reads. What a chance. He decides at once to disguise himself and go to the country in the tramp’s place, assuming that no one would recognize the deception. Placing a ten-dollar bill in the tramp’s pocket instead of the letter, he instructs his valet and butler to take the sleeping tramp out and lay him on a bench in the park. Off Perry goes to present himself as the long lost native, and has little trouble in convincing the old farmer that he is the personage to whom the letter is addressed. Of course, he is welcomed, but one thing he didn’t bargain for was work on the farm, still he must endure it. Another thing he didn’t bargain for, but is willing to endure, is the companionship of the farmer’s pretty daughter. It is a case of love on both sides.

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Meanwhile, the tramp awakening and finding the money, resolves to go back to his old home. His arrival is uneventful, as no one will believe him until he shows the farmer several marks or scars of identification as proof, hence the farmer chases Perry off and locks the daughter in her room. But, pshaw! As they appreciate the fact that love has ever given locksmiths the merry ha ha, they won’t let a little thing like that break their romance, so they elope. When they arrive at Perry’s mansion the girl is amazed, but is reassured by the presence of a minister who makes them one just as the old father, who has followed with a neighbor enters. He not only makes the best of the situation, but considers himself the most fortunate father in Christendom with his daughter making such a match. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 7. 1910

Perry Dudley, a rich eligible bachelor, is bored with his life and longs for a change. Nick, a penniless tramp, has received a letter from the town where he lived as a child, asking him to return home. Through a fluke Perry finds the letter, takes Nick’s place and goes to the little town himself. The townspeople accept him as Nick, he falls in love with a farmer’s daughter, and all is going well until the real Nick shows up. When the farmer finds he has been duped he orders Perry to leave; Perry not only leaves but takes the girl with him. The farmer follows in angry pursuit, but when he learns that his daughter’s abductor is rich and has marriage in mind, he becomes much more agreeable.

On first viewing, the title of this film may be a source of confusion; some viewers may wonder which member of the cast is supposed to represent “that little unclothed postmaster” (Bulletinese for “Cupid”). The answer: Mack Sennett. The idea is that his bungled breakin inadvertently starts the chain of events that brings Charles West and Florence Barker together. Griffith may be merely marking time with this comedy, but it makes a pleasant diversion. It’s essentially just a minor variation on the venerable Prince and the Pauper/Prisoner of Zenda device of switched identities, simplified in this case by the fact that no one in the little town has seen the Sennett character since childhood. Once again Griffith refutes the charge that he didn’t know how to direct comedy. In addition to its basic situation this film offers a tiny subplot involving Billy Quirk as a rejected suitor and, even better, the scenes of West, as a pampered society boy, reluctantly trying his hand at farm work for the first time. Even the intertitles, sometimes the bane of the Biographs, are for once modestly witty. Along these lines, one wonders whether Sennett’s participation, in this film and in some others, extended behind the camera by this time. His nominal directing debut may have been seven months away, and this film may have been written by Stanner E.V. Taylor and directed by Griffith, but through hindsight it’s tempting to see Sennett’s directorial input in his own scenes. His tramp character is closely related to the tramps and clowns who would soon populate the Keystone films, and his wonderful (and apparently improvised) bit with the decanter of wine is perhaps the best moment in the film. Here, however, Sennett’s comic gifts are held in check by Griffith’s restraint – a commodity seldom seen at Keystone. J.B. Kaufman

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269 BIOGRAPH

WHAT THE DAISY SAID Filming date: 8/9 June 1910 Location: Delaware Water Gap, New Jersey Release date: 11 July 1910 Release length: approx. 987 feet Copyright date: 13 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Stanner E.V. Taylor [“The Loyalty of Martha”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Martha); Gertrude Robinson (Milly); Joseph Graybill (Gypsy); Verner Clarges (Father); Charles H. West, Francis J. Grandon (Farmers); Clara T. Bracey, Anthony O’Sullivan (Gypsies); Alfred Paget, Anthony O’Sullivan, Frank Evans, John T. Dillon (Farmhands); ? (Spinster) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate negative, fragment (AFI Collection); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive A TIME-HONORED SUPERSTITION VERIFIED “He loves, he loves me not, he loves me!” What faith have we not placed in this floral prophet when we were in the spring of life. Infallible was its answer when we pulled off each petal repeating the above litany. At the opening of this Biograph subject, we find Martha and Milly, two sisters, in the daisy field asking of that little mystic flower the momentous question, “Does he love me?” The answer in both cases is “Yea!” and off the happy little maids skip towards the homestead. Martha learns of the presence in the village of a band of gypsies and is anxious to have her fortune told by one of these Nomads, curious to know if the story of the daisy is true. Foolish girl not to believe implicity [sic] in the daisy. For this scepticism [sic] or, rather, lover’s apostasy, she incurs the displeasure of the daisy and vengeance is certain. A handsome young gypsy appears, reads her palm, planning her future to suit himself. Martha is fascinated by the young Nomad and later really loves and believes in him, meeting him clandestinely at the foot of a waterfall as often as possible. Finally she persuades her sister Milly to have her fortune told by the gypsy, of course, not hinting of her love for the young man. However, the gypsy now makes the sisters unknown rivals of each other for him, each girl guarding her secret carefully. But the daisy wreaks its vengeance when Martha comes suddenly upon her sister and the gypsy at the waterfall. She witnesses the wretch’s perfidy unseen by them, and so she stealthily departs vowing never to see him again. At this time the old father of the two girls remarking their absence goes in search of them. He is amazed upon surprising his daughter Milly in the company of the gypsy, and an argument ensues which results in the old man being knocked down. The girl’s cries bring several farmhands, who, thinking the old man killed, start after the gypsy to annihilate him. He is in a fair way of being apprehended when he arrives at the gate of the homestead where Martha is seated weeping from chagrin and disappointment. He appeals to her to save him, which she at first is loathe to do, but the realization that she once cared for him softens her and she directs him into a barrel and covers him with potatoes, so that when his pursuers arrive he is safely under cover. Meanwhile, the old man is found to have been only stunned by his fall and in no way hurt, so

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the hands are asked to desist in their dire design. Still they proceed to camp where the young scoundrel has now arrived and order him to leave the neighborhood at once, following him for a distance to be sure he obeys their injunction. The girls are now regenerated in their faith in the daisy, each going to her sincere rustic sweetheart. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 11, 1910

Two sisters, Milly and Martha live in a small rural village and yearn for romance. Martha visits a gypsy camp to have her fortune told and attracts the attention of a young gypsy man, who begins to meet her clandestinely. Martha persuades Milly to have her palm read, unaware that the gypsy will woo her sister as well. When Martha finds them together she rushes off in tears. But when her father finds Milly with the gypsy he reacts angrily and the gypsy strikes him, knocking him out. The gypsy is then pursued by a group of townsmen, and Martha hides him not knowing of the attack on her father. It turns out that her father is not seriously injured, but the townsmen escort the gypsy out of town. Martha and Milly find local boyfriends to take his place.

In his 1915 The Art of the Moving Picture, poet and early film critic and theorist Vachel Lindsay still remembered the 1910 What the Daisy Said as a film of Mary Pickford’s “before producers or actors were known by their name” (Lindsay, p. 55). Lindsay pronounced it “sugar sweet”, but apparently liked the title more than the finished product. This is certainly one of Griffith’s most charming pastoral romance-comedies (if one can overlook the xenophobic treatment of the gypsy by the townspeople, an attitude Griffith does not really endorse – he is obviously amused rather than scandalized by the young gypsy – but doesn’t seem to condemn, either). The film’s charm is due to several factors. First, Griffith’s – and probably the whole company’s – obvious delight in being on location in the lovely countryside surrounding the Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey (not far from his frequent location of Cuddebackville, New York) on a pair of beautiful late springs days, romping through fields of daisies in bloom. The original story/scenario for the film by Biograph’s most reliable scenarist (and, very briefly, Griffith’s predecessor as director at Biograph) Stanner E.V. Taylor was entitled “The Loyalty of Martha”, and one suspects the change of title might have resulted from Griffith’s discovery of the field of daisies that appear in several shots of the film, including its opening and closing. Almost as attractive as the scenery are the pair of Biograph ingenues who star in the film as sisters, Mary Pickford and Gertrude Robinson. While Pickford certainly shines as the stronger actress of the two, and Griffith gave her the more demanding role of the sister who feels betrayed, Gertrude Robinson’s charm should not be entirely eclipsed by her more famous rival. Robinson’s petite brunette beauty makes a nice contrast to Pickford’s blonde hoydenish performance. Although by no means possessing Pickford’s acting range (and Griffith never gave Robinson a role as demanding as Pickford’s in An Arcadian Maid), Robinson had a grace and delicacy that explains Griffith’s logic in casting her, rather than Pickford, as Pippa in Pippa Passes. For the most part, however, Griffith gave her secondary roles, and seems, as was his wont, to have used her partly to antagonize and control Pickford by having another ingenue he could call on. The rivalry between actors that Griffith was known to foster, is perhaps also reflected in the plot of this film as two sisters are wooed by the same man. The natural beauty of both the location and the actresses benefits from Bitzer’s careful photography and Griffith’s subtle direction. Few films show Bitzer’s landscape eye better than this one. Through his framing, Bitzer manages to create a sense of landscape that 113

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embraces and seems to nurture the characters. The opening and closing shots of the daisy hill show Bitzer’s practice of placing actors against the lush ground; the rising hill combines with the camera angle to surround the sisters with the daisy field, like a pre-Raphaelite decorative border. The horizon and a bit of sky just barely peek into the frame above their heads. The shot of the gypsy wagon is filmed so that most of the frame is filled with figures framed in medium shot, but in the background, one sees in the distance the mill pond and its cascade. Most spectacular is the flowing cascade of streaming white waters that fills the background of the frame in the scenes where the gypsy romances each of the sisters, a lyrical and visually stunning romantic setting. Griffith’s sense of gentle irony so strongly evident throughout this film, seems to hint that the gypsy has selected this setting for his meetings in order to make the proper impression on both girls as he makes his not-entirely-sincere pledges. Bitzer’s sense of textures is also evident in the shots of the garden which contains the barrel in which Martha will hide the gypsy from the mob. The worn wood of the fence gate, the spring foliage of the trees which fill the frame, the barrel and the potatoes which Pickford uses to conceal her perfidious beau, each possess a different tactile density and epitomize the varied visual surfaces that so enliven Biograph exteriors. But the blend of irony and artifice that gives this film a flavor unique to Biograph and Griffith may come primarily from its découpage – the careful portioning out of its action between a small number of recurring locations and shots. This one-reel film consists of fiftytwo shots and eight intertitles. But this fairly large number of shots are spread over only ten different locations. In other words, this film alternates between separate locations each shot from a single angle and framing, all of which – except one (a rail fence that the two sisters climb over, on their way to the gypsy camp, a lovely picturesque shot that Griffith could not resist) – are used more than once, and most considerably more than once. The location/framing of the cascade at which the gypsy woos the sisters and also attacks the father (and where we see him recover), for instance, appears in eleven shots. The essence of Biograph’s narrative editing lies in these recycled locations as much as in parallel editing. Parallel editing plays a fairly minor role in this film. Griffith occasionally uses a parallel cut for contrast or to articulate a character’s emotion (as in the shot of the gypsy romancing Milly that interrupts two shots of Martha weeping over his fickle behavior). During the fairly brief chase of the townsmen after the gypsy, Griffith cuts between pursuer and pursued several times (separating the two elements of a chase in a way he rarely did in 1909). But more powerfully, the editing pattern here works through repetition and alternation between the recurring locations. Griffith never cuts within these locations, neither to a closer (or more distant) view, nor to another angle. Each location is presented in the same carefully arranged framing and the growing familiarity of each location gives the film the feel of a series of variations on themes, an almost musical form. It must be stressed immediately that the motivation for this small set of recurring locations (and framings) derives from an economical logic of shooting, made possible by Griffith’s understanding of the power of editing and juxtaposition in telling a story. The Biograph Company could shoot this film in two days partly because Bitzer only had to film from ten different set-ups. But this meant, of course, filming out of sequence, with a strict understanding of the order in which shots would be placed in final editing – which entails a strong sense of continuity and almost certainly a shooting script, even if (as I suspect) Griffith only finalized it on location. This practice of shooting out of order was common practice at nearly all American production companies in the teens, but the marked use of recurring location was only noticeable in companies which had large number of shots with memorable compositions. But beyond the economy of production it enabled, this repetition can have a strong poetic effect, as Griffith’s film demonstrates. Griffith obviously chose certain loca114

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tion/compositions for their visual overtones – the cascade for the love scenes or the daisy hill as the place to present (in the very first shot) an image of two young sisters dreaming of first love as they pick off the petals intoning “He loves me … he loves me not”. But later in the film these overtones contrast with the action that takes place in the same locations, as the father is struck in front of the cascade or the mob pursues the gypsy through the field of daisies. Griffith was as alert to contrast and irony as he was to a more direct lyrical expression. Griffith foregrounds the repetitive nature of his shooting practice, rather than concealing it (by changing the angle of framing, for instance). Perhaps the strongest effect Griffith gets from such repetition comes with his nearly comic portrayal of Charles West as the hard-working young farmer that Pickford finally chooses as her beau after the gypsy is run out of town. Griffith first presents West digging a garden in the film’s second shot. Pickford walks past him, smelling a flower. However, when West briefly stops his spading to speak to her, she shakes her head and walks away. He stares after her sadly, but resumes working. Griffith returns to West in the eighth shot of the film, immediately after Pickford’s first tryst with the gypsy. Here the cut expresses a basic contrast between the romantic exotic lover and the hard-working farm boy, with the repetition of location and task underscoring West’s constancy. When Griffith returns to West in the same framing/location in shot 35, as he hoes the garden, he is again cut against an image of the gypsy, now fleeing from the mob, with an even stronger sense of contrast, and a sort of hyperbole of West still working in the same location after a fair amount of time has passed (possibly days). The final return to West in the film’s penultimate shot, gives his constancy and the repeated location an almost allegorical quality. While Griffith’s cutting back to West indicates a consciousness of the effect of the repetition, it is not as though the thread of images of West has no progression; in his first two appearances he is spading the garden, whereas in the last two he is hoeing. But in this final repetition, Pickford’s action reverses those of the second shot and resolves the film. Whereas in the second shot Pickford rejects West and he maintains his focus on his spading, in this shot she steps into the garden, takes the hoe from his hand and puts his arm around her as she embraces him. Griffith’s most powerful formal use of repetition is reserved for the film’s last shot. We return to the location of the first shot as Robinson stands (alone this time, sister Martha has been taken care of in the previous shot) picking petals from a daisy. As she finishes her oracle a farmer boy enters the frame almost magically. She takes his hand and the two of them walk into the depth of the shot, their backs turned to us, wandering among the flowers, then exiting to the left. The shot lingers briefly on the daisy field as the breeze ruffles the blossoms. This circular structure of returning to the composition of the first shot in the last one serves throughout Griffith’s Biograph career as one of his strongest poetic devices. The first and last shots mirror each other, giving the narrative a sense not simply of resolution, but of formal symmetry and harmony. Most frequently, as here, the similarity in composition underlies a narrative contrast that expresses the film’s narrative progression and resolution. Here two sisters yearning for love are replaced by a heterosexual romantic couple. But alongside Griffith’s extreme formal control and structuring of this one-reel film we must not forget his openness to spontaneity and the contingencies of nature, like the breeze which ruffles the flowers in this last shot. If Griffith’s découpage and editing shows his calculation, he still had time to highlight an ambient detail and celebrate the accidental and transient. No shot demonstrates this more clearly than the shot in which Martha sneaks out of her house to keep her rendezvous with the gypsy. She rounds the porch and exits to the left, after looking about cautiously. But the point at which Griffith actually cuts the shot is determined by a small black puppy which begins climbing down the stairs awkwardly after 115

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Mary has left the frame. The main point of the narrative has been made and the main character has left the frame. But Griffith lingers, granting a moment to this charming and contingent detail, to our delight. The “Spectator” at The New York Dramatic Mirror (most likely Frank Woods) commented only briefly on What the Daisy Said, but noted what he called “poetic and artistic touches that impart an agreeable charm to the picture”. He also praised the film’s acting in the terms that he valued most highly, not only realism but showing an absence of any consciousness of the camera: “The acting all through is of the perfectly natural kind that knows no camera and has the appearance of real life” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, July 23, 1910, p. 25). The Moving Picture World found a nostalgic tone in the film “suggestive of rustic happiness of years agone”. Many of the film’s viewers were likely to have grown up in rural surroundings, but probably saw this film in an urban nickelodeon. Therefore such nostalgia for rural life may have formed a strong attraction for early viewers. As The Moving Picture World put it, “it brings back old days and youthful pleasures and visions, more freely perhaps than almost any picture of recent date” (July 23, 1910, p. 186). For us, nearly a hundred years later, the film not only demonstrates the carefully structured narrative style, that Griffith had forged in the last year, but the possibility of seeing the breeze and sunlight of a day in June in 1910, reflected on the screen and on the faces of Biograph’s ingenues. Tom Gunning

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270 BIOGRAPH

A CHILD’S FAITH Filming date: 7/11 June 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 14 July 1910 Release length: approx. 986 feet Copyright date: 16 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: James Carroll [“A Child’s Prayer”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Mr. Paulton); Florence Barker (Alice Paulton); Alfred Paget (Father’s choice); Mack Sennett (Alice’s husband); Gladys Egan (Their child); W. Chrystie Miller (Old man); Gertrude Robinson (His daughter); William J. Butler (Realtor); ? (Landlord); Edward Dillon, Frank Evans (Workmen); Charles Craig, Guy Hedlund, Dorothy West, Edward Dillon, Clara T. Bracey, Jeannie MacPherson, Henry Lehrman (Well-wishers) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master HOW THE LITTLE ONE’S PRAYER WAS ANSWERED Who is there who really disbelieves in the efficacy of prayer? The most hardened and indifferent worldly man will in time of desperation or danger almost involuntarily breathe a prayer to the Almighty for help or protection. Many are the occasions where calamities have been averted by a sincere prayer, and in this Biograph subject is shown the efficaciousness of a little child’s appeal for help for her mother. At the opening of the story we find Alice Paulton incurring the extreme displeasure of her father by rejecting the suit of the favored young man of her father for one of her own choice. Determined to marry this man she is disowned by her father, and so leaves his roof and is married. Mr. Paulton, being a widower, at first grieves over the loss of his daughter’s love, but later becomes a mono-maniac, money being his only thought, and to hoard this his only aim. He becomes a veritable tyrant, grinding his debtors most unreasonably. Thus things go on for several years. Meanwhile a girl child has blessed the young couple, and at the end of ten years the young father is in the last stage of consumption, with little strength left to work. Dire poverty reigns in the household, and in desperation the wife goes to her father to implore his aid. He is now in the extreme of moneymadness, and almost throws her from his house. The worst is yet to come, and it comes soon – the young father dies. Here the poor woman is left destitute, with her little girl to care for. Her attempts to secure employment are in vain and starvation stares them in the face. But the little child has faith in prayer. The old man’s temper has now gotten worse and his niggardliness more excessive, until finally he sells his home that he may add the returns to his hoard and moves into cheaper quarters. Fate leads him to engage the squalid room directly above his own daughter and granddaughter, although he is quite unaware of it. He is at a loss to find a place to hide his money until he espies a stove-pipe hole in the chimney wall. This he reckons a safe bank, so here he keeps it. On the floor below we see the poor woman despairing, until when she leaves for the next room, the child kneels and prays for aid. At the same moment the old man is replacing his gold in his chimney bank, and shoving it in too far,

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down the chimney it falls, striking the fireplace below and rolling out in front of the kneeling child. She at once believes it came from the Heavenly Father, and so kneels in thanksgiving. The old man becomes a raging demon at the loss of his money, and when the janitor directs him to the apartment beneath he bursts in and snatches the money from the child’s hands. The confusion brings in the mother, and a recognition occurs. The old man is adamant, however, and still refuses aid to his daughter. While in the hall on his way to his own apartment, the thought of the little child on her knees praying with such faith impresses him, and changes his entire nature. Well, he returns to his daughter and granddaughter for good. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 14, 1910

A loving father favors a prosperous young man as his daughter’s suitor but disowns her when she choses a working-class man. Years later, the husband struggles against the ravages of tuberculosis to support his wife and daughter. The heroine’s father has become a miser, and around the time of the husband’s death, he unwittingly moves into a cheap flat directly above that of his widowed daughter and her child. As the child prays for help, the miser’s stash of money falls down the chimney and lands beside her. Her faith touches the father, and he reconciles with his daughter.

A Child’s Faith clearly belongs to that type of film that Griffith made quickly between more ambitious projects in order to fill up Biograph’s release schedule. Apparently considered a minor film, it received few reviews in the trade press. The Moving Picture World afforded it a brief notice that echoed the phrasing of the Biograph Bulletin description and spoke little to the film itself: Interest centers in the simple faith of a child who believes in the efficacy of prayer, and when a shower of gold comes down the chimney she accepts it as a gift from heaven. The miser to whom it belongs is the father of the little one’s mother, from whom she became estranged years before. The faith of the child touches the old man’s heart and a reconciliation follows. The principal feature is the little girl’s faith, and that alone makes the picture notable. Its influence is wholesome and it might make a difference in the viewpoint of some of the men of the world who may see it. (The Moving Picture World, July 30, 1910)

Yet given that the prayer and accidental fall of the money bag occur only in the last minutes of the film, there is considerably more to the action. The whole storyline is undoubtedly thoroughly conventional, yet as usual the film presents some instructive aspects. For one thing, even in so perfunctory a production, Griffith takes the trouble to indicate the passage of time by shifting the furniture around within sets, sometimes in subtle ways. In the first shot, for example, a small table at the left serves as a support when the father unwraps a cloak he has bought as a present for his daughter, as well as a hiding place when he slips the box onto a small shelf below the table. Much later, when he has become a callous moneylender, the table has moved to the right, where he uses it as a desk to receive his pitiful clients. (A similar movement and transformation of a table into a usurer’s desk takes place after his move to a slum dwelling.) In the young couple’s apartment, a sideboard occupies the rear wall when they arrive after the wedding. Later a bed occupies that space, indicating the expansion of their family. Finally, a cot is added as a sickbed where the dying husband is laid, and that cot later sits under the window as a reminder of his absence. Such manipulations of the set decorations to indicate changes in the characters’ lives are common in Griffith’s Biographs, and they are important in swiftly conveying the considerable tem118

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poral lapses within a single reel’s length. Undoubtedly other filmmakers of the era used similar manipulations, but it would be interesting to examine the extent to which Griffith took particular care with this technique. Another quietly impressive aspect of the film is the restraint of the acting – especially considering that this is a sentimental melodrama involving a child. The quiet exchanges between Florence Barker as the mother and Gladys Egan as the child convey their weary despair more effectively than histrionics could, and Egan in particular avoids making the prayer scene maudlin. Even Mack Sennett as the ailing husband manages to tone down his bouncy style. Only George O. Nicholls as the father lacks the ensemble’s general restraint, glancing several times at the audience during the scenes involving hiding the money bag in the stove pipe. The relatively restrained acting perhaps contributes to the fact that there are fewer of the tiny flourishes that Griffith usually adds to spice up even his most mundane efforts. Yet even here there is at least one, when the miserly father, coming to rent a room in the cheap apartment building, stoops and pilfers a newspaper lying outside a door – demonstrating just how low he has sunk. One other notable aspect of the film is the sheer length of its opening shot. This follows upon the summary title, “THE GIRL DETERMINED TO MARRY THE MAN OF HER CHOICE IS DISOWNED BY THE FATHER.” The situation described in fact has developed by the end of the shot, but much more occurs in between. We are introduced to the heroine and the father and must believe that theirs is a loving relationship in order to appreciate the change in his character later. This is accomplished via the cloak that he has bought her as a present, and which he carries upon his first entrance and tosses angrily after her at shot’s end when he disowns her. Not only is this cloak a means of visually summing up the situation but also shows that he has been a generous man, far from the miser that he will become. The shot also involves a fourth character not mentioned in the intertitle, the young man whom the father favors and who is in fact introduced before the man whom the daughter loves. Although the scene is too perfunctory to make the social contrast between the two men explicit, we must assume that the father’s choice is significantly better off. This may be implied simply by the directions of their entrances. While the prosperous young man enters and exits from directly off left, the daughter’s lover comes from the left rear, perhaps suggesting that the first may enter by the front door while the latter must use a service entrance. (Griffith is, however, careless enough about entrance and exit directions in many interiors that this apparent distinction may be simple accident.) Despite such touches, this behemoth of an opening shot can only remain comprehensible because its situation is so simple and clichéd, and the staging and acting are comparably conventional. The rest of the film’s shots are far shorter, even working up to some simple intercutting between the two apartments during the climactic prayer scene. Kristin Thompson

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271 BIOGRAPH

SERIOUS SIXTEEN Filming date: 8/9/13 June 1910 Location: Delaware Water Gap, New Jersey/New York Studio not noted Release date: 21 July 1910 Release length: approx. 535 feet Copyright date: 23 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Stanner E.V. Taylor [“Serious 16”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: William A. Quirk (Tom); Florence Barker (Adele); William J. Butler (Father); Clara T. Bracey (Maid); Mack Sennett, Mabel Van Buren, Francis J. Grandon (Among friends) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master “When love is young all the world seems gay.” Thus chants troubador under milady’s window, but –. Well, we must confess there are fleeting clouds and threatening storms during that period. “Serious Sixteen” would seem a paradoxical expression, still the sixteen year old can become awfully serious, as we will show. Tom and Adele are sweethearts and decide that they must marry. Papa gives consent, but enjoins that they must wait four years. Four years! a lifetime. They simply cannot abide by this decision, and resolve to terminate an unendurable existence, hence they form a suicide pact. Their courage fails in the attempted commission of it, so they decide to elope. While Adele goes to get her belongings, a couple of tantalizing misses appear and for a lark bestow upon the nerve-shaken Tom undue attentions. Adele arrives and from what she witnesses, becomes furiously jealous, losing her faith in poor Tom, and leaves him still forcibly detained by the mischief makers. Going home she determines to be through with the world and join the Salvation Army. When Tom hears of this he, too, decides upon the religious and become a Friar. The extent of their avowals is the purchase of the costumes of the costumers. Her firm purpose, however, is soon weakened by the present from papa of a picture hat. As she dons this, Tom enters, and seeing her backslide, he, too, apostatizes, reasoning it is better to wait four years, than to suffer as they had during this one day. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 21, 1910

When young Tom and Adele learn they must wait four years before they can marry, they agree to kill themselves. They reconsider, and then decide to elope. The plan sours when Adele sees two friends flirting with Tom. Brokenhearted, she decides to give her life to the Salvation Army. Tom responds by choosing to join a monastery. When, however, Adele’s father buys her a new hat, Adele backslides and Tom follows after.

The first of the Quirk-Pickford teenage comedies without Pickford. By now the series was a year old, consisting of six one-reelers. In contrast to the Jones series, it had never settled into a fixed formula: sometimes Pickford and Quirk were newlyweds, sometimes adolescents; in the earliest films they live in a brownstone apartment; in the later ones they court 120

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each other in the countryside. Quirk is sometimes called Muggsy, which is the name critics use to label the entire series, but he is also called Harry, Frank, or (as here) Tom. The films were evidently popular and an important part of Pickford’s success at Biograph, but the series never became a staple of Biograph production, as the Jones comedies had been. Even the most important personnel were rotated out. Muggsy’s First Sweetheart, shot two weeks before Serious Sixteen, was in fact the final Quirk-Pickford that Griffith directed. Florence Barker, Pickford’s substitute in Serious Sixteen, lasted only for this one film. When Pickford returned, the series was passed from Griffith to Frank Powell, who then made the final two entries. Barker was an actress trained by Los Angeles stock companies who, along with Dorothy Bernard, was Griffith’s most important West Coast recruit when Biograph first came to Los Angeles. She starred in The Newlyweds, Griffith’s first West Coast production, then mainly worked in Powell’s comedy unit. She was popular enough that within several months of Serious Sixteen she was given the title role in the new Priscilla comedies, meant as the successor to the Quirk-Pickfords: she starred in five of them, all directed by Frank Powell. Laemmle raided her, as he had Florence Lawrence, used her in a few shorts, and was preparing to star her in a feature when at the age of twenty-two she died of pneumonia. Serious Sixteen uses her as an attractive foil to the flamboyant Quirk. It also shows Griffith and writer Stanner E.V. Taylor at their most playful. Griffith is sufficiently confident in his comic tone that he can make satiric references to the Salvation Army and poke fun at Quirk’s monastic ambitions, as though on holiday from the moral sternness of films like The Salvation Army Lass (1909) and The Cloister’s Touch (1910). Unlike the Quirk-Pickford films written by Frank Woods, Serious Sixteen, avoids satiric barbs at charities and women’s groups; rather, the tone remains whimsical and affectionate. It shows surprising daring though, as it sends up Quirk’s religiosity. At one point the family maid playfully genuflects and laughingly crosses herself as Quirk passes by in his friar’s costume. As Scott Simmon writes in his note to The Peachbasket Hat (DWG Project, #146), Griffith’s view of American small-town life has its surprisingly surrealist side. No Indians or gypsies pop up in Serious Sixteen leaping across white picket fences or disrupting badminton games, but Billy Quirk in friar robes is no less incongruous when solemnly crossing a crowded tennis court or marching up front porch steps holding a revolver to his temple. A comic suicide attempt was at the center of the first Quirk-Pickford comedy, Sweet and Twenty (1909), but Griffith makes the attempts funnier here by making them more bizarre. Instead of simply trying to drown herself in water that is too shallow (Quirk’s situation in Sweet and Twenty), Barker tries to hang herself from a sapling that is too short. To accommodate the low branch, she kneels by the seedling with a noose around her neck; Griffith then builds the gag by having Quirk kneel opposite her, hand her a revolver, and indicate that she is to shoot him before falling against the rope. Grotesqueness gives way to cynicism at the end where we learn that teenage idealism is no match for fashion and consumerism. We are meant to laugh at the idea that Barker’s efforts to join the Salvation Army are easily thwarted by the gift of a large floral hat. The hat that brought so much trouble to Mrs. Jones in The Peachbasket Hat here brings Adele to her senses. The New York Dramatic Mirror commented that the ending was “tame”, complaining that when Adele’s sweetheart follows suit and gives up the priesthood he is not given any equivalent motive. Russell Merritt

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272 BIOGRAPH

A FLASH OF LIGHT Filming date: 14/16/17 June 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 18 July 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 20 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Charles H. West (John Rogers); Vivian Prescott (Belle); Stephanie Longfellow (Older sister); Verner Clarges (Father); ? (Younger sister); Joseph Graybill (Horace Dooley); Anthony O’Sullivan, W.C. Robinson, Kate Toncray (Servants); Charles Craig, Gertrude Robinson, Alfred Paget, George Siegmann, Mack Sennett (Wedding guests); Edward Dillon, Claire McDowell, Dorothy West, John T. Dillon, Guy Hedlund (At first party); Guy Hedlund, Ruth Hart, John T. Dillon, Henry Lehrman? (At second party); George O. Nicholls, William J. Butler (Doctors); Grace Henderson (Visitor); ? (Nurse) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm acetate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINCERE AFFECTION AND CAPRICIOUS INFATUATION The difference between love and infatuation is generally marked, but how often are we indifferent to the dictates of our soul. The sight of a pretty face and an attractive personality nearly always intoxicates us to such a degree as to make us believe that our impulses are induced by the heart and soul, but what a fallacy. It is by the sight that we are hypnotized and though the eyes may be the windows of the soul, still under certain influence an intercepting shade is drawn. This was the condition of John Rogers, a young chemist, who is sincerely loved by the eldest of two sisters, but in a state of infatuation prefers the younger girl, fascinated by what he would call vivacity, but which is nothing less than frivolousness. He marries her, and she soon tires of a life of domesticity. He tries to interest her in his chemical experiments but they simply bore her, although they are interesting to the sister, which interest is born of a pure love which she still holds. While he is working in his laboratory, the wife is either entertaining or being entertained by friends. She is in her element at a dinner party, when an explosion takes place in the husband’s laboratory, apparently destroying his sight and hearing. It is a sad house she returns to after her evening’s pleasure. There is her husband deaf and sightless. You may imagine her lot is now more repugnant, as his helplessness annoys her, so she eagerly accepts diversion. This comes in the form of an offer from one of her friends, a theatrical manager, to shine on the comic opera stage. She accepts the offer and on the persuasion of this friend decides to leave her husband and get a divorce, leaving her wedding ring on the table for her sister or father-in-law to find. The sister sees her action, and tries to dissuade her, but in vain. The thought of this second and worse blow to the young man moves the sister to wear the ring, deceiving him until his affliction is passed,

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for the doctor is sure of restoring his sight and hearing. This deception is easy as he can neither see nor hear and is ever under hands of the nurse. The operation promises to be successful so the sister goes to the green room of the theatre to bring the wife back. After a heated argument the wife consents to go and see him at least, arriving just as he is placed in a darkened room to have the bandage removed. When the bandage is taken off, the young man sees in the dim light of the room the figures about him. He turns from one to the other until he sees his wife and makes a move towards her, but she with guilty mien recoils and as she does, clutches the portieres nervously. Down they come, letting in a fatal flash of light from the outside, striking the poor fellow’s eyes causing now incurable blindness. Realizing what she has done, she rushes horror stricken from the house. The young man’s hearing unimpaired, he learns the truth and now feels in his heart what he failed to see with his eyes. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 18, 1910

A young chemist marries the younger of two sisters, but the older sister is secretly in love with him. The young wife soon tires of married life and compensates with a busy social life. Meanwhile, an explosion leaves the chemist deaf and blind. His wife eventually loses interest in him and leaves the family home. Her sister takes her place, but the husband, who cannot see nor hear, does not know. While the husband recovers from an operation that will soon restore his hearing and sight, the older sister persuades the younger sister to return to the house to take her place at the side of her husband when his bandages are removed. A misstep on the part of his young wife lets a flash of light into the darkened room after the removal of the bandages causing the young chemist to lose his sight permanently.

One must concur with Scott Simmon (p. 68 passim), for whom this story, culminating with the blinding of one of the principal characters, is a metaphoric variation on the theme of the visual. After all, doesn’t this film create a parallel between, on one hand, a “wife at her brilliant party”, who wants to “shine on the […] stage” (insert of a letter) and who prefers the “outside world’s glitter” (intertitle) to the darkness of her husband’s laboratory, and on the other, a “husband working away in his windowless basement lab” (my emphasis)? Moreover, it is the woman who is actually responsible for what happened: “In the visual metaphors of the film, she [the wife] seeks more light than her husband’s eyes can tolerate” (Simmon, p. 76). The title “THE FATAL FLASH” can thus be read in a non-literal manner: it is the flash sought by the woman that is essentially fatal for the man. The film is, therefore, a long parallel between the crossed destinies of a man and a woman who, although married to each other, do not appear to share the same values. On one side, there is work, in the shadows no less, and on the other, there is pleasure, leisure, and amusement. Here Griffith privileges a contrast between two worlds, one of which will be condemned and the other praised. This theme even finds expression in the actual structure of the film through its editing. For example, the first form of parallelism is anchored in a systematic alternation, completely motivated on a narratorial level (there is no movement on the part of the actors from shot to shot to justify the change of shot), between the laboratory in which the young chemist works and the high society salon where the young wife amuses herself. Worse, it is during this very first instance of intercutting between the two spaces that the husband will experience the explosion that will leave him deaf and blind. The parallel between work and leisure is thus transformed into a parallel between suffering and pleasure. Ironically, at the very moment when her husband doubles up in pain in his lab, the young wife, in the high society salon, raises her glass and makes a toast. In doing 123

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so, she repeats the gesture that the chemist has just made, a few seconds before the fatal moment, when he takes in his right hand the beaker of liquid that will cause the explosion once it is poured into the mixture he has just prepared. As he raises the beaker slightly above shoulder-height, as if to visually scrutinize the contents, the chemist puts his flask in nearly the same position (the upper left side of the image) as will soon occupy the wife’s glass when she proposes a toast. This “synchronicity” permits the objects to speak with more acuity than language could. In terms of the construction of space, this film presents a very interesting case of the utilization of a location for a strictly narrative end. The spatial segment in question is composed of a corner of a room, and one could not decide if it is separated from the main room by a door or some other opening. Although Griffith often shows the passageways by which characters pass from one space to another, this is not the case for this space that I attempt to describe, and which is a suitably intermediary space, favorable to passages (in every sense of the word) and contemplation. This space has no personality of its own (one could not say, for example, exactly which room it is), but it is clearly identified with the sister of the wife. It is there that she retires each time she is in waiting or suffers anguish. It is also the supreme site of passage: twice the ring is exchanged out there, and it is from there that the wife leaves, initiating her passage to another life. Moreover, the very existence of the intermediary space gives rise to the only examples of close crosscutting in the film. Even if it is, for the most part, constructed in the modes of alternation and parallelism, the film actually attests to an especially loose synchronicity between the two worlds that it juxtaposes. But, the editing tightens when it juxtaposes fragments of the narrative that are at the heart of one of these two worlds, that of the chemist. For example, at the moment when the doctors verify the results of their operation on the patient, the editing systematically alternates shots of the salon where the action is taking place and this intermediary space where the sister-in-law takes refuge and inside of which, like a lion in its den, she paces up and down, gripped by anguish. André Gaudreault

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273 BIOGRAPH

AS THE BELLS RANG OUT! Filming date: 18 June 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 21 July 1910 Release length: approx. 457 feet Copyright date: 23 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Gilbert Allen); Stephanie Longfellow (Grace, his daughter); Charles H. West (Wilson Breen, her fiancé); Grace Henderson (Mrs. Allen); Alfred Paget, W.C. Robinson, John T. Dillon (Butlers); Dorothy West (Maid of honor); Edward Dillon (Best man); Verner Clarges (Preacher); Charles Craig, ? (Creditors); William J. Butler (Court officer); Mack Sennett, ? (Policemen); ? (Maid); George Siegmann, Henry Lehrman?, Gladys Egan, Joseph Graybill, Gertrude Robinson (Wedding guests) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative The power of dissembling is probably one of the greatest gifts afforded the human being. It has saved us from calamity and disaster; it has prevented woe and sorrow. In this case it allowed to transpire without a cloud the happiest occasion in the lives of two young people – their wedding. Grace, the daughter of Gilbert Allen, is sought in marriage by Wilson Breen, a young man of wealth. The father cheerfully approves of the match and the day for the wedding is set for six months hence. The momentous day arrives and all is in readiness. The bride to be has just left her father for her room, after his reviewing of her attired in her trousseau, when he receives a letter warning him that his connection with an illegitimate trust fund deal had been discovered, and advising him to fly. It is an affair the like of which many a reputable banker has before become involved; simply an idiosyncrasy of the money market. To fly would be cowardly, besides it might mean the death of his daughter on such a day as this. Well, he makes a clean breast of it to his son-in-law to be, and gives him a chance to back out. That young man, grasping his hand, exclaims: “No, I will not give her up. We need each other now more than ever. We must keep her in ignorance of it.” At this point the detectives arrive to take Allen away, but being humane allow the ceremony to take place with them hiding behind a screen. Allen gives his daughter in marriage to Breen and bestows the parental blessing as the happy couple leave for their honeymoon, and before the sound of the wedding bells has dies out he is led off to prison by the detectives. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 21, 1910

If a Wall Street financier is to escape arrest, he must flee his house at once. He chooses instead to stay in order to watch his daughter get married. Thanks to kindhearted police, he is permitted to take part in the wedding while they wait discreetly in the next room, ready to take him away. 125

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A one-day knockoff of a story in the style of O. Henry: a sunny, utterly forgettable afternoon charmer. An amiable Wall Street crook decides to give his daughter away in a parlor wedding even though it means he will be captured by the police and sent to jail; his future son-in law cheerfully agrees to marry the daughter despite the prospect of scandal and disgrace; cops with hearts of gold stay in the wings so the father may take part in the wedding unembarrassed. In short, a sentimental urban tale where everyone looks good, not least the young, clueless daughter who gets to wear a spectacular wedding gown with a long diaphanous train. It’s good to see George Nicholls taking a star turn as the warm, sympathetic father after watching him in so many unsympathetic roles. The part itself is a curious Biograph rarity. Almost invariably, fathers in Griffith’s Biograph dramas are either stern patriarchs who thwart their children or they are passive, ineffectual old men who require looking after. As the Bells Rang Out! features a loving father who is neither overbearing nor helpless, and who readily, if tearfully, agrees to give his daughter away to the man she loves. Father-daughter relationships in serious Griffith films are seldom this healthy. Equally remarkable is Griffith’s depiction of the cops sent to arrest Nicholls. Sennett seems virtually unrecognizable as the quiet, dignified patrolman who waits motionless in the adjoining room while Nicholls enjoys his last moments of freedom. Gone are all the usual Sennett grimaces and farcical poses; he leads a trio of policemen whose stillness creates a surprisingly powerful effect. Griffith plainly means the wedding scene as a dramatic tour de force, cutting back and forth between the stoic, inscrutable police and the proud, jovial father who keeps up pretenses as, one by one, the wedding guests innocently make their farewells in his parlor to leave him alone. The heavy moralism that marked so many of Griffith’s 1909 Biographs has here been exiled to the rather archaic title, meant to evoke the popular ballads of an earlier period. As the Bells Rang Out! recalls best-selling songs of the 1890s like Those Wedding Bells Shall Not Ring Out!, When the Bells Rang! and Don’t Ask Me to Give up My Father. Utterly inappropriate here, it was most likely another one of Biograph’s careless efforts at labeling their films. But it is also possible that the title was a conscious effort to provide a moral touch for a film that makes a crook its hero. The paper print version of the film is complete, but contains one shot out of order. The medium-long shot of the father, alone in the decorated parlor and puffing on his cigar, is cut into the middle of the wedding ceremony. It should be the film’s penultimate shot, immediately preceding the shot of father surrendering to the police, cigar in hand. Russell Merritt

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274 BIOGRAPH

THE CALL TO ARMS Filming date: 1/6/15/21 June 1910 Location: New York Studio/Paterson, New Jersey Release date: 25 July 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 28 July 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (The Lord); Marion Leonard (Regina, his wife); Joseph Graybill (His cousin); Mary Pickford (Messenger); Alfred Paget (Guard); Dorothy West, Vivian Prescott (Gypsies); Grace Henderson (Lady of the court); William J. Butler, Clara T. Bracey, Edward Dillon, Guy Hedlund (Servants); W. Chrystie Miller, Alfred Paget, Francis J. Grandon, Mack Sennett, Verner Clarges (Soldiers) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative, without intertitles (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection), possibly not from the 35mm Mary Pickford Collection nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive A STORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES No period of the world’s history is so attractive as the Mediaeval. It was so froth [sic] with picturesque romance that the mere mention conjures up thoughts of brave warriors, noble women, love and sacrifice. But as in every other time the good had always to battle with the evil. The moral of this Biograph production is the powerful influence of covetousness. When cupidity is aroused there is seldom any counteracting element in the human make-up strong enough to dispel it. Hence it was that when the Feudal Lord and his bride were visited by their cousin at a time when this Lord was presenting to his bride the family heirloom – the Great Ruby of Irskaat, the cousin coveted it, and was determined to secure it. The lord [sic] receives a call to arms, and in this the cousin sees a way to achieve his design. The Lord, however, appreciating the danger of leaving this valuable jewel unguarded buries it in a secluded part of the grounds. His soldiers now assembled, he departs, leaving his wife to the care of his trusted servants. No sooner has he left, than the cousin returns with the subterfuge that he will stay at the palace guarding the wife until the Lord’s return. This the wife at first appreciates, believing his tender well meant. Surreptitiously he rids the palace of the servants, placing his own in their stead. The poor woman is now in the absolute power of this despicable villain. By entreaties and threats he tries to make her divulge the whereabouts of the ruby, but he finds her adamant. Not wishing to use violence, he will pursue another course – flattery and wine. While he gets the wine, the wife writes a note and dispatches her page, whom she discovers in the garden beneath her window, to her husband with it. Off the page goes on a mad dash only to become exhausted before the end of the journey. Meeting a band of gypsies they give the boy refreshments. The drink induces sleep and when the boy awakes he finds several hours have elapsed. Arriving at the Lord’s tent, he delivers the missive and the Lord leaps into the saddle and dashes towards the palace. During the time of this

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wild ride, a horrible thing has happened at the palace. In her endeavor to keep the traitorous cousin at bay the wife has accidentally fallen headlong from one of the parapets of the palace to the walk below. Out rushes the cousin only to find that the fall resulted fatally. He carries her inanimate form in, and now he fully realizes the enormity of his deed and falls cowering at the foot of the alter [sic] in the little chapel. At this moment the Lord dashes up. Entering, he finds his wife cold in death. Stunned for a moment, he rushes into the next room where the cousin grovels, with one object in mind – vengeance. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], July 25, 1910

A Medieval Lord and his Lady possess a fabulous jewel, which arouses the cupidity of the Lord’s cousin. When the Lord is called to arms and leaves the castle, the cousin insinuates himself, hoping to gain the jewel in the Lord’s absence. However, the Lady yields neither to bribes or trickery and in frustration the cousin imprisons her in a tower of the castle. The Lady tosses a message for her husband to a pageboy below, but the boy falls asleep at a gypsy camp en route and the plea for help is delayed. Resisting the cousin, the Lady falls from the tower and dies. The Lord receives the note, but arrives too late. He turns to take his vengeance on his cousin.

The Call to Arms is an elaborate Medieval costume film of the sort Biograph made less frequently in 1910, preferring Westerns or films set in Spanish California as historical films. No previous Biograph film set in the Middle Ages displays such an elaborate use of costume, extras and settings as The Call to Arms, or blends these spectacular elements as well with Griffith’s style of parallel editing. Knights in armor mounted on horseback ride through fairly convincing medieval settings (that Griffith found in Paterson, New Jersey!), flourishing their spears, and their tent camps extend far into the background, showing the sort of elaborate staging that Griffith had introduced in his Civil War films. Some early exterior shots actually have an uncharacteristic low angle for the camera, chosen obviously in order to show the full height of these New Jersey castles. Although this grandiose style does not entirely escape the rather static posturing that marks many of Griffith’s costume films, especially in the film’s first interior shot in which a great deal of plot information is introduced in a single static shot with broad pantomime (as if more formal styles of acting predominated when Griffith turned to such material), it shows that the film d’art influence was now truly subservient to an action-based narration. The film works around its somewhat stodgy material through parallel editing and creates flexible movement through space and a strongly linear unfolding of suspenseful time. Thus the page’s voyage to the Lord’s camp to convey his Lady’s plea for help, especially his dallying at the gypsy camp, is intercut with the Lady’s increasingly helpless situation at the castle. But beyond the general pattern of alternation, single shots also convey the thoughts of characters. Through a device Griffith had perfected in 1909, these cuts articulate a character’s decision. This occurs most clearly as the Lord, after finally receiving his wife’s message, weighs the decision whether to maintain his post at battle or go to her rescue. Griffith inserts two shots between shots of the Lord pondering first the letter from his wife and then the command ordering him into battle: one shot shows his wife barricading the door of a room against the cousin, and Griffith cuts then to the villain trying to force the door. Although these shots function as parallel editing, taking us to the ongoing action back at the castle, they also express the Lord’s thoughts and the motivation for his decision to leave the battle. Beginning with the page setting out with the plea for help, Griffith suspensefully inter128

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cuts the various elements (the attempt at rescue and the Lady in danger) for nearly forty shots. The Lord’s ride to rescue intercuts his Lady’s increasing danger, at one point interrupting the action of his cousin threatening her with his sword, the editing increasing narrative suspense by cutting at this high point of action. When we cut back, the Lady falls or jumps from the window (an action cut with careful continuity from her fall in the interior to her landing outside the tower). The parallel editing that characterizes the latter part of this film, as we alternate between the Lady’s peril and her possible salvation, employs the narrative device of interruption to create suspense. This yields one of Griffith’s longest sequences of what he later described as “sustained suspense”, and created a film with seventy-five shots (plus seven intertitles and one insert of the Lady’s letter), the largest number of shots Griffith had yet crowded into a single reel. As in The Country Doctor (1909) and a number of other Biograph films, in The Call to Arms the race to the rescue does not arrive in the nick of time: by the time the Lord makes it to his castle his wife is already dead. But perhaps the most extreme case of interruption in this film comes in the very last shot, with the final moment of the action. After discovering his wife’s dead body, the Lord confronts his cousin praying before an altar for forgiveness. He raises his sword to strike, assumes a brief tableau of frozen action as the cousin cowers before him – and the film ends! This is a radical denouement, and there is nothing like it in any other Biograph film. How can it be explained? The easiest explanation would be that the paper print (to my knowledge the only print we possess of this film) is incomplete, and either the shot continued with the cousin being hacked to death, or another shot indicated the outcome (which would seem inevitably to be the cousin’s death, although a reconciliation and forgiveness is not entirely out of the question). A number of other paper prints lack shots which we know were included in the release print (such as the frozen tableau in A Corner in Wheat). But this is not the case here. The review of The Call to Arms in The New York Dramatic Mirror (unsigned but believed to be by Frank Woods) clearly describes this abrupt ending in medias res: “As the outraged nobleman, splendidly played by the way, raises his sword the picture ends and we are left to conclude it in our own minds as our wishes may dictate. It is an unconventional ending, but strongly effective leaving an indelible impression on the memory” (August 6, 1910, p. 26). Thus Griffith intentionally ended this film on a frozen moment. Such an interruption extends his style of editing to a larger narrative form, suspending the final outcome of the story. The avoiding of the moment of murder might have assuaged the National Board of Censorship to which Biograph submitted its films. But the narrative innovation of the ending is not explained by that concern entirely. Instead we have here an example of another powerful and original Griffith stylistic innovation, like the frozen tableau in A Corner in Wheat, tried out once, but not returned to in later films. Henry B. Walthall and Marion Leonard were actors Griffith could count on for the broad performances in a romantic style the costumes dramas seemed to call for. (In annotating the Bulletin for this film, Bitzer identifies the Lord as Walthall, and D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Company follows this identification, as I did initially. Looking at the film again, I am less sure. Anyone have any other ideas?) Joseph Graybill acts the villain with an interesting degree of hesitance and ambiguity, fitting in with his remorse after Leonard’s death and prayers for forgiveness at the end. Mary Pickford beautifully plays the drag role of the page boy. I believe this is the only time she takes on a cross gender role at Biograph, a performance mode that would play an important role in her later star persona in a few of her features. Besides praising Griffith’s “unconventional ending” the New York Dramatic Mirror review of The Call to Arms saw it as one of the finest films Biograph had issued, particularly praising its spectacular elements: 129

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If it were not known for a fact that the Biograph productions were made in this country it would be difficult to convince the average picture spectator that the beautiful outdoor scenic backgrounds of this film were not pictured in Europe. Photographed with artistic skill and with numerous characters costumed in strict harmony, we are given an atmosphere of feudal times that has not been excelled in any production, not excluding the best of the French, that this reviewer has ever seen. Added to these points of excellence we have a strong story admirably acting with the combined result of a film subject which must be classed as one of Biograph’s finest. The scene where the feudal lord rides away to war followed by his retainers is wonderfully convincing, but hardly more than the camps scenes with tents of ancient construction. (Ibid.)

