The Griffith Project Volume 8: Films Produced in 1914–15 9781844570430, 9781838710729, 9781839020162

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THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 8 FILMS PRODUCED IN 1914–15

IN MEMORY OF SALVATORE LA ROCCA (1922–2003) MY MENTOR, MY BEST FRIEND

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 8 Films Produced in 1914–15

G ENERAL E DITOR Paolo Cherchi Usai CONTRIBUTORS Eileen Bowser, Ben Brewster, Philip C. Carli, Tom Gunning, Joyce Jesionowski, J.B. Kaufman, Charlie Keil, Mike Mashon, David Mayer, Russell Merritt, Paul Spehr, Linda Williams A SSISTANT E DITOR Cynthia Rowell

Publishing

First published in 2004 by the British Film Institute 21 Stephen St, London W1T 1LN 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 2004 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 978–1–84457–043–0 eISBN 978–1–83902–015–5 ePDF 978–1–83902–016–2

CONTENTS

Foreword Notes on Contributors Note on Layout

502. The Great Leap; or, Until Death Do Us Part 503. The Battle of the Sexes 504. The Gangsters 505. The Escape 506. The Floor Above 507. The Dishonored Medal 508. The Mountain Rat 509. Home, Sweet Home 510. The Avenging Conscience 511. The Painted Lady 512. [Production footage of The Birth of a Nation] 513. The Birth of a Nation PRODUCTION STYLE AND TECHNIQUE

vii xii xiv

1 4 8 12 15 18 24 28 40 46 49 50 55 62

PERFORMANCE AND CHARACTERIZATION THEATRICAL SOURCES MUSIC DISTRIBUTION AND RECEPTION POLITICS NON-ARCHIVAL SOURCES

514. Enoch Arden 515. Ghosts 516. Pillars of Society 517. The Martyrs of the Alamo 518. The Lamb 519. Old Heidelberg 520. The Sable Lorcha 521. The Lily and the Rose 522. Double Trouble

69 81 87 91 98 107 113 116 118 121 124 128 131 135 138

523. 524. 525. 526. 527. 528. 529. 530. 531. 532. 533.

Jordan Is a Hard Road The Penitentes Cross Currents Let Katie Do It The Missing Links Don Quixote The Wood Nymph His Picture in the Papers Martha’s Vindication Daphne and the Pirate The Flying Torpedo

Bibliography Index of Titles: 1914–1915 Cumulative Index of Titles: 1907–1915

141 144 148 151 153 156 160 162 164 167 170

174 176 177

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

FOREWORD

Not surprisingly, the years 1914 and 1915 are widely perceived as the best known and the most intensely scrutinized in the career of D.W. Griffith. The background of this eventful period has been established with a certain degree of accuracy: late in 1913, after six years of unrelenting work and almost five hundred films directed for the Biograph Company, Griffith signed an agreement with Harry E. Aitken, then co-owner with his brother Roy of two studios – Reliance (New York) and Majestic (Los Angeles) – whose films were released under the Mutual trademark. According to the terms of the contract, Griffith would produce his own feature films while supervising those made by others. By early 1914, the migration of the core Biograph personnel to the Aitken organization (including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Blanche Sweet, Robert Harron, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp, assistant director William Christy Cabanne, and story editor Frank Woods; cameraman Billy Bitzer joined them shortly afterwards) had already taken place. In the course of this annus mirabilis for cinema and world history (war between Germany and Russia was declared on 1 August), Griffith would produce The Birth of a Nation – the most acclaimed and controversial motion picture ever made – and begin working on what would become the “modern story” of Intolerance (1916). This massive epic was bound to occupy him for a good portion of 1915, well into the Spring of the following year. Film historians have long been accustomed to take The Birth of a Nation as a milestone for the periodization of Griffith’s career: first the Biograph shorts, then the features. In purely auteurist terms, the events of 1914–15 are firmly established from a filmographic standpoint: four features directed in the first half of 1914 (with The Avenging Conscience becoming the first Griffith film to attract extensive attention in Europe), then The Birth of a Nation, its triumphal or contested screenings throughout the United States, and the filming on the first section of Intolerance. Given his hyperactivity, what did Griffith actually managed to supervise for Reliance-Majestic and Fine Arts-Triangle? So far, the question has been marginalized as a footnote in the chronologies of his life. It is by all means an extremely chaotic footnote, made even more confusing by the uneven or contradictory information published by the Aitken companies in the trade journals of the period. According to Mutual advertisements, Griffith supervised all Reliance or Majestic productions during much of the first half of 1914. While the features were being marketed through State Rights, the short films in one or two reels were being supplied to theaters through Mutual’s contract distribution organization. They were produced on a regular schedule – a comedy on Monday, a drama on Wednesday, and so on. Hence the first question: did Griffith have a say in the production of short films as well as the features? The situation is of special interest to early-cinema scholarship, as it focuses on an important era in the history of film production: Mutual was in the midst of the transition from shorts to features, and caught between the established market for one-reelers and the growing demand for something bigger and better. There was even some uncertainty on how to define the difference between shorter and longer films – a two-reel film would sometimes be called a “feature”. All in all, Aitken found this new development quite profitable. He was supporting Thomas H. Ince’s ambitious productions, Mack Sennett’s popular comedies and vii

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Griffith’s “masterpieces” as well as several interesting small companies like Thanhouser. They were all beginning to advertise their stars: Griffith was already a big one, but this is also the time when Chaplin was making his name. To further complicate the issue, there is the question of the names given to the production and distribution companies and their corresponding studios. In June 1915, Mutual’s directors replaced Aitken with John Freuler; within a month, Aitken formed the Triangle Film Corporation and took Griffith, Ince, and Sennett with him. Starting with The Lamb, Triangle became the distributor for all Griffith-supervised pictures. From 1914 to 1919, Griffith rarely moved from his Los Angeles studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard. Only its name was changed: from the “Reliance-Majestic” studio, to the “Fine Arts” and sometimes “Griffith Studio”, to the “Griffith Artcraft Studio”. It all depended upon who was distributing (Russell Merritt even suggests – in a correspondence to the Editors dated 12 February 2002 – that it may be confusing to call the films that Triangle distributed “Fine Arts films” because it implies a new studio, and the facility on 4500 Sunset Boulevard was called “the Fine Arts Studio” before Griffith left Reliance-Majestic for Triangle). No systematic attempt has yet been made to bring clarity to this quagmire and determine the extent of Griffith’s participation in these productions (Russell Merritt began tackling the case in his 1988 article “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle”). The very term “supervision” is in itself vague enough, as it leaves room for conjecture on whether the term applied to the approval (or even drafting) of the script, cast and crew, or involved the actual overseeing presence on the set. Both possibilities may apply to Griffith’s case, but truth on this point may never be known. Inclusion of the “supervised” films in the corpus of The Griffith Project has inevitably been the object of debate within the editorial team since the beginning of this series. Indeed, one is tempted to say that Griffith must have been way too busy with The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance to spend any time on other people’s productions; however, there is adequate proof that many of the films under his nominal responsibility received some degree of personal attention on his part, as testified by trade journals reports and photographs showing him on the set. Several of these production units actually look like small-scale Griffith projects. Their directors were Griffith protégés such as James Kirkwood, Edward Dillon, Donald Crisp; there were scripts by Anita Loos; and the casts were straight from the Biograph days: Henry B. Walthall, Blanche Sweet, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Spottiswoode Aitken. As we felt that this evidence could not be ignored altogether, we have decided to open the debate on this question by incorporating in this and future volumes of the series a number of titles plausibly supervised by Griffith. We obviously make no claim of completeness nor undisputable accuracy on this matter, and hope that further research will shed some light upon an obscure aspect of the director’s activity. The films directed and supervised by Griffith in the years 1914 and 1915 define the parameters of this volume, the eighth installment in 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. Writers and editors have extensively verified the filmographic information published in modern scholarly books and essays with the data gathered from primary sources and, whenever possible, through the analysis of the prints viewed. As we ventured into a major terra incognita, editorial discretion had to be exercised on a number of occasions in this new phase of the project. Contrary to the method applied to previous volumes in this series, assignments have no longer been given by consecutive groups of films; instead, we have chosen to give priority to the individual interest or expertise of contributors on specific topics (such as in the case of Paul Spehr, who has concentrated his attention on the “lost” films presumably supervised by Griffith), and to distribute the other assignments as evenly as possible among the viii

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specialists who have generously helped to develop The Griffith Project through their work on previous volumes. As there is not enough information available at present on Griffith’s supervisory role in the one- and two-reelers directed by others (a function he had also served during his years at Biograph), it has been decided to leave them out of this survey except for a handful of shorts of special interest such as the remake of The Painted Lady (DWG Project, #511), given its obvious reference to one of the most important films in Griffith’s career at Biograph (#433) and the recent discovery of the first reel of the 1914 version. As in previous volumes, films are listed in their presumed order of shooting, with the last day or month of shooting determining the chronology of the entries. It has been extremely difficult to do so in the case of the films supervised by Griffith, and the sequence proposed here should be considered as a tentative. When the presumed date of filming is vague or ambiguous, the dates of copyright, release or premiere in large cities have been taken into account in establishing the entries’ sequence. Filming dates of the Fine Arts Films have been extensively researched by Ben Brewster in the Harry and Roy Aitken Papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society, also available in microfilm edition. In a correspondence dated 29 June 2003, Brewster writes: The Fine Arts [production] books are not in the Aitken Collection. But those productions which started before the formation of Triangle and the establishment of Fine Arts were entered in the Reliance and Majestic books, and cost records were completed in those books. As a result, there are production records – ledgers broken down to show all costs associated with individual productions – for few of the titles covered in this volume, even though they were eventually released under the Fine Arts label.… [T]he Aitken Reliance and Majestic production records were books kept in Los Angeles – ([as far as New York productions are concerned] they only have records for work done … in the Los Angeles studios, such as titling).… The production records have a lot of cost entries after shooting ceased, often up to and beyond the release of the film. The first dates [given] for each title [in a database compiled by Brewster and provided to the Editor] are the dates of the earliest entry in the respective ledger pages; the second are the date of the last entry for salaries of cast and crew (which these records enter weekly, based on the number of shooting days in the relevant week). The interval between these dates, incidentally, is almost always greater than the number of shooting days indicated at the top of the first page for each title. These shooting days are an accounting device for the allocation of overhead costs, but I can’t from the ledgers work out how they are calculated. But I think it is reasonable to assume that the period within which cast and crew are being paid salaries is pretty close to the shooting period (I have ignored the fact that there are sometimes gaps in the weekly sequence of salary entries, presumably because the production rested for a time, so my dates are the beginning and ending of shooting overall). In every case, salary payments are made within a week of the earliest entry.

In another correspondence (2 November 2003) Brewster adds: I realised there is another source.… The Reliance-Majestic Studios prepared monthly reports, including an inventory; the inventory listed films in production, attributing to them a book value equivalent to what had been expended on the production to date. Once a film was released, it was removed from the inventory (I am not quite clear why that is so – perhaps they count as having been sold to the distributor, Triangle). In Box 33 of the Aitken Papers there is a complete run of these inventories from January 1915 to November 1916, but none before or after. Anyway, a big jump in the inventory figure for a film means that a lot of work

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was done on it in that month. As a result, it is not hard to indicate when films were in production, except for those produced in New York City or Fort Lee, for which the inventories are much more erratic, only usually indicating the value of work done on them in Los Angeles. But there is something on almost all the titles.

By all means, this wealth of information must be taken with a great deal of caution, as several questions and apparent contradictions still remain unanswered (as demonstrated, for instance, by the dates of filming and of the New York premiere of Manhattan Madness [1916], discussed in a note to the film’s credits in Volume 9 of The Griffith Project). Nevertheless, it is thanks to these production ledgers that the estimated filming dates have been established for several entries, and I gratefully acknowledge Ben Brewster for facilitating what would otherwise have been a thankless and often fruitless task. The methodology adopted for the inventory of archival sources has been discussed at some length in the foreword to previous volumes of this series, but is worth summarizing them here. The archival sources listed in each entry of The Griffith Project represent the extant preservation material (closest to the original camera negatives) utilized for the making of viewing copies. According to this definition, the term “archival source” is used exclusively 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. For example, 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 1970’s 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. Whenever in doubt about the nature of an archival element, we made mention of it with the caveat that its printing generation has not been determined. Detailed information (including format, footage and source) on some of the prints available for viewing at the time of publication of this volume can be found in the official catalogue of the 2004 Pordenone Film Festival, held from 9 to 16 October in Sacile. The Griffith Project is the direct outcome of the generous help provided by all the individuals and institutions involved in the preservation and study of Griffith’s work. Mike Mashon (Library of Congress), Elaine Burrows (National Film and Television Archive, London), Steven Higgins (The Museum of Modern Art), Paul Spehr, Russell Merritt, and Kevin Brownlow have replied with admirable patience and insight to the hundreds of inquiries I have submitted to them for almost a decade. Our special thanks go to Mary Lea Bandy and Anne Morra (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Greg Lukow, Patrick Loughney, Madeline Matz and Linda Shah (Library of Congress), all of whom are currently involved in 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. Film preservation is by definition an international effort: several archives have restored other Griffith titles, or helped with additional documentation and research. We wish to express our gratitude to Tim Kittleson, Eddie Richmond, Charles Hopkins and Jennifer Teefy (UCLA Film and Television Archive); Mark-Paul Meyer, Rommy Albers, Catherine x

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Cormon and Simona Monizza (Filmmuseum, Amsterdam); Eva Orbanz (Film Museum Berlin); Dan Nissen and Thomas C. Christensen (Det Danske Filmmuseum); Stéphanie Côté, Robert Boivin (Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal) and Robert Daudelin, former director of the Cinémathèque Québécoise; Anca Mitran and the staff of the Arhiva Na?ionala de Filme (Bucarest); Paulina Fernandez Jurado (Fundación Cinemateca Argentina); Carlos Roberto de Souza and Patricia De Filippi (Cinemateca Brasileira); Lúcia Lobo (Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro); Michelle Aubert, Eric Le Roy and Jean-Louis Cot (Archives du Film, Bois d’Arcy); Michael Pogorzelski and Fritz Herzog (Academy Film Archive); Alberto Del Fabro (Cinémathèque française); Catherine Gautier (Filmoteca Española); Dinko Tucakovic (Yugoslovenska Kinoteka, Belgrade); Agata Zalewska (Filmoteka Narodowa, Warsaw); Vladimir Dmitriev (Gosfilmofond of Russia); Catherine Surowiec; Edward E. Stratmann, Caroline Yeager, Chad D. Hunter, Deborah Stoiber, Daniel Wagner, Tim Wagner, Jared Case, Benjamin Tucker, Kelli Hicks, Anthony L’Abbate and all the staff of the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House for their generous help in retrieving and sharing information on film credits and archival sources. Last but not least, we are grateful to all the interns and students of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation who contributed to the early stages of preparation of this and other volumes: Kelly Chisholm, Sonia Genaitay, Sungji Oh, Christina Porterfield, Heather Stilin, John Woodard (in the academic year 2001–2002); Susan Busam, May Dea, Andrew Lampert, Diana Little, Ember Lundgren, Brianne Merkel, Robert Nanovic, Heather Olson, Brent Phillips, Magnus Rosborn, Alexandra Terziev, Edward Tse (2002–2003); Daniel Blazek, Christina Nobles, Loubna Regragui, David Rice, Jennifer Sidley, Marcus Smith, Anna Sperone (2003–2004). Brendan C. Burchill, recipient of the 2004 Pordenone/Selznick School Fellowship, has assisted with supplementary research. My colleagues on the Board of Directors of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Davide Turconi, David Robinson, Piera Patat, Livio Jacob, Carlo Montanaro, Piero Colussi, Lorenzo Codelli and Luciano 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. Commentaries on the goals and methodological issues raised by The Griffith Project before and after the series started in October 1997 have been published in Griffithiana, Vol. XXI, Nos. 62–63; May 1998, pp. 4–37; in the French journal 1895, No. 29, December 1999, pp. 187–88; and in Luca Giuliani (ed.), The Collegium Papers I (Gemona: Cineteca del Friuli/Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2001, pp. 23–32), the inaugural volume of an annual collection of essays and workshop transcripts written or assembled by students participating in the festival. Paolo Cherchi Usai Rochester, January 2004

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

EILEEN BOWSER is a film historian and curator emeritus of the film archives, Department of Film and Media, 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: 1907–1915 (1990), 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. PHILIP C. CARLI is a musicologist, film and sound recording historian, composer, conductor, and silent film accompanist living in Rochester, New York. He regularly performs at George Eastman House, the New York Public Library, Northeast Historic Film, the Nottingham (UK) British Silent Film Festival, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and other venues in the United States and Europe. He has also composed and recorded more than fifty silent film scores for both piano and orchestra, and his history of American band and orchestral recording in the early acoustic era, “Looking for the Band” (and Orchestra), is due to be published shortly. PAOLO CHERCHI USAI, senior curator of the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House, is professor of Film at the University of Rochester and director of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, established in 1996. Cofounder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and of Domitor, the international society for the study of early film, 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). His latest book is The Death of Cinema (BFI, 2001). 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 most recent book, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (2000) is published by BFI. JOYCE JESIONOWSKI is a film scholar and the author of Thinking in Pictures (1987), an examination of the formal structures of D.W. Griffith’s Biographs. She currently serves as assistant dean at Yeshiva College in New York City. J.B. KAUFMAN is a film historian who has written extensively on topics including Disney animation and the films of Blanche Sweet. He is co-author, with Russell Merritt, of Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992) and of a second book on the Silly Symphonies. CHARLIE KEIL is associate professor of History and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style and Filmmaking, 1907–1913 (2001) and has published extensively on early cinema. xii

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MIKE MASHON is curator of the Moving Image Section in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. 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, 1806–1836 (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 is visiting professor in the Film Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written with J.B. Kaufman an account of Walt Disney’s silent cartoons, Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992), and a forthcoming book on the Silly Symphonies. He directed and produced “The Great Nickelodeon Show”, presented at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in 2002. His most recent commentaries on Griffith can be read and heard on laser disks and DVDs produced by Film Preservation Associates for The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Way Down East, and the Biograph anthology D.W. Griffith Years of Discovery: 1909–1913. CYNTHIA ROWELL graduated in 1999 from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. She is employed by Milestone Film & Video. PAUL SPEHR has been an archival consultant and film historian since retiring from the Library of Congress where he was Assistant Chief, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. He is the author of The Movies Begin: Making Movies in New Jersey, 1887–1920 (1977) and American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908–1920 (1996) as well as of a number of articles on archival matters and early film history. He is working on a book about the career of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. LINDA WILLIAMS directs the Film Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include a psychoanalytic study of Surrealist cinema, Figures of Desire (1981), a co-edited volume of feminist film criticism (Re-vision, 1984), an edited volume on film spectatorship, Viewing Positions (1993) and Reinventing Film Studies (co-edited with Christine Gledhill, 2000). In 1989 she published a controversial study of pornographic film entitled Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (2nd edition, 1999). Her latest book is Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White, from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (2001).

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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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502 RELIANCE MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE GREAT LEAP; OR UNTIL DEATH DO US PART Alternate title: Until Death Do Us Part Filming date: finished January 1914 Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 29 Union Square?, New York; Green River, Kentucky, or Ausable Chasm, New York Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. (the latter reissued the film in December 1914) New York premiere: early March 1914, Weber’s Theatre (29th St. and Broadway) Los Angeles premiere: 26 March 1914, Woodley’s Theatre Release date: by 18 April 1914 Release length: four reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: W. Christy Cabanne Scenario: not known Camera: not known Cast: Mae Marsh (Mary Gibbs); Robert Harron (Bobby Dawson); Ralph Lewis, Donald Crisp (The fathers); Charles Eagle Eye; Raoul Walsh NOTE: According to contemporary sources, this was the first film supervised by D.W. Griffith at Mutual Film Corp. after his departure from Biograph. Archival sources: none known Mary Gibbs is the daughter of a Kentucky mountaineer who falls in love with Bobby Dawson, the son of the leader of a clan with whom Gibbs is in dispute regarding the boundary of his land. During the several encounters between the two warring factions, a member of one of the clans is killed, which starts a battle royal between the two families. Mary Gibbs and her father are attacked by their enemies and are driven into their home, which they barricade and continue to fight. Mary, realizing that her lover is among those in the attacking party, and fearing that he may be killed, manages to escape from her house, and after gaining the shelter of the woods, attracts his attention, and together they flee mounted upon his horse. The other members of his band, seeing what has happened, follow in hot pursuit. The lovers urge their horse to full speed to take a road which leads directly to a precipitous cliff which drops sheer into the river. Before realizing the danger ahead they are upon it, and the horse in the mad race for life is unable to stop in time, dashes madly from the cliff into space. Horse and riders fall into the waters below and providentially are uninjured and able to swim to safety on the opposite shore, for their pursuers realizing that they have gone over the cliff have given them up for lost. Old man Gibbs has seen the daring feat, and admiring such great courage and fortitude, prevents his son, the girl’s brother, from sending a death messenger from his rifle to the heart of young Bob. Later the boy and girl wandering through the woods, meet the old man and his son, and the last of the Dawsons becomes the accepted husband of Mary. The Moving Picture World, April 18, 1914, p. 424

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No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. The Great Leap was a potboiler, but it became quite a sensation because of the dramatic leap that was the climax of the film. The stunt, apparently done with live performers, was enough of an attraction to pull large audiences. Although Mutual’s publicity hinted that Harron and Marsh were on the horse, there was no direct claim that they really performed the stunt. The rest of the picture was a routine mountain feud melodrama. Variety’s reviewer, “Sime” (Sime Silverman), called it “a four-reeler, full of that sort of activity that may be imagined when the tale unwinds around a Kentucky feud ”. He speculated that because of the way that the shot came out: “[t]he Reliance people ... may have concluded it was better than they planned or expected, and no doubt it is” (May 15, 1914, pp. 23–24). As Silverman described the shot, the couple (Robert Harron with Mae Marsh behind him) rides to the edge of a fifty-foot cliff and urges the horse to leap to the water. The horse trips or falters and Harron and Marsh fall off; the horse topples over as it heads for the water. Butch Cassidy-like, Harron, Marsh and the horse all land in the water and survive the fall. The Moving Picture World’s George Blaisdell said that he just couldn’t “get over that horseback leap from the ledge into the water of Robert Harron and Mae Marsh. It is doubtful if anything nervier has ever been done by two people for the screen” (The Moving Picture World, April 4, 1914, p. 67). In a pre-release ad for the film, Mutual bragged that it was a “positively unparalleled feat of daring”, and claimed that because of the dramatic intensity of the film they were giving the film a wider release than their original intention, which was to restrict the showing to a Broadway theatre and other “regular dramatic houses” (The Moving Picture World, March 7, 1914, p. 1295). Although this ad said that the film had “slipped out by accident”, Billy Bitzer reported that Mutual was so pressed for funds that they mortgaged The Great Leap to raise enough money to pay for Griffith and his crew’s move to Los Angeles. Lillian Gish repeats this story, which has found its way into a number of histories covering Griffith’s work at Mutual (e.g., Bitzer, Billy Bitzer, His Story, p. 103; Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, p. 112). Mutual’s ad of 7 March 1914 and Blaisdell’s comment both credit Griffith with supervising this film. Like other Griffith supervised Mutual productions, there is no record to confirm what is meant by “supervision”. The director, W. Christy Cabanne, was a Griffith disciple who was among the early defectors to leave Biograph in the Fall of 1913 and join Griffith at Mutual. He was sent to Los Angeles at the end of December 1913 to set up production, and The Great Leap appears to be his first major production at the West Coast studio. Bitzer’s claim that it was mortgaged to cover travel costs for the rest of the company indicates that it was done, or almost done, before Griffith went to California at the end of January 1914. Since Griffith was in New York and Cabanne was in California, Griffith’s influence would have been indirect at best. If the picture was mortgaged, it was a while before the money was recovered. Although it was one of the first multi-reel films that Mutual released, it was early March when it was first screened and mid-April when it had a general release. It premiered in March in New York at Weber’s Theatre, where it shared the bill with The Gangsters. The two films ran for several weeks, and by mid-April they were also playing at the New York Theatre. It was one of three features advertised in Reel Life (April 18, 1914) as available from Continental Feature Film Corp. and Mutual. A week later it was among eighteen multi-reel films by Griffith, Ince, Thanhouser, and other Mutual affiliates that were available from Continental (Reel Life, April 25, 1914). The Great Leap premiered in Los Angeles on 26 March 1914, at Woodley’s Theatre with Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Ralph Lewis, 2

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Donald Crisp, Raoul A. Walsh, W. Christy Cabanne, and D.W. Griffith in attendance. In mid-April The Moving Picture World reported it was playing at several theaters in Los Angeles. In December, Continental Features announced that it was reissuing it. There is conflicting information about the location where the leap into the river was filmed. Reel Life (February 14, 1914) said it was filmed at Green River, Kentucky, near Mammoth Cave; in the 30 May 1914 edition Reel Life reported that the jump was filmed at Ausable Chasm in New York state. In all likelihood, the interior scenes were filmed at the RelianceMajestic studio of Union Square in New York City. Reliance also had a studio in a New York City suburb, which they bought about the time when Griffith was hired. It was probably convenient to the Thanhouser studio, as there is evidence that there was some swapping of performers between the two Mutual branches. Griffith apparently did not like the new studio and opted to use the facilities at Union Square instead. The Escape, part of The Battle of the Sexes, and possibly The Gangsters were also filmed there. Whether or not it was used for The Great Leap is a matter of speculation, as all the descriptions of the film concentrate on the scene where the horse jumps in the river with the lovers on its back. Paul Spehr

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503 MAJESTIC MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES Working title: The Single Standard Filming date: finished January 1914 Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 29 Union Square, New York Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. New York premiere: 12 April 1914, Weber’s Theatre (29th St. and Broadway) Release date: 12–25 April 1914 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: Daniel Carson Goodman Source: “The Single Standard”, the story by Daniel Carson Goodman (publication undetermined) Camera: G.W. Bitzer Film editors: James Smith, Rose Richtel (according to modern sources) Cast: Donald Crisp (Frank Andrews); Lillian Gish (Jane, his daughter); Robert Harron (John, his son); Mary Alden (Mrs. Andrews); Owen Moore (Cleo’s lover); Fay Tincher (Cleo, the Siren); W.E. Lawrence Archival sources: FILM – George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive (fragment), in March of the Movies (possibly a feature compilation by J. Stuart Blackton Productions, 1933), reel 4. Note: the Library of Congress holds three elements of a film with the title March of the Movies: a) March of the Movies/The Star Family Film (ca. 1930), 35mm nitrate positive, 229 ft. (date taken from edge code on print); b) March of the Movies (J. Stuart Blackton Productions, 1933), 35mm nitrate positive, five reels of six, 3960 feet; c) March of the Movies (J. Stuart Blackton Prods, 1937), 16mm acetate positive, 6 reels, 2066 feet (reissue of 1933 film). Cataloguing card indicated this print includes “clips from Princess Nicotine, The Birth of a Nation, Pollyanna, The Floorwalker, The White Sister, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Big Parade, and others”. MUSIC – George Eastman House, cue sheet Frank Andrews, a successful business man – a man who has always found pride and joy in the company of his loving wife and daughter – suddenly finds himself enthralled by the advances of a gay young woman – a siren, who lives in the same apartment house. So marked an influence does she have over him as time progresses that at last he quite forgets his home ties, neglects his family and goes the way of many other men who have forgotten the meaning of paternity and blood ties. The story is advanced through many scenes enacted with the accompanying notes of New York’s night life, and the denouement comes when the faithful wife discovers her husband’s infidelity. At this time the mother’s mind nearly loses balance, while Jane, the beautiful daughter, crazed by the grief of her mother, determines to take part in the tragedy. With revolver in hand she steals up to the apartment of the woman, but her frail nature is overcome by the temperamental anger of the woman and her mission fails. However, the errand is not fraught with failure, for the father, coming in at this moment, finds his daughter being made love to by the sweetheart of the young woman, and realizes the road upon which he has traveled. When he confronts his daughter and says, “You, my daughter – what are you doing here?” – the daughter answers, “My

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father, what are you doing here?” The realization is brought home to the father’s mind that the law of moral ethics that governs a woman’s life necessarily governs that of the man as well. Reformation comes in his character. He takes his daughter away with him and together they go back to their home of happiness and content. The Moving Picture World, April 18, 1914, p. 424

No complete copy of the film is known to exist, but a fragment survives. It is the scene in a dance hall where Mrs. Andrews (Mary Alden), daughter Jane (Lillian Gish) and son John (Robert Harron) discover that Mr. Andrews (Donald Crisp) is having an affair with their neighbor Cleo (Fay Tincher). The sequence is introduced by a text written by an unidentified commentator (probably in the 1940s or 1950s) that explains, incorrectly, that this is “Mr. Griffith’s first pioneer feature”. It credits Harry E. Aitken (Mutual’s former president) as the source for the added material. Although short, this is quite a complicated sequence. There are four different camera set-ups, edited into almost a dozen separate cuts. There are two titles (with a “DG” logo that appears original). It opens with the daughter, son and mother settling into a dance-hall box; the father and Cleo arrive and enter the next box (on the right). Jane and John are shocked to see him, but he does not see them because he is entranced with Cleo. Jane restrains John from confronting his father and they decide to take their mother out. She has been talking to someone offscreen and hasn’t seen her husband. As they leave, the father and Cleo come on the dance floor and the mother sees them. Mrs. Andrews and her children make a quick exit as the scene ends. Based on a story by Daniel Carson Goodman, a writer who had joined the Reliance Company’s scenario staff, The Battle of the Sexes was the second multi-reel feature that Griffith started for Mutual and the first one that he completed. Like The Escape, which was begun earlier, it was an exploration of sex and morality; however, unlike its still unfinished counterpart, in The Battle of the Sexes the bad genes, brutality and venereal disease that plagued the tenements did not play an important role. This was about middle-class life, so prurient members of the audience had to content themselves with seduction, adultery and attempted murder. Billy Bitzer, the cameraman on the film, called The Battle of the Sexes a “quickie”. He said it was rushed into production because of a delay in completing The Escape caused by Blanche Sweet’s slow recovery from scarlet fever. The recently expanded and refinanced Mutual conglomerate needed a Griffith-made film. Since November 1913, when it was announced that Griffith was joining the company, Mutual’s publicists Phil Mindil and Hopp Hadley had touted the company’s alliance with the previously anonymous director. They had little trouble rousing interest because the motion-picture trade press was already proclaiming that Griffith was the greatest director in the world and that he was responsible for converting movies from entertainment to art. But, with all this fine publicity, Mutual had no “big stuff” to lure audiences into the theater. To fill the gap, Goodman’s story was rushed into production with the working title The Single Standard. The film was shot sometime in January 1914 at Reliance’s makeshift studio near Union Square in New York City. Camerawork was completed before 27 January, because that was when Griffith and a crew of writers, directors and players departed New York for a warmer and sunnier Los Angeles. Lillian Gish said that The Battle of the Sexes was shot in five days – at least her scenes were finished that quickly. Her story that Bitzer could not shoot a closeup of her because her eyes were so bloodshot is often told to illustrate the “quickie” nature of this film. This occurred, she said, because the hours were long and she had so little sleep. Although the camerawork was done in New York, the final editing may have been finished 5

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at the former Kinemacolor studio that Mutual had bought as the Los Angeles base for their Reliance and Majestic companies. Terry Ramsaye and others have reported that The Battle of the Sexes was rushed through in order to provide funds for a cash-strapped parent company – if so, it was a while before the cash began to flow. Although The Battle of the Sexes was finished and in the can as early as February 1914, it was not exhibited until early April 1914 when it opened at Weber’s Theatre, 29th and Broadway in New York City, on a program of Mutual films that included a Sennett comedy and another feature by one of Mutual’s other production companies. Later in the month it was among a number of multi-reel Mutual features advertised as available from Continental Feature Film Corp. and “all Mutual Exchanges”. Included in this package were several other titles that Griffith supervised: The Great Leap, Gangsters, The Floor Above, The Dishonored Medal, and The Mountain Rat. The last four were made after The Battle of the Sexes. In addition to Griffith’s films, Continental also offered features produced by Ince, Sennett, Thanhouser, and the American Film Company. The ad for this package in Reel Life magazine (April 25, 1914), Mutual’s house organ, singled out The Battle of the Sexes as “staged by that Genius of the Photodrama, Mr. D.W. Griffith”. Later ads proclaimed that it was the “greatest domestic heart-interest drama ever produced” and that it was released in five reels even though “the vital material would have made eight, but that isn’t Griffith’s way”. There was no explanation for the delay in releasing this and several other multi-reel films produced by Griffith. In the case of The Battle of the Sexes, perhaps Griffith was not satisfied with the results. It is also possible that the company was leery of launching their new director with subject matter that might offend some of the potential audience. But these are only suppositions. A more plausible explanation is that Mutual was searching for a way to reach the appropriate mass market in a consistently profitable way. The company had a network of regional exchanges that contracted with exhibitors to take a program of one- and two- reel films made by the several production companies that made up the Mutual organization. This was similar to the distribution pattern established by the Motion Picture Patents Company and also adopted by Universal Pictures. The parent company set a schedule for releasing the films made by the production members and fed them to the exhibitors on a schedule. The exhibitor knew that on Monday there would be single-reel productions made by Reliance, Keystone, and American; Tuesday, by Majestic, Beauty, and Thanhouser; and so on. It was a system that ensured a stream of fresh new productions for exhibitors, and guaranteed exhibitions (and rental fees) for producers. The multi-reel films that Griffith wanted to make, as well as those being made by Ince, Thanhouser, and American Film Company, did not fit this programming package. They were too long to program in the small theaters that showed the one- and two-reel films and because they cost more to make, they had to be shown in theaters that had more seats and where audiences would pay more than five or ten cents. Although larger theaters wanted to show longer films, there was no system to distribute them, so films were booked title-by-title as they became available. As Griffith completed new features, Mutual searched for a way to control the distribution in order to ensure a steady income for their new product. As a step in this direction, Mutual set up two new distributing organizations in New York City: Continental Feature Film Corp., headquartered at 29 Union Square, and Western Import Co., 71 West 23rd St.. Continental handled sales in the United States; Western Import was actually an export company designed to distribute Mutual films in Europe and other foreign locations. The films were also available through Mutual Exchanges. To stimulate business, Mutual contracted with Weber’s Theatre in New York to exhibit their longer productions and began building a network of urban theaters that would show their multi-reel films on a regular basis. The Battle of the Sexes was the first feature film that Lillian Gish and Owen Moore made 6

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at Mutual, but it was not their first multi-reel feature. In 1913 Owen Moore appeared in Famous Players’ Caprice with his then wife, Mary Pickford. Gish had a small role in Judith of Bethulia and was featured in at least two of the multi-reel films that Biograph was producing for Klaw and Erlanger, although they had not been released yet. In a review published in Mutual’s Reel Life (April 25, 1914) Ada Patterson characterized Gish’s role as that of a “child woman” and found the “dawning comprehension of her father’s weakness” gripping. The part of Cleo, the femme fatale, was Fay Tincher’s first work for Griffith and even though the part was very serious, her comic ability impressed Griffith and most of the rest of her career was as a comedienne. Just before release the title was changed from The Single Standard to The Battle of the Sexes – a move from the relatively bland to the slightly racier, indicating that Griffith or Mutual was aware that audiences were more interested in sex than standards. Even though this production was a “quickie”, it seems to have stuck in Griffith’s mind because he remade it in 1928. Paul Spehr

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504 RELIANCE MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE GANGSTERS Alternate title: The Gangsters of New York Filming date: January (to February?) 1914 Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 29 Union Square?, New York (see note at the end of the entry for The Great Leap [#502]); Reliance studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors (street scenes): New York City Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. New York premiere: late March 1914, Weber’s Theatre (29th St. and Broadway) Release date: by 18 April 1914 Release length: four reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: James Kirkwood Scenario: James Kirkwood; Anita Loos? (according to modern sources) Camera: not known Cast: Henry B. Walthall (Porky Dugan / Biff Hogan); Consuelo Bailey (Cora Drew); Jack Dillon (Biff Dugan / Tom Hogan); Ralph Lewis (Spike Golden / Hennessy); C. Lambert (Kerrigan); R. Riley (Billy Drew [P. Riley as Jack Drew]); Jack Pickford (Spot, the spy); Alice Horine (Jessie Dugan / Jessie Hogan); Master Ogden Child (Jimmie Dugan / Jimmie Hogan); F. Herzog (Hennessy / Spike McGee); Miss B. Craig (Mrs. Murphy) Archival sources: none known The Dugan family, whose brothers are the leaders of a gang, get into a dispute with a rival gang, led by Spike Golden. The Dugan gang attempt to break up the annual ball of the Golden Association, and, in the gun play that follows, Golden is slain, and the brothers are sentenced to jail for the crime, the elder to die in the electric chair, and the younger to serve a short term. They are innocent of the crime, which is a “frame-up.” On his [release] from the jail, the younger brother sets out with vengeance in his eye, and corners the man who “squealed” to the police and caused, circumstantially, his brother’s death. Alone with the man at his mercy, the influence of the country girl, whom [he] has gradually learned to love and respect, causes him to stay his hand, and finally to allow the “squealer” to leave unharmed. The New York Dramatic Mirror, March 4, 1914, p. 42

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. Reliance’s production of The Gangsters was one of the best received of all of the films that D.W. Griffith is credited with supervising for Mutual in the months before filming of The Clansman [The Birth of a Nation] started. A battery of New York papers gave it positive reviews, including The New York American (“a sermon in films ... teaching a life lesson”); The New York Sun (“the most thrilling display of certain phases of existence in this metropolis. ... Gunplay was never more brilliant”); The New York Journal of Commerce (“The war starts in earnest ... the battlegrounds being through the alleys, hallways and cellars of the tenement district ... perhaps the most exciting series of pictures ever shown in New York”); and The New York Dramatic Mirror (“The film cries out loud to the spectator in its agonizing appeal 8

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for a better understanding of conditions of crime”). Kevin Brownlow (Behind the Mask of Innocence, pp. 187–188) links The Gangsters with Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and credits this film with a bolder story than its predecessor. Among the multi-reel films that Griffith supervised or directed at Mutual, it was the second time that life in New York’s slums was explored. In Griffith’s The Escape, the emphasis is put on bad genes and impure breeding; in The Gangsters, sex and genes are set aside. Vice, prostitution and forced-prostitution (the so-called “White Slave Trade”) had been much in the news in recent years and there had been a number of plays as well as George Loane Tucker’s sensational film exploration of the topic in Traffic in Souls (1913), which had been playing in New York theaters in recent months. To stress that this was a different approach, Mutual emphasized in its ads and press releases that this was not a “White Slave” or “Vice” picture. But crime was a hot topic. Articles about crime, tenement gangs and the social problems in the slums had appeared regularly in newspapers and journals since the 1890s and even earlier. Griffith and Kirkwood would have been very familiar with the photographs and articles of Jacob Riis as well as the writings of reformers like Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell and Jane Addams, who had all been exploring the social and economic causes of poverty, crime and exploitation in America’s cities. No copy of the film is known to survive, but if the plot summaries and reviews of The Gangsters are accurate, there was no exploration of the causes of crime, and the film did not point a finger at political corruption, which was frequently credited with fostering crime in New York City. Instead, it was the graphic portrayal of gang warfare that caught the critics’ fancy. These scenes were filmed on the streets and featured brandished knives and vivid gunplay. The critics found them quite sensational. The New York Herald commented that “[h]ad it not been a silent drama the sound of the fusillade ... would have deafened the spectators”. And while the plot summaries do not indicate that this was a picture that pressed specific moral corrections, several of the reviews commented that the message it delivered was strong and convincing. According to The New York Evening Globe, “[s]uch pictures as ‘The Gangsters’ do more good for us in one week than a dozen reform organizations are able to do in a year”. The New York American wrote: “Few lessons of life are pretty stories, and ‘The Gangsters’ is a life lesson. It is through the presentation of such films that the moving picture people are going to do much good in the world”. A message was probably not necessary. The city’s newspapers had been filled with coverage of the “Becker case”. Police Lieutenant Charles Becker, former head of the anti-gambling squad, had been arrested and condemned to the electric chair. Becker was apparently a scapegoat. He was implicated in a murder that took place in 1912. It was an execution-style murder of a gambling house owner by gunmen hired by a trio of gamblers. The case involved payoffs of police and public officials but only the gunmen and Becker were arrested and convicted. Since they appeared to be agents of others, the case stimulated heavy press coverage. Bribery and pay-offs of city officials, police, and Tammany Hall had gone on for many years. Although the existence of this corruption was well known, few – if any – steps had been taken to correct it. The “Becker case” brought it to the forefront and it was still in the news when The Gangsters was released. The reviewer for The New York Evening Globe made specific reference to it: “It is an opportune moment for such a production and those who have been reading the developments in the Becker case during the past week will be interested in seeing almost an exact reproduction of ‘Gip the Blood’ and his pals, who are now awaiting death at Sing Sing”. “Gip the Blood” was apparently one of the gunmen hired by the trio of gamblers to kill gambling-house owner Herman Rosenthal. The New York Evening Globe’s reviewer was referring to the prison and execution scenes in The Gangsters. Most of the critics were particularly impressed by the execution scene, which showed Biff Dugan, waiting in his death cell attended by a priest, then being led behind a 9

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crucifix to the execution chamber and strapped in the chair. The camera did not show Biff as the current was turned on, but instead showed the warden dropping a handkerchief as a signal to turn on the current. In Variety (March 13, 1914, p. 23), reviewer “Sime” (Sime Silverman) indicated that this sequence was intercut with images of the final moments of Biff’s sister Jessie’s struggle with fatal consumption, her death hastened by the deterioration of her health due to working in a sweatshop. Although the critics found the scene “gruesome” and “revolting”, none of them objected to showing it and several felt that it made a powerful case against capital punishment. The New York American’s critic praised it for showing that “innocent members of a family are made to suffer even more than the criminals who are taken by the State and incarcerated or executed”. The strong impact the film made was apparently the result of a conscious effort to achieve a natural, realistic look through casting, costumes and scenes filmed on the streets. The realistic effect was enhanced by close-ups emphasizing the action. Variety commented on this, praising the uncredited camerawork: “a point this film appears to make being the close range of the camera in which eye expression may be plainly observed”. This is the nearest indication we have that Griffith might have been carefully tracking what was going on during the production of this film. There are other hints that Griffith may have paid more attention to this film than others he “supervised” during the first half of 1914. Intercutting to contrast the deaths of Jessie and Biff, as well as an apparent fade-out shot showing a liberated Porky Dugan with his new wife, driving cows home at the close of day, are prototypical Griffith effects (The New York Evening Globe said this was the closing shot). James Kirkwood, the director, who had considerable experience working with Griffith as both an actor and director, did not need the master at his elbow to borrow from him, but it is very possible that Griffith’s influence was direct. It is interesting to speculate about the impact that The Gangsters may have had on two similar films that subsequently explored crime and life in the slums. While The Gangsters was being filmed, Griffith was planning the production of The Clansman [The Birth of a Nation], which was shot during late Summer and early Fall of 1914. After completing The Clansman, his next major project was The Mother and the Law with its climactic execution scene in which an unjustly charged youth is nearly killed by the State. The enthusiastic critical reception that The Gangsters received, as well as the general praise for the execution scene, may well have encouraged Griffith to continue exploring the dark side of city life. A connection between The Gangsters and Raoul Walsh’s Regeneration (1915) may be less direct, but Walsh was working at the Reliance-Majestic studios in Los Angeles as both actor and director. Although he had no known connection with the production of The Gangsters, he probably saw the film and was certainly aware of the strong reception it received. Walsh was an Irish-American from New York City and although his family escaped the slums, he claimed an intimacy with the New York police force. Regeneration, Walsh’s remarkable portrait of crime and salvation in New York’s slums, used costumes, careful casting, and on-the-street filming to give the picture a canny realism. Like The Gangsters, Regeneration featured close camerawork and fast editing to enhance the dramatic tension and the salvation of the hero – a basically good person in a desperate situation – who mees a good woman and is shown the way to a better life. Walsh may well have seen and admired these elements in The Gangsters. The script for The Gangsters is credited to James Kirkwood, though some sources also credit Anita Loos with co-authorship, but the articles from 1914 give no hint as to who wrote the script. Similarly, there is no surviving record that confirms when or where the film was shot. The reviews point out that there was location shooting in the tenement areas, which would seem to indicate that at least some of the filming was done in New York. The New York reviewers seemed to accept that these scenes were set in New York City. The Moving 10

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Picture World reported that Kirkwood went to Los Angeles in late January when Griffith took his company there (February 7, 1914, p. 689), so it seems likely that if it was started in New York, the final scenes were finished in Los Angeles. Some street scenes could have been shot in Los Angeles. In Behind the Mask of Innocence, Kevin Brownlow (p. 189) writes that The Gangsters and the Girl (Kay-Bee, 1914) was filmed in Venice, California, and downtown Los Angeles in 1914. The Gangsters opened at Weber’s Theatre at the end of March 1914, where it shared the bill with The Great Leap. It was apparently a very popular bill. The New York Evening Globe reported “that crowds are at this very moment crushing into Weber’s Theatre”. It was on the program of multi-reel films that Continental Feature Film Corp. offered in April and continued to offer through the rest of 1914 and into 1915. Paul Spehr

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505 MAJESTIC MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE ESCAPE Filming date: begun December 1913, finished February 1914 Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 29 Union Square, New York; completed at Reliance studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Western Import Co. New York premiere: 1 June 1914, Cort Theatre Release date: June 1914 Release length: four reels (seven reels, according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–1920, p. 244) Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: not known Source: The Escape, the play (1913) by Paul Armstrong Camera: G.W. Bitzer Construction: Samuel De Vall? Film editors: James Smith, Rose Richtel (according to modern sources) Technical director: Samuel De Vall? Production assistant: Thomas E. O’Brien? Cast: Donald Crisp (“Bull” McGee); F.A. Turner (Jim Joyce, the father); Robert Harron (Larry Joyce); Blanche Sweet (May Joyce); Mae Marsh (Jennie Joyce); Owen Moore (Dr. von Eiden); Ralph Lewis (The Senator); “Tammany” Young (McGee’s henchman); Fay Tincher? (An adventuress); Walter Long; [in photo caption in Reel Life, April 4, 1914:] Charles Abbe; Evelyn Bird NOTE: According to The New York Times (June 2, 1914, p. 11), Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman “put together” the prologue of this film, illustrating the careful reproductive process of microbes and farm animals, as opposed to the random selection of humans. Fay Tincher’s appearance in the film is disputed by Paul Spehr. Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – NOTE: The Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection) holds a cue sheet (compiled by M. Winkler) for a film titled The Escape: theme “You and I” (Romance) by Lotter, 1 page. “Wed July 21” marked in pencil; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 291. It is unclear whether the document refers to the 1914 film with this title or to one of the other versions produced during the silent era. May, the prettier and the stronger of the two [sisters], attracts the admiration of “Bull” McGee, a swaggering bully, who looks like a third-rate prizefighter. May escapes. The ambulance surgeon, when he visited the tenement to dress the gash on Larry’s forehead, inflicted by the enraged father, told her that she must escape. Larry is the girl’s brother, and from a lazy good-for-nothing, the blow on the head transforms him into a cruel sneak. There is no mistaking his character after we see him wring the neck of a little kitten. No more is there any question about the foolishness of May’s poor, consumptive sister Jennie, who with trembling fingers fondles the discarded wedding dress. She is fascinated by the brute power of “Bull” McGee. They marry and a year later have a baby that “never stops crying.” While

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Jennie is buying medicine, McGee comes home drunk and stumbles over the crib, crushing the life out of the puny infant. The woman substitutes a wax doll for her dead baby. Nor are things going much better with May. Penniless and with no prospect of finding work, she becomes the mistress of a wealthy man, who after a time offers to marry her. But whatever May lacks, she has a deep sense of the responsibility of bringing children into the world. Again she escapes and tries to bring some cheer into the life of her sister. McGee plans to sell his wife to a dance hall. He delivers her into the keeping of a gang of thieves and procurers, but after a truly thrilling series of scenes she is rescued, only to die in the arms of May. An operation restores Larry to kindly sanity, and May is ready to marry the former ambulance surgeon, who through the entire story has been her wisest counselor. The New York Dramatic Mirror, June 10, 1914, p. 42 [T]he gripping story of one unfortunate tenement family. The elder daughter chooses the easy way, but later reforms; the younger is married to a brute who treats her worse than he would a dog, and is the cause of her death. The Motion Picture News, June 20, 1914, p. 47

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. The Escape is the four-reel version of a play of life in the New York slums written by Paul Armstrong. Although this is the first film Griffith directed after he left the Biograph Company and joined the Mutual Film Corporation, it was not the first of his films released by Mutual. Production was underway in December 1913 at a studio that Mutual had rented at 16th Street and Broadway, near Union Square in Manhattan (The Motion Picture News, November 29, 1913, p. 26) but filming was interrupted shortly after Christmas when Blanche Sweet, the principal female lead, came down with scarlet fever. The picture was delayed for two months while she recovered, and it was apparently completed after Griffith took his company to California in February 1914. Although Griffith was featuring Blanche Sweet as a leading lady, it was a while before the public was able to see her most recent work. Before The Escape she was featured in Griffith’s revolutionary production, Judith of Bethulia, which Biograph did not released until March 1914, and The Escape was not distributed until June 1914. The delay caused major problems for Mutual. They had signed Griffith to an expensive contract and were noisily publicizing him as the movies’ greatest director. Although people in the movie industry were familiar with Griffith’s work, the movie-going public was just learning that he was responsible for Biograph’s well-regarded short films. Since Griffith’s longer Biograph productions were still sitting on the shelf unreleased, moviegoers had not yet seen any of them. To fill the gap, Griffith and his company quickly made The Battle of the Sexes, which was released before The Escape. Both of these initial Griffith Mutual films tread a fine line between high moral purpose and titillation. The films were, of course, against all of these curses visited on society, but they offered the movie audience ample opportunity to explore the avenues of evil. In Armstrong’s play it is the ill-bred, Irish male side of the Joyce family that is the problem, and he offers eugenics as the potential cure. The excesses of Hitler and his Nazi followers largely ended the discussion of eugenics, but as the First World War began it was a much-discussed topic. For those unfamiliar with the term, eugenics was – and is – the application of knowledge of heredity and controlled selectivity to the improvement of the human race. Its argument that humans improved the quality of plants and animals but leave their own development to chance had particular appeal to those Americans who viewed with apprehension the flood of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Although Griffith’s film casts the Irishmen 13

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characters of Joyce and McGee in the role of hereditary villains, he seems to have stopped short of recommending controlled breeding. Nevertheless, The Escape is a precursor of the racist arguments made a few months later in The Clansman [The Birth of a Nation], and seems to reflect his view that the mixing of the races is a particular evil. The play’s author, Paul Armstrong, is no longer widely admired in literary circles, but he was an important contributor to silent and early sound production. Among his plays that found their way to the screen were Salomy Jane (1914), Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915; 1920), Heir to the Hoorah (1916), Ever Since Eve (1921), and Paths to Paradise (1925). The Escape, which had a musical accompaniment, opened at the beginning of June at the Cort Theatre in New York and was generously reviewed by The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison (June 13, 1914, p. 1515). He credited Griffith with endowing “a rather morbid and commonplace play with some nobility of purpose”. He admired Blanche Sweet’s performance: “She has caught the idea of discovering the combined childishness, wondrous cunning, and intense natural longings of womankind in a very charming way”. He also liked the work of Mae Marsh and Robert Harron. Variety’s reviewer, “Sime” (Sime Silverman), was much less impressed (June 5, 1914). He commented: “It would seem the moral of ‘The Escape’ is mis-mating of humans, but the picture misses without indicating that in any way.” He was unhappy that in the staging of the scene where “Bull” McGee finds his wife Jennie dead, McGee did not remove his hat. “Right there Mr. Griffith gave a fundamental principal in pictures a terrible kick in the ribs”. He took Mutual to task for misusing Griffith’s talent: There was no material there for Mr. Griffith to work in the first place, and if there had been, previous ‘vice’ or ‘misery’ films (some of which Mr. Griffith directed) would have ruined any chance for this one. Mr. Griffith is most adept in romantic direction, in scenes and effects (he inserted a neat bit of allegory in this picture – though ‘allegory’ and Griffith are becoming too friendly)[;] why waste the time of a capable director and capable actors on something that the director at least has an idea will be a hard one to put across. (Variety, ibid.)