This film shows Griffith’s and Biograph’s ambitions with the one-reel format, able to mount elaborate productions, but not tied to famous literary texts or sources, and able to adapt even costume films to suspenseful and innovative story-telling. Tom Gunning

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275 BIOGRAPH

AN ARCADIAN MAID Filming date: 22/23/25 June 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 1 August 1910 Release length: approx. 984 feet Copyright date: 3 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Priscilla); Mack Sennett (Peddler); Kate Bruce (Lady of the house); George O. Nicholls (Man of the house); Edward Dillon, John T. Dillon, Henry Lehrman, Joseph Graybill, Charles Craig, Vivian Prescott (In gambling hall); W. Chrystie Miller, Alfred Paget, Francis J. Grandon, Anthony O’Sullivan, Henry Lehrman? (On train); Frank Evans, William J. Butler (Two men) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined), Paul Killiam Collection; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative, without intertitles, incomplete (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate negative, intertitles only for a Hirsch reissue, ca. 1920s (Mary Pickford Collection); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (Stanford Theatre Collection, generation undetermined) RUSTIC SIMPLICITY IMPOSED UPON Woe to him who will prey upon those of pastoral and bucolic innocence for fate is sure to wreak vengeance, and that vengeance is invariably terrible. Such was the lot of an unconscionable villain who imposed upon the trusting innocence of the country maid. Priscilla, after a long and weary search, secures work at a farmhouse. She is at once ordered to do the washing, and is just ensconced at the tubs by the well when a young Italian peddler appears and is directed by her to the mistress. His wares appeal to the farm wife and he succeeds in disposing of quite a bill of goods. Leaving the mistress, the peddler passes on to Priscilla to thank her for bringing him to her mistress and to show his gratitude presents her with a cheap finger-ring, at the same time bestowing upon her words of flattery. The poor innocent little girl is quite overwhelmed and believes every word he utters, treasuring the ring highly, which was not worth more than a nickel. The peddler’s principal weakness is gambling, and he not only loses his money, but becomes involved in debt. His creditors press him for payment and he is at a loss as to how to raise the necessary [sic], when the thought of the little country maid occurs to him. He knows he has gained her confidence and that she loves him, hence he considers his plan easy. She, of course, has no money of her own, but she knows her master keeps his money in a sock under his pillow. The peddler persuades her to secure this money pretending that he will take her away with him and marry her. This suggestion fairly hypnotizes her and so she commits the theft. The peddler pockets the money and promises to meet her at their usual trysting-place by the roadside. Here she repairs, only to learn that the scoundrel has just left on the night train. Wildly she dashes towards the railroad only to see the train on its way. Crushed in spirit she wanders off, but the reckoning

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is inevitable. Fate now takes a hand and on the train the peddler engages in a brawl, during which he tumbles from the flying train. Struggling to his feet he drags himself to the woods. Here the maid meets him, and he in a burst of rage attempts to strike her, but injured more seriously than he realized, he falls dead at the foot of a tree. With this comes a vivid realization of her deed and securing the money she had taken from the farmer, she hastens to make reparation by putting the money back from where she took it, the master being none the wiser. The affair has taught her a powerful lesson. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], August 1, 1910

Priscilla, a plain country girl gets a job as a maid of all work on a farm. A peddler comes by and persuades Priscilla to introduce him to her mistress, who buys a number of items. To thank Priscilla, the peddler gives her a cheap ring and flirts with her, arranging a rendezvous. The peddler gambles and falls into debt and persuades Priscilla to steal the farmer’s savings, which he keeps in a sock by his bed, promising her they will marry and run away together. Once he has the money, the peddler absconds on a train and abandons the maid. However, on the train the peddler becomes involved in a brawl and is thrown onto the track. Seriously injured, the peddler encounters Priscilla and dies at her feet. The maid recovers the money and returns the sock to her master’s bed before he awakes.

An Arcadian Maid stands as one of Griffith’s unknown masterpieces, a film of remarkable performances, unusual story line, and a visualization simultaneously lyrical and stark, a true gem from the nickelodeon era and an example of the unique narrative forms possible in the single-reel format, before the more conventional formulas that appeared with the feature film. Griffith tells a story here that is simultaneously brutal and compassionate, intimate in its involvement with character, yet unflinching in its narrative of naive trust and love betrayed. In its sympathetic, but unsentimental portrayal of rural simplicity, An Arcadian Maid marks an important stage in the creation of a uniquely American cinema of native manners. Less popular or flamboyant than the Western genre, which was already carving out a new American style of action genre, this vein of rural American portrayals would continue in the later cinema of Griffith, Henry King, Frank Borzage and John Ford. Griffith’s mastery of psychological portrayal was barely two years old at the time that he filmed An Arcadian Maid, yet the nuanced subtlety of Mary Pickford’s performance in this film shows cinema’s ability to develop character as indelibly as literature or theater. Pickford was becoming recognized by the time of this film’s release (as The New York Dramatic Mirror phrased it) as the company ingenue. However, Griffith gives her a very atypical and demanding role here, as a country maid who is neither attractive nor intelligent, and he must have truly understood the range of Pickford’s talent. Perhaps most striking, Griffith saddled Pickford with the portrayal of a character who lacks the very essence of Pickford’s primary performance style: energy and spontaneity. Rising to the challenge, Pickford finds truly original and vivid ways to convey the woman’s general weariness and oppression, as well as her simple-minded desire for affection. The opening shots present Pickford as Priscilla the maid, wandering the countryside in search of work. Within striking landscapes, Pickford walks wearily, her head bowed under a large bonnet, obscuring her face as she passes down county roads and between fields of waving grain. But Pickford’s performance is not conceived in isolation. The maid’s bone-weariness and slow-witted reactions are contrasted to Mack Sennett’s spiffy and jaunty performance as the wandering peddler. Although this performance style does not contrast as sharply with Sennett’s other 132

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performances as the maid does to Pickford’s other roles, nonetheless, Sennett has rarely given as controlled and ingenuous a performance in a non-comedy role. Griffith introduces the peddler strolling down the same country road, through the same field as Priscilla in the first shots of the film. But everything about the peddler reverses Pickford’s characterization: his lively walk, swinging his arms akimbo, his watchful eye, smoking a cigarette with the air of a country dandy with vulgar white piping edging his coat and vest. All these details give him a sense of confidence, vitality and even arrogance. The meeting of these two polar opposites appears like a collision, a narrative necessity partly set up by Griffith introducing Sennett in the same locations in which he had introduced Priscilla earlier. When the peddler arrives at Priscilla’s farm and flirts with her, she observes him with open-mouthed amazement and fascination, as if he were a creature from another world. When they meet later for a secret tryst at the rail fence edging the wheat field, Priscilla refuses to give him a second kiss, but continues to express her fascination. In one of the most beautiful moments in all of Griffith’s films, the camera offers us a private moment with Priscilla after the peddler has left. As he leaves, Pickford watches after him offscreen, moving to the edge of the frame as if trying to keep him in view. After he has apparently disappeared, she turns back toward the camera, hikes up her skirt and walks towards the camera swinging her arms awkwardly in a clumsy imitation of the peddler’s walk. This imitation reveals that is precisely the energy and vitality this character possesses that attracts her, offering the possibility of a new dimension to her life. This touching and pathetic attempt to incorporate this strange man’s energy into her life epitomizes Griffith’s compassionate insight into human simplicity. Like Mae Marsh imitating the walk of the prostitute in Intolerance (1916), this Dickensian detail of performance simultaneously demonstrates a character’s child-like desire for a better life and opens our hearts to them as we realize their vulnerability to disappointment. Pickford’s characterization is filled with numerous details that likewise express her simplicity and thirst for the meager scraps of affection or pleasure her bleak life offers her. Her fascination at the fabrics the peddler pulls from his bag to display to the farm wife (played with restraint by Kate Bruce), becomes amazement when the peddler gives her a cheap ring in appreciation of her presenting him to her mistress. When he approaches the maid, she is at first preoccupied with her washing. When she notices him, she drops a slight curtsy. In response, the peddler twists his mustache slightly and produces a box of rings for her to choose from. First she turns away shyly. Then she quickly points to one, and as quickly withdraws her hand, as if unable to believe the offer is serious. As he takes it from the box, Priscilla quickly wipes her wet hands on her apron. The peddler slips the ring onto her finger as she wipes her brow with her other hand, still unable to believe her good fortune, and quickly drops another curtsy. The peddler gives Priscilla a quick kiss on the cheek, which seems to stun her. He twists his mustache one more time, and walks off. Priscilla turns her back to the camera to watch him depart. He turns back, and doffs his hat to her, and she responds with yet another curtsy, as he waves and exits the frame. Mary turns back to the camera, her jaw dropped in amazement. She shakes her head as if to dispel her dream-like state, and turns again to her wash. But then she stops suddenly, remembering her ring. She takes it off, putting it carefully inside her blouse, and begins scrubbing again. Throughout the scene Priscilla never quite manages a smile, Pickford deliberately withholding one of her most charming features. As much as the details, it is the unhurried rhythm of this performance that draws the viewer into the character’s interior life, with Griffith showing Priscilla’s slow realization of her gift and her heart-felt astonishment at this inconsequential act of kindness. Other briefer sequences show a similar attention to performance details as Griffith uses everyday objects to (undramatically, but poignantly) develop the theme of Priscilla’s 133

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good-hearted simplicity and longing for happiness. Before Priscilla leaves to keep her rendezvous with the peddler, she adjusts her hair in the kitchen, using the polished bottom of a frying pan hanging on the wall in lieu of a mirror. When Priscilla awaits the peddler at the fence for their elopement (after he has actually already boarded the train, as Griffith’s ironic parallel editing shows us, while Priscilla remains ignorant of the fact), Griffith shows her first pacing nervously in front of the fence gripping her small bundle of possessions; later, as the time drags on, she nearly falls asleep standing, then finally leans wearily against the rails. Earlier, after the peddler has left the kitchen carrying off the master’s savings Priscilla has delivered to him, she takes off the cross she wears round her neck, apparently in shame, placing it on the kitchen table behind her back, as if she did not dare to face it directly. She retrieves this cross at the end of the film after she has returned the money, and puts it on in the final shot as she prays for forgiveness in the farmyard. Although the Biograph Bulletin describes this denouement as a powerful moral lesson, Griffith refuses to offer Priscilla a sentimental resolution. Although the accusation of theft and the dire consequences it would carry are avoided by the return of the stolen money, Griffith carefully maintains a complete emotional separation between the farm family and Priscilla, with no indication they give her (or are owed by her) any affection (no adoption of her into the family as with the Bartons and Anna Moore in Way Down East). Although Priscilla maintains her position at the farm through the deus ex machina of the peddler being thrown from the train after a drunken fight, there is no question that her life of loneliness will continue, laced now by the bitter knowledge that her one moment of excitement and attraction was based on a deception. The bleak quality of this narrative is exceptional. It is likely that Griffith was influenced in this film by the realist style of portraying rural life as far from bucolic or pastoral, which had appeared in regional writers, such as Hamlin Garland. Griffith understood that this sort of unvarnished narrative called for a detailed portrayal of the environment to place the actors’ performances in context. Bitzer and Griffith endowed this film with wonderful rural landscapes, whose harmony contrasts with Priscilla’s bleak existence. Nearly every exterior shot displays layers of action and a variety of textures that mark the best of Bitzer’s Biograph images. In the shot where Bruce first brings the maid to her washing duties at the farmyard tub, Griffith carefully arranges layers of detail and action, with another farmer watching a kettle over a fire, chickens wandering over the ground behind him, trees and an outbuilding drawing the eye into the far background. The sharply etched textures of orthochromatic stock, combined with the natural sunlight, bring out the variety of materials that fill the frame: the worn wood of the fence and rain spout, the sky reflected in the water sloshing in the bucket, the rumpled country clothes worn by Bruce and Pickford, the smoke rising from the fire. Motion picture photography could deliver this intense visual and almost tactile experience of an environment, with an immediacy no literary description could match. Interestingly, although Pickford’s and Sennett’s portrayals in this film seem to me to be revolutionary moments in the development of American film acting, the perceptive reviewer for The New York Dramatic Mirror seemed more impressed by the broader acting of Marion Leonard and Henry B. Walthall in Griffith’s The Call to Arms, which he reviewed a week earlier with great enthusiasm. However, he did pick up on Pickford’s quality: “The fine character acting of the charming little ingenue of the Biograph stock is the chief feature of this film, although the pretty rural scenes and the excellent support of the rest of the company add to the film’s value.” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, August 13, 1910, p. 26) The review also noted that the film should have tinted the final scene to indicate it took place at night (were earlier scenes in this film, which also took place at night, tinted, one wonders?). But if the reviewer damns the film with slight praise, I believe this simply shows 134

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the richness of film history, in which masterpieces are turned out and forgotten, or neglected, and in which the unique qualities of a film are often only revealed to later viewers. An Arcadian Maid conveys the mixture of emotional tenderness and stark realism that cinema could deliver by placing carefully conceived performances within a detailed and unique environment. Tom Gunning

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276 BIOGRAPH

HER FATHER’S PRIDE Filming date: 28–30 June 1910 Location: New York Studio/Coytesville, New Jersey Release date: 4 August 1910 Release length: approx. 996 feet Copyright date: 6 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Stephanie Longfellow (Ann Southcomb); W. Chrystie Miller, Kate Bruce (Her parents); Charles H. West (Allen Edwards); Grace Henderson (His mother); Francis J. Grandon (Father’s choice); ? (Maid); Alfred Paget (Chauffeur); ? (Doctor); Anthony O’Sullivan, Edward Dillon (Men from bank); George O. Nicholls, Mack Sennett, William J. Butler, Clara T. Bracey, John T. Dillon (At poor farm) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/New Zealand Film Archive Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative WAS IT PRIDE, OR OBSTINATE PREJUDICE? Of all human actions, pride seldomest obtains its end; for, aiming at honor and reputation, it reaps contempt and derision. It was the sin that overthrew the angels. It proceeds from the want of sense or the want of thought. The old father in this Biograph story was possessed of such unreasonable pride as to cause much misery and heartache. We cannot consistently call it pride, but rather, narrow prejudice. Mr. and Mrs. Southcomb dearly loved their only daughter Ann, but being Quakers had set ideas. Ann was a pretty girl of twenty, bright, vivacious and romantic, and loved her parents devotedly, but she chafed under what she deemed almost parental despotism. They decried any ebullition her youth might induce, and frowned into silence her joyous ringing laughter. This condition told [sic] on her and she longed for life’s radiant sunshine, love. It comes at last. Allen Edwards, a concert singer, while driving his auto in the neighborhood of the old Quaker’s farm meets with a serious accident, and is carried to the Southcomb homestead. He is in such a condition that he cannot be removed to his home for some time, and hence is cared for by the Southcomb family, although the old man openly expresses his aversion for the young man on account of the profession. An attachment springs up between Ann and Allen which ripens into sincere love. The old man is beside himself with rage when they broach the subject of marriage. But Ann is decided and the old man, though he loved his daughter, haughtily drives her from the house, for when pride begins, love ceases. He stubbornly refuses to have anything further to do with her. He becomes so bitter that he erases her name from the family bible. To him she is as dead. Many a heartache does the young wife suffer, though Allen has tried time and time again to effect a reconciliation, until one day they receive word that the old Southcomb farm had been seized for debt and the couple were forced to go to the poorhouse. What a shock this is to the young couple. It is the old story of pride defeating its own end by bringing the man who seeks esteem into contempt. The young people make their way to the poorhouse, where the old father is seen scrubbing

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floors, while the mother bends over a washtub. They are brought to the office to interview their disowned daughter, but the old man is still adamant, and while the mother is inclined to accept Ann’s protection the father stubbornly refuses, going back with hauteur to his scrub pail. Ann now realizes that something more than bare persuasion must be resorted to, and as she views through the half open door her parents’ sad plight, an idea strikes her. Sitting herself at the organ, she plays and sings her father’s favorite hymn. The sound of the music halts the old man in his work, and he crawls sobbing to the door to hear the better. Ann continues to play and sing until at last he staggers up to be folded in her arms. He now realizes how unreasonable he has been, not only to her, but to her mother and himself. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], August 4, 1910

A Quaker father is bringing up his daughter Ann in a stern, religious manner, often disturbed by her frivolity. A motorist, a concert singer from the city, has an accident near their rural home, and has to recuperate in their household. Ann and the singer fall in love, but her father refuses to approve their marriage, and when they defy his wishes, he tears Ann’s name from the family Bible. The old couple fall on hard times financially, and are forced from their farm house to the county Poor Farm. Ann and her husband learn of this and offer help, but her father’s pride won’t permit him take it. However, at the poor house, Ann plays an old hymn on an organ and softens his heart. All are reconciled.

Her Father’s Pride employs plot situations that were frequent at Biograph in this period and may well reflect stories filmed at other American film companies of the period. The first situation is generational conflict over a grown child’s choice of spouse, with a drama of parental disowning followed by eventual reconciliation. This generational split supplied a familiar plot, and the originality of each version lay in detailing the cause of the parent’s (almost always the father’s) disapproval and, even more, in the means of reconciliation. While parental tyranny always plays a role in these dramas, in Griffith’s films there is never a question about the affection of the parent for the child. Indeed there often seems to be a strong element of jealousy on the parent’s part, as if part of the conflict came from a reluctance to let emotional attachment leave the family unit. (This is most clear in the beautiful As It Is In Life from 1910). Most frequently in Biograph films (employing a motif familiar from melodrama and sentimental literature), reconciliations with the estranged parents were accomplished by the children of the errant couple, with the original parents happily taking on new roles as doting grandparents. In this version of the tale, however, new wrinkles to the story come from a second, and almost equally familiar conflict in the Biograph film: the disparity between rural traditions and the world of urban sophistication. In To Save Her Soul (1909), Griffith had fashioned an explosive melodrama from this conflict, leading to the hero almost murdering his former sweetheart. In this film Griffith accomplishes a more gentle reconciliation. The Biograph Bulletin for Her Father’s Pride describes the family as Quakers, indicating a strongly religious and traditional cultural background. It would seem the filmmakers’ knowledge of Quakers was rather limited, since the turning point of the film comes when the daughter plays an old hymn for her father. In fact, music plays no role in Quaker services, and their silent meetings are one of their distinguishing characteristics, and a Quaker family would be unlikely to own an organ or piano. Quakerism merely stands in here for a conservative and patriarchal, old-fashioned religion, setting up the conflict with the famous concert singer who wanders into the simple rural home of the family. 137

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Griffith’s narration worked best with stories based on strong dualities between characters or situations that the editing pattern could contrast directly. The duality need not be a melodramatic conflict of good and evil, but could simply indicate different lifestyles and ideologies, as in this film. The duality is embedded in the film from the start, as Griffith’s omniscient narration intercuts the two worlds of the film even before they intersect. In the first shot, we see Charles West (as the concert singer) setting off for his rural trip in an automobile, an immediate sign of wealth and technological sophistication. The second shot brings us into the heart of the rural family. In this single shot Griffith telegraphs the potential conflict within the film with emblematic actions and symbolic objects. As the daughter, Stephanie Longfellow stands in the family parlor holding flowers in her arms. Her father enters, played by the wonderfully expressive Biograph actor W. Chrystie Miller, the epitome of the stock theatrical character of the nineteenth century, “the good old man”, but who brings an unexpected warmth and individuality to this stock role. His grim-faced reaction to Longfellow’s flowers, as he sits down to read his Bible, sets up the basic opposition of the film through symbolic objects. The father’s puritanical and self-righteous religion is expressed by his large family Bible. In direct opposition, Longfellow’s good-natured sensuality is expressed by her flowers. As Miller sits to read his Bible, his wife – played by another quintessential Biograph actor, Kate Bruce – sits submissively behind him. With the central opposition now established, Griffith then introduces its mediation, foreshadowing the reconciliation that will end the film. Daughter Ann moves over to the family organ and begins to play, presumably a hymn, glancing over at her father, who looks up from his Bible and, for the first time, smiles. A shot like this shows how fully narrativized Griffith’s cinema has become, with every action and nearly every object saturated with significance that will be utilized in the rest of the film. The shot offers a compressed version of the whole plot, with the organ music serving as a perfect mediation between sensuality and religion. This is a narrative form that is immediately readable, expressed by clear action and props defining archetypal characters. But props will also mark the development of the narrative, changing their connotations as they chart the key transformations in relations between characters. Thus, a bit later, Ann removes herself from her growing attraction to the singer as she nurses him, enters the parlor and sits down and begins to read her father’s Bible. However, she looks up from the Bible, glancing offscreen toward the adjoining room where the singers still lies convalescing, telegraphing a transformation in her world, a fulfillment of the sensual promise of the flowers in the opening shot and a growing distance from her father’s stern values. More dramatically, when Ann leaves with the singer over her father’s objection, he tears her name from this family Bible, throwing the piece of paper on the floor (where Bruce as the wife surreptitiously retrieves it). In a counter-action marking reconciliation, the film ends with the family reunited as the father reinserts the fragment with his daughter’s name back in the Bible after Bruce produces it from her pocket. As so often in Biograph films, it is the tableau of a reunited family, rather then the creation of a romantic couple, that marks the closure of the film, the regaining of narrative and ideological balance. As the second shot indicated, the film reconciles the estranged generations through the rather original device of music. After the daughter’s marriage, father and mother have been evicted from their farm house and are now living in the county poor house, refusing to contact their daughter for help. Even when the daughter and her husband arrive at the poor house offering help, her father’s pride does not allow him to accept either aid or reconciliation. However, music once again softens his heart. Ann discovers an organ in a room of the poor house while her father scrubs the floor in the next room. Griffith here uses alternating editing to convey this climactic transformation, spread over nine shots. Thus, although the 138

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device is the same that worked in a singe shot in the opening of the film, the editing alternation allows the process to be stretched out, delayed a bit and therefore rendered more dramatic. Furthermore, since the cutting moves between two adjoining spaces, the single event bridges the two rooms, first by a “sight link” (as Bruce watches through the door), but more importantly through “sound cues”. By these terms I indicate that Bruce looks through the doorway, and we see (although the angle is not that of a point of view) in the next shot what she sees: the father scrubbing the floor in the next room. Ann sits at the organ and plays her father’s favorite hymn, while the shot of her father that follows shows him listening and reacting to the music. The flow of sound between the two spaces links the intercut shots that follow as the father begins scrubbing ever closer to the door, drawn by the music and the presence of his daughter. Thus, sound and music bridge a distance (literally) between father and daughter. Recycling the situation of the film’s second shot, this sequence not only shows the father repeating his earlier reaction to the music, but also recalling the family unity it once expressed and realizing his role in destroying his family’s harmony. The story of the film is neatly emblematic, perfectly economical and balanced. However, to my mind, the strongest section of the film does not come from this sort of formulaic narrative clarity, but in the shots given over to the old couple’s long walk from their old homestead to the poor house. Although Griffith only devotes three shots to this process, their unhurried pace, delicate composition and understated performances give this film the sort of depth of feeling and investment in an image which subtends Griffith’s narrative clarity, endowing the Biograph films with their unique sense of emotional involvement. Griffith employs a basic stylistic approach here, which will typify his best work and will be inherited by later American films, especially those dealing with rural themes – not only later Griffith features, but the best work of such Americanists as Allan Dwan, Henry King, King Vidor, and especially John Ford. This style consists of a simultaneously strong emotional involvement and empathy combined (or dialectically expressed by) a certain resistance to emotion. The shots of the old couple’s eviction are marked by a strong use of long shot, rather than closer shots, and deliberately reserved performances by Miller and Bruce.What differentiates these shots is their strongly pictorial composition in which the total image expresses the feelings of the characters. In the first shot after they leave their home, the old couple pause and watch as the bailiff nails shut the gate to their home. This gate was shown once before when Ann and the singer left home driven out by the angry father, so it carries an ironic overtone. The old couple stand with their backs to the camera, a device Griffith frequently used to create this complex of empathy and distance. We know what they are feeling, but Griffith does not invade their privacy, as they cast a final look on all they have lost. The nailing up of the gate has the same emblematic narrative role as the flowers and the Bible in the second shot, but also shows more originality and authentic emotion. It is only after they have gazed offscreen that Griffith has the couple turn and exit toward the camera. The following long shot shows a deep recessive country road lined by trees. When the shot begins, the couple is already far down the road, their backs to us as they walk away from the camera. Their small figures in relation to the bucolic composition underscores the emotional dynamic of the sequence: the couple’s maintaining of their dignity even as they are, in effect, lost within an unresponsive world. When they arrive at the poor house in the following shot, the couple pauses, still with their backs to us as they contemplate, then go through, the gate. The characters keep their backs to the camera and there is a gate in both locations. These motifs relate and contrast their entrance to the leaving of their own home, completing a circuit. Again, the lack of overt emotional expression in the performance, as these two frail, old folks make their way through the world, endows this film with a unique tone that exceeds its rather formulaic, if economically told, story. 139

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The “Spectator” (most likely Frank Woods), reviewing the film for The New York Dramatic Mirror found the story somewhat unoriginal (“pretty rather than strong”) and found the father’s initial refusal of aid “a dramatic, rather than a realistic situation”. But he praised the acting, especially Stephanie Longfellow who played Ann, at length, citing particularly its restraint: In such a role it would be the easiest thing in the world for the actress to forget the undemonstrative simplicity of Quaker manners; but not once did this heroine dispel the illusion. She never wept, she never supported herself boisterously; her movements were characterized by gentleness and firmness. It should also be said that the other three members of the company acted well up to the standard set by the heroine. (The New York Dramatic Mirror, August 13, 1910, p. 27)

One can note here not only the reviewer’s careful attention to gesture and character, but also the way this highly individualized performance and characterization run against the grain of the actress’s anonymity. Tom Gunning

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277 BIOGRAPH

THE HOUSE WITH CLOSED SHUTTERS Filming date: 25/27 June, 1/2 July 1910 Location: Coytesville, New Jersey/New York Studio Release date: 8 August 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 11 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Emmett Campbell Hall Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Charles Randolph); Dorothy West (Agnes, his sister); Grace Henderson (Their mother); Charles H. West, Joseph Graybill (Agnes’s suitors); Gladys Egan, Mabel Van Buren, Alfred Paget, John T. Dillon (On porch/at farewell); William J. Butler [blackface] (Servant); Frank Evans, Verner Clarges, John T. Dillon, Francis J. Grandon (In Lee’s tent) NOTE: Reissued by Biograph 29 May 1916. Archival Sources: George Eastman House, 35mm acetate master positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative THE PRICE OF COWARDICE What a contemptible type of human animal is the coward. He is totally devoid of all the elements that go to make up a man. Charles Randolph was one such as this, bombastic and haughty but with no real courage, and what was worse, a heavy drinker. He, his sister Agnes and mother were the only survivors of an old and distinguished fighting family. Agnes is highspirited and lovable, and at the beginning of the Civil War Charles is carried away by the enthusiasm, and urged by Agnes, procures a commission in the Confederate service and is assigned to General Lee’s staff. Members of the same regiment are Lieutenants Wheeler and Carter, both good natured rivals for the hand of Agnes. The story opens with the departure of the boys with their regiment for General Lee’s headquarters, taking with them a large Confederate flag which Agnes had just completed. In Lee’s tent Charles is given sealed dispatches and launched on a most important mission. It is a perilous undertaking and during the course of the journey he becomes panic-stricken with fear, and drinks heavily hoping to revive his waning courage. Completely overcome, he dashes madly toward his own house, where he seeks to hide himself. Here he becomes very drunk, and Agnes and the mother are horrified at the awful disgrace that threatens the family name. With sudden impulse Agnes decides to don Charles’ uniform and proceed on the mission in his stead, to return in time that he, when sober, may go back to report to General Lee the result. She makes the perilous journey and delivers the dispatch, but on the return she is caught in the battle’s maelstrom with her horse shot down. She becomes imbued with the spirit of the conflict and rushing into the very vortex fights as Charles never could have. In the retreat the flag is in danger of capture and Agnes, leaping over the breastworks, seizes it only to be shot down by a shell. No one has suspected that the gallant soldier was other than Charles, and news is sent to the Randolph homestead of his death. At the reception of this information, Charles realizes what

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a contemptible dog he is, and the mother, fully appreciating the awful disgrace the exposition of it would be, commands that Charles remain forever where he is for the good of the family name, that the world may not know his sister died protecting a coward. The shutters are closed and barred and all is mysterious and gloomy. At the close of the war the young suitors return, but are told that Agnes is not to be seen, being crazed from grief over her brother’s death. Year and year it continues the same, the constant suitors, growing old, leave their floral tribute at the door. Inside the darkened room Charles goes through the bitter years from youth to old age paying the price of his cowardice until death mercifully releases him. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], August 8, 1910

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Charles Randolph and his friends join the Confederate army, sent off by cheering crowds and especially the glowing pride of his mother and his sister Agnes. Agnes is filled with enthusiasm for the cause and cheers on her brother and two rivals for her hand, Lieutenants Wheeler and Carter. Charles is entrusted by General Lee with an important dispatch, but as he rides through enemy lines, surrounded by gunfire and explosions, he becomes terrified. He rushes home where he drinks and hides from the horrors of the battlefield. His mother and Agnes discover this abject figure, as well as his undelivered dispatches. Agnes immediately dons his uniform, cuts her hair and rides off to deliver the message. When this is accomplished, she finds herself caught up in the fury of battle and, in contrast to her cowardly brother, is thrilled by it. She rushes onto the battlefield to save the flag and is shot and killed. Her body is identified as Charles. The mother insists that the fiction of Charles’s death on the battlefield be maintained. Therefore, she orders that the shutters of the house be closed and that Charles remain inside unseen. She tells Wheeler and Carter that Agnes has gone mad with grief. For years the suitors bring flowers to the house with closed shutters. Finally, an old man, Charles opens the shutters and dies, as the secret of the family is revealed.

The importance of The Birth of a Nation (1915) has tended to highlight Griffith’s films dealing with the Civil War, often without realizing that Civil War films were a major American genre in the period from 1909 to 1915, with nearly every company producing some (including Keystone, which produced Civil War parodies), and many like Kalem’s Siege of St. Petersburg (1912), or Bronco’s (and Thomas Ince’s) Drummer of the 8th (1913), rivaling Griffith’s films in their elaborate battle scenes and character pathos. It must be remembered that the years 1910–1915 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the war, a period filled with memorial services, new histories, and discussion in the newspapers. Further, it was a war still very much alive in surviving veterans’ memories. Although perhaps not as pervasive as the Western, the Civil War genre was also a genre that would aid the attempt by American companies to pull audiences away from foreign films by offering national subjects. Simultaneously historical and filled with action, Civil War films could claim cultural respectability, but also grab the attention of little boys (and, as this film shows, little girls) with scenes of danger and bravery. Many Civil War films interlace the events of the war with family life (think of the ending of Ince’s Drummer of the 8th in which the family prepares a dinner for the homecoming of the drummer boy, only to receive his coffin). Battles take place in proximity to homes, and it is this terrain between the military and the domestic that the genre especially explored. Griffith made the imbrication of family and the events of the war especially powerful. Even though the genre was broadly popular, his personal experience as the son of a Confederate 142

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officer, born soon after the War and brought up on his father’s tales and memories undoubtedly contributed to the intense emotional investment one feels in most of his Civil War films. The House with Closed Shutters is Griffith’s fourth Civil War film after The Guerrilla (1908), In Old Kentucky (1909), The Honor of His Family (1909) and In the Border States (released just a few weeks earlier in 1910). In all these films the war invades the domestic space of the home. But perhaps more unique to Griffith, the last three films all involve a soldier who runs home for shelter, and Griffith plays a series of variations on this theme. In The Honor of His Family and The House with Closed Shutters, Confederate soldiers (both played by Henry B. Walthall) seek refuge out of cowardice and are denounced as disgraces to the family honor (by a father in The Honor of His Family and a mother in The House with Closed Shutters). In the other two films, the soldiers are simply hiding from pursuers and both are protected by family members (the mother in In Old Kentucky and a small daughter in In the Border States). In In Old Kentucky, the Confederate son (Walthall again) actually hides in his mother’s bed, and his pursuer is his brother, leader of a Union patrol, whose mother will not let him search her bed. Griffith takes the idea of the Civil War as a family affair, a fratricidal conflict, very literally in these films, using the situation as a means to explore and test the limits of family relations, verging on incest in In Old Kentucky and portraying in The Honor of His Family the murder of a son by his father for betraying his ideal of manly behavior. Perhaps no other genre consistently evokes such complex probings of ideals of family, manhood and gender from Griffith. Although The Informer (1913) is certainly Griffith’s crowning Civil War film at Biograph, and Vachel Lindsay was profuse in his praise of The Battle (1911), I find The House with Closed Shutters Griffith’s most complex Biograph Civil War film, combining beautifully choreographed action in the battle scenes with a claustrophobic Southern Gothic plot in which genders are reversed and family secrets sealed up for decades. The film extends the grim logic of The Honor of His Family with a baroque twist. In the earlier film the son runs home terrified by an enemy attack, and his horrified father shoots him and places his body on the battlefield. When his son’s cowardice is reported, the father maintains he died honorably on the field, a fact borne out by the later discovery of his body. The family honor is upheld – but by the means of both a murder and a lie. The theme of cowardice in battle had already been enshrined in Civil War literature by Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (published in 1895) and Griffith’s The Battle followed Crane’s schema of a young soldier who initially flees in battle, frightened by the tumult of war, but who subsequently regains his courage. But in The Honor of His Family and The House with Closed Shutters, Griffith tells much more primal tales. Rather than recounting the gaining of manhood through battle, Griffith portrays fearful regression followed by death or castration by one’s own family. The House with Closed Shutters provides possibly the first cinematic example of a literary mode just then developing in the work of Southern regionalists, such as George Washington Cable (and later, particularly with the work of William Faulkner), which would be called Southern Gothic. As critic Chris Baldrick indicates in the introduction to The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (p. xix), this mode picked up on the European Gothic theme of ancestral castles or manors holding a family curse or deadly secret, and transferred it to the patriarchal homes of the Southern plantation. In a number of such stories, a proud Southern family conceals a hidden family member, or even a corpse. Cable’s story, “Jeanan Poquelin” (1875), provides an early example, Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (1930) a classical version, while Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) gives a more recent one and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) an ultimate cinematic rendering. While Walthall’s gothic fear and punishment round out this film, at its center is the truly action-filled and heroic tale of his sister Agnes. Dorothy West will once again put on male 143

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uniform and ride to save her beloved in Griffith’s fine 1911 Civil War film Swords and Hearts (and it may be partly her equestrian prowess that drew Griffith to her off camera, as West has been cited as the cause – or one of the causes – of the break-up of Griffith’s marriage to Linda Arvidson). In the opening scenes, West is barely able to remain a graceful Southern lady as she tries to instill martial spirit in her brother and lovers by hopping up and down. Griffith uses parallel editing to contrast Charles’s first drink after being entrusted with the dispatches, with Agnes back home looking out the window, presumably imagining her brother’s heroic feats and grasping at her bosom in emotion, as if lamenting her identity as a woman. Griffith develops in this film a strong thematic contrast between interior space and exteriors. The styles of shooting on location and in the Biograph studio still showed a considerable difference, with a stage-like blocking predominant in the studio sets, while scenes shot in exteriors freely used entrances and exits from and into off-screen space and movement toward the camera. This means that interior space remains fairly predictable as well as enclosed. In contrast, exterior spaces are shaken by sudden entrances and dynamized by fast-moving action. Griffith brilliantly uses this contrast to express Charles’s terror. Thus Charles’s pursuit by Union cavalry as he rides with the dispatches freely cuts from place to place with an open use of the frame. Charles rides toward the camera and exits from the frame as his pursuers exit, then reappear chasing him. Griffith uses the full depth of the screen, often beginning shots with small figures in the background. The space of war that Charles enters is an unsettled, constantly changing and threatening environment. Returning home, Charles seeks the sheltered space of home and family. He passes out in a drunken stupor as mother and sister discover the undelivered dispatches. Playing his mother, actress Grace Henderson expresses hysteria with melodramatic gestures, while Dorothy West in contrast stands still and stares. Agnes’s transformation begins as she gets out of one costume and takes on another, her appearance in uniform cut against her unconscious brother, now wearing a bathrobe, divested of the signs of masculine courage which Agnes wears so well. Once on horseback, Agnes rides through the same open and threatening spaces as her brother, but exults in her mastery of the danger and her discovery of her own power. After Agnes delivers the dispatches, Griffith cuts to Charles coming out of his stupor and realizing the loss of his uniform. In the following shot of Agnes, Griffith executes a powerful use of off-screen space. As Agnes dismounts to adjust her saddle, an exploding shell startles her horse which runs off, leaving her no way to return home. Griffith uses the smoke from the explosion to mask the frame in obscurity, then, from foreground left, a horseman rides into frame, pushing Agnes off the road. Through the smoke one sees a line of soldiers in midground firing off to the left. Agnes teeters in, then out, then back in the frame, before she runs off to the left. At the battle lines, Agnes gains even more energy, hopping about again, as she had in the parlor when she only imagined a battle and saw it exclusively as a male domain. As the Union troops charge the Confederate lines, Griffith uses depth of composition and action to create a stirring and varied scene, gun smoke invading the frame, and constant movement surging through it. Agnes even turns directly toward the camera to convey her excitement at all this. Her grabbing of the fallen flag, which then sails through the air toward the camera as she herself is shot, symbolically crowns her action with an archetypal heroic death. No previous Biograph Civil War film had staged as elaborate a battle scene, and probably no previous Biograph film had pushed Griffith’s composition and sense of action as far as this one. But all of this action will only serve to underline the stasis of Charles’s life in the rest of the film. As his mother receives news of her “son’s” heroic death (in a letter sent by Lieu144

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tenant Wheeler to Agnes), she orders that the shutters to the house be closed. The house that offered Charles refuge from the terrors of untamed violent space becomes his confining prison. The sheltering walls are now barriers that cannot be breached, as Charles acts out the counterpart to Agnes’s heroic gender transformation. He must dwell within this enclosed space, taking on the role of his “mad” sister, as she took over (and ended) his role of the heroic brother. When the mother stands on the porch and bars entrance to Lieutenant Wheeler, Griffith cuts to Charles inside at the window trying to peek through the shutters. Outside, his mother pantomimes that her daughter has lost her mind in grief. When Charles opens the shutters, letting in a strong ray of light, Griffith actually has Lieutenant Carter enter through the window, an unlikely action that nonetheless emphasizes the mother’s intention of creating a cloistered space, cutting off all avenues of communication with the world. The mother quickly covers Charles with a blanket, like an embarrassing household object. In the last ten shots of this approximately sixty-shot film, Griffith shows decades passing (possibly the action is to be understood as coming up to the date of the film, 1910). The compressed time is conveyed partly by the make-up of Charles, Wheeler and Carter as their hair grows white, but also (more imaginatively) by the device of a recurring action, the presumably yearly placing of bouquets of flowers outside the shutters as the aging suitors play tribute to their lost sweetheart. A single shot of Charles within – hair graying, still drinking, arguing with his elderly mother – gives a powerful condensation of the bitter existence they have eked out in this hermetically sealed world of shame. The film ends when Charles can no longer take the enclosure he once sought so desperately and flings open the shutters, letting the light stream over him. This encounter with the world of exterior space is too much for him and he collapses and dies, but not before he attracts the attention of Wheeler and Carter. Thus, the shutters open, Charles perishes and the secret is out. Rushing in, the Lieutenants discover Charles’s body and the mother tells them the story through pantomime. Rather poignantly, the old men raises their hats in sad salute to the true hero of the battle, their lost sweetheart, and Griffith holds the action briefly for a final tableau. That Griffith explored gender roles in this film should not surprise anyone who has been following the Biograph films. As Russell Merritt has emphasized, during the Biograph period Griffith’s films are chock-full of active and powerful women (most often adolescent girls) who take on bandits and Indians, ride horses and jump off cliffs. These characters undoubtedly provided fantasy figures for the nickelodeon audiences of both sexes. But in The House with Closed Shutters, this overt masquerade represents a moment that cannot be sustained, or rather which can only be maintained (like the family honor in The Honor of His Family) through living out a painful lie. Gender roles are inverted here, rather than critiqued, but within the realm of fantasy for viewers there is no question that the film shows the ability of a woman to penetrate into dangerous and unpredictable space, albeit at the cost of her life. In some ways, the film is reminiscent of the extraordinary passage in Faulkner’s Civil War novel The Unvanquished (1962), in which Drusilla compares her life during the war with what it was like before (and Drusilla is no Scarlett O’Hara mourning the loss of Tara and the kindly ole plantation days): Living used to be dull, you see. Stupid. You lived in the same house your father was born in […] and then you grew up and you fell in love with your acceptable young man, and in time you would marry him, in your mother’s wedding gown […] and then you settled down for evermore while you got children to feed and bathe and dress until they grew up too […] Stupid, you see. But now you can see for yourself how it is; it’s fine now; you don’t have to worry now about the house and the silver, because they get burned up and carried away […] and you don’t have to worry about getting children to bathe and feed and change, because the young men ride away and get killed in fine battles… (p. 82)

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The House with Closed Shutters was enthusiastically received by the trade press with The Moving Picture World running a feature article (including stills from the film) that declared the film “a veritable poem” and attributed its great success with “the common people” to its “exquisite pathos” as much as its action), while its review of the film indicated “no picture … so roused the enthusiasm of a large audience” (August 20, 1910, p. 402). The reviewer for The New York Dramatic Mirror (most likely Frank Woods) was knocked out by the film’s battle scenes, and articulates the new aesthetic of direct involvement Griffith and other filmmakers were introducing, giving direct praise to the as-yet-unnamed director: Powerful as the story is with its effective and convincing acting, the feature of the film that impresses most is the remarkably realistic battle scenes. This reviewer can recall nothing in previous war pictures that quite equals it in this respect. We are given, not a bird’s eye view of a battle with an indistinct impression of what is going on, but we, the spectators, appear to be in the midst of scenes of carnage and strife which have every appearance of actual warfare and not make-believe posing for a camera. The result is startling and must be seen to be adequately appreciated. It gives evidence of master skill in directing.

The House with Closed Shutters is precisely the sort of Biograph ripe for rediscovery and deserves an acknowledged place in film history. Tom Gunning

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278 BIOGRAPH

A SALUTARY LESSON Filming date: 6/8/9 July 1910 Location: New York Studio/ Keyport Highlands, New Jersey Release date: 11 August 1910 Release length: approx. 980 feet Copyright date: 12 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: William J. Butler Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Charles H. West (Mr. Randall); Stephanie Longfellow (Mrs. Randall); Gladys Egan (Their child); Jeannie MacPherson (Friend); Charles Craig (Wife’s visitor); Vivian Prescott (Woman on the beach); Alfred Paget (Rescuer); Kate Toncray (Maid); Gertrude Robinson, Edward Dillon, Dell Henderson, W.C. Robinson (On beach) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative THE ALMOST FATAL RESULT OF PARENTAL INDIFFERENCE God’s greatest gift to the home is the child, and how often is it scantily appreciated. In this Biograph story is shown the result of this lack of attention toward the child which almost reached a fatal culmination. Mrs. Randall is strongly addicted to the reading of cheap novels, so much so that she has little time for anything in the nature of domestic duties. The care of her ten year old girl child is especially odious. Living in their seashore cottage, the little one begs her mamma to take her to the beach, but mamma petulantly tells the child not to bother her. The father enters at this moment and more to shame the mother than anything else, takes the child for a stroll on the beach. They have hardly departed when the minister calls and Mrs. Randall sets about to do her utmost to entertain him. While on the beach, Mr. Randall meets a very fascinating and flirtatious young lady, and in a spirit of daring reciprocates her attention. The poor child is now left to its own devices to amuse itself. So, neglected, she wanders across the strand to a distant quiet bay. This portion of the resort is entirely deserted and the child mounts a rock far inland on which she sits to rest. The journey has fatigued her, and overcome by drowsiness she doses off to sleep. Meanwhile, her carelessly indifferent parents are pursuing the bent of their own inclinations unmindful of what danger their child may be in. Some time has elapsed and the tide turning, we find the rock on which the child sleeps completely surrounded by water with it still rising until it reaches her, waking her up. There she is marooned on the rock, with no help in sight. Her protracted absence arouses alarm and a search is started, but in vain, until a life-saver strolling this distant beach hears a feeble cry. Looking in the direction from whence it came he espies a small dark object far out from land. He swims to her rescue, and carries her to her distracted parents, who have by this time been taught a bitter lesson as to what their careless indifference resulted in. Biograph Bulletin, No. [?], August 11, 1910

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During a stay at a beach resort, Mr. and Mrs. Randall neglect their daughter and follow their own interests. Mrs. Randall entertains the local minister, while Mr. Randall agrees to take his daughter on a walk along the beach. However, he is attracted by a flirtatious young woman, and the little girl wanders off on her own. She clambers onto a seaside rock where she falls asleep, unmindful of the incoming tide. Her parents at last notice her absence and begin searching for her. However, the incoming tide has by this time surrounded her rock, cutting her off from land. A lifeguard hears her cries and swims to the rescue just as the rising tide is about to engulf her. The child is returned to her parents, who receive from their near tragedy a salutary lesson in the importance of being more careful parents.

A Salutary Lesson is typical of a number of Griffith’s domestic dramas in which the fabric of a middle-class family becomes frayed by family members who ignore their responsibilities. Sometimes this takes the form of a temptation to an adulterous affair, but just as frequently neglect of children serves as the source of tension (frequently, as in the 1909 A Friend of the Family, the two plots intertwine, and A Salutary Lesson hints at the possible beginning of such a situation). The importance of children to a family, and to a plot, highlights the domestic ideals of Griffith’s Biograph films and the films’ ties to middle-class sentimental literature, as well as being a possible acknowledgment of the popularity of nickelodeon programs with children and women, obvious audiences for what the industry would eventually call “kid pictures”. Nearly every American film production company had regular child stars (as did stage touring companies of the period). Biograph primarily featured Adele de Garde and Gladys Egan, the star of this film. Although I have never found biographies of these child actresses, I think it is likely they were trained initially for stage, since their performance styles draw on a repertoire of stock gestures and reactions. Neither are especially spontaneous or engaging, although both possess a degree of charm, and Egan here conveys the loneliness of a neglected child rather effectively. This story of a child in danger while her parents search for her is tailor-made for Griffith’s narrative use of parallel editing, as the film intercuts both parents searching for their daughter with Egan on the rock surrounded by rising water. This intercutting of several elements into a single suspenseful climax takes up nearly half the shots of the film, generating a large number of shots for this one reeler – fifty-three (plus three intertitles), which is more than any film Griffith shot in 1909, although not the largest amount in 1910, more then twenty shots less than The Call to Arms. The frantic action and panic of the adults contrast sharply with the dangerous repose of the child, initially unaware of her danger. The narrative is resolved by the typically Griffithian reunited family, who all embrace in the final shot, expressing their new-found togetherness and marking ideological and dramatic closure. After the parents have embraced their daughter and then sent her off with the nurse, the two of them embrace for the close of the film, indicating that the possible estrangement between them has been reversed by their drama with their child (the Library of Congress print photographed from a paper print has a fade out here, but it seems to me to be an addition created by Kemp Niver in the process of “restoring” the film in the 1950’s). If the tightly edited climax shows Griffith’s suspenseful narration, the moments of greatest character development and pictorial elegance come with the sequence preceding it, as the little girl wanders off sadly on her own. Griffith uses parallel editing for contrast here, as he cuts from Gladys isolated, strolling along the sea edge – first to her father flirting with the young woman who laughs, then to her mother laughing with the minister. This crosscutting contrasts the parents’ frivolity with their unhappy little girl, and also stresses the dispersal of the family across geographical space, in contrast to the final shot where they are 148

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all gathered together in the family parlor. Griffith filmed the exteriors of this film at a New Jersey beach resort and this location shooting gives the film a certain freshness, an almost documentary quality (especially the scenes on the boardwalk). The locations are used most effectively, however, to express pictorially the daughter’s melancholy wandering, as she stands alone against wooden pilings or sea rocks. The striking image of her sleeping on the rock surrounded by the sea pushes this isolation to the melodramatic extreme, as her emotional isolation becomes physical danger. Tom Gunning

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279 BIOGRAPH

THE SORROWS OF THE UNFAITHFUL Filming date: 12/13 July 1910 Location: New York Studio/[Atlantic ?] Highlands, New Jersey Release date: 22 August 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 23 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Stanner E.V. Taylor [“The Watcher on the Rocks”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Mary); Henry B. Walthall (Bill); Edward Dillon (Joe); Gladys Egan (Mary, as a child); ? (Bill, as a child); W. Chrystie Miller (Fisherman); ? (Messenger); William J. Butler, W.C. Robinson, Gertrude Robinson (On shore) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection) FICKLENESS THAT INDUCES WOE AND DISASTER Oh! deliver us from the fickle woman. No person can spread such woe, disaster and sorrow even unto their ownselves as such a one; and such a one is the leading character of this Biograph subject. In a quaint fishing village we see the childhood sweethearts, Bill and Mary, a boy and girl of about ten or eleven years. Constant companions, they hold for each other a regard beyond their understanding. Ten years roll by, and the boy, now a young man, with a ring approaches the girl and the sweethearts of childhood now renew their vows. They are both very happy, until fate interferes, it seems, to test the girl’s sincerity. Bill while strolling on the shore, which to him since the bethrothal [sic] is a Utopia, espies a raft with an object on it that looks like a human being, far out at sea. Dashing into the surf, he swims to the raft and finds the almost exhausted form of a fisherman lying prone upon it. Pushing the raft to the shore, he, with the aid of others, revives the man, who is a stranger to them all, having put out from a far distant shore. Bill and Joe, the stranger, become staunch friends, and through this Joe meets Mary. She is at once smitten with the stranger and cruelly casts Bill aside for him. Joe, of course, knowing nothing of Bill’s love for Mary, reciprocates her affection until he learns the truth. The horror of the situation is vivid. Here he finds himself the successful rival of the man to whom he owes his life. No, it cannot be, and so repulsing the impetuous Mary he rushes from the place, but not before Bill has seen enough to make him believe Joe has proved himself an ingrate. Joe makes a strenuous effort to reject Mary’s advances, but she is persistent. Finally managing to elude her, he sends her the following note: “Mary: – Bill saved my life. I will not rob him of his love. I see the raft on the shore. I shall go back to the sea on it. If the sea claims me it is my fate. Joe.” She is amazed at this and rushes madly to the shore on view of staying his determination. In the meantime, Bill overtakes Joe at the shore, and ignorant of his propose, with a blow sends him into the sea, never to return. At this moment Mary rushes up, she, of course, not aware of Joe’s fate, and shows Bill the note. He is driven mad upon learning that his deed was entirely unnecessary, so bidding Mary to wait, he wanders out, out into the sea with an insane idea of recovering his victim. Biograph Bulletin, [?], August 22, 1910

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Bill and Mary grow up in a fishing village, sweethearts from childhood. Bill finally proposes to Mary, but soon thereafter, she finds herself attracted to Joe, whom Bill has rescued from a drifting raft. Joe reciprocates, unaware of Mary’s relationship with Bill; once Joe discovers the truth, he elects to return to the sea and leaves Mary a note informing her of his decision. Bill, who had observed Mary and Joe in an intimate situation earlier, is consumed with jealousy and overtakes Joe as the latter wades out toward his raft. Bill drowns Joe, only then to be notified by Mary of Joe’s honorable plan. Racked with grief and guilt, Bill then heads back to the sea, possibly to take his own life.

As he would many times during his Biograph years, Griffith employs the picturesque backdrop of sea and shore as a setting in The Sorrows of the Unfaithful. Ever since Where the Breakers Roar and After Many Years (both in 1908), Griffith recognised such seascapes not only provided eye-catching images, but also lent themselves to narratives of departure and return. In The Sorrows of the Unfaithful, the sea performs two key functions: it produces the catalyst for the breakdown of the central romantic relationship in the person of Joe, who drifts in on his raft; and it provides the means by which Bill dispenses with his rival (and, by implication, himself). Griffith reinforces the centrality of the sea to his story by setting most of his shots in or near the water (the film relies on a solitary interior set), which suggests a certain dramatic logic to Joe’s solution of returning to the water and Bill’s of drowning Joe. The exteriors of the film also provide Griffith with ample opportunity to develop his staging principles, especially evident in the deep and narrow compositions where extras mill about within circumscribed areas, producing pools of activity which draw the eye back into the recesses of the frame. When blocking out action involving only a few characters, Griffith employs the relative spatial freedom afforded by exteriors to good effect as well: in the shot where Bill and Mary perform a type of mating dance, Griffith places them before a natural barrier, receding at an oblique angle, which serves as a backdrop and pivot for a complex but methodical series of zigzagging motions before Mary exits behind it. At the end of this same shot, Bill spies Joe, which links Bill’s relationship with Mary to the cause of its dissolution. The succession of shots also provides evidence of Griffith’s approach to point of view. In the first shot, Bill looks off frame left, followed by a second shot of Joe, floating helplessly on his raft. While the viewer might be tempted to see this second shot as Bill’s point of view, near the end of it, Bill swims into sight as he begins his rescue attempt. In instances such as these, Griffith shows a preference for continuity of action over articulating space as a function of characters’ viewpoints, a principle which underwrites his devotion to crosscutting. Griffith’s reliance on cutting among separated spaces gains special resonance in The Sorrows of the Unfaithful because the film is structured as a series of parallel incidents involving replacement. By employing only a limited number of distinctive settings, Griffith can emphasise how later actions invert earlier ones through a principle of repetition and variation. (One wonders how Raymond Bellour managed to wait until 1983 to tackle analysis of a Griffith Biograph.) Griffith depicts Bill and Mary’s relationship as children through a two-shot sequence at the film’s beginning; after an ellipsis of ten years, the plot resumes, showing the couple in the same two settings, implying the continuity of their affection for each other. Later, when Mary becomes enamoured of Joe, they too will appear in these same settings, intensifying the sense of betrayal by virtue of invoking her previous lover. The last section of the film also relies on crosscutting, but to different effect: at this point, 151

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Griffith introduces a set of new spaces, placing each of the three characters involved in the triangle in a different locale. By separating the characters in this way Griffith reinforces the divisiveness Mary’s love for Joe has produced and splinters the space into a series of shots of characters looking for one another. It all proved too much for the reviewer of The New York Dramatic Mirror, who was of the opinion that “for effective intensity, the Biograph producers have given us nothing in a long time that exceeds this film. In fact, the intensiveness of the story is carried so far by switching back and forth from scene to scene that it is rather a relief when it is all over” (September 3, 1910, p. 27). The bleak conclusion, which suggests Bill goes back to the site of Joe’s death either to kill himself or vainly retrieve the body, offers resolution, but little “relief”: the lines of action converge in the sea, shown in the final shot as a boundless stretch of water no longer touching the shore. Charlie Keil

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280 BIOGRAPH

THE USURER Filming date: 11–15 July 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 15 August 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 18 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (The Usurer); Grace Henderson (His sister); Alfred Paget, Anthony O’Sullivan, Edward Dillon (Debt collectors); Francis J. Grandon (In office); Kate Bruce, ? (First debtors); Henry B. Walthall, ? (Second debtors); ?, Claire McDowell, Gladys Egan (Third debtors); Clara T. Bracey (Maid); Frank Evans (Policeman); William J. Butler (Doctor); Dell Henderson, Guy Hedlund (Movers); Charles Craig, Dorothy West, Gertrude Robinson, Jeannie MacPherson, Mabel Van Buren, Guy Hedlund, W.C. Robinson (At luncheon) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc (format and generation undetermined, possibly 35mm nitrate positive); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (reissue print, Killiam Collection) “WHAT DOTH IT PROFIT?” “Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt.” – Mat. 6–19. How few there are that appreciate the truth of this advice from holy writ, in our incessant struggle for gold. Wealth is not only transitory, but it often conspires against our eternal salvation. “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” True it is that the fight for fortune is ethical where the methods are legitimate, but the one despicable means is that of the usurer or money shark. This man fattens on the misfortunes of his fellow beings, gloating over the fact that his debtors are his abject slaves, and like the ancient king who called for a reckoning from his servant, “But forasmuch as he had not to pay, he commanded him to be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had –.” This is the procedure of the usurer. We find him about to leave his office in the evening ordering his collectors to warn the delinquent debtors that if they do not pay by the morrow their effects will be sold. They start off on their rounds while he goes to spend an evening of pleasure at a banquet. What a contrast. On the one side the poor unfortunates apprised of their inevitable fate, while he and his friends quaff the blood-distilled wine, and regale themselves with viands paid for with the tears of the needy. The next day the collectors carry out the usurer’s orders, and the plea “Have patience with me and I will pay thee all,” is ignored. The bed is removed from under a poor widow’s sick child; the household effects of the widower with one small child, are seized and sold and other cruel, merciless deeds are perpetrated. Still, in the time of all this misery our usurer is enjoying the best the land affords. However, there comes a time of his reckoning, and “woe unto you for ye devour widow’s houses, therefore shall ye receive damnation.” The poor man whose

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goods were seized, in desperation terminates his unendurable existence and here the blood of the oppressed cries to Heaven. The widow leaves to go to the usurer to plead mercy, and when she arrives at his office he is in the safe. The poor woman faints from exhaustion and, falling against the huge safe door, which stands ajar, closes it. Here he is imprisoned in his storehouse of blood gotten wealth at the mercy of the time lock. Struggle as he may, his condition is hopeless, and so he falls to the floor of the vault suffocated. Of what value is his gold now? Will it buy him eternal happiness? No, for “we have brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” The next morning when the time lock snaps, the usurer is found victim of that great leveler, death. Biograph Bulletin, [?], August 15, 1910

A heartless moneylender wreaks havoc on the lives of several unfortunates by demanding his repayment for loans outstanding. One of those whom he has so affected comes to his office to ask for consideration. Unbeknownst to her, he is in an adjoining safe when she arrives; her collapse inadvertently shuts the safe’s door tight. Because of a time-lock, the usurer is unable to escape and eventually he suffocates. When his wife arrives the next morning she finds him dead but takes solace in the wealth he has left behind.

Griffith often returned to familiar material, fashioning either explicit remakes (as in the case of After Many Years [1908], and Enoch Arden [1911]) or a reworking of similar scenarios. A Drunkard’s Reformation (1909) leads to Brutality (1912), The Lonedale Operator (1911) to A Girl and Her Trust (1912), Where the Breakers Roar (1908) to The House of Darkness (1913), and A Corner in Wheat (1909) to The Usurer. Griffith’s recycling efforts may well have been motivated by little more than the desperation borne out of the relentless production schedule dictated during the period, but each of his remounts plays intriguing variations on the original. In the case of The Usurer, the similarities to the earlier film reside less in the details than in approach and attitude: a principle of moralising contrast links cause and effect as the protagonist celebrates while his victims suffer; save for a single shot, the usurer, like the Wheat King, avoids coming into contact with those whose lives he ruins, demonstrating the insulated nature of capitalist exploitation; and the demise of the central character results (indirectly) from his greed, with the figure ironically overcome by the fruits of his financial conquests. Yet apart from the shots that show the usurer dining with his friends, The Usurer shows no evidence of direct citation of A Corner in Wheat. The effects of the usurer’s ruthless pursuit of wealth seem much more localised than do the Wheat King’s (though Griffith presents the consequences as more dire), and the cyclical logic of the earlier film is jettisoned along with the use of nature to contextualise and counterpoint the manipulations depicted. But in some ways, the compression evident in The Usurer makes it an even more structurally impressive film than its predecessor. The film breaks down into two sections, the first detailing through a series of parallel edits the self-indulgent lifestyle of the usurer, who enjoys sumptuous meals with friends while his debt collectors serve notice to two representative families. The contrast extends beyond the discrepancy in depicted actions, as Griffith constructs a thorough juxtaposition by differentiating the details of the mise en scène. To stress the luxurious abundance of the banquet shots, Griffith fills the frame to all its edges, going so far as to place foreground figures with their backs to the camera at the head of the centrally located table. Conversely, the shots of the homes of the indebted feature only a minimum of furnishings, and soon even these are removed, leaving the characters standing defenceless in their bare rooms. 154

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The section culminates in a masterful sequence of six shots, which Tom Gunning has drawn attention to as an example of how Griffith can combine the “contrast pattern with the practice of suspending the outcome of an action by an edit” (Gunning, p. 19). The first shot shows debtor Kate Bruce standing to frame right with her daughter seated in a chair beside her. With the debtors’ rooms shorn of most of their furniture, the similarity of remaining detail (position of window, item hanging on wall at frame right, chair to the right of the standing figure) renders this shot and the one that follows a graphic match, especially because the second debtor, Henry B. Walthall, stands in the same spot as Bruce. Walthall pulls out a gun from within his hat, however, and draws it toward his breast. At that moment, Griffith cuts back to the usurer’s banquet, with the usurer standing at the shot’s end to drink a toast; his placement within the frame transforms this shot into a third rhyming composition, and when he draws a glass upward to his lips, the graphic parallel to Walthall’s actions becomes even more pronounced. Another cut returns to Walthall, who has already shot himself, and now crumbles to the floor. The sequence draws to a close with the usurer completing the toast before exiting from the banquet. Not only does Griffith’s deliberate interruption of Walthall’s act of suicide elevate the narrational act of contrast to the level of causality, as Gunning has pointed out, but it also ties the guilt deriving from Walthall’s death to the ignorant money-lender, illustrating through the associative power of the cut what an earlier title pronounced: the usurer drinks “BLOOD-DISTILLED WINE”. Later, when the usurer lies suffocating in his safe, Griffith will draw on the felicitous graphic parallels by cutting back one final time to Walthall’s outstretched body. The narrational force of the edit in this instance shows Griffith the commentative voice passing judgement on the usurer. Though the money-lender chooses not to know those whose lives he destroys, fate intervenes by selecting one of his victims as the unwitting agent of his entrapment within his safe. The detailing of this action constitutes The Usurer’s second section, and though Griffith still integrates shots of the debtors at home, the chief emphasis of his editing patterns switches from establishing contrast to constructing proximity. The film’s deliberately restricted spatial schema intensifies at this point, as the majority of the shots alternate between the usurer’s office and his adjoining safe. Griffith leads up to the accidental shutting of the safe door quite methodically, with seven shots transpiring between the usurer’s entrance into the safe and his being trapped within it. The director exercises care in establishing the usurer’s decision to secrete himself in the safe as consistent with previously established character traits. His desire for seclusion operates as an extension of the willed ignorance he has demonstrated in the first part of the film: he goes into the safe to get away from others and then brings the door near to closing in order to avoid being disturbed by the office-cleaning woman, whose presence he acknowledges with a dismissive wave of the hand. When the debtor shuts the usurer into the safe, no one realises he is there, neatly inverting his ignorance of the plight of those he had undone earlier. Crosscutting between adjacent spaces allows Griffith to underscore the irony of the usurer’s predicament: though within arm’s reach of his office, he remains powerless to secure help from outside the confines of his safe. Unlike the carefully constructed last-minute rescues which Griffith’s crosscutting often abets, here the editing can only reinforce the usurer’s doom, as cut-aways to the debtors merely reveal them persevering in the face of deprivation, oblivious to the fate of its engineer. As in A Corner in Wheat, Griffith chooses not to end his film precisely at the moment the central figure expires. Instead, Griffith extends the story somewhat to incorporate the discovery of the usurer’s body by his wife. While this risks dissipating The Usurer’s dramatic force, it sharpens the film’s ideological critique. Without the concluding shots, the film’s attack on capitalism consists entirely of examining its abuse by one character. But by imply155

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ing the usurer’s legacy will not end with his death, Griffith hints at the ongoing nature of the system’s excesses. In the final shot, the wife shows satisfaction when holding all the papers she has discovered strewn about the safe floor. These documents, be they investments or loans, survive their owner, and ensure the perpetuation of the economic relations which are the real source of the misery the film depicts. The wife, earlier shown receiving a necklace from her husband in one of the banquet scenes, gladly assumes control over these tokens of capitalist exploitation. While Griffith may stop short of actually analysing capitalism’s economic logic, he doesn’t shy away from hinting at its pernicious long-term effects. Charlie Keil

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281 BIOGRAPH

WILFUL PEGGY Filming date: 19/22 July 1910 Location: New York Studio/Cuddebackville, New York Release date: 25 August 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 26 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Peggy); Clara T. Bracey (Her mother); Henry B. Walthall (Lord); ? (Cousin); Claire McDowell (Maid); Alfred Paget, Dell Henderson, William J. Butler (Servants); Kate Bruce, Edward Dillon, ? (At inn); W. Chrystie Miller, Guy Hedlund, Mack Sennett, W.C. Robinson (At wedding); Gertrude Robinson, Grace Henderson, Mabel Van Buren, Charles Craig, William A. Quirk, Edward Dillon, Stephanie Longfellow, Francis J. Grandon (At party); Henry Lehrman? (Bumpkin) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master A STORY OF THE EARLY DAYS IN IRELAND There is in the Irish the most commendable of traits, candor. They are truthful in the extreme, and hence pugnacious for he who has the courage of his convictions must have grit to back it up. This is even so with the fair lasses of the Emerald Isle, for they scorn the art of dissembling, and pretty little Peggy is an example. It was in the early days of this land of poetry and romance, that the lord of the manor started out for a stroll. Proceeding quite a distance, it being one of those warm days upon which everyone and everything even vegetation suffered indolence, there being not a breath of air stirring, he was overcome with fatigue and thirst. Approaching the home of Peggy, he finds her napping on the stoop. Arousing her, he commands her to bring him a drink. Commands, mind you. Well this is surely rubbing Peggy the wrong way. At first she positively refuses to budge, and he then becomes more suppliant and begs her to please favor him with a drink, so she condescends. The lord is deeply impressed by the artless wilful colleen, and resolves to pay her another visit. At the time of his next call he sees her vanquish a forward admirer who became so bold as to try to kiss her. This indiscreet lad is glad to get out of her reach with nothing more than a few bumps on the head. The lord witnesses this scrimmage from a distance, and reasoning the time inopportune leaves deeply infatuated with this rough diamond. When next he call it is to propose marriage. Whee! how Peggy does storm at his proposition until finally induced by her mother to accept this honor. They are married immediately and Peggy meets for the first time the lord’s nephew, a handsome, though conceited chap who at once imagines he has made an impression upon the peasant bride. During the lawn party which followed the wedding, Peggy finds court manners and etiquette a bit intricate and while returning the courtesy of some of the ladies, trips over her train and goes sprawling. This is viewed with ill concealed amusement, and Peggy flying into a rage would annihilate the whole party. Rushing into the mansion she sends the servants flying out of her way. The nephew now appears and attempts

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to console her. He does this by proposing a horseback ride, but she has no riding costume, and when the nephew suggest her wearing a suit of his, in the spirit of deviltry she consents and rides with him to the inn. The lord, heart-crushed, follows on vengeance bent. However, when he arrives he finds Peggy about to brain the nephew with a stool for daring to attempt to kiss her. One glance at the scene, and the lord realizes she can well take care of herself, for there is his nephew crouched under the table, and Peggy with upraised stool daring him to come out. The lord at once mounts his horse, and by a short cut arrives home much ahead of Peggy, who, upon her arrival, shows abject contrition, for she really loves the lord. Biograph Bulletin, [?], August 25, 1910

Impressed by the forthright nature of Peggy, a lord who visits her inn proposes marriage. She has difficulty adjusting to the lifestyle of the lord, however, and is humiliated at a garden party when her attempt at a curtsy results in a pratfall. Persuaded by the lord’s nephew to take a horse ride with him, Peggy changes into a man’s riding gear and they go off together to a pub. When her husband learns of her departure he follows, but finds no reason for jealousy when he learns Peggy has rebuffed the nephew’s advances toward her. The lord rushes back home in advance of Peggy and a happy reconciliation follows.

A slight comedy, Wilful Peggy offers one outstanding attribute: Mary Pickford at her most spirited. The film is a showcase for her comedic talents, which are on constant display throughout. As Peggy, Pickford engages in knockabout comedy, kicking, punching and pulling hair with wild abandon. But beyond the exuberance of her performance’s physicality, there is the crack timing of Pickford’s reactions, often registered all the more strongly by her punctuating the bouts of energy with moments of repose. When not sending other characters reeling out of the frame, Pickford will suddenly make herself stock still and draw attention to her face, which expertly registers shifting emotions through the pursing of lips, the wrinkling of a nose, or a flash from her expressive eyes. The rest of the cast either serve as sparring partners for the actress or wisely stay out of the way. Certainly the trade press took notice: The Moving Picture World enthusiastically declared “There is life, action, and what may be termed freshness in the picture … and [it] adds to the program a touch of originality” (September 17, 1910, p. 630), while The New York Dramatic Mirror singled out Pickford’s performance for praise: “The actress who impersonated the wilful lady of this film was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the heroine and not for a second did she forget herself” (September 3, 1910, p. 28). No doubt the vitality of Pickford’s presence helped these reviewers overlook the latter scenes of the film, which involve a rushed and confusing series of entrances and exits, not to mention a disappointingly underdeveloped foray into transvestism. Despite the narrational inelegance of the film’s final portion, Griffith generates several guffaws out of Pickford’s performance. Not the least of these can be found in the scene following her disastrous curtsy before her husband’s guests, wherein she pretends to take the humiliation in good grace before the maid (Claire McDowell), waits a beat while manufacturing a forced grin and then proceeds to try to tear the poor woman’s head off in frustration. Pickford’s comic ferocity in Wilful Peggy indicates why Carl Laemmle would lure her to IMP before the close of the year to enliven that company’s considerably less accomplished onereelers. Charlie Keil

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282 BIOGRAPH

THE MODERN PRODIGAL Filming date: 28/30 July 1910 Location: Cuddebackville, New York Release date: 29 August 1910 Release length: approx. 992 feet Copyright date: 30 August 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Dell Henderson [“One Good Turn Deserves Another”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Guy Hedlund (The Prodigal); Clara T. Bracey (His mother); George O. Nicholls (Sheriff); Kate Bruce (His wife); Jack Pickford (Their son); Alfred Paget, Frank Evans, Edward Dillon (Guards); Robert Harron, Dell Henderson, Francis J. Grandon (At post office); William J. Butler (Farmer); Anthony O’Sullivan (At farewell); Lester Predmore, ? (Boys swimming); ? (Prodigal’s sister?) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined), Paul Killiam Collection; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) A STORY IN SYMBOLISM SHOWING THE RESULT OF YOUTH’S EGOTISM Egotism is the most dangerous quality man can cultivate, for it makes us over-confident of our strength of purpose. Self-esteem is a fault that rarely goes unpunished. How few of us realize what weaklings we are without the guiding hand of the Great Master of all. In the opening of this Biograph subject, we find the callow youth as he points toward the city’s spires, exclaiming to his dear old mother: “Mother, there in the big city is my sphere. There will I turn the world over.” Off he goes cityward, ambitious and presumptuous and perhaps we may add reckless. Alas, the city’s whirl is quite a change from the simple quiet life in the country and the youth falls a victim to the snares that beset the unsophisticated. After a bitter experience, he returns, and in symbolism we show him in the raiment of sin – a convict’s suit. Approaching his old home, he sees there in front of the door the old chair in which sat his mother on the day of his departure. What a difference; on that day there shone the sunshine of hope; to-day [sic], the clouds of despair. As he regards himself in his prison garb, he utters that penitential cry of the ancient prodigal, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son.” Turning away, he staggers about exhausted to the pigsty where he ravenously eats the husks upon which the swine feed. At this point we show the other side – the watchful father and his son. The father is the sheriff and has just received the notice of a convict’s escape and a reward offered by the pursuing guards. The sheriff’s young son yields to temptation and is guilty of stealing apples and then lies about it. For this the father chastises him, so in the spirit of rebellion, he goes swimming with his playmates. Here he is guilty of disobedience and is made to suffer. Going beyond his depth, he is carried by the swift running current into the rapids. The boy’s drowning seems inevitable, but the cries of his companions are heard by the fugitive, who is hiding in the bushes by the side of the stream, and at the risk of his life and liberty he plunges into the seething torrent and drags the child to safety just as the father rushes up, having been informed of the boy’s peril. Here is an awkward situation. He is torn

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by conflicting inclinations. As father of the rescued boy, he owes the fugitive an immeasurable debt of gratitude, but as sheriff it is his duty to arrest the convict. Here is where duty is unreasonable. However, there is no compromise where duty is concerned, and he is forced to perform it, odious though it be. At his home he leaves the prisoner in charge of his wife while he gets his carriage. The mother allowing maternal love [sic] guide her feelings, feigns sleep that the prisoner may escape with a suit of civilian clothes, and return to his own despairing mother. As the poor unfortunate approaches his home, his mother, stretching forth her hands, exclaims: “My son was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” Biograph Bulletin, [?], August 29, 1910

Once a young man leaves his rural home for the city, he falls into a life of crime. He escapes from jail but is pursued when he returns to the homestead. While hiding out in the bushes, he notices a young boy in danger of drowning and rescues him. The young boy is the son of a sheriff, who still sees it as his duty to arrest the escaped convict. The sheriff brings the young man back to his own home and instructs his wife to keep watch over him at gunpoint until the sheriff can return with a carriage to transport the arrested man. Knowing the convict saved her son, the wife instructs the boy to bring the young man a change of clothes and then feigns sleep so he can escape. The prodigal son is able to return once more to the waiting arms of his own mother.

Labelled “A Story in Symbolism”, The Modern Prodigal rings a variation on the biblical story on its way to becoming a paean to the strength of maternal love. While the Biograph promotional material stressed the film’s value as a “lesson to young men, who leave their homes, with the know-it-all mien to set the world ablaze with their cleverness”, the message of The Modern Prodigal emerges as considerably more ambiguous than that. Relatively non-judgemental, the film expresses a far more charitable attitude toward its title character than does the advertisement printed in The Moving Picture World, which expands the film’s title to read “… Showing the Egotism of Youth”. In fact, the character who emerges in the least flattering light is the sheriff, a figure who conveniently fuses the connotations of patriarchal prerogative and the law. The father/lawman’s actions function primarily to reveal the inherent morality of others: his prohibitions inadvertently produce ethical dilemmas, which test the resolve of both his wife and the prodigal. The sheriff’s disciplining of his young son drives the boy to go swimming with his friends in an act of defiance; as a result, the child nearly drowns. Yet this provides the opportunity for the prodigal to show selflessness. Knowing his decision to save the boy could result in his being captured, the prodigal transcends heroism in rescuing the child, peforming an act of sacrifice. Later, when the sheriff refuses to allow the prodigal’s actions to deter him from making an arrest, it is left to the mother to leaven duty with kindness. Griffith begins the film with one of the more startling but effective ellipses attempted within the Biograph period: after showing the son leaving home in a two-shot sequence, he inserts a card indicating the boy has taken to crime in the city (viewable in the background from the road featured in shot 2): “BITTER EXPERIENCE / THE RETURN IN THE RAIMENT OF SIN”. The gap covered by the cut absorbs the son’s transgressions, with the plot jumping ahead to his furtive flight from jail. This permits a neat symmetry, with Griffith contrasting the young man’s hopeful exit from the second shot with his furtive re-entry into the same space, reversing the direction of his departure, crouching low and clad in convict’s stripes. Similarly, his visiting of the family home (recalling shot 1) features one salient difference: 160

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the rocking chair his mother occupied in the first shot now sits empty. These four shots, set forth in a simple A-B-B-A pattern, constitute a prologue to the main action, which details the son’s escape from the law and his encounter with the other family, whose mother-son relationship parallels his own. (For an extended analysis of how Griffith’s editing sustains abstract connections in this film, see Jesionowski, 1987, pp. 134–36.) Tellingly, the mother in the other family is only seen at the home, usually on a corner of the house’s porch, positioned to the right of the frame, whereas the prodigal’s mother appears somewhat to the left in the film’s bracketing shots which feature her. Ostensibly passive figures, both mothers subtly subvert expectations: the prodigal’s mother isn’t waiting in her chair when he returns the first time; the sheriff’s wife not only disobeys his orders, but uses his gun and his clothing to orchestrate her release of the convict. Still, the mothers are emblematic figures of unconditional love and the film’s final image suggests that in Griffith’s universe, no resolution rivals that of the rejoining of mother and son. Charlie Keil

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283 BIOGRAPH

A SUMMER IDYL Filming date: 26/27 July, 1/3 August 1910 Location: Cuddebackville, New York/New York Studio not noted Release date: 5 September 1910 Release length: approx. 991 feet Copyright date: 7 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Stephanie Longfellow (Cora); Henry B. Walthall (Albert); Gertrude Robinson (Shepherdess); W. Chrystie Miller (Her father); Charles Craig (Friend); Robert Harron (Country boy); W.C. Robinson, ? (Servants); Guy Hedlund (Farmhand); ? (Foreman); William J. Butler, Claire McDowell, Dorothy West, Charles Hill Mailes, Jeannie MacPherson, Verner Clarges (At party) Archival Sources: Det Danske Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (Danish intertitles); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A BEAUTIFUL BIOGRAPH PASTORAL Fascination and infatuation are simply forms of hypnotism. They are like habits formed and almost impossible to crush. Such was the fate of Albert Woodson, a talented young artist, who became madly infatuated with Cora Irwin, a fellow artist. Cora’s atelier was the rendezvous of the members of the higher Bohemia, and at her little receptions there always gathered the men and women of arts and letters. Among them was Albert Woodson, and during the course of one of these affairs he proposes marriage to the seemingly nonchalant Cora, who regards his protestation as a joke and laughingly rejects his proposal. Despondent, Albert goes to his home and decides to take a long walking trip in the country, where he hopes to crush that infatuation for the heartless Cora. As he trudges through the fields, his mind is occupied admiring the beauty of the land, which enthralls him so as to almost forget the cold-hearted artist. Here he meets a pretty little shepherdess as she feeds her sheep. Her artlessness and beauty make such an impression on him that Cora has now gone entirely from his thoughts. It is a case of love at first sight, and it is not all one-sided, for the little maid is attracted by him. She indeed falls deeply in love with him. Cora, meanwhile, has regretted her action, and learning Albert’s address, sends him the following letter: “Dear Albert: – I was only teasing when I laughed at your proposal. Come to me. – Your Cora.” This note reaches Albert while he is out strolling with the little shepherdess. He mentally compares the two and decides in favor of the country maiden so Cora’s plea is ignored. To be by the little one’s side, Albert engages as a farmhand, and the poor old grandpa of the girl, with whom she lives, seeing them so much together, anticipates that he will soon be left in loneliness. Cora, determined to win him back, makes a more subtle endeavor. She writes a second note: – “Dearest: Why don’t you come to me? I am giving a little reception in your honor. Do please grace the occasion. With heart yearning, Your own Cora.” Before sealing the letter she encloses the butt of a cigarette which she has been smoking. Albert as first is inclined to treat this second letter as he did the first, but the sight

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and aroma of the cigarette conjure up in his mind the fascination scenes of Bohemia and his old infatuation returns. The city’s call is irresistible, and back he goes to the gayeties of the metropolis. The farm scenes shown during the course of the story are undoubtedly the most beautiful ever photographed, showing farm life as it really is. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 5, 1910

Rebuffed in his attempts to propose to Cora, Albert elects to take a walking trip through the countryside. There he meets a shepherdess, and the two soon develop a mutual attraction. Cora regrets her decision and tries to entice Albert back by sending him a note. He ignores her first attempt, but in the second she includes the butt of a cigarette she has been smoking and this token convinces him to return. The shepherdess finds solace in the arms of her grandfather once Albert has gone back to Cora.

The story of A Summer Idyl is, as The New York Dramatic Mirror noted, “quite attenuated and not especially interesting”, but it is merely a pretext for a chance to exploit the rural setting in a series of “really beautiful harvest scenes that are [the film’s] chief value and charm” (September 14, 1910, p. 30). So impressive were these shots that The Moving Picture World designed a two-page spread extolling the virtues of A Summer Idyl entitled “Pictorialism and the Picture”. The Moving Picture World uses the example of this Biograph to assert the importance of expressing feeling through pictorial quality: “[T]he photographer and his associates in the production of the work must have felt the sentiment of the picture. The result is that we have a series of very charming little rustic studies, quite naturalistic in effect, full of atmosphere, and, above all things, of simplicity. There is, it will be perceived, a noticeable absence of staginess and theatricality” (September 10, 1910, p. 566). The positive publicity accorded Biograph for the company’s artful employment of scenic exterior shooting explains why manufacturers during this era would continue to seek out exotic locales for their films’ settings. The documentary aspect of capturing both the pastoral beauty of rural life and the processes involved in farming operations occupies A Summer Idyl for nearly eight consecutive shots. The film’s momentary fascination with providing a record of farmlife all but displaces the central narrative about the rebuffed artist; in this way, A Summer Idyl recalls pre-Griffith Biographs like The Tunnel Workers and The Skyscrapers (both 1906) which combined fictional material with footage of men at work. But Griffith integrates his main characters into every shot of farm labour, thereby enfolding the documentary impulse within the diegesis at all times. With so much attention devoted to the pictorial beauty of the settings, Griffith displays comparatively less inventiveness in matters of staging and performance, though his vaunted sense of parallelism and developing prop-based motifs do emerge strongly at the film’s conclusion. The final two shots contrast city and country, bohemian interior and rustic exterior, romantic indulgence and familial devotion – and Griffith underscores the differences through compositional similarities. Both couples (Cora and Albert; the shepherdess and her grandfather) occupy the same position in the frame and both are engaged in graphically similar activities, as Cora raises a glass to Albert’s lips while the shepherdess places her grandfather’s pipe to his. The pipe represents the older man’s need for his granddaughter, as much earlier in the film we had seen her filling it for him before Albert arrived. Moreover, the pipe allows Griffith one more means of constructing a parallel, in that Cora lures Albert back to his life in the city by including a used cigarette in her final letter to him. Grif163

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fith achieves this parallel at the expense of dramatic logic; as The New York Dramatic Mirror complained, “The cigarette stub incident – how about it? Is the dead odor of a half-smoked cigarette so captivating?” (September 14, 1910, p. 30) Perhaps not, but it links Cora’s hold on Albert to the old man’s claim to his granddaughter’s attention in a way that renders the final shots far more complex and even disturbing than they would be otherwise. Charlie Keil

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284 BIOGRAPH

LITTLE ANGELS OF LUCK Filming date: 5/6 August 1910 Location: New York Studio/Wall Street, New York City Release date: 8 September 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 9 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Mr. Rose); Grace Henderson (Mrs. Rose); Verner Clarges (President of sugar company); Gladys Egan (Alice); Edith Haldeman (Ruth); Clara T. Bracey, Kate Toncray (Maids); Francis J. Grandon (Partner); William J. Butler (Client); Alfred Paget (Butler); Charles Craig, Charles Hill Mailes, W.C. Robinson (In president’s office); Anthony O’Sullivan (On street); Jeannie MacPherson, Dell Henderson, Henry Lehrman, Edward Dillon (At work) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; “unknown format”, possibly 35mm nitrate positive (AFI / National Film and Sound Archive / ScreenSound Australia Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative SAVED FROM RUIN WITH THE CHILDREN’S HELP Language fails when endeavoring to fully describe the wonderful influence of the child upon matters of great moment in life. Often are they made the messengers of Divine Providence also the tools in the hand of fate. Their plea is a demand irresistible, and in this Biograph subject is shown how their childish sincerity lifts from the household the impenetrable clouds of despair. Edward Rose, as president of the Independent Sugar Company, has proved a formidable antagonist of the giant Sugar Trust. His is the only concern which has withstood its advances, and so it is a most desirable acquisition. Rose has received an intimation, that really amounts to a threat, it would be of mutual benefit should he submit gracefully. He, however, is adamant in his defiance, showing a commendable pugnacity that is admired by the trust’s president himself. But in every battle we must look for the traitor, and Rose’s partner plays the Judas, so that the next morning finds Rose a ruined man, sold out to the trust by his own partner. Crushed in spirit Rose goes home, where his wife is now acquainted with the disaster through the newspapers. The two little children are amazed and hurt at their papa’s cold negligence, and are at a loss to know why he should so ignore them, and they become little eavesdroppers at the door of the reception room into which Mr. and Mrs. Rose have gone to talk over the calamity. From what they hear they understand that the president of the Sugar Trust took papa’s money away from him, so they take the savings from their little banks and tender it to help papa. Their papa is too occupied with his gloomy thoughts to notice the little ones. Suddenly a bright idea occurs to Alice. “We will go to see President Sugar Trust.” Writing a note and enclosing their savings they start off, these two innocent children, for Wall Street, having gotten the address from the telephone book. There they trudge hand in hand, a sort of new species of lambs in the street. They insist upon seeing the Sugar King at once. Brought before him, little Alice hands him her note which reads: – “Deer Prezident Shugar Trust: – Papa ses you tok all hiz money. Pleze take our’s instead and give him hiz. – Alice and

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Ruth.” At the same time she profers her savings. The old gentleman, being a family man with children and grandchildren in whom he is wrapped up, is deeply touched by the innocent candor of these little tots, and, turning to his desk, writes a letter to their papa, with which they return, their absence not even having been noticed. This letter offers their papa a position as General Manager of the sugar interests with a salary of $15,000 a year. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 8, 1910

Edward Rose, owner of an independent sugar company, resists the “Sugar Trust”. His partner, however, conspires with the Trust to force Rose into bankruptcy. Rose’s two young daughters go to Wall Street to plead with the Trust president. Unmoved by their offer to turn over their small savings, the president finally succumbs to their tears. He offers Rose a job and happiness returns to the family.

It’s one mark of Griffith’s diminishing power as a social critic to compare this tale about a monopolistic “trust” with the uncompromising A Corner in Wheat of a year earlier. Where the 1909 film made thematic links among farmers and city folk impoverished by a commodities baron they never see, Little Angels of Luck relies on a linear narrative of capitalist goodwill and family values that would have made even Frank Capra blush. (It’s a Wonderful Life [1946] features hard-hearted banker Lionel Barrymore laughing off just the sort of child’s plea for a father that succeeds here.) “The heart interest is all through the film”, reported The Moving Picture World, “and in these times anything, even a child, that gets the better of a trust, is a hero” (September 3, 1910, p. 688). As the elder of the two title figures in Little Angels of Luck, Gladys Egan is once again called to soften a man who has forgotten the interests of the heart, in a reprise of her roles in A Child’s Impulse, A Child’s Faith, and other such films earlier in 1910. Well might “language fail” the Biograph Bulletin “to fully describe the wonderful influence of the child” after so many attempts. (Most unintentionally revealing of the Bulletin’s straining for language in this context is its praise for the “egregious power” of Egan’s character in A Child’s Impulse.) Among the deft moments of Little Angels of Luck, however, is the way that Gladys Egan’s pragmatic character sneaks looks from her sister’s shoulder to be sure that the Sugar Trust’s president is paying sufficient attention to her sobs. She’s less innocent and more enterprising than first appears, and she negotiates New York subways and the wilds of Wall Street in shots intercut with her father’s near catatonic despondency. She returns home with his job offer before her parents even notice the two girls’ disappearance. Also witty is the way that Egan translates more calmly George O. Nicholls’s large gestures of despair, to report to her sister the conversation between her parents that she overhears through a door. The film’s first half is particularly uninspired, full of dull office spaces flatly filmed. Notably clumsy is the cut between shots 6 and 7 that, because of the placement of doors and exit directions, implies that the independent sugar company and the Trust are somehow in adjacent rooms. Perhaps more intentionally ambiguous is the late introduction of the Sugar Trust president’s own two daughters who, seen from behind, at first seem to be the two daughters we know. What vitalizes the film halfway through are the location shots of the girls – the “NEW SPECIES OF LAMBS” – making their way through Wall Street, especially a well-framed shot (#28, of forty) that foregrounds looming businessmen and stone balustrades. 166

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“Trust” is the term given in Griffith’s Biographs for the deepest responsibility that one person gives to another and to higher duty, as in His Trust or The Girl and Her Trust. The dismaying project of Little Angels of Luck is to suggest that, at bottom, monopolistic business trusts and such human trust share the same ethics. Scott Simmon

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285 BIOGRAPH

A MOHAWK’S WAY Filming date: 9/12 August 1910 Location: Delaware Water Gap, New Jersey Release date: 12 September 1910 Release length: approx. 991 feet Copyright date: 14 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: Suggested by the works of James Fenimore Cooper Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Doctor Van Brum); ? (Mrs. Van Brum); Claire McDowell (Indian mother); Edith Haldeman (Indian child); Anthony O’Sullivan, Frank Evans, John T. Dillon (Trappers); William J. Butler (Servant); Alfred Paget, Guy Hedlund, W.C. Robinson, Gertrude Robinson, Charles Hill Mailes, Jeannie MacPherson, Dorothy Davenport (Indians); Francis J. Grandon (Medicine man); Henry Lehrman (Patient); Edward Dillon (Friend); ? (Soldiers) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Film Museum Berlin, 16mm acetate positive (German intertitles) BIOGRAPH SUBJECT OF THE JAMES FENIMORE COOPER TYPE Indefatigable in the extreme was the Mohawk; excessive in his expression of gratitude, he is equally determined in his quest for vengeance – justice, however, being his incentive. Highly emotional, he possesses the power of dissembling to such an extent, as to ascribe him stoical. This double nature is clearly shown in this Biograph story, which gives it a Cooper atmosphere. Dr. Van Brum, the white medicine-man, is a being totally devoid of fellow-feeling, in fact a contemptible despot. The Indian medicine-man has failed to cure the little papoose, over whom the brave and his squaw bend in abject anxiety. The medicine-man incantations proving fruitless the brave decides to seek the white doctor’s aid. Van Brum refuses to waste his time on this Indian, and in reply to the poor fellow’s earnest entreaties, knocks him down. The doctor’s wife, however, hears the Indian’s pleading and surreptitiously goes to administer to the fever-stricken papoose. The remedy is in the form of pellets, a bottle of which the good women leaves with the squaw, with the injunction to give the baby more at regular intervals. The little one convalesces immediately, and the innocent squaw looks upon the bottle as cabalistic. In fact the entire tribe regard it a supernatural charm, and so hold it in awe, the squaw hanging it by a chain around her neck as a fetish. This in a measure, sets to rest the enmity that has existed with the Indian for the doctor. His tyranny has made him an odious neighbor. This condition of peace does not last for long, for the doctor offers an insult to the squaw while she with others are cavorting on the river bank. She resorts to the bottle’s charm for protection, but at this the doctor laughs, until she draws a dagger. The doctor, a coward, is thwarted. The Indians, upon hearing of the episode, declare war, and start after the doctor, who has fled with his wife on horseback. By a short cut the Indians waylay the fugitives and the doctors after an exhibition of his despicable cowardice meets his just deserts, while the wife is carried to the camp where she is about to suffer the same fate as her husband, when the squaw appears and in gratitude demands her release. This the braves are loath to do until she holds up the

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mysterious medicine bottle, the sight of which strikes terror and they withdraw. The squaw and brave then escort the woman to the river where she is taken about [sic] the old ferry and carried across to safety in the British camp on the opposite side. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 12, 1910

When in colonial America, a doctor “REFUSES TO WASTE HIS TIME ON AN INDIAN” whose daughter is ill, the doctor’s wife secretly travels to the Indian village to administer medicine. After the child’s recovery, the young Indian mother wears the medicine bottle as a necklace talisman, which the doctor roughly tries to grab back when he spots it. “THE WHITE MAN’S INSULT” leads to an Indian uprising in which the doctor is killed. His wife too is set for execution until the Indian mother intervenes and escorts her back to safety.

“Indian and Western subjects”, the trade paper tag for this genre, were still growing in popularity two years after Griffith had made his first, the well-received The Redman and the Child (1909), in his initial month directing. A Mohawk’s Way was reviewed the same week as Essanay’s An Indian Girl’s Awakening, Bison’s A True Indian Brave and Pathé’s The Appeal of the Prairie, in which “an Indian falls in love with a white girl” (Variety, September 17, 1910, p. 12). This was Griffith’s first “Western” after returning east from the company’s initial winter location trip to California. By then, the woodsy landscapes of New Jersey, where this film was shot entirely on location, may have looked less suitable for the genre. Certainly, reviewers were beginning to grumble about the inauthenticity of other Eastern-shot Westerns. One obvious solution, taken both here and with Griffith’s next Indian film, Rose O” Salem Town, was to set such stories back in the colonial era. The Western is, after all, a national myth rather than a mere sectional one because all U.S. regions can claim some era as their frontier. A “Biograph Subject of the James Fenimore Cooper Type” thus becomes the Bulletin subtitle for A Mohawk’s Way, and The Moving Picture World took the label as a claim for value as well: “In some scenes it possesses something approaching a Cooper flavor. In others it falls below this standard” (September 23, 1910, p. 688). Cooper’s series of Leatherstocking novels never ventured quite as far back into American history as this film, which seems to depict a seventeenth-century Mohawk village near to a European immigrant colony in New York State. (A Puritan colony might be implied by an intertitle that returns the doctor’s wife to “THE BRITISH CAMP”, although the name given to the doctor in the Bulletin suggests the colony is Dutch.) The characterization of the cruel doctor makes for an early historical example in America of Griffith’s most satirized type: the hypocritical moralist. The opening intertitle bluntly tells us what to think of him: “THE WHITE MEDICINE-MAN. TOTALLY DEVOID OF FELLOW-FEELING.” Illustrating the title, the extended first shot shows the doctor whipping his black(face) servant, threatening his wife with the same whip, and then settling down outside his cabin with a liquor jug, which he will later share with some trappers. When the Indian comes to request help for his child, whom the tribal medicine-man has failed to cure, the drunk doctor responds by punching the Indian in the face. After the deliberate pace of these early scenes (which are single shots alternating with three intertitles), the film escalates cutting through the war chase before settling down again into an idyllic riverside coda. As in Griffith’s Leather Stocking, his 1909 adaptation of Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, a key generic trait of the “Cooper type” film is “friendship” between the white and Indian heroes even amidst wider racial warfare. Indeed, male bonding between light and 169

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dark races in the untrammeled wilderness is seen now as central to the classic American novel, notably in Moby Dick and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Griffith’s variation on this pattern in A Mohawk’s Way once again reveals his ability to reframe American cultural precepts in terms more associated with women novelists of the nineteenth century. This film’s interracial friendship is between two women, who part with a gentle, lingering mouth-to-mouth kiss before the doctor’s wife – or widow, rather, by that point – is sent off in the safety of a riverboat. In a keen little touch, the doctor’s wife retreats back a step when the Indian woman advances away from her warrior husband for more of this kissing business. Then, casting about for a more acceptable way to reciprocate, the Indian woman removes her treasured medicine-bottle necklace and presents it as a gift. (See The Gods Must Be Crazy [1980] for another such totemic bottle.) The rationale under all this comes from the way that throughout the first years of his career Griffith tends to similarly characterize Native Americans and women. That is, Griffith’s early Native Americans hold the same positive traits that he regularly ascribes to women: “constancy” reinforced by emotional passion. The Biograph Bulletin for A Mohawk’s Way makes a point of disabusing us of stereotypes of Indian stoicism by informing us that Indians are “highly emotional”. The Bulletin for an earlier Indian film, The Mended Lute (1909), had used the same phrase. Within a European history of ideas, Griffith’s Indians are less the Rousseau-style “noble savage” of (male) rationality and reason than the romantic savage of (female) emotion and sensitivity. For Griffith, if Indians are “lesser” than white men, it’s also because they are so much like women. That surprising final kiss in this film is anticipated when the white and native women walk off arm-in-arm at the conclusion of The Red Girl back in 1908. The further strangeness of the end of A Mohawk’s Way is that it is played as so unambiguously happy. The wife had shown brief shock in the previous shot on being informed in signs by the Indian warrior of her husband’s death, but she apparently recovers rapidly. As in some later Westerns (famously, The Searchers [1956]), Indian savagery acts out inexpressible wishes of a white character for family destruction. Our widow here rides off smiling, thanks to her new Indian friends, freed of her unredeemable husband and his whip. Scott Simmon

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286 BIOGRAPH

IN LIFE’S CYCLE Filming date: 18/21 July, 18 August 1910 Location: Cuddebackville, New York/Fort Lee, New Jersey/New York Studio Release date: 15 September 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 19 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Charles Simone [“Posthumous Forgiveness”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (James Mullen); Stephanie Longfellow (Clara, as an adult); Henry B. Walthall (Vincent, as an adult); ? (Clara, as a child); ? (Vincent, as a child); Charles H. West (Clara’s tempter); Edith Haldeman (Their child); W. Chrystie Miller, Anthony O’Sullivan, Francis J. Grandon (In seminary); William J. Butler, Linda Arvidson (James’s friends); Alfred Paget, Gertrude Robinson (Young couple); Charles Hill Mailes (Priest in bar); Anthony O’Sullivan (Bartender); Francis J. Grandon, Frank Evans, Edward Dillon, Henry Lehrman, Joseph Graybill, Charles Craig (In bar) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (Kemp Niver Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative THE BROTHER’S PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED The mother is the real guardian angel of the child. Her guiding hand and tender care mould [sic] our character and make us, if we adhere to their precepts, the upright men and women we should be. Consequently what a disastrous thing is the loss of a mother by young children. There is the father you would say – yes, but he does not understand the shaping of their little minds, building their natures, though he would lay down his own life for their good. This is the sad condition of the two children in this Biograph story. James Mullen, living in retirement at his country villa since the death of his wife, finds consolation in the love of his two children Clara and Vincent, aged ten and twelve years respectively. It has been their custom to visit their mother’s grave and place a wreath of flowers upon it. Seven years later, the children now grown, Vincent leaves for the seminary to study for the priesthood, while Clara undertakes to console their father, promising not to forget their mother’s grave. Vincent, now a seminarian, writes to his sister of how happy he is in the call of the church. Clara, while returning from the postoffice, whither she had gone in quest of a letter from Vincent, meets a handsome young man from the city. This stranger immediately lays siege to her heart, which feeling is more than reciprocated by Clara. She yields to the temptation to meet him clandestinely and during these meetings the stranger tries to persuade her to elope with him. At last she consents, and leaving a letter for her father, she runs off to the city with the tempter. Vincent has a premonition of something wrong and hastens to his father’s side where he learns the truth. He breathes a prayer for her deliverance, but she is made to suffer for her false step. She goes through a purgatory ten years with this man who not only denies her the right to the name of wife, but subjects her and their child to abject poverty, he drinking up what little she earns. In a drunken brawl at the saloon he falls against the rail of the bar, injuring himself fatally, but before he dies, he, in a measure, makes reparation by marrying Clara. During all this time Vincent has attended to the mother’s grave, begging her

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interception before God in his sister’s behalf, the whereabouts of whom he is ignorant. After the death of her profligate consort Clara takes her little one and starts off to make a last visit to her mother’s grave. Here she falls prostrate, praying for help and forgiveness. In this position she is found by Vincent who arrives on his regular pilgrimage. At last his prayers have been answered for later, Vincent, Clara and her little one are folded to the old father’s breast. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 15, 1910

A devout brother and sister make monthly visits to their mother’s grave. When grown, the brother leaves their father’s country home for study at a seminary, and the sister soon falls prey to a city slicker. After years of tenement drudgery, she finally marries her seducer as he lies dying from a barroom fall. She makes her way home, now with her own daughter, and is reunited with her minister brother and ailing father.

In Life’s Cycle plays out as a harsher variation on the themes and casting of As It Is in Life from six months earlier. Widower George O. Nicholls, again sitting endlessly outside his home, is tormented by another insufficiently filial daughter. Where the earlier film played this for charm and the realism claimed by its title, this time we get moralistic melodrama. Still, for all the film’s clichés of plot even for 1910, Griffith’s seemingly effortless competence by this point in his career is everywhere on display. The placement of the children in the pastoral landscapes (of Cuddebackville, New York) reinforces the family harmony; the cliffsides (of Fort Lee, New Jersey) underline the dangers of the city man’s apparently polite assistance to the innocent daughter. The first interior sets don’t appear until the fallen woman’s years in the city, exclusively represented by a tenement and barroom. For all the years rushed through in the film’s fifteen-minute running time, there’s a convincing relaxation to the acting and staging. Even when Charles West, playing one of his innumerable straw-hatted city cads, falls back on creaky gestures – an arm thrown outward to argue for the call of the wider world – it’s staged with Stephanie Longfellow moving dynamically toward the camera. The plot compression, it’s true, does result in moments of unintentional comedy, notably in the Ten Nights in a Barroom-style redemption when a minister makes a convenient appearance to marry our sinning couple a few seconds before the brutal seducer dies of his headwound. The cutting across distant spaces is thoughtful and, for a film without a chase, fairly rapid (at forty shots and ten titles). Most interesting is the ethical cutting between the first seduction of the sister and the brother’s contemplative life at the seminary, culminating in the moment (shot 23), complexly played by Henry Walthall, when the brother somehow senses something amiss out there in the world after his sister has been “PERSUADED” (as the one-word intertitle puts it). He shakes off a chill as he looks outward, laughs at his own superstition, but then must shake off a second chill as he walks back up the seminary path. The film’s title underlines the circular pattern so common to the structures of the Biographs. We witness a full cycle, from the first shot’s family happiness to the last shot’s restored harmony, framed and staged identically, with the added granddaughter. The structure argues, of course, for staying within the family circle – at least for women. The moral would seem to be that the daughter should remain tied to the dead past, never straying far from her mother’s grave. All this plays now as one of Griffith’s heavier cautionary tales about the hazards of female independence, and presumably only those who miss the charm of As It Is in Life could object. But if Griffith was attempting to offer an unobjectionable religious drama (“The Brother’s Prayers Are Answered” reads the Bulletin subtitle), then he missed 172

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his mark widely. Trade reviews were not favorable: “The Ladies” Aid societies throughout the country will never place a stamp of approval on this picture”, noted Variety, which detailed one objectionable moment: “The scene in the bar-room, where the girl’s supposed husband, drunk and in a fighting mood, falls and strikes his head against the foot-railing, death resulting after the girl appears and he marries her in dying gasps, palls upon intelligent audiences” (September 24, 1910, p. 10). The Moving Picture World hoped that it would “teach its lesson” but allowed as how “[i]t is not a pleasant story” (October 1, 1910, p. 748). Scott Simmon

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287 BIOGRAPH

THE OATH AND THE MAN Filming date: 16/19 August 1910 Location: New York Studio/Paterson, New Jersey Release date: 22 September 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 26 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Henri Prevost); Florence Barker (Madame Prevost); W. Chrystie Miller (Priest); Francis J. Grandon (Nobleman); Charles H. West, William J. Butler, Elmer Booth, Charles Craig, Verner Clarges, Dell Henderson, Gertrude Robinson, Jeannie MacPherson, Charles Hill Mailes, Dorothy West, Dorothy Davenport (Aristocrats); Alfred Paget, Kate Toncray (Servants); Claire McDowell, Guy Hedlund, Frank Evans, Edward Dillon, Anthony O’Sullivan, J. Jiquel Lanoe? (Rebels); Jack Pickford (Messenger); Clara T. Bracey (In parfumerie) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION God’s justice is inevitable and unerring and it behooves the short-sighted mortal to wait and reason before he gives rein to intemperate desires for vengeance, no matter how great the grievance. The vengeance meted by the Great Master of all is more terrible in the end, and yet more ethical, for vengeance perpetrated by us, in a measure, reverts. No more powerful lesson in this has been shown than the one comprising this Biograph story. Before the revolution in France the nobility exercised a most despotic rule over the peasants, subjecting them to abject slavery. Not only did they suffer pecuniary oppression, but their humble households were invaded and defiled by the noble profligates. Henri Prevost, a perfumer, receives a call from his landlord in quest of some perfume. During his visit this nobleman is attracted by Henri’s pretty young wife. Her beauty so enthralls him that he, during her husband’s absence, exercises his presumed rights, and invites, or rather commands her to attend his house fete. Here he dresses her in finery and promises to make a great lady of her, so that when her husband, who finding whither she had gone, bursts into the palace, she denies him. The heartbroken perfumer at first would return to the palace and in vengeance murder both his wife and the nobleman, but the old priest stays him, by showing him the crucifix, the emblem of Christian charity and making him swear he would never kill them, indicating that vengeance belonged to God. Henri takes this oath and lives up to it. Some time later the peasants chafing under aristocratic tyranny revolt, with the perfumer a leader. The revolutionists invade the home of the nobleman, the occupants of which flee in panic. The nobleman himself, with the perfumer’s wife, who is still with him, make their way to her former home, which she imagines is deserted. The perfumer enters, and upon meeting the guilty pair, sees his chance to wreak vengeance. He is about to run them through when the old priest again appears and shows him the crucifix, reminding him of his oath. He then waves

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back the mob, who haven’t seen the nobleman, with the exclamation “This is my wife.” The mob dismissed, he takes the couple to an inner room where they exchange their finery for peasant’s attire. Thus they leave to take their chances of evading intemperate revolutionists who are parading outside, devastating everything and destroying everybody aristocratic. What a bitter lesson she has been taught. Her covetousness has brought her only shame, terror, poverty and isolation. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 22, 1910

In France of the 1780s, an aristocrat eyes the wife of one of his tenants, a seller of perfume. The nobleman returns to invite her to a palace fête to which she goes with great willingness. The wife abandons her husband and takes up with the aristocrat. After the perfumer is physically restrained from stabbing them both, he takes an oath administered by a local priest vowing Christian charity over revenge. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the perfumer leads a peasant mob that ransacks the palace. His estranged wife and her lover run for shelter to the perfume shop, where the perfumer lives up to his vow by preventing their murder and then exiles them into the world.