Mutual (or Griffith) was apparently cautious about the potential of The Escape. They delayed its release until several other films were out, and it did not figure strongly in the continuing ads they placed in the trade press during 1914 and 1915. Other feature-length films offered through their Mutual Exchanges and their two sales affiliates, Continental Feature Film Corp. and Western Import Co., were given much stronger promotion. The film was revised after Griffith and his crew went to Los Angeles. It was made longer and new scenes were shot at the Reliance-Majestic studio in Los Angeles. Two players were added in Los Angeles: F.A. Turner (the father) and Ralph Lewis (the Senator). Paul Spehr

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THE FLOOR ABOVE Filming date: February?–March? 1914 Location: Reliance studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. New York premiere: by 4 April 1914, Weber’s Theatre (29th St. and Broadway) and New York Theatre Release date: by 18 April 1914 Release length: four reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: James Kirkwood Scenario: not known Source: “The Tragedy of Charlecot Mansions”, the short story by E. Phillips Oppenheim, in his The Amazing Partnership (1914) Camera: not known Cast: Henry Walthall (Stephen Pryde); Dorothy Gish (Stella Ford); Estelle Coffin (Grace Burton); Ralph Lewis (Jerome); Earle Foxe (Bartlett); [as per Reel Life, April 4, 1914:] Evelyn Bird (Retta, the girl on the floor above); Jack Dillon; Caryl Fleming Archival sources: none known Grace Burton and Stephen Pryde have been engaged in clearing up some of the crime mysteries that have baffled the keenest detectives of Scotland Yards. Pryde sees with sorrow that his partner, Grace, is sacrificing herself so that she can supply her frivolous sister, Stella, with every luxury. He remonstrates – but Grace explains that Stella is a show girl – that her expenses for costumes, etc., are heavy – the temptations of the life are great and that she doesn’t want her to accept favors from any man – during her husband’s absence abroad. She feels that she must supply Stella’s needs. Pryde, knowing how frivolous Stella is, offers her all the money she needs – on the condition that she will take no more from Grace – and will repay back what she has already gotten. Pryde is well able to do this for he has just come into a title and fortune, but hesitates to tell the good news to Grace, fearing it may make a difference in their relations. Stella accepts his proposition and returns [sic] money that Grace gave her. But Grace finds out that it is Pryde’s money that her sister has returned, and also that Pryde is now a wealthy man. She feels hurt that Pryde had not seen fit to tell her everything. Stella, being wild and frivolous, soon gets into trouble. One night as she returns from the theater with a friend, she discovers that a man had been murdered in her flat. She appeals to Grace to help her – she declares to them that she only knew the dead man slightly and did not invite him to her flat. She also shows them a telegram, stating that her husband would arrive home at any moment. Pryde believes her and investigates – finds that the tragedy really belongs upstairs. They remove the body to the flat above and wait for the arrival of the occupant – who on arriving and by her screams convinces them that they were right. Stella’s husband arrives and now that he is there to care for her in future, Grace and Pryde are very much relieved and are drawn closer together by the tragedy that nearly entered their lives. The Moving Picture World, April 18, 1914, p. 424 Grace Burton and Stephen Pryde had been engaged in clearing up some of the mysterious crimes

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that baffled the detectives of Scotland. Theirs was a peculiar partnership. Pryde, who had just come into a title and fortune, had grown to love his partner, but feared to tell her the good news, lest it make a difference in their friendship. But he resolved to broach the subject. Arriving at Grace’s home, he found there her sister, Stella, a frivolous girl, who chose to retain her stage career and “good times,” although married. Stephen saw with sorrow that his partner was supplying her sister with every luxury, at her own sacrifice. He was destined to feel a keener sorrow emanating from the same source. When he asked Grace to marry him, as they sat together in the firelight’s glow, after Stella had gone out noisily, she refused him. Grace would give no reason, but the truth was that she loved Stephen, but would not marry him while she felt she had her sister on her hands. Stephen, sensing this, went to the flighty younger sister, and offered her all the money she needed – on the condition that she would take no more from Grace and would repay what she had already received. Stella moved in a different circle from that of her sister. Her boon companions enjoyed late suppers and the good things of life. She lived in an apartment house tenanted by her own kind. On the floor above her lived another girl of the same calibre [sic], and they frequently visited from one apartment to another. Externally the two apartments were identical, and several times much amusement was caused by visitors knocking on the wrong door. A party was in progress in Stella’s apartment when Stephen called to alleviate her financial stress, so the two went to the apartment above for their serious talk. Just then Grace came to call, and, peeping in, saw Stephen handing her sister the money. So Grace found out that it was Pryde who enabled her sister to pay her debts, and felt hurt that Stephen had not taken her into his confidence. Stella’s wild and frivolous ways finally got her into trouble. For some time she and her friend of the floor above had gradually been becoming enmeshed. The other girl was encouraging several suitors, one of whom, Jerome, was intensely jealous of Bartlett. Gay parties and balls became more and more frequent. One night a serious clash occurred through the girl’s tendency to encourage the attention of several suitors. Bartlett came to call, and, making the somewhat frequent mistake, entered Stella’s apartment. At that moment Grace bethought herself to call her sister on the telephone. Bartlett picked up the phone when the bell rang, and was answering when the door opened and Jerome walked in, his face hard with rage. Bartlett, a fellow of the young dandy type, feared for his life, and well he might. The older man felled him with the phone after a short and ugly exchange of words, and Bartlett fell to the floor, dead. The fight, the blow and the fall, Grace and Stephen, who were at the other end of the phone, heard. Then communication was cut off. Rushing to Stella’s flat, they found the body. Then Stephen Pryde, the detective, asserted himself. He found, on the floor, a key to the apartment on the floor above. Stella, arriving, declared frantically she knew the dead man only slightly, and showed a telegram from her husband on his way home. Pryde believed her, and removed the body to the flat above. The detective was eager to make himself morally certain that the crime did not lie at the door of the sister of the girl he loved. There he waited for the occupant to return. When she came in her screams convinced Pryde that the guilt did not lie with Stella. Going down stairs he voiced his opinion, and left Stella to wait for her husband. Meanwhile, the bedlam in the hall caused by the excitement gradually died down. Frantic tenants had rushed out into the hall as they heard the fall but, finding nothing, returned to their rooms. At last Stella’s husband came. It seemed to the panic stricken, over-wrought girl as if he was a ministering angel. She crept into his arms and sobbed her tears away after she had conquered her doubts concerning herself. He, in turn, became convinced that he would care very much for his little wife in the future, and would be away from her no more than he could help. As for Grace and Stephen, they were older, more mature, more hardy souls; but they were

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touched by the events. And especially were they secretly pleased to be drawn closer together by the tragedy that nearly entered their lives, but fortunately had only served to strengthen their interest in each other. Reel Life, March 28, 1914, p. 6

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. Based on a short story, “The Tragedy of Charlecot Mansions”, by English author E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Floor Above was one of several multi-reel films released by Mutual in April 1914. Although it has been credited as a Reliance production, it was called a “[f]our part R & M Special Feature” in Mutual’s Reel Life magazine (March 28, 1914, p. 6), so it is occasionally called a Reliance-Majestic production. Mutual’s ads and the contemporary reviews in The Moving Picture World and Variety credited D.W. Griffith with supervising the production, and the presence of Griffith favorite Henry B. Walthall and upcoming star Dorothy Gish gives the cast a Griffith flavor. Although they publicized Griffith as supervisor of production, there was no description of what supervision Griffith actually did. If Griffith was responsible for this film, he apparently overlooked a limp and unconvincing story that failed to impress contemporary reviewers. E. Phillips Oppenheim’s story was presented with permission of Cosmopolitan Magazine, and was apparently published in London in 1914 in The Amazing Partnership, a compilation of Oppenheim’s stories. Although Mutual credited it as “the world’s most famous detective story” (Reel Life, April 4, 1914, p. 3), it failed to impress either W. Stephen Bush, who reviewed it in The Moving Picture World (April 18, 1914, p. 339), or “Mark”, who reviewed it in Variety (April 18, 1914, p. 339). Bush called the plot “weak” and explained that “the central idea is not strongly dramatic, and the climax, while logical, is not thrilling or powerful”. “Mark” felt that the role gave Walthall nothing to do. He also complained that Dorothy Gish looked too young to be married, though he seemed to accept casting her as a frivolous show girl who lived away from her husband and entertained a steady stream of stage Johnnies in her apartment. “Miss Gish is a charming little movie actress and she works hard to make the despicable role of Stella stand out. She’s a trifle young in appearance to be playing married roles”. There were other complaints about the production. In particular, “Mark” objected that a number of players were not credited, including the actress playing Retta, a key role as the girl in the apartment on the floor above. (A publicity photo reproduced in Reel Life [March 28, 1914] shows Jack Dillon and Evelyn Bird along with Walthall, Ralph Lewis, and Dorothy Gish. It seems likely that Evelyn Bird was the uncredited Retta). Although Bush and “Mark” were hard on the story, both of them gave the production values good marks. Bush liked the story adaptation, the sets, costumes and the acting, an indication that James Kirkwood’s directing was competent, if not above average. Kirkwood was one of the first of Griffith’s protégés to join Mutual. Before leaving Biograph he directed several of the multi-reel productions they made from Klaw & Erlanger properties. This was his last production for Mutual. The same issue of The Moving Picture World that published W. Stephen Bush’s review (April 18, 1914) also announced that Kirkwood was leaving Mutual to direct for Famous Players. The film premiered at the Weber’s and New York Theatres, in New York City, at the beginning of April and at the same time it was offered for booking through Continental Film Corp. and Mutual Corp., making it one of the earliest Griffith-supervised films to have a general release. Continental and Mutual continued to offer it through the remainder of 1914 and into 1915. Paul Spehr 17

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THE DISHONORED MEDAL Filming date: March–April 1914 Location: Reliance studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. New York premiere: 3 May 1914, New York Theatre Release date: by 25 April 1914 (per ad in Reel Life, April 25, 1914) Release length: four reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: W. Christy Cabanne Scenario: not known Source: Under Two Flags, the novel (1867) by Ouida (pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée) Camera: not known Cast: Miriam Cooper (Zora); George Gebhard (LieutenantDubois); Raoul A. Walsh (El Rabb, son of Zora and adopted son of Sheik Achmed); Frank Bennett (Bel Kahn, son of Achmed); Mabel Van Buren (Anitra [Anitara?]); Dark Cloud (Sheik Achmed) Archival sources: none known The story has to do with Lieutenant DuBois, of the French Legion, the duty of which is to preserve peace among the natives of Algeria. His military duties are not so arduous but that he finds time to make love to a very beautiful native girl, Zora, and in this diversion he succeeds in winning the girl’s affection. There is a native lover, but he is cast off for the brave lieutenant and, following the Arab custom, the girl believes herself to be the wife of the soldier. The Arab lover kills himself for grief. Soon after this DuBois is ordered to a distant post, but before he leaves he bestows upon the little Arab girl who has solaced his lonely hours, the coveted cross of the Legion of Honor of France, worn only by those who are brave, and then he goes away, telling the girl nothing of his plans, hoping thus to put her out of his life completely. But a child is born to Zora, and she becomes possessed of but one idea – to find the father of her child. She sets out and wanders far without success, finally accepting refuge with the old sheik, Achmed, who took her into his household and made her one of his family. But Zora’s troubles were not to end thus. Coveted by another Arab, she is stolen from Achmed’s house and hidden in a cave. Achmed goes to her rescue, and as the old sheik is about to take her from the cave her abductor fires a pistol at the sheik in an attempt to kill him. Zora attempts to prevent this tragedy and receives the bullet in her own breast. Achmed carries the dying girl to his house and her last act is to place the medal of the Legion of Honor about the neck of her infant son. Achmed promises to raise the boy and he keeps his word, for, twenty years after we are shown a fine young Arab, known as El Rabb, wearing the medal of the Legion about his neck. Achmed’s own son, Bel Kahn, and El Rabb, are about of an age and are pledged as brothers. They fall in love with the same girl, Anitra, who eventually chooses Bel Kahn for her husband. El Rabb is hard hit, but he is loyal and accepts the verdict. While these things are transpiring Lieutenant DuBois has become a general and is stationed near the village of which El Rabb and Bel Kahn are members. Oppression of the foreigners has

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made the natives rebellious, but old Achmed has prevailed upon them to be peaceful. DuBois sees Anitra, the betrothed of Bel Kahn, and covets her for his own, compelling her to go to his tent. When the natives learn of this outrage their fury knows no bounds; they fairly fly to arms and the strife is on. Terrified by the result of his action, General DuBois leads his soldiers against the Arabs and his command is almost annihilated, – but reinforcements arrive in time to save him, and the Arabs are finally defeated. The brothers have escaped the slaughter and manage to find their way to DuBois’ tent so that, when he returns to possess himself of the victim bought at so dear a price, he meets El Rabb and Bel Kahn. El Rabb plunges a dagger into DuBois’ breast and Bel Kahn escapes with his bride. As DuBois sinks upon his couch he spies the medal of the Legion on the Arab’s breast and soon realizes that retribution has been dealt to him by the hand of his own son. He dies and El Rabb thinks of escape; but he returns to the side of the dead, tears the medal from his breast, tramples it under his foot and calmly awaits the death that will be accorded him by the soldiers. The Moving Picture World, May 16, 1914, p. 942 Algeria and the Algerians were in a state of disquietude. French soldiers, infidel dogs, in strange uniforms, officered by men with much gold braid on their chests, had just conquered the followers of Allah, and the country was under martial law. At evening the lonely place in the hills, where the pious Algerians met, was a curious sight. There prayers were offered, asking Allah to give His children strength to endure the presence of the hated invaders until such time as they might be driven from the country. Among those whose plaints were wafted on the evening breeze was Zora, a beautiful Algerian girl. Especially beautiful was she in the eyes of her native sweetheart. When she went down to fill her water jug at the well, he waited for her nightly, that he might woo her. Zora looked with favor upon her suitor. He was big and strong and attentive. At last they were betrothed, after the Algerian custom, and, for the first time, she raised her veil, so that he might see her face. Then her beauty became apparent. Lieutenant Dubois, though comparatively a young officer, was high in command among the French forces. Latin blood ran hot in his veins. With his soldiers ready to obey him, and obeisances made to him on every side by the Algerians, a touch of the arrogant soon crept into his demeanor. Lieutenant Dubois was a figure attractive to women. His appearance and approach sounded a dominant note. One day he encountered Zora on her way back from the well. Her liquid eyes peering over the top of her veil attracted him. His courtship was swift. After meeting him a few times she so far capitulated as to raise her veil and let him, though not a believer in her faith, gaze on her face. Stirred by her beauty, Dubois took the girl in his arms and kissed her again and again while she clung to him. Though the Lieutenant and Zora thought they were alone[,] they were observed by Zora’s Algerian sweetheart. When he saw Zora in the lieutenant’s arms, he realized full well that his affections had been discarded. He walked away as if stunned, never again to press his suit. He ended his life by throwing himself over a cliff. The affair between Lieutenant Dubois and Zora progressed rapidly. The Algerian girl was infatuated with the handsome foreigner whose beck and call many men obeyed. One day, as they sat together she asked him about the shiny medal that hung on his breast, on a short bit of ribbon. “That is the medal of the French Legion of Honor, one of the highest honors which a Frenchman can attain,” was his proud answer. “Give it to me, that I may know you love me truly,” said Zora. The lieutenant hesitated for a minute, but Zora’s arms were about his neck, and Zora was fair to look upon. He gave her the medal.

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By and by one of the many changes in army life took Lieutenant Dubois away. When he left the country, he neglected to inform Zora of his plans. Soon the horrible truth that she had been deserted was borne in upon her. With the deadly fury of a woman scorned, she took her child in her arms and set out to look for Dubois. Far and wide she hunted through the mountains, to no avail. The lieutenant had gone. The best she could find was the sympathy of those of her own people who did not regard her as an outcast. Wandering through the foothills she came to the home of the old sheik, Achmed. He was a kindly soul. He took Zora and her baby in, made them a part of his own household, and treated them as kindly as if they had been of his own flesh and blood. Zora’s beauty soon got her into trouble again. Haussi, a native libertine, coveted her when he saw her. He lured the young woman to a cave in the mountains. There Zora struggled to protect herself. As she and Haussi faced each other, Sheik Achmed noticed her absence, and suspected trouble. He followed her to the cave, to arrive just in time. Entering, he sensed the situation at a glance. Aiming his muzzle-loading gun, he fired at Haussi. But the bullet did not find the billet he intended. It struck Zora. In the confusion, Haussi escaped. Sheik Achmed took Zora, who was badly wounded, back to his dwelling. There she died. But her last act was to hang around the neck of her little son the medal of the French Legion of Honor, which his father had given her. It was the only heritage of a deserted mother to her son. Zora’s son was adopted by Achmed, who named the boy El Rabb. The sheik reared El Rabb, raising him with his own son, Bel Khan, as brothers. The two grew up to manhood together, and between them there was a very strong bond of affection. The friendship was like of David and Jonathan or Damon and Pythias. Either would have laid down his life for the other. Soon a test came perhaps more severe than one involving life. Both fell in love with the same Algerian girl, pretty Anitra, with a wealth of black hair and sparkling eyes. They courted her almost simultaneously, and so much did they resemble each other in appearance and mannerisms that Anitra, for a while, found it hard to choose between them. But finally she decided upon Bel Khan, son of the sheik. El Rabb was equal to the test, and stepped aside in favor of his foster brother. The passing years had seen the promotion of Lieutenant Dubois. From his position as a subordinate officer he had risen to a generalship. Now he was sent back to Algeria, with high authority to rule over the district. But time had not changed his nature. He was still the libertine. As Dubois took an inspection tour, he noticed a pretty girl – Anitra . He coveted her, just as he had coveted Zora twenty years earlier. But the difference in rank made a difference in the method of his courtship. Instead of being a suppliant, he was now a dictator. “Bring that girl to me this evening,” he told his under officers. That night Anitra was brought to the tent of General Dubois. She was of sterner stuff than Zora had been. She repulsed his attentions absolutely and finally. But she could not escape from the tent. News of Anitra’s detention reached El Rabb and Bel Khan. The rage of the young men was fearful to behold. “Shall Algerians permit these French pigs to despoil their country, and take their women? Never,” they said. Their anger was contagious. They set about inciting rebellion, and found the other Algerians ready and eager to listen. At the conference of war held in the wildernesses of the foothills, the young men decided to give battle to the French. Their anger was quickly kindled when El Rabb and Bel Khan recited the story of Anitra and the ominous murmurs ran around the circle. Soon the murmurs swelled to cries of “War, war on the infidels!” And each speaker who counselled immediate resource to the sword was applauded. The young men could not listen to old Sheik Achmed, who came to counsel peace. War quickly started. Arms were obtained easily. A force large enough to overpower the guards

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descended upon a French ammunition train, and seized the guns and cartridges. Armed, the Algerians fairly rushed to the fray. Frightened messengers brought news to the French officers, as they sat around the long tables in an al fresco cafe that the natives were running amuck. The officers cleared out hastily. At the French camp the news was brought to General Dubois. He was watching Anitra, who lay in a feigned swoon. Leaving orders for a couple of soldiers to guard the girl, he quickly took command of his men, once more the fighter. Soon the French infantry came out, and the battle was on in earnest. Down the long slopes of the foothills poured a thin file of fighting men. From the trenches the Algerians fired upon them. “Allah, Allah, all is Allah!” cried the Algerians, as they left the trenches to charge upon the French, who were routed and turned back for a while. But the French artillery finally arrived on the scene. The Algerians found themselves fighting, while shells burst at their feet and over their heads. So they retreated to the trenches, where they put up a stubborn fight. General Dubois, busy directing his soldiers, was nearly frantic. The shells of his artillery did not rout the Algerians from the trenches. He hesitated from ordering an infantry charge. It would mean a frightful loss of life among his soldiers. As Napoleon prayed for night or Blücher, he prayed for night or his cavalry. At last, fluttering in the distance, he saw the pennants on the lances of the French horsemen. “Come on, my men, the day is saved!” he cried, waving his sword. The soldiers took fresh heart as they saw the riders coming, and soon made the charge which ended the fray. The Algerians were routed, driven from the trenches and sent fleeing in every direction. In war, as in peace, El Rabb and Bel Khan remained together. In the confusion and rout they made their way to the tent of General Dubois. They overcame the guards whom they attacked from behind, and, entering, found Anitra there. Then the young men waited for Dubois. Soon the General returned. He had defeated the enemy, and expected to find a pretty captive in his tent. Instead he found two men eager to avenge the wrongs of Anitra. As General Dubois entered El Rabb attacked him. Zora’s son stabbed Zora’s former sweetheart, his own father. As the soldier lay dying he looked up at the young avenger. Hanging round the neck of the Algerian the general saw the cross of the French Legion of Honor, his cross. Oh, what a mockery! “My son!” he cried, involuntarily. Then he became too weak to cry. He died in the knowledge that retribution had reached him through the hands of his own son. As Bel Khan and Anitra escaped, El Rabb tore the medal of dishonor from his neck, threw it in his father’s face, then he sat down to await his death at the lances of the approaching French Cavalry. “The Tale-Teller”, in Reel Life, April 25, 1914, pp. 10–11

No print elements of this film are known to survive at the time of this writing. In its advertising, Mutual called The Dishonored Medal “a drama of romance and retribution, combining military effects and the atmosphere of the Far East” (Reel Life, April 25, 1914, pp. 38–39), a characterization that lumped the film with a number of common genres of the day. This Griffith supervised production might well remain one of his forgotten (or forgettable) works – no print of the film is known to survive – except for a few unusual elements of the treatment and plot. Although it is populated with men in caftans and veiled women, it is not set in the “Far East” but in North Africa, specifically the French colony of Algeria. This was a part of the globe not regularly visited by movie producers, but there were enough of these “Easterns” 21

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to provide movie audiences with some variety and relief from comedies and melodramas set in contemporary America or the battlefields and parlors of Europe. The Dishonored Medal is distinguished from the run-of-the-mill “Eastern” because its time period is contemporary, or at least recent, and because it looks at colonial life from the point of view of the indigenous population. The issues it deals with, oppressive colonial rule and the cultural-religious differences between the native population and the colonial rulers, are very contemporary – even prophetic. The only credited literary source for this film is “The Tale-Teller”, who signed the scenario adaptation reproduced above. The script was apparently concocted by the scenario department, which was headed by Frank E. Woods at the Reliance-Majestic studio in Los Angeles. If there is a literary influence, it probably is Under Two Flags, a novel by Ouida (pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée), which had been made into a popular play. There had been at least two filmed versions: Thanhouser and Universal’s Gem company had each made tworeel versions of it in 1912. But this story is different. The hero of Ouida’s novel is an Englishman in the Foreign Legion, and though he is loved by a native girl who sacrifices her life for him, the very European themes are honor, loyalty, family, and home. The heroes of The Dishonored Medal are Algerians. The Dishonored Medal is a melodrama of seduction, abandonment and revenge that borrows bits from Madame Butterfly and Damon and Pythias, and throws in a rousing battle scene to enliven the drama. Like Madame Butterfly, a native girl loves a foreigner who abandons her, but The Dishonored Medal follows the fate of the child rather than the mother. Unlike Lieutenant Pinkerton, who seemed to have had some genuine if fleeting feeling for Butterfly, the seducer in this piece, Lieutenant Dubois (George Gebhard), is an unsympathetic cad. Dubois seduces Zora (Miriam Cooper) and has no apparent qualms about abandoning her and her baby. The story summary reproduced above (which seems to be adapted directly from the scenario for the film) shows rather clearly that the audience is supposed to sympathize with the son, El Rabb (Raoul Walsh), his foster brother Bel Kahn (Frank Bennett) and particularly with Sheik Achmed (Dark Cloud), the kindly man who takes in the abandoned mother and, when she dies, raises El Rabb with his own son. As the plot develops, it is the bond between the two foster brothers that becomes central. Grown to young manhood, the boys find themselves in love with the same young woman, and filial loyalty causes El Rabb to give up the girl in favor of his brother. But one seduction is not enough. As though he had not done enough damage, Dubois returns, now a General in charge of the territory. A hot-blooded Frenchman with no moral qualms, he spots their young woman, Anitra (Mabel Van Buren), and chooses her as his next victim. The enraged brothers arouse the locals to rebellion and the film climaxes in a battle between Algerian rebels and the French colonial army. The Algerians lose, but the audience’s sympathies are channeled to the Algerians and the two half-brothers. The French nation is not condemned, but the leader of the French army, Lieutenant-General Dubois, is a totally loathsome figure with no apparently redeeming qualities. Although D.W. Griffith is credited with supervising The Dishonored Medal, there is no record of what his supervision involved. The director, W. Christy Cabanne, was one of Griffith’s trusted lieutenants and one of the first directors that Griffith brought on board when he joined Mutual. Since Griffith’s name was on this film, he probably selected or at least approved the story prior to production and it is possible he had some role in writing it. Reliance and Majestic often gave credit to the author of the scenario, but this film is unusual because there is no credit for an original author or anyone adapting it for the screen. The racial aspects have characteristics in common with other Griffith films. The villain, the worthless Lieutenant Dubois, lusts after natives who are below his class, which is consistent with Griffith’s frequent 22

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condemnation of mixed breeding between races or classes. While sympathetic to the mixedblooded child born of Dubois’ misbehavior, the plot does not allow El Rabb to win Anitra; instead, he helps rescue her, but after avenging himself with his father, he awaits death while Anitra escapes with his foster brother, a man of her own, purer blood. The racial-religious message in The Dishonored Medal is not the black-and-white one presented in The Birth of a Nation. The story summary from Reel Life shows a respect for Islam and the customs associated with it that would be unusual even today. The Algerians are the heroes of this film and they have a nobility that contrasts with the base Lieutenant Dubois. The casting of Mutual’s Native American star Dark Cloud in the sympathetic role of the wise and kindly Sheik Achmed seems to demonstrate a degree of tolerance that is quite different from what would emerge in The Clansman [The Birth of a Nation], a project that was already in development when The Dishonored Medal was being made. This tolerant view of other races, religions and nationalities may have been influenced by the relative success that another of Mutual’s feature producers, Thomas Ince, was having with a series of short films featuring a group of Japanese actors led by Tsuru Aoki and Sessue Hayakawa. At the time that The Dishonored Medal was released, Ince’s The Wrath of the Gods was in production. It dealt with interracial marriage and the powerful cultural traditions of the Japanese people. The Dishonored Medal was among several productions announced as available from the Continental Feature Film Corporation in an ad in Reel Life (April 25, 1914). It opened 3 May 1914 in New York at the New York Theatre, where it shared the bill with The Battle of the Sexes. Continental continued to advertise its availability through the rest of 1914. Paul Spehr

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508 RELIANCE MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE MOUNTAIN RAT Filming date: March–April? 1914 Location: Reliance studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. Release date: May? 1914 Release length: four reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith? Director: James Kirkwood Scenario: Frank E. Woods Story: Mary Rider Mechtold Camera: not known Cast: Henry Walthall (Douglas Williams); Dorothy Gish (Nell,“The Mountain Rat”); Irene Hunt (Harriet Copley, Douglas’ fiancée); Donald Crisp (Steve); Josephine Crowell (Mrs. Williams, Douglas’ mother) Archival sources: none known The story opens in the Eastern home of Douglas Williams …[H]e is being upbraided by his mother for his dissolute ways. She informs him that his fiancee, in disgust, has decided not to marry him. He resolves to go west and redeem himself, which he does (goes west), but associates, on his arrival, with rough company and meets “Nell, The Mountain Rat,” who is queen of the dance hall at which he is a guest. Instead of reforming he indulges himself and through a scrimmage with an old miner both are thrown out. Douglas stakes the miner and is made a partner in a prospective gold mine. Returning to the saloon, in another brawl he is beaten to insensibility and taken to Nell’s cabin by Steve who is head-over-heels in love with Nell and proposes to her. She refuses him because she does not love him, but “likes him just the same.” She has fallen in love with Douglas who, after many interesting scenes and adventures, including a visit from his mother and former sweetheart, who gives him up and returns East, marries Nell. The old miner strikes pay dirt which makes them all rich. The Moving Picture World, May 23, 1914, p.1123 In the mining camps of the West there is to be found a rat with a trait so peculiar to its kind that it has become a superstition among the miners. The mountain rat, as the little animal is known, is a nightly prowler among the cabins of the miners and so superstitious are the men about the good luck the mountain rat is supposed to bring they are careful to protect him from harm. Miles to the East of where the mountain rat is best known, Douglas Williams, after a riotous good time, quarreled with Harriet Copley, to whom he was engaged. She handed back to him the ring which he had given in token of their troth. In the mining camp to which he found his way, Douglas met Nell, a dance hall girl, known to the miners as “The Mountain Rat”. When he met Nell, Douglas was in every respect “down and out”. Despite his condition, Nell took an interest in Douglas and did all in her power to help him. She found a job for him and started him at work. When Douglas fell ill far away from all other friends it was Nell, “The Mountain Rat,” who

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cared for him. Knowing, womanlike, that the boy’s mother would worry, wrote to her that she was nursing Douglas back to health and strength and in the answers written, Mrs. Douglas believed, to a professional nurse who was caring for her son, Nell found great delight. Not content with simply nursing Douglas, Nell found and staked out for him a mining claim which gave every promise of making him rich. Douglas was deeply grateful to Nell for her care of him and for the new chance in life which she gave to him. He was fond of the “The Mountain Rat,” but back in his innermost mind was the memory of the girl he had loved back home and whom he could not forget. If Douglas did not want Nell there was one person who loved her and wanted to marry her. This man was Steve, a typical Western miner, rough but whole-hearted. One night Nell, who had set her heart on attending a dance in a neighboring camp, persuaded Douglas to take her to the hall. As they were about to enter they were informed that only respectable women were allowed on the floor. Nell, humiliated, fled to the street with Douglas after her. Moved by sorrow over Nell’s humiliation and stirred by a sudden impulse Douglas took her to the only hotel in the camp and the two were married by a traveling clergyman. The newly-married couple returned to the hall were admitted at once, and Nell had her dance. The first person to congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Williams was Steve, who added to his congratulations the warning to Douglas to “treat her right.” Back East[,] Harriet had found that time softened her anger against the once wayward Douglas. With his mother she went to the mining camp to tell him so with the hope that he still loved her. The arrival of his former fiancee and his mother so stunned Douglas that he could not summon the courage to introduce Nell as his wife. Instead he hurried Harriet and his mother away from his bride. To tell the truth, Douglas had a bit of the moral coward in his nature. He knew right well that he should bring his former sweetheart and his wife face to face and tell them all. But when it came to confronting the refined, cultured Eastern girl with the little “Mountain Rat” of the West, his courage failed him. Nell, however, was not the girl to be so ignored. Jealousy and rage brought out all the animal in her nature and she went to Harriet and told the Eastern girl the truth about Douglas and herself. Douglas made every effort to get her away from the two women, but Nell bit and scratched and fought wildly until she had finished what she had to say. Her words left Douglas furious and his mother and Harriet heart-broken. To these women, fresh from the sheltered home life of the East[,] Nell’s tale carried with it a wealth of the unspeakable. Their evident sorrow at feeling they must believe that Douglas was not worthy of their trust was not pleasant to the adopted Westerner. In his anger Douglas repudiated Nell and told her he would assign his mining claim to her and go to Mexico. Wild at the thought of losing him, Nell clung to Douglas imploring him to stay. It was at this juncture that Steve entered the room. Believing that Douglas had already ignored his warning given just after the wedding he drew his gun, but Nell sprang between the men. Steve tried to pull her out of the way and in the struggle the gun was fired and Nell fell to the floor. The little “Mountain Rat” was receiving a poor reward for her devotion to the man she loved. It was then that Douglas, thinking she was injured, realized at last that he loved Nell. He ran to her but Nell arose and pushed him back. She, too, had had an awakening. The belief was forced in upon her that the man she loved did not care for her and she was very quick to act. “I don’t want any man who don’t want me,” she said, and ordered both men to leave her. Harriet, attracted by the commotion, entered the room and then Nell apologized for her action. It was only a poor little apology judged by the standards of those whose every word flows smoothly, but it crowded into its few words much that was pathetic and evident sincerity. “I only lived according to my lights,” she said, “but the light was red. Nobody told me it was

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an off shade until it was too late.” “She is worth more than either of us, Douglas,” said Harriet. “I am going back East. She is entitled to her chance.” Nell protested, but Douglas insisted that Harriet was right and besides, he declared, he loved her and wanted her. Overjoyed at his declaration, Nell threw her arms around his neck crying: “I’ll make you proud of me Douglas. I swear I will.” She was as good as her word but “that is another story,” as Kipling would say. Reel Life, April 4, 1914, p. 8

The Mountain Rat was a four-reel Reliance Motion Picture production released by Mutual in the Spring of 1914. According to Mutual’s publicity, a mountain rat was considered good luck by prospectors in the Old West. It was supposed to habituate mining camps and, though it was known for stealing things in the camp, supposedly the mountain rat left something in place of the stolen object. Instead of a rodent, Mutual’s mountain rat was a popular dancehall girl. Set in a mining camp in the West, this was a vehicle for Dorothy Gish. She was featured in the roll of Nell, the dance-hall girl who was affectionately nicknamed “The Mountain Rat” by the miners who frequented the establishment where she hung out. The story was written by Mary Rider Mechtold who, according to Mutual’s publicity department, was a well-known writer whose short stories “appear regularly in the magazines”. It was directed by James Kirkwood and may or may not have been supervised by D.W. Griffith. No copies of the film are known to survive at the time of this writing. Although this was a Western, it was a love story and a social drama rather than a shootem-up. The focus was on the relationship between an upper-class, but down-and-out, Easterner and the common dance-hall girl of uncertain origins. The action was limited to a rivalry between two men in her life: a miner who was in love with her (Donald Crisp) and the dissolute Easterner (Henry B. Walthall), the object of her affections. The Easterner’s feelings for the “mountain rat” were complicated by his relationship with his mother and a former fiancée who broke-off their relationship because of his weak character and penchant for the bottle. Audiences hoping for more vigorous activity had to be content with lively doings in the dance hall and a fight between the rivals, which ended with a gun shot that nearly hit the heroine. This film was a coming out for Dorothy Gish. Lillian Gish said that this film made her younger sister “a personality in her own right” (Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, p. 114). Although her movie career began at the same time as her older sister Lillian, she had been the “other” Gish girl. After leaving Biograph, Dorothy started working for Reliance in February or March 1914. She was featured in two short films and had a prominent part in The Floor Above. Mutual’s publicity department had not publicized her appearance in The Floor Above, but they promoted this role. An article in The Moving Picture World (April 18, 1914), which was probably based on a publicity release, pointed out that “for a long time Dorothy Gish was commonly known as ‘Lillian Gish’s little sister’ and said that she was emerging from Lillian’s shadow”. The part she played in The Mountain Rat was pivotal to the plot, and though the story evolved around Walthall, the dissolute Easterner, Dorothy was in the title role and played the solid character who rescued him and converted him into a stronger character. Both Harry W. De Long, who reviewed the film for The Moving Picture World (May 23, 1914, p. 1123), and “Mark”, who reviewed for Variety (May 22, 1914), gave her good, but not great, marks. “Mark” thought she looked too young for the part. Even though she had not made the critics enthusiastic, she made enough of an impression on the production supervisor (supposedly D.W. Griffith) at Reliance and Majestic that for the next several 26

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months she was given leading roles in an increasing number of their one- and two- reel productions. This was particularly true during the Summer and early Fall of 1914, a three-month interval when sister Lillian and several other female leads were busy with The Clansman [The Birth of a Nation]. Was this a Griffith-supervised film? The information that is available is conflicting, confusing and inconclusive. Beyond the casting of Dorothy Gish, support from Griffith regulars Walthall, Crisp and Josephine Crowell and direction by Griffith protegé James Kirkwood, there is little to indicate that Griffith had a hand in making The Mountain Rat. None of Mutual’s ads or press releases mention him as supervisor, but there is contradictory information about what he was and was not supervising during the Spring of 1914 when this film was made. On 23 May 1914, Mutual began advertising that Griffith supervised all Majestic releases and this continued into July, about the time filming of The Clansman started. On 27 June, a similar ad for Reliance said he supervised all of their releases. The Mountain Rat was finished before these announcements, but it was released about the time that Majestic announced he was supervising their productions. It was among the multi-reel films advertised on 25 April 1914 in Reel Life (p. 39) as available from Continental Feature Film Corporation, but the earliest indication it was released for screening are the reviews in Variety (May 22, 1914, p. 22) and The Moving Picture World (May 23, 1914, p. 1123). Perhaps more information will emerge, but for now The Mountain Rat remains a question mark in Griffith’s filmography. Paul Spehr

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509 RELIANCE MOTION PICTURE CO.

HOME, SWEET HOME Alternate title: Home Sweet Home Filming date: February–April 1914 Location: Reliance studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: Los Angeles locations Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. Los Angeles premiere: 4 May 1914 (Clune’s Auditorium) New York premiere: 17 May 1914 (Strand Theatre) Release date: late May 1914; reissued in 1921 Release length: five or six reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: D.W. Griffith, Harry E. Aitken Source: the song “Home, Sweet Home”, words by John Howard Payne, music by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, from the opera (1823) Clari; or, The Maid of Milan Camera: G.W. Bitzer Assistant camera: Karl Brown (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–20) Property man: Ralph DeLacy (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–20) Film editors: James Smith, Rose Richtel (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–20) Cast: [Prologue and Epilogue:] Henry B. Walthall (John Howard Payne); Josephine Crowell (His Mother); Lillian Gish (His Sweetheart); Dorothy Gish (Her Sister); Fay Tincher (The Wordly Woman); [First Episode:] Mae Marsh (Apple Pie Mary); Robert Harron (Robert Winthrop, the Easterner); Spottiswoode Aitken (Mary’s Father); Miriam Cooper (The Eastern Girl / The Fiancée); W.H. Long (Alkali Pete); George Berringer? [George (André) Beranger?] (The Accordion Player); [Second Episode:] Mary Alden (The Mother); Donald Crisp, James Kirkwood, Jack Pickford (Her Sons); Fred Burns (Sheriff); [Third Episode:] Courtenay Foote (The Husband); Blanche Sweet (The Wife); Owen Moore (The Tempter); Edward Dillon (The Musician); Karl Brown (The Homesick Boy); Betty Marsh (The Baby); Teddy Sampson (The Maid); [additional cast, as discussed in the text below:] Ralph Lewis?; Irene Hunt?; John Dillon?; Earle Foxe?; George Siegmann?; F.A. Turner?; W.E. Lawrence; [according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–20: Howard Gaye] NOTE: “Mr. Griffith suggests that the running time for the picture should be: – 16 M. for the first reel, 14 M. to 15 M. for the second reel and from 13 M. to 14 M. for each of the other reels. The last reel, however, should be run slowly from the beginning of the allegorical part to the end.” (Reel Life, June 13, 1914, p. 3) Archival sources: FILM – Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative (complete); 35mm nitrate positive (fragment); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive (incomplete). MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), unspecified parts (possibly compiled after the film’s initial release) 28

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The photoplay shows John Howard Payne, the author of the famous song, “Home Sweet Home,” as he left his home at Easthampton, Long Island, to go upon the stage, his success there and final failure and imprisonment for debt. We then see him go abroad to England, where he writes plays, and finally is forced to sell them all in a bundle to a producing manager for a few hundred dollars. He is shown at the height of his success, at his love affair with the widow of the poet Shelley and his subsequent flouting by that lady for his more successful countryman and rival in love as well as in letters – Washington Irving. His flight to France, his writing of “Home Sweet Home,” that deathless lyric, his return to the land of his birth, and at the last, his death while American consul in Tunis, alone, unhonored and unsung and then his mother’s death, disappointed and grieved that her beloved son had done so little for the world. Then, in a series of little slices of life, are shown the mistake his mother had made in believing her son died leaving nothing. The strains of Payne’s immortal song have echoed and re-echoed ’round the world and all classes and races of man and womankind have attuned their ears unto its message. First we see a little Western frontier town with its one little lunch counter run by a young girl, “Apple Pie Mary.” To the rough townsmen and the miners she is cold and harks not to their words of love, but instead, opens the floodgates of her heart to an Eastern boy, on prospecting bent for gold. Her heart won, she would forsake this flower of the Western highways for a stately beauty of the hothouses of Eastern society, but the gentle strains of “Home Sweet Home,” played by the halting and stumbling fingers of a peripatetic miner minstrel, guide his wandering footsteps back into the paths of duty and real love, and he finds his “Home Sweet Home” in the calico covered arms of “Apple Pie Mary.” A swift transition to another class of life, and there is seen where the walls of an apartment house are ruthlessly torn away and we see revealed a husband, elderly and past his prime, and his partner of life. The husband, immersed in the cares of business and no longer young, lavishes jewels and clothes and pleasures on his beautiful young wife, but she grows tired of them and fails to recognize the sterling worth of her husband and allows a younger and handsomer man to talk love lyrics into her ear while he urges her to leave her good but uninteresting and unromantic partner and fly with the younger Romeo and seek unlawful happiness with each other. Torn by the struggles between her imaginary love of this youthful lover and her duty and respect for her husband, the young wife is about to leave her home when through the open window comes the haunting air of a violin. The air is “Home Sweet Home,” played by the master hand of a famous violinist to a chambermaid on the floor below. Its message is clear to the young wife, and she dismisses her cavalier and remains true to the man she had wed. A third shift on the great stage of life and is seen a poor old mother and her two sons whom she loves and cherishes[,] but who are both very bad boys. One of them is fortunate enough to acquire some money, and the other covets it and attacks his brother. Both are carrying deadly hate in their hearts for each other, and in a fight to the death both are killed. The old mother is rendered insane with the shock and sits dry-eyed, shrieking aloud in her agony of heart, her very soul bared by the terrible tragedy that has come upon her[,] when the mellow tinkling of a guitar in the hands of a neighbor restores her to a reasonable being[,] and she finds peace and consolation in her faith in God. Needless to say, the melliflous [sic] melody was “Home Sweet Home!” Thus, in a series of life’s dramas of smiles and tears, is shown the influence of the most beautiful and far-reaching of songs, and it is suggested in the play that Payne’s mother at last realized that her son had made one great success of his life[,] though it was but to be the ever-living and deathless lines of “There’s no place like home!” The Moving Picture World, May 30, 1914, p. 1312

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Part 1 – Prologue: John Howard Payne, as a young man, takes leave of his mother and his sweetheart, and sets out from their country home to the city, where he successfully auditions for a position as an actor. The news that he has become an actor shocks his religious mother. She and the sweetheart pay Payne a surprise visit in his lodgings, where they overhear his coarse language as he talks and drinks with friends, who include loose women. When he wakes from a drunken stupor and finds mother and girlfriend there, he is penitent. He goes abroad, and there is ensnared by a worldly woman, but she abandons him, as do his other new friends, when he is imprisoned for debt. In this state, he remembers his old home, his mother and his sweetheart, and writes the song “Home, Sweet Home”. He expires, neglected by indifferent attendants, in North Africa, and then his sweetheart, who had waited faithfully for his return, dies too. Part 2 – Episode 1: In Dusty Gulch, a mining camp in the American West, Apple Pie Mary runs a lunch counter owned by her father. She flirts with all the customers, but receives a formal proposal from Robert Winthrop, a tinhorn prospector from the East. As she accepts and they are engaged, they hear “Home, Sweet Home” being played on an accordion nearby. Winthrop sets out on a prospecting trip, but meets old friends from the East who bring him a letter about his affairs which obliges him to return East with them. Before leaving he exchanges tokens with Mary – a picture postcard showing a girl who looks like Mary for him, a pair of his spectacles for her. While back East he is courted by a rich girl, and on returning to Dusty Gulch with the girl, he decides there is too great a gulf between him and Mary. So Winthrop writes to her breaking off the engagement, and sets out on the stage coach with the rich girl. At a staging post, he hears once again the accordionist playing “Home, Sweet Home”, decides he cannot abandon Mary, hires a horse, and to the astonishment of his Eastern friends, rides back to Dusty Gulch, where he and Mary are reconciled. Five years later, they are happily married with two children. Part 3 – Episode 2: A fishing family consists of a mother and her three sons. The youngest is slightly retarded; the older two cordially detest one another. One day, the second son is paid for some work he did for another fisherman. The first son demands a share of the money, but the second refuses. The mother leaves the family’s shack for the day. The first son lies in wait to ambush the second, but the second is accosted again by the other fisherman before his brother can strike. The third son witnesses the attempted ambush, and follows his eldest brother back to the shack, where he sees him take out a revolver and swear to finish the second brother. The youngest son borrows a horse and rides for help to his friend the sheriff. Meanwhile, the second son returns home. His brother again demands money and is again refused, but the second son changes his tune when he sees the gun. He pretends to be willing to go shares with his brother, then grabs at the gun. The two brothers struggle for possession of the weapon, a struggle won by the elder. A passing guitarist plays “Home, Sweet Home”, the second son draws the first’s attention to it in a desperate plea for his life, but the first son simply laughs and shoots his brother in cold blood. The third son arrives with the sheriff; the first son tries to hide from them, dropping the gun, but the dying second son seizes it and shoots his elder brother dead. When the mother returns and finds two of her sons dead, she picks up a knife and is about to stab herself, when the guitar player passes again. Remembering she still has a son, she allows herself to be comforted. Part 4 – Episode 3: “THE MARRIAGE OF ROSES AND LILIES” (only this episode has a separate title). A wealthy businessman is getting married. Across the way, a musician leaves his violin in his room and tells the boy to tidy the room. The homesick boy picks up the violin and plays “Home, Sweet Home”. The wedding couple hears the tune, and swears to remem30

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ber this moment always. The returning musician is indignant that the boy touched his precious violin. Two years later, the husband is preoccupied by business matters and neglects his wife. One evening, he decides to spend the evening at his club, leaving his wife at home. While he is away, a man friend of the wife’s visits, and, seizing his chance, proposes that she run away with him. The wife agrees. While they are talking, the husband returns, but decides to sit in the hall and finish his cigar so as not to disturb his wife. As he does so, he falls asleep. The lover leaves to prepare the elopement, tiptoeing past the sleeping husband. At the house opposite, the maid asks the musician for a tune, and he knows she wants him to play “Home, Sweet Home”, which he does. Hearing the tune, the wife remembers her wedding and decides to stay with her husband. When the lover returns and tiptoes past the sleeping husband again, she rejects him. He leaves, disgruntled, and the wife gently wakes her husband with a kiss. Ten years later, they are a happy couple with three children. Epilogue: John Howard Payne is in Purgatory, beset by the demons the Master of Lust Thoughts, the Master Carnality, the Master Brutality, and the Master Worldly. His sweetheart, now an angel, intercedes for him. The demons are powerless, and Payne’s soul flies upwards to join her in heaven.

The American Film Institute Catalog lists “Majestic Motion Picture Co.; Reliance Motion Picture Co.” as the producer of Home, Sweet Home, and notes that “because the facility where this film was made was commonly called the Reliance-Majestic studio, some sources have referred to the production company’s name as ‘Reliance-Majestic’”. Although, as we shall see, this statement is a reasonable pragmatic description of the production circumstances of at least one other D.W. Griffith-directed film made in 1914, it is an anomalous one, given that there never was a corporate entity called “Reliance-Majestic”. The Reliance Motion Picture Corporation and the Majestic Motion Picture Company were companies purchased and founded respectively by Harry Aitken when he broke with the General Film Company in 1910 to join the congeries of small production companies that provided alternative product to the Motion-Picture-Patents-Company-licensed programme supplied to affiliated exchanges and theatres by the General Film Co. By 1913 the product of these companies was released through two “independent” national distributors: Universal, dominated by Carl Laemmle, and Mutual, dominated by Harry Aitken. In 1913, Reliance and Majestic regularly released short films as part of the Mutual programme; Reliance operated a studio in Coney Island, while Majestic had one at 651 Fairview Avenue in Los Angeles (see Anthony Slide, The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry, entry “Reliance Motion Picture Co. and Majestic Motion Picture Co.”, p. 171). That summer, as it became increasingly likely that the future of the American film industry lay in feature production and the distribution of a feature programme, Aitken felt the need to beef up his production capabilities. In addition to purchasing a property at 262nd Street and Riverdale Avenue in New York City to provide a new studio for Reliance, and reincorporating Reliance with $1 million capital in December, he hired D.W. Griffith away from Biograph, outbidding Adolph Zukor in the process, on an agreement whereby he would supervise all Reliance productions (three, and sometimes four reels a week in 1913), but be allowed to direct special features which would be released under the D.W. Griffith name. Griffith joined Reliance on 1 October 1913, and worked for three months in New York, but, used to spending the winter in California, he persuaded Aitken to purchase the former Kinemacolor studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. This was where Griffith worked permanently from the Spring of 1914 on. It is not clear whether Griffith’s supervisory role was originally intended to include Majestic productions, and a report in The Moving Picture World (February 14, 1914, p. 823) announcing that 31

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“an enormous new stage is now in process of construction, so that the Majestic has now one of the largest plants in Southern California” suggests the intention to retain and expand the Los Angeles Majestic Studio. However, on 28 March (p. 1685), The Moving Picture World indicates that “the Majestic Studio, for so long a time located at 651 Fairview Avenue, in the east side of the city, is moving over to the west side on Sunset Boulevard. The new location is the Reliance Studio, which is being fitted up and made large[r] for the additional forces”. From April 1914 (and until the formation of Triangle in 1915, when it became the Fine Arts studio and released its films as such), the studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard produced all the films released as Reliance productions and Majestic productions, and also those released as “Griffith Specials”. How this studio (which the contemporary trade press was unsure how to designate, sometimes calling it the Reliance studio, even in announcements of the production there of Majestic films, sometimes calling it the Mutual studio, despite the fact that several other studios in the Los Angeles region, e.g., Keystone, released through Mutual) was run is clear from the books that survive in the Aitken Brothers Collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society. From April 1914 on, those books include three parallel production records (confusingly labeled by the Wisconsin Historical Society cataloguers as the Reliance Motion Picture Corporation Production Record 1914–15, the Majestic Motion Picture Company Journal 1914, and the Reliance Motion Picture Corporation Production Record 1915–17– Volumes 59, 98, and 99, respectively, in the Register to the Collection that is available online via the entry for the Aitken Brothers Collection in the WHS Archives catalogue at ). The costs of each production in the studio (including assigned costs such as an appropriate proportion of the salaries of contract actors and production personnel) were entered by the same bookkeeper (presumably in Los Angeles) on a new page in the respective ledger as soon as costs began to be incurred on the project. A director’s name appears alongside each title in the Reliance and Majestic ledgers, and the same directors, actors, and production personnel (as far as these can be determined) appear in films assigned to either release label. Thus it seems clear that the studio was run as a single unit of production: once the scenario department (under Frank Woods, the former “Spectator” of The New York Dramatic Mirror) had approved a project, the script would be assigned to a director and cast and crewed; then, to ensure that the Reliance and Majestic slots in the Mutual program were appropriately filled (and perhaps for internal accounting reasons), the project would be dubbed a Reliance or Majestic production or a “Griffith Special” and entered in the corresponding ledger (some of the pages are annotated to indicate that a production changed at some stage from its original allotment to another). One- and two-reelers, whether Reliance or Majestic productions, seem to adhere fairly closely to a cost of $1 per foot (standard for the higher end of the American film industry at this time, but a considerable step up from the roughly 50 cents a foot that Reliance shorts cost in 1913). Despite this uniformity, it is my impression that the more prominent directors and actors are more likely to feature in Majestic than Reliance productions – that is, in anachronistic terms, Reliance films were “B” programmers, Majestics “A” programmers, and “Griffith Specials” the equivalent of the later studio specials. But some titles booked as both Reliance and Majestic productions were multi-reelers, with a production cost considerably higher, several dollars per foot. However, this is the set-up after the production of Home, Sweet Home. Home, Sweet Home was the first film directed by D.W. Griffith made in the Sunset Boulevard studio. Exactly when Griffith arrived at the studio seems not to be recorded. Karl Brown’s account of that arrival in Adventures with D.W. Griffith (pp. 9–13) suggests that it was a major Hollywood occasion, but the trade press of the period was New York or Chicago based and none of the papers had full coverage of events on the West Coast (The Moving Picture World’s “Doings 32

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at Los Angeles” column began on 28 March 1914). The Moving Picture World’s “Manufacturer’s Advanced Notes” column for 7 February reports that “D.W. Griffith, director-general for the Mutual Film Corporation, and his staff of directors and scenario department left New York for Los Angeles on Tuesday January 27”, while an article headed “Griffith on the Job” in the 28 February issue says: Miss Blanche Sweet, who has been in quarantine on account of symptoms of scarlet fever which developed while she was working on D.W. Griffith’s production of ‘The Escape’ for the Mutual, has been released and is now on her way to join the rest of the company in Los Angeles, Cal. Mr. Griffith preceded her by about a week, making a few stops on the way, one of which was a visit to his mother. By the time this reaches our readers the entire Mutual company of players and scenario writers will be assembled and hard at work on new productions.

The earliest published mention of Home, Sweet Home seems to be in The New York Dramatic Mirror for 18 March 1914 (p. 30): “Film ‘Home, Sweet Home’. Mutual to Assemble AllStar Cast for Film Based on Famous Song”. On 25 April, The Moving Picture World announced: “Director David W. Griffith has just completed ‘Home, Sweet Home’, a tremendous production that took the whole Reliance crew” (“Doings at Los Angeles”, p. 529). Given that a late and very wet spring disrupted production in Los Angeles in 1914, with the result that on many days no filming was possible, either on location or on the open stages in the studios, the film must have been in production from the time Griffith reached Los Angeles in the middle of February until late April, and perhaps (given Griffith’s penchant for tinkering with completed films throughout his career) right up to the time “a special print” was “rushed to completion to open” Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles on 4 May (The New York Dramatic Mirror, May 20, 1914, p. 32). A production cost record for the film does not appear in the ledgers in the Aitken Brothers Collection – the first title in the “Griffith Specials” ledger is “The Murderer’s Conscience”, i.e., The Avenging Conscience, with a first entry dated 15 April 1914. (Later entries are a few pages for “The Clansman”, i.e., The Birth of a Nation, presumably until Mutual had rejected the project and the production was reassigned to the Epoch Producing Corporation, and many pages devoted to the modern story in Intolerance.) There is a production record for Reliance films in 1913 (Volume 96: “Film Expense Journal, 1913”); entries in it are not dated, but the latest of the titles was released in November 1913. There are no production records for Majestic before April 1914. Detailed production records for both Reliance and Majestic films are thus missing for the period in which Home, Sweet Home was made. However, what the Wisconsin Historical Society describes as “the Majestic Journal for August 1913 to December 1914” (Volume 52), which seems to have been a ledger kept in New York, records an expenditure of $19,230.96 on 29 May 1914 to Reliance Motion Picture Corp. “for entire cost of producing ‘Home Sweet Home’ bought by Majestic M.P. Co.”. $1,827.92 was added to this on 30 June for “feature actors paid for out of Majestic funds but who did not work on any picture or feature and in accordance with agreement were charged to Rel. feature ‘Home Sweet Home’ and are taken into consideration in the cost price of this negative as per statements forwarded to N.Y. office. Above amount was never paid by Reliance and is therefore charged hereby”. Thus, during its making, the film was produced by a unit manufacturing films to be released under the Reliance name, but between its première and its general release at the end of May, it was sold to Majestic Motion Picture Company. However, although the film’s trade-press advertising is surprisingly discreet about it – the plot summary is listed under Mutual Feature Film Stories in The Moving Picture World (May 30, 1914, p. 1312) and the advertisements 33

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stress Mutual and the Continental Feature Film Corp., another Aitken-owned distribution company – there seems no doubt that it was a “Griffith Special”, the second to be released, after The Battle of the Sexes on 12 April. The print viewed (a copy deriving from the Museum of Modern Art’s fine grain master, itself deriving from material acquired from D.W. Griffith) has titles framed by a cartouche with “Griffith” at the top left and right corners and “DG” at the bottom in the middle. We know this is the original appearance of the titles, because Sime Silverman’s review in Variety (May 22, 1914) describes them: “The caption plates [are] marked by two ‘Griffiths’, one in either upper corner, and a ‘D.W.’ [sic] monogram below”. In addition, the film is consistently called a “Griffith Special” or the like in the trade press; “W.” in The New York Dramatic Mirror says “it is released under the ‘Griffith’ brand” (May 20, 1914, p. 32), while Louis Reeves Harrison’s Moving Picture World review describes it as a “Griffith-Reliance Production” (May 30, 1914, p. 1234). So what is the modern filmographer to give as the production company? I think I would plump for Reliance, as the identity assumed by everyone for the unit that actually produced it during the time of its production, or perhaps use Harrison’s formula, “Griffith-Reliance”. Another mystery about the film is its length. The current Museum of Modern Art print is 4,094 feet of 35mm film. When the film was first announced in the trade press, it was described as “five reels” (Motography, April 4, 1914, p. 238; The Moving Picture World, April 4, 1914, p. 95). At the time of release both reviews and advertisements indicate it was “six reels” (The Moving Picture World, May 30, 1914, p. 1234, and June 20, 1914, p. 1652; The New York Dramatic Mirror, May 20, 1914, p. 32). (Silverman’s estimate [op. cit.] that “it seems to run about seven reels” need be taken as no more than an indication of how out of touch with moving pictures Variety still was in 1914). However, the advertisements carry a recommendation as to projection speed that seems studiedly vague as to how many reels there really were, being compatible with a four- or five-reel picture as well as a six-reel one: “Mr. Griffith suggests that the running time for the picture should be: – 16 M. for the first reel, 14 M. to 15 M. for the second reel and from 13 M. to 14 M. for each of the other reels. The last reel, however, should be run slowly from the beginning of the allegorical part to the end” (Reel Life, June 13, 1914, p. 3). When it was released in England in October 1914, moreover, it was advertised as “four reels”, while synopses and reviews indicate that there was nothing significant missing from the film as released in the United States (The Bioscope, October 15, 1914, p. 274–75; October 22, 1914, p. 300). All this suggests to me that the film as it survives at MoMA is substantially as it was originally released. It counted as five reels by the very strict definition of a reel as a maximum of a thousand feet prevailing in the United States; the six reels is pure hype (though it might have been shipped on six spools). In England, where 2,000foot spools were the norm and films had much more variable lengths than prevailed in the United States, the overrun on 4,000 feet could easily be accommodated on two spools, so the film could count as a four-reeler (though it might also have been trimmed to 4,000 feet without substantial changes in the plot). If there is anything missing in the surviving print, it would most likely be in the Prologue, which is currently 1,275 feet; if reel divisions and episode divisions corresponded, the Prologue would have to be the first two reels, which at 16 frames per second would be nearer 1,800 feet if the advertisement’s timings are to be trusted. The cost of Home, Sweet Home comes out at between four and five dollars per foot, depending on how long we reckon it originally was. Although this is more than the Reliance and Majestic features, let alone the programme shorts released by Mutual, the film shows few obvious signs of the extra money: it has relatively few sets, and not very elaborate ones at that, and locations, costumes and properties that were easily available. Most of the money must have gone into the cast. The film’s advertising all emphasises it as an “all-star” picture: the first announcements in The New York Dramatic Mirror and Motography say it will feature 34

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“eighteen famous screen stars”; twenty-five names are listed in the The Moving Picture World’s 20 June advertisement, twenty-six (James Kirkwood’s is the extra name) in the 4 April preadvertising, which describes the film as “embracing in its telling the entire acting staff of the Reliance and Majestic companies”. Not all of these names (which are listed in the credits above) have been identified in the film (e.g., Ralph Lewis, Irene Hunt, John Dillon, Earle Foxe, F.A. Turner, and George Siegmann), and it may be that some or all of them are among those paid out of the film’s budget but not used in the film. Fred Burns, the sheriff in Episode 2, is named in a title, but not in the advertised list, and others (André Beranger, Karl Brown) have been identified from modern sources or the print. Most, but not all, of these advertised names are Biograph veterans recruited by Griffith when he assembled the company to go to California. It seems clear that one of the purposes of the film was to showcase the new Reliance company and to emphasise their new allegiance, given that Biograph was still releasing films featuring many of them in the General Film Company programme. However, ignoring the cast, the film has some of the look of a cheap production. In particular, the filmmakers have trouble with the muslin awnings, so that in both the Prologue and Episode 3, extra light occasionally spills onto the set as an awning flaps in the wind. This might be a further result of the inclement spring; it should certainly not be one of inexperience on the filmmakers’ part. Most likely, the old Kinemacolor studio was still less well equipped than what Griffith was used to in California, and Aitken’s purse was too constrained to bring it up to standard quickly enough. If the decision to amalgamate Reliance and Majestic facilities on the Sunset Boulevard site was made quite soon before the merger took place, it may have been to deal with deficiencies in the Reliance studio that the filmmakers were made acutely aware of in the filming of Home, Sweet Home. The American Film Institute Catalog’s summary (p. 418) claims that “according to modern sources, the real John Howard Payne was denied authorship and royalty to the song ‘Home, Sweet, Home’ and was homeless and penniless for most of his later years”. This is questionable. It was not possible to copyright theatrical writing effectively in Payne’s day, and while Payne did die in Tunis, he was not homeless or penniless at the time, but earning a salary as the U.S. Consul in that city. To be fair, the film itself does not claim he dies destitute. The title introducing the death scene merely says, “HIS DEATH IN AN ALIEN LAND”. The scene shows Payne dying on a couch with two attendants in Arab dress, one fanning him, the other apparently a doctor; when he judges that Payne is dying, the doctor bids the other attendant fan him rather than Payne. But the general impression given is of a constantly downward path, and as we have already seen Payne released from debtor’s prison and deserted by his friends, destitution seems the most likely next step. More important than this particular contrafactual detail is the film’s overall indifference to the actual facts of Payne’s life, easily available to Aitken and Griffith in an 1873 biography by Gabriel Harrison, and a carefully documented account of his early life by Willis Hanson Tracy, Jr., published the year before the film was made. The opening title states: “SUGGESTED BY THE LIFE OF JOHN HOWARD PAYNE AND HIS IMMORTAL SONG ‘HOME, SWEET HOME’. NOT BIOGRAPHICAL BUT PHOTO-DRAMATIC AND ALLEGORICAL, AND MIGHT APPLY TO THE LIVES AND WORKS OF MANY MEN OF GENIUS, WHOSE FAILINGS IN PRIVATE LIFE HAVE BEEN OUTWEIGHED BY THEIR GREAT GIFTS TO HUMANITY”. Where one might expect a moralised version of the life, with documented events rearranged, heightened or diminished to convey a significant story, in fact, the authors have invented their life of Payne out of whole cloth. The Bioscope reviewer, who clearly really knows something about Payne (he is probably more significant for British theatre history than he is for American), indicates this by giving what are in effect two summaries of the Prologue – one the real life; the other, the film’s:

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The first part sketches the life of John Howard Payne, an American actor and playwright, who, having made considerable success on the stage, both in America and England, wrote and adapted many plays, chiefly from the French, and wrote the libretto of an opera, of which only the song ‘Home, Sweet Home’ survives [in the sense ‘is still performed today’ – both libretto and score, by Henry Rowley Bishop, of Clari, or, the Maid of Milan, first produced at Covent Garden, London, in 1823, are still extant]. He became American Consul at Tunis, where he died.... The story is little more than the main incidents in his career, with a mother and sweetheart in the background, of whom, in his riotous excesses, he sometimes pictures sitting over the teacups at home, but who seem to have little effect or influence over his life. (October 15, 1914, p. 275)

The only things in the life presented in the film that correspond to the historical Payne are that he was American, that he was an actor, that he went abroad, that he was imprisoned for debt in London, that he wrote “Home, Sweet Home”, and that he died in Tunis. Far from being a country boy, Payne was born in New York and raised in that city and in Boston. He was one of nine children. His mother died before he had appeared in any but school plays, and predeceased his father. He had a romantic disposition, falling in love with one woman after another in his mature years, but marrying none of them, and these romances (one object of which was Mary Shelley) seem to have been sexually innocent. Given this character, he presumably had some childhood sweethearts, but there is no indication of his constancy toward any of these, or theirs to him. His father urged him into a mercantile career, not from any prejudice against the theatre, which all the Paynes loved, but for the usual prudential reasons. Most significantly, he seems to have led a generally blameless life – his only failings being a chronic inability to keep his expenditures within the bounds of his income (hence the debtors’ prison), and an irascibility that bedeviled his relations as actor and playwright with theatrical managers, relations which no writer that I know of handled successfully at this period. However, he was an infant prodigy, the only achievement of whom still remembered at his death was the song “Home, Sweet Home”, so a Chattertonesque stereotype was easily imposed on the real facts. Thus the trope of a youthful genius who failed in his promise dominated the eulogy (if it can properly be so called) pronounced by Leigh Robinson when Payne’s remains were transferred from Tunis and reinterred in Washington in 1883 (Payne had died in 1852). Homelessness and pennilessness were soon added to this, to give the AFI Catalog’s account of the life. Aitken and Griffith have further added the libel that long absence from home and exile implied debauchery. More generally, at the time the film was made, “Home, Sweet Home” (the song) seemed to inspire everyone to “poetic” gush. Thus some of the intertitles in the Prologue, e.g., “I WILL AWAIT THEE, DEAR MY BOY”, read like quotations from poems, though I do not think they are, and Louis Reeves Harrison is driven in his Moving Picture World review (May 30, 1914, p. 1234) to lengthy (and irrelevant) quotations from Edna Wheeler Wilcox – so historical accuracy was the last thing on anybody’s mind (except perhaps the Bioscope reviewer) when they approached the subject. Richard Schickel (D.W. Griffith, An American Life, p. 209) suggests a psychological explanation for the theme, insofar as “[the film’s] chief interest lies in Griffith’s treatment of Payne, whom he saw as another of his unappreciated artist-wanderers”. Most commentators on Home, Sweet Home note that, as a multi-episode film, it anticipates Intolerance. Others note also the analogy with the 1909 Biograph one-reeler Pippa Passes [see DWG Project, #189]. As in the latter, a series of stories involving different characters are linked by the fact that they find their resolution in chance hearings of the same song. However, in Pippa Passes, the fact that it is a character walking about a city singing in the morning that provides the link anchors all the episodes into a single diegetic space and time (though Griffith does not try to reproduce the series of subtle links between Pippa and the 36

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other characters and among those characters that further unify Browning’s play). In Home, Sweet Home, by contrast, the only spatio-temporal linkage is that all the stories are set in the cultural universe that knows the song, which they must therefore all post-date. Moreover, it is the theme of the song that counts, rather than the innocence of the singer, as in Pippa Passes, which brings it closer to the unification by theme of Intolerance. But the fact that the stories follow one another rather than being intercut obviously makes it closer to the earlier film than the later one. Differences underscore the parallels. Thus, three different instruments – an accordion, a guitar, and a violin – play the music in each episode. (Notably, only the guitarist seems also to sing the words, so the unifier is really Bishop’s music, not Payne’s lyrics, but the tune is so closely associated with the words, or at least the theme of the song, that the song – words and melody – is usually thought of as Payne’s, so the discrepancy is not very important.) The three settings contrast three characteristic American environments – a western mining camp, a seacoast fishing village, and a big city (an agrarian moment is notably absent). Finally, where two of the three stories have unalloyedly happy endings, with successful marriages blessed with many children, one is much more ambiguous: the song fails to deter one of the brothers who hate from killing his sibling, so its later success in preventing the mother’s suicide is not an unmixed happy ending. Interestingly, the summary in The Moving Picture World (May 30, 1914, p. 1312) places this episode third and last, whereas the surviving print and the reviews on release indicate that it should go second. If it were in final place, it would bring the film overall closer to the characteristic ambiguity of Griffith’s later Biograph films (such as The Adopted Brother [1913]), where the film ends happily insofar as the hero and heroine survive and are perhaps united in marriage, but this is achieved by the destruction of another family group or other innocent characters. The World summary also omits the Epilogue. If the Epilogue, showing Payne’s redemption, was, in fact, an afterthought, the film as originally conceived would have been a gloomy one indeed. Another way of looking at the multi-episode format is as a transitional form between the one-reel film and the feature, a unification by theme of the variety programme of short films that constituted the bill in a typical Mutual-served movie house – in this case, comprising a two-reel costume drama, a comedy Western, a melodrama, and a society drama. The lengths of the episodes bear this out. In the current print, Episode One is 986 feet long, Episode Two 953 feet, and Episode Three 761 feet (as it were a split reeler with the Epilogue at 80 feet). In Edward Wagenknecht and Antony Slide (The Films of D.W. Griffith, p. 41), Slide even claims of Episode One: “Interestingly, prior to the first screening of Home, Sweet Home, this sequence had been released, on April 18, 1914, as a separate story, titled Apple Pie Mary, but with a slightly different plot line. Instead of returning to marry Mae Marsh, Harron (here called Burford Dane) marries Miriam Cooper, and only visits Mae Marsh again on her deathbed, when she forgives him ‘with a sad smile playing about her lips and dies with his baby playing at the bedside’”. Unfortunately, despite the circumstantial nature of this comment, I can find no trace of this release; it was certainly not on the regular Mutual program for 18 April, or any other date nearby. However, it does at first sight seem plausible that an episode from Home, Sweet Home might have been released as a separate one-reeler, just as the different parts of Intolerance were released as separate features. If Home, Sweet Home was Griffith’s first feature-length film, the temptation to think of it as a cautious step toward the feature in this way would be almost irresistible. However, he had made at least three features before this (Judith of Bethulia, The Batttle of the Sexes, and The Escape), each of which is a straightforward single-diegesis film, so inexperience cannot be the explanation in this case. And the individual episodes are not, if examined closely, very like Griffith’s one-reel films. By 1913, Griffith constructed these films by combining different plot lines, integrating 37

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them by the device he took further than any of his contemporaries: alternating editing. This can partly be seen as a response to the problem of making so many films. There are a relatively limited number of situations suitable for a short dramatic film, and one way of extending the number so that each film is somewhat different from the others is to combine them. Thus, The Adopted Brother has one story line concerning the eponymous hero’s persecution by the family’s full-blooded son, and a second concerning the hero’s restoration of the self-respect of a drunken writer. The two are brought together by the writer sacrificing himself to save the hero from a murderous attack by his brother. Or consider The Voice of the Child (1912). The main plot line of this film is virtually identical to that of Home, Sweet Home’s Episode Three: a husband is so wrapped up in business that his neglected wife is vulnerable to the seduction of another man, in this case the husband’s friend rather than her own. But the resolution involves an elaborate secondary plot line where the friend uses a stolen photograph to persuade the wife of her husband’s infidelity, which the couple’s daughter sees him slip into the husband’s coat pocket, thus enabling the daughter to resolve the couple’s dissension fully once her appeal has induced her mother not to abandon the family. The functions of this second plot line in The Voice of the Child are fulfilled by the double overhearing of the song in Home, Sweet Home’s “THE MARRIAGE OF ROSES AND LILIES”. The introduction of the song is more carefully prepared in this episode than in the others, with byplay between the musician and the homesick boy in the first hearing, and between the musician and the maid in the second, but there is not any real story connected with it. In Episode Two of Home, Sweet Home, there seems to be something much more like an intervening story, but it is so underdeveloped as to be incomprehensible. The first son’s attack on his brother is motivated by the second son receiving money from a man, but we never discover the reason. The older brother’s first attempt is foiled when the same man reappears with an apparently urgent errand for the second son to run, which he reluctantly agrees to, thus removing him from his brother’s reach for a time. We then see him taking a cheery farewell of this man as he strides towards the family shack and his doom. Possibly there was once more footage to make this secondary sequence of actions explicable, but there is no obvious moment where such footage seems to be missing. Similarly, in the first episode, Robert Winthrop’s business in the East, which motivates his separation from Mary and extended contact with the Eastern girl, is not explained. It looks as if he receives a legacy, putting him into a class above Mary, and thus motivating the letter indicating that there is a gulf between them. But this is never elaborated, and so remains surmise. Another characteristic of the later Biographs is the use of symbolic props, often with ironic reversals built into them. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the heroine’s shawl in The Painted Lady (1912), but one might also mention the mouse in The Lady and the Mouse (1913), the son’s collar and tie in Home Folks (1912), and many others. In Home, Sweet Home, there are such props, but they are underdeveloped. Thus the mementoes that Robert and Mary exchange in Episode One are amusing, but little comes of them; Mary’s wearing of Robert’s glasses when he returns to her at the end has no function except for the comic effect on her appearance, and the picture postcard never reappears. And the roses and lilies that are mentioned in the title to Episode Three serve as the thinnest of symbolic parallels, blooming in profusion side by side in the wedding shots, and their petals dropping separately in hall and sitting room in the scenes of the couple’s dissension two years later. Only the husband even takes any notice of them when he idly tries to restore one of the fallen rose petals to its flower before he falls asleep in an armchair on returning from his club. This thinness also characterises the Prologue and Epilogue. As the Bioscope reviewer noted, the main structuring device, the series of cutaways from the story of Payne’s descent in Europe and North Africa to his mother and sweetheart waiting patiently back home, has 38

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no consequences. It is true that the film does exploit the full range of Griffith’s use of such cutaways: sometimes it is clear that Payne is thinking of his sweetheart when there is a cut to her (e.g., when he is composing the song); at others she is farthest from his thoughts, and is brought in as a commentary for the viewer (e.g., when he is being seduced by the Worldly Woman). She, on the other hand, is always thinking of him, expecting his imminent arrival for tea, having premonitions of his downfall when the parallel scene is one of disgrace or sin; but thinking of her lost love is the only thing she has to do in the film. Not until the Epilogue does her story actually link with his, when she conjures the demons and carries him off to heaven. Robert Henderson (D.W. Griffith: His Life and Work, p. 144) suggests that “the film was notable for its increasingly complex use of technical devices [and] refinement of parallel editing”, but, in my opinion, it seems a step backwards from the technical achievements of the Biograph films. It may be that the complex structures of the later Biographs were forced on Griffith by the need for original stories; in the earlier Biographs he favoured finding a single poignant or thrilling situation and expanding it. Perhaps he felt that the feature format, and, in a compound feature like Home, Sweet Home, the ability to use the parallelism between stories to motivate their resolution, allowed a return to the more relaxed form of his earlier films. The complexity of the late Biographs motivated their high cutting rates, since so much story had to be crammed into a quarter of an hour. The cutting rates of the episodes in Home, Sweet Home are indeed low by 1913 Griffith standards (though still high by general American film industry standards). Thus, in the current print, Episode One has an average shot length of 10.29 feet; Episode Two, 9.16 feet; and Episode Three’s “THE MARRIAGE OF ROSES AND LILIES”, also 9.16 feet (the Prologue and Epilogue are much slower, at 14.00 and 11.25, respectively). Contrast with The Adopted Brother’s 8.24 feet. All in all, Home, Sweet Home cannot be counted as one of Griffith’s more successful films. If, as all the biographies claim, The Battle of the Sexes was simply a potboiler made to fill Aitken’s pressing schedules for Reliance product, Home, Sweet Home seems no more than a showcase for his new company of actors. Ben Brewster

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510 RELIANCE MOTION PICTURE CO.; MAJESTIC MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE Sub-title: Thou Shalt Not Kill Working title: The Murderer’s Conscience Filming date: April–June 1914 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Distribution: Mutual Film Corp; State Rights, through Western Import Co. Pasadena, California preview: 16 July 1914, Clune’s Pasadena Theatre Los Angeles premiere: 27 September 1914, Clune’s Auditorium New York premiere: 2 August 1914, Strand Theatre Release date: 24 August 1914 Release length: six reels (The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–1920, p. 39, lists the release length as seven–eight reels) Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: Frank E. Woods (according to The New York Dramatic Mirror and Reel Life) and/or William E. Wing (according to “Mae Tinee”, in Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1915) Source: “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the short story by Edgar Allan Poe in The Pioneer (January 1843) and his poem “Annabel Lee” in The New York Tribune (October 9, 1849) Camera: G.W. Bitzer Assistant camera: Karl Brown Film editors: James Smith, Rose Richtel New York musical accompaniment composed by: S.L. Rothapfel Cast: Henry B. Walthall (The nephew); Spottiswoode Aitken (The uncle); Blanche Sweet (The sweetheart called Annabel); George Siegmann (The Italian); Ralph Lewis (The detective); Mae Marsh (The maid); Robert Harron (The grocery boy); George A. Beranger Archival sources: The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate negative; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) A baby has been left in the care of a bachelor uncle, who lavishes all his love and tenderness on his charge. He plans a great literary career for his nephew; for the boy has shown promise of future greatness. But he had reckoned without the thought of a possible obstacle – woman. In the freshness of his youth, the young man meets a beautiful girl, whom he calls in the joy of his poetical nature, “Annabel Lee.” The twain soon grew to love each other, with all the power which Poe has so vividly portrayed in his poems of the affections. But the old uncle, his heart set upon the boy’s future, interferes. When “Annabel” calls to invite her young swain to a garden party, the uncle insults her by accusing her of pursuing his nephew “like a common woman,” hoping thereby to prevent her ever returning. The insult sinks deep into her heart, and, realizing that the boy’s obligations to his uncle are too great to be honorably broken, the two decide to part forever. Meanwhile, however, the uncle undergoes a change of heart, as the young people, griefstricken and all unknowing, say their final farewells. Now comes to the young man thoughts that are black and evil. It seems to him that all Nature is but a series of systematic murders. He sees the spider devouring the fly, the ants consuming insects of other kinds. Only that day he had been reading the poems and stories of Edgar Allen [sic] Poe, among

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them the story of “The Tell Tale Heart.” If only the old man, his uncle were out of the way, there might yet be joy and happiness with the girl he loves. To make all the stronger this powerful impression on his mind, his uncle has only one eye, just as had the poor victim in “The Tell Tale Heart.” Brooding over the tragic blackness of the impending separation, he forms a diabolical plan. With all the consummate skill of Poe’s character in “The Tell Tale Heart,” the plan takes form and execution. It is then that the great and saving grace of conscience demonstrates its power. Avenging thoughts, such as Poe, himself, might have conceived, are visualized to the quaking youth. The subtle working of the inner conscience, beyond the power of mind to control, finds expression in the weird and terrible visions which torture the culprit brain. Relentless fate pursues him to the brink of the pit and then – a sudden awakening proves that part of his mental disturbance is a dream, and the dream is what causes him to realize the horror of murder and to abandon the idea of it. The Moving Picture World, August 22, 1914, p.1150

A reclusive, cranky bachelor raises his orphan nephew as a man of letters, exasperated when he learns that his ward has had his head turned by the beautiful young Annabel. When Annabel pays a call to have the nephew escort her to a garden party, the uncle insults her and forces the young man to choose between home and the young woman. Reluctantly, the sweethearts agree to separate, but fuming at the uncle’s unfairness, the nephew resolves to murder him. He strangles the old man and bricks the body behind a fireplace. Guilt-ridden, the nephew grows susceptible to hallucinations as his efforts to conceal his crime fall apart. An Italian has witnessed the murder and blackmails him; a suspicious detective drives him to the brink with persistent questions. Finally images of hellfire and ghouls drive the nephew to hysteria. Half-mad, he confesses and runs to a barn where, surrounded by the detective’s posse, he hangs himself. His sweetheart, intuiting that he needs her, discovers she has arrived too late, and throws herself off a cliff.… The nephew awakens to discover that he has only dreamt the murder and its aftermath. He reconciles with his uncle, marries Annabel, and publishes a successful book. As he reads to Annabel, a final vision appears: Pan plays his pipe, and fairy cherubs, joined by wild animals and bunnies, emerge from their woodland dwellings to celebrate.

Griffith had become – well, strange during the time I had known him…. We were doing a picture called The Avenging Conscience … when Griffith suddenly appeared in the door of the camera room. He did not come in. He did not look at me or notice what I was doing. He was in one of his dreamy moods, far away from the world of here and now and seemingly in the grip of a fascinating inner vision. He looked with unseeing eyes at a spot above my head, a place where the gallery would be if he were speaking from a stage, and intoned with a deep, mystical voice, “Get me a lily … an Easter lily … holding its pure white virginal sweetness to the heaven it longs for … only to droop, to droop, to droop” – his hands were moving in expressive gestures as he spoke, so that I could see the lily – “to droop … and to die … stricken with shame …” … The Oracle had spoken. I hunted up Bitzer and told him what was up. He was disgusted to the point of open rebellion. “Symbolism!” he snorted. “More of his damned symbolism. It’s not enough I have devils dancing up out of hell and angels flying out of clouds, but he’s got to have spiders catching bugs and peacocks spreading tails. Why can’t he come right out and show what he means in plain terms the way he’s always done?… [And] how in hell can you make a lily droop on cue? You can’t. Go tell him you can’t do it.”

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I thought for a moment and then said, “You tell him. I like it here.” He gave me a wave of dismissal. “All right. Do what you can. Only don’t say I never warned you. There’s just no way to make a lily droop and die, not unless you can get Sarah Bernhardt or, better yet, Anna Pavlova to play the lily. Better try Pavlova. She made it with a swan. Maybe she can do it with a lily.” Karl Brown, Adventures With D.W. Griffith (1973), pp. 44, 35, 39–40

The Avenging Conscience endures as an insider’s film, not widely known enough to be considered famous, but not exactly obscure. Within a year of its release, it became the centerpiece of Vachel Lindsay’s The Art of the Moving Picture and the target of a notorious polemic by Ezra Pound. It may be considered, in fact, the first feature film subjected to sustained critical analysis. Reviewers as diverse as Gilbert Seldes, Louis Delluc, Lewis Jacobs, Georges Sadoul, Béla Belázs, and Jean Mitry (Anthologie du cinéma, 1965) have taken note of it. But not until Vlada Petri? published his extended close reading of the film in 1982 (“The Avenging Conscience: An Early Dream Film”) did a modern writer address its cinematic structure in detail. Since then, it continues to fly under the radar. Among the last of the Griffith features released on 16mm, it remains the only first-rank Griffith feature available neither on videotape, laserdisc, nor DVD. Customarily, Griffith’s chroniclers treat The Avenging Conscience as a transitional work, the hurried contract picture finished in June 1914, just before The Birth of a Nation was put into production. Or it becomes yet another example of Griffith the forerunner, in this case with a film that anticipates the mise-en-scène and montage of French Impressionist cinema, the irrational psychology of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1919), or the more elaborate subjective and allegorical sequences in Griffith’s own later work. Yet The Avenging Conscience can also be seen as an anomalous Griffith film, a rich one-of-a-kind, long overdue for serious critical study in its own right. Those who write about the film have, for good reason, invariably singled out the sequences dramatizing the Nephew’s mental breakdown. Those scenes represent a new direction for Griffith who, for all his interest in dramatizing mental crises and subjective states at Biograph, had never before depicted a dream or vision; nor, for that matter, had worked much with flashbacks. Access to the inner life of Biograph characters came from different sources as we’ve seen in one-reelers as diverse as Sweet Revenge (1909), The Summer Idyl (1910), and What Shall We Do With Our Old (1911). True, portraying characters in the midst of bad dreams, hurtful memories, and ecstatic visions were staples for Biograph leading players, but Griffith never before showed what the dream or memory-images themselves looked like. Even flashbacks, when they started appearing in his last year at Biograph, are unattached to a character’s mental projection. Judith of Bethulia (1914) marks the first and last Griffith Biograph to deploy a flashback that is unambiguously derived from a character’s thought process. And even that is a brief, conventional precursor to the flamboyant, diverse renderings of character psychology that erupt in The Avenging Conscience. What we see in The Avenging Conscience is Griffith drawing upon tactics he had deliberately avoided in his short films, devices that had become associated with the increasingly archaic practices of the non-continuous cinema – the tableau, allegorical characters, apparitions, and Biblical figures often rendered in multiple exposure, slow motion, or with matte special effects. These were tools recently given new life by the spectacular success of the Italian imports, particularly Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo Vadis? and Mario Caserini’s The Last Days of Pompeii (both 1913; Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria would follow shortly). But, as if to accentuate the melodramatic excess of these older protocols, Griffith also creates psychological sequences driven by montage where the mise-en-scène is unmarked by any obvious form of 42

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graphic or optical distortion. Scenes of fire and brimstone co-exist with startling montage sequences where the mind responds to external stimuli. These latter are the sequences that, unsurprisingly, critics have found progressive and “cinematic”. When Mitry refers to the sophisticated psychological tension in the film, he has in mind Walthall responding to the micro close-ups of murderous ants or reacting nervously to close-ups of piercing eyes and pulsating objects (a swinging pendulum, a thumping foot, and a tapping pencil) during his interrogation. But highlighting the inner visions and dream symbolizations works a subtle distortion on the film, oversimplifying Griffith’s distinctions between fantasy and reality. The closer we get, the less stable and determinate the narrative in this strange film appears. The waking, socalled real world in the film is itself forever fragmenting, occupied by characters with unfixed identities who wander through ambiguous time zones. Even when taken as a film structured around the associative consciousness of a single character – Henry Walthall’s Nephew – The Avenging Conscience falls into a kind of epistemological vortex. We can start with the relationship between the Nephew and Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is introduced as the historic source for the story, the author of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Annabel Lee”. The Nephew is initially represented as a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, but as the story unfolds, he becomes a character within a Poe story, and at times a surrogate for Poe, the sensitive neurotic artist par excellence who creates poetry out of his nightmares. The outside world works in similar flux. When we first meet the Nephew as an adult, the historical beaver hats and morning coats indicate an 1830s setting contemporaneous with Poe; but we move to an up-to-date village with a restaurant advertising for “Automobile Parties” and a garden party that combines allegorical dancing and a slang-talking American waitress with guests arriving in Victorian formal wear. And when we meet Annabel, the woman the Nephew loves, objective reality altogether blurs with assorted stages of projection. She is a woman with no name other than the one the Nephew has given her, taken from Poe’s famous poem. We are introduced to her as a mental projection, as complex as Griffith ever designed. The Nephew, in the midst of reading “The Tell-Tale Heart”, stares hard at the frontispiece picture of Poe and pauses to think. We cut to Annabel in her room, where she sits at a table to fondle and kiss a framed portrait of the Nephew. Back and forth between Nephew and Annabel until the Nephew puts down Poe’s picture and now starts to write his sweetheart a letter. By 1914, Griffith had long made a specialty of ambiguous cutaways that blended subjective with objective action, images that signaled mental projections as well as events that were actually taking place. But here Griffith ups the ante: Annabel, seen in the cutaway as a possible thought projection, reciprocates by projecting back to the Nephew, staring at his picture. The mental projection is caught in the act of having a mental projection of her own. But both characters operate inside a bell jar, seen as extrapolations from Poe’s pre-existing texts. What is the Nephew’s Annabel caught doing when he conjures her up? Re-enacting thoughts that Poe’s poet claimed his Annabel had for him: “And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me.” The Nephew’s Annabel will continue to follow the formula Poe has devised for her literary prototype: live in a kingdom by the sea and separate from her love when the Nephew’s highborn kinsman comes, and eventually jump to “her tomb by the sounding sea”. Likewise, the Nephew is not merely inspired by Poe’s stories to murder his Uncle and brick him up in a wall. He has channeled the events invented in his literary idol’s imagination. He sits in his study reading the first paragraph of “The Tell-Tale Heart” (“I think it was his eye!”) while his one-eyed Uncle sits glaring at him after scrutinizing his account books. In fact, it is not the Uncle’s eye that does him in. But by surrounding the Nephew with born43

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again Poe characters and actions, Griffith has given the Nephew’s sensitivities, actions, thoughts, and dreams a derivative, pre-patterned caste. What are the lines he reads? “The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.” Sharpened hearing, we soon learn, defines the Nephew, first italicized when Annabel stands outside and he responds to a close-up of her foot tap tapping at his chamber door. The murder – an act that is portrayed as both premeditated and spontaneous – gives way to fantasies that are themselves all secondhand visions based on Poe writings and Victorian Bible illustrations. But more to the point, the representational blur between Poe and the Nephew gives The Avenging Conscience an uncanny aspect long before the Nephew starts hallucinating. The film is permeated by a crisis of perception that may bring it into the orbit of Caligari and German unheimlich after all, or at least make comparisons between the two films useful. Like Caligari and its models, The Avenging Conscience is saturated with doubles and mirrors, characters existing as variations, their identities subject to a constant slippage. But in Caligari, the narrative instability is triggered by the characters doubling each other and events being set up as reflections and variations of prior events. Our inability to distinguish clear and fixed identities comes from the seemingly infinite variability and displacement of Caligari, Cesare, Jane, and Francis. In The Avenging Conscience, on the other hand, the confusing psychological constellations derive from the shifting relationships fictional characters have with their Author and his Word, and between shifting relationship between the Author and the unfolding story. Poe’s words, as we might expect from the Biograph director who sometimes constructed entire films around famous poems and song lyrics, are given a quasi-religious hagiographic status. The first quotation is photographed from an actual page of Poe’s work, followed by an engraving of the author himself. From then on, the intertitles that quote Poe are set off from all other intertitles by a special typeface and unique border design. Further, the images that follow the Poe titles are almost invariably hyper-images: elaborate double exposures or mattes that not only highlight the fantastical in Poe’s writings, but also underscore their cultural importance. A quotation from “Annabel Lee” precedes the shot of Annabel posed besides a matted image of a moonlit sky seen through a window frame; the ghouls are models caught behind smoke effects – visualizations of a quotation from “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The hallucinations themselves with their heavily moralistic tone and fiend imagery (Dante’s seventh circle as seen by the Iowa-stubborn residents of River City) actually have little to do with Poe. But Griffith co-opts and absorbs them into Poe’s phantasmagoria, as though Poe’s nightmare visions now had scriptural force. One of the ways that Griffith doubles Poe and the Nephew is by ending the film with the Nephew reading from his own newly published text. Now it is the Nephew’s Word that triggers the fantastical images. Inspired by his Poe-driven nightmare, the Nephew has finally attained Poe’s ability to conjure images with words of his own, images that counter the Biblical terrors of Golgotha and Hell with mythological images of pastoral rejoicing. It is not that Griffith has simply cobbled together a narrative from episodes in Poe’s stories. Poe’s authority is more elusive than that. Important plotlines and characters, ranging from the grocer and the maid to the blackmailing Italian, have nothing to do with Poe, any more than do the Uncle’s conversion scene with a baby or the shootout with the sheriff’s posse. It is more accurate to see Poe’s writings as pentimento traces that invade and control the film, then retreat and grow invisible, lurk and hide, or mutate and combine with other sources to create a protean vision of a hallucinatory world. As Claire Dupré la Tour (1996) and Miriam Hansen (1991) have shown, Intolerance, a film that begins with a hand opening a book, is the 44

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classic Griffith text governed by notions of deciphering and reading, where one text is superimposed over another to create resonating historical memory patterns. The Avenging Conscience provides a curious and oddly unexplored precedent. The Avenging Conscience is no longer very scary. But the way Mutual treated its negative once the film was released can still give shudders. By all rights, The Avenging Conscience should be a lost film. Unlike the Biograph Company, which had grown so powerful during the Griffith years that it could ignore Europe, treating it as a dumping ground for its unusable twoand three-reelers, the Mutual Corporation considered the international market critical to its survival. Within three months of The Avenging Conscience’s debut, the company risked UBoats and the German blockade to ship the camera negative to its London office where it was used to strike off foreign-language road show prints. Throughout the war, Mutual was obliged to order fresh prints from Europe, and not until United Artists bought film rights to The Avenging Conscience in the early 1920s was a battered negative returned to the United States. Then, in early 1923, UA shipped the negative out to the Geyer Lab in Berlin to accommodate the post-war markets in Germany and central Europe, and by the time the company asked for its return three years later, the footage had become severely damaged. Geyer reported, “About 1,000 meters … is absolutely worthless” (Geyer to UA, October 28, 1926) and UA’s own Consolidated Film Lab in New York found the balance “very poor as it contains water marks, stains, cement marks, fog, and blank film throughout the various rolls. It appears as though the negative might have gotten wet, as the emulsion in a good many places is completely peeled off” (January 10, 1927 lab report). Unsurprisingly, the negative was junked by the time Griffith donated his collection to the Museum of Modern Art eleven years later. Instead, Griffith gave the Museum a worn nitrate print (as best I can determine, the sole surviving print of the film [Editors’ Note: the nitrate is no longer extant]), and from that the Museum created a dupe negative that remains the source for all current prints. Judging from the graphic designs of the head title and intertitles, this is an early version of the film. The print viewed, in fact, despite a series of jump cuts in the final reel, lasts twenty-seven seconds longer than the original (5,750 feet vs. the 5,723 feet announced by The Moving Picture World, August 22, 1914, p. 1150). The detailed plot summaries in Lindsay’s Art of the Moving Picture and in the trades confirm that nothing more substantial than pieces of individual shots is missing. Only Pound’s dyspeptic summary raises a question, indicating that the opening titles, at least in England, may have been different from those that we see now: [The film] began with a printed notice pleading for the freedom of the film; then there was flashed on the screen a testimonial from a weeping Christian, a ‘minister of a gospel,’ who declared that having had his emotions, his pity, stirred by a novel of Dickens in his early youth, had done more to ennoble his life, to make him what he was than any sermons he had ever heard. Then we had some stanzas from a poem by Poe…. (Ezra Pound, “Mr. Joyce and the Modern Stage”, pp. 131)

If Pound is remembering accurately, it means that Griffith’s onscreen appeal against censorship, fortified by printed testimonials, did not start with The Birth of a Nation. Nor did those wars end in the United States. Griffith’s final list against the censors came ten years later when he returned to England to fight for America (1924), which the British had banned. The Avenging Conscience, by all evidence, survived the British censor. America did not. Russell Merritt

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511 MAJESTIC MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE PAINTED LADY Filming date: June 1914 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; twelve days of shooting) Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp. Release date: 19 July 1914 Release length: two reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Donald Crisp (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers); Frederick Sullivan (according to Lauritzen & Lundquist, American Film Index 1908–1915, p. 461) Author: Anthony P. Kelly Source: “The Painted Lady”, a short story by Charles S. Thompson in The Cavalier Cast: Dorothy Gish (Jess); Blanche Sweet (Sister); W.E. Lawrence (Jake); Josephine Crowell (The mother) NOTE: Majestic cat. no. 191 Archival sources: George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive, incomplete

Jess, a country girl, leaves home when her sister tries to boss her. Later she secures employment in a department store in the city. There she meets Jake, a good-for-nothing, who promises to marry her. Jane, Jess’s elder sister, follows her to the city and secures employment in the same store. Jane soon learns that Jake does not intend to marry her sister, and, pretending to be infatuated with him herself, decides to giver her sister proof of her supposed sweetheart’s true character. Jess hides in Jake’s rooms and Jane enters with the ne’er-do-well. Jake attempts to force Jane to his will with a revolver. Jane promises to be his sweetheart, provided he signs a note, presumably to Jess, saying: “I am tired of this life,” etc. Jake signs the note, and when Jane fails to keep her promise there is a struggle for possession of the weapon. In the confusion the revolver is accidentally discharged and Jake is killed. The girls pin the note to his chest, and the police, believing it to be a case of suicide, make no investigation. The Moving Picture World, August 1, 1914, p. 748

When a restless country girl leaves home to find work in the city, her older sister trails her to keep her out of trouble – only to find she is nearly too late. A local Lothario has plied the naïve youngster with liquor and has set her up as his mistress. In order to expose his faithlessness, the older sister vamps the fellow in a restaurant and has him write a note breaking off his affair with her sister (“LET THIS END IT – AM TIRED OF IT ALL”). She then allows herself to be lured to his apartment, where the younger sister has been ordered to hide. When the man demands sex at gunpoint, the older sister shoots him and places his note by his body. The police interpret this as a suicide note and the sisters are permitted to leave the city for home and mother.

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Only a one-reel fragment of Mutual’s The Painted Lady survives, but it’s enough to confirm that despite Blanche Sweet’s appearance, this painted lady has only the vaguest similarity to its famous 1912 Biograph namesake. It might be considered a variation on the original theme, or more precisely, a riff on its prototypal plot. What would have happened had the original painted lady never met her false lover, had stayed sane, and had lived to bury her father and look after her feather-brained younger sister? According to our Reliance-Majestic version, she would have saved her sister from her false lover by pretending to be a painted lady, disguising herself to expose the fickleness of the cheat, and in so doing, shoot him in order to fend off sexual assault. Hence, no insanity, no reliving the past, in fact, no consequences whatever for either sister. According to the plot summary, the police rule the false lover’s death a suicide and both Dorothy and Blanche are off the hook. But to look for comparisons between the two Painted Ladys is a stretch and an unkindness to Majestic’s two-reeler. As a varation of the Griffith Biograph, the film has been drained of everything that gave original interest, recycling the far more conventional theme of one sister saving another from a romantic folly by seducing the would-be lover, thereby demonstrating his unworthiness. As we’ve seen, the wise sister who rescues the foolish sister has been a Biograph staple formula, and would also be recycled in the Reliance and Triangle programmers. Donald Crisp had been directing bread-and-butter two- and three-reel Majestic programmers while acting in Griffith features ever since his arrival in Los Angeles in February 1914. There is no direct evidence that Griffith’s involvement in the production was anything more than cursory, though as I argued in my study of Griffith at Triangle (“The Griffith Third”, 1988), Griffith made a particular point of looking in on productions featuring his inner circle of protégés, even in the midst of shooting The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. The surviving reel of The Painted Lady has all the earmarks of a routine programmer, although the extant print is no more than two-thirds of the film in somewhat mutilated form. So, we see the original encounter between the naïve Dorothy and city slicker W.E. Lawrence in her hometown, but we miss their assignation in the city where he plies her with liquor and she becomes his well-kept mistress. Except for a closing shot showing Dorothy and Blanche leaving for the country, our fragment ends with Blanche getting Lawrence to write his fateful “Dear Jane” note in the restaurant. But this scene too exists only in skeleton form. In its original release, the film’s opening sequences were apparently longer too, judging from the Moving Picture World reviewer: The first reel lingers a little and the picture’s whole meaning and object is accomplished in the second which shows how the other sister accomplishes her purpose…. In the first reel there are several places where one notices Griffith mannerisms (whether he made it or not) and these, seen so often, weaken it; but at the climax, Blanche Sweet’s acting is mighty fine. (August 1, 1914, p. 706)

What these overly familiar Griffith mannerisms were is unclear because the current version moves so quickly. The expository scenes, featuring Blanche dumping Dorothy out of the hammock, are anything but mannered. But we have no way of knowing what has been cut out. Regardless, the reviewer goes on to praise the scenes missing from the surviving print: “In [the second reel], there is much of the unexpected (it is bold and convincing) and

much that is powerfully dramatic and the close gets hold of real life in a strong-souled way that is commendable.” It is tempting to wonder whether the finale, marked by Sweet’s “bold and convincing” performance and a dramatic turn that “gets hold of real life”, doesn’t include her reaction 47

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to the murder of the false lover, building on Sweet’s astonishing turn in the original Painted Lady. At all events, the performances are what captured the trade critics’ attention. The New York Dramatic Mirror concurred with the Moving Picture World reviewer’s assessment of the actresses: “It is principally in the artistic work of the two actresses, Dorothy Gish and Blanche Sweet that the play holds the absorbing interest that it does – not to detract from the value of an exceedingly good plot. It is not an exaggeration to pronounce this one of the best, and surely the strongest of recent two-reel features.” (July 22, 1914, p. 28) Russell Merritt

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512 —

[PRODUCTION FOOTAGE OF THE BIRTH OF A NATION] Alternate archival title: [The Birth of a Nation – Trims] Filming date: Summer–Fall 1914 Length: two reels Director: D.W. Griffith Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Lillian Gish; Miriam Cooper; Mae Marsh; Elmer Clifton; Robert Harron; Ralph Lewis Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm acetate fine grain master, AFI/AMPAS Collection

Among the more peculiar discoveries in the wealth of The Birth of a Nation materials at the Library of Congress are two rolls of outtakes, trims, and duplicate footage. While there are no revelations in the footage – and certainly nothing that could prompt a critical re-evaluation of the film – it is nonetheless an interesting historical curiosity. A significant portion of the reels is devoted to extended establishing shots of the Petersburg battlefield, both before the battle scenes and during the action, plus a fair amount of coverage from the South Carolina legislature sequence. The reels also include two costume tests with Lillian Gish, as well as a scene in which she appears to blow a take, smiling during an otherwise tearful moment. Ralph Lewis is featured in another series of trims that appear to be lighting tests. Of particular interest are the few scenes that appear to be alternate takes. One is where Flora Cameron is comforted by her sister Margaret after the Cameron home is attacked; in these reels, the shot extends for almost a minute, whereas in the release print it is significantly shorter and is not quite as emotionally overwrought. Several scenes from Phil and Tod Stoneman’s visit to the Camerons are also different in terms of action and the number of extras seen on camera. Other shots are clearly trims, while the bulk of the reels duplicate footage found in the release print. Mike Mashon

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513 DAVID W. GRIFFITH CORP.; MAJESTIC MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION Alternate titles: The Clansman; The Birth of the Nation; or, The Clansman Working title: The Clansman Filming date: Summer–Fall 1914 [4 July to 30 October 1914, according to Seymour Stern, “Griffith I – The Birth of a Nation”, pp. 52–57]. (The payroll records in the RelianceMajestic production ledgers begin on 16 May, ending on 27 June 1914.) Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 4500 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles; exteriors, California locations: San Fernando Valley; Forest Lawn Cemetery, Hollywood Hills [site of battle scenes, according to Stern, pp. 53–54]; Imperial Valley; Big Bear Lake; Idyllwild; Calabasas; Orange; Cahuenga Peak Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Epoch Producing Corp.; Triangle Film Corp. (1930 sound reissue) Riverside, California preview: 1 January 1915, Loring Opera House (as The Clansman) Los Angeles roadshow premiere: 8 February 1915, Clune’s Auditorium (as The Clansman) San Francisco roadshow premiere: 1 March 1915 New York roadshow premiere: 3 March 1915, Liberty Theatre Release length: twelve reels Copyright date: 8 February 1915, as The Birth of a Nation (LP6677); 13 February 1915, as The Birth of the Nation; or, The Clansman (LU4453) Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods Source: The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the novel and stageplay by Thomas Dixon (1905); The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865–1900, his novel (1902) Camera: G.W. Bitzer Assistant camera: Karl Brown, F.B. Good Chief assistant director: George Siegmann Assistant directors: Thomas E. O’Brien, George (André) Beranger, Monte Blue, William Christy Cabanne, Elmer Clifton, Donald Crisp, Howard Gaye, Fred Hamer, Herbert Sutch, Tom Wilson, Baron von Winther?; Erich von Stroheim?; Raoul Walsh? Executive and production assistant: J.A. Barry Construction: Frank “Huck” Wortman Property master: Herbert Sutch Costumes: Robert Goldstein Film editors: James Smith, Rose Smith; James E. Woods? (according to a news item) Musical accompaniment composed and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil; Carli Elinor (at Clune’s Auditorium premiere, Los Angeles) Miniatures: (according to Classic Film Collector, no. 36, Fall 1972, p. 53) Art Smith Color: Handschiegl process (for some prints released after 1916) Special effects: Walter Hoffman, “Fireworks” Wilson Technical director: Samuel De Vall Historical consultant: T.K. Peters (according to American Cinematographer, February 1974, p. 223) 50

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Technical advisor (cavalry movements): Col. Rhys Price Press representative: Henry I. McMahon Cast: [as printed in the premiere program:] Henry Walthall (Colonel Ben Cameron [The Little Colonel]); Miriam Cooper (Margaret Cameron, the elder sister); Mae Marsh (Flora Cameron, the pet sister [Little Sister]); Josephine Crowell (Mrs. Cameron); Spottiswoode Aitken (Dr. Cameron); J.A. Beringer [George André Beranger] (Wade Cameron, the second son); Maxfield Stanley [John French, according to programs and reviews] (Duke Cameron, the youngest son); Jennie Lee (Mammy/Cyndy, their faithful old servant); Ralph Lewis (Hon. Austin Stoneman, Leader of the House); Lillian Gish (Elsie Stoneman, his daughter); Elmer Clifton (Phil Stoneman, his elder son); Robert Harron (Tod Stoneman, the younger son); Wallace Reed [Reid] (Jeff, the blacksmith); Mary Alden (Lydia Brown, Stoneman’s mulatto housekeeper); George Siegmann (Silas Lynch, mulatto Lieutenant-Governor); Walter Long (Gus, a renegade negro); Joseph Henabery (Abraham Lincoln and several other parts); Raoul Walsh (John Wilkes Booth); Donald Crisp (General U.S. Grant); Howard Gaye (General Robert E. Lee); William DeVaull (Nelse, an old-fashioned negro); William Freeman (Jake, a black man faithful unto death); Thomas Wilson (Stoneman’s servant); [from other sources:] Sam de Grasse (Charles Summer); Fred Burns; Allan Sears; Violet Wilkey (Flora Cameron as a child); Elmo Lincoln (White-arm Joe and other roles); Alberta Lee (Mrs. Lincoln); Olga Grey (Laura Keene); Eugene Pallette (Union soldier); Chief Dark Cloud (General in the Appomatox surrender); John Ford? (Klansman); Mme. Sul-te-Wan (A black woman, Dr. Cameron’s taunter); Gibson Gowland (Extra); Jack Pickford? (In blackface [according to Louise Brooks, probably reported by Jack Pickford]); Erich von Stroheim?, Jules White?, Ben White?, Ted Mulford? (Men falling from roof); Charles Eagle Eye (Extra); [according to modern sources:] Lenore Cooper (Elsie’s maid); Alma Rubens, Donna Montran (Belles of 1861); ? (Piedmont girl); Charles Stevens (Man who reports the Piedmont raid to the Confederates); William Freeman (Sentry at the hospital) NOTE: Erich von Stroheim’s role in the production is disputed by Joseph Henabery (Before, In and After Hollywood, pp. 87–94) and by Arthur Lennig (Stroheim, pp. 25–28); see also Richard Koszarski, “‘So Long, Master…’: Stroheim, Griffith, and the Griffith Studio”, Griffithiana, 2001, pp. 45–81). “Fireworks” Wilson’s credit for special effects is questioned by Kevin Brownlow (letter to the Editor, October 24, 2002): “I’m beginning to wonder whether Karl Brown didn’t invent the name Fireworks Wilson because he couldn’t recall [Walter] Hoffman’s name”. Kevin Brownlow (October 26, 2002): “Biograph actors Charles Hill Mailes and Claire McDowell were in the cast of the stage version of ‘The Clansman’. The film was banned in Kansas until December 1923. Ted Mulford claimed to be the man who fell from a roof. But then I think he claimed to be Lincoln, too (Des Moines Register [Iowa], April 16, 1917); Ben White [is allegedly another] fellow who fell from [the] roof [Jack White et al., White Brothers, p. 172]. All cavalry companies of the California National Guard took part in the KKK ride (The Motion Picture News, January 2, 1915, p. 33)”. Kevin Brownlow to Editor, 6 November 2003: “Bessie Love was definitely not in The Birth of a Nation. Yes, there is a girl who looks like her. But she said her very first role was in Intolerance. She would certainly have remembered being in The Birth of a Nation. ‘Don’t forget when you talk to me’, she used to say, ‘you’re talking to the horse!’” According to Wagenknecht and Slide, The Films of D.W. Griffith, p. 46, “an unauthorized three-reel condensation, titled In the Clutches of the Ku Klux Klan, was released early in 1916, and a lawsuit followed”. Russell Merritt pointed out that Seymour Stern, in his 1965 essay for Film Culture (p. 53), writes in : “… finally for the Ride of the Klansmen – the hills of Calabasas and the Agoura Trading Post to the 51

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north (for group shots and shots from hilltops against the sky) and (for the main Ride) the back roads and farm country between Whittier, on the Los Angeles county-line, the town of Fullerton, and the site of the new born town of Orange, in Orange County.” In Eileen Bowser’s opinion, the the most detailed account of locations for The Birth of a Nation can be found in Karl Brown’s Adventures with D.W. Griffith (pp. 55–56). Archival sources: FILM – George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive (one reel); Gosfilmofond of Russia, 35mm acetate negative; Library of Congress, a) 35mm nitrate camera negative (8,437 ft., no intertitles), AFI/Killiam Collection; b) 35mm nitrate negative (incomplete, 5,950 ft.), AFI/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection; c) 35mm acetate negative (10,605 ft.), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; d) 35mm acetate negative (13,089 ft.; reissue sound version, picture only), AFI/Lawrence R. Landry and Family; e) 35mm acetate negative (10,764 ft.; reissue sound version, picture only), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; f) 35mm nitrate positive (10,200 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Raymond Rohauer Collection; g) 35mm nitrate positive (7,650 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection; h) 35mm acetate positive (11,000 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), Library of Congress Collection; i) 35mm acetate positive (9,561 ft.; reissue sound version, picture only), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; j) 35mm nitrate positive (10,200 ft; reissue sound version, soundtrack only), AFI/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection; k) 35mm nitrate positive (19,556 ft.; reissue with soundtrack, tinted), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; l) 35mm nitrate positive (10,200 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Lawrence R. Landry and Family; m) 16mm acetate positive (5,700 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), Copyright Collection; n) 16mm acetate positive (4,200 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Jonathan Sonneborn Collection; o) 16mm acetate positive (3,800 ft.; with soundtrack), AFI/Richard Mertz Collection; p) 50 individual rolls of varying footage from miscellaneous sources (Library of Congress print inventory compiled by Linda Shah, under the supervision of Pat Loughney and Mike Mashon. NOTE: some footage measurements of archival elements are approximate); The Museum of Modern Art, a) 35mm nitrate positive (11,238 ft., received 1977 from the American Film Institute; printed on 1921–23 on Agfa stock; b) 35mm nitrate fine grain master (11,375 ft., printed in the 1940s from a nitrate [ca. 1925] intermediate negative. The intermediate negative was obtained from a 1924 nitrate positive, struck from the original negative); c) 35mm nitrate negative (fragment). MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), original score (unspecified parts); Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), Brussels, original score (unspecified parts), 151 pages; George Eastman House, conductor’s (piano) score, two copies with different layouts; 1st violin, three copies (with two different layouts); flute; clarinet; cornets; trombone; drums; cello; bass; Themes from the Incidential Music to The Birth of a Nation (Chappell Edition 1916), piano score; Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), a) parts (0,1,2,1; 2,2,2, tuba; drums; harp; 1st violin, 1st violin-second desk, 2nd violin, viola). NOTE: cover of oboe part is stamped “LARGE ORCHESTRA: SET F”; clarinet “LARGE ORCHESTRA: SET A”; and viola “MEDIUM ORCHESTRA: SET NO. 1”; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 5; b) parts (1,0,1,0; 0,1,1; drums; strings). NOTE: all parts headed on first page “Music score of The Birth of a Nation”; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 6; c) small orchestra: parts (1,0,1,0; 0,1,1; drums and tympani; 1st violin, cello, bass); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 7; d) piano conductor, 151 pages. NOTE: carbon typescript with contents attached (3 pages); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 52

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3236, Item 8. NOTE: A recording of the original music was performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; Clyde Allen, conductor (Label “X” / Fifth Continent Music Corp., 1985, vinyl LP LXLP 701; compact disc LXCD 701)

The first seed of disunion is planted by the African being brought to America in New England ships and sold by the traders to the South, pious Puritans blessing the traffic. Having profited by the trade and having no use for slaves themselves, the traders of the seventeenth century became the abolitionists of the nineteenth. In 1860 a great parliamentary leader, whom we call Austin [S]toneman, is rising to p[o]wer in the House of Representatives. We find him with his young daughter, Elsie, in her apartments in Washington. Her brothers are planning a visit to Piedmont, S.C., where [l]ive the Camerons, old friends – the family consisting of Bennie, his two sisters, mother, father and two brothers. True to their [p]romise the Stoneman boys visit Piedmont, where the elder brother [f]alls in love with the elder Cameron girl, while Bennie Cameron falls [i]n love with a picture of Elsie Stoneman, whom he has never met. They are all interested in the possibility of [s]ecession [i]n case the North carries the election. Soon the Stoneman boys [ret]urn North. The President signs the proclamation and his first call [f]or volunteers comes. In Stoneman’s home his mulatto housekeeper [d]reams ambitiously of her future and the future power of her master – [S]toneman, over whom she is gaining ascendancy. The Stoneman boys leave for the front, as do the Cameron [b]oys. On the battlefield, the chums – the younger Cameron and [S]toneman sons – meet once again and die in each other’s arms. In [P]iedmont, war has scarred the village. The Camerons [s]ell their last and dearest possessions to aid the failing cause of the South. In the North, Elsie Stoneman goes as a nurse to the military hospital at Washington. Later, Atlanta is bombarded and the last days before Petersburg are come. The North is finally victorious and Bennie Cameron lies near death in the military hospital at Washington, and is nursed by Elsie.Cameron is to be hanged upon his recovery, as a guerilla, but Elsie and his mother secure his pardon by Lincoln. Cameron returns home and the South goes to work to rebuild its failed fortunes, under Lincoln’s fostering hand. Then comes Lincoln’s assassination and Stoneman finds himself in supreme power and starts to make his dreams of negro equality come true. His protege, Silas Lynch, a mulatto, he chooses as the leader of the blacks, and sends him South to organize and wield the power of the black vote. Lynch makes Piedmont his headquarters, where [he in]duces the negro[es] to quit work and where he soon clashes with the Aryan race, represented by Bennie Cameron and his friends. Stoneman, ill, comes to Piedmont with E[l]sie. Her brother seeks reunion with the Cameron girl, but the poor bruised heart of the South cannot forget war’s trials, and he is dismissed. Elsie’s love battles with her pride for Bennie Cameron, but she will not answer him definitely. The whites are disfranchised and the Camerons confer with their fe[l]low victims as to what shall be done. Lynch is elected Lieut. Governor and now his love looks high and he aspires to the hand of Elsie Stoneman in marriage. In agony of soul over the degradation of his people by the blacks, now supreme in power, Ben Cameron goes to the mountain top to be alone and there sees a couple of white children scare some pickaninnies [sic] by hiding beneath a white sheet. Cameron thus gets and inspiration for a plan whereby he can use the negro superstitions as a club to defeat their insolent power. The result is the forming of the Ku Klux Klan. When Elsie Stoneman learns of Cameron’s connection with the Ku Klux Klan, in loyalty to her father she breaks off her engagement with Bennie.