“When the film makers fail to find a suitable Wild West, suicide or ancient comic subject, they fall back on the French revolution”, grumbled Variety, unimpressed by any novelty of setting in The Oath and the Man (October 1, 1910, p. 18). “The Oath” of the title is clear enough; “the Man” is presumably the wronged husband and revolutionary played by Henry Walthall, who had originated a similar role in an even more uninspired film, The Cloister’s Touch, late in 1909. There too he had seen his wife abducted by an aristocrat asserting Old World sexual privilege and also had opted ultimately for Christian forgiveness over vengeance, when he re-encountered the nobleman at a monastery – hence the title’s beneficent “Touch” of the “Cloister”. The primary variation in The Oath and the Man is the characterization of Walthall’s wife. In the earlier film, she had gone mad over the loss of her family. Here, she is more than willing to forget her husband in embracing the superficial opulence of court life, something already hinted in the first shot when she enviously eyes the costumes of women who accompany the aristocrat to the perfume shop. This characterization, however, presents problems of plot resolution. A three-word intertitle informs us that she faces “THE BITTER LESSON”, but what we see is a wandering wife who gets off about as lightly as any in Griffith’s oeuvre, her lesson consisting of having her life saved, being given peasant disguise, and heading off with her lover to live happily ever after, for all we know. The emphasis again is on the Christian virtues of Walthall’s character, whose portrayal of the crucial moment when he saves the aristocrats from murder interestingly foregoes an intertitle under the correct assumption that audiences will be able to lipread his pronouncement: “This is my wife!” Variety’s arch comment about his character was: “Be good if you have to stir up a revolution to do it.” About the only thing that enlivens the film’s staging and confused crowd scenes is its cutting. Indeed, it seems an early instance of a film “saved” in its cutting, which at fifty-five shots is one of Griffith’s more rapid to date, especially after the 100-foot opening shot establishes the lust of the wife for opulence and of the nobleman for her. There follows much chasing and ransacking. Notwithstanding Variety’s remark about the familiar setting, Griffith’s only previous French Revolution film seems to have been Nursing a Viper (1909) and, unless I’m misre175

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membering, he returned to the revolution only with 1921’s epic Orphans of the Storm. Nursing a Viper was a far more bloodthirsty rendition than The Oath and the Man – no decapitated heads on poles here – and while the earlier film made due with about half as many shots, it included fascinating play with extremes of stasis and action, and of close-ups and long views, in the same shot. Nothing here matches the innovative opening of that earlier film, subtitled identically on screen: “A Story of the French Revolution.” Instead it is hard to disagree again with Variety’s overall characterization of The Oath and the Man: “There is plenty of bluster about the picture”. Scott Simmon

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288 BIOGRAPH

ROSE O’ SALEM-TOWN Filming date: 3/20 August 1910 Location: New York Studio/Delaware Water Gap, New Jersey/Marble Head, New Jersey Release date: 26 September 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 27 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Emmett Campbell Hall Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy West (Sea child); Clara T. Bracey (Her mother); Henry B. Walthall (Trapper); George O. Nicholls (Puritan); Alfred Paget, W. Chrystie Miller, Guy Hedlund, Claire McDowell, Jack Pickford, Charles Hill Mailes, W.C. Robinson (Indians); Gladys Egan (Little child); ? (Her mother); Verner Clarges, William J. Butler, Frank Evans (Judges?); Francis J. Grandon, Henry Lehrman, W.C. Robinson (Captors); Gertrude Robinson, Kate Toncray, Edward Dillon, Claire McDowell, Charles Hill Mailes (Puritans); Frank Evans, Anthony O’Sullivan, Edward Dillon (Extras) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (Dutch intertitles) A STORY OF PURITAN WITCHCRAFT Reliable authority states that nine million human lives were sacrificed through the zeal of fanatical reformers during the Christian epoch. Religious fanaticism was in most cases the cause, still there were many victimized to satisfy a personal grudge, and this Biograph subject shows how easily such a crime can be perpetrated. Play upon the minds of a superstitious people and you may lead them blindly to any end. In 1692 the agitation was so great in Salem, Mass., that many people lost their self-possession, some even believing themselves to be witches. On the other hand, a number of the inhabitants moved away for fear of being accused of being witches. There are many relics of those days still in existence at Salem, and while conditions are such as to prevent our using the actual spots, yet many of the scenes of the picture are closely contiguous to them, our company of players making the trip there for the purpose. The story tells of the old mother and her child living on the sea coast, care free. The mother ekes a living telling fortunes and nursing the sick among the village folk. The girl we might term a child of the sea, as she spends most of her time among the wave-lashed rocks of the coast, scampering from jut to jut more resembling a sprite than a human. Off in the hills we find a trapper at the camp of Mohawk Indians, on his way to the sea, of which he had heard but never seen. A Mohawk brave volunteers to guide him to the great waters of the Atlantic leaving him there overwhelmed with awe at the grandure [sic] of the spectacle. Here he meets the pretty maiden and the attachment develops which later ripens into love, a betrothal resulting. As the girl reaches her home she is accosted by a hypocritical Puritan deacon, whose insulting advances she indignantly repulses. He in revenge goes to the other churchmen and accuses the girl and her mother of being witches. Proof sufficient to convince these narrow-

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minded fanatics is easy to obtain, for the fact of the old lady’s care and curing the sick is known to all, hence they purposely construe her kindness to be witch-craft [sic]. The poor souls are seized and thrown into prison and later condemned by a prejudiced jury to be burned at the stake. As they are carried to the jail they are met by the trapper sweetheart, who learning of her pending danger, rushes off to enlist the aid of his Mohawk friends to rescue her from this awful fate. The mother is first to be made a victim and while she is suffering the injustice inflicted upon her the deacon visits the girl’s cell and shows her from the window her mother’s fate, with the hope of weakening her determination. She still repulses him and so is lead forth to be victimized as was her mother. Meanwhile, her sweetheart has gotten his Mohawk friends and is rushing to the rescue, arriving just as the torch is put to the brushwood piled up around the girl. With a mad dash the Indians rush upon the scene, knocking down and scattering the fanatics and carrying the girl off before the Puritans realize what has taken place. In fact, it was done so quickly that some of the more superstitious thought she went up on smoke. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 26, 1910

Along the ocean shore near Salem, Massachusetts, in the late seventeenth-century, a trapper parts from his Mohawk companion and meets a free-spirited young woman. A “PURITAN HYPOCRITE” is also “ATTRACTED BY THE GIRL” and, after his advances are repulsed, takes his revenge by having the girl and her mother declared witches. The trapper eventually convinces Mohawks to help rescue the girl, although not before her mother is burned at the stake. The trapper and his Mohawk friend part company once again, leaving the girl and the trapper together.

This fascinating film builds from “the James Fenimore Cooper type” story seen in A Mohawk’s Way, shot over the same period in some of the same locations. To arrive this time at the final handshake of friendship, the white trapper and his Mohawk companion must defy the leaders of both their races. Among Rose O’ Salem-Town’s many surprisingly subtle touches is the dispute within the Mohawk band about the advisability of getting involved in rescue of white women. The Mohawk elder shakes his head at the trapper’s pleas, and only after the old man has been helped into his pelt-covered shelter do the trapper’s Mohawk friend and other Indians join the rescue, crosscut with Puritans piling wood on the girl’s pyre. Some of Rose O’ Salem-Town’s complexity comes from combining a “Cooper type” story of white/Indian friendship with what might be called the “Hawthorne type” story. As in The Scarlet Letter, female vibrancy and independence pose a particular danger to a Massachusetts Puritan colony. Before we see Rose as her mother’s daughter, the film’s title character is introduced alone in the first two shots as part of the landscape, a “SEA CHILD” or “MAID OF THE SEA”, as untamed as the waves to which she points when she introduces herself to the trapper. In a variation on the pattern I noted in discussing A Mohawk’s Way, Griffith again complicates Cooper’s bedrock of male interracial friendship in the wilderness by throwing a woman into the mix, and again in a way that tends to equate women with Native Americans. The key image in Rose O’ Salem-Town comes in its last shot: the white man and the Native American shake hands, with the woman standing between them. The argument of the film is more complex than the single reel has time to make through narrative alone and is reinforced through parallel natural imagery and expressive objects. Evidence of the mother’s witchcraft, for instance, is presumed by two Puritan deacons when they observe her walking through tall grasses gathering natural medicinal herbs (for ailing 178

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settlers whom we have seen secretly consult her). Her daughter, already associated with the sea’s natural vitality, is further condemned at her trial by the “LOVE’S TOKEN” given her by the trapper, a string of shell beads, to which the Puritan jurors point fearfully and which are likewise worn by the Mohawks. “Women” are thus linked to “witchcraft”, which is linked to “nature”, which is linked to “Indians”. Women, wilderness, and Indians are similar threats to the Puritan patriarchs. The story is credited to one Emmett Campbell Hall, whose other work for Griffith also tends toward melodramas of racial relations, his two most incendiary examples being the Chinese-immigrant Western That Chink at Golden Gulch and the Southern slavery and Reconstruction story His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled. Among Hall’s earlier Western scripts is the surviving Lubin one-reeler Red Eagle’s Love Affair (1910), with its Native American shunned by white university co-eds. Hall’s credit for Rose O’ Salem-Town notwithstanding, Griffith himself would seem responsible for its opening intertitle, unusual in this era for its length and expository tone. Indeed, it reads like a draft for Intolerance: “RELIABLE AUTHORITY STATES THAT NINE MILLION HUMAN LIVES WERE SACRIFICED THROUGH THE ZEAL OF FANATICAL REFORMERS DURING THE CHRISTIAN EPOCH. RELIGIOUS FANATICISM WAS IN MOST CASES THE CAUSE, STILL THERE WERE MANY VICTIMIZED TO SATISFY A PERSONAL GRUDGE.” The hypocritical minister – played again by George O. Nicholls, the intolerant doctor of A Mohawk’s Way – points menacingly at his Bible to identify the source of his authority when the girl spurns his sexual advance. He makes his final seduction push in the prison itself after the daughter is “SHOWN HER MOTHER’S FATE TO WEAKEN HER DETERMINATION”. In an exceptionally long and initially positive notice, The Moving Picture World took strong issue with the basis of the story itself, in ways that anticipate Hollywood’s 1930 Production Code (“Ministers of religion … should not be used … as villains, or as unpleasant persons”). The trade journal’s argument anticipates, too, the angry reaction Griffith would face in some quarters from Intolerance’s way of viewing history through fictional hypocrites:

[T]he main question is the suitability of the plot or sentiment of the play. While it is an unfortunate truth that a species of Puritan fanaticism and witchcraft caused much suffering and gave many martyrs to the stake, history records sufficient incidents upon which a plot illustrating (and, if needs be, exposing) the fearful superstitions of the times, and which would easily suggest groundwork for a picture of this nature. To deliberately invent the character of a “hypocritical deacon” is in exceeding bad taste, and, while many sad deaths were the result of blind prejudice and superstition, the enactment of a foul murder as a revenge for rejected illegal love advances, is much to be deprecated and censured. It really seems that the fact of the witchcraft martyrs has been used as an excuse upon which to build an unhealthy love tragedy in a way that is not honest, showing a distortion extremely detrimental and depressing. The idea of the deacon compelling the daughter to behold from her cell window the burning of her mother, is somewhat repulsive; it would seem that the young girl should have been treated equally with the audience in allowing imagination to fill its purpose, rather than the actual view of the tragedy so mercifully saved from the public. It is not surprising that exception has been taken to this part by the public press. (The Moving Picture World, October 8, 1910, p. 813)

Rose O’ Salem-Town still seems remarkably unclichéd, not only in its grim storyline and harsh portrait of a Puritan community, but especially in its depiction of Native Americans, who are, after all, the heroic rescuers for whom we root in the race to the execution site. The film has more than its share of static, heavily posed stances, especially when Dorothy West cringes backward and extends her arm against the minister’s advances. But the film is a great example of all that was lost in story options when American Indian tales came to be 179

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filmed exclusively in desert landscapes of the Far West, where Indians were seldom more than an unindividualized horde. Rose O’ Salem-Town represents the height of an underappreciated film type already nearing its demise in 1910: the Eastern Western. Scott Simmon

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289 BIOGRAPH

THE ICONOCLAST Filming date: 25/26 August 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 3 October 1910 Release length: approx. 992 feet Copyright date: 5 October 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Bernardine R. Leist Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Worker); Claire McDowell (His wife); Edith Haldeman, ? (His children); George O. Nicholls (Employer); Gladys Egan (His child); William J. Butler, Grace Henderson, Charles Craig, Dorothy Davenport (Employer’s friends); Alfred Paget (Butler); Kate Bruce (Maid); Francis J. Grandon, Verner Clarges (Doctors); Jack Pickford, Frank Evans, Anthony O’Sullivan, W.C. Robinson, J. Jiquel Lanoe, John T. Dillon (In office); Guy Hedlund (Worker’s friend) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative HOW THE SEED OF DISCONTENT IS SOWN Iconoclasm, the attacking of cherished beliefs and theories, has ever been the incitement of discontent, but the iconoclast of to-day [sic] may be better termed the socialist. Discontent is rather induced by selfishness, and selfishness is the seed of irrational socialism, nurtured mainly by laziness, and very often, drink. The principal character of this Biograph story, is a lazy, drink-sotted printer. He must be urged by his poor suffering wife to leave his cups to go to work. As usual he arrives at the office late, and an argument between he and the foreman ensues, just as the proprietor of the establishment enters, escorting a party of his friends to show them about and introduce them to the mysteries of his printing plant. The sight of these people dressed in sables and silk is extremely odious to this disgruntled workman, and when the proprietor shows a spirit of cordiality, he, galled by the inequality of their stations, repels it, and with a show of anarchism attempts to strike his employer. For this he is discharged, but his wife begs him, for the sake of their children, to try to get his position back, which he endeavors to do, but in vain. By this time he is ripe for anything, and drink-mad, sets about to take a fool’s method of leveling ranks, that is, armed with a pistol he makes his way to his former employer’s home to wreak revenge. We anticipate the printer’s visit to the publisher’s home, by showing the publisher in the depths of despair over the intelligence that his little child, despite the endeavors of surgical experts, is an incurable cripple. This is the scene that greets the printer at his surreptitious entrance. He finds there are things that wealth cannot buy – health and strength. He steals through the portieres with pistol in hand, intending to satisfy his covetous grudge with the death of this heart-crushed father, who sits weeping for his poor child’s misfortune. The little one realizes her father’s depair [sic] and so tries to cheer him, showing how nicely she can walk with the aid of the leg supports. This fortitude of the child makes a stronger appeal than moral suasion, and he turns from his purpose. The publisher, however, sees him and recognizes him as his former employee, and reasoning that

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now is the turning point in the man’s nature, detains him to persuade him to mend. The child’s mediation causes him to view the world from a different angle. Things could be better with him if he wanted them so, hence his employer gives him another chance by reinstating him in his former position at his printing office. Biograph Bulletin, [?], October 3, 1910

A printer, drinking excessively and neglectful of his family obligations, is fired from his job when he offends his wealthy employer and his employer’s guests as they tour the print-works. Seeking revenge, the dismissed employee enters his former employer’s house with the intent of shooting him. There he sees the employer and his severely disabled daughter and recognises the strong emotional bond between father and daughter. This convincing demonstration of affection brings the printer to his senses. He asks pardon, is reinstated in his old job, and becomes a model worker, husband, and father.

If the setting of The Iconoclast is the world of labour and commerce, Bernardine Leist’s screenplay and Griffith’s direction owe much in structure, method, and tone to the temperance drama and not merely because the worker is, in the Biograph Bulletin’s words, “drink-sotted”. We watch the redemption of a fallen husband and father occur not, as in A Drunkard’s Reformation (1909), reclaimed by his wife and child and the parallel action of a temperance melodrama, but by placing the vengeful worker in the position of witnessing the exemplary affection and rich empathy between the widowed father and his crippled daughter. Griffith uses alternate parallel and complimentary episodes of family life so that we observe two households, one severly dysfunctional, the other, although damaged through bereavement and illness, emotionally alive. Father and daughter reawaken parental feelings and awareness of responsibility in the disaffected worker and through this worker affect his domestic life. Their example brings rejection of revenge and a new sobriety. The alienated worker has been reclaimed and reinstated in his home, workplace, and society. On the face of it, The Iconoclast appears to be the reverse of Griffith’s earlier A Corner in Wheat (1909). Both films are set in the workplace; both deal with the relationship between labour and capital and between management and the individual producing worker. In his earlier film, Griffith is concerned to show the destructive mechanisms of the commodity marketplace – a grain-broker literally stifled by commodity he manipulates for profit, a farmer locked in a spiral of endless toil, consumers unable to afford their daily bread – and is overtly hostile to the greed and indifference of industrial capitalism. In The Iconoclast, by contrast, Griffith is openly critical of the lazy carelessness of the drunken workman who is indifferent to the needs of his own family, and warmly sympathetic to the proprietor of the printing works whose private life belies the luxury he has earned. Nevertheless, both films and other films in which Griffith ventures into the workplace (e.g., What Shall We Do with Our Old [1910]) owe their settings and their subject matter to the troubled history of the American labour movement: the founding in the late 1880s of the radical International Workers of the World and thereafter the fruitful agitations and polemics of various “Wobblies”, free-thinkers, democrats and others who, influenced by European socialism, authored the allegedly-seditious manifestos, led the strikes, and theorised political actions which resulted in the modern labor movement. Griffith’s entry into the acting and motion-picture professions coincides with a succession of miners’ strikes, worker-uprisings, assasinations, and armed railway seizures counterbalanced and opposed by covert Presidential and Congressional manoevering, political kidnappings, arbitrary imprisonments, massive infiltration 182

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of nascent unions by private detectives and agents provocateurs, and conspiracy trials which preoccupied the American people from 1902 through 1908. Griffith’s responses to these events are varied, inconsistent, but always immediate and visceral. In some films – A Corner in Wheat, What Shall We Do with Our Old – he is analytical and poses questions; in The Iconoclast he is descriptive and sentimental. Griffith has drawn strong performances from some of his cast, in particular in the episode at the print-works where a female visitor stares down in contempt at Henry B. Walthall’s drunken workman. His response to this insult provokes a fluent exchange of gestures between Walthall and George Nicholls as the irate owner, Nicholls anticipating the moment when he will discharge Walthall as he takes a bottle from the workman’s back pocket. Anthony O’Sullivan’s shop foreman provides further incisive gestures, angrily pointing, impatiently driving a sullen, rebellious Walthall from the shop floor and rejecting compromise. Nicholls again and Gladys Egan enact the tender relationship between parent and child, the father concerned not to betray too much grief and anxiety, the daughter determined to minimise her lameness and comfort her father. David Mayer

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290 BIOGRAPH

EXAMINATION DAY AT SCHOOL Filming Date: 23/27 August 1910 Location: Westfield, New Jersey/New York Studio Release date: 29 September 1910 Release length: approx. 991 feet Copyright date: 30 September 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: W. Chrystie Miller (Old teacher); Kate Bruce (His wife); Mack Sennett, Gladys Egan, Dorothy West, Edith Haldeman, Jack Pickford, Edward Dillon, Gertrude Robinson, Dorothy Davenport (Students); Francis J. Grandon (County examiner); William J. Butler (New teacher); Alfred Paget, Charles Craig?, Verner Clarges, William J. Butler (School board) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Dorothy Tayler Collection); 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive AN OBJECT LESSON TO EDUCATORS You can catch more flies with honey than with gall, and you rule easier by kindness than by tyranny. This fact is shown in this Biograph pastoral, which indeed might prove a lesson to educators. The teacher to thoroughly impart knowledge must win first the love of his pupil, otherwise his efforts are in vain. The old villiage [sic] schoolmaster is a lovable soul, and you can see the love his scholars bear him written on their smiling countenances as they scamper on to school. He in turn comes trudging along, his face lit up in the pleasant anticipation of soon being in the midst of his loved ones. All hail him joyously at his entrance and there are the little remembrances – an apple from one, a pear from another, a bouquet from another, etc. The opening exercises begin and the odious announcement that the county examiner will be there is received with frowns and pouts. The examiner arrives outside and the old teacher goes to meet and escort him into the classroom. While he is absent Jimmy, the villiage [sic] “cutup,” draws a caricature of the examiner on the blackboard. This so incenses the irascible personage that he immediately dismisses the class for the morning and when they have gone discharges the poor old schoolmaster. What a blow. He goes home almost heartbroken at the thought of losing the association of his dear little flock. Jimmy later becomes truly contrite for what he did, and with the scholars at his heels runs off the teacher’s home to beg his pardon. Here they learn what woe their lark has caused – their dear old teacher discharged. In the meantime, the examiner has gone to the Commissioners’ office and engages a new teacher whom he enjoins to lambaste these youngsters into submission. With what success we shall see. The scholars unanimously plan a revolt and no sooner has the new instructor turned his back than he receives a fusillade of fruit and vegetables. Well, they soon whip him and he rushes off to the Commissioners to tender his resignation. The children follow and insist upon the reinstatement of their old teacher. Their plea is granted so they hurry off to the teacher’s home and fairly carry him back to the schoolhouse. The class again in session, the old teacher

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gives thanks, writing on the blackboard, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow –,” the children singing as he writes. Biograph Bulletin, [?], September 29, 1910

A rural schoolmaster, beloved by his pupils, is dismissed from his teaching post when the county’s visiting school inspector is mildly ridiculed in a cartoon that a mischievous pupil has drawn on a blackboard. When the schoolmaster’s replacement attempts to teach a class, he is driven from the school by the angry pupils. The pupils then go to the school commissioners and successfully insist on the reinstatement of their teacher.

This film is remarkable for numerous reasons: it skilfully blends comedy and pathos to explore ideas of an extended community and the roles which respect, loyalty, responsibility and friendship play in strengthening such a community. Equally, Griffith looks at power and abuse of power, with the threat of expulsion from work and – albeit implied – from home. Moreover, Examination Day at School reveals Griffith’s ability to use the full age ranges of the Biograph stock company and to lead some of these performers into playing above their usual skills and métiers. As in other Biograph films which at this date raise issues of seditious ideas and challenges to authority (see, for example The Iconoclast, concurrently in production with Examination Day at School), the rural community is the battleground between rebellion and authority and, although reducing revolt to a foolish adolescent jape, shows a good worker dismissed from his post because of the excessive self-importance of a school inspector. Chrystie Miller and Griffith work in the early episodes to establish the schoolmaster as an honourable, conscientious, able teacher beloved by his pupils. The school inspector and commissioners exceed their authority and fracture their community by their heavy-handed pomposity, and it requires a further popular revolt – the school children contesting the commissioners’ appointment – and the same pupils acting as mediators and peacemakers to restore harmony and wholeness. To achieve moments of pathos, Griffith appropriates and twists conventions of stage melodrama. Although the schoolmaster’s home and schoolhouse are distinct buildings, the schoolroom becomes an extention of the schoolmaster’s house and the pupils are very nearly his own children. Thus, when the school inspector dismisses the children and, rounding on the schoolmaster, discharges him and casts him from the classrom, his gestures of expulsion – arm outstretched, finger pointing to the door – are those of a stage father unjustly expelling an errant daughter or those of a tyrannical landlord driving out a defaulting tenant. Often in melodrama it is the innocent child expelled by the overbearing parent. Reversing this trope, Griffith expells the community’s father. Chrystie Miller’s abject departure, interrupted as – arms wide – he grasps either side of the doorframe with both hands, head thrown back then falling forward, is a moment alive with anguished dejection. We shall see Griffith turning to this scene again when, in 1920, Lillian Gish’s Anna Moore is driven from the Bartlett family farmhouse by Burr McIntosh’s Squire Bartlett. In Examination Day at School, as in Way Down East, naked authority, uninformed by the full facts of a situation, is overwhelming, misused, and abusive. Setting his drama in a rural school with pupils of various ages has enabled Griffith to draw unusually effective performances from unlikely sources, most remarkably from Mack Sennett, whose boisterous, obsessively-detailed, and occasionally self-indulgent acting – in other Biograph films – sometimes threatens to undermine any pretext of ensemble playing. 185

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Although Griffith has here cast Dorothy West, Edith Haldeman, Gertrude Robinson, Dorothy Davenport to play roles considerably younger than their actual ages, it is with Sennett, cast and developed as a gawky, love-sick, overgrown schoolboy, that Griffith shifts his narrative from comedy to something deeper. Griffith has taken care with Sennett’s appearance. He has been costumed in trousers and jacket too small, as if growth was rapid and unforeseen. His hands are too large; he slouches as if unaccustomed to and embarrassed by towering above his schoolfellows. Allowing his audience to see Sennett lingering outside the schoolhouse, crouching to shoot marbles, scuffing his bare toes in the dust just to wait for the object of his teenage “crush”, or scrunching down, round-shouldered at his cramped desk, Griffith places this boy’s subsequent silly prank in the context of excess adolescent energy. We thereafter see him, twisting his sorry straw hat in his awkward hands, awaken to a sense of shame and remorse, eventual awareness of responsibility, and new maturity. We feel that he has truly learned from Chrystie Miller’s fine schoolmaster. It is worth noting the economy involved in filming this piece. Although Griffith uses a cast of seventeen actors and requires three interior, i.e., studio, locations (the schoolmaster’s home, schoolroom, and schoolboard) and six exterior setups (outside teacher’s home, school exteriors: steps, dusty country path, road on which inspector’s buggy arrives, and outside school board), he has constructed his episodes and developed his narrative so that only those actors playing schoolchildren appear in all locales and encounter their elders, the schoolmaster in his home and rural school and the commissioners in their meeting place. David Mayer

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291 BIOGRAPH

THAT CHINK AT GOLDEN GULCH Filming date: 25/31 August, 1 September 1910 Location: Cuddebackville, New York/New York Studio not noted Release date: 10 October 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 12 October 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Emmett Campbell Hall Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Anthony O’Sullivan (Charley Lee); W. Chrystie Miller, Francis J. Grandon (His friends); Gertrude Robinson (Miss Dean); Charles H. West (Bud Miller); Dell Henderson (Gentleman Jack Dandy); Edward Dillon (Mail carrier); Frank Evans (Sheriff?); Guy Hedlund, Alfred Paget, George O. Nicholls, W.C. Robinson, John T. Dillon, J. Jiquel Lanoe, William J. Butler (Cowboys); Kate Bruce (Extra) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A CHINAMAN’S SACRIFICE THROUGH GRATITUDE Civilization has worked wonders for humanity, but like many other benefits it is bound to bring its drawbacks. The tree of civilization has borne luscious fruit, still there is the fungus. The fruit is the development of the mind inducing higher endeavors, which efforts are nurtured by the soul. The fungus is the enemy of the soul; its root is selfishness, its branches thoughtlessness and greed. Charlie [sic] Lee, the poor chink, who is the hero of this Biograph story, is made to experience the strength of this disorder in the extreme. Having located at Golden Gulch as a laundryman, his old father is about to take his leave for his home in the Flowery Kingdom. Before going the old man warns his son to cherish his sacred queue, for should he lose that he would be an outcast and disbarred from returning to his native country, which every Chinaman who leaves, looks forward to doing. His father gone, the chink feels very much alone and low-spirited, for though a saffron-skinned Pagan, his soul is white and real red blood pulsates his heart. He takes up a basket of laundry work to deliver and on the road is made to feel the result of two thousand years of civilization, for while passing a gang of cowboys, they pull his pigtail, threaten to cut it off, and roughly handle him until rescued by Bud Miller and his sweetheart, Miss Dean. For this intervention the chink is deeply grateful, and when Gentleman Jack, the dandy, tries to cut Bud Miller out in Miss Dean’s affection, Charlie, the chink, keeps his eyes open. Through this the Dandy [sic] and Bud come to blows, but are separated by the boys. However, the chink hears the dandy threaten to do Bud at first meeting. The chink resolves to save his friend at any cost. The excitement at the Gulch is the repeated hold-ups of the registered mail carrier, and the effectual evasion of capture of the robber. A reward of $5,000 for his capture is posted, and the attitude of the dandy towards the notice arouses the chink’s suspicion, hence he follows him like a shadow. His efforts prove fruitful, for he is a witness to the dandy’s operations, who, disguising himself, makes his way to a lonely spot in the road and holds up the mail carrier. At a distance he views the dandy change his disguise and lay out on the ground to rest and gloat over his

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success. Here stands the poor chink apparently helpless. He is unarmed and with nothing with which to secure his captive. There lays the dandy with his hands clasped above his head. All that is needed is a bit of rope. A thought strives the chink, but what a sacrifice it means. A sacrifice which will make him forever an outcast. There is no other way, so whipping out a knife, he with one slash cuts off the sacred queue and binds the dandy’s hands so quickly that he is taken into the camp before he knows what has occurred. After the excitement of his deed is over, the poor Chinaman then realizes what his condition really is. The reward he receives is made use of in an unlooked for way. When the sweethearts go to his shack they find a note which reads: “Missie Dean alsame Bud Miller too – Charlie Lee wishee much glad you two when alsame one. Hope take money for blidel plesent – Goodby. Charlie Lee have went way.” With the note is the bag containing the $5,000, but the chink could not be found. Biograph Bulletin, [?], October 10, 1910

In China, before leaving for America, Charley Lee promises that he will never dishonour his family by cutting his pigtail. Later a laundry man in a Californian mining town, Charley is tormented by local men until befriended by a young woman and her cowboy sweetheart. One of Charley’s tormentors is a well-dressed idler and, secretly, a bandit who robs the mail. The cowboy and bandit become rivals for the girl’s affections. Suspicious of the bandit, Charley follows him, observes him robbing a mail-carrier, and contrives to capture him, cutting off his pigtail to bind the bandit. Rewarded for the bandit’s capture, but disgraced in his own eyes for dishonouring his family, Charley gives the cash reward to the young couple and surreptitiously leaves Golden Gulch.

Griffith remains fascinated with otherness and the tantalising ambivalence which this status generates. To a late-twentieth century viewer, Charley Lee is an unlikely hero. He is vulnerable, grateful, hugely self-sacrificing, and brave, but isn’t he also meant to be viewed as faintly ludicrous? Generous and civilized and the product of an ancient civilisation, in contrast to the barbarism of the California gold fields, Charley’s limited command of written and spoken English, his peculiar gait and posture, his habitual subservience, and his non-sexual adoration of Miss Dean invite the spectator to condescend to him and to find him unthreatening. Broken Blossoms lies almost a decade in the future, but a seed of passive exotic orientalism has been unconsciously sown. Although the scenario for That Chink at Golden Gulch is credited to Emmett Campbell Hall, Griffith’s film is an adaption of a popular stage melodrama and further modifies a popular stage character, the gold-camp Chinaman, who had become a staple of American literature and drama from the mid-1870s. Thus, in recognising the sources for this film and in understanding how these have been overthrown, we gain a clearer understanding of Griffith’s method and purpose. As Russell Merritt has persuasively argued, Griffith frequently draws on his previous theatrical experiences. Griffith has earlier adapted and abridged well-known theatrical melodramas, notably in Professional Jealousy (1907); The Barbarian Ingomar and Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker (1908); A Drunkard’s Reformation, The Lonely Villa, and The Slave (1909). Now once again he shortens and reshapes a stage piece, this time with the effect of humanising and making intelligible and sympathetic what was previously – and merely – an overworked comedy stereotype. The immediate source for That Chink at Golden Gulch is Charles Townsend’s 1893 melodrama The Golden Gulch, a play popular with amateurs and professionals alike. This earlier drama, also set in the miners’ hamlet of Golden Gulch, enacts the efforts of its villain “Gen188

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tleman George” Dixon (in the Biograph Bulletin “Gentleman Jack”) to implicate Frank Evarts, a government scout, for crimes which Dixon has committed: the robbery of express-mail riders and stage coaches and the apparent murder of a Jewish peddler. Dixon also attempts to corrupt the affections of Evarts’s fiancée, Jess Horton. Eventually Dixon’s villainy is unmasked, but only because the peddler, whom “the dandy” Dixon has failed to kill, makes a timely last-act appearance to avert Evarts’s conviction before a frontier court. The Golden Gulch’s Chinaman, One Lung, is but one of a number of ethnic, class, and gender comic roles – Jew, Irish, Negro, Native American, New York “dude”, fastidious spinster – who pad-out Townsend’s slender plot. Griffith and his audience would have been familiar with the stage “Chinaman” – who in speaking or writing replaces the letter “r” with “l” and promiscuously appends “ee” to many words (“Blandee! Blandee! Me likee blandee. Blandee makee Chinaman feel allee same likee flighten clock”), who walks with bent knees turned outward and with hands tucked into opposite sleeves, and who exhibits an unhealthy fondness for strong liquour and caucasian females – as the joint creation of the author [Francis] Bret Harte and the actor Charles T. Parsloe when they collaborated in 1876 to adapt as a comedic melodrama Bret Harte’s short story “Two Men of Sandy Bar”. Hop Sing, the first of many such comic Oriental roles, was a literary/theatrical response to the thousands of Chinese who had been persuaded to emigrate to North America in the 1850s to work on the expanding rail network and in the Western gold fields. So numerous were the Chinese and so willing to work long hours for small wages that by the late 1870s their presence in California and Nevada was met with hostility and occasional violence. By 1882 the U.S. Congress had enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act deliberately restricting further Oriental immigration. Parsloe and Bret Harte’s character reflects some of this accumulated hostility and misgivings which the Chinese occasioned, and Hop Sing and Harte’s subsequent Chinese character, Ah Sin, depict the Chinaman with derision. Parsloe thereafter repeated this comedy role, first as Washee-Washee, “a helpless little Heathen”, in Joaquin Miller’s The Danites in the Sierras (1877), then as Ah Sin in Mark Twain and Bret Harte’s Ah Sin (1877), and subsequently as Wing Lee in Bartley Campbell’s My Partner (1879), and finally in the role of Very Tart, a Chinese character belatedly added to James McCloskey’s already-successful Across the Continent (1870). Moreover, the popularity of the comic stage-Chinaman induced other dramatists and actors to copy Charles Parsloe’s success and to take “Chink” roles into the twentieth century. Griffith in 1910 was inheriting from Parsloe a theatrical convention which he was destined to subvert and change. But also at that date immigration from the Far East was a lesser source of friction, and American attention had refocused on new aliens from Eastern and Southern Europe. Townsend’s The Golden Gulch, first performed more than a decade after the last of Parsloe’s roles, softens the harsh mockery aimed at the Chinese character and, in introductory instructions specifying the costume of One Lung as the “usual Chinese suit – loose blouse, baggy trousers”, adds the restraining caveat about “the customary stage Chinaman”: “In playing this character do not overdo it. The Chinese are not jumping-jacks, remember; therefore play the part rather quietly.” Griffith heeds Townsend’s injunction and – subordinating conflicts between Miss Dean, Bud Miller and Gentleman Jack whilst foregrounding Charley Lee, making him the decisive hero motivated by honourable and altogether lauditory motives, and eliminating all other ethnic, class, and gender stereotypes – raises the stage-Chinaman to a new level, if, by our standards, “politically incorrect”. Although Anthony O’Sullivan still displays some of the “jumping-jack” movements of the American stage-Oriental, he has comparatively few of the excessive disfiguring mannerisms specified for the Chinaman in earlier stage scripts. The use of the queue as a means of capturing and binding Gentleman Jack is original to 189

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Griffith. Also original to Griffith, but of greater signifigance, is the depiction of an Oriental character who is recognisably a good, deserving, and deeply civilised citizen of Golden Gulch. A misunderstood alien proscribed by Act of Congress, a menial (a laundryman who cleans what others soil), neither a cowboy like Bud Miller, nor a miner (none of whom are seen in this mining shanty town), nor a thief in fancy clothing like Gentleman Jack, Charley Lee is equally a heroic and tragic figure for whom shame at the loss of his queue and family honour will drive him into anonymous exile. Gentleman Jack’s cruelty to Charley and Charley’s rescue by Miss Dean and Bud Miller are important in signalling vice and virtue and in helping us to identify Charley as the film’s protagonist, not as a peripheral add-on comedy role. David Mayer

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292 BIOGRAPH

THE BROKEN DOLL Filming date: 2/7 September 1910 Location: Coytesville, New Jersey/ Cuddebackville, New York Release date: 17 October, 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 19 October 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Belle Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Gladys Egan (Indian girl); Dark Cloud? (Chief); Jack Pickford, Alfred Paget , Kate Bruce, Dell Henderson, Guy Hedlund, Francis J. Grandon (Indians); Mack Sennett (Joe Stevens); Linda Arvidson (His wife); George O. Nicholls, Gertrude Robinson, W. Chrystie Miller, Frank Evans, John T. Dillon, William J. Butler, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Dorothy Davenport, Lottie Pickford (Townsfolk); Dorothy West, Joseph Graybill, Clara T. Bracey? (Victims of massacre) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive A TRAGEDY OF THE INDIAN RESERVATION This Biograph story shows to what extreme gratitude may lead a mere child, and one who is looked upon as semi-civilized at that. The subject clearly depicts that a kindly action will never go unrewarded. Joe Stevens came out West to court fortune prospecting in the mountains. He has met with more than fair success and writes his wife that she might join him as soon as she could. Wishing to surprise him, she and their child appear before him unannounced. On the day of her arrival a party of Indians from a reservation nearby visit the village to procure supplies. Among them is a little Indian girl, who, being an unfavored child, is very roughly treated by her mother. The poor tot has never known a kind word or attention. Approaching the cabin of Stevens, the little Indian beholds Joe’s child playing with a very pretty doll. The doll fascinates the Indian girl and Mrs. Stevens persuades her daughter to give it to her. This act of kindness, the first the poor little child has ever experienced, so overwhelms her with gratitude that she is at a loss to know how to express it. However, her little heart pulsates with a new energy, and she leaves her new found friends all aglow with thanks. Meanwhile, the Indians have been making a round of the stores and one of them is cruelly assassinated by a drunken rowdy. The Indians, vowing vengeance, return to the reservation with the lifeless brave. A council of war is held, during which the little one appears with the doll in her arms. One of the Indians seizes this effigy of a white baby and hurls it over the bank, and when the girl climbs down and regains it she finds it hopelessly broken. Heart-crushed, the little one buries it in true Indian fashion, and as she is prostrate before the tiny pyre she hears the noise of the war dance. Hastening to the scene she realizes the grave danger of her first and only friends, and runs off to warn them. She isn’t any too soon for the infuriated Indians are starting out. Joe dashes through the village arousing the inhabitants, and although the redskins have devastated and burned outlaying property, they meet with powerful resistence at the village proper and are driven off. Everyone is loud in their praise for the little Indian child and

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are anxious to know her whereabouts. Alas, they will never know, for the little one, wounded during the conflict, has just strength enough to reach the little grave where she falls, making it a double one, and her pure soul parts with the little body sacrificed upon the altar of gratitude. Biograph Bulletin, [?], October 17, 1910

A Native American child, maltreated by her mother and other tribespeople, accompanies her family to a nearby town to buy supplies. There, local white settlers – a couple and their young daughter – befriend the child and give her a doll, her first and only toy. Meanwhile, another tribesman is wantonly killed by a settler. Enraged, the Indians plan revenge and organise a war-party to attack the town. The Indians also take from the child the doll she was given and smash it. Her doll broken, the child mourns and buries it with traditional tribal rites. Alarmed that her new friends will be harmed when the town is attacked, the child rushes ahead of the war-party to give warning of the imminent attack. In the raid the child is struck by a bullet and, dying, makes her painful way to the site where her doll is interred. Alone, she dies.

Historians of American culture have long and effectively argued that the identity of the Native American and Native American’s encounters with European invaders constitute a palimpsest upon which our current preoccupations and understandings and world-views are constantly reinscribed. Griffith’s The Broken Doll is no exception. Here the Native Americans are “Indians” and “redskins”, “braves” and “squaws”: Caucasian actors from the Biograph stock company, their complexions darkened with greasepaint and black-braided wool wigs, their “Indian” costuming a mixture of tribal and masquerade styles, their mourning and burial rites and battle-preparations mixtures of imagined gestures, choreographed steps, and half-baked anthropological scraps. As Griffith, who has used the Native American in previous films, again returns to the subject – and will carry on with encounter-narratives in such pieces as The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913) – there are questions to be asked. We must query what, in 1910, were Griffith’s and his audiences’ understandings and expectations of “Indians”, and how are we to read The Broken Doll in the light of such knowledge? Is it a sentimental fable, or has it also a social and political dimension? On the face of it, The Broken Doll, further identified by the subtitle “A Tragedy of the Indian Reservation”, is the sorry tale of a child caught in the middle of others’ intractable prejudices and broken by such prejudices. Gladys Egan’s Indian child is as much the broken doll – maltreated by her own people, killed accidentally by the settlers who first show her kindness and whom she befriends – as the child’s toy tenderly passed from the white settlers’ child to the abused Indian girl. It is a sign of Glady Egan’s development as a performer that this young actress is entrusted with the task of stating this point and can play the brow-beaten, neglected child without cloying excess, making her role sympathetic and believable. But The Broken Doll is more than the above. In the first years of the 20th century, European and American audiences knew the Native American from a variety of dramatic, literary, and semi-literary sources, few of them faithfully representing or explicating the interests of these people. Perhaps the largest and most respectable of these sources were the various “Wild West” exhibitions dramatising aspects of life on America’s Western frontier and, in particular, enacting encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. Most famous of these exhibitions is William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s company, significantly titled The Drama 192

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of Civilization, which toured America and the world from 1883 until 1917. Cody’s show, emulated by other travelling exhibitions, re-enacted – with much exaggeration – Indian raids and rescues from Indian attack. It displayed Indian and white horsemanship and featured Native American tribesmen and women, now engaged as performers, re-enacting tribal events, rites and aspects of daily life. If urban visitors to these shows actually met Native Americans, it was to purchase from them photographs and small articles – souvenirs. Thus, most of these encounters were commercial, not cultural nor intellectual, transactions. At the height of Cody’s power, when he brought his show to Chicago to coincide with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner articulated a concept of the American frontier as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization”, arguing that it had been America’s manifest obligation to push westward to the Pacific, pacifying and displacing “the redmen”, and creating in their stead a new European-style civilization. Concurrently, the U.S. government announced that the Western frontier had closed. There was nowhere to go. The closing of the Western frontier brought a new dimension to understanding and dealing with the Indian. (Clearly it is Caucasians who are to “understand” and “deal”. No one was asking Native Americans.) Gathered on officially designated tribal lands and delimited “reservations”, Native Americans became the subject of debate centering on the question, “what to do with the Indian?” One side of the debate favoured maintaining physical separation between white and redman, keeping the Indians to their allocated reservations. Griffith’s Indians, it is observable, get into difficulties when for various reasons they leave their reservations. The other side in this debate argued for some form of assimilation of the Indian into white culture. Griffith’s Indians also have problems when they attempt to assimilate. Theatre and film historians may recognise this debate brought before the public in two ideologically-opposed plays which were soon translated into films: William C. deMille’s Strongheart (1904) and Edwin Milton Royle’s The Squaw Man (1905), the former drama insisting that the Native American is the genuine American and that integration is a realisable possibility, the latter play demonstrating how interbreeding and assimilation can bring only tragedy to members of two incompatible cultures. Thus, it is possible to recognise The Broken Doll as intervention in the separation-assimilation controversy and to read in Belle Taylor’s scenario and Griffith’s direction a safe-but-moving middle view, which effectively asks, “on this frontier: who is the savage, and who is civilised?” The Indian may be accused of bad-parenting, and the white settlers may be good and loving parents, but both sides are disputatious and murderous. The noble savage is neither noble nor altogether savage, but neither is the whiteman an exemplary advertisement for new-style civilisation. As in Cody’s Wild West Show, Griffith creates enactments of ethnicity: forms of mourning and burial and war-making which disguise the fact that the encounter between these Indians and white settlers was originally about trading. These bogus-ethnic moments emphasize otherness, just as the fair-haired doll in the arms of the Indian child underlines difference, and hide the commercial nexus, which in most everyday circumstances is the chief link between adjoining cultures. There is a further point to consider. The Western frontier is a mythic space, another palimpsest where we write our changing preoccupations, and also an Arcadia where pastoral events happen. Griffith, much as Cody before him, was experiencing and explicating not only a closed frontier but also an older way of rural life which was surrendering to life in cities. The Indian is another emblem of a disappearing Arcadia, and perhaps we might link the Indian with Griffith’s farmers, fisherfolk, hand-craft artisans, small-town people who are increasingly “other” from the growing urban audiences enjoying films. Griffith’s use of the 193

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Coytesville and Cuddebackville landscapes evokes the luminous Western paintings of Albert Bierstadt or the canvases of the “Hudson River School” artists. It is also cheap to film. The weather is fine, and no studio-made interior sequences are required to piece-out the narrative. Further, as in other Arcadian and pastoral works, there is a presence that cannot be forgotten and which Griffith rarely fails to acknowledge. This is Death. Death takes the kindly and the vulnerable. Tom Gunning, writing about Griffith’s The Country Doctor (1909) [see DWG Project, #158], has made us aware that Death hides in the lilacs and wisteria which surround the family home of the eponymous doctor. Here, in The Broken Doll, the child’s very openness, goodness, and concern for her new friends endanger her. The open prairie between the settlers’ village and the Indian camp and beautiful mountain landscape where the child expires is also the home of Death. David Mayer

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293 BIOGRAPH

THE BANKER’S DAUGHTERS Filming date: 8/9 September 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 20 October 1910 Release length: approx. 989 feet Copyright date: 22 October 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Earl Hodge Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Verner Clarges (C.W. Bourne); Stephanie Longfellow (Alice Bourne); Dorothy West (Martha Bourne); ? (Youngest daughter); Anthony O’Sullivan, Henry B. Walthall, Edward Dillon (Criminals); Alfred Paget, ? (Butlers); Clara T. Bracey (Maid); George O. Nicholls (Police sergeant); Frank Evans, John T. Dillon, Dell Henderson, Guy Hedlund (Policemen); ? (Messenger) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm acetate positive HOW A DEFENSELESS GIRL’S NERVE SAVED THE DAY The crook is ever possessed of an element of subtlety and inventive ingenuity, which, if exercised in worthy efforts would be highly commendable. Fate, however, always ethical, is unceasingly conspiring against a successful consummation of his sinister efforts. The apparent wealth in the suburban home of Mr. C. W. Bourne, the banker, has excited the cupidity of three members of the under-world. They therefore concoct a scheme to gain an entrance. First of all, they would learn the layout of the house. This they do by disguising one of their number as a messenger and delivering a fake package at the house. He reports to his comrades, and entering a large trunk, the other two dress as expressmen to deliver it with human contents. But there is another thing to be effected: that is to get the banker, who is the widowered [sic] father of the two daughters, out of the way. This they do by sending the following telegram: “Come to New York at once. Big shortage. Cashier has committed suicide. Coulter.” At the time of the arrival of this telegram, the banker is presenting his youngest daughter, who has been ill, with a beautiful diamond necklace. This little surprise he effects to lift the girl’s spirits. Of course, he is loath to leave, particularly as the men servants are off for the evening. Still, the message is urgent and seems plausible so he goes. Shortly after his departure, the trunk is delivered, and though there is some question, his oldest daughter receives it into the reception room, thinking it another of her father’s surprises, she not knowing what had called him away so suddenly. The invalid sister is resting in the room next the reception room, while the sister is in the reception room admiring her sister’s present before a mirror. Suddenly she sees the reflection of a hand protruding from the trunk, which is now slightly open. The man inside hears her move and the hand is drawn back. She pretends not to notice this occurrence, while hurriedly writing a note to Martha, the maid, dispatching her little niece, who happens to be in the room at this moment. This note reads: “There is a robber in the room. Telephone for police and keep quiet.” As the child passes through the adjoining room, the invalid sister insists upon seeing the note and after a parley

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gets it. Rushing to the telephone, she calls the police headquarters. The desk man is dozing, and it is with difficulty she makes him answer and understand. When he does, he acts quickly, sending four officers on a mad rush to the Bourne mansion. Meanwhile, a thrilling scene is being enacted in the reception room. The man having gotten out of the trunk, renders the girl helpless, admits his accomplices and the three are ransacking the place then the police enter and capture them. At this moment the father returns, having found the message a trick, so the little family is thankful that nothing more serious has happened than the shaking up of their nerves. Biograph Bulletin, [?], October 20, 1910

A criminal gang conspires to rob the home of a wealthy banker and his two daughters. To do so, they first lure the banker from his home, then have a trunk – a confederate hidden inside – delivered to the home where it is taken into the daughters’ dressing-room. One daughter, at her mirror, sees the trunk begin to open and, using her small cousin as a messenger, warns her sister of their danger. The younger daughter telephones the police and only after some difficulty persuades the police to come to their rescue. The police arrive after the robbers have broken into the house but succeed in overpowering and capturing them.

With The Banker’s Daughters Griffith returns to a subject he has developed before: women, isolated in a remote dwelling and under seige by criminals; these frightened and apparently helpless women are obliged by circumstance to take a hand in their own rescue, keeping the criminals at bay until their male protectors and the law can arrive. We have seen this action before in The Lonely Villa (1909), and we shall see variants of it at least twice again in The Lonedale Operator (1911) and A Girl and Her Trust (1912). Both Scott Simmon and Tom Gunning have recognised the centrality of this action to Griffith’s oeuvre, and the reader is strongly urged to consult Simmon’s chapter “The Female of the Species/Origins of the Woman’s Film at Biograph” in his The Films of D.W. Griffith and Gunning’s lucid analysis on The Lonely Villa (DWG Project, #150). Gunning’s essay is particularly useful in describing the narrative system in The Lonely Villa that intercuts three parallel actions: aggressive robbers, beseiged women, slow-to-arrive rescuers. In The Banker’s Daughters, Griffith initially interweaves burglars and prey, but cuts short these parallel tracks, resorting instead to a single narrative device, which carries with it numerous hostile and sexually-charged precedents (e.g., the Trojan horse, Iachimo in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, the tales of Boccaccio, Painter, Scheherezade) and functions as a direct means for the dangerous voyeur-thief-intruder to penetrate to the private quarters of the vulnerable daughters. The thief-in-the-boudoir is a sexually-disturbing image, but equally it is a device that allows audience attention to focus on the women’s nerve and resourcefulness in outwitting the stronger, purposeful, but intellectually slower, males. Although Scott Simmon has acutely queried Griffith’s concern with the female character, his analysis of such preoccupation is largely – both in terms of how female characters behave and how such characters illuminate Griffith’s inner life – expressed in psychoanalytical terms. Grateful for Simmon’s insights, we might also question Griffith’s females historically in the context of filmic responses to a growing American women’s rights movement and usefully note the frequent contradictions and the splintered images of traditional and “new” women that are present in his films. How much of this movement is Griffith acknowledging? Newsreel footage of female suffragists’ processions and comedies ridiculing emancipated women (e.g., Biograph’s A Pipe Dream [1905], photographed by G.W. 196

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Bitzer, or Lubin’s The Newest Woman [1909]) were being shown in American cinemas. Griffith, meanwhile, was apparently silent. By considering the composition of the Bourne household – a powerful father and two pampered, expensively clothed, idle daughters, the younger one languishing with an unspecified debilitating illness and bribed with a costly gift which she cannot wear socially (as she is too unwell to leave her home) and which reflects the status and wealth, but not the sympathetic understanding, of the family patriarch – we may note that little is initially expected of these daughters. When they are obliged to act, they are tremulously brave, intelligent, resourceful, and able to act in concert to forestall the invading thieves, but Griffith allows us no indication that their assertive action has in any way changed their lives. They are still defined as the banker’s daughters. Females act, but females gain little in status and nothing whatsoever in self or patriarchially-acknowledged independence. Here are contradictions in characterising and depicting female behaviour which never finally take sides or come to rest. Griffith’s own ambivalence remains a barrier to greater clarity, and it must be said that the action of The Banker’s Daughters suffers as a consequence. If Griffith remains non-commital on one American social movement, he may be more aware of and concerned enough to exploit – at least subliminally – another American phenomenon: suburbanisation. Middle-class American families were leaving metropolitan cities for new suburbs surrounding them. By the mid-1890s Scientific American was publishing plans and elevations of comfortable homes which could be built away from city-centers. By the early 1900s, plans of similar, although smaller and cheaper, kit-built suburban houses were being advertised in the more demotic publication, The Sears Roebuck Catalogue. Suburban living was increasingly accessible to the masses. Breadwinners – bankers such as C.W. Bourne – worked away from home, leaving their homes in the morning, commuting to and from the city, returning at evening. Much of their journeying, especially in winter months, was in darkness or near-darkness. Who was protecting the homes they abandoned each day and saw in full light only on Sundays? That fear of predators helping themselves to the occupants and property of the unguarded nest may lie behind The Lonely Villa (1909), The Banker’s Daughters, The Lonedale Operator (1911), and A Girl and Her Trust (1912). As much as these films enact female resourcefulness, they also dramatise male helplessness and incompetence and the unreliability of modern transport. Automobiles, which should bring rescuers swiftly, break down; gypsy wagons pulled by spavined horses are poor substitutes; trains fail; the police are stupid, slow to apprehend dangers, and – although closer to hand than the rescuing father, husband, or lover – slower still to act. The suburbs may be quiet, their houses surrounded by flowers and shrubbery, but the houses are separated from each other by broad lawns and fences which, if they enhance personal privacy, are also sufficiently remote from each other to conceal crime and make rescue by neighbors less likely. Griffith plays on this duality. Words in the titles of some of these films – Lonely and Lonedale – remind us what he’s about. The Banker’s Daughters is the final film of the 1910 summer season. Exteriors were filmed in Cuddebackville in early September, the company then returning to New York to finish this film in their Manhattan studio. David Mayer

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294 BIOGRAPH

THE MESSAGE OF THE VIOLIN Filming date: 13/14 September 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 24 October 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 26 October 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Charles H. West (Carl); Clara T. Bracey (His mother); Geroge O. Nicholls (His father); Stephanie Longfellow (The woman); Grace Henderson (Her mother); Verner Clarges (Her father); Dell Henderson (The baron); Lily Cahill (The other woman); Claire McDowell, ? (Her servants); Francis J. Grandon (Doctor); William J. Butler (Music teacher); Alfred Paget (Butler); Charles Craig, Jeannie MacPherson, Edwin August (At reception); Edward Dillon (Accompanist); Henry Lehrman (Music student); W.C. Robinson, Kate Bruce (In hallway); W.C. Robinson, ? (Servants), ? (Dancer) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined, possibly 35mm negative), Paul Killiam Collection; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (incomplete) TRUE LOVE IS ALWAYS TRIUMPHANT The ends of Cupid’s plans are sometimes frustrated, but give him a secure hold on two affined hearts, there is no power strong enough to thwart him in his purpose. Separations, quarrels, and the like, may occur, but his ordaining is invincible. In an East Side neighborhood there lived two families, and while they were neighbors there did not exist any extent of communication between the members except by the two children, a son of the one and a daughter of the other. They have become sweethearts from early childhood. The boy has grown up a very clever violinist, but his impoverished condition forbids his advancing very high in his art, his father being a confirmed drunkard, draining him of the meager earnings he secures playing at cheap entertainments and balls. The girl, however, is more fortunate as her parents are highly moral and industrious. Ever hopeful, they become engaged. Sometime before the opening of the story, the girl’s father comes into possession of an apparently worthless farm, and on the very day of the young people’s bethrothal [sic], the father receives a telegram to the effect that oil has been struck on this land, making him immensely wealthy. This good fortune pleases the girl, for she thinks it will make the chance of her marriage with the young man more assured. The girl’s father, however, knows something about the boy’s family and mildly disapproves the match. Still, he is reasonable and visits the boy’s home to see for himself. The sight that greets him widens the breach, for he finds the boy’s father an odious parasite, disgustingly intoxicated from drink procured with the boy’s earnings. The girl’s father appreciates the fact that the boy is not to blame, and writes that under existing circumstances marriage with his daughter is out of the question, but will give him a chance to improve his condition. The girl and her parents move into new quarters and she is sent to

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college to fit herself for the change of station. Meanwhile, the boy’s father has died and the boy by a stroke of good fortune meets a professor of music, who realizing the young man is possessed of undeveloped talent, offers to assist him, securing for him engagements to play at many swell functions. During all this time the young lovers have lost track of each other, and she, not having heard from him, considers the proposal of a Baron, whose attentions rather flatter her than actuate a feeling of love. This Baron’s attitude towards the girl is simply induced by her father’s wealth as is clearly shown in his treatment of a woman to whom he has been paying court. A reception is given at which the bethrothal [sic] is to be announced, and for this reception the young man is engaged as one of the attractions. During the program he plays one of the old melodies he used to play for the girl. It is needless to say that the bethrothal [sic] of the girl and the Baron was not announced. Biograph Bulletin, [?], October 24, 1910

A young couple plans to get married. The girl’s father disapproves because the boy’s father is a drunkard. The girl moves away after her father becomes rich and the lovers lose touch. After his father dies, the boy pursues violin lessons. The girl is pursued by a Baron and they plan to marry. At the party to announce her engagement to the Baron she hears the boy playing the violin and leaves with him.