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Bennie’s little sister, against her brother’s warning against venturing out alone on account of the negro lawlessness, ventures out alone to the spring and is pursued by Gus, a renegade negro soldier. To escape with honor intact, she leaps to her death from a high cliff. The townsmen, led by Ben Cameron, capture Gus, kill him after a trial by the Klan, and throw his body on the steps of the Lieut. Governor’s. Lynch fills the streets with negro militia during Stoneman’s temporary departure from Piedmont. The Klan meets to disarm the negroes, while Lynch arrests the elder Cameron for harboring the Klansman. Elsie goes to Lynch, in the absence of her father, to seek Cameron’s release. In the mean[wh]ile Cameron and Elsie’s brother, who has aided the Camerons, have escaped to seek refuge in a hut near the woods outside of town. Lynch proposes marriage to Elsie and proposes that she shall be his queen of the black empire he is to found in the South. Upon her refusal, he plans arrangements for a forced marriage, and in the meanwhile the Klan, being assembled in full strength, ride off on their missions. They rescue the Cameron party and are told of Elsie’s danger. In the meantime, Stoneman returns and Lynch tells him he is to marry Elsie. Stoneman now realizes the Frankenstein he has himself created, but is helpless until the Klan arrives, disarms all the negroes and rescues Elsie. At the next election, the negroes dare not vote and the threat of a black empire is dissoluted [sic]. Bennie Cameron and Elsie and [sic] married, and the Stoneman boy marries Bennie’s sister. In the end is seen the Prince of Peace in struggle with bestial war, represented by a nude man beast astride a horse, trampling across a sea of dead bodies, while on either side are those bereft by cruel war. The Prince of Peace causes the banishment of the war figu[re] from each […] all is brotherly love in the City of Peace. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 13, 1915 (as The Birth of the Nation; or, The Clansman), LU4453

Though they live in different regions of the United States, sons of the Cameron and Stoneman families have established a friendship while attending boarding school together. During a visit to the Cameron household in the South, Phil Stoneman, the elder of the Stoneman sons, falls in love with the elder Cameron daughter, Margaret, while Ben, the oldest of the Cameron boys, becomes enamoured of a photograph of Phil’s sister Elsie. Soon after the visit, war breaks out between the North and South, and the sons enlist. The younger boys of both households die in battle, while Ben is injured and captured by Union troops during the Battle of Petersburg. While convalescing in a Northern hospital, Ben is attended to by Elsie Stoneman, who helps his mother to plea for his life when he is condemned to death for alleged guerilla activities. Pardoned by Lincoln, Ben returns home to a war-scarred South. Back in Washington, Phil and Elsie view a theatrical performance also attended by Lincoln. During the play, Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Following the assassination, the Stoneman patriarch, the leader of the House of Representatives, assumes an especially powerful position within the government. He appoints a mulatto, Silas Lynch, to oversee the extension of voting rights to black men in the South. Both he and Lynch travel to Piedmont, where the Camerons live, accompanied by Elsie and Phil. Reunited, Elsie and Ben become romantically involved, but memories of the war prevent Margaret from responding to Phil’s entreaties. Lynch is elected Lieutenant Governor and blacks take control of the legislature. Ben begins to note increased affronts to whites by blacks, and closer to home, Gus, a black officer, takes an interest in Ben’s younger sister, Flora. Determined to take control, Ben and others form the Ku Klux Klan, which aims to redress the imbalance borne out of the legislative changes ushered in by Stoneman and Lynch. Though warned by Ben to stay away from the Cameron household, Gus pursues Flora into the forest one day as she goes off for water. Gus proposes marriage, and in desperation, 54

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Flora throws herself off a ledge, dying in Ben’s arms as he rushes in too late to save her. Gus kills a man while trying to resist apprehension and is finally captured and executed at a KKKorchestrated mock trial. His body is dumped on Lynch’s porch. Soon thereafter, Lynch orders the black militia to overtake the streets of Piedmont, while Stoneman quietly leaves town. Spies are dispatched to ferret out those aiding the KKK, and the Cameron patriarch is arrested. Servants of the Camerons effect the father’s rescue, aided by Phil Stoneman, who shoots a black soldier in the process. Phil and the Cameron family are forced to seek refuge in an isolated cabin inhabited by two ex-Union soldiers. Members of the black militia, in close pursuit, lay siege to the cabin. Back in Piedmont, Lynch, who has always been romantically interested in Elsie, proposes marriage, and keeps her captive in his quarters once she resists. Stoneman, who has now returned, is aghast at hearing of Lynch’s plans. At the same time, townspeople are assaulted by the marauding black militia. The KKK, led by Ben Cameron, stages a three-way rescue, saving both Elsie and the Cameron family, while also disarming the black militia within the town. With order restored, and the prospect of future voting by blacks stopped, life resumes as it was before in Piedmont, and a double wedding, of Ben and Elsie, and Phil and Margaret, takes place. [plot summary by Charlie Keil]

PRODUCTION A cyclorama was exhibited in late 1884 in Boston on Tremont Street, in a substantial circular building of brick and iron built for the purpose. The painting commemorated the battle of Gettysburg, representing the decisive action that took place on the third day of the battle, 3 July 1863, known as “Pickett’s Charge”. Viewers climbed a winding stair to stand on a viewing platform: opera glasses were available to aid in viewing the details. It was painted by the celebrated cyclorama artist, Paul Philippoteaux of France. He came to America two years previously, spent several months on sketches and research, and employed a photographer to make panoramic views of the landscape. Later, these photographs would serve as an invaluable reference for the restoration of the Gettysburg battlefields by the National Park Service. Philippoteaux’s first version was exhibited in Chicago in 1882, and he was asked to do a second one for Boston. Old soldiers who viewed the cyclorama were quoted in the Boston press as saying that it is “as accurate as if photographed in the field”. In the annex to the Boston exhibition, Philippoteaux added a new painting, a diorama called “The Uprising of the North”, recalling the events of the beginning of the rebellion. This diorama includes a symbolic scene of the freeing of slaves and equipping them with rifles. The Boston cyclorama is one of the few surviving examples of this pre-cinema form in which the eyes of the spectators provide the movement of the images. It was moved to Gettysburg itself in 1913 for the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, where veterans of the North and South met in an encampment to commemorate the healing of the nation’s wounds. We may wonder how a graphic depiction of the bloody battle would assist the healing. Commemorations were held at each significant anniversary of the war: the national trauma remained vivid fifty years later. Many of the survivors were still among the living. American literature, theater, painting and sculpture, and after the turn of the century, cinema, repeatedly struggled to gain control over the painful images. The process, as it usually does, turned history into myths. Paul Spehr’s charting of the voluminous film production of Civil War films (The Civil War in Motion Pictures, 1961) shows how the genre peaked at the various anniversaries, especially during 1911 and 1913. In the Summer of 1914, while The Birth of a Nation was in production, Civil War film releases included Lubin’s The Battle of Shiloh and Between Two Fires, Photoplay’s The Littlest Rebel, Edison’s The Southerners, Klaw & Erlanger’s A Fair Rebel, Kalem’s The Chest of Fortune, among others. The Birth of a Nation came as a culmina55

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tion of five decades of the national cult of remembrance. After it, the rush of Civil War films began to slow. Many of The Birth of a Nation’s themes were sturdy clichés: divided families, friend against friend, lovers tested by different loyalties, Lincoln’s pardon of captured spies in answer to a mother’s plea, the faithful black house slaves, heroism and sacrifice. In the earliest years of the Civil War genre, the majority portrayed the victorious north, but before long such films were more likely to be made from the point of view of the defeated southerners. However, many Civil War films were attempts at reconciliation that emphasized equally the tragedy of both sides, divided families and separated lovers. In 1908 Griffith directed the first of his several films on the subject. This was The Guerrilla, in which the Union soldier comes to the rescue of his sweetheart, attacked by drunken brigands in stolen Confederate uniforms. Resembling other thrillers he was making in his early days at Biograph, the plot contained the essential elements of a family threatened by intruders, or the home as a shelter against the terrors of the world. True to popular trends in Civil War films at the time, the setting is the Union side of the conflict, but it is worth noting that the girl is threatened by marauders only pretending to be Confederate soldiers. In Old Kentucky (1910) was set in Griffith’s home state, where sympathies were historically divided. In this film two sons join different sides. After the war the family reconciles. In The Fugitive (1910), a mother of a Confederate soldier unknowingly, and then deliberately, shields the Union soldier who killed her son. Other Civil War films made by Griffith before The Birth of a Nation include In the Border States (# 262, 1910); His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled (both 1911); Swords and Hearts (1911); The Battle (1911); and The Informer (1912). All of these are worth study in their own right as well as being predecessors of The Birth of a Nation. Some historians would include in the list of Griffith’s Civil War films The Rose of Kentucky (1911), primarily because it includes “night riders” in costumes that are just like those of the Ku Klux Klan. They terrorize a tobacco farmer and his black employees. In this film, unlike The Birth of a Nation, the night riders are the evil ones, not heroes. Tom Gunning, in his essay on The Rose of Kentucky for The Griffith Project (see DWG Project, #356), has noted the modern tobacco planter machine, which is either an anachronism or indicates a modern 1911 setting. Gunning observes that this version of the night riders might be an indication that Griffith’s political convictions did not go as deep as his passion for creating stirring melodrama, a suggestion we might keep in mind when trying to understand how to see The Birth of a Nation today. Two of Griffith’s finest Civil War films took on a grim note of horror in the literary tradition of southern Gothic, discussed by Tom Gunning in his essays on these films. In The Honor of His Family (1909, see DWG Project, #229), a proud father kills his own son and takes the body to the battlefield to preserve the family honor when the son proves a coward. In The House with Closed Shutters (1910, see DWG Project, #277), a mother locks up her cowardly son for the rest of his life to hide the fact that his sister died in his place to save the family honour. Little Sister [Flora]’s decision to choose death over dishonour in The Birth of a Nation takes on an additional tone when we consider it in the light of these earlier films. The famous scene is not only a question of racist or feminist issues, but also an example of Southern pride clinging to notions of honor in defeat. The Clansman, Thomas Dixon’s popular and notorious play, based on his 1905 novel, had been performed across the country by touring companies, particularly in the South, for some years when, in 1911, Kinemacolor attempted a film version on location with the cast of a touring company that was then playing the Southwest (Silver City Enterprise, New Mexico, December 8, 1911). The company reported shooting completed by January 1912, but it is probable that the complexities of filming in Kinemacolor technology far from the studios resulted in flawed footage, because the film was never released. In December 1912, The 56

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Clansman was listed as one of the projects of Famous Players-Lasky, another film that was never released and probably not even made. Frank Woods, briefly a director with Kinemacolor, brought the idea of filming The Clansman to his friend D.W. Griffith (Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young, p. 250). There is some debate among scholars about how much of the content and ideas of The Birth of a Nation derive from Dixon’s novels The Leopard’s Spots (1902) or The Clansman, how much from the play version, and how much from other sources. At least we know that the play scripts survive among the D.W. Griffith Papers at the Museum of Modern Art. If we consider Griffith’s predisposition to the theater and his experiences in the popular touring melodrama, we could expect the play to be the first source for him, even though it is very likely that he was familiar with the books as well. Griffith’s papers at MoMA also include selections from Walter L. Fleming’s history, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (1905). Karl Brown reported that a cheap modern reprint of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, a compilation of lavishly illustrated articles by participants of the war published in The Century Magazine in 1884–1887, was purchased in multiple copies for use around the studio. G.W. Bitzer acknowledged borrowing some of Mathew Brady’s famous Civil War photographs from the library: the similarity of his cinematography to these photographs has been remarked (Newhall, “A Note on the Photography of Griffith’s Films” in Iris Barry, D.W. Griffith, American Master, p. 37). Griffith departed from Biograph in late 1913 to work as supervising director with the entrepreneur Harry Aitken of Mutual and Majestic and his newly organized Reliance organization. Reliance took over the new studio of Carlton Motion Picture Laboratory on the Clara Morris estate in Yonkers, a loft building at 29 Union Square in Manhattan, and the studio abandoned by Kinemacolor in Los Angeles. On 27 January 1914, Griffith left New York for Los Angeles: “James Kirkwood and Edward Morrisey, directors, Frank E. Woods and Russel [sic] B. Smith of the scenario department”, and “a large company of players” went with him (The Moving Picture World, February 7, 1914, p. 689). Frank Woods, a close friend of Griffith since the days when he wrote favorably in The New York Dramatic Mirror about Griffith’s high achievements at Biograph, became unofficial publicist as well as scenario writer and acted as second in command to Griffith. The company took over the former Kinemacolor studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The first plans announced to the press included “a tremendous production of ‘The Clansman’ by Thomas Dixon” (The Moving Picture World, January 3, 1914, p. 32). Aitken insisted on the completion of several films before giving his agreement to go forward with this one, to provide a financial base: his letter to Griffith of 14 April 1914 said “I think your next feature should be an Elderbrush [sic] Gulch…. and then we will get after ‘The Clansman’” (see the D.W. Griffith Papers at the Museum of Modern Art). But I think by that time Griffith must have been already at work on The Clansman, at least making his plans, because he had scouted locations and begun rehearsals by mid-May. The actors were from the Griffith stock company, working on the same lot in other pictures, nominally supervised by Griffith, between their assignments for The Clansman. Aitken was aware that Griffith had big ambitions for this project and they did not yet have sufficient capital. As G.W. Bitzer recalled, “They had to hock The Great Leap which Christy Cabanne directed under the Mutual banner to pay the railroad fares of Mr. Griffith’s company to the coast” (Barry 1965, D.W. Griffith, p. 19). Another company, named the Epoch Producing Corporation, would be incorporated at the time of the premiere of The Birth of a Nation to take over ownership and distribution of it. The year 1914 in film production was characterized by the growing importance of the big feature: the Italian spectacles imported by George Kleine – Quo Vadis?, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, Antonio e Cleopatra, Scuola d’eroi (released in the United States as For Napoleon and France), Spartaco, and Cabiria – were playing at advance prices in opera houses, legitimate 57

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theaters, and the biggest, most deluxe downtown cinemas in major cities and then were sent to the ordinary circuits. The production companies were pressuring distributors and exhibitors to begin to charge higher admission prices: at this time competition often held the price down to a nickel, creating untenable financial conditions while the length of the show increased to fill an evening’s entertainment. The feature films cost much more to attend on their first showings in special venues, but the admission price problem occurred when they reached the ordinary theaters still getting their programs from the exchanges. American feature films, such as The Squaw Man, The Battle of Gettysburg, The Wrath of the Gods, The Spoilers, Neptune’s Daughter, and The Christian, were either in production or already in release in the first few months of 1914. Some of these were as long as eight reels, or about two hours if the average speed of 15 minutes per reel was maintained. However, the one- or two-reel films were still the majority of releases and were the backbone of the weekly film service supplied to the theaters. Biograph was only now releasing the delayed feature Judith of Bethulia – to triumphant reviews but without attributing any credit to Griffith – as well as his two-reel film, The Massacre, which had been distributed in Europe before its release in United States. Although Griffith would not admit that the Italian features and the other spectacle films fired his ambitions when Iris Barry interviewed him in 1939–1940 for her seminal monograph D.W. Griffith, American Film Master, she did not quite believe him. Certainly, it is understandable that in 1914, with the feverish feature film activity going on around him, Griffith would be eager to get started on his own big feature production, but Aitken was trying to keep his newly-acquired genius under control. The Battle of the Sexes; The Escape; Home, Sweet Home; and The Avenging Conscience were all completed first. These were features, certainly, in the terms of that day, but not the big one Griffith had in mind. The Clansman project had special meaning for Griffith, whose father, Colonel “Roaring Jake” Griffith of Company E, First Kentucky Cavalry, died when David Wark Griffith was only ten years old, and the history, legends, and myths of the Confederacy were imbedded in the youthful psyche. The irreverent G.W. Bitzer, Griffith’s cameraman, employed by the Museum of Modern Art in 1940 and asked to write his memoirs, contributed the following to Barry’s book (1965, p. 19): The Birth of a Nation changed D.W. Griffith’s personality entirely. Where heretofore he was wont to refer in starting a new picture to ‘grinding out another sausage’ and go at it lightly, his attitude on beginning this one was all eagerness. He acted like here we have something worthwhile…. Personally, I did not share the enthusiasm. I had read the book and figured out that a Negro chasing a white girl was just another sausage after all and how would you show it in the South?

In New York on 18 April 1914, a meeting was called by the Committee for the Protection of the Good Name of Immigrant Peoples on the topic “Against Motion Picture Libels on Races” (The Moving Picture World, April 18, 1914, p. 337). It was concerned primarily with representations of the Jews. Producers invited to this meeting advised the committee to confer with the National Board of Censorship. Most white men at this time were seemingly unable to understand that blacks might need similar protection, and the race was carelessly and cruelly libeled in many motion pictures. Griffith shared this lack of understanding. Memoirs by several eyewitnesses of the production of The Birth of a Nation have been published. Two who were closest to it day by day were G.W. Bitzer, the cameraman, who had been with Biograph from its beginnings, and Karl Brown, a clever and sharp-eyed kid in his teens, later a well-respected cameraman, writer, and director. Karl Brown wangled a job as assistant to Bitzer as soon as the new company had arrived in California, months before 58

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production of The Birth of a Nation began. As part of his job assisting the cameraman, he recorded every scene of that production in his log as it was made. These men were blessed with good memories and a desire to record what happened as objectively as possible, but we have to take into consideration that their remembrances were those of old age, long after the events they recorded (G.W. Bitzer, Billy Bitzer: His Story, 1973; Karl Brown, Adventures with D.W. Griffith, 1973; another eyewitness account, Before, In and After Hollywood: The Autobiography of Joseph E. Henabery, was published in 1997). In April the company completed and released Home, Sweet Home, and in May, produced The Avenging Conscience. At the same time that Griffith worked on that innovative film, preparations had already started on The Clansman. A caravan of automobiles led up through Cahuenga Pass to the northern slope of Cahuenga Peak, and there, in a natural clearing, the plans were laid out for the battle scenes. Karl Brown remembered: A sort of ridge curved around the rim of a gently descending slope near ground that ran down to where the dry-as-dust riverbed of the Los Angeles River lay baking in the sun. There were little clumps of trees clustered on both sides of this open area, with small hills rounding up here and there in the background, to provide splendid locations for artillerymen to rake the field with grape and cannon, the two favorite close-range charges of the Civil War cannoneers. Not only the geography but the orientation of the field happened to be perfect. When shooting big stuff you must shoot either north or south, never east or west. On this location all the camera angles from the ridge would be shooting north, which meant cross light from the right during the morning, and from the left throughout the afternoon. (Brown, Adventures with D.W. Griffith, p. 55–56)

Frank “Huck” Wortman, master carpenter, and George Siegmann, chief among the multitude of assistant directors, laid out the trenches and gun emplacements as Griffith surveyed the scene and expressed his vision with gestures and words that to the young Karl Brown were poetic and unspecific but that Wortman and Siegmann knew how to interpret in practical terms. Confederate trenches to the right, Union to the left. Griffith had observed long ago at Biograph that it was necessary to preserve screen direction in battle scenes, in order not to confuse the audience about which running and falling soldiers belonged to which side of the conflict. There is a long list of “assistant directors”: Joseph Henabery disputed the title of chief assistant director that Karl Brown awarded to George Siegmann, claiming that title for George Beranger (Henabery, in the Appendix to his autobiography, Before, In and After Hollywood). It is easy to fall into such disagreements, since the title “assistant director” was not then an official one, and any number of people might have acted in that capacity for the moment when Griffith needed something done – as Karl Brown put it, “…and whoever else happened to be standing around doing nothing”. For assistant directors, in addition to George Siegmann, Brown also mentioned Elmer Clifton, Herbert Sutch, Erich von Stroheim, Howard Gaye, Monte Blue, George (André) Beranger, Donald Crisp, Fred Hamer, Tom Wilson, Christy Cabanne, Raoul Walsh, all names known to film history, but this list is not complete and surely not entirely accurate. Some of these names are also to be found in Bitzer’s account. Many of these men also worked on Intolerance (1916), which could have added to the confusion in Brown’s and Bitzer’s memories. Henabery thought Stroheim and Monte Blue were not yet at the studio. Ambitious young men were eager to act in the lowliest capacity to work with D.W. Griffith, considered as the outstanding creative genius of his day in motion pictures, or, if not actually present, ready to claim in later years that they were. Assistants were always needed in large crowd scenes, such as the battle sequences, to direct groups of extras in the action. Brown said that Battles and Leaders of the Civil War became the chief reference for all the military equipment. The job of Herbert Sutch was to procure the ancient muskets, and to 59

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find a way to convert these weapons, which had been modernized to fire cartridges, to the appearance of Civil War authenticity, not to mention the necessity of shooting blanks. According to Brown’s account (p. 58), Sutch achieved this by pouring a very soft wax into the modern cartridges with a small amount of smoky black explosive powder. Such improvisation characterized the spirit of Griffith’s team. For period uniforms and costumes, they turned to Robert Goldstein, a Los Angeles costumer who was to be enriched by having to accept part ownership in the production instead of payment of his bill. The same reference, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, was Goldstein’s guide to preparing the costumes. Bitzer, too, became a part owner of the film when he advanced his savings to help finish the film. W.H. Clune, owner of Clune’s Auditorium, where The Clansman had its Los Angeles premiere, was a big contributor to the costs of production. Nobody had reason to regret their investment, as it turned out. Journalistic attempts to characterize the achievement of The Birth of a Nation often point to its production cost, lavish for its time, and its recordbreaking return at the box office, but the problem with this is that we do not have good enough financial records to tell us the real story. All we really know is that production costs swelled way beyond what they had available, and loans were needed to complete the film. Bitzer gave a sort of account of costs: $10,000 to Thomas Dixon for the rights to The Clansman; filming costs rose to $78,000 at one stage; Bitzer put in $7,000 from his own savings; Griffith told Bitzer “That Woman” (whoever that may have been) invested $9,000; W.H. Clune put up $15,000; and Goldstein took payment for costumes in stock for $7,000. Originally budgeted for $40,000, Bitzer said, The Birth of a Nation cost $110,000. He also announced that it grossed $20,000,000 over the years, but Variety is unsure enough as to decline to list the film at all in their annual lists of the top-grossing films of all time, although, of course, they mention it. While trenches were dug and gun emplacements built in the valley chosen for the battle scenes, a vacant lot across the street from the studio was leased, where Huck Wortman and his carpenters erected the streets, house fronts and slave quarters of a sleepy southern town. Some of these sets were erected right on the studio lot, conveniently next to the carpenter shop. After six weeks of rehearsal, shooting began on 4 July 1914. Bitzer said that just one camera was used, a Pathé “with a 3.5 two-inch lens interchangeable with a wide-angle lens – that is, you had to screw one out and screw the other into its place” (Barry, D.W. Griffith, p. 37). The orthochromatic film was slow and limited in tonal range. Bitzer suggested that the limitations of this stock may have helped give the images “historical authenticity”. The entire film was hand cranked by Bitzer, in what he described as three-quarter waltz time, and the turning had to be absolutely constant to the end of the shot, as was second nature to any experienced cameraman of that day. It was also common to vary the cranking speed according to the demands of the specific scenes, and in addition, Griffith films were sometimes sent out with instructions to the theater manager to vary the projection speed in certain scenes. The first scenes filmed were the battle scenes. Bitzer claims that the little family group on the hill, watching Sherman’s march to the sea, was discovered sitting there by Griffith, and was captured on film without their knowing. The team went up in the mountains to Big Bear to shoot Gus’ chase of Flora among the pine trees, and her fall to her death among the rocks. Later, Brown and Bitzer were sent back to the mountain to film a dummy that Brown threw – in place of Mae Marsh – over the cliff, and, according to his tale, he almost went over with it. In a mountain meadow at Big Bear, they did the love scene between Margaret Cameron and Phil Stoneman. They drove east to the open country around the Rio Hondo [a tributary of the Los Angeles River] to film the thundering hordes of the white-robed Klansmen on horseback from every possible angle. Both Billy Bitzer and Karl Brown have left harrowing 60

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tales of horses jumping over them and of explosions and smoke beside them as they filmed from ground level. The assassination of Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre was pictured in authentic detail according to old engravings, with the play script of Our American Cousin at hand to guide the performance on stage. A mirror was moved around to reflect sunlight on Booth like a spotlight as he slid through the theater crowd. After three seasons filming on the West Coast, Billy Bitzer was experienced with lighting by the brilliant California sunlight, aided by soft cloth diffusers and mirrors, instead of the electricity needed for indoor work back east. According to him, the only scene requiring special lighting was the burning of Atlanta in miniature, in order to make it look real, as he put it (Bitzer, p. 106). Joseph Henabery, stepping out of the ranks of extras, got the role of Lincoln by showing Griffith what he could do with Lincoln makeup: actors at that time were still responsible for their own makeup. Joseph Henabery said that in one long sequence he was chasing himself: as a black renegade and then as a white soldier. As an extra, he believes he played thirteen different characters. The repeated use of extras, and at times actors playing extra roles, may explain why some scholars have found editing “errors” in later years, such as a character falling dead in battle and discovered up and running in a later scene. Blackface makeup on white actors, and black extras even in the same scene, were common in the industry. Karl Brown was one of numerous witnesses to Griffith’s habit of occasionally vocalizing on the set, often with snippets of opera, no doubt thinking of the score to be written, to which he would contribute his ideas to the composer/arranger. Like Chaplin, Griffith was not a professional musician, but that did not stop him from having ideas about the scores for his films. His collaboration with Joseph Carl Breil led to the score with which The Birth of a Nation opened in New York, the score that is most closely associated with the film. In the case of the earlier Los Angeles opening, the score was compiled by Carli Elinor, together with Lloyd Brown, theater manager for Clune’s, and several others. It may be that Griffith had little to do with that score, which continued to be played at Clune’s for the length of the run of the film as The Clansman. Karl Brown’s account is quite confusing, as he described the sensation of hearing the Breil score at the opening in Los Angeles and recognizing the sounds of Griffith’s voice in the instruments. (Henabery corrected this mistake in his book.) The facts concerning these scores have been in dispute: by far the most reliable and detailed account today is that of Martin Marks, in Music and the Silent Film (1997); see also Philip C. Carli’s analysis of the score in this volume. Karl Brown told us that Griffith (at least in the period to which Brown was witness) never called “camera” or “cut” as other directors did, but always “fade in” and “fade out”. Brown’s theory was that Griffith never knew in advance whether he would need a fade to open or close a scene, thus the system of including a fade every time gave him the option to use it or not. Rose and Jimmie Smith were his cutters for most of his career. They knew how to interpret the remarks he made when he looked at the footage in the projection room at night, after shooting was done for the day. Shooting was completed in October and the footage was edited to twelve reels by the end of the year. Karl Brown was assigned to shoot the intertitles for the film, and therefore, he was not a daily witness to the editing work. While the editing and titling went on, the indefatigable Griffith produced The Mother and the Law, which was not released at that time, but revised and incorporated as the modern story of Intolerance. As The Clansman, The Birth of a Nation had its first public showing on 1 January 1915, at the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California, with a special seven-piece orchestra, and prices of twenty and thirty cents, according to the printed program in the D.W. Griffith Papers at the Museum of Modern Art. This was a high-class showing for 1915. Nevertheless, Griffith considered it only a trial run, 61

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held secret from most of his staff, because he did not want any cheerleaders in the audience, just ordinary moviegoers. Joseph Henabery said that he went along with Griffith to that screening and wrote down as best he could (with the help of his fiancée, later his wife) what was in the film at that date (this document is in the Joseph and Jeanne Henabery Collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library; see Henabery, p. 82). The official premiere was at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles on 8 February. Griffith attended these showings to judge audience reaction, and then edited further. He continued to do the same at the New York premiere on 3 March, where the picture was now known as The Birth of a Nation; he followed it to the showings in Boston and Chicago for the same purpose. If production of a film includes its editing stages, production of The Birth of a Nation continued long after the film was being shown to the public. It is hardly surprising that modernday prints and even negatives show some gaps or illogical connections, when the editing continued under such circumstances. Today, archival reconstruction offers a variety of choices to the restorer: which showing constitutes the original version? Griffith cared deeply about audience reaction. I expect he would be quite bewildered to observe how young audiences perceive the film today. In the words of Iris Barry, the film has not changed, but we have. Eileen Bowser

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE Few films have been as reviled as The Birth of a Nation and still remain central to a history of the medium. No other example save Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, Leni Riefenstahl 1934) comes to mind that matches the status of Griffith’s work as a masterpiece maudit. The difficulty in assessing the stylistic achievements of The Birth of a Nation, then, derives from the ethical dilemma the film presents to its analyst: how to speak approvingly of the many formal merits of the film without appearing to tacitly endorse its hateful ideology? Critical attempts to divorce Griffith’s method from his message can only emerge as either the worst kind of depoliticised formalism or an obstinate refusal to engage with the uglier aspects of the film’s effectiveness. As Russell Merritt has demonstrated in his incisive analysis of the sequence wherein Gus pursues Flora, the critic errs when insisting the film’s form exists independent of its content (Merritt, “D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: Going After Little Sister”, 1990). The Birth of a Nation is a formally masterful racist work; in Clyde Taylor’s words, “Griffith’s film confronts us with the possibility of a work being powerfully persuasive, affecting and aesthetically rewarding, while at the same time saturated with noxious conceits and ideas: beautiful yet evil” (Taylor, “The Re-Birth of Aesthetic in Cinema”, p. 27). Extolling the film’s stylistic achievements need not deny its racist intent; if anything, it should focus our awareness on better understanding how Griffith achieved the power to create a film that can still simultaneously impress and outrage audiences today. And even on this score, scholars differ in their assessments: two recent accounts offer divergent impressions of the film’s enduring effectiveness in the context of examining its racist underpinnings. While Linda Williams grants The Birth of a Nation some of its original force in her analysis of its perpetuation of melodramatic tendencies rooted in racial oppositions (Williams, Playing the Race Card, 2001), Scott Simmon sees the film as a withered artifact that “now seems to fail its audience on every ethical, emotional, and perhaps even artistic level” (Simmon, The Films of D.W. Griffith, 1993, p. 104). David Bordwell, meanwhile, in his book on film style, still sees reason to deem the film “great” (Bordwell, On the History of Film Style, p. 268). Russell Merritt’s astute appraisal most closely approximates my own: “[W]ere the film no more complicated than the Dixon play on which it is based, it would have been forgotten long ago … The disturbing fact is that Griffith invests even his most offensive sequences with skillfulness that repays 62

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minute examination” (Merritt 1990, p. 218). I would extend this to say that oftentimes Griffith ensures the effectiveness of those offensive sequences by patterning them after formally audacious, but less ideologically contentious moments from elsewhere in the film. Though we may lament the fact that Griffith invested his considerable talent in the celebration of the Ku Klux Klan and the denunciation of racial integration, we cannot neglect the manner in which he deploys that talent. Ultimately, acknowledging Griffith’s formal abilities helps to explain why The Birth of a Nation has not receded into the background of film history, but remains an embarrassingly vital and admittedly complex benchmark of the medium’s development. Perhaps what has not been duly noted in formal studies of the film is the manner in which the film’s bipartite structure promotes the doubling of devices from the first half, so that celebrated (and relatively benign) moments from the earlier portion of the film resurface, racially charged, in the latter section. We can thus slightly amend Taylor’s characterisation to describe The Birth of a Nation’s stylistic achievements as “beautifully evil”, insofar as what first appears as innovative or inspired often returns as appalling, if no less effective on a formal level. Doubtless Griffith had more in mind when replicating these effects than brazen recycling or even artful formal rhymes; instead, it makes sense to see these repetitions as deliberate attempts to create emotional parallels between moments from the first half and those from the second. These formal echoes constitute the strongest stylistic evidence of Michael Rogin’s claim that one cannot “separate [the film’s] aesthetic power from its negrophobia” (Rogin, “‘The Sword Became a Flashing Vision’”, p. 150). By the time his Biograph career was drawing to a close, Griffith had already acquired the reputation of a stylistic trailblazer, his influence admitted by rivals and alternately trumpeted or reviled by critics. (The trade press typically applauded Griffith’s handling of actors but often questioned his reliance on a cutting rate far in excess of the industry norm.) Long stymied by Biograph’s refusal to even name its key creative personnel, Griffith broke free with a shamelessly self-promotional advertisement extolling his own accomplishments in December of 1913. Though many of the ad’s claims are suspect, collectively they attribute Griffith’s importance as a director to his formal achievements. What may be more important than the dubious contention that Griffith was responsible for “founding” such “innovations [as] the large or close-up figures, distant views, … the ‘switchback,’ sustained suspense, the ‘fade-out,’ and restraint in expression”, is the tacit belief expressed by the ad that Griffith’s pre-eminence within the industry lay in his superiority as a stylist (The New York Dramatic Mirror, December 3, 1913, p. 36). Claiming mastery of the “modern technique of the art” of motion pictures, Griffith’s advertisement leaves no doubt that stylistic distinctiveness qualifies as the principal means by which such mastery can be detected. The epic scale of The Birth of a Nation allowed Griffith to develop his stylistic distinctiveness further while affording him the crucial added luxury of extended temporal duration that the rigid one-reel format of the majority of his Biograph productions had denied him. Now, Griffith could not only play out stylistic effects for a far longer time than he had been able with the brief one-reelers, but he could also link devices across the entire structure of a full-length narrative. Like many epics, The Birth of a Nation is often recalled as a series of set pieces, memorable for their emotive power, as the suggestive arrangement of carefully wrought images enlivens key narrative situations: the Battle of Petersburg, the assassination of Lincoln, Gus’ pursuit of Flora, the KKK’s ride to rescue the Camerons. Without dismissing the contributions of such sequences to the film’s overall effectiveness in stylistic terms – admittedly, I will discuss aspects of each of these examples in what follows – we must remember that style is not turned on and off like a faucet: the style of The Birth of a Nation ultimately resides in the systematic deployment of devices across the whole film. For that reason, though isolation of key representative sequences can prove a helpful and necessary tool in examining how the 63

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film’s style operates, it can also mislead us into thinking style only comes to the fore during the film’s bravura sequences, receding into functional support of the narrative at other times. While Griffith’s style may seem most noticeable during the film’s moments of grandiose spectacle, or when the form of narration becomes most self-conscious, the film’s claim to being a stylistic work of distinction arises from style consistently reasserting itself in a compelling fashion throughout, devices interlocking into a system designed to invite viewer response while sustaining (and occasionally confounding) comprehension. (Moreover, the film’s thoroughgoing racism only achieves the power it does by being wedded to a sustained stylistic system.) By 1913, at the end of his tenure at Biograph, Griffith had worked out an identifiable style, which, his self-aggrandising assessment of its importance via the New York Dramatic Mirror ad notwithstanding, did entail a developed sense of the potential of selected aspects of film technique. As many have pointed out, myself included, Griffith’s style did not translate fully into the codified operations of classicism; in both his treatment of space and his tendency to use editing and other techniques for overt narrational purposes, Griffith’s style outstrips the functionality and self-effacement which will become the hallmarks of mature classicism (Keil, “Transition through Tension”, 1989, p. 23). Collectively, the Biograph films instruct us as to how Griffith balanced the demands of comprehensible storytelling with the desire to inform those stories with telling details, channelled emotion, and enlightening parallels. As the narratives themselves were often unexceptional, Griffith came to invest the considerable resources of his stylistic repertoire into the shaping and heightening of spectatorial response. In other words, the telling of the tale often takes precedence over the tale being told. In many of the late-era Biographs, in particular those leading up to his departure from the company, one has the sense that while the narrative material may have interested Griffith to varying degrees, his experiments with staging and framing, creating spatial and psychological connections via editing, and developing performance style engaged him more consistently than ever before. In another entry, issues of performance in The Birth of a Nation will be treated [Editor’s Note: see Joyce Jesionowski’s essay on performance and characterization that follows], so I will restrict my study to concentrate primarily on editing, staging and framing (the latter two which I will treat in combination), aspects of Griffith’s style I believe to be central to the film’s stylistic system. If The Birth of a Nation’s multi-reel length provided the canvas to use film to craft history in epic terms, it also gave Griffith the opportunity to cultivate the late-Biograph-era experiments within a large-scale format which would allow them more residual force, a force ultimately wedded to a pernicious racist ideal. When production began on The Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s mastery of editing was such that he had already explored most of the ways in which alternating views of spaces divided by a measurable distance could be arranged for varying effects. His confident handling of the multi-pronged last-minute rescue had reached new heights in such late-period Biographs as A Girl and Her Trust (1912), The Informer (1912), and The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1914). Combining propulsive editing rhythms, predicated on diminishing shot lengths at key narrative moments, with the selection of increasingly more kinetic or even closer-scaled shots for the climaxes of such sequences, Griffith had learned to squeeze virtually every ounce of audience response out of the effective rescue scenario. The Birth of a Nation offers three variations on this formula: the attack on the Cameron home by guerilla soldiers, Gus’ pursuit of Flora (and the subsequent tracking of both by Ben), and the tri-partite rescue which serves as the film’s narrative climax. As many commentators have mentioned, the final rescue of the film serves as the seeming culmination of all of Griffith’s last-minute rescues up to this point, as he skillfully switches from one strand of increasingly dire racial menace to another, ultimately deploying the dynamic 64

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moving-camera shots of the charging Klan on horseback as a release valve, effecting resolution of the multiple scenarios of entrapment and imperilment. Moreover, it represents a tour de force deployment of all the related techniques used to bolster such sequences: the judicious insertion of moving camera shots to distinguish and empower the rescuing forces; the increased reliance on closer-scaled shots to emphasize female endangerment; the escalation of cutting rates and activity within the frame to convey the progressive diminishment of occupied safe space for the parties in need of rescue; and the sustained intercutting among all three scenarios to enhance the sense of pervasive danger and totalizing anarchy, demanding the remedy of white physical force. What has been less readily recognized is that this latestage rescue scene combines the elements of the earlier two, while significantly displacing and inverting key aspects. Whereas the guerilla raid on the Cameron home let the forces of disorder loose upon the domestic sphere, propelling the family into their cellar, the final attack finds the family driven away from their home altogether, into the confines of an isolated cabin. The deceased Flora is replaced by the young daughter of one of the cabin’s owners, ex-Union soldiers, who serve as saviours for the Camerons, in direct opposition to the guerilla Union forces who terrorized them during the first raid. The forest setting of Gus’s pursuit of Flora becomes the space for the attack on the cabin, while the sexually motivated endangerment of that earlier scenario finds itself transposed from unbounded nature into the interior confinement of Elsie by Lynch. Meanwhile, the third strand of the final sequence, wherein the white townspeople of Piedmont are terrorized by the black militia, broadly replays the raid on the Cameron home, now dispersed across multiple families. In this way, Griffith can recapture the residual emotional associations invoked by the earlier rescues (both of them qualified by virtue of their results, insofar as the Cameron home is devastated and Flora dies) and invest them into this final and ultimately far more satisfactory banishment of the black menace. What is at stake for the intended audience amounts to not only a positive outcome for the depicted scenarios of imperilment, but retribution for the earlier compromised rescues as well. As much as the last-minute rescue gains its primary force through the employment of crosscutting, it depends equally on consistent spatial legibility. Another facet of editing which Griffith refined over the course of his Biograph training was the delineation of spatial relationships predicated on contiguity. Russell Merritt has demonstrated that this skill receives ample rehearsal even in as unlikely a context as the passage from home to forest during Gus’ pursuit of Flora. His apt characterisation of Griffith’s method warrants quoting at length: Following the system he had worked out at Biograph, Griffith breaks his forest down into separate but contiguous compartments, each segment of the forest a tightly defined, autonomous physical locale. There is no overlapping space between one composition and the next, and there are no spatial gaps to permit openings between locales. It is as though we were watching a crosssection of a freight train, each segment of the forest a boxcar, the characters chasing each other from one boxcar to the next. Just as we never see more than three sides of any Griffith room, so here we see only one face of each part of the forest, the vantage point of the shot never changing … Griffith invariably motivates cuts by having characters pass from one area to another or by having characters peer out from one space into another. One consequence of this style is that Griffith can yoke together wildly disparate, even incompatible patches of woodland scenery and from them create a seamless, wholly synthetic geographic backdrop. (Merritt 1990, p. 221)

As Merritt mentions, Griffith’s handling of editing also depends upon the manipulation of characters’ glances. A particularly notable aspect of this feature of the film’s editing schema involves cutting on characters’ looks to articulate viewpoints and reinforce reactions within 65

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dramatically charged moments. Though Griffith’s treatment of articulated views does not prefigure the shot/reverse shot technique adopted within classicism, he does make diegetic gazes the visual pivot points for many scenes by cutting amongst shots of characters casting glances off-frame. Lincoln’s assassination, for example, is partly organized around the view of Elsie, who employs her opera glasses to afford her a better glimpse of John Wilkes Booth. (Oddly, Elsie’s first view of Booth and her second one, now abetted by the glasses, appear in the film rendered at the same shot scale.) The entirety of the assassination scene is orchestrated as a spectacle, insofar as attention of the diegetic audience shifts from the play on the stage to Lincoln making his appearance in the presidential box, back to the play, then to the shooting, and, finally, Booth’s moment of performance on the stage itself. The playing out of pertinent dramatic action for the benefit of diegetic observers, self-consciously displayed in this scene, functions similarly in less overt instances. I will single out two consecutive scenes predicated on characters looking on at others as representative of this tendency. Both portray an unreciprocated or refused gaze of longing and, strikingly, like the assassination scene, the one directly invokes death at its climax, while the other foreshadows a scene that will result in death. (More often than not, the act of looking in The Birth of a Nation involves danger, or, at the very least, disturbing sights. If one recalls the climactic final rescue scene, for example, most of the shots of the townspeople in their homes show them looking out of their windows, fearfully taking in the spectacle of their streets overtaken by crowds of unruly blacks. Even the two instances of viewed romantic ideals I will cite below come embedded within actions of violence or recollections of mortality.) The first of the two scenes involves Lynch surreptitiously viewing Ben and Elsie’s romantic encounter among the trees as they exchange kisses by alternating pecks on the beak of a dove. The sequence is built upon principles of mediation and doubling: Lynch observes their private moment from a distance, while the bird serves as a intermediary for direct physical contact between the two; Lynch, like Elsie, will use a tree to obscure his presence, while his enraged shaking of a dog moments before the couple arrives offers a violent prefiguration of their emotional caresses of the dove. Moreover, the bracketing shots of Lynch inform our understanding of the exchange between Ben and Elsie: rather than seen only as a tender and intimate love scene, it must also be viewed as fuelling Lynch’s jealous passion. Finally, both in terms of its combined forest/animal iconography and enframed views, the scene prepares for an early portion of Gus’ pursuit of Flora later in the film. Before she is aware of Gus’ presence, Flora stops to interact with a squirrel. In a particularly unnerving cut, Griffith shifts from Flora pointing offscreen with a smile to a shot of Gus also looking off determinedly. Clearly, the latter shot is not Flora’s point of view but a reinforcement that Flora’s actions are seen by Gus. What then follows is an extended series of shots of Flora, smiling and talking to the squirrel, intercut with close-ups of the squirrel in the tree. At approximately the midpoint of this series, Griffith inserts a single shadowy shot of Gus, watching Flora while framed by scraggly, denuded branches. Varying a set of similar elements, Griffith thereby draws connections between the two scenes that equate Gus and Lynch, Elsie and Flora. In both instances, Griffith telegraphs the inappropriate longings of black males through their intense gazes and the perversion of a natural order. (Significantly, the squirrel leaps away just before Gus appears before Flora.) Inevitably, black male desire begets violence: Gus’ proposal to Flora will cause her to leap to her death, while later, after his failed advance, Lynch will have Elsie drugged and gagged to ensure her cooperation. The second scene of looking I will examine shows Phil gazing at Margaret. In this instance, Margaret is lost in reverie and the first shot offers an idealised portrait of the Cameron daughter in a garden bower fingering rose petals. Phil looks at her from a point beyond the garden, perceiving only the beauty of the moment and not its underlying sorrow. The pattern of shots, 66

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first Margaret shown lost in her thoughts, followed by Phil looking on longingly, is repeated. When he approaches her in the fifth shot, he is rebuffed, with Margaret meeting his gaze for the only time in the scene. From this point onward, Margaret will avert her eyes from Phil’s, despite his outstretched hand. Instead, she stares off in a direction apart from Phil’s presence, signalling an inward turn of mind. As she crushes the rose she is holding, Griffith introduces a cut to a previously seen shot of one of the younger Cameron boys dying during the War, before returning to the same shot of Margaret. The combination of the outwardturned gaze, a remembered image, and a potent prop signals the ability of the visually recollected past to eradicate the supplications of the present. That Margaret could not have seen the image of her dying brother matters little; the force of the cut suggests that this is her vision and that its saliency outstrips the appeal of Phil’s longing look. The recalled image of the dead brother is marked off from the other shots in the sequence by appearing framed in a vignette. Griffith consistently applies different kinds of masks to a variety of images throughout the film to enframe them, just as he varies shot scale and stages actions behind and within elements of the mise-en-scène for similar effects. Collectively, these constitute one of the film’s most notable stylistic tendencies; because Griffith moves the camera so seldom (even to pan or tilt), the masking of images serves as an alternative method of drawing viewer attention to a pertinent detail or eliminating superfluous or distracting information from a portion of the frame. Similarly, Griffith relies on close-ups throughout the film to isolate relevant objects within the mise-en-scène. The recurrence of an element, particularly when shown again in a closely scaled shot, will immediately call forth associations related to its earlier appearance, even if the context has changed. The parched corn served to Confederate soldiers constitutes one such example. In the first close-up of the corn, Griffith uses a high-angle shot of a frying pan full of kernels being portioned out to a single soldier, framed such that only the hands clutching the pan and those receiving the ration are visible onscreen. (The image of an outstretched hand is connected most strongly to war-induced death, as shown in the moment when the younger sons die together on the battlefield, or in the striking still images of bodies of the war dead massed together.) Later, when Flora prepares the meal for Ben’s homecoming, a similar composition is employed, one of her hands arranging the motley assortment of kernels. In this way, Griffith suggests the deprivations of war have been visited upon the Southern family as much as upon the soldiers on the battlefield. Moreover, the spread of associations the earlier framed close-up encourages (with war as death through the concentration on the hands, with war as elimination of the natural bounty so pointedly linked to Southern existence in the earlier part of the film) gains in intensity when a shot of parched corn recurs as a part of the plans for Ben’s homecoming. Accordingly, the repeated imagery conditions our response to that bittersweet moment. The depiction of Ben’s return is one of the most remarked-upon of the poignant observational touches in The Birth of a Nation. Much of its power derives from Griffith’s self-conscious use of framing. Ben approaches the Cameron front porch, a space consistently tied to family gatherings in the early part of the film. Flora comes out from the door and each examines the worn nature of the other’s clothing (Flora has adorned her threadbare dress with “Southern ermine”, cotton dotted with coal soot). Then, after a tentative moment of sorrowful reflection, they embrace. As they move toward the door, Griffith rather uncharacteristically cuts to allow a shift in camera position. While the shot of Flora greeting Ben had featured a typical frontal perspective, with both characters generally shown in side profile, the composition at the door is at a more oblique angle, with the line of the housefront more pronounced. The change in angle prompts a corresponding shift in framing, so that now Ben’s back blocks Flora’s body from view, leaving only one of her arms visible around his neck; when his mother’s arm reaches out to greet him from within the house, it will be similarly 67

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isolated from the rest of her body. Even Ben’s face is obscured by the door jam. The resultant tableau gains emotive power from its deliberate understatement. (Griffith had learned during his Biograph years that turning an actor away from the camera could prove a powerful dramatic technique.) However, the composition also draws its force by recalling both the outstretched hands of less fortunate soldiers, frozen by death on the battlefield, and Flora’s earlier gesture of thrusting out her arms in despair when learning of the death of one of her other brothers. Ben’s return home to the embrace of his family recalls all of the dreadful sadness the war has caused, even as it also functions as a moment of joyful reunion. Moreover, the self-consciously framed homecoming is one of many privileged stylistic moments Griffith recasts in the second part of the film, drawing on the earlier scene’s emotional associations to colour the audience’s reception of the later incident. The homecoming finds its correlative in the dumping of Gus’ dead body after he has been executed by the KKK. Ben is returned to his family to effect the rebuilding of the South, while Gus is delivered to Lynch’s doorstep as a brutal reminder that black insurgence will not be tolerated. At the threshold to his home, Ben is enveloped in a maternal embrace signified simply by the use of two arms wrapped tight around his neck; Gus’ abandoned corpse lands on Lynch’s entrance in such a way that an outturned leg remains the only fully visible body part. Griffith offers the dumping of Gus’ body as a perversion of the first homecoming, much as he views Gus’ debased actions as a renegade soldier (identified as Flora’s stalker primarily by his Union cap and jacket) as an affront to the gallantry of Confederate soldiers. Lynch’s retrieval of Gus’ body completes the debased parallel, while the white note from the KKK pinned on Gus’ shirt recalls the “Southern ermine” Flora had attached to her dress. Two other images strongly connected with the war are revisited and transformed in the film’s second half. The first involves the celebrated masked image of the woman huddled with her children on the hillside, as Sherman’s forces march toward the sea. Panning from this intimate portrait of familial suffering to its basis in long shot in the valley below allows Griffith one of his most cogent and eloquent intimations of causality. Later, when blacks have taken over the State House of Representatives, Griffith will employ a similar device: an iris isolates a trio of white visitors in the gallery amongst the throngs of black attendees reacting approvingly to the inappropriate antics of the legislators below. At the moment a bill proposing intermarriage between blacks and whites is passed, the visitors (likely a man and his two daughters) depart, their actions closely watched by the blacks surrounding them. (Earlier, the injustice of a trial verdict rendered by a black jury had been telegraphed primarily by the reactions of a white family, the father pulling his daughter toward him in a protective gesture.) Griffith renders the spectre of black rule in spatial terms, intimating it will not only undo white political and legal structures, but also devastate white society on a scale akin to the Civil War itself. A variation on the same idea occurs with the second example. During the height of battle, Griffith cuts to a partially masked image of Dr. Cameron, his wife and the two daughters, as the father reads from the family Bible. The insertion of the familial tableau suggests the interdependency of homefront life and wartime strife. Later, when Piedmont comes under siege by blacks, Griffith indicates the scope of the attack by inserting numerous shots of families cowering in their homes; in the first of these tableaux, the mother in the foreground also reads from the Bible. Southern values, represented by the Cameron family in the first instance, find themselves under significant threat from the black forces unleashed in the film’s second half. Within each of the families depicted, young women or girls figure prominently, and the legislative and legal changes that earlier provoked anxious responses from concerned fathers have now become social anarchy inviting abject fear. At a climactic moment, Griffith renders concrete the threat to female virtue first with a close-up of Elsie Stoneman, subdued by Lynch’s servant, a fist shown hovering near the side of her face, then to a close-up of the little 68

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girl in the cabin, tears streaming down her face as a rifle butt is poised to end her life should the attack by marauding black militiamen prove successful. The prospect of imminent violence, contained within the frame as either the enforcement of black will or the preemptive intervention of white desperation, only signals the growing black menace exploding beyond the confines of the close-ups, finally vanquished by the massed force of the KKK riders. But, as Robert Lang has argued, “neither the triumph of the Ku Klux Klan nor the couplings of the Stoneman and Cameron children is enough to achieve satisfactory closure. Without a patriarch of Lincoln’s stature to preside over the new nation, Griffith feels impelled to invoke the image of Jesus Christ himself” (Lang, The Birth of a Nation, 1994, p. 23). Fittingly, closure comes courtesy of imagery and techniques originally employed in depicting the devastation of war. For his final image, Griffith recasts the huddled embattered family on the hill during Sherman’s advance as Ben and Elsie looking out on a celestial city. The split screen which encompassed the burning of Atlanta and the exodus of Southern refugees now becomes the composite image of the blessed city and the newlywed couple: a utopian community replaces one ravaged by war, while North and South are fused together once more. In this final gesture, Griffith’s style effects an attempt to bring together what it had so convincingly put asunder earlier. Yet it also reminds us how style has consistently produced echoes within The Birth of a Nation designed to wed pathos to fury, distress at war to outrage at white disempowerment. What these parallel moments prove is that Griffith’s style was never designed to be ideologically neutral. As much as Griffith was concerned with aesthetic effect, he was equally devoted to a principle of emotional agitation for the purpose of deterring public support for black enfranchisement. Style in The Birth of a Nation is the product of a talent in rapid development finding its realisation within the broad canvas of the feature; it is also, irrevocably, the product of a mind determined to use style for racist ends. It is the enduring legacy of American film aesthetics that the one comes tethered to the other. Charlie Keil

PERFORMANCE AND CHARACTERIZATION 1. The Director’s Point of View By the time Griffith made The Birth of a Nation, the director’s authority over performance was just being established. Margaret MacDonald’s article “Art and the Motion Picture” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 14, 1914, p. 50) is illustrative. In it she likened the director to the film’s “painter” and “the players his colors”. Though invoking the plastic rather than the theatrical arts as her model, MacDonald nonetheless upheld her paper’s insistence on the crucial link between cinema performance and “nature”. “Never was a mirror more truly held up to Nature in the history of pantomime”, she warned. “The face untrained or incapable of bespeaking emotion has no place before the motion picture camera”. To illustrate her point, a “palette” of actors’ cameos accompanied this essay. Griffith was anxious to be recognized as such an artist. The New York Dramatic Mirror, which had celebrated the distinction of “the Biograph director” for many years before Griffith’s identity was publicly revealed, obliged him with suitable publicity such as an interview with Robert E. Welsh in 1914 and, in general, continued to give good reviews to his postBiograph films. As the publicity machines cranked up in the period just before the release of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s own mythologies began to take shape in daily as well as trade papers. The legends of his attempts to educe performances from the untrained members of his casts were established, and if the stories were apocryphal, at least they suggest the variety of methods he developed to shape the screen images of his “principals”. The gentle words, 69

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the badgering, the Pavlovian trickery, the jealous rivalries fomented between actors and actresses – these strategies range from pragmatic to inspired attempts to induce emotions through which the “music of the soul” could be externalized in the “mirror of nature” that was the camera’s eye. Beneath the practical dramaturgy, moreover, lay the aesthetic beliefs that would shape the performances of The Birth of a Nation. “Let them act as two people very much in love would be expected to behave in like circumstances, and the audiences weave their own romance and do the larger share of the acting for that scene”, Griffith told the Motion Picture Supplement in November of 1915 (Robinson Locke Collection of Dramatic Scrapbooks [from here on referred to as RLCDS] at the New York Public Library, vol. 209). The first part of the statement generally echoes the standards for performance set by Frank Woods in the The New York Dramatic Mirror. But the second part asserts the centrality of audience participation in creation of the total performance and amounts to the director’s own theory of spectatorship. Griffith explicitly suggests that effective screen performance had dual sites: one with the actor on screen; the other with the viewer in the audience. In any set of gestures, the audience were to recognize those that matched their “expectations” of “ordinary behavior” in “like circumstances”, i.e., in the conditions of their own lives. The realism of the screen performance stimulated recognition, and recognition elicited an act of identification that Griffith considered an essential part of the performance. It was this alignment of audience expectations with screen characterization that confirmed that the mirror indeed had been held up to nature. Eventually Griffith would claim that the screen actor’s objective was to lead the audience to an apprehension of inner truth as well as picturing true-life behaviors. For this, “I must have people with souls”, Griffith asserted in The Motion Picture Classic (February 1917, in RLCDS, vol. 209). Theater crafts receded into the dim background, if they were necessary at all. The actors “do not practice and practice”, Griffith claimed. “It [the performance] comes naturally to them”. In an interview with Harry C. Carr for Photoplay (“How Griffith Picks His Leading Women”, December 1918, in RLCDS, vol. 209) Griffith focused the site of the actor’s performance even more narrowly. “Every other physical characteristic is of insignificant importance compared with the eyes … The farther the motion picture art progresses the more important does this become. Every year actors make less fuss in their hands, and tell more and more with their eyes” – the eyes that gave access to the all-important soul. But the “soul-music” touted by publicists and critics alike encompassed relationship even more than a display of the character’s emotional life. In “What I Demand of Movie Stars” (The Motion Picture Classic, February 1917, in RLCDS, vol. 209), Griffith articulated his largest ambitions. “Not only beauty but thought is our goal …”, he claimed. “The silent drama is peculiarly the birthplace of ideas”. Intellectual expression then was the grand finale of the cinema experience – an objective that was particularly important to the director of The Birth of a Nation, who had positioned his film as history lesson as well as romantic adventure. 2. Three Actors Speak Like Griffith, the actors of this period were basking in the new light of publicity and namerecognition. Though their identities had been revealed to their fans prior to their appearance in The Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s epic made his performers stars and objects of household attention. As the scrapbooks of the Robinson Locke Collection in the New York Public Library demonstrate, the names of Marsh and Walthall and especially Lillian Gish were spread far and wide by the daily and trade press of the time. Marsh was tagged “the girl with the thousand faces”, and the “sunlight-and shadow” actress whose “elfin charm” was a hallmark of her performances. Lillian Gish (to her great chagrin) was adored as “the most beautiful 70

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blonde in the world”. Articles in the trade papers and dailies such as The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, sought favorite recipes and makeup secrets, and hungered for stories of beginnings humble or illustrious, ordinary or surprising that charted the actor’s rise to fame. But whatever else they revealed about themselves under curious and sometimes relentless public scrutiny, the actors of Griffith’s company also became adept at explaining their performances and giving the reasons why they thought they had achieved such celebrity. Interviews reveal a group of people adept not only in spinning official biographies, but also in analyzing the details of their craft and articulating the methods that made them effective on screen. Due regard was always paid to Griffith’s artistry and great influence. But many of the principals in The Birth of a Nation also were quite specific about personal techniques for summoning motivation and creating character. If their observations do not necessarily confirm their production habits, at least they suggest that these actors thought about how to deliver a screen characterization and were not simply vessels of received inspiration. The three major stars of The Birth of a Nation are cases in point. Mae Marsh settled on spontaneity as her strong suit in an interview with Robert Cushman in The Silent Picture (#17, Spring 1973, p. 9). In that article, Marsh differentiated her style from that of Lillian Gish, who came from the theater to Griffith’s studio. While Gish would “think” herself into a role, Marsh claimed that she had to “feel” it. “Lillian is a perfectionist. I am too, but I like to have fun”, the “sunlight and shadows girl” explained. Nonetheless, interviewed earlier in her career, Marsh was fully aware of the seriousness of addressing the unforgiving camera eye. In “Mae Marsh Does Not Like Shams” (Chicago Post, March 15, 1917, in RLCDS, envelopes 1325, 1326), she described the importance of “feeling” her way into a role. “Sincerity is the biggest screen asset”, she advised. “With the camera grinding away just a few inches from your face you can’t let down, you can’t fake emotion, you must feel [emphasis added] your role. You must be the person you are playing. Otherwise the camera will get you. And the camera remembers nothing of your hit in this or that picture. It only records today”. The Moving Picture World (January 10, 1914, in RLCDS, envelope 2481) declared that “Henry B. Walthall is one of the best … on the screen…. His work is so natural, so lifelike, that illusion is established on his initial appearance in a picture”. But the aggressive presence of the watching camera at first challenged The Birth of a Nation’s male lead. “I was afraid the camera would fuss me when I first started in”, he admitted, “but, strange as it may seem, I no sooner get into the spirit of a scene than I forget its presence…. On the other hand, [I] have to be watched carefully in order that I don’t play over the lines. That’s my great trouble” (unattributed item, Henry B. Walthall scrapbook, RLCDS, vol. 303). But by August 1915 in Photoplay Magazine, “the man who adorns his profession” was able to describe how he overcame both obstacles in a statement that reflects both his internalization of the “natural” ideal, and the attitude of a trained actor tactically struggling with a specific problem of craft. “I try to live the part”, he observed, “and I never speak the lines as do other actors on the screen. I just think them and find that the results are better” (“The Little Colonel: Some Impressions of a Man Who Adorns His Profession”, in RLCDS, vol. 303). In April 1922, The Blade ran a series of articles specifically addressing the craft of screen acting and authored by none other than Lillian Gish herself. Again, the ideals of “naturalism” and “authenticity” are confirmed at the same time that the strategies of screen and theater are definitively severed. “Acting before a motion picture camera isn’t really acting at all, as most people understand it”, Gish explained. As Frank Woods did in his New York Dramatic Mirror “Spectator” columns, Gish differentiates between performance codes. “In pantomime, things are more set, more definitely arranged beforehand. Certain things are done certain ways. There are actors on the screen, of course, who follow definite methods, 71

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but the ones who are successful don’t do this” (“How Movie Acting Differs from that of Spoken Drama”, The Toledo Blade, April 14, 1922, in RLCDS, vol. 203, p. 178). Most interesting is Gish’s economical summary of a theory of screen performance as it had been laid down to the date of her articles. She upholds the standard of naturalness which Woods first articulated in 1909 and which Griffith took up as his own. Then this stage-trained actress affirms the shift from studied technique to spontaneity, imagination, and thought as the sources of effective screen work. “Acting before the camera is really thinking in motion”, Gish stated. “You have a part well in mind – it exists in your imagination. Then you must project it, bring it out in movement”. Echoing Marsh’s description of the actor’s preparation, and Griffith’s assertion that performance “comes” to the screen actor, Gish continues, “Your body obeys your mind; your technique is really instinctive. Screen acting is really being someone – not acting that person. You imagine yourself into the role, and portray the emotions… On the screen we are not original; we are merely reflecting human nature”. Lillian Gish, who was soon to be a director herself, laid down the aesthetic of the “new American style”. 3. Minstrelsy and Racial Stereotyping: Some Preliminary Comments Griffith had made occasional attempts to use “real” people to validate the depiction of ethnic types in the Biograph films. A case in point was casting Dark Cloud, a Native American actor, as the lead in The Song of the Wildwood Flute (1910). Griffith’s ostensible objectives were always the ideals of “unaffectedness” and “authenticity”, and The New York Dramatic Mirror’s review of the film (November 30, 1910, p. 30) specifically singled out for praise “the remarkable exhibition of natural pantomime by the lover, a part played by a full-blooded Indian, in a manner that would put some of the French pantomimists to shame”. Whatever credibility Dark Cloud’s acting lent to the earlier Biographs, however, the claims to authenticity became increasingly disingenuous considering the nostalgia toward which depictions of native life accelerated. This very disingenuousness reflects the doublethink of the culture at large, but also the conflicts in Griffith’s own thinking on matters of racial equity and social justice. It was a combination that would explode into controversy, protest, and grievance on all sides with the release of The Birth of a Nation. Given the blatant and ugly racism of the film, the casting of a large number of AfricanAmerican actors is more than ironic. It is suspiciously self-serving, and also interesting. Asked in the New York Sun (April 15, 1915) about directing the African-American cast, Griffith said: “They were the easiest. The Negro is a natural actor and I do not mind saying that among the 4,500 of them we took out of the fields, out of the shops and from every other place we found remarkable talent. A producer may some day put forth the tragedy of the Negro on the film – he will find men and women of that race fully competent” (Anon., “Producing a Play on a Stage 5 Miles Wide: D.W. Griffith’s Great Idea and How He Worked Out Historically Accurate Battle Scenes with 18,000 Actors and 3,000 Horses”, in The Birth of a Nation scrapbook, New York Public Library). It would be interesting to know, of course, in what Griffith considered this tragedy to consist if not in the abject miseries of slavery and the failure of Reconstruction. But as far as performance is concerned, the depiction of the African-American characters of The Birth of a Nation, like those of the Euro-Americans, is a mosaic of styles. The characterizations range from minstrel turns (the little set-piece between Jennie Lee’s “mammy” and “Stoneman’s servant” in the hallway of the rented house in Piedmont); to outrageous racial stereotyping (the hyper-passionate and oversexualized characters of Gus, Silas Lynch, and Lydia Brown being the most egregious); to the more insidious portrayals of “good Negroes” (the faithful Cameron house slaves) and comic ones (the pickininny types that populate Piedmont streets). 72

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There is a color line in the film, drawn at identified characters who no matter how minor (the “Negro disturber” and “barn burner”) are played by white actors. It is the mixture of cork-faced and “natural” performances, however, that complicates the story. The film demonstrates that many African-American extras were clearly given particular bits of business to play. These dominate some scenes – the Southern Union meeting, the riot in the Masters’ Hall, and Dr. Cameron’s humiliation, for instance. The details of the amalgamation of the African American with the cork-faced white roles in The Birth of a Nation is beyond the expertise of this essay. But by his own count, Griffith recruited thousands of African-American actors to portray the field hands, the Union soldiers and the general slave and eventually freed population of the Camerons’ home state in The Birth of a Nation. Thus far, the participation of the African-American cast has not been detailed. A full account of their experience, especially as creators of character in the film, would be intriguing to say the least. To complete an assessment of acting in the film, the subtleties of the interactions of the African-American cast with the director and the material of the film remains to be explored. 4. Acting and the Narrative Effect The formal schema of The Birth of a Nation is itself a mosaic of narrative addresses. Tableaux, facsimile, portraiture, minstrelsy, stage, and representational performances are all melded together in a seemingly unified narrative flow. Highly stylized character typology drawn from theatrical and literary sources (e.g., the slave stereotypes and the formal poses in the historical facsimiles) exist side-by-side with the purely fictional, “natural” performances most often attributed to the Griffith style of acting. Moreover, the formal strategies of a Griffith narrative with the insistence on cutting and the separation of performers into individualized spaces, often for the express purpose of focusing on a particular emotional display, directly impact the presentation of character in The Birth of a Nation. The habit of interrupting action by cutting and cutting away prolongs the moment, makes time subject to dramatic pace, and creates a sense of suspension and anticipation even during the smallest and quietest passages of exposition in the film. Thus is the drama sustained in a state of potency, of expectation, of speculation until the resolution is manufactured by the film’s structure. In such a formal context, the constant interruption of action also governs the general flow of gesture and ultimately, the amplitude of the emotional pitch. The rhythm of construction is deliberately interwoven with the rhythm of performance and a narrative of shifting registers. A recognition of this composite is necessary to account for the acting in this film. Scenes in which history is reenacted or mythologies are proposed, are disposed in explicitly formal, even codified postures. The opening of the film, for instance, displays one such set of codes. A recognizably Puritan figure stretches out his arms over slaves brought to the United States by northern commerce. This one condensed image, and the title that interprets it, allows the film neatly to insist that the North bears the covert burden for the carnage of the Civil War, and by implication, exonerates the South of its slave-holding responsibilities. At the other end of the film, the high pageantry surrounding the Ku Klux Klan tries to elevate the stature of that organization just as the race to the rescue tries to romanticize it. Griffith takes great pains to legitimize and elevate the KKK by tying it to “Scottish” (i.e., “ancient”, “European”) mythologies, and the initial scenes of Klan formation are either freighted with quasi-sacred symbolism (cross, mask, robe, blood, and flame), or weighted with lowering authority (masked and robed figures looming over alleged transgressors). The Civil War that contextualizes all the performances, and is the theme of the tableaux, pageants, and facsimiles, is itself a series of superbly staged illustrations, some more formal than others, some more condensed than others. Some invoke authority (e.g., like the illustrations imported from history books), and some evoke authenticity. Though the battle scenes, 73