The Message of the Violin begins in an East Side tenement building, a locale used frequently by Griffith (it is clearly the exact same set used in Simple Charity, filmed nine days later). This focus on what the Moving Picture World’s review called “typical young people of the East Side” (November 5, 1910, p. 1058), was an important element of Griffith’s films, linked insistently to a focus on the injustice of poverty and wealth disparity and related to Griffith’s interest in a literary and photographic naturalism. Here, the love of the young couple is threatened by the intervention of the upperclass Baron, who pursues the woman because of the sudden wealth of her family (oil has been found on a farm her father owns). The story is then filtered through a typical melodramatic structure, with the upper-class villain pursuing the lower-class girl for nefarious purposes. The immorality of the Baron is further determined here by his dubious relationship with “the other woman”. In a curious sequence in the film, the Baron visits this woman after a title reading “THE OTHER WOMAN READS OF THE BARON’S APPROACHING MARRIAGE”. The woman is seen in her apartment reading the newspaper, for some reason waited on by two Oriental servants dressed in kimonos. The servants bow to the Baron as he enters and he proceeds to talk with and embrace the other woman. This space is contrasted with two others: the next shot shows the girl with her mother and the following shot the boy with his mother, before we return to the Baron and the other woman, who kiss as he leaves. Here, then, upper-class immorality is coded through a discourse of Orientalism – immorality is associated with class and race – and contrasted with the domestic and familial spaces of the two young lovers. This process of circulating between morally coded spaces continues but contracts, ending with the denouement where the girl hears the violin of the boy in an adjacent room – the spaces connected via sound – and enters the room, with the lovers reuniting in the foreground as the Baron watches from the background. Here, the contrasting spaces are brought to the single shot. Aside from the immorality of the Baron and the other woman, the future of the two young lovers had also been threatened initially by the behaviour of the boy’s father. He is a drunkard and is described in a title (and the Bulletin) as “AN ODIOUS PARASITE”. The film 199

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opens with the father, scruffily dressed and with an unkempt beard, threatening the boy with his violin; the mise en scène of the apartment mirrors this disorder, notably with a slanted blind on the window at the back of the apartment. In a later shot, the drunken father threatens his wife with violence also and she scurries off to refill a bucket with alcohol. The girl’s father decides to visit the boy’s family to discuss the wedding; the two men cut very different figures, with the girl’s father well-dressed (and wearing a bow-tie). He is offered a drink by the drunkard and leaves, with a title explaining, “THE GIRL’S FATHER IS REASONABLE, BUT THE BOY’S FATHER, AN ODIOUS PARASITE, WIDENS THE BREACH”. He tells his daughter of his opposition to the wedding because of the drunkard, and writes a letter to the boy, which is inserted and reads: “I CANNOT BLAME YOU FOR YOUR PRESENT CONDITIONS, BUT UNDER EXISTING CIRCUMSTANCES ANY ALLIANCE IS IMPOSSIBLE. PROVE YOURSELF WORTHY AND I WILL CONSIDER THE MATTER”.

The theme of the dangerous and destructive effects of drinking is a familiar one in Griffith’s films, ranging from the well-known A Drunkard’s Reformation (1909), to What Drink Did (1909), A Change of Heart (1909), Effecting a Cure (1910) and others. These films though proceed to show the reformation of the drunk man, who realises the error of his ways and reforms. This reformation of masculinity is a central theme of Griffith’s films and can be sited in the context both of debates about the reformation of cinema and its ability to reform spectators (most noticeable in A Drunkard’s Reformation, a film that shows the drunk man mending his ways after watching a temperance play and which was seen at the very first sitting of the New York Board of Censorship) and in the context of broader reform debates about temperance that proliferated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In The Message of the Violin, though, the father does not reform but instead dies. This lack of reformation clearly displeased the reviewer for Variety, who noted, “Part of this picture does not please anybody and spoils the picture. It shows a drunken old man, who berates his good wife and doting son, gulping down beer in his squalid surroundings and later pictured in a dying struggle with delirium tremens” (October 29, 1910). As the father dies, a music teacher enters the apartment after hearing the boy play the violin (again, spaces are connected by sound). The title reads, “THE BOY GIVEN AN OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE HIS TALENTS”. The death of the father enables the boy to become a more accomplished violinist and paves the way for the lovers to be reunited. It is worth noting that the death of the father also enables the reformation of domestic space and this is explicitly carried through the mise en scène – the slanted blind on the back window is straightened in subsequent scenes, reflecting the re-organisation of domestic space with the demise of the drunkard. The Message of the Violin was praised by The Moving Picture World for its realism. “It depicts a series of events”, the journal observed, “such as might happen in the life of almost any couple in America”. The sudden elevation of the girl’s family to great wealth “has happened over and over again” apparently, for the journal seemed to represent the realisation of the American dream, pointing to what the reviewer described as “the purely American quality of the drama” (November 5, 1910, p. 1058). Lee Grieveson

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295 BIOGRAPH

TWO LITTLE WAIFS Filming date: 16/21 September 1910 Location: Greenwich, Connecticut/New York Studio Release date: 31 October 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 3 November 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Mrs. James H. Ryan [“Baby Waifs”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Grace Henderson (Mrs. Weston); Verner Clarges (Mr. Weston); Edith Halderman, ?, (Two waifs); Kate Bruce (Mother Ignatius); William J. Butler (Doctor); Alfred Paget, ? (Butlers); Jeannie MacPherson, Lucille Lee Stewart? (Maids); Charles Craig (Man at orphanage); Clara T. Bracey, Claire McDowell, Dorothy Davenport (Nuns); Jack Pickford (Boy on road); Edward Dillon (Workman) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A MODERN FAIRY TALE There is nothing wordly [sic] that makes a stronger appeal to the human heart than the grief of the little child. Children are so seldom made to feel the weight of woe, that when they do suffer real sorrows we are sure to weep with them. One of the most important of God’s lessons is taught by the child – sincerity, and the child’s tears will wash from our soul the stain of indifference, selfishness and artifice. The child is the real sunshine of life, and when Mrs. Weston lost her only little one, she, though a widowed mother, experienced her greatest grief. Her future seemed destined to be clothed in gloom. Her heart almost breaks as she views the empty crib in which her departed little girl formerly slumbered. About this time there are brought to a neighboring Orphan Asylum two little girls, whose mother has died and left them dependent. The poor little tots cry incessantly for their mamma, but the good sisters tell them that their mamma has gone to Heaven and is now at God’s house. They then cry that they want to go to mamma, indicating that they will surely go. The next day during recreation hour on the Asylum grounds, they take advantage of the excitement attending a quarrel between two of the children, and slip out through the gate. Once outside, they start off to find mamma in Heaven, asking passersby, “Which way is Heaven.” After a long and tiresome journey, they come to the mansion of Mrs. Weston, which is a veritable paradise. Its grandure [sic] convinces them that they have at last reached the goal. Through the broad flower-lined avenues the little ones wander until they come upon Mrs. Weston seated on one of the verandas. Approaching her they ask: “Please, mam, is this Heaven, and is our mamma here?” Mrs. Weston, of course, does not understand their query at first, but it suddenly dawns upon her when she sees them clasp each other weeping. Also, their asylum garb indicates where they came from, and what they are – waifs. It being late in the afternoon, she decides to keep them overnight at her home, placing them in the empty crib. The sight of these two little darlings sleeping in the little crib dispels the gloom that has enveloped her and she makes up her mind never to part with them, hence she writes to the Asylum the following letter: Dear Mother Ignatius: The two little waifs that came to me I have decided to adopt legally, and

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take this opportunity to bestow a regular endowment in the support of your great charity as a memorial to my lost child. Sincerely yours, Helen E. Weston. Biograph Bulletin, [?], October 31, 1910

Mrs. Weston’s child dies and she mourns her loss. Meanwhile, two young girls are placed in an orphanage after their mother dies. They escape to search for her in Heaven and arrive at Mrs. Weston’s house. She decides to adopt them.

This touching film opens with the death of Mrs. Weston’s child, focusing on what the opening title describes as a “MOTHER’S GREATEST GRIEF”. Weston holds the child in the foreground as servants and doctors wait in the background; she eventually collapses. Grace Henderson’s performance is remarkably restrained, part of what Roberta Pearson terms “the verisimilar code” of acting initiated by Griffith at Biograph. The sombre mood of the opening continues. Later, Weston’s grief for the loss of her child is represented in a remarkably poignant shot – the empty crib fills the foreground as Weston’s outstretched hands emerge from the left, slowly moving into the frame. Finally, Weston stands forlornly in the centre of the frame. (The shot may be seen as a forerunner of the celebrated shot of Ben Cameron returning to his home after the war in The Birth of a Nation [1915], where the arms of his sister and mother reach out of the doorway to pull Cameron into the home, their bodies remaining hidden). Here, the slowness of Weston’s movement, the emptiness of the frame connoting the absence in Weston’s life, and Henderson’s restrained performance convey the extremes of grief powerfully. Such a focus on the suffering of mothers is certainly visible more widely in Griffith’s films. The Fugitive, filmed some eight days after Two Little Waifs, is another example, though perhaps the clearest example is the recurring linking image in Intolerance (1916) of the impassive mother rocking a cradle, subjected to the tragedies of history. The initial focus on the grief of the mother shifts to a focus on the suffering of the eponymous two little waifs. After Weston has collapsed holding her child, the location shifts to a religious orphanage. The two little girls are brought in and told that “THEIR MAMMA HAS GONE TO HEAVEN”. They shield their eyes and when put to bed cry, “WE WANT TO GO TO MAMMA”. The following day they escape from the orphanage to search for their mother in heaven and Griffith makes full use of the location shooting in Greenwich, Connecticut, continuing the aesthetic structure initiated by the shot of the empty crib. Three shots are worth noting here. After asking a boy by the side of the road, “WHICH WAY IS HEAVEN?”, the girls walk on a track by a field, their heads bowed and with huge shadows following them. The shot resembles a painting; the dusky lighting and shadows suggest a subdued mood and connected with the performance of the two girls connotes their growing sadness. After arriving outside Weston’s grand house and mistaking it for heaven, they stand at the entrance to the grounds in the foreground of the shot, framed from the waist up and by the gates of the house. They begin to move forward and proceed down the tree-lined avenue until they are in long shot, dwarfed now by the size of the imposing house. After cutting to Weston with the empty crib, we return to the girls outside the house. The shot is framed at the height of the girls’ shoulders, and we see them in the right foreground in front of the large house. The distance of the initial shot and the height of the framing in this shot emphasises the vulnerability of the two little waifs; the off-centre framing and complex camera set-ups contribute to the emotional effect of these scenes. The penultimate shot returns to the scene of the first shot, though now the crib is filled 202

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with the two children. Weston hugs both of them and the children hold each other as they fall off to sleep. The narrative has inexorably moved towards filling the empty crib and resolving the grief of the mother and the suffering of the children. Mrs. Weston writes a letter to the orphanage to begin the process of legally adopting the children and sets up an endowment to memorialise her lost child. The Variety review of the film noted that “the photography is fine” and indeed that “real sentiment is touchingly and feelingly brought out” (Variety, November 12, 1910). The film is genuinely touching and shows Griffith experimenting with lighting and the framing of the image to heighten emotion. Lee Grieveson

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296 BIOGRAPH

WAITER NO. 5 Filming date: 19/22 September 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 3 November 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 10 November 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Bernardine R. Leist Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: George O. Nicholls (Chief of police); Claire McDowell (His wife); Jack Pickford (Their son, as a boy); Charles H. West (Their son, as an adult); Mary Pickford (His fiancée); Grace Henderson (Her mother); Kate Bruce, J. Jiquel Lanoe (Wife’s friends); Gladys Egan, Dorothy West, Alfred Paget, Clara T. Bracey (The poor); Guy Hedlund (At meeting); William J. Butler (Chief’s aide); Alfred Paget, W.C. Robinson (Butlers); Alfred Paget, ?, (Policemen); Edward Dillon (A friend); Jeannie MacPherson, ? (Maids); Dell Henderson, William J. Butler, Alfred Paget, Guy Hedlund, Edwin August, Dorothy Davenport, J. Jiquel Lanoe (In restaurant) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive, incomplete (AFI / National Film and Sound Archive / ScreenSound Australia Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive A STORY OF RUSSIAN DESPOTISM “For ye have the poor always with you.” Mat. 26, ii. Because of this we are reminded of the Corporal Works of Mercy – feed the hungry, clothe the naked, harbor the harborless – which acts always bring reward. Still there may be occasions when that reward comes tardily, but there is logical reason for the delay, for in the end our reward is more complete. The wife of the Russian Chief of Police being a woman possessed of a noble heart is much touched by the tales carried to her of tyrannical oppression bestowed upon the poor. After some persuasion on the part of a Russian artist socialist, she makes a round among the poor of the city and the sight that greets her almost freezes the blood in her veins. She sees them huddled like cattle, more dead than alive, slowly but surely dying for want of nourishment. So moved is she with the truth, that she becomes an ardent sympathizer and consents to become a member of the secret society to oppose the government in its present treatment of the poor. The meetings of this society are held at the artist’s studio, a fact the police have long suspected. On the night of the admission of the wife as a member, a raid is planned by the police, and you can imagine the Chief’s amazement as he enters to find his wife just taking the oath of allegiance. What a shock. At first he is at a loss to know what best to do. Finally dismissing his men with their captives, he, alone with her, asks what it means. She tells him in a word, and he, realizing her fate will be death, determines to join her in an effort to fly from Russia. Disguising themselves as peasants, they succeed in evading the interception and arrive safely in America. In this country he finds it impossible to obtain congenial employment, and is forced to accept a position as waiter in a swell restaurant, which he keeps secret from all but

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his wife. Being a gentleman born, he is successful, and when his American born son is old enough, he is able to send him to college. Later when the boy returns home from college, he is apprised of the engagement between the son and the sister of his college friend. The son is still in ignorance of the nature of his father’s employment, and is warned not to marry for the present at least, the father intending to resign the waiter position as soon as possible. The young folks refuse to wait, and elope. After their marriage they receive the blessings of the girl’s parents but the boy’s parents are not to be located, so the party goes out to have a little wedding dinner, selecting, by singular coincidence the restaurant at which the father is employed. Amazement and embarrassment seize the entire party and the father then tells his son why he asked him not to marry. The excitement attending this unexpected meeting arouses the notice of other occupants of the dining room, and one of their number approaches, recognizing the waiter. This man proves to be the Russian’s old friend, who after a tireless search is now given the opportunity of bestowing upon his former Chief the Czar’s pardon, which restores his social standing. So culminated his troubles. Biograph Bulletin, [?], November 3, 1910

The wife of the Russian Chief of Police joins a revolutionary group. The group is raided by the police and she is discovered by her husband. He decides to leave the police and together they flee Russia for America. The man takes up a job as a waiter. His son, after returning from college, becomes engaged to the wealthy sister of his college friend. The waiter asks them to wait before getting married, but they elope and, after returning, go out to the restaurant where the man is, unbeknownst to them, a waiter. During the commotion caused by their meeting, the waiter is recognised by his old friend from the police who brings with him a pardon from the Czar.

The Moving Picture World’s review of Waiter No.5 noted that “it must be admitted that it is not up to the standard which has been set and generally followed by the Biograph people” (November 19, 1910, p. 1176). Likewise, Scott Simmon lists the film as an example of one of the weaker Griffith films from this period, chiefly for its reliance on coincidence (Simmon, p. 6). This certainly is central to the film. The night the wife of the Russian Chief of Police chooses to join the revolutionary group is the night it is raided by her husband; the restaurant the son and his wife visit after eloping is “by chance” or “by singular coincidence” the one where the father is a waiter (Variety, November 19, 1910; Biograph Bulletin); and, finally, it just so happens that the waiter’s former colleague in the Russian police was eating there also and has with him a pardon from the Czar. Much of this is compounded today by the absence of titles in the paper print copy of the film, which makes the jumps in time and space difficult to follow and indicates just how reliant this film was on explanatory intertitles. Nevertheless, there are certainly some interesting aspects to the film. Made just five years after the failed revolution in Russia, the film intervenes in an ongoing political crisis in depicting (albeit briefly) what the Bulletin describes as the “tyrannical oppression bestowed upon the poor” in Russia (the film is subtitled “A Story of Russian Despotism”). “The scenes among the poor”, The Moving Picture World noted, “are harrowing enough to arouse the most generous impulses and cause one to believe the unpleasant criticisms of the Czar” (November 19, 1910, p. 1176). In the scene, the well-dressed wife of the Chief of Police is led by the “Russian artist Socialist”; into a room overcrowded with shabbily-dressed poor; she is clearly horrified and when she hands out some money the people clamour around her 205

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for more. The story is thus underpinned by a representation of the socio-political reality of Russia but uses this as a backdrop from which to articulate a more familiar (and familial) story (the struggle of the waiter, the romance of the son with, in the words of Variety, a “society girl”, the reuniting of the family around the regained social status of the father). Such a welding of the vaguely political with the fictional, and with familiar narratives, was certainly central to Griffith in this period and more widely visible in what The Nickelodeon termed “uplift dramatic films” (The Nickelodeon, January 21, 1911, p. 69). Part of the problem with the film is that the two stories do not fit together well to the extent that the film feels like two half-worked-through ideas. The figure of the “Russian artist socialist”, who draws the wife of the Chief of Police into the cause of (presumably) socialism, is though intriguing. No doubt an intertitle proclaimed his occupation as artist and this is briefly visible also in the scene at his house prior to the police raid, where an easel is visible in the corner of the room. The artist, then, draws attention to the plight of the poor; art has a social and political function. Is Griffith linking art to revolution? How closely did this relate to Griffith’s understanding of the social and political function of his own work? The migration to America is also worth commenting on in this context. After the Chief of Police finds his wife at the revolutionary meeting, he talks with her then breaks his sword and changes from his uniform (love conquers political beliefs). The next shot shows them arriving in a bare and shabby room, now in America. The arrival is somewhat downbeat and the only job the man can find is that of a waiter. Nevertheless, slowly the condition of the family improves, graphically represented by the changing decor of the room – in subsequent shots, there is a plaque of some sort on the wall, then a picture, curtains, and finally another picture and flowers in a vase. The room begins to look more homely at the same time as the waiter has clearly been able to afford to send his son to college. This is perhaps not the clarion call of the benefits of American democracy visible elsewhere in the period, but nevertheless this “story of Russian despotism” does contrast the conditions in Russia with the freedom of America and participates thus in the delineation of American national identity. This might in turn be related back to the confusion underlying the film, a film which includes a positive representation of socialist revolutionary activity (linked to art) but continues with the story of the waiter’s (muted) American dream and, finally, concludes with him regaining his social standing! Lee Grieveson

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297 BIOGRAPH

SIMPLE CHARITY Filming date: 23/27 September 1910 Location: New York Studio/Fort Lee, New Jersey Release date: 10 November 1910 Release length: approx. 993 feet Copyright date: 14 November 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Frank E. Woods [“Blood Red Tape of Society”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin Cast: Mary Pickford (Miss Wilkins); W. Chrystie Miller, Kate Bruce (Poor couple); Edwin August (Doctor); Francis J. Grandon (In pawn shop); Grace Henderson, Clare McDowell, Verner Clarges (Charity workers); Dell Henderson (Boss in store); Alfred Paget (Behind counter); Edward Dillon, Lottie Pickford (In hallway); Lloyd B. Carleton (Bailiff); William J. Butler (Tradesman) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (AFI / National Film and Sound Archive / ScreenSound Australia Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate negative (printed in 1935 from a 1920 nitrate positive) SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OSTENTATIOUS AND THE SINCERE “And the Greatest of these is Charity”. Charity, that much abused word. How often do we find real charity? Only among those poor souls who can ill afford to dispense it. Most times charity is bestowed with great ostentation and a fanfare of trumpets – we say charity, but it is only so-called charity. Humility is the father of real charity, whereas, upon most occasions charity is bestowed that the bestower may be glorified. An illustration of this is portrayed in the Biograph subject. In an Eastside tenement there lived an old couple. The husband was a cigar maker, but becoming feeble from age, he is discharged. Back to his cheerless home he comes, where his faithful wife tries to buoy up his spirits. The old man realizes, however, that he has lived out his usefulness and appreciates the reality of a future of absolute want, short though it may be. The awful aspect quite undoes him, and he is taken seriously ill. It is indeed a house of sorrow. No money with which to buy food or medicine, the poor couple resort to pawnshops to raise a little money on their household effects, they both being too proud to ask aid from anyone, and there were those in the house who would have been glad to do it. There is a young settlement doctor who administers to the wants of the infirm, but he is kept in ignorance of this case, so the old man goes unattended. A pretty little slavey, who works about the house is the first one to know of the poor couple’s sad plight. She in her innocent way has fallen desperately in love with the young doctor, who though meeting her often as he comes and goes, is quite unaware of the interest he has excited. The sincere girl decks herself out in her best dress hoping to fascinate him, but sad to relate, he doesn’t notice it. While thus attired she hears the sorrowing of the poor woman, and is moved to a determination to help, but how. She has nothing to spare herself. An idea! And though it hurts her she takes to the pawnshop this one best dress and raises fifty cents on it which she forces the poor woman to take. This is real charity. At length, when her husband is sinking slowly, the poor woman rushes to the City Charity Society. Here we find the red tape of charity. They must make rigid

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investigation for fear they may give aid to the unworthy. Well, by the time they get through their investigation, the poor man is dead. At this moment the young doctor just hears of the case, and learns through finding the pawn-ticket the slavey drops, what a jewel in the rough she is, as contrasted with the other women of the Charity Society. Consequently, the girl has made a stronger though mute appeal to him than did her efforts when togged out in her finery. Biograph Bulletin, [?], November 10, 1910

An old man loses his job and returns home, sinking steadily into illness. His wife pawns household goods to get by. Their plight is noticed by a girl who cleans the tenement and she too pawns a dress. Finally the wife goes to a Charity organisation but their investigations take too long and the man dies. The young cleaner is now noticed by the tenement doctor she had tried to attract earlier, who sees the pawn shop ticket she has dropped.

Simple Charity provides a further glimpse into the world of the urban poor, following on from other Griffith films such as The Song of the Shirt (1908), A Child of the Ghetto (1910) and many others. The film opens with the dismissal of an old man from his job as a cigar maker. Returning to what a title describes as “A CHEERLESS HOME” in a tenement in New York’s Lower East Side, the old man sinks into illness and his wife is reduced to pawning their household goods to buy food. The film traces the decline of the old man, who dies moments before help arrives from a charity organisation. The story of the old couple is intertwined with the story of a younger couple, the romance between the cleaner of the tenement building, referred to in the Bulletin as a “pretty little slavey” and played by Mary Pickford, and the tenement doctor. Once again, the portrayal of the inequities of social and economic conditions is enmeshed with romance, with a story of girl meeting boy and with the constitution of the young couple. A sequence near the beginning of the film shows the subtle intertwining of the two stories. After leaving the apartment with goods to take to the pawn shop, the old woman stops briefly to talk with the young cleaner in the hallway outside her apartment. As she leaves, the settlement doctor arrives and kindly picks up the soap dropped by the cleaner. The following shot shows the old woman in the pawn shop, before we return to the communal space of the hallway, with the cleaner now scrubbing the floor. As the doctor re-enters, he drops his matches and she picks them up for him and lights his cigarette. He leaves, forgetting his matches, and she holds them close to her, indicating her feelings for the doctor. At this moment the old woman returns from the pawn shop, passing through the hallway before entering her apartment with food. With wonderful efficiency and clarity, Griffith brings together the characters and spaces of the film to delineate the stories of the two couples, the suffering of the old couple and the feelings of the young woman for the doctor. The parallel lines of the stories continue and culminate at the close of the film. The cleaner has learnt of the plight of the old couple and has pawned her best dress to help them out. But the old man continues to decline and eventually dies; the cleaner listens at the doorway and looks through the keyhole as the doctor arrives and the two enter the room and sadly see that the man has died. A title announces, “THE YOUNG DOCTOR FINDS A JEWEL IN THE ROUGH” and the next and final shot shows the cleaner and the doctor outside the old couple’s room. The young woman has accidentally dropped the pawn ticket for her dress (inserted, it reads “B.F. COHEN, LICENSED PAWN BROKER, THE BOWERY”). The doctor picks it up and realises the sacrifice she made for the old couple. He gives her money presumably to recompense her and kisses her; he leaves as the shot and film ends with the cleaner looking after him. The suf208

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fering of the old couple, then, takes a back seat here at the close, as the film concludes with the constitution of the young couple; the story of the suffering of the old couple intertwines with and is superseded by the story of the young couple, as the tale of unjust social and economic conditions is “sugar-coated” with romance. One is struck, watching the film today, by the familiarity of the space delineated – the tenement building, the communal space of the hallway where characters and stories interact, and the private space of the apartments. Such spaces are portrayed over and over again in films of this period (the “keyhole genre” emerging from around 1903–04 offers particularly clear examples; Griffith’s The Message of the Violin, filmed nine days earlier than Simple Charity, follows this structure also and uses exactly the same set). The communal space of the hallway and the private space of the apartments are connected here, though, as Griffith’s vision of the anonymity of urban life is tempered by the community spirit of the cleaner, who sacrifices her best dress for the old couple. This act of “real charity”, as the Bulletin has it, is contrasted with the actions of the Charity Society. A shot of the old couple together, with the man in bed and pointing to his mouth as if starving, is followed by the title, “AT LAST FORCED TO SEEK AID OF THE CHARITY SOCIETY”. The old woman enters the offices of the society, speaking to two well-dressed women, before returning home. The title “THE RED TAPE OF CHARITY. INVESTIGATE CAREFULLY THAT WE MAY NOT GIVE AID TO THE UNWORTHY” links back to the original (and more polemical) title of the story, “Blood Red Tape of Society”, by the ex-critic of The New York Dramatic Mirror, Frank Woods. The two charity workers begin their investigation, intercut with the growing desperation of the old woman, who periodically goes to the door of the apartment to see if they have arrived yet. The charity workers visit another apartment in the tenement building but are chased away by children, as Griffith cuts to the woman checking the door; they visit another man (the pawnshop owner, it seems) followed again by a shot of the woman checking the door of the apartment. They then visit the cigar shop where the man used to work and this time Griffith cuts to the man in the room, who dies. The procrastination of the charity workers leads to the death of the man, presumably from starvation; they arrive in the apartment with a basket of food as the wife kneels at the side of her husband and the cleaner and the doctor sadly watch. The cutting between the rich charity workers and the suffering poor heightens the emotion, aligning the spectator with the suffering of the old couple. The characteristic race-to-the-rescue does not materialise, replaced instead by the slow and ultimately pointless investigation by the Charity Society. Griffith’s dislike of some forms of charity is clear across the body of his work, stretching from the portrayal of the bureaucratic charity organisation in his script for Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker (directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Sr., in 1908, and probably Griffith’s first script), to The Reformers; or, The Lost Art of Minding One’s Business (1913), and to the meddling reformers in Intolerance (1916). Simple Charity seems to follow a similar structure to Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker. In that film, the daughter’s visit to the “Amalgamated Association of Charities” for the third time is interrupted by a cut-away shot of her mother ill in bed in their tenement flat, setting up a striking contrast. For Griffith, a class-based charity was not only inefficient but pernicious (this viewpoint did not take in all charity organisations – the religious charity seen in Two Little Waifs, for example, is treated respectfully). Such a representation of reformers as inefficient and heartless was certainly contentious at a time when the film industry was still assiduously courting reform groups to uplift the cultural status of cinema and pre-empt governmental intervention. Accordingly, the Moving Picture World’s review of Simple Charity castigates the film for this portrayal of charity workers. “The criticism of the charitable organisations [sic] is not in good taste”, the journal argued, “and, judged by what they actually accomplish, is not warranted” (November 26, 209

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1910, p. 1236). Likewise, in an overall negative review of the film Variety suggested that it had “several scenes which do not meet with favour” and that “Charity organizations throughout the land will frown on this picture as their style of work is shown up to ridicule” (November 19, 1910). Lee Grieveson

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298 BIOGRAPH

THE FUGITIVE Filming Date: 24/29 September 1910 Location: New York Studio/Fishkill, New York Release Date: 7 November 1910 Release Length: approx. 996 feet Copyright Date: 14 November 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: John McDonagh Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Kate Bruce (Confederate mother); Edward Dillon (John, her son); Clara T. Bracey (Union mother); Edwin August (John, her son); Dorothy West (Confederate son’s fiancée); Lucy Cotton (Union son’s fiancée); W. Chrystie Miller, Dell Henderson, Claire McDowell, Clara T. Bracey, Lily Cahill, Jeannie MacPherson (In farewell crowd); Alfred Paget, Charles H. West, Dell Henderson, Guy Hedlund (Union soldiers); Guy Hedlund, Charles H. West, W.C. Robinson, Francis J. Grandon, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Frank Evans (Confederate soldiers) NOTE: For the circumstances surrounding the submission of this story to Biograph, see O’Leary (ed.), Cinema Ireland: 1895–1976, p.10. Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc., 35mm negative (generation undetermined); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative SHOWING THE EXTREME OF A MOTHER’S TENDERNESS The strength of a mother’s love will never be fully appreciated. What anxiety does she not suffer for her own; what self-sacrifice does she not endure, yet, withal, she is reasonable and considerate to a marvelous extent. The Civil War has just begun and the young men of the Virginia mountains are experiencing that great sting of war – the good-bye to mothers and sweethearts. The scene of our story is Virginia in a locality where the feelings of the people are about evenly divided. John, the Confederate, is taking leave of his mother to join the little regiment of the neighborhood volunteers. Off the band of patriots go to headquarters. Not very far away we see John, the Union soldier, bidding farewell to his mother and sweetheart, on his departure for the front. The two forces happen to be close to each other, and when John, of the Union forces, with comrades goes foraging they are surprised by John, the Confederate, and put to flight. The Union boy becomes separated from his companions and is hotly pursued by the Confederate. Driven to the “last ditch”, the Federal turns and fires at the oncoming Confederate, who drops in his tracks. This enables the Union boy to get away, and rushing up to a farmhouse, which is indeed the home of the Confederate, dashes in and seeks protection of the mother of the boy he has slain. Neither of them, however, realized the enormity of this plea. The mother hides the fugitive behind the fireplace board, and as the soldiers later bring on the body of her dear boy, she realizes what the death of the fugitive would mean to his mother, so she is determined to save him, she, of course, not knowing that he was responsible for the death of her son. Later, however, when she learns the facts and the

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fugitive’s identity, she is at first inclined to give him up, but when calm reason takes possession of her, her mother instinct predominates and she thinks of another mother awaiting her son’s return, so she enables him to escape by the back way out of the house, the Confederate soldiers having departed, they reasoning that the mother would not shield the destroyer of her son’s life if he was anywhere about. After the war, when wounds are healed, two mothers are seen, one welcoming back her hero son as one of victory’s band, while the other decorates with flowers the coat of the gallant boy who fought and died for the lost cause. Biograph Bulletin, [?], November 7, 1910

Two sons from opposing sides leave to fight in the Civil War. After a confrontation, the Union soldier kills the Confederate soldier and then hides, shielded by the mother of the Confederate soldier who does not know her son has died and that the man she is helping killed him. She finds out when her dead son is brought home but still shields the Union soldier and helps him escape. At the close, the Union soldier returns to his mother and sweetheart, and the mother of the Confederate soldier places flowers on her dead son’s jacket.

The Fugitive was one of a number of Griffith’s Biograph films dealing with the Civil War. The film focuses principally on the effects of the war on the mother of a Confederate soldier, a structure that is more widely visible in Griffith’s Civil War films which, as Scott Simmon has observed, tend to focus on the suffering of women “as metaphor for the South’s experience of the war” (Simmon, p. 118). Such a structure weaves together and conflates national and family histories and would, of course, reach an apotheosis with The Birth of a Nation in 1915. The Fugitive thus opens with John, the Confederate soldier, saying goodbye to his mother (in a house, it is worth noting, with a portrait of George Washington hanging on the wall); they move to the veranda, where John also says goodbye to his “sweetheart”. After a shot of John being waved off by a larger party, bustling with action as flags and hats are waved and guns handed out, we return to the mother and the sweetheart on the veranda as the mother leaves to enter the house alone. There is a clear visual contrast between the excitement of John, the other soldiers and members of the community, and the sadness of the mother alone in the empty house. Alongside establishing a mood and an alignment with the concern and suffering of the mother, the opening also builds up the locale that will become important as the story progresses and as the action shifts to the space of the house. After the shot of the mother alone in her home a title announces, “JOHN, THE UNION SOLDIER, LEAVES FOR THE FRONT”, and Griffith shifts focus to the Union soldier saying goodbye to his mother and sweetheart. The five-shot sequence of the opening is contracted to one shot – outside a barn, John says goodbye and leaves from the back of the frame with a band of soldiers. His mother stays sitting throughout, on the side to the camera and next to the sweetheart and is clearly not individuated in the way the Confederate mother was. The parallel lines of action of the opening are brought together in classic Griffith fashion in the next sequence. Two separate shots show Union and Confederate forces rising up over a ridge and turning right; the chase is interrupted by shots of the Confederate and Union mothers in their respective homes before the battle begins. Union troops enter a space around a house, followed by a shot of the Confederate soldiers entering the space behind them. The following shot brings the soldiers together briefly, as the Union soldiers flee and the Confederate soldiers enter shooting. In the kerfuffle, John the Union soldier is separated from his comrades and is chased by John the Confederate. After a sequence of 212

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separate shots of both soldiers, they are brought together in a single shot: Union John is seen in the foreground on a path but leaves for the cover of some trees as Confederate John enters the foreground. The suspense and pathos is heightened as Griffith cuts back to the Confederate mother at home praying, before returning to the soldiers and showing the inevitable confrontation: they see each other about the same time but Confederate John is fatally shot and Union John rushes from the scene to hide, pursued now by the other Confederate soldiers. Griffith’s interruption of the fight sequence to show the mother praying is a form of parallel editing based on the thoughts of characters, creating what Tom Gunning terms a “psychological space” (Elsaesser, p. 343). For Joyce Jesionowski, this sequence in The Fugitive shows Griffith’s identification of “intercutting as an inherently cinematic activity, exclusive of action within the frame” (Jesionowski, p.137). Such an interweaving of narrative lines, Tom Gunning observes more generally, “seems to be Griffith’s basic narrative schema” (Elsaesser, p. 342). Again here, the parallel lines of action and parallel spaces are brought together in one shot, though somewhat unusually this is not the resolution of the film (as it is, for example, in The Message of the Violin or in other stories of a race-to-the-rescue). This sequence of conflict is also interesting for the way Griffith narrows the focus down, shifting from the general conflict to the specific battle between the two Johns; Griffith – and the war film as genre more generally – invokes the broader conflict principally in its effects on individuated characters caught up in the conflict (here, mainly for its effects on the Confederate mother). Following Confederate John’s death, the action shifts to the house seen at the beginning of the film. Union John arrives there seeking shelter and the Confederate mother at first asks him to leave, but after a shot of the Confederate soldiers arriving on the veranda she helps him hide in a cubby hole (the relation between the veranda and the house had been established at the opening of the film). The soldiers bring in the mother’s dead son and lay him down and again, as with Two Little Waifs, there is the tragic spectacle of a mother mourning her dead child – the mother speaks to her son and holds him, in a performance from Kate Bruce of restrained grief. (Bruce, it is worth noting, frequently played mothers in Griffith’s Biograph films, as Blanche Sweet would later recall: “She played a great many of the mothers, of course, always the sweeter, gentle characters” [Slide, p.46]). After a title reading “THE MOTHER LEARNS THE FUGITIVE’S IDENTITY”, she drags Union John from the cubby hole and shows him her son and then demands he leave, but again the Confederate soldiers are seen arriving on the veranda and the mother relents, hiding John once more. A title reading “SHE THINKS OF ANOTHER MOTHER AWAITING A SON’S RETURN” explains her actions and emotions and grants spectators an insight into her thought process not granted in relation to other characters, further aligning spectators with her suffering and sacrifice. The ending, after the mother has helped John escape, brings us to the end of the war, showing John returning to his mother and sweetheart and, finally, Confederate John’s former sweetheart visiting the mother with (it seems) her new partner. After they leave, the mother goes over to her dead son’s coat which is hung on the wall and places flowers there. As with the opening (and the opening of Two Little Waifs), the focus is on the suffering and grief of the mother. Unlike Two Little Waifs, there is no upbeat ending, but an elegiac lingering over the consequences of loss. The Fugitive was criticised by Variety for the scene where John the Confederate soldier was shot down. “Although everything is fair in war”, the journal suggested, “it wasn’t fair of the film arranger to picture such ghastly and unpleasant details” (Variety, November 19, 1910). Such concern about gruesome (or vulgar) scenes was, of course, more widespread in the period, as the trade press attempted to police the boundaries of morality to assuage 213

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reform concern and assure the long-term profitability of cinema. The Moving Picture World review of the film perceptively observed that “the only dramatic interest is in the mother’s struggle when she is considering whether she shall give up the fugitive or not” (November 19, 1910, p. 1178). The film has also more recently been addressed by film scholars. Jesionowski suggests that The Fugitive is the film where Griffith “arrived for the first time at a dramatic formula in which the audience in fact supplied much of the real activity of film” (Jesionowski, p. 137), and Scott Simmon describes it as a “small masterwork” (Simmon, p. 116). Lee Grieveson

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299 BIOGRAPH

SUNSHINE SUE Filming date: 6/8 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 14 November 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 17 November 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Wilfred Lucas [“The Old Piano”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Marion Sunshine (Sunshine Sue); W. Chrystie Miller (Her father); Clara T. Bracey (Her mother); Edward Dillon (Tom, her suitor); Charles H. West (Harry, the summer boarder); George O. Nicholls (Head of employment agency); Donald Crisp (Head of sweatshop); Dorothy West, Jeannie MacPherson, Robert Harron (Sweatshop employees); William J. Butler (Piano store owner); Jeannie MacPherson, Jack Muhall? (Piano store employees); Guy Hedlund, Francis J. Grandon (In piano store); J. Jiquel Lanoe (Waiter); Francis J. Grandon (Yokel); Henry Lehrman (Harry’s friend); ? (Servants) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc., 35mm nitrate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate positive (Ed Foley Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; 35mm nitrate positive INNOCENCE PROTECTED FROM THE WILES OF A DESIGNER There is an invisible power always attendant upon the truly innocent. A guardian angel that leads the way from the many pitfalls that threaten the young before they are able to realize the enormity of one false step. The human is endowed with free will, but during youth there is always that power reasoning for us, and our future depends upon harkening to it. Sue is the sunshine of the old home; ever smiling, singing and lifting the burden from the shoulders of her parents in their declining years. She is beloved by Tom, an honest country lad, who is at a loss to know how to evince it, she too care free [sic] to understand. He was content to sit for hours and listen to her sing and play the old songs on the parlor organ. Fate seemed to be taking good care of affairs until one day a summer boarder pays the homestead a visit. Good looking, easy of manner and the owner of an automobile, Sue feels quite elated when he pays her some attention. She readily consents to taking a ride with him, which meets the approval of her parents who look upon the young man as highly reputable. Ah! here is the time-honored trick of fate; the playing with fire, so often the beginning of the end. Some miles away from the village, the auto becomes conveniently disabled, and as it is assumed it will be some time before it is righted, the young man suggests that they go to the roadhouse nearby for rest and refreshments. So well entertained is she that the time flies swiftly and when she suggests returning home she is made to believe that it is too late to return home that night. Stunned at first by this intelligence, she awakens to the full realization of the situation and excluding the young man from the room, she passes the night alone in dreadful anxiety, for she imagines the disquietude her dear old folks are suffering. And rightly, too, for at dawn we see her poor old father with faithful Tom, after an all-night vigil at the front gate sorrowfully dragging himself up to the cottage door. The young man returns to Sue in the morning and persuades her to go with him to the city promising to marry her upon arrival. To this she consents and he installs

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her in a furnished room while he ostensibly goes to make arrangements for their marriage. While he is away she writes this news to her father. But, alas, the poor girl is later made to appreciate the cruel truth of the situation when the young man pretends his father objects to his marrying just at present. He, of course, reasons that she has gone too far to turn back. In fact, she fully realizes her awful predicament, for she knows how the world will regard her apparent indiscretion, so ashamed to return home, she seeks employment. In this direction she meets with the indignities often afforded the innocent by those human vultures who call themselves men. Her experience is enough to convince her of the falseness of the world she would enter, so back home she goes the same day to be received with open arms by her dear old daddy, whose searching gaze she has met with a smile. Biograph Bulletin, [?], November 14, 1910

An adored daughter, Sunshine Sue is lured from her country home by Harry, a summer boarder, and goes for a drive in his automobile. When the car breaks down, she spends the night away from home and, believing marriage to be eminent, accompanies Harry to the city. But the city slicker soon reneges on his promise. Sue is unsuccessful in finding employment and returns home to be happily reunited with her father, mother, and country suitor.

Griffith uses editing and directionality in lateral space to construct tableaux dramatizing cultural conflict in a familiar tale of seduction. Drawing upon the cautionary lessons of nineteenth-century sentimental literature for middle-class female readers, he celebrates small-town values against the forces of modernity. As Variety observes in a brief review, “it is the old story, but its moral is ever timely” (November 26, 1910). As the film opens, Sue is seated at a dining table between her father and a naive, enamored country lad named Tom. She exits right into a modest parlor decorated with striped wallpaper, wainscotting, and a conspicuous portrait of Abraham Lincoln. A piano, surely an expression of her vivacious and musical personality, occupies the left part of the frame. The stage is set for the intrusion of Harry, “The Summer Boarder”, a tall, middle-aged city slicker dressed in trench coat and hat and driving a roadster. Flattered by his attentions, Sue is led in a series of shots through the porch and gate to the right of the house and into an automobile, which veers off right. Shifiting the direction of Sue’s rightward movement away from hearth and home, the car drives up to the foreground from the rear and stalls. A series of shots next show Sue, duly impressed by elaborate floral arragements, moving left into the space of an elegant roadhouse where tuxedoed waiters serve guests. Parallel editing shows Sue’s troubled father and Tom peering toward the right in vain efforts to discern her return, while she and Harry dine at the roadhouse. Promising marriage, Harry persuades Sue to accompany him to the city but later reneges. Without resources, Sue seeks employment first in a textile factory and then in a company that stocks pianos, but she is ill equipped to deal with men in a world of commerce. Indeed, the manager of the piano establishment is a less romantic and more threatening version of the boarder who earlier preyed on her. She is so upset by his advances that she breaks down in tears while leaning on a piano to the left, a shot that is rhythymically intercut with scenes of her bereft father caressing the piano, also on screen left, in the parlor. After this episode, Sue reverses the direction of her earlier movement toward the city and returns home as she first enters the space of the porch, then moves left into the parlor where she reconciles with her father in the presence of Lincoln’s portrait, and then exits left 216

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into the dining room where she is reunited with Tom and her mother. A final scene shows Sue back at her piano in the parlor seated next to Tom, a timid suitor who finally occupies the center of the frame, while her father orchestrates their romance from the rear. Clearly, Griffith’s representation of a country maiden endangered by a city slicker – not coincidentally an older man rivalling a revered father – draws on sentimental literature with strong didactic overtones. Although this formulaic narrative often ended with the seduction and ruin of the heroine, Griffith makes it clear in scenes at the roadhouse that Sue has not lost her virtue and may thus reunite with her parents and Tom. Yet the happy ending elides a number of significant issues, including the strong attraction between father and daughter, echoed throughout the film in seduction schemes of disreputable older men preying on young girls. The comparative unimportance of mother-daughter relations in Griffith’s family romance belies the strength of homosocial ties in middle-class female culture, as documented in American women’s history. Sumiko Higashi

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300 BIOGRAPH

THE SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTE Filming date: 1/17 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Fishkill, New York/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 21 November 1910 Release length: approx. 996 feet Copyright date: 25 November 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Mrs. James Ryan [“Legend of We-No-Nah”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dark Cloud (Gray Cloud); Mary Pickford (Dove Eyes); Francis J. Grandon (Her father); Dell Henderson (A suitor); Kate Bruce, Alfred Paget, J. Jiquel Lanoe (Indians) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm acetate negative INCORPORATING AUTHENTIC INDIAN CUSTOMS The Indian moving picture subject is always entertaining and when it is done with as absolute authenticity of detail it becomes instructive as well. The Biograph has always endeavored to depict the redman as he really is, and not as cheap literature would portray him. Hence, it is that a moving picture of this work becomes more convincing than text books, histories or historical novels. In this subject are incorporated several traditional customs with as lifelike portrayal as is possible, engaging in the production the services of a number of the descendants of the aborigines. In the opening scene is shown the Corn Dance, which is a ceremonial performed in thanksgiving to the Great Master for his bountiful yield of crops. This dance is performed each year at the harvest. During the course of the dance, Dove Eyes, the pretty little squaw, becomes very much attracted by Gray Cloud, the brave who leads the dance. Gray Cloud is handsome and graceful, and it is small wonder that he should impress the pretty maid. Her interest in him does not go unnoticed for the brave has long been smitten with the little squaw and bashfully makes advances which are just as coyly received. To conclusively learn his fate, he goes to the old squaw to hire the love flute. This is the timehonored custom of lovers and is their form of wooing. This love flute is held in the custody of a spinster squaw and the swains hire it from her with the payment of skins to serenade the object of their affections. If the maid is enticed from the tepee by the strains of the flute, the lover is given hope. Dove Eyes appears and Gray Cloud wins his suit, and prepares for the marriage. Meanwhile, Gray Cloud’s rival hires the flute to serenade Dove Eyes, but she turns a deaf ear, and so the rival goes away disgruntled and vowing vengeance. After the marriage Gray Cloud starts on a hunting trip. His rival follows at a distance determined to wreak revenge. Some distance away from the village the rival makes a move to shoot Gray Cloud, but desists, not having the cold blood to effect this purpose. He has hardly lowered the gun when he sees Gray Cloud disappear. The earth seems to have swallowed him, and it does in a measure, for when the rival runs to the spot, he finds Gray Cloud at the bottom of a bear pit. To get out unaided is impossible, but his rival merely laughs derisively and leaves him to his fate. The little squaw has been pining all this while for Gray Cloud, who has now been absent for several days. Dragging herself to her father’s tepee, she is taken ill on the very threshold

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and is carried inside. The medicine man is called, and after many prayers and incantations gives the case up. The rival hears the cries of the poor heartcrushed little squaw and all the animosity he held for Gray Cloud dissipates, so he runs to the pit and drags Gray Cloud out, helping him to Dove Eyes’ side, who livens up as he is the real doctor of her ills. Biograph Bulletin, [?], November 21, 1910

Gray Cloud successfully woos Dove Eyes, a lovestruck Amerindian maiden, with a magic flute that he plays according to an established ritual. But after he brings his bride home to his tent, he is shadowed by a jealous rival who leaves him for dead when he falls into a pit during a hunting trip. Despairing over Gray Cloud’s inexplicable absence, Dove Eyes becomes so ill that the envious rival relents, rescues the trapped warrior, and makes possible the couple’s reunion.

As stated in the Biograph Bulletin (plot summaries that were reproduced almost verbatim in The Moving Picture World), “the Indian moving picture subject is always entertaining and when it is done with as absolute authenticity of detail it becomes instructive as well. The Biograph has always endeavored to depict the redman as he really is, and not as cheap literature would portray him”. Presumably this meant that dime novels represented Amerindians as drunken savages and heathens rather than as positive representations of the racial “Other”. Significantly, the film begins with a slightly high-angle shot of an Amerindian dance celebrating a harvest, and thus privileges the spectator witnessing an ethnographic scene. A cut to Dove Eyes, described in the Biograph Bulletin as “a pretty little squaw” admiring the warrior Gray Cloud, shows us Griffith’s stereotypical coy maiden but in Native American dress. Biograph’s claim to authenticity, the result of the studio consulting “descendants of the aborigines”, is thus immediately undercut. As Variety bluntly remarks, “the poor attempt of the principal characters to act as Indians is pitiable” (December 3, 1910). Gray Cloud’s wooing of Dove Eyes with a magical flute, the machinations of a rival suitor, and a happy resolution are dramatized by parallel editing and by directionality in lateral space that is offset by vanishing points receding into nature’s depths. Griffith’s emphasis on representing Amerindians in majestic natural surroundings does differentiate this text from his depictions of white culture. Dove Eyes, for example, inhabits a tent situated in the right foreground of a scene with a lake in middleground and another tent against a horizon of trees on the opposite side of the water. When she marries Gray Cloud, she goes to live in a tent situated high in the left foreground of a frame that also shows a lake in the midground and vast rolling hills in the distance. While on a hunting trip, Gray Cloud, followed by a jealous rival suitor, is shown against the verticals of a deeply wooded area. Amerindians are thus situated in panoramic vistas and rarely shown indoors. Such painterly compositions exemplify the didacticism of an American pictorial tradition deployed to represent Native American culture within white parameters. Although the harvest dance and courtship rite dramatize rituals that pique curiosity, the film’s thematics about romance and rivalry were melodramatic staples. Additionally, the symmetry of Griffith’s directionality and editing imposes an order on his representation of the racial “Other” that, to some extent, regulates the space they inhabit and thereby mimics white culture. Despite Biograph’s claims to authenticity, this film remains a construction of Amerindian culture for white consumption. Sumiko Higashi 219

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301 BIOGRAPH

A PLAIN SONG Filming date: 13/17 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 28 November 1910 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 1 December 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Stanner E.V. Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Edith); Kate Bruce (Her mother); W. Chrystie Miller (Her father); William J. Butler (Her employer); Dell Henderson (Manager); Jack Pickford, Edward Dillon, W.C. Robinson (On street); ? (Janitor); Alfred Paget, Lottie Pickford, Robert Harron, Elmer Booth?, Jeannie MacPherson, Dorothy West, Harry Hyde, J. Jiquel Lanoe (Storemates and escorts); Lily Cahill, Donald Crisp, Guy Hedlund (At station) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative, without intertitles (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive THE POWER OF FILIAL DEVOTION “Love thy father and thy mother”. Adhere strictly to this injunction and the way will be clear. In time of temptation or of threatening evil, the thought of our parents will lead us from the path of error. So many are the snares and pitfalls laid in the way of youth that it is only through this agency that an escape is made. This Biograph subject is a most lucid illustration of this problem. Edith is a salesgirl in the department store and toils most arduously to eke the lives of her decrepit mother and blind father. Quasi-poverty is their condition, as Edith’s meager pittance is all there is to depend on for the existence. Sadly she compares her own loneliness with the condition of her storemates, as she views them passing by with their sweethearts, light-hearted and happy. Hence it is small wonder that she feels highly flattered and pleased at the attentions of a traveling repertoire manager who enters the store advertising his show, and presents Edith with two complimentary tickets for that evening’s performance. The next day the manager appears again at the store and invites her to take a stroll with him. This is the first attention the poor girl has ever experienced, and when the manager tries to persuade her to go away with him it is a supreme struggle with inclination that prevents her leaving her old folks. The manager leaves her with ill-concealed displeasure and the next time he visits the store he tries to win her through jealousy by flirting with one of the other girls. This has the effect and she yields to the great temptation of meeting him after store hours. With renewed endeavor he persuades her and she at last consents to go away with him, leaving a letter for her parents to the effect that she is tired of the drudgery, and longing for pleasure has gone away. Arriving at the railroad station, where she is to meet her tempter, she sees a party of old folks on their way to the almshouse. One of them is sightless and a voice from the soul speaks to her. “Remember thy father and thy mother”. And she does remember, seeing them most vividly in her mind’s eye. This thought so impels that she at last realizes that she is playing with fire, and turning on her heel, runs back home to find that

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the letter she had written is gone from the table where she left it. However, her fears are allayed when she finds the letter in possession of her blind father who, of course, cannot read it. Taking it and tearing it to bits, she folds her dear old papa in her arms as her mother enters to share in the embrace. Her eyes opened to the falseness of the world, she is now more than ever determined to perform her sacrificial duty of caring for the old folks. Biograph Bulletin, [?], November 28, 1910

A lonely department store clerk, Edith longs for romance but is obligated to support a mother and a blind father. She is thus quite vulnerable to the schemes of a city slicker and is persuaded by a manipulative repertoire mangager to accompany him out of town. At the train station, however, Edith sees an elderly couple who remind her of her helpless parents, and she returns home to be reunited with her unsuspecting family and resumes her filial duties.