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for instance, do not explicitly acknowledge the work of Matthew Brady or other military photographers of the Civil War, the disposition of the battlefield lines and trenches and especially of the bodies enacting “the Red Lane of Death” certainly alludes to the stark naturalism of that work and thereby seeks to confirm the veracity of the depiction – and by extension, of the film itself. However, these sequences too, fluctuate between the demonstrative, the metaphoric and the allusive, as illustrated particularly in transference of the emotional and physical vulnerability of the allegorical every-family portrait of Mother and three Children huddled in the rocks far above Sherman’s march to the sea, to the Cameron family in Piedmont who are formally posed in prayer for the battlefield safety of their son and brother Ben. The allegorical family, the reenacted carnage, and fictional Camerons are tied together by the shape of a “special effect” – the arc of an iris – that both softens their respective images and increases the sense of extreme peril that hangs over the particular family (the fictional Camerons), the mass of soldiers (portrayed as actuality), and, by extension, every family in the world of the film (as represented by the allegorical grouping). The image of Lincoln hangs over the first part of The Birth of a Nation as highly codified as any saint’s. The “presence” of the martyred President is summoned to the film by the conventions of Joseph Henabery’s makeup and the explicit facsimile environments in which the character usually appears. The actor’s physical build confirms the legendary stature of the man and measures not only Lincoln’s historical importance, but also the virtue that commands continuing respect and ultimately binds Northerners to Southerners in the common task of nation-building. But once again, facsimile and fiction can fluctuate as the dramatic moment requires. Although the facsimile performances, such as Lincoln signing the declaration of war, or the assassination in Ford’s Theatre, share the openly declared formality of re-creation, they suddenly may break into the demotic when the public moment shifts to a private register. Such a shift occurs when Lincoln, left alone after he has signed the act of war, takes a handkerchief, wipes his eyes and folds his hands over the hankie in prayer. The same sort of shift occurs when Mrs. Cameron comes to plead with the President for her son’s life. “The Great Heart” is the alternative Lincoln persona of the film and as such he is the prayer of North and South alike. When Elsie Stoneman brings Mrs. Cameron to Lincoln to beg for Ben’s life, she brings her into the presence of a civic deity. It is no surprise that Mrs. Cameron sinks to her knees in gratitude when Lincoln relents and cancels the order for Ben’s execution. This quasi-religious scene, the highlight of Josephine Crowell’s exceptionally delicate work in the film, ironically is also the most “realistic” for the Lincoln figure, who is given an opportunity to step out of the facsimile environment he usually inhabits to enter for a telling moment the “living” world of the film’s fiction. Later, the interaction between facsimile, actuality and stage re-creation in the Ford’s Theatre sequence similarly results in a wonderful orchestration of performance modes and spaces. The “natural” manner of the fictional characters (Elsie and her brother Phil attend the play) and the explicit re-creation of Our American Cousin (complete with stage effects and theater conventions) interpenetrate the reenactment of Lincoln’s assassination, each narrative mode overlaying its own code of performance on the sequence. The tension among them reaches its height in Raoul Walsh’s attitude-striking assassin, an intensely theatricalized depiction of John Wilkes Booth, an actor in real life. Walsh affects a specifically thespian pose in the moment before the assassination and follows the act itself with a literal expropriation of all three performance spaces – stage, facsimile, and cinema – as the Booth character literally “takes the stage” in a supremely climactic moment that throws both the theatre and the fictional environments into complete chaos (the actors scatter; the audience panics), as the facsimile environment around Lincoln resolves itself into a tableau of the great man’s dying moments – a grand structure that prepares for the narrative shift to the second “act” of the film. 74

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As has been mentioned, the film’s many African-American characters are portrayed in styles ranging from naturalistic (the incidental characters in streets, courtroom, lecture hall, fields), to minstrel stereotypes (watermelon and chicken-eaters, buck-and-wingers), to the cork-faced mammies and samboes, who themselves range from the white-lipped and goggleeyed, to the more “elevated” stereotypes of the “faithful” slaves whom Griffith had often celebrated in the Civil War films of the Biograph period, His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled (both 1911) being the chief exemplars of the genre. Along with Gus, the rapist, the other two major cork-faced roles also are played by white actors in an ominous and sexually over-determined manner that Griffith had used for betrayers and villains in Biograph films like The Informer (1912). (And it is of some interest that in that film, the character whose twisted arm signified a soul perverted by jealousy was enacted by none other than Henry B. Walthall, The Birth of a Nation’s upright hero.) Though the performances of Walter Long, George Siegmann, and Mary Alden are quite as detailed as any other principal in the film, they are meant to confirm only the most threatening stereotypes. Even reviewers inclined to tolerate the general climate of the film judged that characterizations in “the second part … inflame race hatred. The Negroes are shown as horrible brutes, given over to beastly excesses” (The Moving Picture World, March 13, 1915). This is particularly true of Gus, simply the bogeyman who embodies everything unmentionable about integration. In the evil mulatto, however, Griffith believed he had discovered ground ripe for the depiction of motive and psychological exposition rather than for the mere enactment of sexual menace. The characters of Silas Lynch and Lydia Brown are exploited to express the unregulated passions supposed to result from race mixing. Seething, resentful, disloyal, duplicitous, in the extreme, Lynch and Brown are seen as far more dangerous than the Southern cork-faces and African-American incidentals, who are portrayed as the simple dupes of carpetbaggers and scalawags. Siegmann’s and Alden’s performances are rendered at an emotional pitch quite unlike the treatment of any white character in the movie. Vaunting and cringing at the same time, both actors portray characters that burn with envy and ambition overlaid with a dangerous sexuality that is demonstrated in the business they are given to perform. From Mary Alden’s famous hand-licking, to George Siegmann’s falsely humble but slyly insinuating looks at the desirable but forbidden Lillian Gish, the actions of the mulatto characters stand in direct contrast to the chaste and modest restraint shown in romantic matters by the white characters – especially in contrast to the reverential gaze cast by Lynch’s rival, Ben Cameron. If Gus crudely represents the proximate danger of Reconstruction, Lynch and Brown demonstrate what the future would have been like if integration, with the twists of racial mixing, had not been effectively checked by the Ku Klux Klan. The only white character who approaches the perfidiousness of the two mulattos is their mentor and protector, Austin Stoneman. Ralph Lewis’s characterization often verges on a parody of emphatic self-importance. Chin thrown up, eyes widened imperiously and lower lip thrust forward whenever challenged, he is a wholly unlikable and unappetizing creature – the real villain of The Birth of a Nation. Stoneman is the obverse image of the “Great Heart”, and as with Henabery’s Lincoln, Lewis’ performance summons a historical figure – the Radical Republican, Thaddeus Stevens – to the film. Unlike Lincoln’s portrayal, however, Stevens’ character is polemicised. The screen image is given external traits that do not aim to represent an authentic historical personage, but rather to make an argument that demonstrates man’s internal faults. A fictional name differentiates his hard heart from Lincoln’s “great” one. A twisted body (club foot) emblematizes the twisted psyche, and a wig signifies the vanity of the man who, in the parlance of the film, would remake Lincoln’s benevolent world in the image of black appetites – a specific conflation of “Negro” with “sexual license”. 75

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The incidental characters – African- as well as Euro-American – who populate street, battlefield, facsimile, and tableaux also are emblematic as well as individual. Though most of these characters are anonymous, Griffith had the directorial habit of distributing various telling details throughout a crowd that always gave the impression of individuality within the mass. In the best moments one experiences a world of subsidiary but definite individuals who might have taken the stage if the story had turned in their direction. These roles range from the young Southern belles who catch the camera’s eye at the ball celebrating the victory at the Battle of Bull Run, to semi-formal portraits of the menaced families of Piedmont praying for deliverance from Reconstruction, to the naturalistic depictions of slave field labor, to the intrusive presence of the “mooning sentry” whose unwanted attention at the door of the Union hospital both invades Elsie Stoneman’s private space and prefigures Lynch’s unwanted gaze that precipitates the film’s finale. Whomever else these performances represent, all the incidental characters appear as exempla meant to illustrate and authenticate the historical point of view the movie presses. Their importance to that project, especially in the case of the African-American cast, should not be minimized. In January 1915, Selwyn A. Stanhope described for Photoplay (“The World’s Master Picture Producer”, January 1915, pp. 61–62, in RLCDS, vol. 446) the effect he thought Griffith was achieving as he directed the scene where the slaves dance before their Cameron masters. An older man outdances the younger ones because “he is back in the old days and these folks around him are his people … If you didn’t know, you would say he was a great actor. But he isn’t. He’s simply an old negro living over again the days of his youth” – a bit of verismo meant to confirm the authenticity of the film’s depiction of plantation life. The most colloquial, “unaffected” and detailed performances in The Birth of a Nation are, of course, reserved for the core fictional characters of the Cameron and Stoneman households. These portrayals utilize a range of dramatic strategies. Griffith introduces animal “familiars” as metaphors for character traits – puppies and kittens for the slavemaster, Dr. Cameron; a fluffy white cat for Elsie Stoneman; a frisky squirrel for the spirited Flora Cameron. In addition, despite the criticisms leveled at the older pantomimic code by Woods and Gish, realistic acting in this period, as Roberta Pearson has pointed out in Eloquent Gestures, still exhibits artifacts of older “gestural” systems. (The old Cameron house slave, for instance, is bent over slightly with his hand pressed to the ostensible crick in his back, retaining the posture of a type.) Also, most of the key performances in The Birth of a Nation are accompanied by actual speech of some kind. Actors on the screen (“unheard” by anyone in the audience who was not lip-reading) are nonetheless speaking lines to each other – though, true to his own claim, Henry B. Walthall seems to speak fewer lines than other performers. Thus, the gestural scope in The Birth of a Nation ranges from the demotic (that which would accompany colloquial conversation); to the demonstrative (speech with explicit mime as in Elsie raising her arms and pretending to pull a trigger when she asks her departing soldier brother to “shoot one for me”); to the allusive (animals that figure people); to the exotic (distorted gesture reserved for expressions of passion escalating or extreme). The most common example of the latter would be the arm-flinging exhibited by women in distress. But more specialized bits of business in this mode are Lydia Brown’s grotesque spitting and hand-licking as well as the moments of “sightless” introspection demonstrated to some degree by just about every main character at one time or another in the film. Overarching all the multiple addresses to characterization in The Birth of a Nation is the visual theme of the hero’s gaze fixed on the heroine’s portrait. Elsie’s ideal image is the special treasure Ben Cameron guards, and his capture of the woman herself is the true end of the film’s romance. Vigilance, therefore, is one the major themes of Henry B. Walthall’s performance and hundreds of bits of business are invented to establish and secure the presence of 76

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his character’s watchful eye on the screen. First discovered behind a picket fence, Ben is introduced as someone whose gaze establishes the reality of Piedmont. Though the shots are not strictly “point-of-view” set-ups, Ben’s perspective does coincide with the film’s narrative point of view. What he sees – and the way he sees it – will be the most significant angle of vision as it is the physical, emotional and ideological gaze of this character that directs the attention of the spectator around the world of the film. In the sequence that introduces the town, for instance, Ben sees his family well established in their community. He sees his little sister who is ironically introduced in the context of a game of hide-and-seek (prefiguring the melodramatic and desperate hide-and-seek with Gus that eventuates in Flora’s suicide). In a subsequent sequence, Ben superintends the initial moments of affection between his sister Margaret and family friend and wartime enemy, Phil Stoneman. Eventually, Ben’s witness to the indignities of Reconstruction motivates and justifies the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Most importantly, Ben sees the portrait of Elsie Stoneman which will occur and recur throughout the first third of the film until the real woman finally merges with the cherished image that idealizes the film’s politics. It is Henry B. Walthall’s artistic task to establish gravity of a gaze that holds all the various narrative addresses of The Birth of a Nation together. It is Griffith’s directorial task to pace this performance in such a way as to establish its authority over the spectator’s experience of the world of the film. The famous gate sequence, for instance, during which Ben Cameron returns home from the war to a town blighted and a home ruined, is preceded by a full ten seconds of visual “silence”. The viewer watches an empty street before the shabby house until the tip of a shadow intrudes, and only then a ragged soldier appears. Employing Ben’s controlling perspective, Griffith combines performance space and performance pace to achieve the kind effect he referred to when he described the audience’s role in doing “the larger share of acting for [the] scene”. Ben’s view of the ravaged Piedmont calls for recollection – a comparison with all the other times that his gaze directed the viewer to the details of his street. Little incidents of happy family life, the street celebrations that followed the success at Bull Run, the martial splendor of Confederate troops departing to bring “the cause” to final victory – all are compacted in his (re)view of his street. His apprehension of a sorry ruin is an invitation to the viewer to merge emotional (and ideological) perspectives with the character in an act of identification that constitutes the total performance of the scene. The same effect is attempted from the opposite emotional direction in Miriam Cooper’s portrayal of Margaret Cameron. This character seems constantly to look away as events in the film become too painful for her to see. Introduced walking away from the camera, she is first an illustration of ideal Southern womanliness and only afterward an individual woman. Subsequently, Margaret’s is the gaze that becomes lost in the past, the bitter contemplation of what has been rather than what stands before her – most particularly, the face and form of her suitor, Phil Stoneman. Indeed, the performance that married eye and soul became Cooper’s trademark, as reaffirmed by an article in the Milwaukee Journal (April 11, 1918, in RLCDS, vol. 346, pp. 247–306), which noted that Cooper’s eyes were “‘Soul Mirrors’.…They flash, they melt. One is so fascinated by her wonderful eyes and their expressions that other features are forgotten … But if you look closely, you can see everything that is in her mien photographed in the ‘mirror of her soul’”. In the liquid gaze and physical stillness that Cooper created to portray her, Margaret’s stare is as introspective as Ben’s vigilance is prospective. As he points to the exterior (and political) architecture of the Southern milieu, she indicates its interior (and psychological) architecture and elicits the spectator’s affections as Ben solicits the spectator’s approbation. The awakening of her character – the acknowledgment of Phil Stoneman’s love – can only come after the KKK has reversed the South’s defeat and freed it from the nightmare of defeat and Reconstruction. 77

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Moments of intense emotion often stray into the public eye in The Birth of a Nation, but in ways constructed almost exclusively for the attention of the spectator rather than to elicit the reactions of the fictional characters. In some of these scenes, Griffith seems perilously close to reviving the classic “mistake” Frank Woods had criticized in 1909: “the tendency [actors] have to represent actions and conversations as taking place behind the backs of people who in real life could not have failed to hear or observe [them]” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, November 13, 1909). Indeed, the kind of commotion kicked up by Lydia Brown’s hysterical tantrum would undoubtedly be heard by any but the most deaf or obtuse Austin Stoneman. Yet, when the character exits his study, Ralph Lewis’ performance gives no evidence whatsoever of a man who is concerned that his housekeeper is having a fit just outside his door. Rather, he enters the shot reading a document and registers mild surprise, then more serious concern, then erotic interest in the torn remnants of clothing allegedly left by Senator Sumner’s attack on the housekeeper. But Woods’ caveat makes note only of the dangers of trying to demonstrate an abstract state (e.g., thought or psyche) through melodramatic gesture. It does not recognize the flexibility Griffith gained by occasionally daring to go to extremes of physical action in the film’s performances. There are many moments in The Birth of a Nation when “reality” and “naturalism” seem to be far less interesting than the direct exposure of the traumatic dimensions of a moment. At such points, the simple stillness affected by Miriam Cooper does not give adequate access to the character’s inner life. At these times, Griffith fearlessly transgresses his own realistic ideal and opts for ornate and even grotesque posturing to expose the deepest truths of characters as he saw them. In one sense, these confirm Pearson’s observation of the existence of the older “gestural” code co-existing with the developing “verisimilar” one. Indeed, The Birth of a Nation occasionally exhibits the artifacts of the older style of acting out rather than acting from within. In polemical characterizations, like Mary Alden’s Lydia Brown, such directions could be seen as strategic. The expropriation of the antique style intensified a point that was already extreme. But the core characters of The Birth of a Nation are also driven to performance extremes. Precedent for these moments can be found in the Biographs. From the structural separation and reunification of homicidal women until the dramatic breaking point in The Female of the Species (1912); to Blanche Sweet’s inward-gazing lapse into madness in The Painted Lady (1912); to Lillian Gish’s neurotic meltdown in The Mothering Heart (1913), Griffith practiced excerpting characters from the “normal” flow of time and space when dramatic moments became psychically “abnormal”. In The Birth of a Nation, Mae Marsh’s “sunlight and shadows” performance in particular is sustained in two registers, the extraordinary breaking out of the ordinary to reveal the emotional scope of Flora Cameron’s wartime experiences. Marsh demonstrates this dramaturgic tactic in miniature when Flora is hiding with her sister in the family cellar to elude Union marauders. Fear alternates with hysterical giggling, expressions changing almost instantaneously on Marsh’s face throughout the ordeal. More radical are the passages where Marsh’s performance goes suddenly “catatonic” with an emotion too strong to externalize, only to emerge from the abstract remove with a violent and spontaneous physical demonstration that releases her pent-up feelings. Standing in the capacious anteroom of the Cameron mansion, Flora reacts to the news of her brother’s death with an almost hysterical blindness. Marsh widens her eyes and fixes her expression, the character’s apprehension of the outside world shut off as, body swaying, Flora disappears inward, withdrawing from the unspeakable. As she comes back to “reality”, her posture breaks into gestures forcefully expressing a desire for vengeance against the enemy who has caused her family so much pain. In the next moment, Flora’s high emotional energy has dissipated again and she and her sister Margaret physically collapse onto the parlor settee and are plunged into the depths of sorrow. 78

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Each state Marsh enacts is a “natural” one. But the continuity between each natural expression is broken almost expressionistically to illustrate the character’s extreme distress. Nor is Flora the only character who detaches from “reality” to become “possessed” by emotional specters too powerful to exorcise “natural” gesture. After her character breaks her engagement to Ben Cameron, Lillian Gish enacts the same catatonic sightlessness when Elsie Stoneman withdraws into the privacy of feelings too profound for an actress to perform. In each of these cases, Griffith uses inaccessibility as cleverly as he has used grotesque expression to reveal the inner secrets of his screen characters. Playful or catatonic, however, the visual center of the film is Elsie Stoneman, and Lillian Gish’s performance is managed to explore the trajectory of this pivotal characterization. During the course of the film, Elsie makes a transition from dutiful, if deluded, daughter, to loyal wife. The theme of her character is an awakening – to love as well as to the truths of the Southern way of life and the fallacies of her father’s ideology. The translation of a daughter’s loyalty from father to husband is a venerable theme in Griffith’s Biograph work and was explored by him in many variations. On the epic stage of The Birth of a Nation, however, Elsie Stoneman becomes much more than daughter or wife. The final race to the rescue not only saves her but the South itself. This identification of woman with cause lifts Elsie to an iconic level of significance far exceeding the dimensions of the fictional character and much more akin to the elevation that Gish would experience as “the most beautiful blonde in the world”. Star and character pass through the film’s structure, repositioned from real woman (and daughter) to archetypal Woman (star and Southern ideal). The structural and dramaturgic strategies of the film propose and confirm this dual ascendancy. Griffith begins Elsie’s journey in one of the most elaborate introductory sequences in any of his films. She is first established in full shot with her father, Austin Stoneman, through a bit of theatrical business. She stands behind him and wipes the sweat from under his wig. This peculiar bit of naturalism immediately is followed by an image that best can be described as a family portrait: a medium shot of father and daughter each speaking intimately to the other, but facing the camera in a pose so nearly formal that it might be composed for a still rather than a motion picture camera. This is the first time portraiture is invoked in connection with Elsie – and the first time that Griffith melds Elsie’s character with a star-quality close-up of Lillian Gish – but it will hardly be the last. In the very next sequence, which introduces the Stoneman “boys”, Phil and Todd, Elsie/Gish is introduced again in a passage of no less than thirteen shots that slowly reveal her in connection with the younger men in her family. They are seated in the garden of their Pennsylvania home. Though on first viewing she is not immediately identifiable, Elsie does appear in the background on a porch. After a close-up of a letter detailing the upcoming visit to the Camerons in Piedmont, there is a cut to a drape on the porch and a pair of shoes. As with the introduction of Margaret Cameron, Elsie is temporarily masked to portray her traits rather than her face. A closer shot focuses on a white cat and hands that pick it up. A shot of the brothers follows; then a return to the shoes. At this point, Elsie is still hidden behind the drape and represented only by the combination of cat and small white-stockinged feet. Only after another cut to the brothers, is the drape finally swept aside to reveal Elsie holding the cat. A charming knees-up image catches Gish, sunlit and sun-kissed, before the sequence is allowed to proceed in longer shot as Elsie runs forward to see what her brothers are up to. All this little detail is, of course, meant to captivate the viewer and establish a sense of spontaneity and “life-likeness” in the family scenes. But over the course of the fifteen shots that start in her father’s parlor, Elsie’s characterization has been positioned and repositioned a number of times. At the center is Lillian Gish’s actual performance. The actress renders a young lady of modest experience and some reserve, close to her father and playfully affec79

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tionate with brothers who seem still to be boys as she still seems girlish. (Lillian Gish is only one of the actors in the film given to hopping in moments of excitement.) But the masking that initially hides Elsie’s figure from the viewer creates a combination of synecdoche (a charming little foot) and simile (soft as a kitten) that specifically points to Elsie’s signal qualities as a charmer. The star’s physical beauty also is invoked twice on Elsie’s behalf – first, in the “portrait” with Austin Stoneman; then, in a specific shot in the Pennsylvania sequence that halts the actress at the foot of the porch stairs, white cat in arms, sunlight liberally streaming around her delightful face and form. These qualities – charm, domestic loyalty and romance – are elevated during the next sequence when the Stonemans visit Piedmont and the actual Elsie becomes the portraited ideal on which Ben’s imagination becomes fixed. The woman who eventually emerges from that portrait has a public life that includes access to the facsimile history of the film, and she engages in lovely colloquial exchanges with the other fictional characters of the film. But the ideal as represented by Gish’s blonde beauty is the pole toward which Elsie’s character is constantly being drawn by Griffith’s visualization of the actress – and the attention of the film’s men is the emblem of this gravitational pull. The famous “moon”-ing sentry is often regarded as a moment of particularly charming sentiment. But that man’s insistent look is not wanted by Elsie and actually mediates the male look in the film between Ben’s adoration and Lynch’s outright affront to the female ideal Elsie/Gish represents. For all interchanges into which the character is drawn – and most of the time Gish rises to the challenges of her role with force – the imagery built around her character is always pulling actress and role away from the “reflection of human nature” and toward apotheosis. In fact, it is Elsie’s character who navigates the greatest representational range in the film. She directly interacts with the two historical figures – Lincoln and Stevens (Stoneman) – who stand at the antipodes of the film’s political arguments about Reconstruction and nationbuilding. She participates in the historical reenactment of Lincoln’s assassination. She has a full role as a character in the fiction of the film and yet her association with Stoneman (Stevens) also confers quasi-actuality on her character. And finally, she is the ideal woman, the repository of the male gaze so thoroughly that the final battle for the fortunes of the South is fought over her body. It is this fluctuation between real and ideal, concentrated in Elsie and illustrated both in Gish’s performance and Griffith’s performance of Gish, that most fully implicates the audience in the ideological aspirations and conclusions of the film. It is his idealization of Elsie that identifies Ben as a man who has ideals, and by extension, elevates the actions of the KKK which he leads. Conversely, in seeking to possess the body and not “soul” of this woman, Lynch demonstrates his inability to conceive highly enough. His gaze reflects the baseness of all his conceptions – in this case the amorous is the political. The characterization of Elsie Stoneman, woman and ideal, is a combination of Lillian Gish’s gifts and D.W. Griffith’s fearless exploitation of the broadest possible definition of performance – even to the transgression of his own ideal of representational realism. Gish’s abilities as a performer who could act as someone would “in like circumstances” and yet be perceived as “the most beautiful blonde in the world” established her in the culture of stardom as well as in the firmament of Piedmont. 5. Director to Actor; Actor to Audience The Robinson Locke theatrical scrapbooks, collected by a former publisher of The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, and maintained in the archives of the Theater and Film Department of the New York Public Library, were an invaluable aid in the preparation of this essay. The Birth of a Nation is documented in Volumes 203 and 446. Individual actors as follows: Miriam Cooper (volume 83, 346), Josephine Crowell (volume 353), Lillian Gish (Vol. 202, 203), Mae 80

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Marsh (envelopes 1325, 1326), George Siegmann (envelope 2104), Henry B. Walthall (Volume 303). The references to local newspaper and contemporary magazine articles can be found in this source. Many of the clippings in the Locke scrapbooks affirm fidelity to everyday life as the measure of ideal screen performance. They address it directly, as a critical value, but also indirectly in their insistence on chronicling the home lives of the actors who have caught the public eye. These clippings also document that mixture of fascination and desire that would elevate the members of Griffith’s troupe off the screen and into the firmament of stardom. Acting in The Birth of a Nation exhibits that same range, from intimacy to apotheosis. Many of the roles in the film do indeed exhibit a gestural pattern that seems to be led by the “normal” conversational congress that people hold with each other. But ostensible “normalcy” also masks an ambitious level of artifice that was not always recognized by or spoken of among Griffith, his players, his critics, and his observers. Radically compiling narrative codes at every level of formality, Griffith actually took the same freedom in composing performances as he did in the assembly of shot sequences. Though the composite effect was meant to deliver, and was received as, striking realism, each moment of the film converges and diverges from actuality as local narrative and emotional effects require. This fluctuation between the ordinary and the symbolic creates opportunities for the audience to enter into the construction of the performances and ultimately invites emotional complicity with the sweeping arguments of the film itself. The extraordinary immediacy that The Birth of a Nation seemed able to communicate even to hostile audiences can perhaps be summed up in a comment made in Motion Picture (Jean Darnell, “The Personal Side of D.W. Griffith”, January 17, in RLCDS, vol. 212) that reflects on Griffith’s dramaturgy. “[Griffith] seemed to have some different way in which he directed his people …”, Jean Darnell mused – “perhaps he was speaking to the photoplay world through his players”. The Birth of a Nation remains one of his most striking statements. Joyce Jesionowski

THEATRICAL SOURCES The title credits to The Birth of a Nation state that Griffith’s film is drawn from Thomas Dixon Jr’s novel The Clansman (1905). Not cited in the credits, but an evident source nonetheless, is an earlier novel by Dixon, The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865–1900 (1902). As Linda Williams has indicated in her Playing the Race Card, footprints from these two sources are everywhere in the completed film. However, equally – and perhaps even more important as a source – is a third Dixon work which receives less attention from Williams and which, unlike the earlier Dixon works, is unavailable at an Internet library site. This is a stage melodrama, also dating from 1905 and also called The Clansman. On tour in the Southern and “border” states from 1905, and from 1906 through 1908 in the Northeastern states and the Midwest, this racist, thoroughly obnoxious, deeply offensive – but skilfully-written – melodrama unites characters from both novels in one narrative and enacts key moments from the latter novel, notably the post-bellum reunion of Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron; the persecution and abuse of the Cameron family by newly liberated and enfranchised African Americans exhilarated by sudden empowerment; the abduction, rape, and murder of thirteen year-old Flora Cameron; the founding of the South Carolina chapter of the Ku Klux Klan under the leadership of the Confederate hero General Nathan Forrest; tensions between the Stoneman and Cameron families caused by the latter’s refusal to submit to rule by African Americans (which Stoneman perceives as “equality” and “uniting the Nation” and the Camerons as tyranny and racial contamination); and a final act which depicts the imprisonment of Elsie Stoneman menaced by a lust-driven Silas Lynch, Lynch’s usurping of military authority, ordering the 81

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immediate execution of Ben Cameron, and a timely rescue of the endangered principals by masked Klansmen, led by Ben Cameron, who seize and imprison Lynch. Certainly Dixon’s The Clansman, novel and play, are hugely significant to the content and form of The Birth of a Nation, and I intend to discuss Dixon’s stage-play at a further point in this essay. However, to locate this film wholly in the context of these immediate sources is to ignore decades of theatrical practice, in effect to overlook as many as a hundred popular dramas that, from the years of post-war peace, revisit the American Civil War (1861–65) and the Reconstruction period (1865–85). These plays establish an interlocking body of theatrical conventions and audience expectations from which Dixon is the beneficiary, and Dixon thereafter knowingly manipulates and subverts these to theatrical and polemic effect. For similar reasons, to focus wholly on the declared sources for The Birth of a Nation is also to discount more than a decade of Civil War and Reconstruction-era films, as many as twentyfour in number, twelve of these by Griffith himself, which developed on the back of what had become by 1905 a sizeable national repertory of stage-plays dramatising sectional and trans-sectional perceptions of the War Between the States and its sometimes turbulent, sometimes healing aftermath. Therefore, my purpose is to locate the sources for The Clansman and The Birth of a Nation in their respective contexts, a strategy which necessitates reading from stage-play to stageplay, from stage-play to film, and from film to film. I will argue that stage-plays and films which have as their subjects episodes from the American Civil War and its aftermath, especially the aftermath experienced in the defeated states of the Confederacy, are a part of an active continuum of perception, analysis, and interpretation which attempts to identify and understand the causes, conduct, and results of the most traumatic event in American history. Further, this on-going process aims to develop an agreed history and a unified national mythology from this contentious material. The Civil War has never produced an agreed historical account. Divergent histories, which, in turn, directly affect the form and content of dramatic narratives, North and South, begin from the moment of Union victory. The Ku Klux Klan was secretly formed in 1865; the Southern Historical Society was founded four years later by William Dunning elaborating the “Confederate myth” of a genteel South victimised by a boorish, predatory North who burned and pillaged indiscriminately as they overran and starved the Confederacy. Both the Klan and the slightly more academic historians express defeat in terms reminiscent of the English Civil War: on the one side, gentlemen cavaliers and their ladies brought low by the dangerous ideologues and peasantry of their opponents – in the American South, a cavalier plantation culture extinguished beneath swarms of Yankee profiteers and mischief-making abolitionists without manners, breeding, or chivalry as their birthright; on the other side, an oppressive US federal government unwilling to concede to sovereign states their legitimate right to make their own laws. Southern historians add to these charges a Northern urban population incapable of understanding Southern ways or the happy plantation life which benefited both white masters and African-American slaves helpless to care for or govern themselves. Southern manhood, declared a natural aristocracy of gentlemen and yeoman farmers, was charged with the care and protection of its womenfolk. Northern interpretations of the War were expressed through the national veterans’ organisation, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), formed in 1866, and are as simplistic and partisan as those of the Confederate veterans: War was fought to preserve the Union from the devilish rebel secessionists. Liberation of African-American slaves from oppressive masters was an afterthought, but a necessary and humane act. There is little room for common ground between the two exhausted adversaries. Conflicting views of the war were thereafter maintained and elaborated through veter82

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ans’ organisations formed to foster comradeship among the many local militias and state regiments. Once established and seeking social events which might keep memories of their roles in the conflict alive, these organisations began to stage amateur melodramas in local theatres and in GAR meeting halls. GAR melodramas are boastful and crude, largely focusing on Northern successes and enacting struggles to chastise rebellious armies and treasonous individuals and to draw errant rebels back into the Union. The damaged infrastructure of the South and its large rural population necessarily meant that there were fewer Southern plays, and these, too, are of indifferent quality. Southern melodramas highlight the hypocritical wickedness of the abolitionists and the ways in which Northern forces pillage from Southern homes and insult civilians. Because these amateur dramas must function within the conventions of the melodramatic genre, they must therefore include an identifiable villain. Within the conventions of these plays, the villain is usually one of the enemy’s soldiers – sometimes in civilian clothing and spying on his hosts – who unsuccessfully tries to thwart the army’s battle plans but who also has time to meddle in the love affairs between a military hero and a local heroine – or, if not the principal female, a woman from the opposing side of the Mason-Dixon Line, the political boundary between the Northern “free” states and the slave-holding states of the Confederacy, who is attracted to the man, but morally opposed to his ideological position. Indeed, it is from these amateur melodramas that a convention arises which will transfer intact to professional melodrama and which will then be exploited, in turn, by both Dixon and Griffith. This convention is an intersectional love affair, in some dramas a pair of love affairs, between a man from the South and a woman from the North or, conversely, a Northern man and a Southern woman – or sometimes, as we witness in The Clansman and The Birth of a Nation, a pair of couples attracted by love but opposed and repelled by political and social ideology. Often the attraction begins before the war, and the couples are then separated by conflict until military operations inadvertently bring them together. Thus many of these dramas take place in two time-periods: the antebellum years, when courtship is feasible, and the wartime years when military victory decides issues. As professional dramatists begin to invade amateur territory from the mid-1870s and attempt to express a national concern for a cessation to sectional conflict, a further necessary step is taken. Rather than end their melodramas with a victory for one military unit and a defeat for its foes, professional dramatists extend the drama into the post-bellum period and look for means of resolution and reconciliation. Such a realignment of concern usually obliges a final act set in the post-war period and brings together couples estranged through misunderstandings or, as frequently and as plausibly, through sectional and ideological difference. In transsectional weddings and in restored amity between estranged partners, lovers, siblings, and parents and children, and with a further final exposure of a villain’s role in fomenting discord (often with the expulsion of the villain from the recovering world inhabited by the drama’s characters), the action of these plays dramatises the healing and reintegration of wounded and seriously fragmented families, regions, and ultimately, the nation itself. Reinforcing ideas of division, mutual loss, and ultimate, if painful, reconciliation is achieved through a deliberate symmetry of characterisation which enacts discord, death or injury in battle – sometimes of brothers, cousins, or boyhood friends. The same principle of symmetry divides and reunites lovers. It is significant to both the work of Dixon and the subsequent filmmaking of Griffith that professional Civil War dramas employing these conventions were still popular, attracting audiences in metropolitan theatres, village halls, and rural tent fit-up theatres well into the 1930s. It is now, in the context of an extant body of popular theatre, that we may regard Dixon’s dramatic rendering of The Clansman. My description is notional rather than absolute, based 83

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not a single static text, but on as many as five variants which survive in American and British libraries. Touring The Clansman in three discrete companies over a three-year period, in which theatres of various sizes in various regions were visited and where audiences met the production with differing expectations of entertainment, would inevitably force changes to the performance text. These variants are apparent in decisions to admit to some productions – but perhaps not all – musical and variety turns in the form of African-American dances, songs and “plantation melodies”, often found between 1875–1910 in touring melodrama “combination” companies, and to introduce, perhaps as mimed entr’actes, a pair of out-of-door episodes which depicted the Klan’s mounted night riders preparing their violent vengeance (the seizure, castration, and murder of Gus) and, in the closing moments of the final act, timely intervention (the rescue of Elsie and Stoneman from Lynch’s home). Dixon begins his play at a point where the fourth act of a Civil War play normally begins and where, in Reconstruction-era dramas, economic, social, and romantic necessities, delayed and unfulfilled by the calamities of war, will set the agenda for three further acts. Unlike the models on which he builds and whose expectations he recurrently invokes, Dixon ventures into darkness beyond reconciliation or even impotent stalemate. The Clansman is a four-act drama that begins in a defeated South on the day in 1867 when enfranchised freed men, paying back their former masters for more than a century of slavery, use force, intimidation, fraudulent (repeat or multiple) voting, and premature poll-closing to win places in the State Legislature of South Carolina whilst preventing Whites from voting. Through exposition, we learn that Ben Cameron, wounded on the battlefield and sent to a Washington hospital, has met and fallen in love with Elsie Stoneman. Cameron is now practicing law in his home state. It is in this first act that the audience becomes acquainted with a linked constellation of greater and lesser villains: Alec, later Sheriff; Gus, later commander of a company of an African-American militia; Silas Lynch; and, crucially, Austin Stoneman. Stoneman, at this point and for much of the action, is the architect of Southern humiliation. An abolitionist and the secret leader of “The Black League”, he has arrived with a proclamation enforcing intermarriage between Whites and African Americans. Unlike Griffith’s Stoneman, whose intentions to foster race-mixing are led by his own sexual slavery to the Mulatto servant, Lydia, Dixon’s Stoneman – true to his hateful abolitionist principles – is clear-sighted in his intent “to unite the Nation” through racial interbreeding. Only when he objects in the strongest possible racist terms to Lynch’s proposed marriage to Elsie, is his hypocrisy exposed. The second act plays on expectation generated by the nation-wide popularity of such Reconstruction-era melodramas as Charles T. Dazey’s In Old Kentucky (1893). In this drama a Kentucky farm, encumbered with liens and unpaid mortgages, is rescued from the predations of the play’s villain, a self-styled “trader in niggers”, by a racehorse’s timely win of a purse large enough to clear all debts and to assure that the approved couples are united. Indeed, the home threatened with foreclosure by a villain and his henchmen acting as a sheriff’s bailiffs is so common as to be one of the parodied clichés of melodrama, but in Dixon’s hands this cliché is still powerful in the anxiety it generates. Retaining the pattern of action but altering audience understanding of oppressed and oppressors, Dixon introduces the Cameron home, now about to be auctioned to pay tax debts unfairly imposed by the new African-American sheriff and soon to be claimed by Silas Lynch. Ignoring all chances to find the money to meet this arbitrary debt, the auctioneer, urged on by Lynch, rushes the bidding, only to be thwarted by Elsie Stoneman’s capping bid which restores the property to the Cameron family. The new African-American masters nevertheless disarm White militia units and seize Ben Cameron. About to resist and fight back, Cameron is counselled by General Forrest that through the Klan there is “a better way”. The Clansman’s third act begins with family and friends happily celebrating Flora Cameron’s 84

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thirteenth birthday. A visitor, at first peering into the home and then, when the elder Whites’ backs are turned, intruding to bring Flora a box of chocolates – and to make it evident that he is strongly attracted to her – is Gus. Ben Cameron ejects Gus from the house, but moments later it is apparent that Flora has been abducted. A search is organised. Anxiety about her whereabouts and safety prevails until a pre-arranged signal, a single shot, informs that she is dead. The act ends with the formation of a posse to pursue and execute Gus and to fling his mangled body onto the steps of the governor’s home. The final act is set in the home of Silas Lynch, now Acting State Governor, as imminent exposure for corruption will prompt the flight of White Governor (and abolitionists’ catspaw) Shrimp. Lynch now exercises his authority to order the arrest and execution of Ben Cameron. Cameron is apprehended and taken away to be shot but is able to warn Nellie, a young Southern woman who has committed herself to the cause of the Klan. Lynch then proposes marriage to Elsie Stoneman, but, when rebuffed by Elsie, he locks her in an adjoining office, instructing her guard to kill her immediately if gunshots are heard. Lynch then attempts to blackmail Stoneman into forcing his daughter to marry Lynch and is, for a second time, rebuffed as Stoneman reveals his personal loathing of intermarriage and the disgrace and contamination that Elsie’s marriage to Lynch would bring to her, himself, and his undiluted White aristocratic lineage. Lynch is then prepared to violate Elsie to give her no option but to marry, and Stoneman is prepared to shoot Lynch (and, with the sound of that gunshot, sacrifice his own daughter) when robed and hooded Klansmen, brought by Nellie and Ben, rush in, liberating Stoneman and Elsie. United and reconciled to Ben’s Klan leadership, Elsie and Ben receive assurance from Stoneman that the (presumably African-American) army of occupation will be withdrawn from South Carolina and that, henceforward, “WATER BE ALLOWED TO FIND ITS OWN LEVEL”. Typical for plays with a decided sectional interest, The Clansman was launched and premiered on tour. Although the company was eventually booked into major American cities – Newark, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Baltimore, Washington, Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis – these performances followed in 1906–08 only after The Clansman had proved successful on the road. Promoted as “an answer to Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, the company’s itinerary began on 23 September 1905, with two nights at Norfolk, Virginia, then played an additional two nights in the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, before heading south playing one-night stands and split-weeks through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, returning to Atlanta, then travelling westward to Chattanooga before swinging south through Alabama and Louisiana, playing Christmas week in New Orleans. Reviews were favourable, and weekly receipts exceeded $9,000. On the basis of this showing, a second company was rehearsed and, in January of 1906, was sent on a westward circuit through Kentucky and Ohio before turning southward through Georgia, then returning to Norfolk to play through the duration of the Jamestown exposition which ended in March 1907. A third troupe, the Northern Company, was formed in the Autumn of 1906, playing dates in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Brooklyn, Massachusetts, Connnecticut, upstate New York, and eventually westward through Illinois and Missouri. The Western Company spent the season of 1906 on tour through Arkansas, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, and Maryland. Given the range of The Clansman tours and different sectional experiences of African Americans and “other” cultures present in the United States forty years after the ending of the Civil War, it is unlikely that audiences invariably interpreted the play in the same terms. Throughout the border states and the South it is probably reasonable to assume that audiences responded to the depiction of the new populations of freed men and women in light of the dangers which Dixon ascribed to them within the drama, and again in terms he used when afterwards he addressed his audiences in curtain-speeches advocating the repatriation, voluntary or not, of all African Americans to African shores. 85

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In the Midwest, Northern, and Eastern states, the responses The Clansman drew are likely to have been more complex. New York City had endured race riots in 1863 when Lincoln’s call for the conscription of further Union troops had resulted in working-class immigrants, chiefly Irish, attacking, beating – and in some instances, murdering – free African Americans. In many Midwestern states African-American farm labourers were employed. But American industrial and urban areas had already faced what was perceived as a further and greater crisis from 1895 when it became apparent that patterns of immigration to America had substantially changed. No longer were immigrants – blue-eyed, fair-haired, and chiefly Protestant – arriving in substantial numbers from Western and Northern Europe. Rather, between 1895–1910, immigration of people from Southern and Central Europe contributed to the largest increase in population that the United States had or would undergo in its entire history. The new immigrants – dark haired, dark-eyed, and sometimes swarthy in skin colour – looked different from previous newcomers. Moreover, many were Jewish; still more were Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic. The United States, fighting an ill-advised and unnecessary war with Spain in Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, had the questionable fortune to win and, as an unforeseen result, to bestow American citizenship upon Roman-Catholic Cubans and Filipinos. Thus, to some audiences, African Americans and the threat they allegedly posed were equated with “other” immigrants who now so visibly disrupted earlier perceptions of the American physiognomy. Griffith, developing The Birth of a Nation from Dixon’s novels and stage-play, returns to the traditional structure and conventions of Civil War melodrama and plays strongly upon audience expectations which both structure and conventions foster. If our attention is focused on the first part of this film, there is little to tell us that The Birth of a Nation is substantially different from this film’s numerous theatrical predecessors. Nor, apart from duration, is the quality of filming, editing, and performance, in The Birth of a Nation visibly different from films which Griffith had earlier made for Biograph nor, likewise, which fellow directors had filmed for Kalem, Vitagraph, Imp, Klaw & Erlanger, Keystone, and Domino. From the moment that Phil and Tod Stoneman declare their intent to visit the Cameron family, travelling from Pennsylvania to South Carolina, we are aware of classic binary pairs of North–South relationships forming: Margaret Cameron and Phil Stoneman examining a cotton “blossom” in “Love Valley”, and Duke and Wade forming a juvenile alliance, described in the intertitle as “CHUMS – THE YOUNGER SONS – NORTH AND SOUTH”. That some of these binaries lead to romance and others to death fall within the givens of acknowledged conventions. The dreadful carnage of Petersburg underlines the symmetries of futile sacrifice and ideological obsession. Griffith has exploited this convention of symmetry and destabilising asymmetry in filming battlefield encounters between Ben Cameron and Phil Stoneman, in depicting the simultaneous deaths of Tod Stoneman and Duke Cameron and a further intentionally unbalancing death of Wade Cameron. The assassination of Lincoln is likely to be our first awareness that Griffith is departing from orthodox melodramatic dramaturgy, introducing an element which is neither present in American stage-plays nor in previous films. The Lincoln assassination episode is a deliberate intrusion. Thus it is in the opening moments of the second part that Griffith’s overall strategy is apparent: he has made one long film narrative from two discrete plays, using the expectations generated by the typical “Union (or Northern) Civil War melodrama” to season and play against the expectations raised in The Clansman, a “Confederate (or Southern) Civil War melodrama”. In effect, Griffith has restored the first three acts of the standard Civil War melodrama but has then reinstalled Dixon’s bleak long “fourth act”. There is an inherent conflict between these two melodramatic forms, but there is also a synergy gained by yoking together the two antagonistic dramas. Thereafter Griffith adheres to the plot, if not always to the finer details of the earlier stage work. His changes are chiefly in motivations which propel the characters and in re-weight86

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ing characters to add emphasis to different points, notably to valorise White characters and to villainise African Americans. Such alterations are apparent in the characters of the Cameron men. Where Dixon makes Dr Richard Cameron vigorous and active in his immediate scorn for and resistance to Stoneman’s abolitionist views, Griffith ages the elder Cameron, making him vulnerable to harassment and less able to withstand persecution. Griffith’s change foregrounds Henry Walthall’s Ben Cameron, depicting him as a character transformed by war, love, and continual adversity into a leader who will change the South. Against our better judgement, we are compelled to like Walthall’s “Little Colonel”. That is one of the skills of well-crafted melodrama: to oblige us to side with those who are threatened and unjustly treated. To this purpose Griffith also reinflects Dixon’s villains, reinterpreting them for audiences further from the post-bellum South and less able to understand the South’s readiness to lay the cause for the Civil War at the feet of the Northern abolitionists. Stoneman, the abolitionist whose principles are compromised only when his daughter might become the mate of an African American, is reconfigured by Griffith to be driven by lust for a Mulatto serving woman. Stoneman’s early capitulation to Lydia and the growing implication that Stoneman is succumbing to the ravages of an unspecified venereal infection reduce the importance of his villainy and render this character less threatening – and less inherently evil – than Silas Lynch. Lynch, scheming and self-serving in Dixon’s stage-play, is now credited with intellect, guile and ruthlessness which turn him into a formidable screen villain, one who threatens rape, political dictatorship, and the total extinction of Southern White culture. Griffith’s Flora Cameron, played on screen by Mae Marsh, is older than Dixon’s thirteen year-old Flora but as innocent and able to make a calculated choice between submitting to Gus’ rape or accepting death to dishonour – and in that choice to make a further statement about the repugnance of Griffith’s African-American villains. Where – in what theatre and in what circumstances – and when Griffith became aware of Dixon’s The Clansman is still unknown. What we know from Griffith’s earlier work is that he was steeped in the conventions of the commercial theatre, which shaped the plays he watched, in which he appeared as a jobbing actor, which he tried to reproduce as a screenwriter, and which he subsequently emulated in eleven Civil War films for Biograph. In assessing The Birth of a Nation it is apparent that Griffith, innovative in so many respects, is making no attempt to outgrow or to repudiate these theatrical conventions. Rather, these conventions pass into his hands much as they had passed into Thomas Dixon’s, and again, as they had been exploited in devising a sinister stage drama, they are invoked and active in giving effective form to a landmark (if no less sinister) American film. David Mayer

MUSIC Joseph Carl Breil’s score for D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is considered a seminal silent film orchestral accompaniment; what is more, it was considered so at the time of its composition. Much of its importance is a reflection of the glory of Griffith’s narrative achievement, and the fact that Breil had good material to work with – and a musically informed, and probably personally intrusive, collaborator in Griffith himself – certainly made Breil’s job all the easier. But reflected glory cannot account entirely for the effect of Breil’s composition. No one would ever call Breil a great compopser or a great musician, but he may have been the first musician known to take film accompaniment seriously and to do it with a competence acknowledged both by the filmmaking community and by filmgoers. Martin Marks’s definitive study of Breil’s Birth of a Nation score, to which I am heavily indebted for my observations in this essay , also sorts out the complicated chronology surround87

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ing not only the Breil score but one which preceded it (Marks, Music and the Silent Film, pp. 109–166). As a brief recounting of the background of the composition, Griffith appears to have selected Breil to provide a score for The Birth of a Nation late in 1914; however, the Los Angeles premiere at Clune’s Auditorium on 8 February 1915 (as The Clansman) had a score compiled and arranged principally by Carli D. Elinor, the theatre’s conductor, which was part of the deal Griffith had made with William Clune the previous summer for exhibiting the film. (Elinor’s score was used for the twenty-two-week Clune’s run, and Elinor later worked again for Griffith, arranging the score for Hearts of the World [1918]. Elinor eventually became the most important cinema musician on the West Coast, arranging scores for dozens of silent films and conducting at the California and Carthay Circle Theatres in Los Angeles.) Breil’s score was used for the New York opening on 3 March 1915 at the Liberty Theatre and for the film’s succeeding forty-four-week run. According to the Los Angeles Times of 8 February 1915 (the day of the Clune’s premiere), the New York premiere was to have Breil’s score played by members of the Russian Symphony Orchestra, a New York-based group led by its founder, the enterprising Modest Altschuler (who later settled in Hollywood), which was also the first American symphony orchestra to commercially record on a regular basis. The exact circumstances surrounding the score’s composition and compilation – both terms must be used, as it is a mix of pre-existing and newly composed music – are somewhat murky, as Breil was evidently around Griffith on the set during the later stages of filming, but it appears that Breil commenced his work no earlier than November 1914 and possibly as late as January 1915. Breil’s composition and compilation were complicated – indeed, quite heavily compromised – by Griffith’s last-minute tinkering and re-editing of the film, which consequently required Breil to rewrite and reorganize numerous sections of the score that he had already completed and synched. Despite this trouble, which Breil himself complained about regarding the film industry in general several years later, Griffith and the public received Breil’s Birth of a Nation score with acclaim, and Griffith decided on the basis of this success to give Breil the job of scoring Intolerance (1916) – a project that would make the experience of scoring The Birth of a Nation seem like child’s play by comparison. A common dictum of theatrical music, often forgotten by musical scholars, is that a score’s effectiveness only becomes fully apparent in a performance setting. It is functional music, and all theatre music – opera, musical theatre, melodrama, or incidental music for plays – is functional, part of a larger fabric. Wagner works differently in concerts in which singers, accompanied by a symphony orchestra placed behind them, give a formal uncostumed and unacted performance; not necessarily worse, but the costumes and scenery add a complementary dimension that increases the whole. Because Wagnerian opera is by design a primarily musical medium – music is the first and most important element – it can work in a performance without staging elements. Silent film accompaniment music, such as my own and my colleagues’ work, is not the same at all in this respect; and it is even less important in and of itself than the seminal film music written for sound productions from the late 1930s through the 1960s. If silent film music, whether written in the 1910s and 1920s or newly composed today, is independently memorable divorced from the film, it is (or should be) essentially an accident – a pleasurable and ego-satisfying accident, to be sure, but not a principal intention. That is not the point of film scoring. With Wagner, it is Wagner first and always (as Wagner himself constantly reminded people – and as did every operatic composer from Mozart to Berg in more or less subtle ways). With Breil, it is Griffith first and always. That, at least, is what I want to sketch in these written reflections, drawn from my experiences as musicologist, concert performer, theatrical musician, and film accompanist. Regarding Breil’s Birth of a Nation score as a film accompaniment experience: Does it “work”? How so? Why so? What cultural background did Breil and Griffith expect of their audiences? 88

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What was the effect on these audiences? What can we take from these aggregate questions and their postulated answers to inform ourselves as to the role, motivation, and relevance of silent film/music partnering today and in the future? Martin Marks’ Music and the Silent Film provides a detailed musicological and analytical study of Breil’s score. Marks outlines Breil’s construction and approaches to Griffith’s film, including thematic and tonal relationships; he also points out some of Breil’s responses to Griffith’s film structures, and how, in his view, they alter some of the film’s meanings. I agree with most of Marks’ assertion in his admirable essay , and suggest to those who wish to intensively examine the Birth of a Nation score to consult his work. In the present brief essay, however, I follow perhaps a more visceral approach. The feel and rhythm of the film in screening, accompanied by (or joined to) Breil’s music, demonstrates a search for cohesion between the elements of image and sound, and it is in the success or failure of this cohesion that I am inclined to judge the success of the score. Film accompanists as a rule find Griffith’s films a pleasure to accompany not only because of their strong emphases on plot and character, but because of their holistic, “arching” construction that pre-echoes the classical “Hollywood” style. Griffith’s acknowledged Dickensian narrative style, using combined narrative and motivation to create unified large-scale dramatic forms, is an exact parallel to musico-dramatic styles in opera and musical drama from Mozart to Alban Berg – what basically constitutes the modern operatic repertory. In 1915, however, as Marks points out, the newness of Griffith’s filmmaking in the context of motion pictures themselves, and the general critical isolation of motion pictures from other performance and narrative styles (especially in the United States) made Breil and Griffith sometimes ignore obvious narrative predecessors in their search for something as apparently “new” as the film the musical score was to accompany. It is only with a century’s distance that we can see these continuities, which in a sense Griffith and Breil were trying to escape. It should be remembered that within the American art music world of the time, the ideal operatic structure was based upon the integrated, self-reflexive forms of Wagner’s mature operas, particularly those comprising the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, with few clearly isolated set pieces, constant linking and metamorphosing themes representing characters and dramatic situations (leitmotiven), and an arching musico-dramatic coherence from curtain to curtain. Most early twentieth-century American operas, such as John Knowles Paine’s Azara (1906), Frederick Shepherd Converse’s The Pipe of Desire (1910), and Victor Herbert’s Natoma (1911), adopt (and adapt) Wagnerian principles, as does Breil’s own later The Legend (1919). However, what Griffith particularly admired was nineteenth-century Italian opera; Karl Brown mentions Griffith’s habit of singing on the Intolerance lot in the manner of celebrated Italian baritone Titta Ruffo, one of the most forceful and effective actors on the operatic stage at that time (Brown, Adventures With D.W. Griffith, p. 30). Italian opera was largely dependent on set pieces and independent musical structures within the framework of an act – arias and choruses (usually very specific poetic and musical conventions) linked with sung dialogue, or “recitative”. So although modern viewers of The Birth of a Nation (and modern dramatic musicians who devise accompaniments to the film) may perceive the holistic dramatic thrusts of The Birth of a Nation’s two “acts”, a completely unified accompaniment was not what Griffith was envisioning at all. Indeed, a dramatic form such as a motion picture comprised of hundreds of shifting scenes – so completely and almost bewilderingly alien to the scenic and acting arrangements of opera – would seem on the face of it to dictate a “detail”based score, with specific set pieces and individual numbers, and this is what Breil comprehended and set out to compose. Indeed, according to Marks (p. 136), Breil’s initial response to an early cut of The Birth of a Nation was that it lacked “detail”, or narrative and emotional points suited to precise musical expression. For all of Breil’s theatrical experience, and his experience in scoring 89

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Cabiria in 1914, this brings up an approach typical of early multiple-reel films: their episodic dramatic and thematic structures, going from sequence to sequence in a point-to-point manner. Griffith’s early features are crucial, and The Birth of a Nation especially, in establishing the arching structures more typical of 1920s American films; Breil, however, is coming to this style of arching – of having characters and dramatic situations permeate a film’s fabric, thus constituting a more holistic approach than “then this happened, and then this” – from behind, following Griffith’s lead. Breil devised a score of nearly sixty numbers nearly equally divided between the film’s two halves. Much of it is pre-existing but very culture-specific music, especially in the first half: songs with strong American Civil War associations (“Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” “The Bonnie Blue Flag”), minstrel-show tunes by Stephen Foster and others, “genteel” popular songs (“Listen to the Mocking Bird”), Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Scots folk melodies (“Auld Lang Syne”), and others. Breil uses these specific tunes, but rarely goes into composing music of his own which echoes the style of these melodies without directly quoting them, something Central European nationalistic composers (such as Smetana and Dvorak) did in their dramatic works; this indicates just how culturally and historically directed Breil – with Griffith’s undoubted concurrence, if not actual urging – wanted this score to be. In addition, Breil’s approach to these melodies obviously derives from a particular strain of melodramatic music practice, especially when considered in the context of Griffith’s theatrical experiences and the performance history and background of Dixon’s Clansman play itself. American Civil War/Old South/slavery plays – including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and its numerous stage adaptations; Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859); Bronson Howard’s Shenandoah (1889); Augustus Thomas’ Alabama (1891); Dixon’s aforementioned play; and the first American operatic treatment of the Civil War, librettist Stinislaus Stangé and composer Julian Edwards’ When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1902) – had established a long tradition of using well-known culturally-specific songs such as those cited above to underscore action and delineate cultural reference points years before Griffith engaged Breil to work on The Birth of a Nation. The largest concentration of Breil’s original composition occurs in the first half of Act II, and Marks goes into some detail as to how Breil probably envisioned his compositional structures in the two acts (Marks, pp. 141–43). However, the compositions really are often set pieces, going from point to point in the narrative. What Breil (and Marks, following Breil’s lead) calls “leitmotifs” really are not leitmotiven in the Wagnerian tradition, as there is little or no thematic transformation or development (a crucial element of Wagnerian style). Several principal characters – Austin Stoneman and Lydia Brown, for example – have straightforward leading motives or reminiscences, calling attention to prior characters or situations without musically indicating any change or development in the situations. This is a technique found in French and Italian operas from the 1840s onward, especially those of Verdi and Gounod (La Traviata and Faust provide many examples). There is also a “Love Theme” for Ben Cameron and Elsie Stoneman, which reappears at various points. In a sense, this is perfectly effective, because the changes are happening on screen, in the development of the drama and the characters’ relationships; the music underlines this, in a less closely tied way than most dramatic composers would essay now, but effectively enough. Some elements in Breil’s score point towards the future of film accompaniment, both during the silent period and afterwards. Most of the action scenes are accompanied by altered and rearranged excerpts from the symphonic and operatic repertoire of his day. An excerpt from Carl Maria von Weber’s overture to Der Freischütz, for instance, accompanies the Piedmont raid and the assault on the Camerons. Marks evaluates possible motivations for Breil’s selection of this music at this point, before settling on what is undoubtedly the most reasonable explanation: that it was a fitting “hurry” piece of the type later standardized in compendia 90

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of silent film music and in cue sheet recommendations (Marks, p. 146). In 1915, such use of the “heavy” symphonic repertoire, as shown here (and later in the film, in the Klan finale, when the “Ride of the Valkyries” from Wagner’s Die Walküre appears), was not as common a practice as it became later in the decade and through the 1920s, so here Breil may be seen as a a leader, or at least a consolidiator and integrator of existing practices. (Carli Elinor’s score depended much more on pre-existing, and “symphonic”, music than Breil’s, and special mention of this style – which indicates how unusual it was at the time – appeared in the Clune’s programs; a copy is reproduced in Marks’ Music and the Silent Film, p. 134.) However, the Freischütz overture had been extremely popular in American legitimate and variety theatres, both as a complete composition preceding the evening’s entertainment and excerpted to accompany dramatic situations or vaudeville acts, for over eighty years by the time Breil deployed it, so he was continuing a well-established tradition as well as leading the way into new practices. In Breil’s own composition for the score, his best approaches to linking music and image in a close, parallel-transforming way are in two instances, of which the first is a great coup de théâtre in the music accompanying Silas Lynch’s followers killing three Klansmen. Here, Breil deliberately puts Austin Stoneman’s theme (music associated with the man whose ideals have raised Lynch to power) as an independent musical line in the midst of a violent musical treatment echoing the violence onscreen, with a strength and dramatic coherence rarely evident (to this degree) elsewhere in his score. More subtly, his treatment of the music assigned to Flora Stoneman, which does show some development hinting at her ultimate tragedy, shows Breil achieving, in a limited sense, thematic manipulation for musico-dramatic purposes akin to that employed by Hollywood composers in scores of the 1940s and 1950s. Considering these points, it seems that Griffith and Breil were only partially aware of what each, and the two together, were doing. Both said at the time in press notices and jottings that they looked at the music for The Birth of a Nation as something of an “opera without a libretto” (Marks, p. 138). In other words, they had no precise language to conceptualize the union of music to image on such a vast scale as a three-hour film. In truth, as has been demonstrated for years by scholars in various disciplines, The Birth of a Nation is fully capable of standing on its own for study and appreciation without music; it is more than an opera, and much more than a non-libretto. Griffith’s instinctive approach to filmmaking sometimes led him to under- or overestimate the structures and concepts that eventually appeared on the screen through the conveyance of his vision to the crew and players, and he probably had the creator’s incomplete view of what he had achieved. Breil was brought in to intellectually, and efficiently, define Griffith’s vast project in musical terms dependent upon traditions as disparate as Anglo-Scots folk music and Wagnerian opera. It is not surprising that they (in my view) perhaps “did not quite get it”; and Breil’s later score for Intolerance demonstrates that he was unequal to the Herculean task set by Griffith in that film. Nonetheless, as a pioneering effort in matching a score to both the structure of the film and the editorial character of its director, Breil’s score for The Birth of a Nation supports many of the claims that he himself, as well as later commentators, have made for it. Philip C. Carli

DISTRIBUTION AND RECEPTION As it approaches the century mark, The Birth of a Nation remains a wholly unique phenomenon in motion picture history. Epic in its scope, undeniable in its historical and film-historical significance, endlessly controversial in its unself-conscious audacity, The Birth of a Nation has always defiantly resisted categorization and continues to do so at this writing, nearly nine decades after its creation. 91

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Certainly the earliest efforts to exhibit the film were made more difficult by its unique nature. There had been other feature-length films, other “epic” films had been shown to American audiences, but in an industry still dominated by the one-reel booking practices of the nickelodeon, there was no ready-made distribution option for a film on the scale of The Birth of a Nation. Consequently, Griffith and his associates in Epoch Producing Corporation, the company formed to distribute the film, were required to make up their own system as they went along. For most of 1915, each booking of the film – a large-scale business enterprise, usually in a legitimate theater, always with a full orchestra – was a separate event. By the end of the year several of these engagements were running simultaneously, but there was nothing like the systematized roadshow exhibition of later years, let alone the widespread simultaneous booking that would have been common for an ordinary film. Under the circumstances it’s doubly remarkable that the film was as successful as it was. It was, of course, wildly successful. Today box-office records are made and broken with a regularity that denotes nothing more significant than constantly rising admission prices, but William K. Everson pointed out more than two decades ago (in his book American Silent Film, pp. 78–79) that in terms of the number of paid admissions, the only meaningful criterion, The Birth of a Nation was still the most successful film ever made, and there seems little reason to revise that estimate today. It was easily the most profitable film of Griffith’s career, the reliable bedrock that continued to sustain him and his company when his fortunes turned in later years. This success was due mainly to two factors: the film’s unprecedented achievement in artistic terms, and, inevitably, its controversy. Today many commentators think of The Birth of a Nation only in terms of its racial content, but it’s important to remember that, in the context of 1915, a large percentage of the audience was simply bowled over by the film’s impact as entertainment and never considered its racial aspect at all. Of the major trade papers, only The Moving Picture World (in its review by W. Stephen Bush) even mentioned the objectionable depiction of African Americans, and that only after a full page of praise for the film’s artistic and technical innovations. The exciting cinematic breakthrough that this film represented, evaluated by other writers in this volume, had an effect on 1915 audiences that cannot be overstated. Some of the overwhelming impact of The Birth of a Nation came, of course, from its timeliness: its production and release coincided with the semicentennial of the Civil War. For the previous four years this anniversary had increased Americans’ awareness of the war, an event still recent enough to reverberate in the national consciousness, but distant enough to ease some of the immediate bitterness that had followed in its aftermath. Between 1911 and 1915 the Civil War had become an increasingly persistent theme in American popular culture, not least in the work of filmmakers, including Griffith himself. The Birth of a Nation, with its vast, forceful and evocative summation of the war and Reconstruction, drew on that heightened awareness of the occasion and served as a culmination of it; audiences felt that the immense, disturbing collective experience of the crisis was being synthesized before their eyes. On 9 April 1915, the fiftieth anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant, the audience viewing The Birth of a Nation at New York’s Liberty Theatre stood in reverent silence as that event was reenacted on the screen. And then there was the racial content. That The Birth of a Nation is (inevitably, for a film based on The Clansman) permeated with racist attitudes and riddled with offensive scenes can hardly be denied. The film’s historical preeminence has been a double-edged sword: racist material that would have been, and frequently was, ignored in lesser films became unavoidable in The Birth of a Nation because of its high profile. Today, of course, the effect is even more pronounced; the vast majority of 1915 films having been forgotten, Griffith and his film have become a lightning rod for all racism in early film. But what’s striking is that this racial content, so universally condemned today, elicited such a wide range of reactions 92

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in 1915. To the other distinctions of The Birth of a Nation we can add its early illustration of the all-embracing nature of mass media. Groups separated by vast sociological gulfs saw their differences displayed in sharp relief, perhaps for the first time, when simultaneously confronted with this powerful, inescapable film. The first public showing of Griffith’s film took place at the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California, on New Year’s Day 1915. At this time the film was still known by its original title, The Clansman, and, in fact, continued to be shown under that title on the West Coast long after it was known as The Birth of a Nation elsewhere in the country. It was in California, during these initial showings, that the film immediately ran afoul of the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Association’s Los Angeles branch, alarmed at the idea of a large-scale film based on Dixon’s novel, appealed to the city council and was temporarily successful in stopping the scheduled premiere. Griffith promptly obtained an injunction restoring his right to exhibit the film, and the official Los Angeles opening followed on 8 February at Clune’s Auditorium. The Clansman continued to run at Clune’s for a record-breaking seven months, earning the exhibitor, W.H. Clune, such great sums that he subsequently went into film production himself. The NAACP, having failed to suppress Griffith’s film in Los Angeles, turned anxious eyes toward the anticipated opening in New York. But before that event took place, Thomas Dixon, who exercised at this time a proprietary control over the film, arranged for two private showings in Washington for Woodrow Wilson, members of his cabinet, Supreme Court justices, and members of Congress. The film overwhelmed this distinguished audience, gaining the endorsements of Wilson and others. (Later, after the subsequent public furor, an embarrassed Wilson would tentatively withdraw his support, but by that time the film had been running for months with proud claims of presidential endorsement.) Legend has it that Dixon, flushed with success, jubilantly suggested the new title The Birth of a Nation after one of these triumphant showings. Details of this story are open to question, but the title change was attributed to Dixon by The Moving Picture World as early as 20 February 1915 (p. 1121). After weeks of negotiations, The Birth of a Nation opened in New York at the Liberty Theatre on 3 March 1915. Reviewers’ reactions ranged from enthusiastic raves to the New York Times’ reserved “an elaborate new motion picture taken on an ambitious scale ... an impressive new illustration of the scope of the motion picture camera” (March 4, 1915, 9:4). This New York showing would prove a microcosm of the film’s general reception; it was overwhelmingly successful, running for an unprecedented ten months, but it was also here that serious opposition to The Birth of a Nation first crystallized. The Los Angeles branch of the NAACP had made a full report to the national office, and by the time The Birth of a Nation arrived in New York a campaign of resistance was already underway. This campaign was assumed by some observers to be well organized and unified, but Thomas Cripps has reported, in his 1963 essay “The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture, Birth of a Nation”, that the film’s opponents were actually divided by political differences and dissension. This, combined with social inequities and the film’s cachet of presidential approval, blunted the effectiveness of the protests. The NAACP’s first recourse was to the National Board of Censorship, whose seal was theoretically required for exhibition. Initially The Birth of a Nation had been given the Board’s uncontested approval, but this was based on a preliminary screening by a subsidiary committee of ten people (out of a total membership of more than 100). After the NAACP’s appeal, the film was reviewed by the Board’s General Committee, whereupon Griffith and Epoch were asked to make substantial cuts in Part Two. There has always been some question about the extent and duration of those initial cuts, partly because the versions of the film we see today are invariably descended from the 1921 reissue version, itself substantially altered from 93

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the 1915 original. The two principal scenes at issue were Walter Long’s rapacious pursuit of Mae Marsh, leading to her suicide, and George Siegmann’s preparations for a forced marriage to Lillian Gish. A third, less hotly contested, scene was the depiction in Part One of an Abolitionist meeting during which a white woman, about to embrace a black child, was apparently repulsed by his odor. Whether removed in 1915 or in 1921, the latter incident seems to be missing from the Abolitionist meeting in all modern prints. The two major episodes are well in evidence, and it’s not clear that either one was drastically truncated. It was reported at the time that placating intertitles like “WAIT, MISSIE, I WON’T HURT YEH” were inserted after the fact to soften the attempted-rape scene, and that the scene had originally contained more extended close-ups of Long frothing at the mouth (with the help of a mouthful of hydrogen peroxide), which were removed as a concession. Based on modern prints, such assertions are credible. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to see that the forced-marriage scene has been substantially reduced; the idea is certainly clear – including Siegmann’s obvious lust for his intended bride. In any case, both of these major episodes turn not only on issues of race but also on the censor’s two traditional bugaboos: sex and violence. It seems likely that the Board’s concurrence with the NAACP on these scenes sprang from motives other than a desire for racial harmony. Whatever cuts were made, the Board reviewed the film and once again granted its approval – but this time the vote was divided. One of the dissenters was Dr. Frederic C. Howe, the chairman of the Board; consequently The Birth of a Nation was denied the Board’s standard seal of approval, which bore Howe’s name. All of this controversy was extensively reported in both the trade and popular press. The Moving Picture World (March 13, 1915, p. 1586) reported, significantly, that at a private showing two days before the public opening – to an audience composed entirely of invited industry personnel and their guests – the more egregious appeals to racial prejudice were greeted by hisses. After the public opening, the protests became more public and more overt. Within a week of the opening, The New York Times reported the NAACP’s official opposition to the film. During the second week of the Liberty engagement, the New York Evening Post dropped all advertising for the film and carried an interview in which Jane Addams actively denounced it: “It is both unjust and untrue…. The production is the most subtle form of untruth – a half truth” (quoted in The Survey, April 3, 1915, p. 5). While these formal, orderly protests were taking place, spontaneous outbursts continued as well. On 14 April 1915, the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, a racially mixed group of protestors caused a disturbance at the Liberty, shouting their indignation and throwing eggs at the screen. (The incident took place not during the depiction of Lincoln’s assassination but during the attempted-rape scene.) Needless to say, none of this opposition impaired the financial success of The Birth of a Nation, which continued to sell out at every performance. If anything, the protests were good for business; in 1915, as today, controversy fueled the box office. On 9 April 1915 the film opened at the Tremont Theatre in Boston. Once again it was eagerly received by reviewers; Frederick Johns wrote in the Boston American (10 April 1915): “David W. Griffith has written an epic on film. ... [A] wonderful historical drama and an enthralling human drama combined by one of the master dramatists of the generation.” But it was here that The Birth of a Nation encountered perhaps its most vocal opposition; as the NAACP publication The Crisis noted: “The center of the fight has been Boston.” The city, traditionally liberal, had in 1906 been the scene of riots over a stage production of The Clansman, which was subsequently closed. Now, even before its opening, The Birth of a Nation sparked a vigorous debate in the local press, charges and countercharges flying between the film’s opponents on the one hand, and on the other, Griffith, and Dixon, who was still outspoken in defending “his” film. At a public hearing the harried mayor agreed to cuts, apparently more extensive than those in New York, but allowed the film to open on schedule. On 17 94

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April a crowd of several hundred African Americans converged on the Tremont and tried to buy tickets; the police were called to head off an anticipated riot and made six arrests. More public demonstrations and, reportedly, more cuts in the film followed. One outcome of the Boston controversy was the first showing of the “Hampton epilogue” (officially titled The New Era), an independently produced short showcasing the progressive social and educational work of the Hampton Institute in Virginia. This short would be appended to Griffith’s film in a haphazard manner in many of its subsequent U.S. bookings. Meanwhile the NAACP, once again frustrated in its efforts to suppress The Birth of a Nation in Boston, pressed for the formation of a triumvirate censor board composed of the mayor, the police commissioner and the chief justice of the municipal court. After a two-month fight, the censor board finally convened in late May – and refused to ban the film. As The Birth of a Nation worked its turbulent way across the United States, similar scenes of conflict were enacted over and over in most of the major cities. The protests were noticeably less vocal in the South, and the Atlanta opening in December was marked by the appearance of horsemen, garbed in bedsheets, riding past the theater and firing guns in the air. The film’s volatile nature made it a political hot potato which many authorities were anxious to avoid. In May 1915 opponents of the film rejoiced when the newly elected mayor of Chicago announced that he would not allow it to be shown there. Three weeks later a Superior Court judge issued an injunction overturning that decision, and The Birth of a Nation opened as planned at the Illinois Theatre. Other communities were successful in keeping controversy away from their doorsteps. Lawmakers in the state of Kansas, some of them proudly declaring that they had never seen the film, kept it out of their state for nearly nine years after its release. Not until late 1923 could The Birth of a Nation legally be shown in Kansas, and then only after further skirmishes in the courts. While all this was happening, the film continued to meet with overwhelming success at the theaters that were showing it. In January 1916, when the New York run at the Liberty finally came to an end, Motography (January 15, 1916, p. 110) announced in tones of awe that The Birth of a Nation had played 620 consecutive performances there and that, factoring in supplementary showings at other area theaters, it had been seen by 872,000 New Yorkers. Later the same month the Chicago engagement also ended after a run of nearly eight months, with similarly staggering results. But this commercial success carried a backlash of its own: in February 1916 the Southern Amusement Company, to whom Dixon had assigned dramatic rights to The Clansman in 1906, sued Epoch for $500,000, the amount alleged to have been earned at the Liberty. The ideological debate over the film soon became a complex one; observers were not merely divided into “pro” and “con” camps but quickly splintered into multiple smaller factions. Anna Everett, in her book Returning the Gaze, refutes the notion that black critics (or white critics sensitive to racist attitudes) failed to appreciate Griffith’s artistry. On the contrary, some of those critics responded to The Birth of a Nation with an intuitive understanding that its power and skill doubled its potential danger. (When Intolerance appeared the following year, the same critics eagerly seized on it, grateful for a chance to praise Griffith’s artistry without compromising themselves on the issue of race.) The short The New Era, intended as an “equal time” measure to promote a more positive African American image, earned the enmity of some black critics who felt that any participation in showings of The Birth of a Nation constituted inappropriate support. Proponents of Griffith’s film, on the other hand, were not simply white supremacists seeking to air their views. Many of them were members of the film industry who had been dealing with censor boards for the better part of a decade, had formed a bitter grudge against censorship of any kind, and failed to differentiate the pressures directed against The Birth of a Nation from any other form of interference in their trade. 95

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In the forefront of anti-censorship sentiment was Griffith himself, who took the pressures against The Birth of a Nation as personal attacks on himself and his artistic freedom. In July 1915 he hosted a special showing of his film at the Los Angeles Trinity Auditorium for an invited audience of newspaper editors and their families, taking the opportunity to address the audience directly during the intermission. Griffith’s remarks were directed against the evils of censorship, and more than once in the course of his address he warned that the quiet acceptance of censorship presaged the spread of a “spirit of intolerance” that had already taken root in U.S. culture. (At the time, of course, he was busily engaged in the production of Intolerance. While Griffith was undoubtedly sincere in his views on social responsibility, he was also a seasoned showman, and his deliberate use of the word “intolerance” was probably not a coincidence!) His anti-censorship pamphlet The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America likewise leaned heavily on the word “intolerance”. One argument popular with Griffith apologists hinged on Thomas Dixon’s responsibility for the film’s offensive elements. As early as 1915, Vachel Lindsay laid down the gauntlet in no uncertain terms: “Wherever the scenario shows traces of The Clansman, the original book, by Thomas Dixon, it is bad. Wherever it is unadulterated Griffith, which is half the time, it is good” (The Art of the Moving Picture, p. 47–48 of the 1915 edition). He went on to recommend a list of other Southern writers, including Joel Chandler Harris and Mark Twain, as sources of story material more in keeping with Griffith’s stature. In 1921 an anonymous reviewer for The New York Times took up the argument: “It has always been a great pity that, in undertaking to build a photoplay on the struggle between the North and South, Mr. Griffith went for material to so garbled and prejudice-feeding an account as ‘The Clansman.’ He permanently impaired his work by doing so” (May 2, 1921, 12:1). The same claim has been revived numerous times in succeeding years, with illustrations of how significantly Griffith toned down the virulent racism in Dixon’s original works. Other, less friendly critics have maintained that Griffith merely substituted his own patronizing brand of racism for Dixon’s overt offenses. As for Griffith himself, we have no evidence that he was particularly anxious to continue his association with Dixon; after riding out the storm generated by The Birth of a Nation, he moved on and never looked back. Dixon, still shrilly defending The Birth of a Nation as his own, continued to cling to the spotlight as long as possible, then made a notably unsuccessful foray into film production himself. By the 1920s he was writing undistinguished scenarios for Fox and Vitagraph. Inevitably, the phenomenon of The Birth of a Nation was not confined to the United States but was exported to other nations as well. Its reception there confirms that the intense reactions in the U.S. were not universal but were linked to specific national and regional feelings. Michael Hammond (“‘A Soul Stirring Appeal to Every Briton’”, in Film History, 1999) has researched the reception of the film in Britain in 1915–16, reporting that what little controversy was engendered there had nothing to do with race. Britons were not blind to the racial content of The Birth of a Nation, but saw it from a perspective of class-conscious colonialism that had long since been quietly woven into the social fabric. A far more sensitive aspect of the film – to a nation already at war and suffering an alarming toll in human lives – was the depiction of the Civil War itself, with its vivid portrayal of danger and casualties. In France, as Kevin Brownlow has reported in a personal conversation, the World War affected The Birth of a Nation in a different way: the film was not shown because of all the black colonial troops fighting in the war. Not until well into the 1920s was it seen by French audiences. Similarly, Yuri Tsivian has revealed (in a private correspondence with the author) that in Russia, the country that would be so profoundly affected by Intolerance, The Birth of a Nation was never formally released and so had virtually no impact at all. Eisenstein and other directors were aware of it but had little to say about it. 96

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Meanwhile, in June 1917, after more than two years of sensational success coupled with bitter strife, the domestic roadshow exhibition career of The Birth of a Nation came to an end. The film continued to circulate in second-run venues for several years before being officially reissued in 1921. It’s been suggested that Griffith undertook this reissue in desperation, hoping to recoup some of the disastrous financial losses of Intolerance, but, in fact, Russell Merritt has pointed out that the box-office failure of Intolerance has been greatly exaggerated. Griffith’s financial condition in 1921 was perfectly healthy; the reissue of The Birth of a Nation was actually the brainchild of Harry Aitken, one of the original partners in Epoch. A new edition of the film was prepared, and this became the source from which most of our modern prints derive. The elimination of such scenes as the wholesale deportation of blacks – widely commented on in 1915, but apparently left intact in most prints – can be traced to this reissue. Aitken took personal care to ensure that the film was not handled as an outmoded curiosity but retained its status as a top attraction, not only in 1921 but in continued showings throughout the decade as well. In a 1925 letter he explained: “I have tried to teach the managers of the different offices of the United Artists that The Birth of a Nation was to be treated in a manner entirely opposite to the usual method of handling pictures and that is, that they must charge more for it next year than they do this. In other words, have them have the same attitude that the manager of a theatre has toward a successful vaudeville act when it returns each year.” Company records of the arsenals of sound-effect machines and other paraphernalia that traveled with The Birth of a Nation touring companies testify to the care that was taken with each new engagement. Griffith did maintain some personal involvement in this process – surviving correspondence from 1921 indicates his dissatisfaction with the overture played at New York’s Capitol Theatre for the current showing – but by and large, the 1920s incarnation of The Birth of a Nation was a Harry Aitken enterprise. While it quickly proved that its box-office appeal was still potent, The Birth of a Nation also retained its aura of controversy. Wherever the film was shown, it met with fresh opposition and protest. Aitken was personally present when the film returned to a second violently contested engagement in Chicago in 1924. “Having a wonderful time”, he wrote to Griffith, “operator arrested.” He later noted with satisfaction that the Illinois contracts had brought in a gross well over $100,000 and added: “I am still out on bail on three different arrests.” The film’s standing with liberal critics was not helped by its continued support from the newly re-formed Ku Klux Klan, which was all too eager to identify itself with The Birth of a Nation. In 1925 an Ohio representative of the Klan wrote to Aitken to offer its support in having the film shown in that state, bypassing a ban by the state censor board. The Birth of a Nation has generally been associated with the Klan’s resurgence in the early-twentieth century anyway, and that distinction, along with the Klan’s periodic use of the film for its own self-promotion, has been an ongoing source of embarrassment ever since 1915. With the end of the 1920s, as Griffith moved into the sound-film era, The Birth of a Nation refused to be left behind. In December 1930 a somewhat shortened version of the film appeared in theaters, with a soundtrack of music and effects and with a sound prologue featuring a conversation between Griffith and Walter Huston (see the separate note by Kevin Brownlow in Volume 10 of this series). Audiences that came to snigger at an old-fashioned silent movie were, as The New York Times noted (December 22, 1930, 16:2), “quickly hushed as the story swung into the Civil War sequences”. But this was to be the last commercial reissue of the film, and although it lost none of its cinematic power in succeeding years, it was increasingly regarded as a museum piece and rarely had an opportunity to demonstrate that power. In Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (Chapter 7), Janet Staiger has written about changing perspectives on The Birth of a Nation, beginning in the late 1930s, when it became a pawn in the continuing debates between various left-wing 97

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political factions. The original polarities created by the film, based only on racial considerations, were now overlaid by a new matrix of political alignments in the flurry of recriminations between Communists, Socialists and Marxists. But by that time the film was no longer a continuing presence for the film-going public at large, and these petty squabbles were only a shadow of the fierce battles that had raged around it in the 1910s and 1920s. Still, a film as powerful and influential as The Birth of a Nation could never really be forgotten. Periodically revived by film societies and repertory houses, it was as often challenged and protested by those who sought to suppress it. The civil-rights struggles of the 1960s, with their attendant societal changes, and the resurgence of interest in silent films that followed shortly afterward, have combined to focus attention on Griffith’s film once again, revealed in a new – if no less volatile – light. Today it remains one of the great problems of film history: a film of such undeniable force and importance that it cannot be ignored or dismissed, but whose deeply disturbing attitudes and the searing rage they inspired have become an indelible part of its legacy. At the time of this writing it seems safe to predict that The Birth of a Nation will enter its second century with the same explosive energy with which it embarked on its first. J.B. Kaufman

POLITICS In an article describing the partial restoration of The Birth of a Nation that launched the Pordenone Silent Film Festival’s The Griffith Project in 1997, the late David Gill wrote that this was a “restoration nobody wanted”. To present an even partially restored Griffith film to a large audience with full orchestra in the manner of Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) would be, wrote Gill, “the flash point for a riot … and understandably so” (“The Birth of a Nation: Orphan or Pariah?”, p. 17). No riot took place at that screening – indeed, the audience cheered loudly – but neither have calls for further revivals, certainly not in the U.S. For to cheer the exciting rides of the Klans as they rescue white womanhood from the brutal clutches of “black beasts”, brings American audiences too close to reviving the race hatred that this film so successfully engendered. The fact that this monumental achievement of American film art was also the film that made the Reconstruction era appear to be a time that reunited “North and South … in common defense of their Aryan birthright” and sparked a new twentieth-century revival of the Klan remains to this day a basic dilemma of American cinema history. There is just no getting around the great importance, and the disastrous political and ideological impact, of Griffith’s most magnificent and most awful film. Critics and scholars to this day seem to fall into two camps around it: those who do not defend the racial politics of the film but who want to account for the full development of Griffith’s art and thus sometimes try to explain away this singularly hateful film, and critics and scholars who tend to be interested in this film precisely for its exemplification of overtly white supremacist politics. Naturally, scholars associated with The Griffith Project tend to be in the first group – the group dedicated to understanding the totality of Griffith. Indeed, part of the excitement of this book project and the related screenings in chronological order at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival of the more than 500 films made between 1907 to 1913 is the opportunity to see the many permutations of themes, subjects, and styles that seem to solidify in The Birth of a Nation, but which other films suggest could equally have solidified another way. In the eleven Civil War melodramas, for example, we have seen Griffith rehearse the story of the Civil War from at least three major perspectives: the point of view of the North, the point of view of the South and even, as in the two-part film, His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled (both 1911), the point of view of the “faithful” slave who holds things together back on the plantation. The many permutations Griffith could run on these Civil War and race themes has natu98

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rally given rise to speculation about why Griffith settled on the much more reactionary and hateful version for his most famous and powerful Civil War melodrama in The Birth of a Nation. David Mayer, for example, writes that long before Griffith joined the contentious field of Civil War melodrama, many popular plays both amateur and professional had established the convention of telling the story as part of an intersectional love-affair with at least the potential to heal the conflict between North and South. Mayer argues, in his notes on one of Griffith’s twelve Civil War melodramas – Swords and Hearts (1911; see DWG Project, #358) – that Griffith borrows heavily from these traditions of depicting two households, two families of the North and South. As in the two His Trust films of the same year, Griffith also takes the action beyond the end of the war into the post-war South. But this time, when Griffith extends the story of Reconstruction, as he does in the extended second half of The Birth of a Nation , his previous sentimental and romantic treatments of the Reconstruction era become “savage and political”. The reason, according to Mayer, is Griffith’s reliance on Dixon as a source. He writes: There may be some truth in Lillian Gish’s assertion that Griffith lacked the confidence to work without the example of a full-length drama about Reconstruction, which Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman was to provide (Gish [The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me], p. 132). There is little here to foreshadow the anger, bitterness, and racial contempt that characterize the latter half of The Birth of a Nation. (Mayer, in Cherchi Usai, ed., The Griffith Project Vol. 5, p. 113)

Thus, Mayer finds that Griffith only becomes “savage and political” in his Civil War melodramas due to the influence of Dixon. In the same volume of The Griffith Project, discussing another Biograph one-reeler made almost concurrently with Swords and Hearts, Tom Gunning takes up the question of Griffith’s pre-Birth of a Nation treatment of the Klan in The Rose of Kentucky (1911; see DWG Project, #356). This film depicts a stalwart Kentucky tobacco planter who defends his farm against a group of clan-like “night riders”, thus proving himself worthy of the love of an orphan who is also his ward. While noting that the more or less contemporary period depicted in the film does not correspond to the historical era of the Klan, and that the “night riders” named in the film might not be meant as Klansmen, Gunning nevertheless suggests that the costumes are very similar (he even speculates that they may have been borrowed from a touring company of Dixon’s The Clansman). Although the film is unclear about the motives for these attacks, Gunning suggests that Northern audiences would have been familiar with stories of Klan violence during the Reconstruction era and may have understood the hero of the film to have been in support of the cause of the freedman. He then goes on to explore the following hypothetical situation. He writes: if there had been an anti-Klan melodrama of the established popularity and success of Dixon’s The Clansman, with as many opportunities for epic filmmaking [would Griffith have made] a feature film closer to The Rose of Kentucky – and if this could have happened, would we scholars have been relieved of the burden of defending a politically reactionary, racist film as a cinematic masterpiece? I have always felt that Griffith’s ideological commitment to Dixon’s racist and fascist agenda penetrated about as far as his pocketbook, that is, as his recognition that the film’s theme and the controversy it would ignite would make him a lot of money. (Gunning, in Cherchi Usai, ed., The Griffith Project Vol. 5, p. 108)

Gunning does not ultimately press this case. He notes only that while it raises the question of whether Griffith personally felt any true allegiance to the Klan, that “The Rose of Kentucky 99

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may provide too small a platform to actually claim Griffith’s anti-Klan credentials” (ibid.). Like Mayer, however, he suggests that the “savage and political” parts of The Birth of a Nation can be blamed on Dixon. Indeed, Gunning comes close to saying that Griffith didn’t care about the political cause of the Klan: his imagination was simply fired by white sheets and hoods. He could thus use them interchangeably – one moment as stealthy and cowardly villains and another as heroic saviors. It is absolutely true, as these two historians point out, that there is no precedent in Griffith’s Biographs for what we could call, after Mayer, the “savage politics” of The Birth of a Nation. And it is also true that Griffith was not a consistent ideologue of anything. But what does it mean to defend Griffith in this way? In both these discussions Griffith’s use of Dixon may well have been a decision of the pocketbook, but decisions of the pocketbook are often the way ideology gets formed in popular culture. To dismiss it as only of the pocketbook is, to my mind, not to take the political seriously enough. So let us now look at some of the critics, perhaps understandably not part of The Griffith Project, who have been interested in this film precisely for its exemplification of white supremacist politics. Michael Rogin’s magisterial essay “The Sword became a Shining Vision”, published in 1984, begins with the sweeping claim that American film was born “in a racist epic” and proceeds to speculate on the psychosocial and political reasons for its birth. It goes on to argue that The Birth of a Nation represented a major solution to an impasse Griffith had encountered in his preceding work. That solution was the new villain of the lustful black male whose sexuality supplanted that of earlier desirous, desiring and active white women. Making much of the supplanting of the sexual and full-figure Blanche Sweet, by the girl-like and ethereal Lillian Gish, Rogin argues that the helpless white woman threatened by the black beast solved the problem of (white) male empowerment in some of Griffith’s previous films. To put the argument crudely, race hatred solved the virility problem of some of Griffith’s more passive, self-lacerating, “castrated” heroes. In other words, the insidious racial politics of the film represented an aesthetic breakthrough that energized Griffith’s art. More recently, Clyde Taylor has argued along similar lines that to separate the aesthetic from the political is to evade the true meaning of a work. Taylor writes, “If, as I contend, the central theme of the work is the unification of national sentiment around the issue of miscegenation as threat to ‘civilization,’ then the neglect of this theme in the aesthetic dialogue amounts to a curious evasion of the question of meaning” (The Mask of Art, p. 110). Taylor goes on to detail how frequently film criticism has celebrated the aesthetics of Griffith’s film without noting that virtually all of its formal achievements “are deployed in the cause of aestheticizing and sentimentalizing his principals as White people” (ibid.). Rogin and Taylor are now joined by more recent Griffith scholars, Jane Gaines (Fire and Desire, 2001) and Susan Courtney (Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation, 2002), who have placed racial (and sexual) politics at the forefront of studies of The Birth of a Nation. For these scholars the film is a rich text precisely because it so well exemplifies certain crises of white male subjectivity. To these critics, the issue is not simply whether Griffith was personally a Klan supporter and vehement hater of Negroes but how race hatred enabled a certain white male empowerment that was sympathetically received by much of the nation. While these critics might also blame Dixon, they take no pains to excuse Griffith. The point for these scholars is thus not the depth of Griffith’s personal racism but the particular way white supremacism came alive, gained a new vitality and viability with the rides of the Klan in The Birth of a Nation. In this essay I wish to follow the lead of these scholars to see how Griffith’s film enabled a new mode of white supremacist belief, but one that in no way simply echoed Dixon’s politics. I want to argue that Griffith forged a new kind of white supremacist melodrama out of two antithetical stories: one that was full of love for the suffer100

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ings and kindness of slaves that was inherited from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s portrait of Uncle Tom (in Uncle Tom’s Cabin [1852]) and one that was full of race hatred inherited from Thomas Dixon. Through a sleight of hand that could only come from such a masterful filmmaker, Griffith succeeded where Dixon failed: he reversed the racial feeling of kindliness toward black men and transformed it into fear and revulsion, but he did so through a kind of jiujitsu that took the racial sympathy of the Uncle Tom model that had prevailed in popular culture since mid-nineteenth century and flipped it to what Leslie Fiedler has called the “anti-Tom” model of racial antipathy. Griffith thus succeeded in creating the white supremacist classic that Dixon had only dreamed of creating precisely because he was a less ideologically committed racist. Ever since the 1850s Harriet Beecher Stowe’s martyred Uncle Tom had generated influential sympathy for the suffering, good African beset by white villains such as the evil, white slave driver, Simon Legree. Stowe’s troubling vision of the black Christian martyr had effectively challenged all previous visions of the African, turning a figure of fun into a beloved, kindly uncle whose humanity, for all its stereotypes, challenged the “Southern” view of slaves as subhuman. Both novel and multiple theatrical adaptations before the war worked to draw northerners previously uninvolved in the debate over slavery into its orbit. After the war, the popular novel and its myriad theatrical adaptations continued to figure Eliza, Tom and Topsy as sometimes comic, but mostly familiar and friendly, icons of white sympathy. Griffith’s film solidified North and South into a new national feeling of racial antipathy, transforming the beloved black man into an object of white fear and loathing. While it is not possible to argue that The Birth of a Nation directly caused a worsening political situation for African Americans (indeed it is possible to argue that opposing it became a cause around which political groups like the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] united), it is possible to argue that the film contributed to a marked shift in national racial feeling among ordinary whites and to a notable erasure of black bodies from the screen of cultural consciousness. The question we need to ask of Griffith’s film, then, is how it succeeded in doing what Thomas Dixon’s novels and play had explicitly tried to, but failed, to do: to turn sympathy away from the martyred black man and toward a sexually endangered white southern womanhood whose rescue depended on the erasure of blacks. The answer can be found, I believe, by understanding the deeper ways in which Griffith revised the mythos of Uncle Tom while seeming to adopt its kindly feelings toward slaves. Dixon was a southern white supremacist who worked furiously to counter the mythos of the gentle, family-loving, musically gifted Uncle Tom which had sparked so much sentiment about the humanity of slaves in the antebellum era. His “anti-Tom” mythos of the rapacious “bad nigger” forever baring his fangs and claws at white women was aimed directly at countering Harriet Beecher Stowe’s model of the good, long suffering Christian black man. He self-consciously transformed Stowe’s villain Simon Legree into the mixed-race black villain Silas Lynch and the good Tom into a rapacious “bad nigger”. Accepting the public’s familiarity with Simon Legree, Eliza and George, Dixon partly tells a tale of their further adventures, showing, for example, the disastrous outcome of George and Eliza’s mulatto son who seeks to marry into a white New England family. But Dixon’s novels, and his 1905 theatrical version of The Clansman, with their radical views excoriating Negroes, represented the extreme fringe of southern politics. They were popular hits in the South and were known in the North, but they never captured the imagination of the whole nation. The perhaps apocryphal story of Dixon’s renaming of the film from The Clansman to The Birth of a Nation upon seeing it at a preview in New York suggests his own perception that Griffith’s film had broken through to speak to a national, not just a sectional, audience. Though Dixon promulgated the idea of 101

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national rebirth forged through the expulsion and hatred of racial scapegoats, it was Griffith’s film that actually achieved this new national feeling of white supremacist rebirth among northern and southern viewers and that really transformed the Tom tradition of white sympathy for suffering blacks. The renaming of The Clansman had the effect of distancing Griffith’s film from its sources in Dixon. This distance has been used to produce a tradition of criticism that has viewed the film as bad when it follows Dixon and as great when it does not. Thus the first half of the film (which provides the back story to, and the depiction of, the Civil War) is judged politically acceptable and aesthetically good, while the second half, which contains Dixon’s Reconstruction story, is judged both politically and aesthetically evil. To do this, however, is to ignore both the power and excitement of the second part of the film with its last-minute rescues as well as the raid by “black renegades” on the Cameron plantation in the first half of the film. Susan Courtney has astutely argued that while the myth of the black rapist was invented after the Civil War as a way to re-constrain black men when slavery had ceased to, Griffith’s depiction of a troupe of black soldiers lustfully penetrating the Cameron home during the war sets up the pattern of white female suffering and terror at black threat that is carried out throughout the film – not only in its supposedly Dixon-influenced second half (Courtney, Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation, p. 105 of the manuscript version in my possession). It is much more pertinent, then, to consider the way in which Griffith reworks his Dixon sources in both parts of the film to excite and satisfy his audience. I argue that part of the power of Griffith’s narrative, part of its ability to galvanize national sentiment as Dixon’s play had not, lies in the fact that where Dixon’s starting point had been a vehement opposition to the sympathetic racial sentiments of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had taught audiences to weep for the sufferings of Uncle Tom at the hands of his cruel white masters, Griffith’s starting point was to incorporate both Stowe’s antebellum story and Dixon’s story of Reconstruction and thus to much more cannily refunction some of the very elements of pathos, action, and melos from the antebellum era that Dixon had so abhorred. This is not only to say, however, that Griffith softened or improved Dixon’s vehement racism with a kinder, gentler treatment, for example, of those “faithful souls”, Mammy and Jake, who continue to serve their white masters after the war is over. Certainly the presence of Mammy and Jake does offer Uncle Tom-like elements of racial sympathy to Griffith’s masterpiece of race hatred. But more complexly this Tom-like sympathy toward the “good” blacks allowed The Birth of a Nation to become an agent of national (white supremacist) reunion under seemingly democratic, but actually exclusionary, auspices because it offered to many whites in the North and South what felt like a fitting conclusion and answer to the sectional disunions originally sparked by Stowe’s story of Uncle Tom. Thus Griffith’s film, despite its shift from Tom-style negrophilia to Dixon-style negrophobia, became the inheritor of the mainstream tradition of what I call the central national melodrama of black and white. Dixon had refused to tell “the story of slavery”, not wanting to become an apologist for an institution that had disastrously brought the villainous “black seed” to American shores. Griffith seems to follow Dixon’s sentiment towardslavery when an intertitle tells that “THE BRINGING OF THE AFRICAN TO AMERICA PLANTED THE FIRST SEED OF DISUNION” – thus blaming disunion both on the African and on the slave traders that brought him. However, Griffith’s willingness to take on a happy plantation version of the story of slavery in the first half of his film (the part that most critics have praised in contrast to the more vehemently racist second half) gives him the ability to tell the story of slavery in a way that seems to be a natural extension of Stowe’s story of Uncle Tom and his friends. It is thus not by telling the “anti-Tom” sequel of Stowe’s characters, as Dixon first did, but by adapting, revising, and extending her familiar story of slavery that Griffith becomes something more powerful than Stowe’s antiTom opponent. He becomes her inheritor. 102

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Dixon’s novels and plays are full of speeches about sectional reunion. His ride of the Klan to save Northerner Phil Stoneman, at the end of The Clansman, and to save Elsie Stoneman, at the end of his play of the same title, enacts a common purpose between North and South. Nevertheless, it was Griffith’s film, and not Dixon’s novels or his play nor any of Griffith’s many rehearsals for The Birth of a Nation in his many Civil War melodramas at Biograph, that actually achieved the “moving picture” felt to heal national divisions. For it was not until Griffith’s much grander ride “to save a nation” managed a much more effective form of racial threat followed by racial exclusion that once-divided national audiences could feel a sense of rebirth as one nation in the empowering of the film’s white hero. Griffith’s putative explanation for the film’s effect was that his “ride to the rescue” transcended that of ordinary melodramatic rescues and points to the important phenomenon of “multiple rescue operations” later discussed by Michael Rogin. Rogin quotes a statement from Griffith’s autobiography that upon reading Dixon’s novel he skipped quickly through the book until he got to the Klan’s ride: “We had all sorts of runs-to-the-rescue in pictures and horse operas … Now I could see a chance to do this ride-to-the-rescue on a grand scale. Instead of saving one little Nell of the Plains, this ride would be to save a nation” (Rogin, p. 191; Griffith, D.W. Griffith, The Man Who Invented Hollywood, pp. 88–89). Michael Rogin thus argues that the multiple rescues enacted by the ride of the Klan reenact and reverse the Civil War battles that Griffith added to the first half of his film. “Civil War close-ups show suffering; Clan close-ups show movement and power” (Rogin, p. 222). Whether or not Griffith actually wrote these words – in an autobiography that was not entirely written by him – it is true that he had created many a ride to the rescue. In his film, the extreme pathos of the defeat of the South, which Dixon did not represent, resonates powerfully against the extreme action of the climax in which the Clan rescues first Elsie caught in the clutches of the mulatto Silas Lynch and then an entire interracial group surrounded in the cabin by black hordes. The extremes of pathos, typified by sufferings on the battlefield and in the famous, painfully slow, homecoming in which Ben Cameron registers the full measure of Southern defeat in the soot-daubed cotton trim of his little sister’s dress, are balanced by the extreme action of the Clan’s vengeance on Gus and the exciting rescues that far exceeded Dixon’s rescue of just Phil Stoneman (in the novel) or just Elsie Stoneman (in the play). In these exciting climaxes Griffith, unlike Dixon, sets up two endangered groups, both in need of rescue. Northerner Elsie Stoneman is caught in the clutches of Silas Lynch in his house in town while a mixed Northern and Southern group composed of Dr. Cameron, his wife, daughter, the Cameron family’s two former slaves, and Phil Stoneman are trapped in a rural cabin with two Union veterans and surrounded by attacking black troops. Michael Rogin has argued that this rescue of the family from the cabin is not just from any cabin, but from a “Lincoln log cabin” whose refuge ironically democratizes and merges, as the most egregious intertitle puts it, “FORMER ENEMIES OF NORTH AND SOUTH … REUNITED AGAIN IN COMMON DEFENSE OF THEIR ARYAN BIRTHRIGHT”. The cabin wraps the former slave-owners in the mantle of humble beginnings and reconciles former enemies (in the first part of the scene “Auld Lang Syne” is played). For while it is “former master” Doctor Cameron who is actually rescued, his location in the rural cabin – and his association with the humble Union Veterans frying bacon over their hearth – disassociates him from the once-grand Cameron Hall and the institution of slavery. Griffith could easily have had the doctor take refuge in his own home and had the black troops surround it. During the first half of the film he had done just that when he showed the Cameron parents and daughters besieged in the house, while “black guerilla” troops raided the town. However, this later variation of rescue replaces the iconography of the grand plantation with the humble home of the cabin. The reenergized 103

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Doctor defends this cabin vigorously with his North and South, rich and poor, black and white comrades. Griffith, unlike Dixon, thus makes his audience feel Stowe-like emotions of democratic inclusion and brotherhood even while rooting for the “common” defense of an exclusive “Aryan birthright”. But perhaps the real reason Griffith can get away with such contradictory gestures of white supremacy and democracy is that the icon of the cabin is not limited to the democratic associations of Abraham Lincoln. Its emotional and iconographic resonance extends further back than Lincoln to the iconographically prior cabin of Tom himself. I have argued that nostalgia for a democratic and humble “space of innocence” so central to all melodrama was located in the icon of Tom’s cabin – the integrated place where Master George Shelby, Jr., once taught Tom how to read, where Mrs. Shelby came to weep with Tom and Chloe, and of which “Old Folks at Home” and “My Old Kentucky Home” sang nostalgically. This cabin, which seems to function out of all proportion to its actual importance as a locale in the novel, hovers over all Tom’s longing, in speech and song, for the impossibly good, lost Kentucky home. As the American locus classicus of honest and humble beginnings, the cabin in Griffith’s film has now become as important a locus of virtue for the former masters as it once had been for the former slaves. Symbolizing variously the elusive lost home of slaves, the poor but honest home of the free white man, it now attempts to spread its mantle of iconic virtue over the sins of the former masters. By “integrating” the cabin, Griffith refunctions melodrama’s necessary “space of innocence”. The melodrama that once pictured Tom and Chloe as victims of an economic system that reduced humans to objects of exchange, now makes the Tom and Chloe figures – Mammy and Jake – sympathetic participants in the melodrama of white victimization. Inside the cabin, Mammy fiercely and heroically fights off the black marauders, clubbing each intruding black head after the besieged group is out of ammunition. However, like her comic flattening of two black soldiers, Mammy’s actions lack the heroic status of Eliza’s desperate protection of her child, or Tom’s heroic martyrdom in defiance of the white slave master’s power. She has become the prototype of countless stage and screen Mammies to come, sharing in the pathos and action of white main characters but having no story of her own. For her story only matters so long as the former masters and their new allies are themselves racially endangered. I have argued elsewhere that Stowe’s projected reunion of the African family in Liberia lacked emotional conviction. Africa could not resonate as home the same way as “Kintuck”. Griffith, too, faced the problem of establishing a melodramatic space of innocence. He solved it by adapting Dixon’s Reconstruction-era drama to a glowing portrait of antebellum Southern culture. But Griffith could get away with such a regressive move because, unlike Dixon, he also told the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The representation of these more recent events made any idea of return to the good old days of the plantation impossible. Indeed, there is even a sense in which Griffith’s nostalgic portrayal of antebellum life pretends to the prelapsarian innocence of small-town rural America that is deeply indebted to the iconography of the postbellum Tom show. Thomas Dixon’s anti-Tom strategy had been to avoid all romanticized depictions of the antebellum era, believing as he did, that slavery had been a mistake in its importation of black blood into the country. Thus Dixon was at least consistent in his exclusion of blacks – even the “faithful” ones – from any nostalgic image of the past or any happy ending pointing to the future. Griffith, on the other hand, was democratically inclusive. He freely borrowed the nostalgic musical associations with black culture that Dixon had so vehemently eschewed when in his novel he had Elsie give up the banjo and when he used “vulgar” Negro tunes to underscore the grotesque deaths of his raped white women. Griffith also freely included Mammy and Jake as the good folks in need of rescue, granting them comic heroic status. Yet 104

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by including “faithful” blacks in the emotional sense of what the Klan was rescuing, he was later able to exclude them all the more effectively from any real drama in the reborn nation. Griffith’s eventual exclusion of blacks is never represented as a calculated policy of Jim Crow politics but as a natural result of the rescue of the white woman from the black rapist. In each of the multiple rescues carried out in the last third of the film, black men are quite literally wiped from the screen by what poet Vachel Lindsay, in The Art of the Moving Picture, once tellingly called a “white Anglo Saxon Niagra”. Indeed, the ride of the Klan is repeatedly figured as a flushing of blackness from the screen. Chaos and disorder represented as dark bodies in riot are swept aside by the white robes of the Klan. This pattern is repeated with each new rescue, in which nearly all-black frames are suddenly flooded with white. A most striking moment of black exclusion also occurs in a scene which an intertitle calls “DISARMING THE BLACKS”. Griffith shows a group of black soldiers on foot in their dark Union uniforms surrounded on both sides by white-robed Klansmen on foot and horseback. The dark soldiers drop their guns and rapidly exit both front and rear of the frame, leaving an empty white middle that now blends with the white Klansmen on both sides. The culminating shot effectively “parades” the racial cleansing that the multiple rescues have accomplished in what an intertitle of some prints calls the “PARADE OF THE CLANSMEN”. Elsie and the group rescued from the cabin are surrounded on both sides by the white-robed and-hooded Klansmen. Since Elsie is still in her white nightgown and the rescued men are mostly without jackets, the effect is again of a flood of white almost completely filling the screen. Not surprisingly, neither Mammy nor Jake – nor any other “faithful souls” – are anywhere to be seen. The following shot seems to demonstrate the logic of this exclusion: a group of blacks watching the parade in fear, turn and almost tiptoe away, again leaving the previously dark frame white. Repeatedly and variously, then, white images displace black. But more often than not, the displacement seems non-violent, a natural (and sensible) withdrawal rather than a forced and violent exclusion. It would seem that Griffith’s greater ability to borrow elements of Stowe’s interracial amity in the picture of kind masters and “faithful souls” ultimately aids him in accomplishing a total whitewash of the screen. Thus Griffith’s depiction of the “good Negro” appears to have made it possible for his activation of a more effective eradication of racial villains. In a similar way it may seem that his portrayals of the sexual attacks on white women by black men have been softened from Dixon’s. Dixon’s novel of The Clansman had Gus actually rape the Cameron family friend, Marion Lenoir. In his stage version, however, he was less willing to show the black beast in physical contact with the white woman and so changed the crime to Gus’ pursuit of Flora Cameron (no longer Marion) culminating in her jump off a cliff to save herself from the proverbial “fate worse than death”. However, in both the case of rape (in the novel) and attempted rape (in the play), he has Gus narrate the scenes while in a hypnotic state and thus avoids any direct depiction. It is actually Griffith, then, who much more luridly presents the white virgin threatened by the “black beast”. Once again, Griffith’s film achieves its much greater power to motivate race hatred by not appearing to be such an exhortation. The urgent need to rescue the white women from such overwhelming danger seems to naturally motivate race hatred. The failed rescue by Ben of his sister Flora Cameron motivates the greater need for the rescue of Elsie Stoneman, who is physically threatened, and touched, by Silas Lynch in ways that Dixon never dared portrayed on stage. Indeed, Dixon’s novel has no scene depicting Lynch’s sexual assault – Lynch does not even ask for Elsie’s hand. Although his play includes a scene in which Lynch asks both Elsie and then her father for her hand, it does not depict Lynch forcing his attentions upon her. In Griffith’s film, however, Lynch begins the scene already, as an intertitle puts it, “DRUNK WITH WINE AND POWER”. His strikingly lascivious sexual over105

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tures to Elsie are drawn out over a long scene frequently intercut with the assembling of the Klans. In the first instance, after his initial proposal has been rudely repulsed, Lynch kneels beside the seated Elsie and presses the hem of her white gown to his lips. Elsie withdraws in horror to the door, which she finds locked. In the second instance Lynch, now seated in a chair and smiling at her, thrusts his hips forward and rubs his thighs insinuatingly. If there was any doubt as to the sexual nature of his gesture, Elsie’s widening eyes and scream of horror make it clear. It is at this point that Griffith first cuts to two Klansmen on horseback. The ride of the Klan in Griffith’s film thus appears entirely activated by this miscegenous sexual assault on a white woman. In her book Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives, Susan Courtney argues that The Birth of a Nation represents a crucial turning point in the construction of what some critics have called the “classical” cinema. Where most critics have employed this term to describe an efficient system of narration in contrast to an earlier “cinema of attractions”, Courtney stretches the term to suggest that the classical also holds out a form of masterful vision and assured power with both racial and gendered dimensions. For Courtney the device of the black man’s sexual assault on white women, and the exaggerated agonies of female suffering, which empower the white man to rescue, reverse many of the agonies of male suffering in the earlier Civil War dramas Griffith directed at Biograph. But to Courtney it is not just the white male hero who is empowered to perform heroic acts, but the cinema itself is empowered to construct a vision of an hierarchical racial, sexual, and national order in which helpless women suffer, black people disappear, and the white gaze predominates. William Walker, a black man who saw the film in a colored theater in 1916, recalls, “Some people were crying. You could hear people saying God … You had the worse feeling in the world. You just felt like you were not counted. You were out of existence” (Interview in Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s documentary, D.W. Griffith, Father of Film, 1993). Walker does not explain how the film accomplished his sense of eradication, of being “out of existence”, but I would submit that it had as much to do with the visceral experience of the logic of black disappearance as the specific instances of white-on-black violence or even of more explicit depictions of black men attacking white women. Walker may have recognized that what he had seen spelled the end of his very representation in the nascent medium in any but the most servile or villainous roles. Indeed, his further reaction extends the logic of his having been made invisible: “I just felt like … I wished somebody could not see me so I could kill them. I just felt like killing all the white people in the world”. Perhaps because he realized how much the film had made his humanity invisible, Walker wished to use it as an advantage to return the violence he had experienced. There can be no more powerful statement of the political effects of Griffith’s film than William Walker’s impotent rage at being eradicated for crimes of interracial sexual lust that black men had never committed, when the reversal of such crimes had been repeatedly practiced by white masters against black female slaves during – and after – slavery. The further insult that The Birth of a Nation would be used as a recruiting tool by the Klan later in the decade, sparked a vigorous campaign by the NAACP to ban the film. Yet, as Jane Gaines tells us in Fire and Desire, for every mayor who banned the film out of respect for blacks, or a desire to keep the peace, there were others who did so out of a protest for the depiction of interracial sex. One thing is clear, however, Griffith’s film was more incendiary, more racially hateful in its consequences, more likely to produce the phenomenon of race riot (which more often than not meant whites attacking blacks) than Dixon’s more crudely racist novels and play had ever done. But the reason may not only lie in the greater lust of his Lynch or the greater violence of sequences excised from the available versions. At a deeper level its effectiveness as race hatred, its ability to make William Walker impotently despair of ever being counted 106

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and to resolve that the only possibly effective reaction would be to kill “all the white people in the world”, lies in what I have seen as Griffith’s greater willingness to deploy and rework the familiar features of the Tom material. For it was Griffith, not Dixon, who ultimately created the most effective counter to the story. He did so, not by writing the sequel to the stories of Simon Legree and Eliza and George Harris, but by refunctioning the enormous emotional appeal of the antebellum story of the old South into a new kind of racial melodrama – a melodrama which, like Uncle Tom, deploys race as a fundamental quality of good and evil but which, unlike Uncle Tom, reverses the values of good and evil. Tom had been good because he possessed patient and long-suffering – feminine – qualities attributed to his race. Now the qualities of long-suffering goodness have been transferred to the white women endangered by the utterly transformed, hypermasculinized and hypersexual “black beast”. As we have seen, the very homey qualities once attributed to Tom, his wife and family, are now attributed to the former masters who unite to defend a home now associated with their “Aryan birthright”. There is much to deplore in the transformations D.W. Griffith wrought on America’s melodrama of black and white. However, rather than defending the good parts of the film, or a good aesthetics carefully cordoned off from more sinsister ideology and politics, we do better to take a broader view of the history of racial politics in American culture. In this longer view – one that can consider The Birth of a Nation as the most important film melodrama of the early-twentieth century as in dialogue with the most important theatrical melodrama of the mid- and late-nineteenth century – we begin to see that The Birth of a Nation was no fluke or exception. It was mainstream America’s negrophobic “answer” to the negrophilia of the Tom story, and we have seen these two versions of the melodrama of black and white playing themselves out in American culture ever since. In both versions we discover how a bad-faith white vision of America came to believe in its own melodramatic virtue through its relation first to the extreme victimization and second to the extreme villainy of the black male body. Writing as I am amid the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Stowe’s novel, it is time to realize that though its 1915 filmic answer is still the “restoration nobody wanted”, it is precisely a full restoration of this film that we need to see, if only to understand the way these two works are inextricably connected. Linda Williams

NON-ARCHIVAL SOURCES Although volumes have been written about various aspects of The Birth of a Nation, the story of its preservation is relatively little known. At first glance this doesn’t seem surprising; film preservation is generally regarded as a straightforward, prosaic affair, and it seems a foregone conclusion that The Birth of a Nation, an invaluable commercial property during the silent era, would be carefully preserved. But the fact is that the film’s survival after the end of the silent era was a tenuous struggle. For decades it existed primarily in the hands of private collectors, technicians and entrepreneurs, and the versions we see today are profoundly influenced by their efforts. And the saga of the film’s travels is a story nearly as enthralling, and peopled by characters as colorful, as those of the film itself – and, at the time of this writing, is still an unfinished story. To begin with, it is important to bear in mind that there is no “definitive” version of The Birth of a Nation (or, for that matter, of most of Griffith’s major films). The film that Griffith previewed as The Clansman at the beginning of 1915 was substantially cut and revised within a few months in response to the demands of pressure groups, so that the version that played in one city might differ materially from that in another. What survived from all these revi107