Yet another morality tale adapted from sentimental literature for middle-class female readers, A Plain Song is an interesting variation of Sunshine Sue. A young clerk named Edith labors in what the Biograph Bulletin labels a “department store”. A modest dry goods store rather than an emporium situated on the fabled Ladies’ Mile in New York, her workplace nevertheless represents hedonistic values. On display at the rear of the store are women’s fashions. At the end of the day, young female clerks pair off with escorts in anticipation of an evening’s pleasure, while Edith appears lonely and dejected. An exterior shot outside her home echoes her plight, as a well-dressed couple in the background walk arm in arm away from the camera. After she enters the parlor, shots of Edith peering out the window to the right are intercut with shots of romantic young couples walking along the diagonal of a white picket fence toward the camera. The interior of Edith’s modest dwelling consists of two rooms: a parlor with a prominent ladderback rocker in front of an ordinary fireplace, and, to the left, a dining area with a curtained window (that is not the source of lighting in the frame). Edith’s blind father, first shown seated at the dining table, significantly occupies the center of the frame. As in Sunshine Sue, a revered father competes for his daughter’s affection with an older roué, in this case a “repertoire manager” bent on seduction. An intertitle reinforces the moral issues involved by labeling Edith’s infatuation with the scheming manager as “THE GREAT TEMPTATION.” Persuaded to leave town with him, she displaces her father from the center of the frame as she embraces him for a last time. An insert shows her letter to her mother: “I AM SORRY TO LEAVE YOU AND FATHER, BUT I AM YOUNG AND NEED SOME PLEASURE IN LIFE. I CAN’T STAND THE DRUDGERY ANY LONGER. GOOD-BYE, EDITH.”

Edith leaves to catch the train, symbol of the forces of modernity disrupting traditional family ties and obligations. But at the station, an intertitle echoing the Ten Commandments reads, “REMEMBER THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER.” An elderly couple who pass by remind Edith of her parents, shown at that very moment sitting at the dining table, so that she spurns the manager and turns back. Reunited with her mother and her father, who once more occupies the center of the frame, Edith chooses filial duty rather than personal fulfillment. She thus represents what Americanists call “character”, that is, a sense of self rooted in ethical precepts and small-town productivity, rather than an individualized “personality” acquired in a consumer culture. Associated with performance, masks, and deception, on the other hand, the repertoire manager boarding the train heralds a new era of consumption based on self-gratification. As in Sunshine Sue, Griffith’s validation of filial affection rather than heterosexual 221

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romance is based on intense father-daughter relations. Such rejection of heterosexuality would ring truer if the heroines enjoyed strong homosocial ties with their mothers in an alternative female culture, in contrast to contemporary “new women” styled as men’s playmates and companions. But in these films Griffith remains fixated on father-daughter ties and relegates mothers to the background of domestic interiors. Sumiko Higashi

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302 BIOGRAPH

HIS SISTER-IN-LAW Filming date: 14/18 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 15 December 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 20 December 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: M.B. Havey Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Lottie Pickford (Eva); Gladys Egan (Blanche); Edward Dillon (John, Eva’s sweetheart); Claire McDowell (Maiden aunt); Jeannie MacPherson, Harry Hyde, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Dorothy West, Guy Hedlund, Henry Lehrman (Wedding guests); William J. Butler (Minister); Clara T. Bracey (Nurse) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative SHE FINDS HERSELF IN THE WAY SO LEAVES In this Biograph subject is shown a theme so real and so convincing that it becomes an absolute warning. There are certain things that are undeniably irrepressible in life’s cycle that there is little use of deluding oneself that he or she is so different. Love is of an indomitable quality that resists even reason. To say that we will never love to the extent of disregarding all else in its favor is idle, for all attempts to temper it will prove futile. Eva and Blanche are two orphan sisters who live with their aunt. They are inseparable each apparently living for the other. They vow that come what will they will never separate. However, when Eva, the eldest, is betrothed to Jack, Blanche, who is but ten years old, seriously objects, fearing that Eva’s marriage would surely be the means of their parting one from the other. The wedding takes place and Eva declares that Blanche shall live with her and her husband. It went well until Jack realized that Blanche was dividing Eva’s attentions, and in consequence became very much annoyed, despite his endeavors to feel thoroughly satisfied with conditions. Jack finds a third person not so pleasant, and Blanche’s solicitation of Eva’s attentions occasions several serious quarrels, until she begins to feel that she is in the way. On one occasion, when their tiff is rather more stormy than usual, Blanche is an unseen spectator. The poor little girl now realizes the truth and then decides to go back to her aunt’s house to live, leaving the following note to explain her departure: – “Darling Sister: I am going back to Auntie’s. I am sorry I was a bother to you and Jack. I love you both very much, that is why I can’t stay. Blanche.” Upon finding this note the young couple are sorry for the way they have acted towards the child, and Jack persuades Eva to go to her aunt’s and bring his sister-in-law back. Blanche, however, is not to be moved, and Eva returns in grief without her. She has hardly left when Blanche changes her mind and goes back, but she soon realizes it is not to be for when she enters noiselessly she find Eva and Jack in each other’s embrace arguing that Blanche’s absence is all for the best. This decides her finally, and making her way back to her aunt’s, she enters to stay for all time. A long time after she is told by her aunt to get ready to visit Eva. Arriving there, she finds a new playmate – a little baby girl. Her surprise is extreme when shown her little

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niece, and her delight is inexpressible when she is asked to remain with her sister and brotherin-law as a companion to the baby. Biograph Bulletin, [?], December 15, 1910

Eva and Blanche are inseparable sisters living with a maiden aunt. But Eva marries a suitor named John, to Blanche’s great dismay, and starts married life in a nearby apartment. Blanche lives with the newlyweds for a while, but her constant presence soon irritates the bridegroom. Feeling unwanted, Blanche returns to her aunt’s home despite Eva’s entreaties. Later, when Eva gives birth to a child, the sisters are reconciled.

Unlike Sunshine Sue and A Plain Song, this film represents a strong homosocial female culture binding together Eva, her little sister Blanche, and their maiden aunt. As the film opens, the two demonstrably affectionate sisters are seated together in the sitting room. Parallel editing shows Blanche in a state of extreme annoyance after the aunt summons Eva to greet her suitor John in the parlor to the right. Indeed, the jealous child enters the parlor to attack her rival. At the wedding, Blanche is squeezed on the edge of the frame to the left, although Eva has asssured her, “The marriage will not separate us.” But in shots that echo the intimacy of the two sisters when they lived in their aunt’s home, John and Eva are now shown in intimate conversation in their sitting room. Although John consented to include Blanche in his household, he soon becomes annoyed by her constant demands and quarrels with Eva. Overhearing their disagreement, the dejected child returns to live with her aunt and refuses entreaties to reconsider. But when Eva later gives birth to a child, the sisters reconcile. John, a minor figure once more, is now squeezed to the right of the frame while the women in the family and the nurse fuss over the new arrival. As in his other releases, Griffith organizes middle-class domestic space as contiguous rooms, each coded to reveal the nature of the characters’ feelings and relations. The aunt’s home consists of a sitting room and parlor with panelled walls, draped windows, and appropriate furniture. Blanche’s intense attachment to Eva dominates the mood of the sitting room, where she occupies the center of the frame, while John, the only man in a womanly sphere, courts Eva in the formal parlor. After Eva’s marriage, the situation of the characters vying for her affection is reversed, in that John now inhabits the center of the sitting room while Blanche is exiled to the parlor to the right. Unsuprisingly, the couple live in modest rooms that contrast with the more substantial home of the maiden aunt. Blanche’s extrusion was thus dictated as much by the cramped space of the newlywed’s apartment, as by the requirements of marriage and procreation. As usual, Griffith represents the shifting nature of family relations through framing and editing that is symmetrical, but John remains outnumbered in a world of strongly allied middle-class women. Sumiko Higashi

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303 BIOGRAPH

A CHILD’S STRATAGEM Filming date: 5/26 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 5 December 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 9 December 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Belle Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Edwin August (John Walton); Stephanie Longfellow (Mrs. Walton); Gladys Egan (Their daughter); Claire McDowell (The designing woman); Linda Arvidson, Lily Cahill (Friends); Jeannie MacPherson (Secretary); ? (Maid); Alfred Paget, Jack Muhall? (In office); Charles Hill Mailes? (Lawyer); Guy Hedlund, Henry Lehrman (Lawyer’s aides); William J. Butler, W.C. Robinson, Dell Henderson, Donald Crisp (Policemen); Clara T. Bracey, Jack Pickford (On street); Frank Evans, J. Jiquel Lanoe, ? (Tramps); Harry Hyde, J. Jiquel Lanoe, George O. Nicholls, Donald Crisp? (On trolley) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative HOW THE LITTLE ONE PREVENTS A DOMESTIC DISASTER Unreasonable jealousy is undoubtedly the worst affliction the human being is heir to. It not only makes the life of its victim miserable, but also affects the well-being of those of the social circle. That monster, jealousy, is most inventive and has an aptitude for reversing conditions consistent with the fevered perception of the poor unfortunate so afflicted. Mrs. Walton is one of those jealous-natured women who misconstrues every act of civility on the part of her husband towards any one [sic] of the female sex. In truth, she has no grounds for such feelings, as Mr. Walton is the most devoted of husbands and the kindest of fathers. Every trivial matter that can be construed circumstantial is the food for a quarrel. These quarrels are always in the presence of their little ten year old daughter. So frequent are these dissensions that the child, though young, begins to fear for the future. The worst comes, when one evening a party of lady friends call on Mrs. Walton; one of them deliberately tries to elicit Mr. Walton’s attentions. He quite innocently and courteously acknowledges her, what he merely assumes cordiality. However, Mrs. Walton’s eye is ever on the designing lady, and foolishly imagines her husband attracted. After the visitors have departed there is the worst storm yet, and a separation seems inevitable. All this transpires with the child as a witness. Next morning Mrs. Walton packs her trunk and leaves a note to her husband on the breakfast table to the effect that she is determined to begin divorce proceedings. The little one now intervenes, but with poor success. Young as she is, she appreciates the enormity of the affair and is at a loss to prevent it. While she is sitting pondering at the table, an article in the newspaper concerning a black hand kidnapping strikes her gaze. The very thing! Supposing something could happen to her, everybody would become alarmed and excited and mamma and papa would no doubt forget their own differences in their efforts to lift the veil of mystery from her. Fine! She at once puts the scheme into effect by writing a letter to her mamma and

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another to her papa ostensibly from the Black Hand to the effect that she has been kidnapped. Dispatching the letters, she goes to hide at her aunt’s home. Arriving at her aunt’s house, she finds the place vacant, the aunt having moved. There is nothing for her to do but to stroll about and kill time. This she does, but wandering so far she loses her way, and falls into the company of some poor but honest folk. Telling them her address, Jimmy, the newsboy, volunteers to escort her home. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Walton are thrown into a state of wild excitement and in their endeavors to locate their missing child forget all else. Hither, thither the search is made, but in vain, and they are both on the verge of mental collapse, when the little one, escorted by the gallant newsboy, enters. She then makes clear the reason for her escapade. The parents now realize how foolish they have been and what a lesson their little tot has taught them. Biograph Bulletin, [?], December 5, 1910

Mrs. Walton willfully and mistakenly presumes that her husband is unfaithful and demands a divorce. Devastated by the impending breakup of her home, the Waltons’s little daughter plots to reunite her parents by pretending to be a kidnapping victim. Her absence causes such consternation in the household that her parents do indeed reconcile when she returns home after some misadventures.

Although this film is approximately the same length as the other one-reelers Griffith directed at this time, the characters are situated in many more indoor sets and in several outdoor scenes, thus intensifying the sense of fragmentation conveyed by parallel editing. Such fragmentation aptly dramatizes the psychological drama of a well-to-do family threatened with divorce and dissolution. But it also results in some illogical editing with respect to the movements of characters, as indicated below. As the film opens, Mrs. Walton is consumed by jealousy and wrongly accuses her husband of infidelity. She exits the front parlor and has a temper tantrum in the back parlor, to the left of a portiere separating the large room. During most of the film, Mr. Walton, plagued by a suspicious and irrational wife, is usually shown in the front parlor or in his office. As Mrs. Walton becomes increasingly unreasonable and demands a divorce, she retreats from the back parlor, no longer shown in the film, to the sitting room on the left. With each movement to the left, she withdraws into an increasingly private space and vents destructive feelings. Indeed, all the family members are shown isolated in rooms or in outdoor scenes, as if they are unable to connect. At one point, Mrs. Walton even exits right from the sitting room and out the front steps without traversing the back and front parlors, where her daughter is plotting to thwart the divorce. Such movement makes sense in terms of the momentum of the narrative, but not in terms of the layout of the house. Pretending that she is a kidnapping victim, the distraught daughter hopes to reunite her parents. But she loses her way during a visit to an aunt, is befriended by stereotyped Italian immigrants dressed like gypsies, and is escorted home on a streetcar by a helpful newsboy who is obviously from a lower class. Fortunately, her absence causes such consternation that her relieved parents reconcile. An upper middle-class family, the Waltons live in a spacious and comfortably furnished home and employ a uniformed maid. Yet Griffith’s lateral representation of domestic space in terms of contiguous rooms utilizes a floorplan that was becoming outmoded at the time, as Americanists argue. As opposed to front and back parlors designed for entertaining guests, who were not admitted to a private sitting room, a more contemporary layout featured an open living room and dining area more expressive of the family’s personality. (At 226

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one point in the film, Mrs. Walton’s guests enter the back parlor from the front parlor to the right and then inexplicably exit left, which would have led to the sitting room.) Griffith’s adherence to an old-fashioned floorplan not only suited his conceptualization of space and use of parallel editing, but also expressed the conservatism of his social values. Such conservatism would render his views increasingly outmoded in the ensuing Jazz Age. A depiction of family life in an open-plan interior, however, would have created a more fluid space and dictated the use of cut-ins to retain the director’s symmetry of framing, directionality, and editing. Sumiko Higashi

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304 BIOGRAPH

THE GOLDEN SUPPER Filming date: 19/29 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Greenwich, Connecticut Release date: 12 December 1910 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 15 December 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Dorothy West Source: “A Lover’s Story”, the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy West (Camilla); Charles H. West (Lionel); Edwin August (Julian); Claire McDowell (Lady-in-waiting); Lottie Pickford, Jeannie MacPherson, Dorothy Davenport (Flower girls); Francis J. Grandon, Donald Crisp, Harry Hyde (Courtiers); Alfred Paget (Messenger); Donald Crisp (Monk); Verner Clarges, Guy Hedlund (Priests); Grace Henderson (Queen); Guy Hedlund (Hermit); W.C. Robinson, J. Jiquel Lanoe (Mourners); Kate Toncray (At feast) NOTE: Reissued by Biograph 27 March 1916. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (Dutch intertitles) ADAPTATION FROM ALFRED LORD TENNYSON’S POEM In introducing this classic little can be said, as the theme is so well known both as one of Boccaccio’s stories and as the sequel to Tennyson’s “The Lover’s Tale.” Julian loves his cousin and foster sister Camilla, who is wooed and won by Lionel, his friend and rival. He is a witness to their marriage and after the ceremony he departs heartbroken to his own house. Utopian was the existence of Lionel and Camilla, until some time later Camilla is seized with a serious illness, and Lionel’s grief knew no bounds when he heard “That low knell tolling his lady dead.” “She had lain three days without a pulse; all that look’d on her had pronounced her dead. So they bore her – for in Julian’s land they never nail a dumb head up in elm – bore her free-faced to the free airs of heaven, and laid her in the vault of her own kin.” Julian learns of the death of Camilla, and hastens to the house, arriving in time to see the funeral cortege slowly moving towards the sepulchre. Following in its wake he exclaims, “Now, now, will I go down into the grave, I will be all alone with all I love.” So after the train had departed from the vault, Julian enters “and at the far end of the vault he saw Camilla with the moonlight on her face: All the rest of her drowned in the gloom and horror of the vault.” Bending over, he kisses her hand, and ’tis then he finds her supposed death is but as sleep, for she revives from out the trance. “He raised her softly, and wrapping her all over with the cloak he wore, bore her through the solitary land back to the mother’s house where she was born.” Conquering his desire, he goes to bring back Lionel, her husband. Meanwhile, Lionel, grief stricken, determines to become a recluse, going to the deserted cliffs overlooking the sea, where he secures from an old mendicant his thatched hut. After a search, Lionel is located through the meeting of the old man and the searching party. He refuses to go back as

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he is yet ignorant of Camilla’s resuscitation, and so is taken by force. To effect a meeting of Lionel and Camilla without a shock, Julian arranges the Golden Supper, a custom in the East when a man bestowed upon his honored guest his most valued treasure, and acting upon Camilla’s injunction, “You have given me life and love again, and none but you yourself shall tell him of it, And you shall give me back when he returns,” Julian presents Camilla to Lionel during this supper. Lionel at first cannot realize the truth; he seems to be dreaming, but positive material manifestations awaken him to the reality. Julian’s duty performed, he leaves forever. Biograph Bulletin, [?], December 12, 1910

Camilla chooses Lionel over her foster brother Julian. Julian watches the wedding procession, despondent. Camilla dies some months after the wedding and is placed in the family tomb. Julian goes to her there, finds signs of life and takes her back to her home. Meanwhile, Lionel has become a recluse in his grief. Julian searches out Lionel, brings him forcibly back, and at a banquet reveals Camilla to him. Husband and wife are united and Julian leaves them forever.

The film is adapted from Part IV of Tennyson’s A Lover’s Tale. The exteriors are shot on location in Greenwich, Connecticut (according to Graham, Higgins, Mancini and Vieira) in the environs of a great house with a grand front staircase and gardens overlooking the sea. The decision to film what the Biograph Bulletin calls a “classic” subject on location may have been inspired by the Vitagraph Company’s Shakespeare adaptations A Midsummer’s Night Dream (1909) and Twelfth Night (1910), among the first to be shot on location. The film differs from the poem on a number of important points. The Tennyson poem has a pastoral setting in an unnamed country: Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, Filling with purple gloom the vacancies Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails, White as white clouds floated from sky to sky. O pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, Like to a quiet mind in the loud world, Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea Sank powerless, as anger falls aside And withers on the breast of peaceful love! Although we are told that Julian comes from an old and established family, the story has a natural rather than a social setting, played out against a backdrop of bay and mountains, clear streams and forested glens. Perhaps because it is a pastoral, Tennyson does not need to place the poem historically and it seems to occur in modern times – the Frederick Simpson Coburn illustrations show Julian in a frock coat, for example. One indication that Griffith was inspired by the Vitagraph examples is the decision to make this a period piece, with the actors in Elizabethan dress. The choice of the location also helps to place the story socially. One has a sense of a palace, of court ritual and an attendant hierarchy: Camilla’s mother as queen, courtiers, monks. Thus we are given Tennyson with a Shakespearian setting. The narrational structure of the poem is markedly different from the film. The first three parts of A Lover’s Tale are narrated by Julian in the first person and tell of his childhood love 229

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for Camilla, the failure of his hopes, and a period of near madness after she has chosen Lionel in which he has several visions of her dead or dying as well as a final vision of a wedding procession that initially appears to him as a funeral procession and may or may not be the “actual” marriage to Lionel. The fourth and final section, entitled “The Golden Supper”, is told by a friend of Julian’s in the third person who narrates Camilla’s death, her recovery by Julian and the uniting of man and wife. Given that the film pares away this narrational structure, there is no preparation for Camilla’s death. The scenes of the wedding procession are followed by a quotation from the poem: “LATER. ‘THAT LOW KNELL TOLLING HIS LADY DEAD,’” and then a scene by Camilla’s death bed. Even given the abruptness of transitions in the one-reel film (Brewster 1991, pp. 37–56), and the fact that contemporary audiences might have been more familiar with the source material, this seems an extremely awkward transition. Also, because the poem so forcefully evokes Julian’s desire for Camilla, the scene in the tomb verges on decadence, à la Edgar Allan Poe: O Love, I have not seen you for so long! Now, now, will I go down into the grave, I will be all alone with all I love, And kiss her on the lips. She is his no more; The dead returns to me, and I go down To kiss the dead. It is not simply that Griffith’s rendition of this event is more chaste (the intertitle quotes only the second and third of the lines given above and he only kisses her hand) but because we have so little access to the character’s subjective state, the erotic implications of the scene are much less marked. Perhaps of most interest are the filmmaker’s attempts to render Julian’s subjective states. One strategy is simply to show Julian looking on while Lionel courts Camilla, an ill-fated strategy given the difficulty of representing the act of hiding at this stage of film history. Near the beginning of the film we find a particularly prolonged pattern of entrances and exits. All three characters are seated on a rocky ledge. A page calls Julian away, leaving Camilla and Lionel alone. He proposes and she accepts. Julian enters left, sees them and expresses despair, then exits left again. As Lionel and Camilla move to the foreground to exit, Julian re-enters and looks after them. The next two shots suggest a retrospective point-of-view structure. Lionel and Camilla embrace by a low wall overlooking the sea and, in the next shot, Julian reacts to this. But this structure is not developed and immediately we have all the characters return to the same space. After Julian reacts, he exits left. Lionel and Camilla enter left and then exit through the foreground. Julian enters left behind them, walks up to long shot framing, shakes his head, arms upheld, then drops them, bowing his head. Thus we find multiple entrances and exits, multiple gestures expressing grief, and the repetition of the staging in which Lionel and Camilla come forward so that Julian can look at them from behind. Even with this staging, it seems quite implausible that Lionel and Camilla would not see Julian in his grief. (The first scene of the wedding procession, which is similarly staged, seems more plausible since Julian ducks behind a low wall – a point emphasized by a cut-in – before the couple passes by). The film uses crosscutting only sporadically, but it is used for the purpose of psychological contrast at the end of the wedding section when there is an alternation between the wedding party ascending the front stairs of the house and Julian walking through the estate alone. This section of crosscutting also becomes the occasion for an evocative use of the location, one that seems similar to, although not as fully developed as, the uses of landscape analyzed by Tom Gunning in his discussion of Lines of White on a Sullen Sea and The Coun230

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try Doctor in D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film. During the wedding party, Julian returns to the rocky ledge where he had once sat with Camilla and Lionel, and where he lost her. The repetition of the setting serves to evoke the mood of loss. The opening shot is also used in this way. The film begins with Julian and Camilla happily talking in a garden setting with a low wall curving from midground left to foreground right. Later, Camilla’s mother gives her permission to marry Lionel standing in the same position in the garden. After the disappointment of his suit, Julian returns twice to this spot: once during the latter part of the wedding procession and again at the end of the film, each time crumbling a flower in his hand. Lea Jacobs

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305 BIOGRAPH

WHEN A MAN LOVES Filming date: 22/31 October 1910 Location: New York Studio/Westfield, New Jersey Release date: 5 January 1911 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 9 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: George W. Terwilliger Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dell Henderson (Mr. Bach); Mary Pickford (Tessie); Charles H. West (John Watson); George O. Nicholls (Tessie’s father); ? (First swain); Guy Hedlund (Farmhand); Robert Harron (Young man); Verner Clarges (Preacher); Grace Henderson (Preacher’s companion) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative, without intertitles (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection) WHEN A VICTIM OF CUPID BECOMES HIS ASSISTANT Love smooths out all wrinkles and makes the whole world good-natured. The man in love is never possessed of a grouch, for love and ill humor will not chum together in the same make up. Hence it was that when Mr. Bach was stricken with the tender passion, he was ripe for any extreme of generosity. Mr. Bach, now a wealthy man, visits the scenes of his boyhood days in his auto and meets farmer Brown, his boyhood friend. Brown is the father of a very pretty daughter named Tessie. Bach becomes deeply smitten with the artless little country lass, and secretly hopes to win her. Tessie, however, has a host of admirers in the little village, the favored one being John Watson. John is a bit superior to the other fellows of the neighborhood. He reads novels and has a good line of persuasive talk with which to embellish his suit for Tessie’s heart, and he is successful, to the violent perturbation of the other swains. Now Tessie is of course pleased with the notice bestowed on her by the rich bachelor, but her heart is true to John. A few days later Mr. Bach, lovelorn, revisits the homestead. His presence stirs John up to deeds of determination. In this frame of mind he seeks Tessie and plans to elope that very night. He will be beneath her window with a ladder. Mr. Bach, to remain at the homestead, uses the subterfuge that his auto has become disabled and would like to spend the night with his old friend Brown. Brown is delighted for he has discerned the attention Tessie has exerted. To accommodate Mr. Bach, Tessie is put out of her own room by her father and the room given to Mr. Bach. Oh! Horror! This spoils the plans for the elopement. Curse the luck! Poor Tessie is locked in the adjoining room out of reach of John. John arrives beneath the window, and calls “Sweetheart, I am waiting,” repeating it a number of times. He cannot understand why he does not get an answer, so throws several pebbles through the window. At length, growing impatient, he places the ladder and climbs into the window, encountering the astounded Mr. Bach, who, mistaking him for one of those sinister intruders, a burglar, is about to throw him out, when he explains the situation. This is very odious news to Bach, but as “all the world loves a lover,” his heart softens and he consents to aid the couple in their flight. In other words, he leads the wedding march by piling them into his auto and speeding to the nearest minister’s abode. Brown soon learns of his daughter’s

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escape from the room in which he locked her, and fearing the very thing that is happening, starts out in pursuit in a buggy, arriving at the minister’s just too late to forbid the bands but in time to give his paternal blessing to Mr. and Mrs. John Watson. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 5, 1911

While visiting the old homestead, a rich bachelor of a certain age falls for Tessie, a country lass, who is also being courted by a handsome, novel-reading young man, John, and a comic rural type. Upon a second visit by Mr. Bach, it becomes obvious that the father favors the bachelor’s suit, much to the anger of John, who proposes to Tessie that they elope. Determined to stay the night, Mr. Bach pretends that his car is broken. The father puts him in Tessie’s room, and locks her in an adjoining spare bedroom without a window, thus confounding the plans for the elopement. That night, John calls and throws rocks at Tessie’s window and finally climbs a ladder into her room only to find Mr. Bach. Upon learning of John and Tessie’s love, Mr. Bach relinquishes his suit and helps them escape in his car. The father and comic suitor pursue in a horse and cart, but arrive after they have been wed. As a result of Mr. Bach’s intervention, the father, John and Tessie are reconciled and drive off in Mr. Bach’s car, leaving Mr. Bach and the comic suitor in the horse and buggy.

Although The Moving Picture World (January 28, 1911) praises the film’s realism on the grounds that it “depicts what actual people would do under similar circumstances”, this is actually the standard plot of the older man stepping aside to allow the union of a young couple. In 1909 Biograph had done the same story as a drama with a Spanish setting, The Eavesdropper (DWG Project, #123), and here it is done as a rustic comedy. The character of the comical rustic suitor may not seem strictly necessary for the plot, and has no equivalent in The Eavesdropper, but nonetheless performs an important structural role in When A Man Loves. He appears in the first shot, courting an alternately amused and exasperated Tessie. During Mr. Bach’s second visit, both he and John interfere with the bachelor’s efforts to court Tessie. While the father angrily dismisses John, Mr. Bach takes care of the rustic by giving him money to leave. When John first appears under Tessie’s window the night of the elopement, he calls “Sweetheart, I am waiting!” only to be disturbed by the rustic, who enters carrying a bottle of liquor (presumably bought with Mr. Bach’s money) and weaving drunkenly under the window. John ducks out of sight. Mr. Bach looks out of the window and, in a series of five shots, the film cuts back and forth between the bachelor at the window and the comic suitor down below. The rustic drinks, waves and finally staggers off. Thus we have a symmetrical exchange of roles: Mr. Bach, in Tessie’s place, is courted by the rustic in John’s. This pairing is repeated at the end of the film when Mr. Bach and the rustic find themselves together in the horse and buggy. The rustic’s smile at Mr. Bach and flick of a limp wrist marks them again as a couple in an epilogue which nicely echoes the structure of doubling set up earlier. The film has more shots than any of the ones I viewed for this year (ninety-five, while the others ranged from forty-seven to sixty-six). The fast cutting rate is not so much a function of the final chase, which is brief and relatively perfunctory, as of the amusing scene in which John comes to Tessie’s window. The editing here is complex. It is a variant of typical Griffithian room-to-room cutting – from the space beneath the window to Tessie’s secondstory bedroom to the adjoining spare bedroom. It also involves cutting from the bachelor at the window to the ground below (not an eyeline match, since the characters on the ground are framed from straight on, but unmistakably suggesting what the characters are supposed 233

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to be seeing) and, when John climbs the ladder into the bedroom, matches on action. Cutting between adjacent spaces is used for humor here, not only in the substitution of the comic suitor for John, but, also, in a joke about the rocks John throws at the window which hit a mystified Mr. Bach inside. The pace of the editing is instrumental in maintaining the quick tempo so important to farce. This is, of course, a device which will become crucial in the Mack Sennett comedies. The acting in this comedy is much broader than we have seen in the dramas, with a great deal of pantomime, as when George Nicholls mimes to Tessie that the bachelor is rich, when Mary Pickford, about to be moved to the spare room, mimes to the audience that she will not be able to elope, and when Dell Henderson, up in Tessie’s room, reacts to the rocks that keep hitting him on the head. Lea Jacobs

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306 BIOGRAPH

THE LESSON Filming date: 26/28 October, 2 November 1910 Location: New York Studio/Fort Lee, New Jersey Release date: 19 December 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 22 December 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Dell Henderson [“The Fourth Commandment”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: W. Chrystie Miller (Reverend Hollister); Joseph Graybill (James, his son); Stephanie Longfellow (Ruth); Verner Clarges (Doctor); Jeannie MacPherson, ? (Friends); Charles H. West, Edward Dillon (In first bar); Guy Hedlund, W.C. Robinson (In second bar); W.C. Robinson (Bartender on street); Robert Harron (Young boy); Alfred Paget, George O. Nicholls, Dell Henderson (Policemen) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (Dutch intertitles) INSPIRED BY THE GREAT COMMANDMENT “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” – Ex. XX-12. Particular stress might be consistently put upon this precept, but woe betide those who are indifferent to this commandment, for our parents are ministers of God, and those who offer an affront to his minister irritate God. This Biograph subject teaches a most powerful lesson by showing the awful result of filial indifference. The Rev. Mr. Hollister, nearing the last mile-stone of life’s journey, has but one ardent wish, and that is to see his son James wearing the cloth that he must now lay aside on account of his old age. The boy has had the advantage of an example in religious principles, but he has needed the guiding solicitude of a mother, she having long since died, so that James and his sister Ruth are raised by their father, the old minister. The old father loses no opportunity to point out the better way for James, hoping that he will follow in his footsteps. Ruth is also solicitous, she feeling that James is guilty at times of disobedience in which conjecture she is right. James instead of harkening to his father’s plea, though he ostensibly pretends to, spends most of his time in the corner saloons, becoming more addicted to drink, until through moral frailty the habit is formed to an irrepressible degree. The old minister’s condition takes a sudden turn for the worse and upon the arrival of the doctor Ruth is informed that her father has but a few moments to live. The old man calls for his boy, but he at this hour is in a saloon intoxicated, rejecting the peruasions [sic] of even his companion to go home, for they are cognizant of the good man’s weakness. Ruth knows too well where her brother is at this moment and can imagine his condition, but she conquers pride and goes out to search for him. Entering the saloon, she finds him in an almost helpless condition. The saloon-keeper, appreciating her embarrassment, begs her to leave, he intending to send the boy home. James misconstrues his actions and strikes him in resentment of a fancied insult, felling him. In the fall, he strikes his head on the foot rail and when the police arrive they find the brawl has resulted fatally for the saloon-keeper. In the excitement Ruth has gotten James out and to home, where he arrives only a few minutes before the messenger of death. The police learn

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who delivered the fatal blow and go to get him. Ruth hears them entering and intercepts their entrance into the sick room, begging them to hold off that her father may be kept in ignorance and his last moments peaceful. This they consent to do and when the old minister breathes his last the boy is taken away to pay the penalty of his indifference to the greatest of God’s commands. Biograph Bulletin, [?], December 19, 1910

An ailing minister wants his son to follow in his footsteps, as indicated by his request that his son put on his frock coat. Although doing this, and seeming to respect his father’s wishes when at home, the young man then goes out to drink at a saloon and returns home drunk. Sometime later, when the old man takes a turn for the worse, his daughter goes to search for her brother in the bars. She finds him drunk and uncooperative. When the barkeep tells her to leave, the young man becomes distraught and strikes him down. The barkeep hits his head on the footrail and dies. Sister and brother leave for their home as the police arrive in the bar and then pursue the culprit. They arrive at the house as the old minister is dying. The girl persuades them to wait, and brings the frock coat for the boy to hold. The old man dies without knowing what has become of his son. The police then arrest the young man, and the sister is left holding the frock coat.

The New York Dramatic Mirror (December 28, 1910), presumably Frank Woods, notes; “The moral of the story was said to be based on the commandment that teaches ‘Honor thy father and thy mother and thy days will be long before thee,’ but on closer analysis the lesson taught seemed to be more strongly one of temperance, while the important climactic situation was the fine touch of human sympathy that left the father to die in ignorance of his son’s downfall.” The film is one of Griffith’s temperance dramas, like A Drunkard’s Reformation (1909), but unlike that film it depicts the hero’s decline without any reversal, without even an attempt at reform (in this sense it is more like the play, a dramatization of Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir, viewed by the father of A Drunkard’s Reformation, and like earlier temperance drama [Gunning, p.163]). The Moving Picture World (December 31, 1910) review provides some insight into the appeal of these sorts of stories, which follow the ineluctable downward path of the protagonist: “Like the horrible examples graphically shown in the goody goody Sunday school books these films possess a fascination which cannot be denied, yet perhaps few would care to acknowledge its influence.” There is a fascination attached to the spectacle of the hero’s degradation and, despite Frank Woods’s claim about the “fine touch of human sympathy” in the film, I believe it is the way this degradation is crystallized in a dramatic situation – about to be arrested at his father’s deathbed – that makes it compelling. The film orchestrates the central situation through crosscutting between the brother and sister as they make their way to the father’s side, and the police in the bar and in pursuit, although the action is not really delayed enough to make it very suspenseful. The entrance of the police at the end is delayed very slightly by showing them enter first at the exterior door of the apartment building, then in the vestibule at the door to the apartment and finally inside the apartment itself. As always when Griffith sets up this kind of room-to-room cutting we need to see every character traverse the space every time they move through it, so that we see all three spaces when the boy goes out to drink, when he comes back drunk, when he goes out on another occasion, and when the sister goes out to find her brother and then brings him back. It would be interesting to learn when Griffith abandons this insistence on spelling 236

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out all of the characters’ comings and goings, for a great deal of screen time is spent on what are merely transitional moments just so he can have those spaces there at the film’s climax. The dramatic situation culminates in a rather clumsy piece of blocking, in which we see the dying father at the left, the policeman near the door at the right and between them in a line the doctor, the brother and the sister. A subsequent grouping, in which the girl holds the father’s hand as the boy kneels beside him and the doctor stands behind, awkwardly obscures the boy’s features. This seems a regression from the kinds of depth staging that Ben Brewster (Confidence, DWG Project, #131) suggests the Biograph filmmakers were attempting in 1909 in response to the Film d’Art releases. It may be a function of the prominent room-to-room cutting that seems to push Griffith in the direction of frontal, shallow staging. The bar scenes are somewhat obscure and rather interesting. In the first, the young man enters, greets the barkeep and a friend, and then is greeted in turn at the entrance of what seems to be a dandy figure (although, given his ill-fitting clothes, he may be simply a downand-out type who is attempting to dress pretentiously). They share a drink and the dandy sits down, his airs giving the young man much amusement. Later, when the youth staggers out of the bar drunk, the dandy makes a disparaging remark and is ordered out by the barkeep. My bemusement with this interchange is echoed by Frank Woods, who notes that “the character rung in during one of the saloon scenes was well conceived, although it had nothing in particular to do with the story”. I am also puzzled by a later bar scene, this one in a bar with a piano, in which the young man enters, apparently makes a proposition to two men at a table (that they gamble together?) and, after being turned down, goes merrily on his way. Aside from the difficulty of figuring out what is literally supposed to be happening in these scenes, I am puzzled by the shift in tone. With the exception of the third and last scene, in which the barkeep is killed, the drinking scenes are rather gay. Not only do we have the comic byplay with the dandy, but Graybill’s rather stylized performance of male bonhomie. For example, when he takes off the frock coat at the beginning and puts on his street clothes, he repeatedly adjusts tie and jacket, his gestures and expressions emphasizing his pleasure in his natty appearance and also, presumably, the pleasure of anticipation of being out and about and meeting with his mates. At the end of the second bar scene, he waves goodbye to his mates with an elaborate rotation of his right hand while holding his left foot off the ground (a gesture so elaborate that I believe Frank Woods refers to it when he says the actors “sometimes mistook their exits”). I wonder if this aspect of the performance, as well as the dandy figure, introduce traces of a comic, as opposed to melodramatic, view of male drunkenness, and if so, I wonder if there is a precedent for it in vaudeville or elsewhere. The 16mm paper print that I saw had displaced footage. Some of shot 42, in which the doctor tends to the ailing minister, appears in shot 8. Lea Jacobs

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307 BIOGRAPH

WINNING BACK HIS LOVE Filming date: 1/3 November 1910 Location: New York Studio/Location not noted Release date: 26 December 1910 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 24 December 1910 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Anthony Donnelly [“Winning Back Her Love”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Wilfred Lucas (Frederick Wallace); Stephanie Longfellow (His wife); Vivian Prescott (Vera Blair); Edwin August (A friend); Alfred Paget, Jeannie MacPherson (Servants); Charles Craig, Adolph Lestina (Waiters); Verner Clarges (Leaving restaurant); Joseph Graybill, Guy Hedlund, Dorothy West, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Frank Evans, Donald Crisp, George O. Nicholls, Robert Harron, W.C. Robinson, Alfred Paget, Harry Hyde (At stage door) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined), Paul Killiam Collection; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (Dutch intertitles) ONE WAY OF CURING AN INDIFFERENT HUSBAND Heroic treatment is sometimes necessary to correct an ill, and many are the occasions that things go from bad to worse for want of courage, for it does take courage to resort to heroic treatment. Then again, none are so morally blind that they cannot be made to see in reproaching reflexibility the error of their way. Mrs. Wallace is possessed of a disturbing premonition that her husband’s love is waning, and truth to say her fears are well grounded, for, although she doesn’t know of anything conclusively, still there is a reason, and that reason is Vera Blair, a show girl, who, believing Frederick Wallace to be a single man, is attracted by him and successfully fascinates him. He has spent several evenings in her company and now finds her irresistible. Hence, when he receives a note asking him to accompany her to a little after-the-show supper, he hastens to comply. This note falls into the hands of the wife, who is beside herself with grief, when Bob Martin, a friend of the family, appears. Upon learning the cause of her woe, he suggests a plan to cure Fred of his folly. This remedy is to pay him back in his own coin, to-wit: visit the cafe in his company and pretend a reckless abandon, thereby putting the “shoe on the other foot.” Repugnant as this procedure is to her, she is induced to consent as it will mean one thing or the other decisively. Fred has arrived at the stage door and meeting the girl, he is just leaving for the cafe when the wife and friend appear in the distance. They follow and secure the adjoining private booth to that occupied by Fred and the girl. It isn’t long before Fred hears the clink of glasses and a hilarious laugh that is unmistakably his wife’s. Stealthily drawing the curtain dividing the booths aside, the sight that greets him freezes his blood, for there is his wife, with an empty wine glass in her hand, apparently in a state of mild intoxication, accompanied by their dearest friend. In an instant he is towering with rage. His wife in such a place drinking with his friend, outrageous! Ah! but he doesn’t yet appreciate the enormity of his own fault. Getting the girl into another room by subterfuge, he bursts in upon what he deems the guilty pair. Urged by the friend, the wife continues to play her part,

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though her heart is well near breaking, and almost repels. At this point the girl returns for her gloves which she dropped and learns now that he is a married man. She scorns him with even more vehemence than his wife appears to do, and departs, the wife leaving at the same time. Left alone, he now realizes his profligacy and the value of his wife’s love, which he imagines he has lost. As he sits there alone, he is in the depths of desperation when he espies on the table a water glass filled with wine – it is now clear to him. His wife did not drink, but poured the wine into this glass and pretended intoxication to show him the error of his way, which he now sees only too clearly. What a wretch he has been. What a jewel she is to suffer indignity for his sake. Jumping up from the table, he rushes home with a firm purpose of amendment, bestowing upon her look and attention she hungered for. Biograph Bulletin, [?], December 26, 1910

Fred leaves his wife to spend an evening in the company of Vera, an actress who believes him to be single. Some days later, Vera sends him a note inviting him to have supper at Maxim’s after the show. He departs and his wife finds the message and despairs. A family friend convinces her that she has to fight for her husband, and that they should also pretend to have a date. The wife and friend are seated in one table at Maxim’s, Fred and Vera at an adjoining table separated only be a curtain. Fred hears his wife’s laugh and sees her apparently drinking. He sends Vera away and confronts his wife and friend. Vera enters, denounces Fred, and exits. His wife and friend leave also. Fred discovers that his wife had not in fact been drinking – she had poured her wine into her water glass – thus giving proof of her blamelessness. He goes home and the couple are reconciled.

Robert Henderson (p.110) calls the film “slow-moving and pedantic”, but I think it is nicely made. The central situation is the meeting of the two couples, and it is a scene which provides Griffith with some good opportunities for editing while allowing scope to the actors. The encounter between the couples is handled in a variant of room-to-room cutting, showing the husband’s table in medium-long shot and the wife’s from a position somewhat further back. Cutting from table to table allows Griffith to isolate individual gestures and attitudes on the part of the actors, so that the husband’s slow transformation in mood – from flirting with Vera, to suspicion, to suspicion confirmed by a peek through the curtain, to anger that he must hide from Vera, to anger that he freely expresses after Vera’s exit – is handled in six shots, each one detailing a different phase of the response. While actors on stage had had to manage such transitions on their own, some very famously (Brewster and Jacobs, p. 91), this film offers almost a textbook example of how editing could be used to structure a performance. The three shots which bring all of the actors together and reveal the truth of the situation are also well done, although blocking does become a problem here. Having sent Vera out of the room, Fred breaks through the curtain and accuses his wife. Cut back to Vera, who returns to the other table to collect her handbag. Cut back to Fred who stands turned to the left, facing his friend in a threatening posture, the wife standing between them. Vera enters from the right and for once Griffith’s habit of having all the actors stand in a line works to his advantage, since she is plausibly “hidden” from Fred for a moment as she is standing behind his back. The actors’ pause very slightly in a tableau that sums up the scene: the husband accusing the wife while the evidence of his own fault is manifest. Vera then taps Fred on the back to ask what is going on and the tableau breaks up quite naturally. The problem with the blocking occurs somewhat later, after Vera and the wife (both apparently 239

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defiant) and the friend have exited. Fred stands facing front in the foreground and the wife returns at the rear to indicate her true feelings of sorrow; however, all but the very top of her head is blocked from view by the foreground figure. I do not know why they did not retake this, for it mars an otherwise well orchestrated scene. Generically the film is also of interest since the plot bears a strong resemblance to what Stanley Cavel, referring to a later period, calls the comedy of remarriage. These films, which include The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937), My Favorite Wife (Leo McCarey, 1940), and Too Many Husbands (Wesley Ruggles, 1940), present a husband and wife who are initially bored with one another, and are placed in a series of compromising and embarrassing situations that eventually lead to the rediscovery of their love and hence reconciliation. Charles Musser (pp. 262–83) claims that DeMille invented the genre in the late teens with the films Old Wives for New (1918), Don’t Change Your Husband (1919) and Why Change Your Wife? (1920), although I have found at least one contemporaneous example, A Pair of Silk Stockings (Walter Edwards, 1918), and suspect that there are more. What is interesting about the Griffith example is that although it concludes with a “remarriage”, and has the symmetrical tit-for-tat structure typical of the genre, it is not a comedy. The wife is too pained by her husband’s infidelity, and the film is too quick to insist that she is only playacting (hence the device of the wine) while the husband’s outrage at her actions is too extreme. Griffith cannot manage to be light enough in his treatment of marital infidelity nor cynical enough to support the suggestion that the wife might indeed have a very fine time with the family friend. Nonetheless there remain comic moments, shades of the genre to come. It is very difficult, at least for me, to see the moment where Vera taps on Fred’s shoulder as anything but a comic reversal. And the charming scene in which Fred tries to leave Vera’s apartment after having spent part of the evening with her there anticipates the scene in Why Change Your Wife? in which Thomas Meighan tries to escape the enticing clutches of Bebe Daniels and go home to his wife. Lea Jacobs

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308 BIOGRAPH

A WREATH OF ORANGE BLOSSOMS Filming date: 7/8/10 November 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 30 January 1911 Release length: approx. 993 feet Copyright date: 31 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Belle Taylor Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Edwin August (Husband); Florence Barker (Wife); Grace Henderson (His mother); Kate Bruce (Her mother); Dell Henderson (The rake); Donald Crisp, Kate Toncray, Guy Hedlund (Servants); ? (English cousin); Jeannie MacPherson, ? (Friends of the bride); Francis J. Grandon (Business associate); William J. Butler, Donald Crisp (In office); W.C. Robinson, Robert Harron, ? (Movers); Adolph Lestina, Harry Hyde, Alfred Paget, Dorothy West (At party) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative IT SERVES TO POINT OUT THE RIGHT PATH Despair is one of the most intoxicating elements experienced by us, blunting our mentality and driving us to most unreasonable extremes. However, in most cases it needs but a warning voice or sacred recollections to awaken us from our moral lethargy to realize the value of hope. In this Biograph subject the wife was snatched from the brink of an abyss by tender memories of the past. The dressmaker’s pretty daughter meets the son of her mother’s patron while on an errand to deliver a dress. The son is attracted by the girl and later proposes marriage, which she, greatly flattered, accepts. This seems to be a dream to her, but its realization is in marrying the young man. Although the mother of the boy strongly objects to the marriage, still she makes the best of it, and receives the girl in her home as her daughter-in-law. The girl, coming from her humble surroundings is dazzled by her new experience and being rather attractive elicits the attentions of many of the male acquaintances of her husband’s family. One in particular is rather more direct than the others and loses no opportunity to place himself in her way. The simple girl is of course pleased with these little attentions, particularly as her husband is in a mild state of depression owing to business difficulties. The tempter knows this and becomes assiduous in his advances, which are more mildly repulsed by the wife who feels that her husband is neglecting her. At length the crash comes, and the husband is ruined. Everything lost, they are forced to move to cheaper quarters. This is decidedly irksome to the wife as the taste of luxury has in a measure spoiled her. She is in the throes of desperation when the tempter again appears and she becomes an easy prey, consenting to his plea for her to go away with him. Going up to her room to pack her grip, she, while gathering her effects, comes upon the wreath of orange blossoms she wore when she was married. The sight of these blossoms awakens memories of the past and impresses her with the enormity of the step she is thinking of taking. In her mind’s eye she sees herself arrayed in her wedding attire, standing beside the man who loves her with an unselfish, honest love she could not hope to find in the man she

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would take this awful leap with. This decides her and she dismisses the tempter and all thoughts of him. Meanwhile, the husband has been down town where he gets a chance to recoup. Promise of sunshine now hovers over the little home, where a few hours before all was gloom. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 30, 1911

The daughter of a poor seamstress takes a package to the house of her mother’s wealthy employer and meets the lady’s son. The son requests a date and eventually proposes marriage. His mother is horrified and disowns him. After the marriage they live in an elegant flat and she meets her husband’s social set at the parties that they host. Her husband becomes preoccupied with business worries, leaving her vulnerable to the attentions of a rake. After he is ruined, they are forced to move to cheaper quarters. Her husband goes out to look for work. The rake appears and proposes that she leave with him. As she is packing her bags, she finds the wreath of orange blossoms that her husband had brought to her on her wedding day and that they had stored away together after the marriage. She orders the rake out of the house and begins to clean up. Her husband, who has found a job meanwhile, comes home to a cooked supper.

A couple of points in the Biograph Bulletin require comment. First, there is no indication in the print I saw that the husband’s mother accepts the wife. Before the marriage takes place there is a scene in which he tells his mother about the match, she makes a gesture of refusal, he defies her and exits; she then indicates some regret but makes a final gesture of dismissal. This is her last appearance in the film. Her disowning of the son helps to motivate his later financial worries. The Biograph Bulletin’s statement that the marriage “seems a dream” to the heroine does correspond to something in the film. After she meets the boy, he accompanies her back to her house, meets her mother and asks for a date. A narrative title follows: “HER DAY DREAM.” In the next scene, which takes place in her mother’s kitchen, she opens a box of flowers that she has received. The young man enters, proposes, kisses her and gives her a ring. He exits and she shows the ring to her mother. Given the title, one might well interpret this as the girl’s daydream and it is not until the next scene, when the boy is disowned by his mother, that it becomes confirmed that the marriage is “really” to take place. In contrast with the Biograph Bulletin’s comments about the daydream, there is nothing in the film that directly adheres to the description which reads: “In her mind’s eye she sees herself arrayed in her wedding attire, standing beside the man who loves her with an unselfish, honest love she could not hope to find in the man she would take this awful leap with.” Instead, there is a mirror shot in which we see her wearing the wreath of orange blossoms. Of course, this shot does carry some of the subjective weight suggested by the Biograph Bulletin in its description. Although the shot is much simpler, both spatially and narratively, than the example from the 1911 Danish film Ved fængslets port cited by Barry Salt (p.70), it is an early Biograph example of the use of a real mirror in a set. This is a standard plot, and one that Griffith will remake in 1911 as The Voice of the Child. It is also typical of the class of one-reel movies based on what Ben Brewster (in “A Bunch of Violets,” an unpublished manuscript) has called thematic objects, e.g., A Baby’s Shoe (Edison, 1912) in which a man stops short in the midst of stealing from his boss when he finds his baby’s shoe in his pocket. Lea Jacobs

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309 BIOGRAPH

THE ITALIAN BARBER Filming date: 15/16 November 1910 Location: New York Studio/Fort Lee, New Jersey Release date: 9 January 1911 Release length: approx. 993 feet Copyright date: 11 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Joseph Graybill (Tony); Mary Pickford (Alice); Marion Sunshine (Florence); Mack Sennett (Bobby Mack); Kate Bruce (Mother); ? (Youth); Robert Harron, Adolph Lestina, Henry Lehrman (Men buying papers); John T. Dillon, W.C. Robinson (In shop); Donald Crisp, Adolph Lestina, Vivian Prescott, Edward Dillon, Jeannie MacPherson, Lottie Pickford, Claire McDowell (At ball) Archival Sources: George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive (incomplete); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; 35mm nitrate negative, without intertitles (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive, incomplete (Kemp Niver Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master HOW CUPID PLAYS THE GAME OF HEARTS “Sweet Italian Love, mia Italian Love You don’t need the moonlight your love to tell her.” The author of the above lines surely knew his Italian well, for there is no easier victim of Cupid’s darts than the Italian, and the miniature unclothed God has no need to resort to his many time-honored trimmings, such as the moonlight, babbling brooks or shady lanes to induce cardiacal [sic] intoxication. A pretty face, and the Latin gentleman falls. A portrayal of this is given in this Biograph comedy drama. Tony, the barber, on his way to the shop meets little Alice, the newsgirl, who runs a stand on a neighboring corner. He at once becomes smitten and can think of nothing else. Later they are betrothed and little Alice fancies she has made a good catch. However, clouds gather when Alice’s sister Florence, who is a vaudeville artist, returns from her road tour with her sketch partner Bobby Mack, for [sic] the moment Tony sees Florence he transfers his affections to her. Poor Alice becomes aware of the waning of Tony’s love for her and the heavy blow falls when on the night of the Barbers’ Ball Tony escorts Florence thither. Alice being excessively romantic reasons that life without Tony is impossible so she is about to emulate the heroine of a novel she has been reading by terminating her unendurable existence with a pistol when Mack enters. The bullet she intended for her own love-lorn head passes through Mack’s hat, scaring him stiff. Recovering himself, he wants to know the cause of this rash attempt at self-slaughter, and Alice tells him in detail of the inconstancy of Florence and Tony. At first Mack is wild with rage, but on second thought, he realizes that Florence is not worth worrying over as far as he is concerned, and convinces Alice of the same of Tony, so then and there a new vaudeville team is formed, with prospects of something even more serious. Mack invites Alice to go to the ball with him,

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which invitation she most willingly accepts. At the ball the two couples meet and for a moment it looks as if there is going to be something doing. However, the ruffled condition of the situation is smoothed out and each swain is well satisfied with the change of hearts and the quartette [sic] find significance in the dancing master’s call “Hands all around,” “Change your partner.” Hence it is now certain that Alice and Mack the celebrated protean artists will now delight the hearts of the vaudeville fans, while Tony will lather and shave to maintain a home for the ex-vaudeville artist Florence. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 9, 1911

On his way to work at a barber shop, Tony falls in love with Alice, the pretty keeper of a nearby newsstand. Later he escorts her home, proposes, and is accepted. Soon Alice’s sister Florence and her fiancé Bobby return from touring as a song-and-dance team. Tony and Florence are immediately attracted to each other, and upon learning this, Alice tries to shoot herself, nearly killing Bobby by accident. Bobby convinces Alice to replace Florence as his dance partner, and they rush off to the local dance hall to inform Tony and Florence of the switch.