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sions was further altered by a major reissue in 1921 [see the essay on “Distribution and Reception” of The Birth of a Nation elsewhere in this volume]. Changes for this reissue were made in the original negative, and generations of film preservationists would afterward refer to the resulting version as the “original” – which, up to a point, it was. Prints that we see today are directly or indirectly descended from that 1921 version, meaning that, before we even begin our consideration of the film, we already have at least one layer of separation from Griffith’s 1915 original. To many observers this is probably a good thing; most of the missing scenes are those that were found most offensive in the film’s first showings. The two episodes considered most inflammatory in 1915 – Walter Long’s pursuit of Mae Marsh and her resulting suicide, and George Siegmann’s attempt at a forced marriage to Lillian Gish – were supposedly modified at the time, although the extent of those modifications in the long run is open to question. Other scenes, such as the wholesale deportation of blacks to Africa (an idea reportedly ascribed to Abraham Lincoln), are now missing altogether. The extent of the 1915–21 cuts can be roughly gauged by a surviving musical score that dates to the Spring of 1915, fairly early in the film’s run. But the precise content of the excised scenes is a matter for speculation since, at least at the time of this writing, we must rely on the imperfect memories of witnesses. In 1965, for example, Seymour Stern described in excruciating detail an alleged scene in which Long was castrated by the Klan, to the expressive accompaniment of Beethoven’s sixth Symphony. It’s a virtual certainty that this horrific scene never existed anywhere outside Stern’s imagination, but it’s also fairly clear that Long’s execution scene has been edited in what we now know of The Birth of a Nation. The formal commercial life of Griffith’s film essentially ended with its sound reissue in 1930–31, after which, along with the rest of the silent era, it was consigned to history. For the sound reissue even more footage had been removed from the film, and once again the changes were made in the negative – but this time, at least, Epoch Producing Corporation retained prints of the 1921 version, along with the sections of negative that had been removed for the new reissue. Epoch, the company originally formed to distribute the film in 1915, continued to maintain the commercial rights for decades afterward (and even attempted yet another sound reissue in 1950). Although Griffith retained a share in The Birth of a Nation, the rights belonged to Epoch, which, in turn, was controlled by the Aitken brothers, and Harry Aitken in particular. Griffith himself, contrary to popular belief, did not even retain a print of the film. His massive gift of films to the Museum of Modern Art in the late 1930s did not include The Birth of a Nation, simply because Griffith had no film elements to give. But the Museum had already obtained a negative elsewhere, and for the time being this became the official archival version of The Birth of a Nation. As the donor of a large collection, Griffith retained rights of access to his films at the Museum – a collection into which The Birth of a Nation had now been absorbed, despite its unusual circumstances – and after his death in 1948 those rights reverted to his estate. A decade later, in the late 1950s, Griffith’s executor and former attorney Lloyd Wright held an auction for the benefit of the estate. At stake were any remaining rights the estate held to any of Griffith’s former properties, including the films donated to the Museum – rights which were exceedingly unclear by this point and which, in fact, Wright openly admitted were probably negligible. Nevertheless, the auction attracted some enthusiastic attention, and in the end the winning bidder was Paul Killiam. Killiam, a graduate of the Harvard Law School, had been engaging in silent-film-related entrepreneurial activities for the better part of the 1950s. No stranger to either Griffith films or the Museum of Modern Art, he had earlier obtained commercial rights to the Biograph negatives and had relied heavily on them in producing his Movie Museum television series in 1953–54. A later series, Silents Please, had presented condensed versions of silent features. 108

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Now, having acquired Griffith’s own somewhat dubious rights to his films, Killiam organized a corporation named D.W. Griffith, Inc., to exploit them. His various business ventures ultimately coalesced in the formation of Killiam Shows, a company best remembered today for its PBS television series The Silent Years. Former employees recall that Killiam ran his ship with a gentle but unconventional hand, deliberately cultivating an eccentric image and also, less deliberately, displaying a certain penny-wise-pound-foolish impracticality. His unfortunate decision to cut corners by presenting Intolerance (1916) on television at 24 fps resulted in a picture that ran nearly 100% too fast. It brought a blistering rebuke from Pauline Kael in The New Yorker (November 6, 1971): “Everything in [the film] is destroyed; it has no emotional power – it’s just a curiosity.” Accordingly, when Killiam asked Karl Malkames to assemble a new negative of The Birth of a Nation, Malkames made liberal use of stretch-printing to compensate for Billy Bitzer’s characteristically slow 1914 cranking speed. Under Killiam’s auspices, Malkames used as source material the Museum of Modern Art print and two prints in Malkames’ own collection (one of them a print of the 1930 sound reissue that had been given to his father, cameraman Don Malkames, by Bitzer). It was this activity that brought Killiam into direct conflict with the man who had been the low bidder in the Lloyd Wright auction: Raymond Rohauer. By the early 1970s Rohauer was well launched on his notorious career, parlaying his interest in the silents into a distribution business of his own, with a sideline of nuisance lawsuits against other distributors and exhibitors. Although he actually did accomplish a substantial amount of good in the film world, Rohauer’s brash assumption of ownership of any film he touched, and the resulting despoliation or unavailability of numerous classics, had by this time earned him the worldwide enmity of silent-film enthusiasts. His acquisition of the rights to The Birth of a Nation was characteristically ingenious. The original terms of Epoch’s distribution of The Birth of a Nation had called for both Griffith and Thomas Dixon to receive royalties on the film’s receipts. When Dixon fell on hard times late in life the Aitken brothers had bought back his stock in Epoch, but their additional obligation to pay him the royalty – admittedly an insignificant one after 1931 – had gone neglected for many years; instead, the Aitkens had managed to eke out a modest income of their own from what remained of the film’s commercial potential. Now Rohauer approached Dixon’s widow, convinced her that she had been cheated for decades out of rich financial rewards and that he was there to rectify the situation, and enlisted her support. Next he approached Roy Aitken (Harry Aitken having died in the meantime) on behalf of Mrs. Dixon and demanded an accounting. The aging Aitken, with no resources of his own, had little choice but to sell his Epoch interest to Rohauer. For a payment of $25,000 (a generous amount under the circumstances), Rohauer became the new proprietor of Epoch and proceeded to create his own edition of The Birth of a Nation. His source materials included a twelve-reel nitrate print of the 1920s version, probably acquired from Aitken. Clearly, Killiam and Rohauer were on a collision course. The inevitable happened when Rohauer learned of Killiam’s plans to exhibit The Birth of a Nation himself. Still stinging from his defeat at Killiam’s hands in the LloydWright auction more than a decade earlier, and now armed with what appeared to be legal title to the film, Rohauer promptly threatened his old rival with legal action. For once, however, he had met his legal match. Learning that Rohauer was preparing to seize his film, and himself on increasingly tenuous terms with the Museum of Modern Art, Killiam made a quick decision: he donated the camera negative of The Birth of a Nation to the American Film Institute – which, in 1971, meant the Library of Congress. Under the Library’s care, the precious film would be preserved, along with other Birth of a Nation elements from the Academy archives, and was also protected by a donor restriction designed to keep 109

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it out of Rohauer’s reach. Only momentarily deterred, Rohauer descended on the Library in the Summer of 1972 with a U.S. Marshal and a court order to seize the film. When the Library’s technical and legal staff finally convinced him that moving the nitrate film would damage it, Rohauer responded with a court order to seal the film. The stalemate continued for years as the case dragged on in court. Rohauer, doing business as Epoch, produced what appeared to be a valid copyright renewal on the film, and a federal district court found in his favor in 1973. But Killiam promptly appealed the decision, pointing out that The Birth of a Nation had actually been copyrighted twice in 1915, once by Epoch and Dixon and once by Griffith’s own company, with copyright dates only five days apart. He argued that the Epoch copyright, not involving an assignment from Griffith, had been inoperative from the start and that a renewal was therefore invalid. Finally, in August 1975, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the earlier decision, ruling that neither of the copyrights was any longer valid. The Birth of a Nation was now in the public domain. The end of the matter was somewhat inconclusive, since Rohauer was able to establish a claim on the 1930 reissue and subsequently did distribute that version. In principle, however, the net effect of the case was to rescue the “original” version of Griffith’s film from the proprietary claims of any one individual. (In 1976, as the dust was beginning to settle, the Library suggested that Rohauer donate his materials to their collection, now that the film’s public-domain status had been confirmed. Rohauer was less than enthusiastic about the idea, but after his death in 1987, all of his nitrate film, including The Birth of a Nation, did find its way into the Library’s holdings.) While all of this was going on, 16mm distributors catering to the home market cautiously withdrew their prints of The Birth of a Nation, pending the outcome of the case. (The leading home distributor, Blackhawk Films, had formerly distributed the film under a license from Epoch, which predated Rohauer’s takeover. When the term of the license expired, Rohauer chose not to renew it.) When the case disintegrated in the mid-1970s, the title began to reappear – and at that point an event occurred that rocked the silent-film collector’s world: the announcement of a 16mm print of The Birth of a Nation that featured an image vastly superior to that in other available prints and was in color, reproducing the tints of the silent theatrical release. The new version was offered by Thunderbird Films, a Los Angeles company operated by one Tom Dunnahoo. The bearded, bandana-wearing Dunnahoo, described by one former associate as “a film pirate who actually looked like a pirate”, had produced his 16mm negative while the film was still presumed to be protected by copyright – his usual working method, and one that eventually led him into serious legal trouble of his own. His release of The Birth of a Nation served to focus attention on his prime source material: an original 35mm silent release print owned by private collector Lawrence R. Landry. Working carefully to preserve as much of the original visual quality as possible, Dunnahoo reproduced this edition for the home market, tints and all. The 35mm print was later returned to Landry, and still later was deposited, along with other films, with the Library of Congress. Subsequently it was loaned to the Museum of Modern Art so that they could produce their own dupe negative to replace the version originally acquired in the 1930s. Thus, all three of these “non-archival” versions of The Birth of a Nation – the Killiam, Rohauer and Landry prints – eventually came under the archival care of major film-preservation institutions. Considering the battles fought on their account, the surprising fact about these various versions of the film is how little they differ from each other. Some of them have been issued, not only on 16mm, but subsequently on videotape, laserdisc and DVD, as has the version originally preserved by the Museum of Modern Art. The collector thus has the opportunity to compare them side by side, revealing that – derived as they are from the common source of the 1921 reissue – they display, in terms of content, a remarkable uniformity. A title here, 110

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a slightly truncated shot there, and other minute cosmetic variations are the only evidence of the varying sources – for the most part. The Landry print, apart from its color effects, is no exception. As a working theatrical showprint, it inevitably suffered breaks which were repaired by splices before Landry acquired it, and most of its variations from other available versions are a result of this attrition. Some of the damage is particularly sad; the celebrated homecoming scene, plagued with splices, is one notable casualty. The exquisite poignancy of the scene, preserved in other versions, is rather spoiled in this one as Walthall suddenly lunges into the doorway. But the overall similarities of the various versions only serve to bring the key differences into tighter focus, and raise some intriguing questions. Why is the original MoMA print missing a thirteen-shot sequence, depicting Long’s introduction as Gus and his confrontation on the street with Walthall, a sequence that seems to have been preserved in every other version? And what exactly is the provenance of the Landry print? In most respects it seems, like the other versions, to be derived from the 1921 reissue, yet it includes an unusual indication of roadshow origins: a title referring the audience to a printed programme for the cast list, while other versions include a cast crawl (with several misspelled names). Another seemingly unique feature of the Landry print is a five-shot sequence, depicting Long furtively stalking Mae Marsh as she leaves her house (immediately before the attempted-rape scene), that is missing from all the other versions. On the other hand, if the Landry print includes such exclusive material, why is it missing the death of the second Cameron son (George Beranger), which does appear in the other versions? (In the Landry print this makes for an odd effect in Part Two, when Miriam Cooper has a flashback to Beranger’s death scene, which the audience has not seen before – although, admittedly, Cooper hasn’t seen it either.) These particular omissions all flow smoothly in their respective prints and seem like deliberate cuts, not splices to cover damage. Perhaps the most striking of these variations is the reordering of shots during the gathering of the Klan in Part Two. At times the differing versions of this sequence have led to speculation that the shots were reedited in the 1920s, intensifying the sequence’s impact and artificially inflating the film’s reputation as a cinematic breakthrough. On closer inspection we can see that the inconsistencies revolve around a discrete block of six shots and one intertitle (“SUMMONING THE CLANS”), depicting the two mounted Klansmen by the barn, the lone horseman at another location responding to their signal, the two men riding away and then being followed past the barn by another group of riders. In the original MoMA print and the Rohauer and Killiam prints these shots, intercut with the forced marriage, serve to introduce a small group that will gradually grow to become a mighty army at the climax. In the Landry print the same block of six shots is placed later in the sequence, following several group shots and shots of two horsemen, presumably the same two, pounding along a forest path and a shallow stream with the fiery cross in hand. Otherwise the two sequences are more or less identical. When and why was this change made – and which version came first? We may never know. In the meantime, all of these available versions have been supplemented by what will undoubtedly emerge as the ultimate non-archival version of The Birth of a Nation: the Photoplay Productions version. Working with the 35mm Landry print, supplemented in key scenes by a dupe negative from the National Film and Television Archive and by the 16mm Thunderbird print, Kevin Brownlow, David Gill and Patrick Stanbury, along with John Allen, produced what may ultimately be regarded as the definitive surviving version of the film. (The 16mm material, seen only for the television edition of their presentation, was used to cover further damage to the 35mm print in the interim between 1975, when Dunnahoo had copied it, and 1990. See David Gill’s article in Griffithiana 60/61 for an inside account of assembling 111

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the Photoplay version.) Shown at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 1997, accompanied by a live orchestra playing John Lanchbery’s score which, in turn, was deeply rooted in Joseph Carl Breil’s original, this edition communicated a strong sense that Griffith’s film was being triumphantly restored at last to its original glory – although the Photoplay principals insisted that their version was only a work in progress. And perhaps it is. As convoluted as the story of the film’s preservation has been over the last seven decades, at the time of this writing it may still hold further surprises. In the commotion over the Killiam–Rohauer controversy in the 1970s, one intriguing document in the Library of Congress file has often been overlooked: in November 1979, after the lawsuit was over, Killiam – heir to all the materials that had originally been in Griffith’s possession in the 1930s – made a second donation to the Library of Congress. Time and budget constraints prevented the detailed cataloguing of the materials, but a standard inspection was conducted before the film was shipped to the Library’s nitrate vault. The inspection report indicated, in addition to 1930 reissue elements, more than 8,000 feet of 1915 negative, cut apart for the 1921 reissue. The collection, comprising innumerable scraps of negative, presents a formidable challenge to the film reconstructionist; full reassembly of the fragments, if it was possible at all, would take many years. Unless and until this work can be done, there remains the breathtaking possibility that those long-lost 1915 scenes may have survived after all…. Reconstruction of this film’s complicated journey has been, more than usual, a job beyond this writer’s abilities. Accordingly, I have had more help than usual from others. Special thanks are due to Karen L. Everson, Steven Higgins, Irving Kleinfeld, Tim Lanza, Bruce Lawton, Scott MacQueen, Karl Malkames, Madeline Matz, Russell Merritt, Richard Roberts, Linda Shah, David Shepard, and Paul C. Spehr. J. B. Kaufman

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ENOCH ARDEN Alternate titles: Fate Ordained (according to the The International Film Index 1895–1990, Vol. 1); The Fatal Marriage (1922 reissue) Filming date: January–March 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 39 days of production) Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 4500 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles; exteriors: California coast Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp.; A Mutual Masterpicture; reissued by R-C Pictures Corp. in 1922 as The Fatal Marriage Release date: 8 April 1915; reissued on 18 June 1922 (according to handwritten note on material submitted to Copyright Office) Release length: four reels; five reels (1922 reissue) Copyright date: 18 June 1922 (reissue: copyrighted by Art Brand Productions, Inc., LP17972) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: W. Christy Cabanne Scenario: not known Source: “Enoch Arden”, the poem (1864) by Lord Alfred Tennyson Camera: William E. Fildew Cast: Alfred Paget (Enoch Arden); Lillian Gish (Annie Lee); Wallace Reid (Philip Ray) Archival sources: George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; 35mm nitrate positive (Casselton/Larson Collection); 35mm acetate negative (1997 restoration from 35mm nitrate positive, combined with intertitles from 28mm diacetate positive); Library of Congress, 28mm diacetate positive (AFI/George Ruckdeschel Collection); 16mm acetate positive (Kemp Niver Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm diacetate positive (incomplete); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined). MUSIC – Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), Brussels, unspecified parts (parts IV, V); Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), piano (Parts IV, V), 33 pages; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 22 Annie and Philip and Enoch are happy children together in a small fishing village. The bonds of friendship that keep them together are not impaired in the least when years later Enoch and Annie are married and Philip, the wealthy miller’s son, is the first to congratulate them although deep in Philip’s heart is a great and undying love for the little bride. Two children are born to Enoch and Annie and their happiness is abundant in spite of Enoch’s prolonged absences at sea, where he serves as a fisherman. Enoch’s poverty, however, impels him to accept an offer to go to sea and make his fortune. Annie pleads with him not to go. But Enoch, desperately anxious to win a fortune and make his family more comfortable, decides [to go.] The ship on which he sails is wrecked in a storm and Enoch and two companions are swept upon an uncharted island. The two men die and Enoch alone survives. He remains alone on the island for years, is reduced almost to the state of cannibalism when he is rescued by mariners who go to the island to replenish their water supplies. Then he goes home. In the meantime Annie, after waiting, has abandoned hope of ever seeing Enoch again. She finally marries Philip who has

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remained loyal through the years. A baby is born to them and Enoch, gazing through the window of Annie’s new home, finds her happily surrounded by her little family. Rather than bring unhappiness upon the family Enoch goes away without letting Annie know of his return. Later he dies, without the secret of his homecoming being known. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress (as The Fatal Marriage), June 18, 1922, LP17972 [stamped with date June 19, 1922]

Annie Lee is loved by both Philip Ray, the miller’s son, and the rough sailor Enoch Arden, but she accepts Enoch’s proposal of marriage. Years later Enoch is shipwrecked on a voyage, and after waiting ten years for his return, Annie yields to her children and to Philip, gives Enoch up as lost, and marries Philip. Enoch is rescued and returns home, sees Annie’s happiness, and resolves never to reveal his identity to her or the children.

Considering that Griffith hardly ever remade one of his films, it’s especially remarkable to find a story produced in three different versions, as Enoch Arden was. The first two were both produced at Biograph: After Many Years (1908), which is not strictly based on Tennyson’s poem but clearly derives from it, and the two-reel Enoch Arden in 1911. This multiplicity of versions probably has something to do with the prestige associated with Tennyson’s name, but in addition it may well indicate a fondness for the story on Griffith’s part. (After all, despite numerous stage adaptations, Enoch Arden doesn’t appear to have been particularly popular with other filmmakers.) Technically, of course, this feature-length 1915 version is directed not by Griffith but by Christy Cabanne. But it’s no discredit to Griffith to say that this version is, in some respects, the best of the three; not only did Griffith supervise the film, but it’s clear that Cabanne is heavily influenced by the previous Griffith-directed versions. This is strikingly evident in the film’s structure. The intercutting in After Many Years, implying a telepathic connection between Charles Inslee on the island and Florence Lawrence at home, has given that film a degree of latter-day notoriety, but we can infer that Griffith was equally taken with the effect in 1908. For his subsequent 1911 version he expanded on it, interweaving the scenes of shipwreck survivor and wife far more extensively than in the 1908 version – even though (as Tom Gunning has pointed out in D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, p. 112) the original poem had offered little or no precedent for either formal interweaving or the idea of a telepathic connection between husband and wife. By 1915 the device has become a tradition, and Cabanne cuts between the two threads of the story with freewheeling abandon. The story is faithful to the original poem (most of the titles are taken directly from it, though often condensed and modified), but in terms of formal structure Cabanne is taking his cues, not from Tennyson, but from Griffith. The influence of the earlier film versions can also be seen in such scenes as those of the sailors’ discovery of Enoch on the island, and his return to his former home, both of which are staged very much as in the 1911 version. The device of taking the intertitles from Tennyson has some interesting results: when Alfred Paget as Enoch proposes to Lillian Gish as Annie the scene is played without titles, simply because it’s not described in the poem. At times Cabanne’s interpretation of a scene seems slightly at odds with that offered in the titles. When Lillian consults the Bible for an answer to her dilemma, the sense of the scene matches that in the poem, but Cabanne condenses the action so that what we see on the screen seems to clash with what we read in the titles. And midway through the last reel we are informed that Lillian has become fully reconciled to her second marriage to Wallace Reid, but Cabanne allows Reid to worry about it until the very last scene in the film. 114

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Roberta Pearson has analyzed Griffith’s 1908 and 1911 versions of this story in detail, comparing the acting in both films and distinguishing between “histrionic” and “verisimilar” styles (Pearson, Eloquent Gestures, pp. 62–74). In general she finds that Griffith tends toward the latter by 1911, encouraging his cast to adopt more restrained gestures and expressions, and helping them out by conveying narrative information himself through props and editing. In general, we can say that the 1915 version reflects the same trend. By and large, the acting of the three principals is subtle enough that when Paget, in the tavern near film’s end, delivers a gestural soliloquy about his changed appearance – an action that would not have seemed out of place during most of the Biograph years – it seems jarring by its contrast with the general tone of the film. The prize performance here is that of Lillian Gish as Annie Lee. Enoch Arden was produced immediately after The Birth of a Nation and displays, perhaps even more prominently than that film, the promise of the sensitive, thoughtful actress Lillian Gish would become in just a few short years. In Enoch Arden her character ages two decades, a process convincingly conveyed through acting far more than makeup. Her painful indecision in the last two reels, agonizing over whether to accept Reid’s marriage proposal or cling to the dwindling hope of Paget’s return, is just the kind of dilemma she would portray so well throughout her career. Admittedly, she benefits from the increased length of the film. Linda Arvidson, playing Annie in the 1911 version, is required to submit to her persistent suitor in one shot; Gish, in 1915, holds Reid off for the better part of a reel, a luxury that would have been impossible in the earlier versions. But even allowing for such advantages, Lillian Gish’s future acting accomplishments are unmistakably announced here. When she holds her sickly baby in an early scene, fearing for its life, and later when the baby dies, it’s difficult not to think of Way Down East (1920). As a 1915 version of a story that had already been produced twice at Biograph, Enoch Arden offers a useful index to the rapidly changing conditions of film production during these vital years: it’s produced on a far more lavish scale than the Biograph versions, but would itself have seemed quite modest within a few years. In the shipwreck scene an actual sinking ship is beyond the means of either Biograph or Majestic, but here Cabanne is able to give us the rocking, partially submerged interior of the boat. The passage of time on the island is cleverly suggested by placing Paget on the beach next to some little imitation palm trees, and later situating him among fuller vegetation. The most elaborate setting is the exterior of the village square, with a working windmill at the rear, a church on one side and a tavern on the other. When Paget returns at the end, the passage of time is again suggested by tall weeds and fuller vegetation, and the faded sign of the “King Henry Inn”. Enoch Arden was reissued in 1922 with the less-than-inspired title The Fatal Marriage. Art titles, augmented with such touches as an animated tolling church bell, were added to pad the film’s length from four reels to five. Whatever one may think of such reissues, we can be grateful for this one. A nitrate print of the 1922 edition, combined with authentic 1915 intertitles from a 28mm original, provided the source material from which George Eastman House produced their gorgeous restoration print. J.B. Kaufman

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GHOSTS Alternate titles: The Curse (1919 reissue); The Wreck (pre-release title of 1919 reissue) Filming date: March–April 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 30 days of production) Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Distribution: Mutual Film Corp.; Continental Feature Film Corp.; A Mutual Masterpicture; reissued in 1919 by Exhibitor’s Film Exchange Release date: 1? June 1915 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: George Nicholls Scenario: Russell E. Smith Adaptation: John Emerson Source: Gengangere, the play (1881) by Henrik Ibsen Camera: not known Art director: George Siegmann (according to modern sources) Assistant to the director (unspecified capacity): Erich von Stroheim (according to Arthur Lennig, Stroheim, p. 30) Set decorator: Erich von Stroheim (according to Arthur Lennig, Stroheim, p. 30) Wardrobe assistant: Erich von Stroheim (according to modern sources) Cast: Carl Formes (Henrik Ibsen); Al W. Filson (The family doctor); Thomas Jefferson (The husband); Juanita Archer (Johanna); Henry B. Walthall (Captain Alving/Oswald); Mary Alden (Helen Alving, the wealthy heiress); Nigel de Bruillier [Brulier] (Her sweetheart); Loretta Blake (Regina); Erich von Stroheim (School clerk) Archival sources: George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Killiam Collection), incomplete; 16mm acetate negative (AFI/Yale University Collection) Alving, a roue [sic], marries eighteen-year old Helen, despite his doctor’s warning. Alving dies, a victim of his excesses, when Oswald is nine years old. As Oswald grows up, his mother picks out for his wife a girl of his own station. But the horrible part is that the girl’s mother was Alving’s paramour, and the girl herself is Oswald’s half-sister. This only the doctor knows. Common decency to the living forces him to bare the fact to stop the marriage. Oswald, through his inherited taint, goes insane. His mother comes home one day to find him sitting on the floor playing with the sunbeams. She runs for the doctor. During her absence Oswald takes poison. For her consolation the mother can only turn to the physician who has been her life-long admirer. The Motion Picture News, May 29, 1915, p. 67

Captain Alving, a debauched man, marries a young woman in spite of his doctor’s warning that his diseases will be passed on to any offspring. Alving also has an affair with his best friend’s wife, fathering a daughter. He encourages his young son, Oswald, to drink. His wife, 116

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aware of his evil influence, sends the son away to school. Eventually Alving dies. Oswald returns home a young man. He is attracted to the girl unaware she is his half sister and wants to marry her. The effects of his father’s diseases begin to appear, as he drinks to excess, behaves wildly, sets fire to an orphanage, and finally dies.

It might seem rather remarkable that one of Mutual Majestic’s offerings would be an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts, a bitter naturalistic play subject to controversy and censorship, dealing with such taboo material as syphilis, incest, and ultimately, a mother’s murder of her son. Indeed, the trade press expressed some misgivings about the film; The Moving Picture World stated: “The stage version ... let loose a torrent of abuse in continental Europe and was so censored in Great Britain that even today it is a forbidden production” (May 29, 1915, p. 1439). However, the most controversial aspect of the film, its treatment of venereal disease, is so indirectly presented in this film version that one would be hard pressed to find it, if one did not know the source. Indeed, the film seems rather to invoke some sort of heredity madness, and reviewers seemed to think this claim of the crushing power of heredity was the source of the controversy (The Moving Picture World, May 29, 1915, p. 1440). The one title that names Oswald’s problem (“LOCOMOTIVE-ATAXIA!”) describes a symptom of syphilis, but only a limited number of audience members would get the connection. The reviewer for Variety seemed to think the son’s problem was epilepsy (June 11, 1915, p. 9). However, the filmmakers were clearly anxious to exploit Ibsen’s celebrity and notoriety. Griffith’s interest in Ibsen may have played a role here, but not necessarily. The film begins with a bizarre shot of a man made up to look like Ibsen preceded by the intertitle: “A LIFE-LIKE REPRODUCTION OF THE GREAT POET AND DRAMATIST. POSED BY CARL FORMES.” The actor looks towards the camera and poses very still. This paratext (to use Gérard Genette’s phrase) seems to invoke both the photograph of an author that might serve as the frontispiece of a book and the vaudeville practice of actors appearing made up as famous celebrities (an act quick-change artist Fregoli, for instance, specialized in). The film is an extremely free adaptation of Ibsen’s work and follows a tendency I have found in many adaptations of literary works in the teens of actually enacting the backstory of the original piece, starting the film’s action years before the play began and showing events only referred to in the play’s dialogue. Given Ibsen’s extreme care in slowly revealing backstories, this makes the film almost unrelated to Ibsen’s art. Thus Henry Walthall plays a dual role here, portraying not only the son Oswald, but also his father Captain Alving, who is only invoked as a ghostly presence in the play, long dead. While the dual role does give Walthall an opportunity to play contrasting roles and to underscore the hereditary transfer of madness from one character to his offspring, it also undercuts the play’s main structural device, the evocation of a villain never directly shown. The onset of physical and mental symptoms also gives Walthall opportunity for some hysterical acting, but there would seem to be little difference between his climactic attack (well admired by contemporary reviewers, Variety [June 11, 1915, pp. 19–20] stated: “Walthall does several bully ‘drunken scenes’ but it’s his work in the closing reel that stood out.”) and the melodramatic portrayal of delirium tremens in such plays as Drink (which also had, in Zola’s L’Assommoir [1877], a naturalist source). George Nicholls’ direction shows a strong tendency to break theatrical tableaux either by cutting into closer shots (including some clear point-of-view or sight-link editing), or by intercutting related scenes. However, the cutting rate is much lower than Griffith’s late Biograph films, with about seventy shots over the film’s five reels, while Griffith in 1913 was averaging more shots than that in a single reel. Tom Gunning 117

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PILLARS OF SOCIETY Filming date: April–June 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 46 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 27 August 1916 Release length: five reels (four reels according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Raoul Walsh (and George Nicholls, according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Scenario: D.W. Griffith (according to Patrick Brion, D.W. Griffith, 1982, p. 208) Source: Samfundets støtter, the play (1877) by Henrik Ibsen Camera: not known Titles: Anita Loos? Cast: Henry Walthall (Karsten Bernick); Mary Alden (Lona Tonnesen); Juanita Archer (Betty); George Beranger (Johan Tonnesen); Josephine B. Crowell (Karsten’s mother); Olga Gray (Madame Dorf); [according to Cherchi Usai and Codelli, eds., Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–1920, pp. 502–503:] Charles Lee; Loretta Blake; Jennie Lee; C. Elliott Griffin NOTE: Company ledgers (Vol. 55, p. 5) indicate a production called Out of Bondage (director: George Siegmann), “changed to 4 reel feature Pillars of Society”. Ben Brewster to Editor, 25 August 2003: “Anthony Slide (Kindergarten of the Movies, p. 92) cites Seymour Stern (without giving a reference, and there’s no Stern-authored item in his Bibliography) to the effect that ‘it had been shot in 1915, immediately following production of Ghosts, but was shelved because of the poor response to the first Ibsen adaptation’”. In another correspondence from Ben Brewster to the Editor (2 November 2003), Ben Brewster writes: “This [title] is in the [Reliance-Majestic] Feature Book, with shooting dates from April 17, 1915 to June 5, 1915, and a total cost of $14,846.00, but it does not appear in the Majestic inventories. Both Ghosts and Pillars of Society were made as Reliance pictures. Ghosts appears once, in the April 30, 1915, Majestic inventory, marked “transferred from Reliance”. Presumably Pillars never appears because it was not transferred to Majestic, but released as a Fine Arts picture but booked to Reliance, like Macbeth [1916]. As far as I can tell, incidentally, the Fine Arts Film Co. was either simply a trading name of the Majestic Motion Picture Company, or a purely titular company if it ever really existed.” Archival sources: Library of Congress, 35mm acetate negative (reels 1, 3–4 of 5), AFI/George Marshall Collection Karsten Bernick, last of the house of Bernick, whose shipyards are the mainstay of the town, is forced to return home from a Bohemian life in Paris to assume the management of the business which is nearly bankrupt. He breaks an engagement to Lona to marry Betty, her rich half-sister. With her fortune he saves the company and eventually comes to be known as a Pillar of Society.

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Then a certain Mme. Dorf, an actress, arrives in town and threatens to expose an episode in his history which occurred during his days in Paris. He persuades he brother-in-law, Johan, to take the blame for him. Johan agrees to do so for his sister’s sake and then leaves for America for with his sister Lona. Mme. Dorf dies and leaves her little daughter to Karston’s [sic] care. Karston [sic] really fears to refuse the guardianship and wins new honors as an upright benevolent citizen. In the midst of his security in the community, Johan and Lona suddenly return, the former to clear his name, the latter, who still loves Karsten, to persuade him to establish his place as a Pillar of Society on a foundation of Truth instead of lies. Karsten defends himself vigorously on the grounds that a Pillar of Society must resort to suterfuge [sic] and deception to [sic] order to protect society which depends upon him. Johan falls in love with Karsten’s little protege [sic], the daughter of Mme. Dorf, and renews his insistence that Karsten clear his name. Desperate, Karsten connives at their departure on an unseaworthy [sic] ship, but his plan reacts on himself, for his only child Olaf, has run away and been discovered on the ship as a stowaway. The ship catches fire and there is a thrilling rescue of the little boy in a motor boat. Karsten is awakened to the truth of his position and at a reception given him by the townspeople as a tribute to their leading citizen, confesses the truth. Thus he learns that the Spirits of Truth and Freedom are the true Pillars of Society and not man, however, powerful. The Moving Picture World, August 26, 1916, p. 1445

Karsten Bernick, a Norwegian businessman and owner of a shipyard, has built a successful career on a sequence of deceptions and betrayals. An affair whilst purportedly a student in Paris has left him with Dina, a dependent child, now an attractive young woman, and his attempts to scramble back into the good graces of his family involved placing the blame on his half-brother Johan and deserting Lona, his fiancée to marry a woman with wealth. Karsten’s immediate concern is a ship with a rotten hull. Cosmetically – but not structurally – repaired, it can sail for America with its crew and his visiting half-brother and former fiancée. Their deaths at sea would remove living reminders of his guilt. Meanwhile, and unknown to Karsten, his small son, fretting under Karsten’s discipline and longing for adventure, stows away aboard the badly repaired ship. Concurrently, Karsten is involved in a scheme to bring a railroad to the coastal town and, with his cronies, “the pillars of the community”, has secretly purchased properties through which the rails must pass. Fortunately, he learns of his son’s flight. Leaping to a motorboat, Karsten rescues his son, his former fiancée, his ward Dina, and his half-brother, and alerts the ship’s crew of their imminent danger. Karsten belatedly confesses his guilt and promises a life founded on honesty.

Griffith, preoccupied with Intolerance (1916) as The Pillars of Society was made, is unlikely to have had any connection with this film, although it was produced under his nominal supervision. Raoul Walsh adheres to Ibsen’s dramatic plot, but whereas much of what happens in the stage drama occurs in the final weeks of Lona Hessel and Johan Tonnesen’s belated visit to Norway and consequently enacts the weight of deceitful and cowardly past-events impinging heavily on the present, Walsh stretches his film to enact incidents which begin far in the past: We observe Karsten Bernick, already a practiced hypocrite and extremely vulnerable to feminine charm, leave for study in Paris. Rather than belatedly hear of Bernick’s treacheries, we witness his betrayal of his fiancée, his affair with Mme Dorf, confrontation with 119

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Dorf, and his further betrayal by marrying for money. We are party to his family’s provision for young Dina, his willingness to have his half-brother bear the shame of Karsten’s guilt, the way in which his guilt puts Dina at the mercy of parish gossip and nearly into the hands of the sanctimonious local pastor. We likewise observe his callous treatment of his son, his exploitation of the workers in his shipyard, his indifference to maritime safety standards, and his contemptuous treatment of the local businessmen who heap praise on him. The value of Ibsen’s late point of attack enables the audience to focus on Bernick and to have some small sympathy for his final change of heart and eventual awakening to community and domestic responsibility. As effectively as Henry Walthall plays the role of Bernick, as always with his fine eye for character detail (e.g., furtively reading The Pleasures of Paris whilst pretending to his mother that he is engaged in Bible study), we have seen too many of Bernick’s craven misdeeds to awaken much sympathy for his new-found virtue. David Mayer

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THE MARTYRS OF THE ALAMO Alternate titles: Martyrs of the Alamo; The Martyrs of the Alamo; or, The Birth of Texas Working title: The Alamo Filming date: May–June 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 39 days of production) Location: Fine Arts Studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 3 October 1915 Release date: 24? October 1915 (according to Russell Merritt, “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle” [1988]); 21 November 1915 (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–1920) Release length: five reels (four reels, according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Copyright date: 15 November 1915 (LP7889) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: W. Christy Cabanne Scenario: W. Christy Cabanne; D.W. Griffith? Story arrangement: W. Christy Cabanne, Theodosia Harris Source: The Martyrs of the Alamo, the novel by Theodosia Harris (publication undetermined) Camera: William E. Fildew Musical accompaniment selected and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil Cast: Sam De Grasse (Silent Smith); Walter Long (Santa Anna); A.D. Sears (David Crockett); Alfred Paget (James Bowie); Fred Burns (Captain Dickinson); John Dillon (Colonel Travis); Juanita Hansen (Old soldier’s daughter); Ora Carew (Mrs. Dickinson); Tom Wilson (Sam Houston); Augustus Carney (Old soldier of the War of 1812); Douglas Fairbanks; Jack Prescott; Joseph Belmont; Betty Marsh Archival sources: FILM – Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/University of Texas Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/J. Stuart Blackton Collection); 35mm acetate negative (reconstruction of the two nitrate positive prints); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor (1,1,2,1; 2,2,1,0; drums; harp; strings), 84 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., New York 1915); copyright C1 E 371505, 16 October 1915; location: LC M1357.B; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 87 Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico, comes to San Antonio, Texas. Later the wife of Captain Dickinson is insulted by one of the dictator’s officers and her husband is thrown into jail. Then are introduced Bowie, Crockett and Silent Smith, who later, with an army, capture the mission and fort. Afterward, in trying to hold the Alamo, all the defenders, with the exception of Silent Smith, Mrs. Dickinson and her baby, and the old soldier’s daughter, are killed. Houston, hearing of the fate of the defenders of the Alamo, gives battle to Santa Anna’s army, which is routed by the few hundred Texans and Santa Anna is captured. Motography, October 9, 1915, p. 769

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In 1836, a group of Texans rebels against the rule of Mexican general Santa Anna by staging an uprising against his troops in San Antonio, taking refuge in the Alamo and barricading themselves there. Santa Anna attacks the Alamo with thousands of troops and defeats the rebels. General Sam Houston, who has arrived too late to save the rebels, counterattacks the Mexican army at San Jacinto and defeats them, leading to the annexation of Texas by the United States.

Of the films produced by Griffith’s company during the mid-1910s, there are some that had little or nothing to do with D.W. Griffith himself but which clearly bear his influence. The Martyrs of the Alamo is a prime example. As a director/writer, Christy Cabanne is no Griffith, but his film is patterned on some of Griffith’s large-scale Westerns and action pictures. As the Mexican army swarms over the Alamo in the fourth reel, threatening helpless white women and children, it’s difficult not to think of similar scenes of atrocities in The Battle at Elderbush Gulch and other earlier pictures. In this case, of course, the story is based on actual historical events, which suggests a kinship with The Birth of a Nation. Indeed, it seems safe to assume that Cabanne would not have constructed his film as he did were it not for the influence of The Birth of a Nation. Throughout the film he follows Griffith’s epic at a respectful distance, like a deferential younger sibling, patterning many of his scenes on those in The Birth of a Nation – partly out of admiration, partly to evoke associations with Griffith’s scenes in the minds of the audience. The opening scenes of The Martyrs of the Alamo, for example, intended to show the Texas citizens’ intolerable living conditions under Santa Anna’s rule, suggest that the Mexicans’ offenses consisted of nothing more serious than drunken loitering, taking up space on the sidewalks, and an occasional discourtesy to their white neighbors. But by the time The Martyrs of the Alamo was released in late November 1915, The Birth of a Nation had been drawing vast audiences and storms of controversy for the better part of a year. Viewers conditioned by Griffith’s horrific images of Reconstruction could easily read the worst into Cabanne’s loitering Mexicans. The effect of this borrowing is to scale down the events of history until they fit comfortably into the scope of a five-reel program picture. Griffith grapples, for better or worse, with achingly visceral sociohistorical issues; Cabanne acknowledges those issues and then uses them as a backdrop for an action picture, pitting good guys against bad guys. Griffith personalizes the irrevocable forces of history by peopling them with compelling characterizations; Cabanne settles for a few perfunctory gestures of heroism and romance and then moves on. And, considered on its own terms, The Martyrs of the Alamo delivers the goods, packing a full complement of stirring heroism and rousing battle scenes into its five reels. “Talk about your ‘war films’,” enthused “Sime” in Variety (October 29, 1915, p. 22), “here’s one that’s one without any boasting over it.” One of the most interesting aspects of these Fine Arts program features is their reliance on Griffith’s second-string acting company. Walter Long, invariably a supporting player in films directed by Griffith, is one of the biggest names in the cast of The Martyrs of the Alamo, and it’s a welcome showcase for a movie villain whose career spanned decades. He offers an intriguing portrayal of Santa Anna, with his swaggering manner and delusions of Napoleonic grandeur. (If he suggests any previous Griffith villain it’s Holofernes in Judith of Bethulia, retiring to his tent to indulge in orgies while the battle rages outside. Here again, however, this trait is scaled down in The Martyrs of the Alamo, whose single “orgy” seems rather deco122

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rous and harmless.) Alfred Paget, a reliable character player for Griffith since 1909, is on hand as Jim Bowie, combining fastidious dress with what seems to be a barely restrained temper even as he slowly succumbs to “consumption”. Even more fascinating are the bit players, easily overlooked in Griffith’s own films, who have a chance to shine here: Tom Wilson as Sam Houston, Fred Burns as the hotheaded Lieutenant Dickinson, Allan Sears as a lanky, affable Davy Crockett. Augustus Carney, erstwhile star of the “Alkali Ike” comedies for Essanay, offers mild comedy relief as an irascible war veteran. History buffs with a special interest in the Alamo will see that Cabanne combines known historical fact (a façade of the Alamo which, at least from a distance, looks authentic) with a fair sprinkling of legend (Colonel Travis [John Dillon] drawing a line in the dirt as he calls for volunteers). The real-life “Deaf” Smith, an important figure in the history of the Texas Revolution, is here transformed into “Silent” Smith, a semifictional character who feigns deafness in order to learn Santa Anna’s strategy. (Sam De Grasse, recently seen as the aristocratic Charles Sumner in The Birth of a Nation, demonstrates impressive versatility as he portrays this folksy, tobacco-chewing character.) Interestingly, the film’s intertitles acknowledge the harshness of Santa Anna’s rule – a burden to all classes of his nominal constituents, and the real cause of the rebellion – but the action of the film depicts most of the conflict as a simple clash of Anglos vs. Mexicans. The latter are not explicitly vilified on screen but are mostly depicted as a faceless army of charging opponents (although, with the Mexican Revolution currently in full swing, surely even that depiction did little to improve U.S.-Mexican relations in 1915). In this connection it’s perhaps worth noting the African-American character, played by a white actor in blackface, who can be glimpsed among the defenders of the Alamo. This character may be inspired by the real-life servant to Colonel Travis, who is known to have been present at the actual event, but in currently available prints of The Martyrs of the Alamo the character can be seen before Travis arrives on the scene. Some of the influence of The Birth of a Nation on this film is seen most clearly in its historical material. Sam Houston’s signing of the declaration of Texas’ independence is filmed with some of the ceremony that attends the Abraham Lincoln tableaux in Griffith’s film. And the acknowledged rivalry between the Bowie and Travis factions among the Alamo defenders is here symbolized by two characters who seem to be loosely modeled on the younger brothers of the Northern and Southern families in The Birth of a Nation, contending with each other in a spirit of friendly rivalry, but registering a fierce loyalty to each other in times of crisis. Released a few months before the eightieth anniversary of the actual siege, The Martyrs of the Alamo was well received by audiences and critics. Louis Reeves Harrison praised it in The Moving Picture World (November 6, 1915, p. 1155): “It quickens our pulses, gives new life to stagnant blood of overfed prosperity.” Today the film’s interest is compounded; it may tell us little about the events of 1836, but it’s invaluable as a 1915 reflection of those events. J.B. Kaufman

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THE LAMB Working title: Blood Will Tell Filming date: July–August 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 38 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued by Triangle Film Corp., 2 September 1917 New York premiere: 23 September 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Chicago premiere: 2 October 1915, Studebaker Theatre Release date: early October 1915 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 1 November 1915 (LP7887) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: W. Christy Cabanne Scenario: W. Christy Cabanne? Source: The Man and the Test, the novel (probably spurious) by Granville Warwick [pseudonym of D.W. Griffith] Camera: William E. Fildew Titles: Anita Loos? Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Gerald/Son of the Idle Rich); Seena Owen (Mary/The American Girl); Alfred Paget (Bill Cactus/Her Model Type of Man); Kate Toncray (Gerald’s mother); William E. Lowery (Yaqui Indian Chief); Charles Eagle Eye (Himself); Lillian Langdon (Mary’s mother); Monroe Salisbury (The Wealthy Miner); Edward Warren (Gerald’s valet); Tom Kennedy (The White Hopeless) Archival sources: George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; 35mm acetate negative; Library of Congress, 16mm acetate positive (Boltons Trading Corporation 1974 reissue); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) A sprig of the old Knickerbocker family has won a beautiful girl as a fiancee and everything goes along smoothly until the girl, Mary discovers a “yellow streak” in her Lamb Yclept [sic] Gerald. During a mishap at a bathing beach Bill Cactus, a young giant from Arizona visiting in New York, affects a thrilling rescue while Gerald fails utterly to show up as a self-sacrificing young man. Later Bill goes out to Arizona where the girl and her friends are enjoying a visit at a ranch. The Lamb leaves the transcontinental train to buy some Indian trinkets. The train speeds off without him. Crooks offer to take him to the train by a short cut route, then pack him and leave him for dead on the desert. The Lamb wanders about rather helplessly till by good fortune he sights an aviator who is fitting [sic] over the country for the very same ranch people where his former finacee [sic] is staying. The aviator and Gerald are captured by Yaqui Indians, taken across the Mexican border and held prisoners. A thrilling fight ensues between the Yaquis and Mexican soldiers in which the Indians are victorious. Gerald’s sweetheart in an automobile party that ventures across the line is captured by the Indians, too. The Arizona man then shows his “yellow streak” and goes back over the border to

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tell the American troopers of the girl’s capture and disappearance. Gerald and Mary are left alone together. Then the real qualities of the Lamb assert themselves. He finds a rapid fire cannon which the Indians had taken from the Mexicans and which they regarded as a piece of junk. Backed up against the wall with the girl at his side he operates the rapid firing gun and mows down the greater part of the tribe as they advance to attack them. When, however, all the ammunition is exhausted the remaining Indians have their opportunity. They approach cautiously on all fours, meaning to take the man alive to cut his heart out. Gerald and Mary prepare for the [sic] death. But in the meantime the American troopers come riding over the sagebrush and cactus. They arrive in the knick of time and Mary and her Lamb fall into each other’s arms. The Moving Picture World, October 9, 1915, p. 340

Gerald, the weakling son of a wealthy New York family, loses his fiancée Mary to Bill, a strapping adventurer from Arizona, when Bill rescues a drowning swimmer and Gerald stands by helplessly. Disgusted by Gerald’s “yellow streak”, Mary visits Arizona with Bill, but a determined Gerald follows. When Gerald leaves the train to buy trinkets, he is stranded in the desert by crooks, then kidnapped by Yaqui Indians and whisked away to Mexico. Soon after, the same Indians kidnap Mary who ends up held captive in an adobe next to Gerald. While the less-than-heroic Bill flees back across the border to alert the U.S. militia, Gerald locates a machine gun and starts to mow his captors down. The surviving Yaquis surround him, ready to cut out his heart, but American troops come to the rescue. Mary responds to Gerald’s bravery and they agree to marry.

Peppy, toothsome Doug Fairbanks was a sensation from his first bounce, and The Lamb, his movie debut, set the formula that would carry him through the rest of the decade. Anyone who has seen one of Fairbanks’ teens pictures knows the pattern that The Lamb set in place. A young man with a certain patrician quality and privileged Eastern upbringing – mollycoddled by female relatives and cut off from male role models – drives his sweetheart to despair with his feckless incompetence. Humiliated into developing long-repressed physical skills, he runs, jumps, punches, and smiles his way into vigorous, red-blooded manhood. This blueprint became the Fairbanks trademark, but, as Gaylyn Studlar noted in her Fairbanks chapter in This Mad Masquerade (“Building Mr. Pep: Boy Culture and the Construction of Douglas Fairbanks”, pp. 10–89) even though that formula was recycled endlessly, no one seemed to mind. After The Lamb’s unexpected success, screens were filled with Fairbanks for the rest of 1915 and throughout all of 1916. As Studlar writes, up until the moment the company lost him, Triangle capitalized on Fairbanks’ popularity with the release of a multireel feature virtually every other month for a year and a half. The Lamb was released 7 November 1915, followed by Double Trouble in December, His Picture in the Papers in February 1916, The Habit of Happiness in March, The Good Bad Man in April, and so on. He was the one actor that Triangle’s Harry Aitken managed to turn into a major star. The question is whether Griffith had anything to do with Fairbanks’ first film, thereby helping create the Fairbanks blueprint. Griffith consistently said yes, Fairbanks was equally insistent in saying no. On paper, at least, Griffith makes the stronger case. The contract Fairbanks signed with Majestic on 26 June 1915, two weeks before starting production on The Lamb, includes the famous clause: “Said CORPORATION agrees that as a condition precedent to and as a part of the consideration of this agreement, the direction of the motion picture that said MR FAIRBANKS is to render services in the making of, shall be supervised by DAVID W. GRIFFITH.” Further, the non-existent novel that the studio claimed as the 125

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source for The Lamb was attributed to Granville Warwick, one of Griffith’s common pseudonyms at Majestic. Finally, W. Christy Cabanne, Griffith’s factotum from Biograph days and the most dutiful of Griffith copycats, was the film’s director of record. Griffith is credited with having written at least another half-dozen Cabanne Triangles, including The Martyrs of the Alamo, Daphne and the Pirate, and Diane of the Follies (1916), not to mention Fairbanks’ second feature, Double Trouble. Although Cabanne was never asked about The Lamb, here is what he had to say about a Fairbanks picture he directed a few months later: If you saw Flirting With Fate, where Fairbanks hires a professional assassin to help him commit suicide, those comic routines with [George] Beranger as the assassin – they were all Griffith…. I don’t see how any human being worked the way he did. Never less than eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to his own directing chores, he spent a great amount of time working with us. Especially when I directed his own stars, the Gish sisters or Bobby Harron, he helped out with the scenarios and went over [the rushes] with me in the projection room. (Quoted in Carlyle Ellis, “The Meaning of ‘Griffith-Supervised’”, Motography, January 15, 1916, pp. 115–116)

These seemed to me reasons enough to conclude that Griffith had indeed actively participated in the production of Fairbanks Triangles, including The Lamb (Merritt, “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle”, pp. 242–269). But that was before I actually saw the film. Now I’ve looked at it and I’m ready to recant. The difficulty is that nothing in The Lamb before the last-minute rescue resembles anything like Griffith, least of all the narrative and Fairbanks’ performance. It is unlikely that any Reliance or Triangle we will ever see looks less like a Griffith production than Fairbanks’ first movie. By now it has become a critical commonplace that the Fairbanks character itself – the leaping go-getter – worked far outside the range of Griffith’s male protagonists. But the same is true of the performance styles of The Lamb’s other players, the film’s comic tone, and its assorted plot contrivances. The witty, wiseguy titles have the mark of Anita Loos, who by 1915 was regularly writing for Cabanne and the Fine Arts comedy unit, and who would later become permanently attached to the Fairbanks unit. But they sound nothing like Griffith or his head writer, Frank Woods. Thanks to J.B. Kaufman’s research in the Triangle business records, we now know Loos titled the second Fairbanks Triangle, Double Trouble, also directed by Cabanne, before teaming up with the classic Fairbanks directors, Allan Dwan and John Emerson. It’s likely from the style that she also wrote titles for The Lamb. Who else at Fine Arts would have written: “THIS IS THE STORY OF A LOVESICK LAMB, WHOSE DAD, AN OLD WAR HORSE, HAD DIED. CLINCHING HIS TEETH IN A WALL STREET BEAR, LEAVING THE LAMB TO GAMBOL AROUND ON THE LONG GREEN.”

Or outclass Sennett-style puns with“THE LAMB WAS It is simply not the Griffith comic voice, any more than the airfields, military bases, or private gymnasiums are Griffith kinds of locales. Even allowing for Fairbanks’ unique comic style with its non-Griffith direct-to-camera asides, it’s hard to recall any Griffith comic romances – whether supervised or directed – in which his female leads don’t share any comic scenes. The Muggsy Biograph series with the on-going interaction between Pickford and Quirk provide one model; the Griffith Artcrafts with Gish and Harron, another. And did Griffith ever make a movie with a happy ending that consisted of a son preening because he lived up to the memory of his heroic father? It runs against the grain of virtually every Griffith father-son short and feature film currently available, where youngsters try to escape fathers who are rivals, tyrants, or benign but ineffectual oldsters. True, the last-minute rescue featuring soldiers on horseback who rescue the hero and his sweetheart from bloodthirsty Indians has been directly copied from The Birth of a Nation. But the wildfire success of The Birth of a Nation had turned such scenes into common currency,

TO BE LED TO THE HALTER”?

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a staple ending for comedies as well as Westerns and historical spectacles. Cabanne had used it before in The Martyrs of the Alamo, he would use it again in Daphne and the Pirate and The Flying Torpedo. My new theory, no less speculative than the old, is that Triangle attached Granville Warwick’s name to the production in order to satisfy the legal requirement of the Fairbanks contract. Fairbanks sued the company anyway, complaining that Griffith never properly supervised his films. But the issue was resolved behind closed doors, with no record of the arguments. Fairbanks’ suit was settled out of court when Fairbanks got what he wanted – early release from the contract that enabled him to join Zukor at Artcraft. The Lamb was quickly forgotten in the flood of later, more sophisticated Fairbanks Triangles. As for Griffith, if he ignored Fairbanks on The Lamb, the film marked the appropriate start to his tangled, wary relationship with a man who would consistently outmaneuver him as a business partner and rival. Russell Merritt

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OLD HEIDELBERG Filming date: April–June, August–September (October?) 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers indicate 40 days of production, then 15 days; the latter is crossed out and replaced with 55 days) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corporation Release date: October to mid-November 1915? Release length: five reels (four reels, according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Copyright date: 8 November 1915 (LP7888) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John Emerson Scenario: John Emerson Source: Karl Heinrich, the novel (1902) by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster, translated by Max Chapelle [pseudonym, Max Schaaf] (1903) Camera: not known Assistant director: Erich von Stroheim Technical advisor: Erich von Stroheim Cast: Wallace Reid (Prince Karl Heinrich of Rutania); Dorothy Gish (Kathie [Katie]); Karl Formes, Jr. [Carl Formes] (Dr. Juttner); Erich von Stroheim (Lutz); Raymond Wells (Karl Bilz); J.W. McDermott (Von Wendell); James Gibson (Kellerman); Franklin Arbuckle (Ruder); Madge Hunt (Frau Ruder); Erik von Ritzau (Prince Rudolf); Kate Toncray (Kathie’s mother); Harold Goodwin (Prince Karl at age 12) Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm acetate positive (generation undetermined; a tinted 35mm nitrate positive, printed in 1922, is no longer extant) The story is based on the strong and pathetic theme of the conflict between love and duty. Through the early life of Prince Karl, the heir to the throne of Rutania, there appears at frequent intervals the person of Kathie, a beautiful young girl, the daughter of a common soldier. When he goes to Heidelberg to complete his studies he again finds her there, the niece of the landlord of the little hotel at which he stops. As they have both reached the age of adolescence they fall in love and for a few happy mouths [sic] Karl is able to forget that he is a Prince and live the careless, carefree life of a student. Then a crisis arises in the affairs of his country and he is called back to the palace, where he is effectual in preventing the country from being plunged into the horrors of war, but in doing so he is forced to marry the Princess of another country. He returns to Heidelberg for one day for the purpose of bidding Kathie good-by and then abruptly turning away leaves to enter the lonely, loveless life of kings. The New York Dramatic Mirror, October 16, 1915, p. 30

Prince Karl of Rutania, raised in an atmosphere of strict royal discipline, is sent to Heidelberg for a year of schooling and sees for the first time the simple joys of the commoners’ lives. 128

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He makes friends with his classmates and falls in love with Katie, the innkeeper’s daughter. Called back to Karlburg by a national emergency and pledged to an arranged royal marriage, Karl uses his royal power for the good of the people, but sadly realizes he must turn his back on the happiness he found in Heidelberg.