The Italian Barber, with its sudden romantic twists and its quickly sketched characters, is typical of the routine pictures Griffith was turning out during this period between his few really ambitious projects. The review in The Moving Picture World, here quoted in its entirety, reveals much about the problems Griffith was facing in late 1910: Not worthy of the producers. To waste all the good material required to represent a barber as inconstant to a girl, and she equally as inconstant, is expensive amusement. The story is puerile. The actors, having no opportunity, do nothing, and the audience wearily awaits the finish. Such pictures as this, with Biograph trade-mark, cannot fail to shock those who have looked for the best of all American films from this company. With their old capable actors scattered, and weak plays, acted by poor substitutes for their former excellent company, the Biograph pictures no longer attract the attention they once did. (January 21, 1911, p. 142)

Indeed, as Richard Schickel has noted, “as 1910 drew to a close, nearly all the important actors and actresses [Griffith] had developed in his first years at Biograph were leaving – lured away by the independents” offers of bigger salaries and, more important, star billing” (Schickel, p. 155). Mary Pickford is still present, but she made only two more films after The Italian Barber before departing for a stint at IMP; Mack Sennett here has a fairly minor role, as does Kate Bruce. The Moving Picture World would modify its harsh tone only a week later, with the release of His Trust. And other reviewers were not nearly as hard on The Italian Barber. In Frank Woods’s opinion, “a very human comedy-tragedy is here portrayed in a very lifelife and sympathetic manner” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 18, 1911, p. 31). The reviewer for The Nickelodeon even found it novel, with “several character types that are fairly new to the photoplay”, specifically the amorous Italian barber and the music-hall couple; the four main characters get “into a romantic imbroglio that is quite unconventional” (January 21, 1911, p. 83). In its basics The Italian Barber, however, appears unremarkable, repeating setups among a small number of interiors, varied at intervals by shots of a chilly-looking street setting where the heroine has her newsstand. The latter reflects the picture’s winter-time shooting. Unusually for this late date, the intertitles are missing from the paper print, but they presumably would have indicated time lapses in a story that, as it stands, seems to rush along. 244

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As in so many of the technically unambitious films of this period, the main points of interest in The Italian Barber lie in the performances. Mary Pickford is especially effective in the scene where Tony proposes. He gestures flamboyantly as he places the ring on her finger, kissing his fingertips several times and touching the ring with them. (The kissing gesture becomes a motif that characterizes him.) Alice seems a little uncertain, but generally happy, allowing him to kiss her cheeks and embrace her. Yet her response is tepid, as she puts her right arm around him, but not her left. Clearly Pickford is using nicely restrained acting here to contrast with the broader “Italian” mannerisms of Joseph Graybill as Tony. She smiles a bit, but there is none of the ecstatic, fluttery gestures one might expect from a Griffith ingenue becoming engaged. No doubt this restraint is partly meant to hint that Tony is not really the right man for her – since she ultimately will not marry him. Similarly, in the next scene as Alice closes her stall and Tony hurries forward to escort her home, she slips the fingers of her left hand inside his cuff for warmth – a little gesture that subtly conveys their new intimacy. Pickford uses a similar bit of business later, just after Tony meets Florence and is secretly smitten by her. As Alice takes Tony’s hand and swings him around to leave the room, Tony moves into frame center, looking intensely at Florence, who smiles encouragingly at him. Unaware of this interaction, Alice swiftly kisses Tony’s left sleeve, unnoticed by him. With such tiny moments Griffith enlivened his more mundane projects. Stylistically there are some interesting aspects to The Italian Barber. Like other films of this period that are largely based around stringing a series of interiors together, this one indicates that neither director nor actors were keeping track of where off-screen doors were supposed to be. In the shot in the barber shop where the lovestruck Tony’s neglected client stalks out, the man exits directly left at the rear, while Tony’s own exits and entrances from the shop indicate that the door is off foreground left. Later on, when Alice returns to the apartment to retrieve her lost purse and discovers that Tony and Florence are in love, she enters from the door visible at the rear of the main apartment set. Yet she sadly drifts out directly off left, only to be seen in the street returning to her stand in the next shot. (Indeed, the entrances to and exits from this modest apartment suggest that there are three separate doors to the outer world – as happens time and again during this period.) Like other filmmakers, Griffith tended to stage multiple actions simultaneously within the same shot. Here he largely avoids this fracturing of narrative interest until the sixteenth shot, a long view of the apartment where Florence and Bobby enter to join Alice and Tony. Initially the sisters’ introduction of their respective fiancés proceeds in a straightforward manner, but a sudden burst of competing pantomimic gestures ensues. Bobby indicates that he’ll leave, moving with Florence to the door at the right and miming to her that Alice and Tony want to be alone. As this movement occurs, Alice quickly makes a face indicating surprise, then happily moves left to Tony, brushing his lapel and pulling a hair off his shoulder (presumably one of hers). Bobby exits during this, and Florence briefly looks sad. The action becomes more linear here, as Alice introduces Florence to Tony. It is also perhaps interesting that the film uses intercutting without either a rescue situation or an attempt at parallelism. This occurs late in the action, moving between Bobby’s thwarting of Alice’s suicide attempt and the dancehall scene with Tony and Florence. The dancehall shots, by the way, though they seem rather conventional and perfunctory to the modern eye, must have had some appeal at the time. The Nickelodeon reviewer remarked that “the final scene showing a bowery ball is rich in caricature and induced many laughs”. Kristin Thompson

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310 BIOGRAPH

HIS TRUST Filming date: 5/18 November 1910 Location: Fort Lee, New Jersey/New York Studio not noted Release date: 16 January 1911 Release length: approx. 996 feet Copyright date: 19 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Emmett Campbell Hall [“The Trust”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Wilfred Lucas (George); Dell Henderson (Colonel Frazier); Claire McDowell (His wife); Edith Haldeman (Their child); Guy Hedlund, Kate Toncray?, Adolph Lestina? (Black servants); Alfred Paget (Messenger); Alfred Paget, Adolph Lestina, Francis J. Grandon (Confederate soldiers); Mack Sennett, Joseph Graybill, W.C. Robinson (Union soldiers); Jeannie MacPherson, W. Chrystie Miller, Charles H. West, Vivian Prescott, Lottie Pickford (At farewell) NOTE: Reissued by Biograph, 4 July 1916, with His Trust Fulfilled. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Film Preservation Associates, Inc. at Academy Film Archive, 35mm nitrate positive THE FAITHFUL DEVOTION AND SELF-SACRIFICE OF AN OLD NEGRO SERVANT “His Trust” is the first part of a life story, the second part being “His Trust Fulfilled,” and while the second is the sequel to the first, each part is a complete story in itself. In every Southern home there was the old trusted body-servant, whose faithful devotion to his master and his master’s family was extreme to the extent of even laying down his life if required. This Biograph subject portrays a story which in no way exaggerates the selfsacrificing love of the man for his master. The cruel war has just begun and when Colonel Frazier leaves home to join his regiment of Confederate soldiers, he tells George, his bodyservant, to take good care of the wife and child he is leaving behind. A short time after the husband is killed in battle and one of his comrades brings the news of his death to his wife, giving her his sword. This is hung over the mantel. This is indeed a heavy blow to the poor woman, but her burden is made heavier when the Union forces appear, plunder the house and burn it to the ground. When this occurs the child is alone asleep in her crib, it being the hour of her afternoon nap, and the mother has gone for a walk about the grounds for diversion to ease her heartache. The old servant is also out on the farm repairing a hedge. Seeing the flames he at once thinks of the child. Without thought of self, George dashes through the flames into the house where he finds the child on the floor overcome by the heat and smoke, and carries her out placing her safely in her mother’s arms, the poor woman being now in front of the burning house, frantic with anxiety. Recovering somewhat from the effects of his struggle in the house, he thinks of his master’s sword, and at the risk of his life he reënters [sic] the building and secures it. It is not long after that the entire house collapses and a most pitiable illustration is given here of the sufferings of many a Southern woman during that awful time of strife – homeless, with no apparent asylum. George now realizes the

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sacredness of his trust, and taking the heartbroken woman by the hand, leads her and the child to his own humble log cabin, where he gives his all for their comfort, he being content to spread a blanket on the ground outside the door on which to lay his head. Thus far has the servant been faithful to his trust. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 16, 1911

A Confederate officer leaves his home to lead his troops in battle, first entrusting his wife and daughter to George, the head of his household slaves. The officer is killed in battle, and a messenger informs the wife, giving her her husband’s sword. Later, as the wife wanders griefstricken, a band of Union soldiers burns the house. George rescues the child, as well as the sword. He offers his humble cabin as shelter for the pair.

His Trust is justly famous, both as one of the Civil War dramas that Griffith made before The Birth of a Nation (1915) and as half of the director’s first two-reeler. The Biograph Company insisted on releasing the two parts separately, and an introductory title for His Trust (also reproduced in the Bulletin) insisted that the parts were separate, with His Trust Fulfilled being a “sequel” to the earlier film. A four-year gap, plus a distinct difference in the kind of action involved in each film, make the break a logical one. While George’s trust is carried out in heroic action in the first film, he shifts to stealthy self-sacrifice to fulfill it in the second. Both films were enthusiastically received, especially the first one. The Moving Picture World, which had been so hard on Griffith and the Biograph Company only a week before (see the quotation in the notes for The Italian Barber), heaped praise on the new production: The Biograph players have told a story graphically and with dramatic force. They have reproduced accurately conditions which actually existed in thousands of instances all over the South while the war raged, and at its close. And they have done it so well that it holds the attention of the audience from beginning to end. It seems much like the old-time products of the Biograph company. (January 28, 1911, pp. 195–96)

The New York Dramatic Mirror praised it lavishly, noting that “the battle scene was wonderfully real” (January 25, 1911, p. 30). The Nickelodeon agreed, going so far as to suggest, “It is a film of large value and ought to be preserved as an historical document” (January 21, 1911, p. 83). The initial march of the Confederate soldiers past the officer’s house suggests in its staging a dry run for the similar scene in The Birth of a Nation: the soldiers march in diagonally from depth, moving close to the porch and exiting front. Similarly, the officer’s charge before his death, as he waves the Conferate flag, would be elaborated in the Little Colonel’s defiant ramming of a similar flag into a Union cannon. Still, the battle itself is inevitably much simpler than the epic scenes of the later feature. Here some impressive depth shots involving drifting smoke (later echoed in the burning of the house), establish the two armies opposite each other. The oblique shots diagonally into depth along the barricades create an angled shot/reverse shot pattern that obeys screen direction, with the Union soldiers facing right, the Confederates left. The necessity for keeping the action clear of these groups shooting at each other no doubt dictated this care with eyelines. By contrast, virtually all of the contiguous cuts and eyeline matches around the house and its grounds involve inconsistent screen direction. The epic scale of the scene is, in a way, emphasized more in the shot of the battle’s after247

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math. As the officer lies dying in the foreground, a very large number of people, including priests, nuns, nurses, and doctors, can been seen moving about among the wounded in the background. The action is at once distracting and impressive. It is hard to imagine any other director of the era who would have bothered assembling so many extras and costumes for a single shot, and it, perhaps more than anything else in the film, conveys why contemporary reviewers were so enthusiastic. The scene of the house’s destruction involves two primary spaces: a wooded area with a stile near the house and the front of the house itself. A pair of eyeline-match cuts between these spaces are created as first the wife and daughter, then George, look from the stile area to the smoking ruins, again across the axis of action. (It should be noted that there is an inaccuracy in the Bulletin’s description of this scene, since George stops repairing the hedge and tries to save the house before the soldiers set fire to it.) In general, the cutting rate in this scene is if anything faster than that of the battle itself. A notable use of the still-novel device of having an actor emote while facing away from the camera comes as the wife makes a wild gesture of despair after the house’s shell collapses. The ending, as George surrenders his cabin to the wife and child, then beds down outside, hardly offers enough closure to make the story as self-contained as the Bulletin claimed. It is no wonder that some exhibitors ran the two films together and that Biograph itself rereleased them as a two-reeler in 1916. Kristin Thompson

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311 BIOGRAPH

HIS TRUST FULFILLED Filming date: 5/18 November 1910 Location: Fort Lee, New Jersey/New York Studio not noted Release date: 19 January 1911 Release length: approx. 999 feet Copyright date: 24 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Emmett Campbell Hall [“The Trust”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Wilfred Lucas (George); Claire McDowell (Mrs. Frazier); Gladys Egan (Her daughter, as a child); Dorothy West (Her daughter, as an adult); Verner Clarges (John Gray, the lawyer); Grace Henderson (Landlady); Harry Hyde (The English cousin); Jack Pickford [blackface], ? (Youths); Adolph Lestina, Guy Hedlund, Clara T. Bracey? (Freed slaves); Marion Sunshine, Guy Hedlund, Clara T. Bracey, Jeannie MacPherson, John T. Dillon [blackface] (In wedding group) NOTE: Although released separately, His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled may be seen as Griffith’s first two-reel film. They were reissued as such on 4 July 1916. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative THE SEQUEL TO “HIS TRUST” This Biograph subject while being a complete story in itself is a continuation of that told in “His Trust,” the synopsis of which is as follows: The master leaving home at the opening of the war to join the Confederate Army, tells his bodyservant to take good care of his wife and child. The master is killed in battle; the home is sacked and burned, leaving the woman and child homeless, and the old negro, faithful to his trust, gives up his little cabin for their comfort. The only thing saved from the wreckage was the master’s sword. The opening scene takes place four years afterwards. The war has closed, and the negroes leave to enjoy their emancipation, but George remains true to his trust. He has all these years cared for the widow and her child. The poor woman, worn with worry and heartache is stricken and dies. The care of the child devolves upon George, who takes her to the lawyer, with whom he arranges for a home for her, paying for her support out of his savings, enjoining absolute secrecy on the part of the lawyer, [sic] For several years things go along uneventfully until the child now grown desires to go to the seminary to procure an advanced education. To the lawyer this seems impossible, but George when he sees the girl break down and weep, insists that he take the last of his savings and appropriate it for the purpose. This is an awful ordeal which old George goes through, denying himself even the positive necessities of life in order to keep her in school for the full term. However, at the end of the first term there is nothing left of George’s savings and the lawyer is forced to inform the girl that a return to school is impossible. To witness the child’s disappointment is more than old faithful George can stand, and going to the lawyer’s office, he finds a cousin from Europe there inquiring as to the condition and whereabouts of Miss Frazier. George entering the office surreptitiously espies a fat wallet in the Englishman’s coat pocket. His love for the child and his desire to

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grant her every wish leads him into temptation so he takes the pocket-book. However, he has hardly secured it when his better self asserts itself and he puts it back, but not before he is detected. The lawyer knowing the negro’s worth realizes what prompted his action and sends him off. The English cousin later meets the girl and they are betrothed and a happy wedding follows shortly after. Old George at a distance views the festivities with tears of joy streaming down his black but honest cheeks, and after they depart for their new home, he goes back to his cabin, takes down his master’s saber and fondles it, happy in the realization that he has fulfilled his trust. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 19, 1911

Four years later, at the war’s end, the wife and child are still living in George’s cabin. The emancipation of the slaves does not tempt George to abandon his trust. After the wife’s death, George secretly finances the girl’s room and board with a kindly older woman. Growing up, the girl desires to go to boarding school, but George’s savings pay for only one term. Thereafter he nearly steals the wallet of the girl’s wealthy English cousin. The latter falls in love with the girl and marries her.

As I suggested in the notes to His Trust, the two films are very different in the types of story conveyed. While the main characters of the first film – the wife, her daughter, and George – mainly reacted to immediate losses and dangers, by the beginning of this film they have formed a stable little household. George raises crops for the group, and there is no suggestion that the wife has made any effort to get herself and her child out of this situation. One would expect that in the war-time South, even if the pair had no living relatives, the white community would have been shocked to see a white woman and child living in slave quarters and would have found some way to aid them. The oddness of Griffith’s treatment of this situation becomes most intriguing in the shot where the wife dies. Initially the wife gestures at the child and George responds that he will continue to care for her – despite having just learned of the emancipation of the slaves. The wife asks for her dead husband’s sword, which has been hanging on the wall of the cabin, just as it had hung, briefly, on the wall of her house. One might expect that she would give it to her daughter as the sole link between the child and her father. Instead, however, she hands it to George, and I would suggest that the most reasonable way to interpret this is that she personally emancipates George and appoints him the girl’s adoptive father. Interestingly, in the last shot, after the girl’s marriage to her cousin, she makes no attempt to retrieve the sword, which remains in the cabin as a symbol of the trust fulfilled. The gift of the sword is doubly surprising because the wife had seemed so cold to George previously, acknowledging his supreme gift of his cabin at the end of the first film with a complacent nod, seeming to think it only her due. As the wife, Claire McDowell gives a fascinating performance, especially in the sequel. On the one hand, her acting is somewhat old-fashioned, consisting largely of broad, histrionic gestures rather than facial expression (in contrast, say, to Mary Pickford’s performances of this same period). On the other, her stony, imperious bearing seems appropriate to the role, as Frank Woods pointed out: “As the proud, resentful Southern woman that held on to herself until the last moment, the actress did excellent work” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 25, 1911, p. 30). The wife’s puzzling relationship with George raises the question of how racist His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled are. On the one hand, they depend upon the cliché of the exceptionally trustworthy black man who transcends his race and earns respect within the white 250

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world. Still, Griffith avoids the more patently offensive ideas exploited in The Birth of a Nation. The scene of the excited ex-slaves rushing about to spread the news of the emancipation avoids any suggestion that they will commit violence against whites – despite the wife’s fearful reaction. (The shock apparently is what causes her death.) The lawyer who refuses to shake George’s hand is clearly to be seen as acting in a bigoted manner; at the end, having realized the depths of George’s sacrifices to help the girl, the lawyer shakes his hand enthusiastically. The Nickelodeon described the moment in an interesting way: “the final scene, where the white man honors himself by shaking the negro’s hand is in the nature of an apotheosis” (January 28, 1911, p. 112). This formulation suggests that in 1911, His Trust Fulfilled could have been interpreted as a distinctly anti-racist film. Stylistically the film is less ambitious than His Trust, but it does contain a simple eyeline match as the wife looks out the window at the celebrating ex-slaves shortly before her death. The paper print examined has a confusing moment where a title and an inserted letter have evidently been switched. The title “LATER. THE CHILD NOW GROWN DESIRES TO GO TO SCHOOL” is the twenty-third shot of the current print, coming after the girl has already received a letter from the prospective school and told George about it. The letter itself comes as shot 19, which clearly should be the title quoted above. The letter should come as shot 21, which consists only of a brief leader with the word “letter” on it. Kristin Thompson

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312 BIOGRAPH

THE TWO PATHS Filming date: 19/22 November 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 2 January 1911 Release length: approx. 992 feet Copyright date: 4 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy Bernard (Florence); ? (Nellie); Wilfred Lucas (Her husband); Adolph Lestina (Tempter); Clara T. Bracey (Mother); Grace Henderson (Tempter’s companion); Edith Haldeman, ? (Children); Dell Henderson (Worker); Donald Crisp, Alfred Paget, Frank Evans, W.C. Robinson (Footmen); Harry Hyde, Jeannie MacPherson, John T. Dillon, Vivian Prescott, Lottie Pickford, Henry Lehrman? (At party) NOTE: The subtitle of this film is “A Symbolism”, according to main title card. Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc. (format and generation undetermined), Paul Killiam Collection; George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print, 16mm, 403’; The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm acetate positive (incomplete) A SYMBOLISM As we start out on life’s journey two pathways lie out before us, the rosy path of pleasure and the thorny path of toil. The maxim reads: “All roads lead to Rome,” but these two roads lead to widely divergent points. On the path of pleasure we are titillated by the velvet brush of the rose and intoxicated by its perfume until at the awakening we find ourselves morally, mentally and physically debilitated. On the other path, where all is real, we by the trials of toil are kept morally awake and made to realize that pleasure does not bring happiness but peace of conscience will. This truth is clearly verified in this Biograph subject telling the story of two sisters who traveled diverging roads. Florence and Nellie are dressmakers, sewing to eke an existence. A wealthy woman calls for a gown they have just finished. She is accompanied by an unconscionable profligate, who, tempting the girls in turn, points out the “easy way.” Nellie spurns him but Florence harkens to his persuasions and accompanies him to where all is pleasure. He brings her to his mansion, a palace of pleasure during a bacchanal orgie [sic]. She at once becomes obsessed with the spirit of revelry and is swept on to the inevitable goal, the morass of moral indifference. Nellie, however, is content in the house of toil and “She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff,” marrying her honest, manly sweetheart, receiving as the years roll on the greatest of God’s blessings, a family of three children. How terrible is the one’s fate in contrast with the other’s. Steeped in the toxin of gaiety she goes down, down until there is no chance for retreat. She, up to now, the toy of the tempter, grows unattractive to him and he unceremoniously discards her, putting her out to shift as best she can. An outcast, she now realizes the reward of worldliness, “For her home inclineth unto death and her path unto the dead.” Hence, in the squalor of her hovel death comes and she has reached the inevitable. Nellie has been guided by

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the Proverb, “The path of the just is as a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” We realize the result of this as we leave the happy little family sitting by their fireside. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 2, 1911

Two sisters, Nellie and Florence, support themselves and their mother by sewing. A man accompanying a wealthy client tempts first Nellie and then Florence to leave with him. Nellie rejects him, but Florence goes to his decadent apartment and becomes his mistress. Nellie marries a diligent carpenter and raises a growing family. Eventually the Tempter tosses Florence out, and she dies alone and impoverished.

The Two Paths is a simple instance of a fairly common sort of narrative of the era, using intercutting to create parallelism between two storylines. In a very general way it could be thought to prefigure Intolerance (1916), but the handling here is not only far simpler but downright clumsy. After the lengthy opening in the sisters’ apartment, the second scene shows the naive Florence marvelling at the revels going on in the Tempter’s apartment. Florence’s gradual succumbing to the lure of beautiful clothing and strong drink apparently continues across a single evening, despite the fact that it is intercut with scenes of Nellie becoming engaged, marrying, and settling into a life of honest toil. Perhaps the subtitle “A Symbolism” was intended in part to cover over this oddly disparate time scheme. The Bulletin describes the action in the Tempter’s home as “a bacchanal orgie” [sic], though it consists primarily of some high-spirited drinking and a bit of solo dancing. So modestly has Griffith staged this party that he has a footman reveal it only briefly and at intervals by drawing aside a curtain. I should note that Kemp Niver (p. 162) interpreted this curtaindrawing and revelation of the banqueters as “a projection of the future”, presumably a vision of the sort of life the poor young woman can have if she succumbs to his proposition. Yet in later scenes, some members of the party come forward, and the subsequent shots of the same space show the party progressing as if across a single evening. Whatever the intended time scheme of events was, the basic contrast of virtuous toil and frivolous vice remains clear enough. To emphasize the point, the unnamed Tempter is made up with pointed beard and upturned eyebrows, presumably another part of the “symbolism”, suggesting a diabolical figure. (This device was noted by critics: “The tempter was clearly made up to indicate the devil” [The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 11, 1911, p. 30].) Such post-Victorian moralizing was common enough in the films of the period, and especially in Griffith’s (see also Three Sisters [DWG Project, #313]), but The Two Paths perhaps went a bit further than most. The Moving Picture World went so far as to ask a minister to review it as “a religious play”. The Rev. W.H. Jackson took the film strongly to task for its simplistic approach, comparing it to “the street evangelist, a man who on account of an “experience” feels called upon to be a teacher of others”. He deplored Florence’s rapid fall into vice during the party, since “young people DRIFT into sin” rather than jumping into it. Jackson also dismissed the notion of the film as “a symbolism”: “Apart from the symbolic suggestion of the satanic features of the tempter the whole play is as devoid of ‘symbolism’ as it is lacking in truthfulness to the actual, possible and natural” (“‘Moral Lessons’ on the Screen: Two Recent Examples Analyzed”, The Moving Picture World, January 14, 1911, p. 87). Frank Woods, however, reacted more positively, declaring “[i]t would be hard to find a more conscientious preachment, and though it is a sermon in pictures, it shows that a sermon may be brought to earth in a vital and interesting way” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, quoted above). 253

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The film reflects the problems created by the ongoing thinning of the Biograph Company’s acting ranks. Dorothy Bernard is excellent as Florence, suggesting affectingly the rejected woman’s decline and death at the end. The unknown actress playing Nellie, however, comes up with none of the little bits of business that make even the most routine of the Biographs at least sporadically interesting. Quite implausibly, in the first scene she works doggedly away at her sewing machine, failing to register the wealthy customer’s visit or the lengthy temptation and departure of her sister. Indeed, the actress’s pained expression when the Tempter propositions her does not even make it clear whether Nellie struggles against any serious desire to go with the villain or simply is insulted that he would approach her at all. As a result, the contrast in the moral motives of the two sisters remains fuzzy. Despite its problems, like most Biographs The Two Paths has little moments of inspiration. When Florence finally decides to go away with the Tempter, she smiles, holds up the finger with her thimble, removes it, and slips it mischievously into her oblivious sister’s pocket. Bernard could have simply placed the thimble on her own chair, but the little bit of business – in effect teasing her sister about having to stay and work – vividly suggests the bad character that leads to her downfall. There is also a nice echo between Florence’s reactions to the Tempter’s proposition and to his later ejection of her from his house: in both cases she points to her own chest and says “Me?”, naively flattered in the first case, groggily shocked in the latter. Two scenes near the end contain some relatively sophisticated lighting effects: an apparent attempt to suggest a nighttime scene in Florence’s dismal flat, and a simple placement of an arc lamp in the happy family’s fireplace in the final shot. There is also an odd cut that perhaps relates to the development of the eyeline match. At the end of the lengthy first shot of the Tempter’s home, the “palace of the easy way”, Florence moves to him and he embraces her. A cut moves back to the sisters’ apartment, where Nellie sits looking off right front with an annoyed expression, as if watching her sister’s downfall. She shakes her head, says something (perhaps “Oh, well”), and turns back to her work. Since the eyeline match had not yet become a stylistic convention (though Griffith uses it in a simple way in this period, as in His Trust), it is difficult to be sure that this cut plays with a false eyeline match. Still, given Griffith’s later use of characters apparently looking at spaces far removed, the moment is worth noting. Kristin Thompson

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313 BIOGRAPH

THREE SISTERS Filming date: 26/28 November 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 2 February 1911 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 4 February 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Mary); Marion Sunshine (Florence); Vivian Prescott (Adele); Kate Bruce (Mother); Guy Hedlund?, Kate Toncray?, W.C. Robinson, Lottie Pickford (At dancing academy); Charles H. West (Mary’s admirer); Harry Hyde (Florence’s admirer); Edward Dillon, ? (Customers at Adele’s academy); Wilfred Lucas (Curate); Grace Henderson, Claire McDowell (Investigating committee); Alfred Paget (Churchman) Archival Sources: George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (Mary Pickford Collection), possibly not from the 35mm Mary Pickford Collection nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive THE ROMANCE OF A PRETTY SHOP GIRL Dancing is one of the most healthful and innocent forms of recreation known, and yet it may be made harmful. Of course, it isn’t the dancing itself, but the association youth is liable to experience if care is not taken. Mary is the youngest of three sisters and of an impressionable nature. She and her sister Florence are living at home with their widowed mother, while Adele travels on the road with a theatrical company. Adele returns from the road at the end of her season, and is not home long before she realizes that her place is with her mother and sisters. She finds that they neglect their poor old mother, running off to dancing parties every night, and what is worse, associating with a class of habitues no way conductive to their moral health. Adele who is older and more experienced, decides to stay and watch over them. To better effect her plan she hires a hall and opens a dancing academy, thereby affording her sisters a chance to enjoy their favorite pastime under her eye. She is grieved to see that Mary is receiving the attentions of one of the most worthless scoundrels that frequents the place. The only reason for his presence at the academy is to lure innocent girls to their destruction. A sociable is given at the academy and during its progress the Investigating Committee visits it. A young curate is one of the party and he forms quite an attachment for Mary, and appreciating the danger of her present surroundings, resolves to save her from the impending danger, for his interest has ripened into love. However, despite all of Adele’s urging Mary will have nothing to do with the minister. Her ideal is the young good-for-nothing, who seeing Adele’s anxiety to separate them, becomes more urgent and suggests Mary’s going away with him. Mary, of course, consents, for he has only to suggest and she yields. Adele, upon her return from the dancing academy is amazed to find Mary preparing to leave with the contemptible cur. By subterfuge Adele gets Mary into her room and locks the door. She is determined to save her sister at any cost, but how? An idea. She lures the fellow to make love

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to her and at the proper time the other sister releases Mary to see what an unconscionable dog her choice is. He has in a moment transferred his attentions to Adele. The scheme works and Adele then shows the disgruntled scapegrace the door. The minister arrives and after a deal of soft persuasion wins Mary over. Biograph Bulletin, [?], February 2, 1911

Mary and Florence, two working sisters who live with their elderly mother, worry her by going with disreputable men. The eldest sister, Adele, returns from a dance tour and resolves to supervise the pair. She opens a dance school and introduces Mary to a minister. Though the minister is attracted to Mary, she has fallen in love with a young thug. She agrees to run away with the latter, but Adele locks her in the bedroom and flirts with the young man. Mary sees them kissing and after a fit of pique accepts the minister as her suitor.

Though more lively and considerably less preachy than the recent Two Paths, Three Sisters takes the same tack of contrasting the virtuous sister and the naive, easily tempted one. Here the third sister, Florence, has little to do and was probably included mainly to unlock the bedroom door at Adele’s signal so that Mary may see her boyfriend kissing Adele. The Moving Picture World referred to Three Sisters as “one of the company’s famous sermons in pictures”, suggesting that the Biographs had gained a reputation as more moralizing than most companies’ films of the period. The reviewer unkindly concluded, “The film teaches that immorality of various sorts is rife everywhere, especially lying in wait for girls. It has no other interest” (The Moving Picture World, February 18, 1911, p. 370). Fortunately this is not entirely true, though Three Sisters certainly falls among the routine pictures that Griffith was cranking out between his more ambitious projects. The figure of virtue, Adele, is considerably more interesting than the wan, industrious sister in The Two Paths; Adele is good-humored and has a tomboyish swagger that makes virtue seem more a matter of common sense than self-denial. Indeed, Frank Woods commented of Vivian Prescott’s character, “The part of the older sister, the lively, altogether sophisticated girl of the stage, is as fine a bit of character comedy as has been seen on the screen in some time” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 8, 1911, p. 31). Another noteworthy aspect of the film is its quick tempo, both in action and editing. The opening section in particular is staged and filmed at a breakneck pace. Overall the film contains fifty-eight shots (including intertitles), almost exactly the same as in the more action-oriented His Trust, released two weeks before. As Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs (p. 189), have pointed out, the final scene where Adele opens Mary’s eyes by vamping her boyfriend consists of twenty-eight shots bouncing back and forth across three side-by-side rooms of the girls’ home. (This scene is preceded by the intertitle, “MARY PLANS TO GO AWAY WITH THE WORTHLESS YOUTH, BUT ADELE RESOLVES TO SAVE HER.”) Most of these transitions are handled by having one of the three moving through a doorway from room to room, creating frame-edge cuts that briefly match the action. As seems often to happen in Biograph films with movements through doorways, the geography of the whole is rather amorphous. To be sure, screen direction is rigorously maintained, as is usually the case when two or more interiors are cut together. (Contrast this with His Trust, where most movements between indoors and outdoors and between two exteriors – except in the battle scene – have mismatched directions.) The three rooms are a sitting room (left), a sort of combination dressing and dining room (center), and a bedroom (right). In the opening scene, Mary and Florence leave the apartment at the far left rear of the sit256

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ting room, though the door itself is just offscreen. Yet when Adele returns home, she pops in from the right (i.e., the dining room) to greet her surprised mother. The dining room itself does not appear to have an exit to the outdoors, and the bedroom clearly does not, since Mary can be locked in it. We have already seen a similar unclarity in the staged entrances and exits of The Italian Barber; perhaps Griffith and his crew simply did not have the time to plan out such things consistently, even in interiors. There are a few other points of interest. The women who accompany the minister to the dance social are apparently the sort of reformers whom Griffith would later lampoon in Intolerance (1916), though little is done with them here. At various points both Adele and the minister make the common “child” gesture during their pantomime: holding their open hand, palm down, about three feet from the ground. They are referring to Mary here, who is considerably taller than that, so it would appear that this gesture can also refer to youthful innocence and vulnerability in a grown person. Frank Woods considered “especially noteworthy” the comic pantomime as Adele triumphantly ejects the young thug from the apartment after having revealed his fickleness to Mary. There she waggles her thumb repeatedly toward the door, says “Out!” and finally tugs at her own lapel to indicating “throwing out”. Finally, given the dancing motif that has run through the film, it is a clever touch when Adele and Florence break into a brief jig of triumph as Mary finally accepts the minister’s attentions. Kristin Thompson

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314 BIOGRAPH

FATE’S TURNING Filming date: 3/6 December 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 23 January 1911 Release length: approx. 998 feet Copyright date: 25 January 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Ashton Crawford [“Her Wedding Gift”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Charles H. West (John Lawson, Jr.); Stephanie Longfellow (His fiancée); Grace Henderson (Her mother); Dorothy Bernard (Mary, a waitress); Donald Crisp (Valet); ? (Waitresses); Adolph Lestina (Minister); Francis J. Grandon (Doctor); Edward Dillon, J. Jiquel Lanoe (Attorneys?); Kate Toncray, Elmer Booth, Francis J. Grandon (Servants); Claire McDowell, Alfred Paget, Jack Pickford, John T. Dillon, Frank Evans (At hotel); Edwin August, Marion Sunshine, Alfred Paget, Claire McDowell, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Guy Hedlund (At wedding) Archival Sources: Film Preservation Associates, Inc., at Pacific Film Archive (format and generation undetermined, possibly 35mm nitrate positive); George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Ed Foley Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative THE DISASTER OF A FALSE STEP AVERTED There is always a chance given to the most indifferent to correct any error of discretion youth might make, and the heroine of this Biograph subject seemed to be guided by an irresistible impulse along the road to justice. John Lawson, Jr., owing to his father’s illness has borne the burden of business, and unaccustomed to the absolute responsibility, suffers a nervous breakdown. His father now well enough to look after affairs suggests he take the rest cure at a summer resort. This he decides to do, and bidding adieu to his fiancée he departs, arriving at the summer hotel the same day. In the dining hall he is attended by a pretty waitress to whom he takes a great fancy. Several days elapsing, we find him deeply smitten with the girl to the neglect of his fiancée to whom he fails to write. Escorting the girl to her home, they become betrothed, he presenting her with an engagement ring, promising to marry her immediately. This, of course, is a most dangerous step, and after a week or two, John is called hurriedly to his home as his father’s health has taken a bad turn, his life being despaired of. So urgent is the message that he does not have time to see the girl before his departure. His father dies and he in the excitement of the occasion has almost forgotten the little waitress, when a letter of appeal comes from her. John now taking his father’s place in society and business, reasons that an alliance with the waitress is out of the question, and writes to her to that effect. This letter is a crushing blow and she goes to the boy’s home to plead with him that he may be made to realize the disastrous result of his determination. She arrives at a time when there is a “Doll Party” in progress, and comes face to face with John’s fiancée who meets her with scorn. She receives very little better treatment from John himself, and so goes back to her furnished room to suffer alone for the trust she had placed in him. Sometime later she learns that he is to be married and making one last effort takes up her baby and rushes to the home,

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entering just as the marriage is about to take place. Her pitiable condition wins for her the sympathy of all present and a feeling of scorn is directed towards John, especially from his fiancée, who leaves at once with her mother. John, of course, has always loved the girl, and it was false pride that prevented his marrying her. Now this has dissipated in the realization of his duty so the minister who was to perform the ceremony as originally planned, marries John and the poor unfortunate girl. Biograph Bulletin, [?], January 23, 1911

John Lawson, suffering a nervous breakdown, takes the rest cure at a summer resort where, despite his betrothal to a socialite, he is attracted to a pretty waitress and proposes marriage. When forced to return home and attend to his dying father, he decides he must break his latest vow and writes to tell the waitress he can no longer marry her. Distraught, the waitress visits the boy’s home in time to witness a “Doll Party” being held for the first fiancée. She is ordered out of the house, but returns with a babe in arms to crash the wedding ceremony. The bride, overwhelmed, storms out; the bridegroom, repentant but resourceful, uses the minister meant for the original wedding to marry the mother of his child. The ceremony over, the waitress – married at last – collapses dead into a chair.

What did Griffith think he was doing with John Lawson, the rich young man played by Charles West who suffers a nervous breakdown, seduces and abandons a waitress, and finally agrees to marry her when exposed and dropped by his disgusted fiancée? Likely, Griffith thought the challenge was to turn the twelve-year-old Way Down East (1920) formula on its head and make such a character a protagonist instead of the villain. On the other hand, Griffith goes out of his way to make this spineless figure as unattractive as possible, accentuating his fecklessness, surrounding him with snobbish friends and a manservant (Donald Crisp) who, in the best Crisp ultra-snooty manner, does West’s dirty work for him. This appears to have been designed as one of those Biograph tours de force, all events leading up to the flamboyant final scene where in less than two minutes mother and infant disrupt a wedding and the marriage ceremony resumes, one bride substituted for another. But in order to get to that climactic point, Griffith is obliged to design a male protagonist defined by his passivity, moved to action only by the social and business demands of others. The reviewer for The Moving Picture News (Feb 25, 1911, p. 14) was censorious: “We’ve read enough of this sort of late; there’s no need to put them on the screen. Aim of this production unknown.” The hypersensitive, poetic male had already become a Griffith type, especially as played by the ethereal Herbert Yost, but West is used to bring out other aspects of this submissive, sickly character: a faint-heartedness intertwined with cowardice. Griffith plainly had a thing for effete heroes who, enacted by Charles Emmett, Ivor Novello, and Joseph Shildkraut, became part of Griffith’s trademark in the 1920s. What Fate’s Turning has going for it is skillful pacing, imaginative handling of the crowded restaurant scenes, and an intriguing performance from Dorothy Bernard. Bernard as the waitress Charles West wrongs shows Griffith still working within a classic declamatory style, but smoothing and polishing it into a seamless form of choreography. Bernard was a newcomer to the troupe in late 1910 (Fate’s Turning is only her fifth Biograph) who would never rise beyond the second rank of Griffith’s heroines, but she shows flair for making the archaic vocabulary of expressive gesturing appear spontaneous and off-hand. Aside from Lillian Gish, Bernard had the longest career of any Biograph player, acting the maid in the mega 259

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stage hit Life with Father in the 1940s, then in the 1950s becoming a regular cast member on ABC-TV’s long-running sitcom, Make Room for Daddy, starring Danny Thomas. This, incidentally, is the last paper print we shall see for over a year. Not until Iola’s Promise, copyrighted in March 1912, do the paper prints return. By the way, does anybody know what a “doll party” is? Russell Merritt

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315 BIOGRAPH

THE DIAMOND STAR Filming date: 10/12 December 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 20 February 1911 Release length: approx. 996 feet Copyright date: 21 February 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: M.B. Harvey Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Bulletin photograph: Wilfred Lucas (John Wilson); Florence Barker (His wife) Archival Sources: The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A GREAT WRONG CORRECTED BY A NEIGHBOR’S CHILD Indifference is in most cases criminal for it has caused as much woe as any other fault to which man is prone. John Wilson’s growing indifference towards his wife is brought to a climax when he arrives home on this particular evening, after an afternoon with the boys, in an intoxicated condition. A serious quarrel ensues and they separate, but to avoid scandal decide to reside in the same house, occupying different apartments. Practically free to do as he pleases, and suffering somewhat from the result of his hasty step, for he really loves his wife, he goes into the circle of the smart set and is fascinated by the belle. This fair charmer being possessed of a host of admirers, he is flattered by her special attentions to him, making him the favored one. He is destined to become a regular attendant at her house parties. Mrs. Wilson learns of this while on a pitiful secret visit to his rooms during his absence and hears the woman call him up by telephone, she picking up he receiver in answer to the ring. A few days later he is especially honored by a dinner given to him by the lady, but falling into his habitual indifference he forgets all about it. The lady in a huff calls him up by ’phone reprimanding him for his neglect. To make reparation for this slight he promises to give her the most beautiful diamond star obtainable, for which he has heard her express a wish. He gets the star and prepares to send it, enclosing a card reading: “Accept this little peace offering and let us be friends again. Jack.” He places this in his desk drawer to send to the lady that evening. Meanwhile, she alone and heart-crushed is proffered dangerous diversion by an old-time suitor, who on this day calls to take her auto riding. Wilson sees from his apartment the man leaving his wife’s rooms and becomes jealous, which jealousy clears his vision. Realizing his love for his wife and appreciating his own contemptible actions, he is torn with distress. At the office he cannot work, for his mind is ever on his apparently lost love. A little girl next door, having the run of the Wilson apartments, enters John’s room and finds the diamond star while playfully rummaging about the room, and innocently takes it to Mrs. Wilson. She upon reading the card naturally thinks it is intended for her and pins it to her corsage, hurrying to her husband’s apartment to thank him. He having just arrived is, of course, astounded but happy that the star although misgiven is the result of a reconciliation. Biograph Bulletin, [?], February 20, 1911

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When John Wilson comes home drunk, his marriage collapses and he agrees to live separately from his wife in their apartment. His evenings now free, he takes up with a socialite, but uncomfortable with her social ambition, forgets to attend a dinner party she has thrown in his honor. To atone, he buys her an extravagant diamond pin, but before he can deliver it he sees an old suitor leaving his wife’s side of the apartment. Consumed first by jealousy, then remorse, he discovers he still loves the woman he married. A child next door finds the diamond pin while playing in the Wilson apartment and innocently takes it to Mrs. Wilson. Misreading the attached note, Mrs. Wilson assumes the pin is meant as a peace offering and takes her husband back.

The Diamond Star is one of those Biographs currently in limbo: it survives, but is unavailable for viewing at the time of this writing. This is only the second missing Griffith Biograph (Friend of the Family [1909] was the first, and has now become available), but we will encounter an increasing number of inaccessible Biographs in 1911. The Diamond Star’s phantom status points to the momentous shift in the way Griffith Biographs in the middle and late period have been preserved. The paper print collection at the Library of Congress, the source for nearly all the 1908–1910 Griffith Biographs, suffers a mysterious interruption that lasts for exactly a year. The Biograph Company had been systematically depositing paper prints with the copyright office since 1900, but those deposits come to a screeching halt at the end of 1910. No paper print of Biographs copyrighted from 1 February 1911 through 11 March 1912 survives. The great blackout starts with the Biographs Griffith filmed in late November 1910, when he directed The Diamond Star, and extends through all of 1911. Of the seven films Griffith shot in December 1910, only one – Fate’s Turning – survives on paper; then nothing for an entire year. Why these prints should be missing is an enigma. Whether Biograph decided to stop making them, or whether the films were lost en bloc while stored in government vaults, no one has been able to determine. Happily for us, however, two collections of original 35mm negatives now come into play: the first created by Mary Pickford in the early 1920s when she bought dozens of Pickford Biographs from the Empire Trust Company, Biograph’s financial receiver, and which she eventually gave to the Library of Congress. The other is at the Museum of Modern Art, created in 1939 when Robert H. Hammer, the Treasurer of the Empire Trust, arranged for a gift to the Museum of some 880 Biograph camera negatives that extend from 1896 to 1916, complementing the Museum’s earlier acquisition of the Griffith papers. We have already seen individual titles from these – and other – sources, most memorably when in 1997, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto screened three variant prints of The Guerrilla (1908). But the December 1910 Biographs, the first cluster of Griffith films unprotected by paper prints, are also the first to depend on the Pickford and Museum of Modern Art collections, illustrating the uncertainties and sparkling possibilities of prints derived from Biograph’s vault negatives. For the next year we are dependent entirely upon negatives subject to commercial alteration, early irregular storage practice, and nitrate volatility, but also capable of displaying Griffith’s work as it was meant to be shown, in pristine 35mm. The December batch prepares us for the best and the worst: What Shall We Do with Our Old, a lustrous Museum of Modern Art print made from a Biograph original negative, but missing almost all its exterior shots and, in the absence of original titles, fitted with new titles created at Blackhawk; Heart Beats of Long Ago, a complete 35mm print with original titles, but horribly scratched; The Lily of the Tenements, a lost 35mm which happily survives in 16mm but lacks original titles; A Decree of Destiny, complete and pristine, part of the Pickford collection at the Library of Congress; and The Diamond Star, condition unknown. 262

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Lacking a print, what is available on The Diamond Star (plot synopsis, a single production still, and a few trade reviews) points to an O. Henry-style story featuring a naive, modern couple and an ingenious if implausible twist ending. True to the O. Henry formula, the city itself is marked by up-to-date innovations: an extension telephone, a roadster in Central Park, and the latest dance steps among the fast set. In this case, the signature trick ending involves a reconciliation based on the wife’s misinterpretation of an expensive gift intended for her husband’s mistress. Biograph had used a similar plot device two months earlier where in A Gold Necklace, directed by Frank Powell, misunderstandings that derive from a misdirected necklace are made farcical. In The Diamond Star, the O. Henry twist takes a darkly cynical turn: the hero not only gets away with adultery, his wife forgives him on the basis of misinformation. Mainly reviews hint that the material was growing a bit stale. The reviewer for The Moving Picture World (March 4, 1911) gently hinted, “There is something of a sameness which in a way has the effect of creating a feeling that possibly the subject has been overworked.” In fact,The Diamond Star was directed just as Griffith was being weaned away from comedies in order to concentrate on his pastorals, romances, and serious dramas. Not only had Frank Powell taken over directing the Pickford-Quirk comedies. The day before Griffith completed production on The Diamond Star, Powell started a series of Priscilla comedies, starring Florence Barker who played the wife in The Diamond Star. A gifted comedienne, Barker became a regular in Powell’s Biograph company out in California. The Diamond Star was her last work for Griffith and her last dramatic role at Biograph. Russell Merritt (EDITORS’ NOTE: A viewing print of this film was struck in September 2000. The entry for this title will be updated in Volume 9 of this series.)

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316 BIOGRAPH

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD Filming date: 8/16 December 1910 Location: New York Studio/Fort Lee, New Jersey Release date: 13 February 1911 Release length: approx. 994 feet Copyright date: 15 February 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: W. Chrystie Miller (The old carpenter); Clarie McDowell (His wife); Francis J. Grandon (Policeman); George O. Nicholls (Judge); Adolph Lestina (Doctor); Guy Hedlund (Carpenter at the vice); Donald Crisp (Court officer in foreground); Wilfred Lucas (Violent jailbird); Elmer Booth (His victim); Vivian Prescott (Prostitute on witness stand); William J. Butler, Edward Dillon, Alfred Paget, John T. Dillon, W.C. Robinson (In shop); Frank Evans, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Guy Hedlund (In court); John T. Dillon (In jail) Archival Sources: The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A STORY FOUNDED UPON AN ACTUAL OCCURRENCE IN NEW YORK CITY “What shall we do with our old” is a greater problem than we realize at first casual thought. There is the pension for the soldier, but for the useful citizen wounded in the battle of life – nothing. In this army we find the ambitious, public spirited men, wearing away their physical and mental faculties in their struggle for a livelihood while shouldering the wheel of progress, under which juggernaut they are almost inevitably crushed. This Biograph subject illustrates the old carpenter starting off for work in the morning leaving at home a wife old and ill. At the shop a new foreman is put in charge, and a weeding of the old hands takes place, as the employer insists upon an infusion of young blood among his employees, hence the old man with others suffers the penalty of being old – discharged. At his age he finds it impossible to obtain employment, and having been active and independent all his life is too proud to seek charity. Later, his savings having been exhausted and his wife now seriously ill, starvation promises to be their lot. He goes out to make a last effort for work, and on his way passes a residence before which stops an automobile. Two ladies alight, one carrying a dog for which the couple show great solicitation and care. As he views this scene, the old man cannot help feeling that a dog’s lot is preferable to his. Weary and hungry he is driven to make a desperate attempt to obtain food by breaking into a butcher shop and stealing a basket of provisions. He is caught, however, by a policeman before he has gotten a block away and taken to the Night Court. Here, of course, his story is the oft repeated one, and little credence placed in it, so he is put back in the pen. The judge, a kindly disposed man, fearing he might have made a mistake, sends the officer to investigate. The officer returns with the report that the old man has not exaggerated the case. The judge then releases the old fellow and sends the officer home with him with aid – financial, medical and material. But it is too late, for the poor woman’s life has gone out during her husband’s forced absence. Biograph Bulletin, [?], February 13, 1911

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An elderly carpenter is laid off when new management takes over his shop. Too old to find new work, he desperately seeks other ways to feed his ailing wife. When he notices wealthy women lavishing attention on a pampered dog, he bristles and breaks into a butcher shop. He is quickly arrested and brought to night court. By the time the judge investigates and provides him with food and medical assistance, it is too late: he is freed from jail only to find his wife dead.

After the brilliant tour de force of A Corner in Wheat, it is possible to underestimate the quiet virtues of What Shall We Do with Our Old, made over a year later. This was the first protest topical Griffith had made since his 1909 masterpiece, and he returns to a more conventional form, dramatizing the inadequacy of old age care in industrial America with a straightforward story about a carpenter who, laid off without a pension, is forced to steal food for his ailing wife. Crosscutting, at the heart of A Corner in Wheat’s radical charge, is limited here to several cut-aways: back and forth from W. Chrystie Miller, as he sinks deeper into trouble, to his ever-deteriorating bedridden wife (see Note in last paragraph). Nor does the film have anything like the scope of A Corner in Wheat. Like the other topicals that follow it, What Shall We Do with Our Old works entirely within the conventions of the personalized anecdote. Yet even in its incomplete form, lacking all but one of its exterior shots, the film displays surprising force. For once Griffith avoids scapegoating the philanthropies that try to help (“the know-nothing crowd from Fifth looking after Third”, as a reviewer of Three Sisters called them) or demonizing the foreman who, performing his job, lays off the old men. The judge and policeman who investigate and rush to the old man’s rescue are neither incompetent, hypocritical, nor insensitive. The judge’s spontaneous gesture of paying for the care of the old man’s wife plainly registers as a selfless, generous act (possibly even an homage to the look-alike judge, Louis Brandeis, who had recently come into the national spotlight as a champion of Massachusetts’ pension system). In What Shall We Do with Our Old, Griffith comes as close as he ever would to presenting an injustice that was systemic to unregulated free enterprise, beyond the control of individuals or the courts. The Biograph Bulletin claimed Griffith’s story was “founded upon an actual occurrence in New York City”, but most likely it sprang from the same source that provided its title: Richard Washburn Child’s article “What Shall We Do With the Old?” that had been written a year earlier for Everybody’s Magazine. Child’s article, published in September 1909, worked with anecdotes to argue the need for old age insurance, referring to an elderly carpenter who made chairs until he collapsed and then became unemployable. Instead of a dying wife, Child gave his man five children, each incapable of helping their father, forcing the old man to fend for himself. Biograph’s story of the theft, the courts, and the incarceration was apparently invented for the film. It is worth noting that, despite the raging debates over old age pensions in the contemporary press, Griffith was working an issue that had attracted few if any muckrakers in the other arts. Frank Norris, Jack London, and the short story writers for McClure’s – the famous sources for Griffith’s other topicals – were curiously silent on the subject of retirement care. In fact, it is hard to find any play, novel, or short story written on the plight of the elderly before the 1920s. Part of the reason may have been that the battle lines were so curiously drawn, resisting easy polemics. Old age pension was an issue that divided Socialists, labor leaders, and industrialists alike, creating strange alliances and unpredictable positions. Two 265

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of the strongest opponents were Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs; two of the most important advocates were Andrew Carnegie and railroad magnate Edward Harriman. One consequence: amidst a flurry of social legislation passed while Griffith was at Biograph – legislation on child labor, collective bargaining, housing conditions, work safety, food and drug inspection, election reform – old age welfare was the one issue that produced nothing. The reviewer for The Moving Picture World (February 25, 1911, p. 431) wrote, “It would be well if all those state legislatures which are struggling with the question of old age pensions could see this picture”. But if any legislator did, it made no difference. No federal legislation was ever passed regarding social insurance during the entirety of the Progressive era. None would be passed for another twenty-five years. Long after European countries had created government protections, the issue in the United States remained wide open. Symptomatically, the issue is left open in Griffith’s movie too. The carpenter’s company shows callous indifference toward its elderly workers. As the scene in the workshop forcefully illustrates, the manager cares more for the used tools he confiscates than he does for the used-up workers he fires. But in suggesting a remedy, the film doesn’t offer much beyond the idea that the old man should be given another chance to keep working. As the Bulletin states and the lost original titles may have repeated, “Having been active and independent all his life [the old man] is too proud to seek charity.” This was the crux of the debate: how to create income for retirement without recreating the welfare system pioneered in Germany and developed elsewhere in Europe. Griffith is satisfied to dramatize the plight of the victim. As for solutions, he limits himself to portraying the inadequacy of voluntarism. The staging of his big scenes shows Griffith full of self-confidence, working out colorful variations of a basic blocking device that has been evolving since early 1909. Here a single minor character is placed in the foreground, where he stands still, either idle or performing a routine task. Visually, however, he provides a counterpoint to the main narrative action by directing sharp glances (and thereby directing our eyes) to other activities around him. Each of the three heavily populated scenes – the ones in the workshop, the night court, and jail cell – has its anchorman, and each of the anchormen generate colorful mini-dramas without ever moving. In the carpentry shop, it is the handsome young man (Guy Hedlund?) who expertly chisels a chair leg while he continuously darts glances around the room as the foreman weeds out the old men. In jail, it is evil-looking Wilfred Lucas, mao-maoing everyone around him and eventually assaulting Elmer Booth. These are roles made for a scene stealer like Donald Crisp who milks the part of the slightly bored, supercilious bailiff for all it’s worth. Oblivious to our protagonist and his troubles in the court, Crisp serves as a kind of traffic cop, directing witnesses on the stand (most notably the outrageous Vivian Prescott) and keeping his mordant eye on onlookers in the back row. Finally, an “archival” note: There may also have been a thematic match cut in the original version of this film; the relevant shots are missing from the negative at the Museum of Modern Art. Griffith shows the old man contemplating a wealthy woman preening her pet dog. The Biograph Bulletin notes, “As he views the scene, the old man cannot help feeling that a dog’s lot is preferable to his wife’s.” The assembly sheets, also at MoMA, indicate three missing pairs of shots (numbers 5 and 6, 8 and 9, 12 and 13). The first two pairs might have made the comparison explicit by providing cutaways from the coddled dog to the starving wife. Not that this kind of heavy-handed editing would have made What Shall We Do with Our Old a better film, but Griffith had done something similar in A Corner in Wheat when he cut away from the revelers at the Wheat King’s party to hungry ones in a bread line. Russell Merritt

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317 BIOGRAPH

A DECREE OF DESTINY Filming date: 2/17 December 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 6 March 1911 Release length: approx. 995 feet Copyright date: 7 March 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: Virginia K. Tucker Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mary Pickford (Mary); Marion Sunshine (Edith); Joseph Graybill (Kenneth Marsden); Clara T. Bracey (Aunt); Claire McDowell (Nun); John T. Dillon [blackface](Servant); George O. Nicholls (Priest); Adolph Lestina (Doctor); Donald Crisp, Alfred Paget, Edward Dillon, William J. Butler (At club); Kate Toncray, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Donald Crisp (At wedding); Grace Henderson (At “taking of the veil”) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate negative (Mary Pickford Collection); two 35mm nitrate positives (Mary Pickford Collection), negative sources undetermined THE RESULT OF AN IMPULSIVE GIRL’S VOW In this Biograph subject is presented a most delightful story of two sisters, who, brought up in a religious atmosphere, place an importance upon the efficacy of prayer that is beautiful. Kenneth Marsden, a young artist in failing health is advised to go South where the balmy air is conducive to a betterment of his condition. Acting upon this advice, he leaves his club friends after a little good-bye spread and is soon in New Orleans, where he expects to find accommodations with an old-time friend of his mother. The old lady receives the son of her dear friend with open arms, but her two convent-bred nieces, Mary and Edith, are horrified at the thought of a man in the house. However, it isn’t long after his arrival that he has made a decided impression upon the young ladies, but no more than they have impressed him. Kenneth is at a loss to know which of the two he cares most for, as they are both so gentle and artless. Still, he feels that Mary likes him for he reads her more clearly than Edith. Still he is impartial in his attitude towards them. Some time later, while out for a stroll, he is caught in a rain-storm and drenched to the skin. The old lady is prompt in her solicitude for his condition, and though she administers preventives he is stricken down with pneumonia and for a time his life is despaired of. The two girls are ever in the extreme of anxiety and when the time of the crisis arrives Mary’s disquietude becomes so intense that she goes and kneels before the little shrine to the Blessed Virgin in her room and prays for his recovery vowing to consecrate herself to the church if her prayer are answered. While she prays there is a turn for the better in Kenneth’s condition, and the doctor assures them that he will recovers. A few days later finds him convalescent, and realizing that Mary’s solicitude is induced by love he is about to make his choice between the two sisters, and in fact he at first receives encouragement until she remembers her vow and recoils. This episode is witnessed by Edith, who goes to her room almost heartbroken. Mary upon going to the room finds Edith in tears and learning the cause, plans a subterfuge to send to Kenneth. Well, the outcome is that two weddings take place, the spiritual and the material. Mary is wedded to the church in a scene

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showing the beautiful ceremony of a postulant receiving the veil, while Edith is wedded to Kenneth. The receiving of the veil is presented with absolute authenticity. Biograph Bulletin, [?], March 6, 1911

Two convent-bred sisters, Mary and Edith, fall for a sensitive, sickly artist who has come to live with them in their aunt’s house. When he is caught in a rainstorm and contracts pneumonia, Mary promises the Virgin Mary she will become a nun if he recovers. He rallies, his love for Mary grows, but true to her vow, she contrives for him to marry her sister while she goes off to take her vows.

Before we get to A Decree of Destiny, a word about the second banana. For once, the one to watch is not Mary Pickford but the actress who plays her sister, fluttery-eyed Marion Sunshine. Sunshine was an anomaly among the Biograph players: a famous vaudeville star who apparently decided to join Biograph on a lark while waiting for her partner to rejoin Tempest and Sunshine, a highly successful stage act. Sunshine’s career at Biograph was short, a three-month interlude sandwiched between vaudeville seasons, then in 1911 another month while waiting out the summer doldrums. But among the second tier Biograph players Sunshine’s career was the most remarkable: after returning to the stage, she went on to become a successful lyricist, playwright, singer, and dancer. Born as Mary Tunstall Ijames to a Cuban-American family living in Louisville, Kentucky, she started her professional career at age five (she was one of the baby princes murdered by Robert Mantell in Richard III). By the time she appeared at Biograph, she had been a vaudeville headliner for almost ten years, a specialty singer who played piano and performed sentimental parlor ballads. Paired with male-impersonator Florenze Tempest (“Our American Boy”, according to the cover of one song sheet), she honed what Scott Simmon has dryly called “complexly gendered stage shows”. Sunshine, according to Arvidson, inadvertently caught Griffith’s eye while he was walking down Broadway. Reluctant to approach Sunshine himself, Arvidson claims, Griffith had a friend do it for him, and was surprised to discover that the young woman was both a celebrity and a movie enthusiast. Biograph acknowledged the coup by coming as close as it ever would to identifying an actor: it named her first film Sunshine Sue and created for her the role of a musical Southern belle who sings “the old fashioned songs” (perhaps a nod to her vaudeville specialty, “Mary, You’re A Little Bit Old Fashioned”) and whose talent at the piano links her to father and faithful country beau. Thereafter, Sunshine settled, apparently without complaint, into the regular talent pool, not given another lead until her return in 1911. Then she came into her own with what Simmon calls a “vibrantly brilliant mime” performance of the young heroine in The Rose of Kentucky. But in 1910 she was no match for Pickford and was given secondary roles like the one we see in A Decree of Destiny. It is characteristic of Griffith that he did not permit stage credentials to blind him to the limitations of a screen performance. But Sunshine’s off-screen career took a remarkable turn. She continued working with Florence Tempest for a while, the two of them headlining in revues that included the original Ziegfeld Follies (1912). But after reprising the act in a Mutual two-reeler called Sunshine and Tempest (1915), Sunshine struck off on her own and in the mid-twenties she re-invented herself. Already a moderately successful song lyricist whose songs were performed by Fanny Ward, the Duncan Sisters, Harry Richmond, and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, at the age of thirty she turned to her Cuban roots and started a new career spreading Latin American rhythms. She formed a Carioca band, then toured with 268

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the Don Azpiazu Orchestra, writing the songs and appearing as their singer. Her smash hit became a rhumba standard – “The Peanut Vendor” which she wrote in 1931 as a Cuban pop song “El Monsieur” – and other Sunshine songs were widely performed on the Latin circuit. By the mid-1940s, Ella Fitzgerald, Tito Puente, Xavier Cugat, Judy Garland, and Stan Kenton had all recorded her work. When she died in 1963, she bequeathed a scholarship fund to the Julliard School of Music. Movies were strictly a diversion. A Decree of Destiny was the last film she made during her original round at Biograph; when she returned the following summer, she continued in several similar sister roles, played walk-ons in three or four other titles, and then returned to the greener pastures of musical theater. Biograph did not lose an irreplaceable presence, but her work in A Decree of Destiny hints at a charming stage personality. She plays off Pickford with wonderful restraint: a subdued, non-threatening complement to the energetic, comically resourceful Mary. The film itself is a comedy of manners with a strange twist. By now Griffith had been creating matched pairs of sisters for two years, starting with The Girls and Daddy (1909) where Florence Lawrence and Dorothy West are dressed and coifed alike and then made to move in tandem. A Decree of Destiny builds on the same principle (an old one, most likely taken from vaudeville sister acts and plays like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Two Orphans). Here the story itself is also grounded in symmetries, with Griffith converting narrative symmetries into symmetries of space. The most flamboyant example is the sisters’ bedroom divided by a curtain into two near-identical sleep chambers, the sisters positioned across from each other, kneeling at prayer in tandem, each hiding a long-stem rose under a mattress, and hopping into bed with the same motions. The parlor works with the same idea, although less obtrusively. Griffith poses the two youngsters screen left across from two tall windows, covered by two sets of white muslin curtains. Within two years, as Yuri Tsivian has argued, Franz Hofer had begun to explore the uncanny, fantasmagorical aspects of sisterly symmetries in Die Schwarze Kugel (1913), making explicit Freudian links between doubling, predestination and loss of identity. By contrast, Griffith uses the graphic parallels mainly for comic effect, creating comparisons to highlight temperamental differences. Both sisters are given the same tasks, the same impulses, the same props, but invariably, Griffith finds ways to make Mary the more vivid, the more impulsive, and more resourceful twin, just as her side of the room is given heftier religious icons (the statuette of Mary and Jesus on the wall) and furniture. She gets to play more with the props, whether the pillow coverlet, the sacred statuette, or the ice pitcher, and of course gets more screen time in order to scheme and pray alone. She also controls the cleverest routine in the movie – returning Graybill’s rose, then bumping backwards into a cabinet so that a plate smashes on the floor. The accident (which looks as though it may have been unrehearsed) triggers her departure and provides the opening for bringing her sister and Graybill together. In so doing, she evolves from sisterly double to stage manipulator. The brief ordination ceremony appears to have been conducted by an actual priest with real altar boys and nuns, or at least by actors extremely familiar with the ritual (the Biograph Bulletin hints at professionals, saying “The receiving of the veil is presented with absolute authenticity”). But as with so many of these anomalous endings in other Biographs, Mary’s decision to take the veil is not easy to judge. The dominant tone, of course, is highly moralistic, Mary’s “spiritual” wedding meant to contrast with Marion’s “material” one. But as the Biograph Bulletin makes clear (the film is subtitled, “The Result of an Impulsive Girl’s Vow”), she may also be the victim of youthful over-zealousness. Part of the strange starkness of so many of these middle Griffith Biographs stems, I think, from Griffith’s consistent efforts at shading and even undermining the moral earnestness of the overt text. Russell Merritt

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HEART BEATS OF LONG AGO Filming date: 19/20 December 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 6 February 1911 Release length: approx. 997 feet Copyright date: 6 February 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Belle Taylor [“The Missing Key”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy West (Daughter); Wilfred Lucas (Lover); Francis J. Grandon (Fiancé); George O. Nicholls (Father); Kate Toncray (Lady-in-waiting); Alfred Paget, Guy Hedlund?, William J. Butler (Guards); W.C. Robinson (Servant); Donald Crisp, Adolph Lestina (Courtiers); Jeannie MacPherson, Kate Bruce, J. Jiquel Lanoe, and others (At the ball) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Dorothy Tayler Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; Nederlands Filmmuseum, 35mm nitrate positive (Dutch intertitles) A STORY OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY In the days of long ago where the heart directed there the cavalier forged his way no matter what the obstacle. Even life was given in the heeding of the heart’s prompting, as this Biograph subject illustrates. A feud existed between two Italian houses and it meant disaster to any one of the belligerents to intrude into the opposing house. The Lord of the house gives a feast in honor of the arrival of a wealthy foreign noble, whom he expects to make his son-inlaw. The daughter, however, has given her heart to the son of her father’s enemy. That he may be present at the festival, she surreptitiously takes her father’s signet ring throwing it to him from the window, which, of course, admits him. The father anticipating the intrusion of his enemies, orders death to any member who enters the hall. After the festivities the unwelcome [sic] betrothal takes place and the forbidden lover braves death to see his loved one. While they are in clandestine meeting a guard is seen to enter the corridor so the girl hides her sweetheart in a secret closet, turning the key and taking it with her. Not finding the intruder, the guard imagines he was mistaken. The favored suitor, however, is suspicious and determines to watch. At this moment the father is called away for a time and as an honor to his son-in-law elect leaves the household in his absolute charge. This move works in favor of the nobleman to more effectively pursue his watch, and going into the corridor finds the forbidden lover’s cap on the floor outside the closet. This situation if exposed would make the nobleman the laughing-stock of the entire courts of Europe, so he vows vengeance. The girl realizes her lover’s danger in the air-tight closet and makes a desperate attempt to release him, but in this she is surprised by the noble who secures from her the key, and despite her order send the guards off whom she has called to break open the door. The guards, of course, must respect his orders as he has been placed in charge by the master. Later the master of the house returns and the nobleman tells the story to him, and sure that the imprisoned lover has met his fate by this time, opens the door. His anticipation was correct for the lifeless form of the forbidden lover falls headlong across the corridor. Biograph Bulletin, [?], February 6, 1911

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When two lovers, separated by feuding families, contrive to meet in secret, they are interrupted by guards and he is forced to hide in an airtight closet. The lover’s fate is sealed when the lady’s father, lord of the castle, departs on business and leaves his daughter’s fiancé in charge. Suspicious and sadistic, the fiancé suspects the concealment and toys with his intended while she tries to free her lover. At last, with her father’s return, the door is opened and the lover is found dead of suffocation.

In this strange little film, Griffith revisits the frights and phobias that had found their fullest expression in his theater days when he was still in his twenties: claustrophobia, fear of entombment, and slow suffocation. Intertwined with paralyzed would-be rescuers who blunder and fail, claustrophobic entrapment is a master motif in Griffith’s stage writings, whether in his vaudeville sketch In Washington’s Time, his unproduced play War, or his published poem “The Wild Duck”. I have argued elsewhere (Merritt, pp. 2–30) that movies represent for Griffith a form of psychological emancipation from the stage, where Griffith replaced his self-lacerating, paralyzed, and impotent stage heroes with a steady succession of protagonists who race through space to liberate and reunite with loved ones. But Griffith never abandoned those stifling older formulas: as late as Broken Blossoms (1919), he has Lillian Gish spinning around in a coffin-like closet waiting to be killed, and in The Struggle, his final film, Hal Skelly plays a helpless drunk locked inside an abandoned attic, raving and collapsing onto the floor while trying to strangle his dumbstruck daughter. Like The Sealed Room and “1776” or The Hessian Renegades (both 1909), Heart Beats of Long Ago is a dramatic throwback to the insecurities of his theater days. Heart Beats of Long Ago reworks the Balzacian device of lovers locked in an airtight chamber that Griffith originally used in The Sealed Room. Now, however, the story has been fitted with a frame taken from Romeo and Juliet that permits extra layers of intrigue, frustration, suspense, and impediment. Entombment fantasies were not uncommon at Biograph. By the end of 1909, Griffith had already shown characters locked inside a vault, caught in the bottom of gravel pit, suffocating under a mountain of cascading grain, and stuck inside a chimney. Infants had been routinely boxed up: shut inside ovens, locked in barrels, trapped under hat boxes, and – an unkillable Biograph moment – placed in a hempen bag where, mistaken for a kitten, a baby is taken out to be drowned. But these, of course, all end in rescue or, in the case of A Corner in Wheat, provide the poetic end for a Promethean villain. What is distinctive about Heart Beats of Long Ago is its parody of the rescue formula. Instead of a great distance broken up into a series of discrete spaces that the rescuer penetrates in order to effect a rescue, the lovers are fatally separated by a single door. Life is not threatened by a weapon, or poison suddenly deflected in a climactic gesture; space itself is the enemy, no longer providing the hero an opportunity to display energy and speed, but literally deflating and exhausting him and, in the final moments, sucking life out of him. In a reversal of the usual response to the challenges space provides, arm movements gradually decelerate; the victim’s face grows slack. One of the stylistic oddities of the film is that the lover’s predicament is transferred gesturally to his would-be rescuer. Dorothy West, hoping to unlock the forbidden door, gasps and gulps, hyperventilating as he suffocates. The effect of enfolding the sealed room formula within the Romeo and Juliet framework is to multiply the number of blockages that delay rescue without expanding spatial units. The entire film takes place on three sets; rescue is less a matter of penetrating distances than winning a cruel cat and mouse game built on the protocols of courtly manners. As in so many Griffith Biographs, the opponent is a deadly father figure, expanded to include a patriarchal 271

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household that hates the household of the lover, subsequently displaced by a jealous fiancé, a literal father surrogate who, when father is called away, is left in “absolute charge of the household”, i.e. the daughter. Having contracted with the father for the princess, the fiancé now turns the screws on the anathematized lover, taking pleasure in frustrating the daughter (at one point he even takes the cup the father has left behind, toasting himself for foiling the daughter’s rescue efforts). Finally he hands the confiscated key back to father in order to let the old man open the door and applaud the results of his surrogate’s handiwork. The sudden resurgence of these incapacitating formulas may be connected to events in Griffith’s personal life. In 1910 his four-year secret marriage to Linda Arvidson was disintegrating just as it was being made public to the Biograph players when Linda insisted upon traveling with him in their first-class sleeper en route to California. By the end of the year, as Heart Beats of Long Ago was being directed, Griffith was in the throes of an affair with the film’s leading lady, Dorothy West. Arvidson would learn about it within a few months when she discovered one of West’s love letters in her bureau drawer. She confronted West on the mezzanine of Macy’s Department Store, and then quit both Griffith and Biograph. As an expression of panic, Heart Beats of Long Ago is as primal as anything Griffith wrote during his theater days. For all its formulaic elements, the film encrypts autobiographical anxieties worthy of Hitchcock, especially if we perceive that, like Hitchcock, Griffith’s closest affinities were with his female protagonists. Griffith’s private life suggests some of the forces that went into the making of the film; but the effusions of the narrative combine with a remarkable formal discipline that suggest continuing control. Biographical influences aside, what gives the film its interest is Griffith’s ever-increasing mastery of mise en scène and editing. He continuously works props and decor to create nuance and compress dramatic action. The brutally realistic detail of knife marks and fingernail scratches on the door, revealed when the door is finally opened and the dead lover tumbles out, not only epitomizes the horror of suffocation: the marks also denote the final, ineffectual use of a knife that first appears at the start of the tryst. The lover, on his knees, uses it to tickle the daughter’s ankle in order to attract her attention. But what is distinctive about Heart Beats of Long Ago is the way Griffith braids his props, makes them intersect, as characters continually steal, lose, drop, and give away personal possessions that mark the loss or transfer of power and authority. The fiancé appropriates father’s cup and takes control of daughter’s key as he gains legal authority over the wearer of father’s stolen ring. The key has been confiscated from the daughter’s elaborate pouch, a bag of tricks which also contains a handkerchief used for crying and deception. At times actors appear to be simple repositories of signifying props. When the lovers are first alone together, Wilfred Lucas holds his mask and rose in one hand, while in his other (the hand on which he wears the stolen ring), he pats his knife and adjusts the feathered cap that, when it drops off his head, will be found by the fiancé. The flickering candles, later elements in Silas Lynch’s attempted rape of Elsie Stoneman in The Birth of a Nation (1915), make an early – perhaps their earliest – appearance here. So does the isolated body part, in this case an arm, which, segregated from the rest of the body, becomes an abstracted and ominous sign. A guard’s arm enters the scene through the back window, clutching the branch of a vine. The lovers see it and react. Griffith keeps the arm isolated for a full five seconds before its owner (Alfred Paget) reveals himself, the guard coming fully into frame as he lifts himself through the window. After Heart Beats of Long Ago, Griffith swore off locked room stories for over a year. He made one more film with Dorothy West, and then on Christmas day left for California with his wife. Production resumed twelve days later in Los Angeles with Fisher Folks, featuring Linda Arvidson as a crippled flower girl who forgives and welcomes home her straying husband. Russell Merritt 272

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THE LILY OF THE TENEMENTS Filming date: 14/22 December 1910 Location: New York Studio Release date: 27 February 1911 Release length: approx. 996 feet Copyright date: 1 March 1911 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: none known Source: none known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy West (Tenement girl); George O. Nicholls (Tenement owner); ? (His son); Clara T. Bracey, W. Chrystie Miller (Her parents); William J. Butler, Adolph Lestina (Father’s friends); Alfred Paget (Clothing contractor); W.C. Robinson (Butler); Francis J. Grandon (Doctor); ? (In office) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm acetate negative (AFI/MoMA Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) A STORY OF EAST SIDE NEW YORK One half of the world don’t [sic] know how the other half lives, or there would be more charity and concern dispensed by those of the fortunate half. There is indeed no disposition of indifference on the part of the better conditioned, but it is simple because they do not know. Here we find a youthful toiler at a sewing machine eking the lives of her poor old mother and father. She receives a mere pittance for her labor, and this barely gives them plain food without having much for the rent of their cheerless rooms. The owner of the tenements calls for payment, and being a man of unconscionable principles offers her a means of ameliorating her condition and giving aid and ease to her and her own instead of the hopeless toil she is subjected to. The temptation is great, but her pure soul rebels against this contemptible assault and she send him away promising to pay him the next day. What a rash promise, for she has no hopes aside from that which would be miraculous. Upon the owner’s return to his office he is met by his son who is just back from college. This son is the father’s one real love. He has built great hopes for him and at once makes him a member of the firm. The next day the owner goes to reoffer [sic] his proposition, feeling that by this time she has weakened in her determination. He feels assured when the girl in her hopeless condition seems compelled to make a sacrifice of herself. She, however, promises to give her decision the next day. He has just left when she receives from the clothier a large order of sewing and so goes to beg for mercy and time in which to pay the rent. At the office she meets the son, who is deeply touched with the poor girl’s condition and is further impressed by her innocent face. He at once decides to make an investigation, but business defers his errand until his father enters and tells him he will go, of course, with a different object in view. The poor girl at his entrance is as a lamb on the altar and he has come to claim the victim. The girl, with repugnance is about to yield, when the son with an urgent message for his father enters. He understands the situation at a glance and then and there denounces his father, bidding him good-bye forever. Hastening out he secures medical aid for the old folks and material assistance for all,

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promising to protect the girl for all time if she will allow, as her pitiful lot has aroused in him sincere, honest love. Biograph Bulletin, [?], February 27, 1911

A struggling young seamstress supports her elderly parents by working at home. The landlord offers free rent for sex, but she declines. He threatens foreclosure, but she is saved when a large sewing order comes her way. She rushes to the landlord’s office to arrange for an extension on the rent, encounters the landlord’s son, and leaves an ambiguous message saying only that she must see the landlord on important business. The old man receives the message and leaves for her apartment. His son, unaware of his father’s lechery, innocently follows after him to convey an urgent business message. When he walks in on his father attacking the seamstress, he interferes, denounces the old man, and provides the girl’s family with food and medical help.

Griffith ended 1910 closing up shop to prepare for Biograph’s second season in Los Angeles. His last film in New York was a strange hybrid: part social exposé capitalizing on the current New York shirtwaist worker’s strike, part women’s film, and part father-son psychodrama. The Lily of the Tenements has generally been studied as an urban topical, the last in a series of muckraking Biographs that began with The Song of the Shirt (1908) and included What Shall We Do with Our Old, finished only six days before The Lily of the Tenements. But what gives the film its peculiar twist is the subplot Griffith invents: a son who, adored by his father, discovers the old man’s lechery and abandons him in disgust. The Eugene O’Neilish theme, made all the more glaring by its incongruity with the main plot, is an odd one for Griffith. I can’t think of another Biograph – or, for that matter, a Griffith feature – in which a son banishes a father. Like the suffocation and failed rescue in Heart Beats of Long Ago, made earlier the same week, the formula shows up unexpectedly, linked to stories Griffith had abandoned after concocting them in his theater days. Here he seems to resume where he had left off five years earlier. In War and In Washington’s Time, stifling allpowerful father figures had paralyzed their sons and stolen their sweethearts while the sons helplessly looked on. In The Lily of the Tenements, the son finally gets to confront father, denounce and disown him, while he simultaneously rescues the heroine and provides food and medicine to her parents. By contrast, the heroine’s immigrant family – defined by helpless, passive parents and a hardworking, self-sacrificing daughter – is far more conventionalized, made so conventional in fact that Griffith can abstract the parents as literal stereotypes in a tableau vivant. The image of them, father in his yarmulke despondent under a framed print of Moses and mother wasting away in her sickbed, is displayed like a portrait of the Wretched Poor, a picture that the daughter looks in on, uses as a point of reference, and then retreats from in order to determine future actions. At times the motionless parents serve as objects used to help visualize the daughter’s mental process. When she runs into their room, recoiling from the landlord’s invitation to have sex, she wanders between them unobserved, ruefully shakes her head as she contemplates first mother, then father, then returns to accept the landlord’s offer. When, later, the landlord comes to pick her up, she prepares by returning to the parents’ room, kneels to bid these statue-like figures goodbye, and is now ready to sacrifice herself. Griffith returns to a similar formula in Judith of Bethulia (1913), where another devout and dutiful Jewish daughter is ready to make herself an untouchable for the sake of her people. What skews Griffith’s depiction of his exploited Jewish seamstress is its dependence on 274

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Victorian paintings almost seventy years old. In fact, Griffith’s portrait is more fully controlled by nineteenth-century paintings than by contemporary working conditions in the Lower East Side. In the mid-nineteenth century, the seamstress had been by far the most popular of all social subjects among British painters. Inspired by Thomas Hood’s best-selling poem, “The Song of the Shirt” (1843) and taking their cue from Richard Redgrave’s The Sempstress (1844), reform-minded painters used the seamstress as the quintessential victim of urban hardship. Scott Simmon was the first to notice that Griffith’s seamstress returns to the imagery that Redgrave and his followers created some seventy years earlier. In Griffith, as in Redgrave’s painting, an emaciated young woman works alone in a small threadbare room opposite an uncurtained window with a few, symbolically charged objects on a shelf: a single candle, a clock (to indicate the late hour), and a medicine bottle. Despite the abject poverty, however, the room in both painting and film is clean and neatly arranged: nothing is dirty or in disarray which might suggest laziness. The effect is curious: Dorothy West’s unsmiling, understated performance makes the plight of the seamstress compelling, but as a social statement, the film appears strangely antiquated, less in touch with actual working conditions in New York than with the plight of the British seamstress in the pre-industrialized needle trade. Not that the American homeworker in 1910s clothing trade was working in less barbaric conditions: the wages were appalling (about $1 to $1.50 per week for finishing work), and the working conditions in the tenements an urban scandal. But, according to Congressional committee reports, by 1910 women were seldom working alone at home; they worked in shops and factories. The pattern among those who did home work, mainly Italian women, was that of a family who sewed, basted, and did finishing work together. More typically, however, seamstresses were increasingly absorbed into on-site assembly lines where they could be more closely supervised. This was particularly true of Jewish seamstresses, whose families dominated the industrialized garment trade. The great women’s strike of 1909 and 1910, a five-month walkout that drew national attention to working conditions for female garment workers, was directed against factories and shops where over seventy-five percent of all women in the city’s garment industry worked; the great symbol of oppression was no longer the poorly lit, Dickensian garret – it was the sweatshop. Eleven days after The Lily of the Tenements was released, one of the largest, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, caught fire and killed 146 young women. Griffith never responded to the actual Triangle fire itself, the most horrific labor disaster of the decade. He was in Los Angeles at the time, and by the time he returned to New York in the early June, he had abandoned protest Biographs in favor of crime and gangster genre pictures. The Lily of the Tenements marks the end of Griffith’s social protest Biographs. As Simmon notes (p. 57), the newer urban Biographs like The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and The Miser’s Heart (1911), no longer hint at class conflict. The Lily of the Tenements’s lecherous landlord, like the stock speculator, the tyrannical factory boss, and the plutocrat, virtually disappears. Instead, the underclass itself becomes the threat. The economic failures of the immigrant family in The Lily of the Tenements become a matter of personal inadequacies, while the new Biograph bogeyman is no longer the merciless bill collector and his employers, but the parasitical tramp. As the emaciated seamstress, gaunt Dorothy West found her niche. This was arguably her most powerful role at Biograph; it was certainly her best known. When, in 1916, Pickford made a film about sweatshops called The Eternal Grind, she recalled The Lily of the Tenements and had West cast as her overworked, suicidal sister. Russell Merritt

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BIBLIOGRAPHY ABEL, Richard. The Red Rooster Scare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) ARVIDSON, Linda (Mrs. D.W. Griffith). When the Movies Were Young (New York: Dutton, 1925; reprinted by Dover Publications, 1969) BOWSER, Eileen (ed.) Biograph Bulletins, 1908–1912 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973) BOWSER, Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (New York: Scribner’s, 1990 [Volume 2 of the History of American Cinema series, edited by Charles Harpole]) BREWSTER, Ben. “A Scene at the ‘Movies’”, Screen, vol. 23, no. 2, July-August 1982: 4–15 BREWSTER, Ben. “Traffic in Souls: An Experiment in Feature-Length Narrative Construction,” Cinema Journal 31, no. 1, Fall 1991: pp. 37–56 BREWSTER, Ben and Lea JACOBS, Theatre to Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) CAVELL, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1981) CHERCHI USAI, Paolo (ed.) The Griffith Project, volumes 1–3 (London: British Film Institute/Pordenone: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 1999) DAVIS, Carlyle Channing and William A. ALDERSON. The true story of “Ramona”; its facts and fictions, inspiration and purpose (New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1914) EVERSON, William K. American Silent Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) GRAHAM, Cooper C., Steven HIGGINS, Elaine MANCINI, João Luiz VIEIRA. D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Company (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1985) GUNNING, Tom. “Weaving a Narrative: Style and Economic Background in Griffith’s Biograph Films”, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Winter 1981: 10–25; reproduced in Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI Publishing, 1990) GUNNING, Tom. D.W. Griffith and the Origins of the American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (Champaign/Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991) HENDERSON, Robert M. D.W. Griffith: The Years at Biograph (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) JESIONOWSKI, Joyce E. Thinking in Pictures: Dramatic Structure in D.W. Griffith’s Biograph Films (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) LINDSAY, Vachel. The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Livewright, 1970, originally published in 1915; reprint, New York: Modern Library, 2000) MERRITT, Russell. “Rescued from a Perilous Nest: D.W. Griffith’s Escape from Theatre into Film”, Cinema Journal 21, Fall, 1981: 2–30 MUSSER, Charles. “DeMille, Divorce and the Comedy of Remarriage”, in The DeMille Legacy, Paolo Cherchi Usai and Lorenzo Codelli (eds.), Edizioni Biblioteca dell’Immagine, 1991, pp. 262–83 NIVER, Kemp. D.W. Griffith: His Biograph Films in Perspective (Los Angeles: John D. Roche, 1974) O’LEARY, Liam. Cinema Ireland, 1895–1976 (Dublin: Dublin Arts Festival, 1976) PEARSON, Roberta. Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) PRATT, George. Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973) 276

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PETRIC, Vlada. “David Wark Griffith” in Richard Roud, ed., Cinema: A Critical Dictionary, volume 1 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1980) SALT, Barry. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London: Starword, 2nd edition, 1992) SCHICKEL, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984) SIMMON, Scott. The Films of D.W. Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) SLIDE, Anthony. The American Film Industry, A Historical Dictionary (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986) TSIVIAN, Yuri. “Two Stylists”, in Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), A Second Life: German Cinema’s First Decades, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996)

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INDEX OF TITLES: 1910 Note: Release dates are given after each title. Numbers refer to program sequence.

ARCADIAN MAID, AN

GOLD IS NOT ALL

(1 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275 AS IT IS IN LIFE

(28 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246 GOLD-SEEKERS, THE

(4 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245 AS THE BELLS RANG OUT!

(2 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 GOLDEN SUPPER, THE

(21 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 BANKER’S DAUGHTERS, THE

(12 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .304 HEART BEATS OF LONG AGO

(20 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .293 BROKEN DOLL, THE

(6 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318 HER FATHER’S PRIDE

(17 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .292 CALL TO ARMS, THE

(4 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276 HIS LAST BURGLARY

(25 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .274 CHILD OF THE GHETTO, A

(21 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .235 HIS SISTER-IN-LAW

(6 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260 CHILD’S FAITH, A

(15 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .302 HIS TRUST

(14 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .270 CHILD’S IMPULSE, A

(16 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .310 HIS TRUST FULFILLED

(27 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265 CHILD’S STRATAGEM, A

(19 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311 HOUSE WITH CLOSED SHUTTERS, THE

(5 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .303 CONVERTS, THE

(8 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .277 ICONOCLAST, THE

(14 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .242 DECREE OF DESTINY, A

(3 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .289 IMPALEMENT, THE

(6 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317 DIAMOND STAR, THE

(30 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 IN LIFE’S CYCLE

(20 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .315 ENGLISHMAN AND THE GIRL, THE

(15 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . 286 IN OLD CALIFORNIA

(17 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .234 EXAMINATION DAY AT SCHOOL

(10 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240 IN THE BORDER STATES

(29 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .290 FACE AT THE WINDOW, THE

(13 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262 IN THE SEASON OF BUDS

(16 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .263 FAITHFUL

(2 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 ITALIAN BARBER, THE

(21 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243 FATE’S TURNING

(9 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309 LESSON, THE

(23 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .314 FINAL SETTLEMENT, THE

(19 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .306 LILY OF THE TENEMENTS, THE

(28 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .236 FLASH OF LIGHT, A

(27 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .319 LITTLE ANGELS OF LUCK

(18 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .272 FUGITIVE, THE

(8 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .284 LOVE AMONG THE ROSES

(7 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .298

(9 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254

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MAN, THE

SUNSHINE SUE

(12 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 MARKED TIME-TABLE, THE

(14 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .299 TAMING A HUSBAND

(23 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 MESSAGE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

(24 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .237 THAT CHINK AT GOLDEN GULCH

(24 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .294 MIDNIGHT CUPID, A

(10 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .291 THOU SHALT NOT

(7 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268 MODERN PRODIGAL, THE

(18 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .250 THREAD OF DESTINY, THE

(29 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .282 MOHAWK’S WAY, A

(7 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 THREE SISTERS

(12 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .285 MUGGSY’S FIRST SWEETHEART

(2 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313 TWISTED TRAIL, THE

(30 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .267 NEWLYWEDS, THE

(24 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244 TWO BROTHERS, THE

(3 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238 OATH AND THE MAN, THE

(12 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256 TWO LITTLE WAIFS

(22 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .287 OVER SILENT PATHS

(31 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .295 TWO PATHS, THE

(16 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257 PLAIN SONG, A

(2 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312 UNCHANGING SEA, THE

(28 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .301 PURGATION, THE

(5 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252 UNEXPECTED HELP

(4 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .266 RAMONA

(28 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248 USURER, THE

(23 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .255 RICH REVENGE, A

(15 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .280 VICTIM OF JEALOUSY, A

(7 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247 ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN HILLS, A

(9 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 WAITER NO. 5

(11 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249 ROSE O’ SALEM-TOWN

(3 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .296 WAY OF THE WORLD, THE

(26 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .288 SALUTARY LESSON, A

(25 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251 WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD

(11 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278 SERIOUS SIXTEEN

(13 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .316 WHAT THE DAISY SAID

(21 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271 SIMPLE CHARITY

(11 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269 WHEN A MAN LOVES

(10 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .297 SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTE, THE

(5 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305 WILFUL PEGGY

(21 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .300 SORROWS OF THE UNFAITHFUL, THE

(25 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281 WINNING BACK HIS LOVE

(22 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279 SUMMER IDYL, A

(26 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .307 WREATH OF ORANGE BLOSSOMS, A

(5 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .283

(30 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .308

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CUMULATIVE INDEX OF TITLES: 1907–1910 Note: Release dates are given after each title. Numbers refer to program sequence: 1–90: Vol. 1, 1907–1908. 91–168: Vol. 2, January–June 1909. 169–233: Vol. 3, July–December 1909. 234–319: Vol. 4, 1910.

“1776” or, THE HESSIAN RENEGADES

BLACK VIPER, THE

(6 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .181 ADVENTURES OF DOLLIE, THE

(21 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 BRAHMA DIAMOND, THE

(14 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

(4 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98

AFTER MANY YEARS

BROKEN DOLL, THE

(3 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 “AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM” (22 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115

BROKEN LOCKET, THE

ARCADIAN MAID, AN

BURGLAR’S MISTAKE, A

(17 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .292 (16 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .187

(1 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275 AS IT IS IN LIFE

(25 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 CALAMITOUS ELOPEMENT, A

(4 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245 AS THE BELLS RANG OUT!

(7 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 CALL, THE

(21 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .273 AT THE ALTAR

(20 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .226 CALL OF THE WILD, THE

(25 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 AT THE CROSSROADS OF LIFE

(27 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 CALL TO ARMS, THE

(3 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 AT THE FRENCH BALL

(25 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .274 CARDINAL’S CONSPIRACY, THE

(30 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 AWAKENING, THE

(12 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 CAUGHT BY WIRELESS

(30 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .188 AWFUL MOMENT, AN

(21 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 CHANGE OF HEART, A

(18 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 BABY’S SHOE, A

(14 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .194 CHILD OF THE GHETTO, A

(13 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 BALKED AT THE ALTAR

(6 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260 CHILDREN’S FRIEND, THE

(25 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 BANDIT’S WATERLOO, THE

(13 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .186 CHILD’S FAITH, A

(4 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 BANKER’S DAUGHTERS, THE

(14 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .270 CHILD’S IMPULSE, A

(20 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .293 BARBARIAN, INGOMAR, THE

(27 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265 CHILD’S STRATAGEM, A

(13 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 BEHIND THE SCENES

(5 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .303 CHOOSING A HUSBAND

(11 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .44 BETRAYED BY A HANDPRINT

(30 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . 222 CHRISTMAS BURGLARS, THE

(1 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 BETTER WAY, THE

(22 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 CLASSMATES

(12 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173

(1 February 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

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CLOISTER’S TOUCH, THE

DUKE’S PLAN, THE

(31 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 CLUBMAN AND THE TRAMP, THE

(10 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .232 EAVESDROPPER, THE

(27 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .72 COMATA, THE SIOUX

(3 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 EDGAR ALLEN POE

(9 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 CONCEALING A BURGLAR

(8 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 ELOPING WITH AUNTY

(30 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 CONFIDENCE

(24 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 ENGLISHMAN AND THE GIRL, THE

(15 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 CONVERTS, THE

(17 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .234 ERADICATING AUNTY

(14 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 CONVICT’S SACRIFICE, A

(31 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 EXAMINATION DAY AT SCHOOL

(26 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163 CORD OF LIFE, THE

(29 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .290 EXPIATION, THE

(28 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 CORNER IN WHEAT, A

(21 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 FACE AT THE WINDOW, THE

(13 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .216 COUNTRY DOCTOR, THE

(16 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .263 FADED LILLIES, THE

(8 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, THE

(17 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151 FAIR EXCHANGE, A

(27 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142 CRIMINAL HYPNOTIST, THE

(23 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .190 FAITHFUL

(18 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 CUPID’S PRANKS

(21 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243 FALSELY ACCUSED!

(Edison, 19 February 1908) . . . . . . . .5 CURTAIN POLE, THE

(18 January 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 FAMOUS ESCAPE, A

(15 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 DANCING GIRL OF BUTTE, THE

(7 April 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 FASCINATING MRS. FRANCIS, THE

(6 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224 DAY AFTER, THE

(21 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 FATAL HOUR, THE

(30 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .220 DEATH DISC, THE

(18 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 FATE’S TURNING

(2 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 DECEIVED SLUMMING PARTY

(23 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .314 FATHER GETS IN THE GAME

(31 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 DECEPTION, THE

(10 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 FEUD AND THE TURKEY, THE

(22 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 DECREE OF DESTINY, A

(8 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, THE

(6 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317 DEVIL, THE

(17 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 FINAL SETTLEMENT, THE

(2 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 DIAMOND STAR, THE

(28 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .236 FLASH OF LIGHT, A

(20 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .315 DRIVE FOR A LIFE, THE

(18 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .272 FOOLS OF FATE

(22 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133 DRUNKARD’S REFORMATION, A

(7 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192 FOOL’S REVENGE, A

(1 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118

(4 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108

281

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 4

FOR A WIFE’S HONOR

HIS DUTY

(28 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 FOR LOVE OF GOLD

(31 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149 HIS LAST BURGLARY

(21 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 FRENCH DUEL, THE

(21 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .235 HIS LOST LOVE

(10 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, THE

(18 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .196 HIS SISTER-IN-LAW

(15 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152 FUGITIVE, THE

(15 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .302 HIS TRUST

(7 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .298 GETTING EVEN

(16 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .310 HIS TRUST FULFILLED

(13 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .185 GIBSON GODDESS, THE

(19 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311 HIS WARD’S LOVE

(1 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .198 GIRL AND THE OUTLAW, THE

(15 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .103 HIS WIFE’S MOTHER

(8 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 GIRLS AND DADDY, THE

(1 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 HIS WIFE’S VISITOR

(1 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 GOLD IS NOT ALL

(19 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 HONOR OF HIS FAMILY, THE

(28 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246 GOLD-SEEKERS, THE

(24 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229 HONOR OF THIEVES, THE

(2 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 GOLDEN LOUIS, THE

(11 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81 HOUSE WITH CLOSED SHUTTERS, THE

(22 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 GOLDEN SUPPER, THE

(8 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .277 HULDA’S LOVERS

(12 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .304 GREASER’S GAUNTLET, THE

(22 April 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 I DID IT, MAMMA

(11 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 GUERRILLA, THE

(15 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 ICONOCLAST, THE

(13 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .64 HEART BEATS OF LONG AGO

(3 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .289 IMPALEMENT, THE

(6 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318 HEART OF AN OUTLAW, THE

(30 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .258 IN A HEMPEN BAG

(not released) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180 HEART OF O YAMA, THE

(16 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .215 IN LIFE’S CYCLE

(18 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .45 HELPING HAND, THE

(15 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .286 IN LITTLE ITALY

(29 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 HER FATHER’S PRIDE

(23 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .219 IN OLD CALIFORNIA

(4 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276 HER FIRST ADVENTURE

(10 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240 IN OLD KENTUCKY

(18 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 HER FIRST BISCUITS

(20 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .183 IN THE BORDER STATES

(17 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 HER TERRIBLE ORDEAL

(13 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262 IN THE SEASON OF BUDS

(10 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 HINDOO DAGGER, THE

(2 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259 IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT

(18 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90

(25 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .200

282

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 4

IN THE WINDOW RECESS

LONELY VILLA, THE

(29 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .211 INDIAN RUNNER’S ROMANCE, THE

(10 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150 LOVE AMONG THE ROSES

(23 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .171 INGRATE, THE

(9 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254 LOVE FINDS A WAY

(20 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .68 INVISIBLE FLUID, THE

(11 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 LUCKY JIM

(16 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 ITALIAN BARBER, THE

(26 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128 LURE OF THE GOWN, THE

(9 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309 JEALOUSY AND THE MAN

(15 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 MAN, THE

(22 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161 JILT, THE

(12 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241 MAN AND THE WOMAN, THE

(17 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 JONES AND HIS NEW NEIGHBORS

(14 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 MAN IN THE BOX, THE

(29 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 JONES AND THE LADY BOOK AGENT

(19 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 MANIAC COOK, THE

(10 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 JONES” BURGLAR

(4 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 MARKED TIME-TABLE, THE

(9 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 JONESES HAVE AMATEUR THEATRICALS, THE

(18 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83

(23 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264 MEDICINE BOTTLE, THE

(29 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 MENDED LUTE, THE

(5 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .170

KENTUCKIAN, THE

(7 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

MESSAGE, THE

(5 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

KING OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

(15 April 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

MESSAGE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

(24 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .294

KING’S MESSENGER, THE

(29 April 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

MEXICAN SWEETHEARTS, THE

(24 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156

LADY HELEN’S ESCAPADE

(19 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107

MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE, A

(18 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .205

LAST DEAL, THE

(27 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228

MIDNIGHT CUPID, A

(7 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268

LEATHER STOCKING

(27 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .191

MILLS OF THE GODS, THE

(30 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176

LESSON, THE

(19 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .306

MIXED BABIES

(12 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

LIGHT THAT CAME, THE

(11 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .203

MODERN PRODIGAL, THE

(29 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .282

LILY OF THE TENEMENTS, THE

(27 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .319

MOHAWK’S WAY, A

(12 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .285

LINES OF WHITE ON A SULLEN SEA

(28 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 LITTLE ANGELS OF LUCK

MONDAY MORNING IN A CONEY ISLAND POLICE COURT

(8 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .284 LITTLE DARLING, THE

(4 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 MONEY MAD

(2 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .182 LITTLE TEACHER, THE

(4 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 MOUNTAINEER’S HONOR, THE

(11 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .195

(25 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .209 283

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 4

MR. JONES AT THE BALL

PIRATE’S GOLD, THE

(25 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 MR. JONES HAS A CARD PARTY

(6 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 PLAIN SONG, A

(21 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 MRS. JONES ENTERTAINS

(28 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .301 PLANTER’S WIFE, THE

(7 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 MRS. JONES’ LOVER; OR, “I WANT MY HAT”

(19 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165

(20 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 POLITICIAN’S LOVE STORY

(22 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 PRANKS

(30 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .179

MUGGSY’S FIRST SWEETHEART

(30 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .267

PRINCESS IN THE VASE, THE

(27 February 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

MUSIC MASTER, THE

(6 May 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

PROFESSIONAL JEALOUSY

(4 January 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

NECKLACE, THE

(1 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155

PRUSSIAN SPY, THE

(1 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104

NEW TRICK, A

(10 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148

PURGATION, THE

(4 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .266

NEWLYWEDS, THE

(3 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238

RAMONA

(23 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .255

NOTE IN THE SHOE, THE

(6 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127

RECKONING, THE

(11 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .70

NURSING A VIPER

(4 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .202

RED GIRL, THE

(15 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .43

OATH AND THE MAN, THE

(22 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .287 “OH, UNCLE” (26 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177

REDMAN AND THE CHILD, THE

(28 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 REDMAN’S VIEW, THE

(9 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .214

OLD ISAACS, THE PAWNBROKER

(28 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

RENUNCIATION, THE

(19 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166

ON THE REEF

(17 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227

RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE’S NEST

(Edison, 16 January 1908) . . . . . . . . .3

ONE BUSY HOUR

(6 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134

RESTORATION, THE

(8 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .204

ONE NIGHT, AND THEN—

(14 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .233

RESURRECTION

(20 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

(1 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74

RICH REVENGE, A

(7 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247

OPEN GATE, THE

(22 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .207

ROAD TO THE HEART, THE

(5 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122

’OSTLER JOE

(9 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

ROCKY ROAD, THE

(3 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223

OUTLAW, THE

(23 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

ROMANCE OF A JEWESS

(23 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57

OVER SILENT PATHS

(16 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257

ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN HILLS, A

(11 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249

PEACHBASKET HAT, THE

(24 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 PIPPA PASSES or, THE SONG OF CONSCIENCE

ROSE O’ SALEM-TOWN

(26 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .288 ROUE’S HART, THE

(4 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189

(8 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 284

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 4

RUDE HOSTESS, A

SWEET REVENGE

(8 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 RURAL ELOPEMENT, A

(18 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .208 TAMING A HUSBAND

(14 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 SACRIFICE, THE

(24 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .237 TAMING OF THE SHREW

(14 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 SALUTARY LESSON, A

(11 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278

(10 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .61 TAVERN-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER, THE

(24 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

SALVATION ARMY LASS, THE

(11 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111

TENDER HEARTS

(19 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .162

SCHNEIDER’S ANTI-NOISE CRUSADE

(8 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124

TEST, THE

(16 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .217

SCULPTOR’S NIGHTMARE, THE

(6 May 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

TEST OF FRIENDSHIP, THE

(15 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .76

SEALED ROOM, THE

(2 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .178

THAT CHINK AT GOLDEN GULCH

(10 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .291

SERIOUS SIXTEEN

(21 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271

THEY WOULD ELOPE

(9 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175

SEVENTH DAY, THE

(26 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159

THOSE AWFUL HATS

(25 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94

SIMPLE CHARITY

(10 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .297

THOSE BOYS!

(18 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92

SLAVE, THE

(29 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168

THOU SHALT NOT

(18 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .250

SMOKED HUSBAND, A

(25 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .48

THREAD OF DESTINY, THE

(7 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239

SON’S RETURN, THE

(14 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147

THREE SISTERS

(2 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313

SONG OF THE SHIRT, THE

(17 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .65

THROUGH THE BREAKERS

(6 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .213

SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTE, THE

(21 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .300 SORROWS OF THE UNFAITHFUL, THE

’TIS AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO GOOD

(22 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279 SOUND SLEEPER, A

(29 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135 TO SAVE HER SOUL

(12 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 STAGE RUSTLER, THE

(27 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .221 TRAGIC LOVE

(10 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 STOLEN JEWELS, THE

(11 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 TRAP FOR SANTA CLAUS, A

(29 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .55 STRANGE MEETING, A

(20 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .218 TRICK THAT FAILED, THE

(2 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164 SUICIDE CLUB, THE

(29 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .210 TROUBLESOME SATCHEL, A

(3 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 SUMMER IDYL, A

(19 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 TRYING TO GET ARRESTED

(5 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .283 SUNSHINE SUE

(5 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 TWIN BROTHERS

(14 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .299 SWEET AND TWENTY

(26 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 TWISTED TRAIL, THE

(22 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167

(24 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 285

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 4

TWO BROTHERS, THE

WHAT DRINK DID

(12 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256 TWO LITTLE WAIFS

(3 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144 WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD

(31 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .295 TWO MEMORIES

(13 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .316 WHAT THE DAISY SAID

(24 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 TWO PATHS, THE

(11 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269 WHAT’S YOUR HURRY?

(2 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312 TWO WOMEN AND A MAN

(1 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .201 WHEN A MAN LOVES

(15 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .206 UNCHANGING SEA, THE

(5 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305 WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD

(5 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252 UNEXPECTED HELP

(20 May 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 WHERE THE BREAKERS ROAR

(28 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248 USURER, THE

(22 September /1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .47 WILFUL PEGGY

(15 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .280 VALET’S WIFE, THE

(25 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281 WINNING BACK HIS LOVE

(1 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 VAQUERO’S VOW, THE

(26 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .307 WINNING COAT, THE

(16 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 VICTIM OF JEALOUSY, A

(12 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 WITH HER CARD

(9 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261 VIOLIN MAKER OF CREMONA, THE

(16 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 WOMAN FROM MELLON’S, THE

(7 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141 VOICE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

(3 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231 WOMAN’S WAY, A

(18 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 WAITER NO. 5

(24 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .60 WOODEN LEG, THE

(3 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .296 WANTED, A CHILD

(8 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113 WREATH IN TIME, A

(30 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .193 WAS JUSTICE SERVED?

(8 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 WREATH OF ORANGE BLOSSOMS, A

(21 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154 WAY OF MAN, THE

(30 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .308 YELLOW PERIL, THE

(28 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153 WAY OF THE WORLD, THE

(7 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 ZULU’S HEART, THE

(25 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251

(6 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

WELCOME BURGLAR, THE

(25 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89

286