Along with other cinematic milestones, the year 1915 was a major turning point in the career of Wallace Reid. Formerly one of the second string of actors in Griffith’s stock company at Majestic, Reid made a brief but memorable appearance as a blacksmith in The Birth of a Nation which proved to be his breakthrough. Although Griffith seemed to have little use for the young actor in his own films, Reid continued to prosper with the company, enjoying progressively larger roles until, by the end of the year, he stood on the brink of stardom. One of his featured roles, that of Philip Ray in Enoch Arden, is considered elsewhere in this volume; by the time of Old Heidelberg he was playing the leading role of Prince Karl, torn between the demands of love and duty and sadly bowing to the inevitable. By the end of 1915, Reid had been lured away from Griffith’s company by Cecil B. DeMille, and his all-too-short reign as a popular star lay directly ahead. For an actor who represented such an unknown quantity in Griffith’s eyes, Old Heidelberg was an ideal vehicle; the story was already so well known that it had a presold popular appeal. This film version was, in fact, only one link in a long chain of adaptations. Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s romance Karl Heinrich had first been published in 1902 as a novel, and at least three stage adaptations had quickly followed. The most successful of these was revived in New York in 1910, and this quite likely led to Majestic’s 1915 film version. In 1924 the story took a lighter turn when it was adapted as Sigmund Romberg’s operetta The Student Prince. This was followed in turn by another film version, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, directed in 1927 by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer, and the story continued to resurface on stage and screen in later years. The top screen billing in Old Heidelberg actually goes to Dorothy Gish, who was herself well on the way to screen stardom. Though she has little to do, her performance as Katie (Kathie in the original story) displays her natural charm and was and is a delight to all except, apparently, “Jolo”, who complained in Variety (October 8, 1915, p. 21) that she “doesn’t suggest anything Teutonic, thereby failing to preserve the otherwise strongly created atmosphere of German student life”. Other reviewers were far more complimentary. Another notable member of the cast is young Harold Goodwin, who plays the Prince at age 12. In later years Goodwin would virtually grow up onscreen, appearing in the silent films of Mary Pickford and Buster Keaton, among many others, and continuing his acting career in dozens of sound films in succeeding decades. In retrospect, perhaps the most interesting casting choice in the film is that of Erich von Stroheim, who appears as valet and chief killjoy Lutz and who also assisted director John Emerson behind the camera. Richard Koszarski has written on Stroheim’s connection with Old Heidelberg, providing valuable insights on his working relationship with Emerson and speculating on the extent of his involvement in the finished film. (Koszarski’s comments are reprinted in Griffithiana 71, pp. 56–60.) Traces of Old Heidelberg can be seen in several of Stroheim’s own later films while, conversely, Koszarski makes a case for Stroheim’s creative contribution to this film. The royal edict “THAT EACH CRIPPLED SOLDIER BE GIVEN A HANDORGAN” is offered as one touch that suggests the Stroheim influence. Of course there are other influences at work here, not least that of Griffith himself. The “LOVE’S MARRIAGE” title, followed by an idyllic shot of the lovers by a stream, seems a striking example of Griffith’s hand at work. And, as the Variety reviewer commented, “No Griffith 129

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feature would be complete without a battle-scene” (reviewers frequently wrote about these Griffith-supervised program pictures as if Griffith himself had directed them). In the original version of Old Heidelberg the end of Karl’s idyll was brought about by the simple necessity of royal obligation; here his return to Karlburg is prompted by an impending war, and the film suddenly takes off in a new direction as Reid finds himself in the midst of an antiwar lecture. The inclusion of the war is, of course, motivated by World War I, which was already raging in Europe when this film was produced. The antiwar stance may reflect the United States’ current neutrality policy, but it seems to come directly from Griffith, who had presented glorious scenes of the Civil War in The Birth of a Nation but took pains to link them to a strong antiwar statement, and was preparing an even stronger one in his current production of Intolerance (1916). (Interestingly, the passage in question in Old Heidelberg – in which Reid is conducted through scenes illustrating the horrors of war – suggests Thomas Ince’s Civilization, which would be released months later in 1916, far more strongly than any other Griffith film or Meyer-Förster’s original story.) Continuing this thread, Kevin Brownlow points out in a personal conversation that some of the differences between the (vastly different) 1915 and 1927 film versions of Old Heidelberg are prompted by the intervening changes in world history. The Locarno Treaty of 1925 had admitted Germany to the League of Nations, and the 1927 The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, was designed to reflect a new and more positive attitude between nations. Wallace Reid’s 1915 duel was not repeated by Ramon Novarro in 1927, nor was there any mention of war, mythical or real. Released on the second Triangle program in November 1915, Old Heidelberg drew a generally favorable reaction from critics but was overshadowed by Ince’s contribution to the program: the Civil War drama The Coward, with Frank Keenan and Charles Ray. J.B. Kaufman

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THE SABLE LORCHA Filming date: June–September 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 63 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: San Francisco (waterfront? and Chinatown) Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 18 October 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 29 November 1915 Release length: five reels (four reels, according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Copyright date: 22 November 1915 (LP7886) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Lloyd Ingraham Scenario: Chester B. Clapp Source: The Sable Lorcha, the novel (1912) by Horace Hazeltine (pseudonym of Charles Stokes Wayne) Camera: Hugh C. McClung Assistant camera: Henry Kotani Assistant director: Henry Kotani Music accompaniment selected and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil (according to The Moving Picture World, November 27, 1915, p. 1672), J. A. Raynes Cast: Tully Marshall (John Soy); Thomas Jefferson (Robert Cameron/Donald McNish); Charles Lee (Yup Sing); Loretta Blake (Evelyn, Cameron’s daughter); Elmer Clifton (Phillip Clyde, Evelyn’s fiancé); George Pearce (Murphy, Donald McNish’s partner); Hal Wilson (The detective); Raymond Wells (Central office man); Earle Raymond; (in San Francisco shooting, September 1915:) Mazie Radford?; Charles Lee?; William De Vaull? Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor (1,1,2,1; 2,2,1,0; tympani and drums; strings), 63 pages (printed by G. Schirmer, New York); copyright C1 E 373197, 20 October 1915; location: LC M1357.R; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 117 Soy, a half-breed Chinaman, mistakes Robert Cameron, a wealthy philanthropist, for a man who wronged him several years previous, and resolves to wreak vengeance. He kidnaps Cameron from his yacht and concealing him in the underground labyrinth of Chinatown plans his revenge, which is to be a duplicate of the crime which Cameron is supposed to have committed. Cameron’s twin brother Donald appears, and Soy seeing him, thinks that Robert Cameron has escaped, and stabs him. Dying, Donald confesses that several years previous he had been engaged with Soy in the business of smuggling Chinese into the United States. After taking on a particularly large cargo of the human freight and receiving their passage money Donald had locked them between decks and then blown up the junk, called the Sable Lorcha, and the Chinamen had died like rats in a trap. With the aid of detectives the place of Robert Cameron is discovered and the rescue party enters just as he is about to experience the same death which his brother made the Chinamen suffer in the sinking junk. The New York Dramatic Mirror, October 30, 1915, p. 35

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No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. The story opens with a mysterious Chinese man, John Soy (Tully Marshall), making an offering before the seven-headed idol of evil. Soy has devised a combination of drugs which produces fumes that render a person unconscious for a short time. Using the formula, he goes to the home of a retired Connecticut businessman, Robert Cameron (Thomas Jefferson), drugs him and leaves the first of a series of threatening notes, each of which bears no signature but, instead, has the image of a mysterious ship. After the first, Cameron seems to see his portrait beheaded. After the second, a mirror is mysteriously smashed before his very eyes. The third note threatens that Cameron will pass from the sight of man before the third day. Unaware that he has any enemies, the mystified Cameron decides to escape on his yacht and takes his daughter Evelyn’s (Loretta Blake) fiancé Phillip Clyde (Elmer Clifton) with him. At sea, they come across Soy who appears to be adrift and they take him on board. Soy drugs Cameron and Clyde and signals the members of his tong, who have been following in another boat, to board the yacht. They tie Cameron up, put him in a box and abduct him. When Clyde awakens he returns to port. By chance, Clyde sees Soy on the street and follows him to Chinatown. He then calls in a detective (Hal Wilson) to help find Cameron. Although his search is unsuccessful, he learns that Cameron has a twin brother, Donald McNish (also played by Thomas Jefferson). The twins were born in Scotland but separated by the mother’s death. Robert was brought to the United States, but Donald was adopted by a family named McNish. Soy, who is holding Robert Cameron prisoner in a secret location in Chinatown, goes walking and sees Donald on the street. Unaware that they are twins, he assumes that Robert Cameron escaped and follows Donald to Robert Cameron’s home. As Donald is entering the gates, Soy stabs him. Before he dies Donald makes a confession and for the first time we learn why Soy and his confederates have been seeking to kill Cameron. Years earlier, Donald was in China smuggling laborers to America. On one of his trips, fearing that he would be caught, Donald blew up the boat, the Sable Lorcha. It sank, killing all on board except Soy and Donald’s partner Murphy (George Pearce). Taking the profits from the escapade for himself, Donald escaped. Murphy and Soy vowed to take vengeance for Donald’s crime. Thinking he killed Robert Cameron, Soy returns to Chinatown and finds Robert still alive. Soy decides to do away with him too and starts to kill him by filling his cell with water. This would cause him to suffer the same fate as the coolies who drowned with the Sable Lorcha. While this is taking place, the police raid the hideout and rescue Robert Cameron. Soy escapes, but fearing he has failed his duty, goes to a shrine and before the seven-headed idol of evil, commits ceremonial suicide. To clarify an obvious question, a “Sable Lorcha” is not a fur coat, it is a boat. A lorcha is supposed to be a Chinese boat and this one is named the Sable. Fine Arts had to make this explanation early in the film that bears this unusual, mysterious name. The Sable Lorcha is a tale of vengeance and mistaken identity told as a suspenseful mystery. Although the story is set in Connecticut and the waters off America’s East Coast, it is the exotic and inscrutable Orient that is used to create intrigue, apprehension, and an enigmatic sensation. Through much of the film, the audience is left to wonder how a Chinese tong, led by Soy, an ominous figure of uncertain past, has come so far, to such an unfamiliar location to wreak terrible vengeance on a seemingly innocent retired businessman. The film is almost at an end when the reason for the vendetta is revealed – and it turns out to be an understandable though not a moral reason. Although the film was produced by the Fine Arts Film Corp. at the Griffith studio in Los 132

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Angeles and released by Triangle Film Corp., it started its life as a Reliance-Majestic production for Mutual. The rights to make a film from Horace Hazeltine’s 1912 novel were arranged on 28 June 1915 while the Reliance and Majestic companies were still a part of the Mutual Film Corp. This happened at the time that Mutual underwent a major management change. Harry Aitken was voted out as head and John Freuler replaced him. Aitken withdrew the personnel of his Reliance and Majestic companies from Mutual including D.W. Griffith and his staff. In August Aitken joined with Adam Kessel and Frank Baumann to form Triangle Film Corporation with Griffith, Thomas Ince, and Mack Sennett as the “triangle” of producers. They announced that their first films would be released in September. Most of the remnants of Aitken’s Reliance and Majestic companies became part of Griffith’s Fine Arts company, and the Los Angeles studio became the Fine Arts studio or sometimes the Griffith studio, since he was nominally in charge of all production there. By the time this change took place Chester B. Clapp, who had been on the RelianceMajestic literary staff, was adapting Horace Hazeltine’s novel for the screen and since it was already being prepared for production, The Sable Lorcha became one of the first films started under the Fine Arts name. Lloyd Ingraham was named director and Tully Marshall and Thomas Jefferson were chosen as principals. Ingraham was a former stage actor who started work for Reliance-Majestic in 1915. He directed several one- and two-reel films and had played the judge in Griffith’s still uncompleted film, The Mother and the Law, soon to be included in Intolerance (1916). The Sable Lorcha seems to have been Ingraham’s first multireel film and also one of Tully Marshall’s earliest feature roles. Thomas Jefferson, the son of legendary actor Joseph Jefferson and a stage veteran in his own right, had also joined RelianceMajestic in 1915. The picture was in production at the end of August when the company sent a large party to San Francisco to shoot scenes in the Bay Area (The Motion Picture News, September 4, 1915, pp. 50, 61). In addition to the principals, the crew included cameraman Hugh McClung, Henry Kotani, a crew of stagehands, an assistant, and “twenty natives of China”. Henry Kotani is credited as an assistant cameraman on the film. He had been acting in the company of Japanese actors working in films with Oriental themes produced by Thomas Ince’s Kay-Bee company, which had been affiliated with Mutual and was now with Triangle. This is one of the earliest credits Kotani received for camerawork as he changed his career from acting to camerawork. To film the final scenes of the picture, the company bought a Chinese sailing ship, the Alden Besse, which was alleged to be four hundred years old. They also built a large tank on the studio lot to film the sinking of the ship smuggling the Chinese laborers. D.W. Griffith is credited with supervising The Sable Lorcha, but as with the other early Fine Arts productions, since he had plans in the works to expand The Mother and the Law into a more ambitious production, the extent of his supervision is far from clear. Oscar Cooper, who reviewed The Sable Lorcha for The Motion Picture News (October 15, 1915, p. 86), detected the Griffith influence in the directing of Lloyd Ingraham and the photography. He credited Ingraham with handling a difficult subject and keeping it from becoming melodrama. He was particularly impressed with Tully Marshall’s performance as Soy. But this comment and the fact that it was among the first films produced with his name attached to it seem to be the film’s only links to Griffith. The cast and the production staff include people who worked with Griffith, but none of them have strong associations with his past work. Triangle premiered The Sable Lorcha the week of 18 October 1915, on the third program at their flagship house, New York’s Knickerbocker Theatre. It was paired with Thomas Ince’s five-reel Kay-Bee production, The Disciple, starring William S. Hart and two Keystone tworeel films, A Game Old Knight and Her Painted Hero, which featured Charles Murray and 133

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Hale Hamilton. After the showing at the Knickerbocker, the films were given general release on 29 November 1915. An anonymous reviewer for The New York Times (18 October 1915, p. 9) praised it as one of the best films that Triangle had released. He compared it with The Moonstone and commented that it “has in it more of mystery, ingenuity and surprise than you would find in a thousand ordinary scenarios”. He was particularly impressed with a scene in which Thomas Jefferson was shown in both of his roles in a single shot. Triangle’s program received guarded praise from Oscar Cooper in his review for The Motion Picture News. He characterized it as “consistently good work rather than brilliancy” but felt that it had enough variety to sustain it with audiences throughout the country. He reported that the audience at the Knickerbocker responded very well to the mixture of comedy, sentiment, and mystery. Variety’s reviewer, “Fred”, indicated that the mystery and suspense worked well and it was well photographed, but he found the story improbable in places and the “suspense and thrills of the type usually found in the cheaper fiction magazines”. Paul Spehr

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THE LILY AND THE ROSE Alternate title: The Tiger Girl (1920 reissue) Working titles: Lily and the Rose; Mrs. Billie Filming date: July–September 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 70 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: Pasadena, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued by United Picture Productions Corp., as The Tiger Girl, 15 February 1920 New York premiere: 7 November 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Chicago premiere: 15 November 1915, Studebaker Theatre Release date: 12 December 1915 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 6 December 1915 (LP7979) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Scenario: Granville Warwick [pseudonym of D.W. Griffith] (according to modern sources) Adaptation: Paul Powell (according to synopsis submitted to the Copyright Office) Story: “Mrs. Billie”, by Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: Hugh C. McClung, John Leezer Assistant director: Roy Hiram Rice Music arranged and adapted by: Joseph Carl Breil; J.A. Raynes Cast: Lillian Gish (Mary Randolph [The Lily]); Wilfred Lucas (Jack Van Norman); Elmer Clifton (Allison Edwards); Rozsika Dolly (Rose); Loyola O’Connor and Cora Drew (Letty Carrington and Molly Carrington, Mary’s spinster aunts); Mary Alden (Cousin Clara); William Hinckley (Tennis player) NOTE: A photograph published in The United Exhibitor (21 February, 1920) shows D.W. Griffith on the set with Wilfred Lucas (courtesy of Harold “Rusty” Casselton). Archival sources: FILM – Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Blackhawk Collection), incomplete. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor (1,0,2,0; 0,2,1,0; drums; strings), 86 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corp., New York 1915, “Triangle Plays” series); copyright C1 E 373893, 15 November 1915; location: LC M1357.B (cornet, copy 2, in M176.L); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 81 The Lily is first seen in a beautiful Southern home, where she is cared for by her two aunts, typical gentlewomen of former days. Through a fashionable relative, the Lily is introduced to the man whom she marries. He gradually tires of the artless girl and goes to a lively show, where he sees a sensational dancer, the Rose. In his infatuation he neglects the Lily. She is unsuspecting until she receives an anonymous warning. Then she tries to win back her husband by giving a new dance that she has learned at a social affair, but he does not give her any encouragement. Then

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the ways of the husband and wife part. He takes the dancer to the seashore, while the Lily returns to her girlhood home. The man finds that the dancer is shallow and fickle. When he is ready to leave her in disgust he gets a letter from his wife, saying that she has decided that as he was unwilling to be bound by marital ties, she had started proceedings for their separation. He goes out to the garden house and shoots himself. The dancer finds him dead and, thinking only of herself, carefully leaves, after wiping out her footprints on the sands. The Lily finds consolation in the regard of a girlhood friend, a sincere young author who lives in an adjoining house. His great work is dedicated to her and in the thought of him the Lily finds a new hope and interest in life. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, December 6, 1915, LP7979 [stamped with date April 1, 1916]

Mary Randolph, raised from childhood by two spinster aunts and adored by the neighborhood bookworm, falls for a suave ladykiller from the city, Jack Van Norman. She marries Jack only to discover his affair with Rose, a dancer in a musical comedy. Leaving him, Mary returns to her aunts where she gives birth to her baby. Jack himself is betrayed when he discovers Rose entertaining a tennis player. He kills himself, Rose learns her lesson, and Mary finds happiness with the writer next door.

Et le rythme de “Le Lys et La Rose”. C’est le meilleur film de Griffith. Il a cinq ans ou six ans d’âge. Il parut à Paris avec les tout premiers Triangle et les Chaplin en 1916. Ce jour-là quelques Français commencèrent d’oublier les films de Mlle Robinne et s’éprirent du cinéma. [And the rhythm of ‘The Lily and the Rose’. It is Griffith’s best film. It was made five or six years ago. It was shown in Paris together with the earliest Triangle and Chaplin films in 1916. That day the French public began forgetting about Miss Robinne and fell in love with cinema. – Eds. Translation] Louis Delluc, “Lillian Gish”, in Cinéa (not dated); reprinted in Louis Delluc, Ecrits cinématographiques I, ed. Pierre Lherminier (Paris: Cinémathèque Française, 1985), p. 148

Paul Powell, a contract director at Reliance and then Triangle, caught fire with The Lily and the Rose. Although the last reel is missing and what survives comes from a trimmed and retitled reissue print, enough remains to reveal a well-paced, handsomely produced vehicle for Lillian Gish that in its opening scenes anticipates the charms of True Heart Susie and A Romance of Happy Valley (both 1919). Louis Delluc thought that Griffith himself had directed it, and in 1921 called it Griffith’s best film (but, then again, Delluc also rated Dream Street [1921] over Broken Blossoms [1919]). Delluc particularly responded to Gish’s performance as the headstrong, vulnerable country mouse obliged to cope with her husband’s infidelity. He considered her scene at her faithless husband’s coffin (part of the reel missing from our print) as compelling as the baptismal scene in Way Down East (1920), thanks to Gish’s ability to register unsorted, contradictory feelings. But the film boasted other qualities that made this one of Triangle’s best-reviewed films. The elegant camerawork in particular caught reviewers’ attention. When Gish stalks her husband in the park – he is in a touring car with his mistress; she is trailing them in a horse and carriage – Powell takes a page from an identical sequence in Griffith’s The Drive For A Life (1909) by using tracking shots to create visual tension as the camera keeps the two moving vehicles in perilous, unstable alignment. The third and fourth reels are saturated with more deep-focus shots that cleverly draw us into exploring rooms by degrees, shifting light sources, and opening doors and drapes mid-shot to reveal new significant spaces. 136

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The Lily and the Rose was plainly meant as a prestige Triangle. It marks Gish’s first appearance with the new company, and introduced the popular Ziegfeld attraction, Rozsika (Rosi) Dolly to feature films. Rozsika’s veil dance on the rocky shore doesn’t wear terribly well (though it compares favorably to Carole Dempster’s imitation in Griffith’s The Love Flower [1920]), and trade reviewers were curiously restrained in commenting on it – whether out of gallantry or fear of alerting censors. But the veil dance was new territory for Dolly. She had made her career as one of the Dolly Twins where her specialty was dancing a novelty Tandem Act – she and her sister dancing with props and in elaborate look-alike costumes. Triangle was able to sign her because sister Yansci (Jenny) had recently broken up the act in order to dance with her new husband, Harry Fox. Together, Jenny and Harry introduced their latest invention, the fox trot, while Rosi, turning to ballroom dancing, found a new career performing Spanish tangos. The Lily and the Rose came just at the point she was finding that new direction for her career. As such, Rosi’s Triangle debut with the veil dance was also her Triangle farewell. Part of The Lily and the Rose’s appeal was its elaborate production values. The front office used the film to inaugurate the studio’s new elevated, open-air monster stage, measuring 70 feet by 160 feet. The stage is introduced as the winter garden theatre where Wilfred Lucas first sees Dolly perform. A few months later it became the foundation floor for Griffith’s Hall of Babylon. Along with Fairbanks’ The Matrimaniac, The Lily and the Rose remains Paul Powell’s most notable Triangle (this may be because these are the only two films that are left of his work: his other thirteen Triangle features are lost). Powell stayed with the company until the bitter end, directing Bessie Love and Constance Talmadge through Spring 1917; then he pursued a career as a freelancer. His single prestige post-Triangle assignment was as Mary Pickford’s director for her first United Artists feature, Pollyanna (1920); he also had a brush with the still unknown Rudolph Valentino in two early budget films (also lost). Otherwise he spent the ‘Twenties directing Agnes Ayres and low-budget programmers for fly-by-night studios. He retired from directing with the advent of the talkie era. Russell Merritt

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DOUBLE TROUBLE Filming date: August–October 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 41 days of production). Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: Santa Ana, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 5 December 1915 (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–1920); 31 October 1915 (according to Russell Merritt, “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle” [1988]) Release length: five reels Copyright date: 29 November 1915 (LP7978) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: William Christy Cabanne Scenario: William Christy Cabanne; D.W. Griffith? Source: Double Trouble, the novel (1906) by Herbert Quick Camera: William E. Fildew Musical accompaniment arranged and adapted by: Joseph Carl Breil Titles: Anita Loos Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Florian Amidon/Eugene Brassfield); Richard Cummings (Judge Blodgett); Olga Grey (Madame Leclaire); Margery Wilson (Elizabeth Waldron); Gladys Brockwell (Daisy Scarlett); Monroe Salisbury; W.E. Lowery; Tom Kennedy; Kate Toncray; Lillian Langdon Archival sources: Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/R. Walter Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Walker Collection), Enterprise Distributing Corporation reissue. NOTE: The FIAF Treasure of the Film Archives database indicates the existence of a print (format and generation undetermined) in Brazil, either at the Cinemateca do Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro or at the National Archives; however, a recent survey of the holdings has not supported this information. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor (1,0,2,0; 0,2,1,0; drums; strings), 93 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corporation, New York, “Triangle Plays” series, copyright C1 E 373895, November 22, 1915); location: LC M1357.B. NOTE: cornet part in M176.D (Box); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 42 The hero is cast as a young banker when the action begins. He is very timid in the presence of young women. However, he is shown to be at home addressing a Sunday School. As he is leaving on a vacation, he, as the Banker Amidon, is hit on the head by a thug. Five years later he awakens as Amidon again while in pajamas on a Pullman car. He is astonished when he sees a paper and notes the lapse of time. He meets an old fri[e]nd, Judge Blodgett. They go to a clairvoyant, who puts him in a trance. He awakens as a Mr. Brassfield. In that character he tells of waking up in the boom town of Bakerstown after the blow on the head, with no consciousness of what had happened before or even his name. He takes the name of Brassfield, strikes oil, becomes a wealthy man and is nominated to be mayor. When he enters on his many love affairs,

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the old judge and the clairvoyant decide that he had better become Amidon again. They go to Bakerstown. There Amidon is unable to transact the big business built up by Brassfield. He is again returned to the aggressive Brassfield. He proves very successful in business dealings and also in political affairs, but is so unscrupulous as to railroad a poor man who wouldn’t be bribed. The clairvoyant turns Brassfield back to Amidon, who rescues the poor family from death by gas and releases the father from jail. He also is reconciled to his sweetheart. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, November 29, 1915, LP7978 [stamped April 1, 1916]

Florian Amidon, a timid young man, suffers a blow to the head which not only induces amnesia but also brings out his repressed and completely opposed personality: Eugene Brassfield, a brash and not overly honest businessman-turned-politician. The two personalities are at odds with each other until, with the help of Florian’s friends and a medium, they are merged into one, retaining the best qualities of each.

Even if the Fine Arts policy of importing stage stars was an almost total failure, the one exception – the launching of Douglas Fairbanks’ screen career – was such a spectacular success that that policy seems justified in hindsight. Then again, even his earliest films suggest that the irrepressible Fairbanks would have found his way to the screen anyway, even without Fine Arts. Double Trouble continues the pattern established in The Lamb, contrasting Fairbanks the sissy with Fairbanks the robust young man. This prissiness vs. manliness idea appears, in fact, so persistently in Fairbanks’ films as to constitute one of his favorite themes. The Mark of Zorro (1920), with its delightful distinction between foppish Don Diego and dashing Zorro, is probably the most famous example, but there are plenty of others. The difference in Double Trouble is that, like such recent dual-personality films as The Woman of Mystery (1914) and The Case of Becky (1915), it gives the device a psychological premise. Fairbanks’ two “selves” (their personalities suggested by their very names, “Florian” and “Brassfield”) are two distinct beings, both inhabiting the same body but at war with each other. Not that Fairbanks takes any of this seriously; he’s clearly having the time of his life romping through a comic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As the prissy Florian, he’s forever cringing with upraised hands, nervously nipping at his pinky finger as he recoils in horror from some fresh outrage. He’s afflicted with a chronic sneeze which seems to intensify around women, as if he’s somehow allergic to them. (He stops short of out-and-out homosexuality and, in fact, is as panic-stricken at the advances of a mincing bellboy as at the threat of any other kind of intimacy.) As Brassfield, on the other hand, he’s the cocky, grinning, self-confident Fairbanks we all know, and then some. With careless ease he takes on the world of local politics, cheerfully indulging in practices which, in today’s world, would destroy a political career in five minutes. (In one scene, he hands a fat wad of bills to an associate, on a public sidewalk in broad daylight, and casually indicates distribution of them. In another scene, Fairbanks’ henchmen hustle a potential whistle-blower down a dark alley, and a shooting seems imminent. The actual ploy is more devious, and perhaps easily missed on first viewing: one of the henchmen simply fires the revolver at the ground, then places it in the victim’s pocket. The police, arriving moments later to break up the altercation, find the still-warm gun in the rival’s possession, and he’s promptly hauled off to jail!) Fairbanks, in short, is the whole show. Bouncing from one extreme to the other, indulging in such set-pieces as a drunk scene that begins with the go-getter and ends with the timid character (who, of course, has never been intoxicated before), he easily dominates the proceed139

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ings. Louis Reeves Harrison, writing in The Moving Picture World (November 13, 1915, p. 1319), found this a shortcoming: “there is no other characterization from beginning to end calculated to provide an interest allied to his shifting personality and adventures.” Be that as it may, Double Trouble is clearly designed as a showcase for Fairbanks, and he makes the most of it. As with The Lamb, all of this has little if anything to do with Griffith. Director Christy Cabanne can be sensed looking over his shoulder at Griffith in some of his other films, but there’s no such sense in Double Trouble – until the last reel, when the jailed innocent’s wife decides to commit suicide. Then, suddenly, we’re watching a different movie, featuring a Griffithian race to the rescue by Fairbanks and company. It was reported at the time that the mayor of Santa Ana, California, had given Cabanne the key to the city, along with the services of the police and fire departments, resources well utilized during the scenes of the electionday parade. A far more noticeable presence than Griffith’s is that of the uncredited Anita Loos, whose witty, conversational intertitles set the tone of the film perfectly, and forecast the delightful titles she would continue to provide for Fairbanks’ films over the next two years. Some viewers will note that Fairbanks’ mental condition is diagnosed as “aphasia” – a diagnosis no more accurate in this film than in several other films of the period – but Loos seems to acknowledge the inaccuracy in a sly intertitle: “APHASIA IS A MENTAL CONDITION, VOUCHED FOR BY ALL OUR BEST NOVELISTS AND DRAMATISTS.” Although the surviving print of Double Trouble is affected by nitrate decomposition, the continuity of the story is still clear, and we’re lucky to be able to see the film at all. Interestingly, this print seems to derive from a reissue. Most of the intertitles still bear the original Fine Arts logo, but the two newspaper inserts used to indicate Florian’s five-year blackout have been replaced with newspapers from 1915 (reporting a special meeting of Wilson’s cabinet) and from 1920 (reporting Warren Harding’s election as President)! By 1920, of course, Fairbanks had become a much bigger star for his own company, and it’s hardly surprising that his earlier films should be reissued. But after the events of the intervening years, Double Trouble must have appeared to audiences as a different film. The scenes of Brassfield addressing crowds of voters on election day, for example, had been oddly prescient; in the interim they had been duplicated by real-life shots of Fairbanks addressing vast throngs of fans during the Liberty Loan rallies of World War I. J.B. Kaufman

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JORDAN IS A HARD ROAD Filming date: August–October 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 47 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors of Alaskan town: Bear Lake Valley, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: late November 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 19 December 1915 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 13 December 1915 (LP7980) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan (A news item in The Motion Picture News [October 9, 1914] credits Jack Conway as having almost completed shooting.) Scenario: Allan Dwan; Mary H. O’Connor? Source: Jordan Is a Hard Road, the novel or short story by Sir Gilbert Parker (publication undetermined) Production manager: Frank H. Wood? (according to The Motion Picture News, September 18, 1915, p. 60) Production adviser (train robbery): Al Jennings (according to The Motion Picture News, October 9, 1914, p. 71) Music composed and arranged by: J.A. Raynes Cast: Dorothy Gish (Cora Findlay); Frank Campeau (Bill Minden); Sarah Truax (Mrs. Findlay); Owen Moore (Mark Sheldon); Ralph Lewis; Fred Burns; Mabel Wiles; Lester Perry; Jim Kid; Walter Long; Joseph Singleton; Elmo Lincoln; Clarence H. Geldert Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor (1,0,2,0; 0,2,1,0; drum; strings), 81 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corp., New York 1915, “Triangle Plays” series); copyright C1 E 373896, 25 November 1915; location: LC M1357.R; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 77 In "Jordan Is a Hard Road," Bill Minden is captured in Northwest Canada for holding up a stage. After a series of crimes and following jail sentences, Minden finds his daughter, Cora. She has become a beautiful woman under the care of a Mrs. Findley. Minden becomes converted at a campmeeting, where his daughter sings and plays the organ. Minden turns the village inn at Askatoon into a temperance hotel, puts Mrs. Findley and his daughter in charge and goes to live with them. He poses to Cora as an old friend of her father. The girl nurses back to health Mark Sheldon, a young Englishman, who was wounded by the police as a supposed horse thief. The young people fall in love. Bill Minden promises to invest in Sheldon’s mine, thinking to advance the happiness of the pair. Robbers loot the bank at Askatoon, taking all of Minden’s deposit. Minden helps a station agent at a nearby town to steal a box of the money, which the robbers were shipping away. He is wounded mortally, but gets back to the hotel with the treasure. He fires a shot and when Mark and Cora appear makes them believe that he has accidentally shot himself while

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cleaning his gun. He turns the money over to Mark and dies happy thinking he has assured the happiness of his daughter. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, December 13, 1915, LP7980 [stamped with date April 1, 1916]

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. Based on a novel by English author Sir Gilbert Parker which was set in his native Canada, Jordan Is a Hard Road is the story of the reformation of a bad man. Bill Minden (Frank Campeau), a notorious highwayman and head of the MacMahon gang, tries to retire after a career of bank and train robberies and stints in prison. He returns to Askatoon, a town in Canada’s north country. Years earlier he had sent his baby daughter Cora to Askatoon to be brought up by Mrs. Findlay (Sarah Truax). Cora (Dorothy Gish) has been raised in a strict environment and is unaware of her father’s existence or his criminal life. After arriving in Askatoon, Minden attends a revival meeting in which his daughter Cora is a participant. He is moved by the experience and decides to reform. He has saved a large amount of his illgotten money and he deposits it in the local bank, then buys a local inn and converts it to a temperance hotel. He engages Cora and Mrs. Findlay to run it. They move in, though Cora is still unaware that Minden is her father. Cora is being wooed by Mark Sheldon (Owen Moore), an English prospector. To help him out and encourage the romance, Minden tells Mark that he will invest $50,000 in his mine but Minden’s money is stolen in a bank robbery. To make up for the loss, Minden stages one more train robbery; he is seriously wounded but is able to return to Askatoon. Dying, he fires his gun to make them think he shot himself, turns the money over to Mark and dies in Cora’s arms. When the recently formed Triangle Film Corp. announced its production plans at the beginning of September 1915, Jordan Is a Hard Road was one of the titles scheduled for production (The Motion Picture News, September 4, 1915, pp. 41–42). Plans for the production were apparently in place because the next week, The Motion Picture News (September 11, 1915) reported that an entire “Alaskan” village was being constructed for the picture. On 18 September, the paper reported that celebrity bank robber Al Jennings had been “engaged by Frank E. Wood, manager of production at the Griffith studio, to take part in and aid in the direction of the bank and train robbery scenes”. In these and other announcements following the formation of the company, Triangle claimed that all of their releases would be supervised by Sennett, Ince or Griffith, the triad of producers that anchored the new organization. Fine Arts was Griffith’s company and he was specifically credited with supervising Jordan Is a Hard Road, one of its early productions. Because this title, along with a dozen or so other Fine Arts productions, were sandwiched between The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance (1916), many Griffith enthusiasts have dismissed the company’s claims and assumed that the big projects consumed all of his attention, causing him to pay no more than lip service to his supervisory obligations. As a result, rather scant attention has been paid to these films. This is unfortunate. From the time that he left Biograph, Griffith was the subject of a great deal of publicity. Even before the sensation caused by the release of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith was being touted as the world’s greatest director, the master innovator, and he rapidly moved from being an obscure background figure known only by film professionals to an international celebrity. Although there is little doubt that promoting The Birth of a Nation, defending his reputation, and planning Intolerance consumed much of his attention, he cannot have been unaware that his name was attached to a mixed body of work that was also on public view. During September, when most of the filming of Jordan Is a Hard Road was taking place, Griffith was still 142

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planning the conversion of The Mother and the Law into Intolerance. On 9 October 1914, The Motion Picture News reported the construction of large sets on a lot near the Fine Arts studio. The paper knew they were connected with The Mother and the Law and commented: “The buildings for this are of many different heights, some towering up as skyscrapers. The architectural design leads to the belief that it is a reproduction of one of the Holy Land Cities.” In this interval before the big sets were ready, Griffith might have paid more attention to Jordan Is a Hard Road and other films being produced with his name on them. Contemporary reviewers seemed to accept Triangle’s claim. Variety’s reviewer “Wynn” saw the master’s hand in Allan Dwan’s direction. He commented: “Like the majority of Griffith spectacles, the prominent feature of this production is the masterly manner in which the ‘mob’ scenes are handled with every detail properly attended to” (November 26, 1915, p. 24). Even though this is a story focusing on personal redemption and a father’s relations with a daughter he neglected, Jordan Is a Hard Road was apparently not bereft of action. The criminal aspect gave ample opportunity for some lively activity. The anonymous New York Times reviewer said: “It is a Bret Harte sort of a story of the Golden West of broad hats, cattle rustlers, and restless revolvers.” Peter Milne of The Motion Picture News said that Minden and his bandit gang “furnish enough thrills by their deeds, and the execution of them to satisfy anyone” (November 27, 1915, p. 92). Both trade press reviewers were impressed with the cast, costumes, and camerawork. The lead was played by stage actor Frank Campeau, who apparently made his screen début in this role. By this time Dorothy Gish had established her own place as a lead. She had a strong sense of comedy and was apparently more vivacious than Lillian. Peter Milne commented that “Miss Gish can always make one laugh or cry at her own will”. Milne was particularly impressed with the film’s allegorical opening, which showed Christ and the road to Jordan crowded with “folk of all kind. These last, and the others as well for that matter, are handled with a careful sense of the artistic. Such scenes might have been abominably pictured, as the chances to go wrong are many, but thanks to Dwan they are as perfect as one can ask for”. “Wynn” of Variety was less impressed. He called it pretentious but felt that the dramatic construction of the rest of the film made up for it. “It lived up to every prediction and promise made by the Triangular group of producers.” The religious theme was apparently taken from Sir Gilbert Parker’s story and, if Milne is correct, was rather typical of Parker’s works, which were often set in the Canadian North and frequently had a religious motif. Parker was a popular source for silent filmmakers. More than a dozen films based on his works were made during the 1910s, and while none of them have become memorable classics, it is apparent that Parker’s stories were popular material for audiences of an earlier generation. There is a minor confusion over the director credit for Jordan Is a Hard Road. Almost all sources credit Allan Dwan as the sole director of the film, but an item published in the “In and Out of Los Angeles Studios” column in The Motion Picture News (October 9, 1914, p. 71) reported that director Jack Conway was almost through filming the picture. If Conway did some preliminary work, Dwan received the final credits. The picture premiered at New York City’s Knickerbocker Theatre in late November 1915 on the seventh of Triangle’s scheduled weekly programs. It was presented with a four-part Kay-Bee film, The Winged Idol, with House Peters, and an unusual four-part Keystone production, A Submarine Pirate, featuring Syd Chaplin. In reviewing the program, Peter Milne felt that Jordan Is a Hard Road was the most enjoyable feature on the bill. Paul Spehr

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THE PENITENTES Working titles: The Penitents; The Penitent; Los Penitentes Filming date: August or early September–October 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 46 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; Mexican village: Chatsworth Park, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: ca. 1 December 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 25 or 26 December 1915 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 20 December 1915 (LP7977) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John Conway Scenario: Mary H. O’Connor Source: The Penitentes, the novel by R. Ellis Wales (publication undetermined) Camera: not known Musical accompaniment selected and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil Historical advisors: Charles F. Lummis, R. Ellis Wales Cast: Orrin Johnson (Manuel); Seena Owen (Dolores); Paul Gilmore (Col. Juan Banca); Irene Hunt (Señorita Carmelia [Carmelita]); Josephine Crowell (Her mother); F.A. Turner (Father Rossi); Charles Clary (Father David); A.D. Sears (The Chief Brother, Manuel’s uncle); Dark Cloud (Indian chief); [according to documentation on pre-production:] Harry Hann; Joseph Henabery; Edward Warren Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, “musical setting for the photoplay Los Penitentes (The Penitents)”, piano conductor, 99 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corp., New York 1915, “Triangle Plays” series); copyright C1 E 377033, 10 December 1915; location: LC M1357.B; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 101 The Penitentes are a fanatical sect who are flourishing in Mexico in the seventeenth century. They indulge in cruel tortures during their ceremonials. While celebrating the C[ru…] in a realistic way up in the mountains the Indians atta[ck…] […] […]ment. When the Penitentes return to the […] servant and little boy named Manuel as the only survi[…] is heir to a rich farm or hacienda, and the greedy leader […] Penitentes persuades the band to take over the farm and keep t[…] ignorant of his rights. When Manuel is grown up the Penitentes be[…] suspicious of the inquiries of a priest named Father David in regard t[o] the identity of Manuel. They induce the young man to become the victim in the right of crucifixion. They plan to make it a real torture and not a representation, so that Manuel may die during its course. Dolores is a young girl who is in love with Manuel. But in spite of all her efforts aided by a clever woman named Senorita Carmelia, she cannot dissuade him from taking part in this ceremonial. Just as Manuel is being stretched on the cross soldiers called by Father David rescue him. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, December 20, 1915, LP7977 [stamped with date April 1, 1916]

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The scene is laid in New Mexico two centuries ago, when a fanatical religious society known as the Penitentes flourished, although vigorously opposed by the Catholic Church. At the opening of the play there is a scene where sheep are grazing peacefully and the land seems to be one of quietude and plenty. The Penitentes are holding their annual ceremonial, where they discover and punish an Indian who is spying on them. He tells the tribe, who massacre a settlement, but Father Rossi, a Catholic priest, is spared, and an old peon servant escapes with the boy, Manuel. The priest does not know of the boy’s escape and makes his way to the northern part of the state. The Penitentes take possession of the property belonging to the massacred inhabitants, including that which should have been turned over to Manuel. Years later Senor Martin, who lives with his daughter Carmelita in a large settlement near the Penitentes, gives a fiesta. His guest, Colonel Juan Banca, who has been courting Carmelita, sees a beautiful girl belonging to the fanatics names Dolores (Seena Owen) and becomes infatuated with her. Carmelita manages to get acquainted with Dolores and her widowed mother in order to keep the young girl away from the soldier. Father David, who is the religious mentor of Senor Martin’s vast ranch colony, becomes interested in the spiritual appearing Manuel (Orrin Johnson), who seems out of place among the rude and cruel Penitentes. His inquiries about Manuel, who has become a stalwart youth, arouse the suspicions of the avaricious leader of the Penitentes. As a result this evil leader skillfully incites his followers into a plot to get rid of Manuel. They plan that at their celebration of Good Friday Manuel shall be the victim of crucifixion. To prevent interference with their plans they kidnap Colonel Banca. But Father David sends for the troops. Meanwhile Dolores has been using all her arts, aided by the suggestion of Carmelita, to win Manuel away from the Penitentes. But the youth is fired by zeal, being misled by the Penitentes, and is determined to go through with the ordeal. He is being stretched on the cross preparatory to be nailed when the soldiers arrive and stop the cruel procedure. Father Rossi then finds out the identity of Manuel, and the story ends with the marriage of Manuel and Dolores by the Priest. The Moving Picture World, December 25, 1915, pp. 2450, 2452

Set in New Mexico in the seventeenth century, The Penitentes is the story of a boy, orphaned in an Indian raid, who is adopted and raised in an isolated community of religious fanatics called the Penitentes. The church has tried to suppress the Penitentes because their rites include the crucifixion of one of their members who is found worthy of a death emulating Christ’s. Manuel, the orphaned baby, was adopted by his uncle (A.D. Sears), a leader of the Penitentes, who also took over the estate that baby Manuel should have inherited. Grown to manhood, Manuel (Orrin Johnson) is unaware of his heritage and works as a shepherd. He is in love with Dolores (Seena Owen). At a fiesta at the nearby estate of Señor Martin, Colonel Juan Banca (Paul Gilmore), who has been wooing Martin’s daughter Carmelita (Irene Hunt), sees Dolores and is attracted to her. Carmelita becomes friends with Dolores in order to keep Banca away from her. Father David (Charles Clary), a priest on Martin’s ranch, becomes interested in Manuel because he seems out of place among the cruel Penitentes. The priest’s interest alarms Manuel’s uncle, who plots to get rid of Manuel by nominating him to be crucified at the Good Friday ritual. To ensure success, they kidnap Colonel Banca. Father David sends for troops. Manuel is enthusiastic about the honor but Dolores is horrified. In an attempt to save him, Dolores sacrifices her own reputation by telling the elders that Manuel is defiled and unworthy of the sacrifice. As Manuel is about to be fastened to the cross, the troops arrive and put a stop to the ceremony. Manuel is saved and two old monks tell of his origin, revealing his true identity. Restored to his property, Manuel is free to marry Dolores. Silent cinema has more than its share of films with last-minute rescues and plots about 145

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unfortunate orphans who are exploited before finally being restored to their lost heritage, but The Penitentes has to be one of the more unusual versions culled from these threadbare themes. And this is not because it is set in the colonial Southwest – a common enough locale for California-based producers – but because it touched on the always sensitive issue of religious fanaticism and is specific that this is fanaticism within the Roman Catholic Church. The hero, unjustly condemned to death, was not a falsely accused criminal but a sacrificial offering to be put to death on a cross rather than a gallows or electric chair. R. Ellis Wales was credited with authorship of the novel that Mary H. O’Connor adapted for the screenplay. Wales does not seem to have been one of the popular writers chosen because his name or book was calculated to lure an audience. Fine Arts did not contract with him through a literary agent; instead, they apparently found him right in their midst. During September and October 1915, when The Penitentes was being filmed, he was very available for consultation because he was the “technologist” advising D.W. Griffith on the authenticity of costumes and historical details for Intolerance. After Intolerance (1916), he was Art Director for the Reliance-Triangle production of Macbeth (1916) with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Wales, who apparently specialized in historical research, did not create an imaginary sect for his novel. The Penitentes are a real part of New Mexico’s history. It was a Catholic brotherhood with exclusive Native American and Hispanic membership, whose rites emphasized fasting and self-flagellation. Masks were worn during the rituals and on Good Friday a member was chosen to reenact Christ’s Passion. He carried a cross from the church and was strapped to it with wet rawhide which shrunk as it dried, inflicting severe pain. A similar punishment was inflicted on members found guilty of misconduct. Although Wales’ strong suit seems to be authenticating historical dramatizations, another historian and author, Charles F. Lummis, was also consulted during the staging of The Penitentes. This is another of the Fine Arts productions credited to Griffith that falls into the twilight zone between The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, so the degree of his involvement is open to question. Fine Arts’ parent company, Triangle, was specific in crediting Griffith with supervision of The Penitentes. With military battles, masked principals and a climax featuring troops riding to rescue the hero and unite him with his loyal sweetheart, it bore a striking resemblance to a film that was still playing in a record New York run and was now making the rounds of theaters in the United States and abroad. At least two contemporary reviewers said they detected Griffith’s influence in this production and credited it with being a worthy heir to his masterwork. Since no copies of the film exist at the time of this writing, we can’t confirm the opinions of Variety’s “Fred” (December 3, 1915, p. 21) or Harvey F. Thew, who reviewed the film for The Motion Picture News (December 4, 1915, p. 86), but here is a sample of what they had to say. According to “Fred”, “in a great many ways it reminds one of the note which the master director struck when he worked out the screen version of the Ku-Klux Clan [sic] in ‘The Birth of a Nation’”. “Fred” also found the musical score that Joseph Carl Breil wrote for The Penitentes reminiscent of his earlier score: That tremendously thrilling call by the brasses in the orchestration which accompanies the latter picture [The Birth of a Nation] is almost duplicated in a fife call in the music that has been written for ‘The Penitentes’ and in a great measure it plays just as important a part for it carries a plaintive and weird appeal that is enough to send the cold shivers down one’s spine. As a matter of fact the picture carries the same note. There is nothing in it that enthralls and enthuses as in the ‘Nation’ picture, for its general tendency seems to be to depress, and in this it succeeds very well indeed.”

While Thew was less euphoric, he praised a battle sequence: “Several real thrills are provided 146

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by battle scenes in which the camera has swept great reaches of country; by cavalry dashes which remind one continually that the supervising hand of D.W. Griffith is stretched over the production”. Although the Penitentes sect is central to the plot, the story seems to stop short of condemning the actions of the group. The leader of the sect, played by A.D. Sears, is motivated more by greed and self-concern than religious fanaticism. It is his desire to keep his brother’s land and prevent outside interference that causes him to select Manuel (Orrin Johnson) as the chosen one for the Good Friday crucifixion, and the military intervention that saves the hero at the end seems to have been motivated by a kidnaping and the hero’s plight rather than a desire to put an end to the sect’s religious practices. The director, Jack Conway, was a sometimes assistant to D.W. Griffith. A veteran actor, he tried his hand at directing as early as 1912, but worked primarily as an actor until 1914 when he directed a few one- and two-reel films for Kay-Bee and Reliance-Majestic. The Penitentes is one of his first multi-reel features, and the beginning of a long career as a reliable professional. While the cast has a number of Griffith veterans such as Josephine Crowell, F.A. Turner, A.D. Sears and Dark Cloud, it is not filled with Griffith principals. The leading lady, Seena Owen, appeared in a number of one-reel films for Reliance-Majestic during 1914 and 1915, and was featured in Fine Arts’ first feature, The Lamb. It is possible that her work in The Penitentes helped earn her a role in Intolerance. The trade press had problems with her name. She entered the film world as Signe Auen, but by 1915 her Scandinavian name had been “anglicized” to Seena Owen. This didn’t seem to solve the spelling problems, because in articles in the trade press she became “Seeno” and “Sien”. Triangle premiered The Penitentes at New York’s Knickerbocker Theatre, circa 1 December 1915, on the eighth Triangle program. It was coupled with Kay-Bee’s The Edge of the Abyss, a five-reel feature starring Mary Boland and Robert McKim, and Keystone’s two-reeler The Great Vacuum Robbery. After its run at the company’s flagship houses, The Penitentes had its general release on 25 December 1915. Paul Spehr

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CROSS CURRENTS Working title: Master of Fate Filming date: September–November 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 60 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: ca. 1 December 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 2 January 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 27 December 1915 (LP8006) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Francis Grandon Scenario: Mary H. O’Connor Camera: not known Musical accompaniment arranged and selected by: J.A. Raynes Cast: Helen Ware (Elizabeth Crane); Courtenay Foote (Paul Beale, Elizabeth’s fiancé); Teddy Sampson (Flavia, Elizabeth’s foster-sister); Sam De Grasse (Silas Randolph); Vera Lewis (Mrs. Van de Veer) Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor, 59 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corporation, New York, “Triangle Plays” series, copyright C1 E 377034, 17 December 1915); location: LC M1357.R; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 34 A picture of life in society and also that on a desert isle is shown in “Cross Currents.” Elizabeth Crane, who lives in Washington, is engaged to a diplomat named Paul Beale. Flavia, her younger sister, returns from a Paris school. Beale becomes interested in Flavia, and Elizabeth releases him from the engagement. He marries the young girl. Silas Randolph invites a party for a cruise on his yacht. His sister and Flavia induce Elizabeth to accompany them. The yacht catches fire, and an explosion destroys the vessel. Flavia is picked up by a sailing vessel. Paul and Elizabeth are washed ashore on a desert island. Elizabeth nurses Paul, who has been weakened by the adventure. Flavia organizes a searching party and cruises in the vicinity, where her husband and her sister are lost. They land on the desert island and are seen by Paul and Elizabeth. The latter, realizing her hour of happiness is ended and that Paul will have to return with his wife, throws herself into the ocean and disappears. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, December 27, 1915, LP8006

No copy of this film is known to exist at the time of this writing. In Washington, D.C., socialite Elizabeth Crane (Helen Ware) is engaged to a diplomat, Paul Beale (Courtenay Foote). Elizabeth’s young foster-sister Flavia (Teddy Sampson) returns 148

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from Paris where she has been in school. Elizabeth realizes that Paul is attracted to Flavia and ends their engagement. Flavia and Beale soon marry. Elizabeth is being courted by the wealthy Silas Randolph (Sam De Grasse), but does not return his feelings. Silas invites Helen, Flavia and Paul to join him on his yacht. While at sea, the yacht catches fire and sinks. Elizabeth and Paul find their way to a deserted island. Paul is ill and Elizabeth nurses him. Before he recovers they discover that Silas Randolph is also on the island. Silas makes unwanted advances and Elizabeth resists. Although he is still sick, Paul tries to rescue Elizabeth but Silas gets the best of him. While attempting to help Paul, Elizabeth stabs and kills Silas. Left alone, in love with each other and believing that Flavia is dead, Paul and Elizabeth renew their courtship and live together as man and wife. Flavia is not dead, however. After Flavia’s child is born she has a premonition that her sister is alive and mounts a search. When Elizabeth sees the search party in the distance, Paul tells her he wants to stay with her but Elizabeth tells him that his child has a right to a father and he belongs with them. Telling him that she wants them to believe she went down with the yacht, she walks into the sea and drowns. When the party arrives, Paul tells Flavia that he has been all alone. Cross Currents was a tailor-made vehicle for the female lead, Helen Ware, a popular stage actress who had only recently joined the growing list of stage stars performing in films. Earlier in 1915 she appeared on Broadway with Nat C. Goodwin, Otis Skinner, and Robert Warwick in A Celebrated Case, and before making Cross Currents she was featured in World Film’s The Price (1915). Rather than being a screen adaptation of one of her stage successes, Cross Currents was an original screenplay written by Mary H. O’Connor of Fine Arts’ scenario department. O’Connor apparently understood Helen Ware’s abilities because the film and Miss Ware’s performance received very positive reviews in the trade press. Louis Reeves Harrison, who reviewed Cross Currents for The Moving Picture World on 4 December 1915, was particularly impressed: “Very much to the pleasure of those who have seen Helen Ware in roles not entirely suited to her, roles not giving scope to her powers as a motion-picture performer, one is provided which displays her natural endowment of physical strength to advantage, while not detracting from talent as an actress. The story carries her from the stilted posturing of the drawing room to the free expression of her intelligence in an extremely difficult performance.” “Jolo” (Joshua Lowe), who reviewed the film for Variety (December 3, 1915, p. 21), was less enthusiastic, but described the film as a “[f]ine idea, beautifully worked out in the matter of direction and well acted. A great picture for any theatre”. This is the story of two former lovers who find themselves stranded on a desert island and renew their relationship. He was married to her younger half-sister, who may or may not have died when their ship sank. Another suitor is also on the island; the two men fight, and the woman kills the second suitor, leaving them alone to renew their love affair. This was a variation on themes familiar in mid-1910s movies. Shipwrecks, castaways, love triangles, and adultery were common enough subjects in 1915, and this was not the first time they were explored in a film supervised or directed by D.W. Griffith. Earlier in 1915 Griffith was credited with supervising a version of Enoch Arden directed by W. Christy Cabanne, which was the third version of Tennyson’s poem with Griffith’s name on it. Griffith had previously directed an altered version of Tennyson’s verse, After Many Years (1908), and a more direct adaptation, the two-part Enoch Arden (1911). While Cross Currents is not a fourth version of Enoch Arden, there are enough similarities that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the popularity of the earlier films – and the public’s continuing interest in castaways – directly influenced this production. A romantic triangle, shipwreck, isolation and self-sacrifice are elements of both stories. Loneliness and survival are the major concerns of Robinson Crusoe, the obvious source of this genre. Tennyson added romance, bigamy and self-sacrifice to Daniel DeFoe’s story, and in this version Mary O’Connor’s scenario downplays survival and spices 149

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up the situation even more by adding murder and adultery. For variety, she makes the woman the lead character, so there is no hero with a long, flowing white beard. The lovers are not trapped on the island for years and years, but they are there long enough for the “other” woman – the heroine’s half-sister and the lover’s wife – to have a baby. Although elements borrowed from Enoch Arden were changed about, both films were about the character and nobility of the hero/heroine, so the ending was kept. In Cross Currents it was the heroine who sacrificed herself, but in both films the audience could shed a tear as the picture ended with other couple – the wrong couple – embracing. While much of the film takes place on an island, the opening sequences showing social life in Washington, D.C., gave an opportunity for a touch of spectacle. One of the highlights was a ball in the East Room of the White House with the principals cast as guests of President Wilson, and extras playing ambassadors and prominent politicians. The Triangle publicity department bragged that recent photographs were used to recreate the room in careful detail. The sinking of a burning yacht, which propelled the principals to their desert isle, provided excitement for members of the audience craving some action. Triangle’s busy publicity department claimed that a large, luxurious yacht was bought and burned to make the scene, and perhaps it was worth it, as the reviewers were impressed. Variety’s Joshua Lowe called it “some fine picturizing”. Cross Currents headed the bill of Triangle productions that opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York the first week of December 1915. William S. Hart’s Between Men (KayBee) and Keystone’s Crooked to the End (with Fred Mace) completed the bill. After playing in Triangle’s flagship theaters during December, this package had its general release on 2 January 1916. Paul Spehr

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LET KATIE DO IT Alternate title: Let Katy Do It Working titles: Mother of Nine; Mother of Seven; Mother of Nine – Let Katy Do It Filming date: August–late October? 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 65 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 9 January 1916 (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–1920); 5 December 1915 (according to Russell Merritt, “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle” [1988]) Release length: four reels (five reels, according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Copyright date: 3 January 1916 (LP8009) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Directors: Chester M. Franklin, Sidney A. Franklin Scenario: Bernard McConville Story: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith), from the (spurious) novel by the same author Camera: F.B. Good Assistant director: Millard Webb Musical accompaniment composed by: William Furst Cast: Jane Grey (Katy Standish [Katie Higgins]); Tully Marshall (Oliver Putnam); Charles West (Caleb Adams); Ralph Lewis (Uncle Dan Standish); Walter Long (Pedro Garcia); Charles Gorman (Carlos); George Pearce (Father Standish); Violet Radcliffe, George Stone, Carmen de Rue, Francis Carpentier, Ninon Fovieri, Lloyd Pearl, Beulah Burns (The Adams children); Luray Huntley (Priscilla Standish) Archival sources: FILM – Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Dennis Atkinson Collection). MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor, 93 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corp., New York 1915, “Triangle Plays” series); copyright C1 E 377026, 29 December 1915; location: LC M1357.F; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 80 A pretty story of a young girl, who mothered seven bright little children, is told in “Let Katy Do It”. Katy Standish is a family drudge on a New England farm. Her father and mother die. She then lives with her married sister. In rapid succession seven children are born to the sister. The parents are killed by a train. Katy teaches school to aid in supporting her little flock, of which she is the foster mother. Dan Standish, who is the uncle of Katy, sends for her and the children. She goes to his mine in Mexico. With Dan is Oliver Putnam, a former sweetheart of Katy. The girl gets angry with him, because he does not like the children. While the older people are away on an errand of mercy, Mexicans attack the little home at the mine. One of the children escapes and aid is summoned. Before the cowboys can arrive, however, the children keep the attackers at bay by shooting off guns and discharging surrounding mines that had been prepared for just such an

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emergency. Then help arrives. Oliver is pleased at the plucky work of the children. He and Katy are reconciled and make a happy home for the flock in the States. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, January 3, 1916, LP8009

Katie Higgins is expected to do the lion’s share of the chores on the family farm in Maine. Frustrated by the way her family monopolises Katie’s time, her fiancé Oliver goes off to work in Uncle Daniel’s gold mine in Mexico. Once her parents have passed away, Katie gains new responsibilities caring for her sister Priscilla’s growing family. When Priscilla and her husband Caleb are killed in an accident involving a train, a struggling Katie accepts Daniel’s offer for her and the seven children to move to Mexico. Oliver’s ambivalence toward the children causes Katie to hesitate finally accepting his marriage proposal. Tensions between the Mexicans and the American settlers escalate, resulting in a series of attacks on the mine and Daniel’s house. The Mexicans’ assault on the home is temporarily thwarted by the ingenuity of Katie’s brood. By the time the attack is quelled, Oliver realizes he does care for the children. With the proceeds from the mine, Katie and her extended family move back to the U.S. to live in prosperity.

Let Katie Do It is only an appropriate title for the first third of this rather odd multi-reeler; the remainder of the film would be more aptly named “Seven Little Angels”, for the emphasis shifts decisively toward detailing the antics of the various child performers once they have been introduced. The film’s lightly comic tone finds itself awkwardly disrupted when the narrative requires the removal of the biological mother and father of the “Angel Band”. Though kinetically charged and expertly intercut with images of Katie reading to the children gathered on her lap, the rather graphic accident scene injects more solemnity into what has been up to this point a bucolic Cinderella story than the film can reasonably absorb. Problems of tonal consistency aside, Let Katie Do It benefits from an intermittently ambitious approach to style: it employs a wide variety of shot scales with finesse, including a stunning overhead extreme long shot of the Mexican attack and many effective close-ups of lead actress Jane Grey and, inevitably, the youngsters portraying her adopted family; it uses natural light for numerous striking pictorial effects, with an “open door” shot of Katie looking out the kitchen window and a silhouette of a rider on a hill being particular stand-outs; and it combines moving camera and rapid intercutting to sensational effect in two set-pieces, the aforementioned collision of the carriage and the train, and the multi-pronged Mexican attack that serves as the film’s climax. Those looking for the possible influence of D.W. Griffith’s supervision would probably wish to study these crosscut sequences most carefully, as they rival his finest efforts from the late Biograph period and the early features. If Let Katie Do It lacks the thematic consistency Griffith’s Biograph work typically afforded, it still offers many of the pleasures of ingenuity one associates with filmmaking of that era. Charlie Keil

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THE MISSING LINKS Filming date: finished Fall 1915 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: week prior to 18 December 1915 Release date: 16 January 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 10 January 1916 (LP8010) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Lloyd Ingraham Scenario: Bernard McConville; Marion Clarke (according to a trade review) Story: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Source: “from the novel by” Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: not known Music selected and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil (and/or George W. Benyon?) Cast: Thomas Jefferson (Arthur Gaylord); Elmer Clifton (Horace Gaylord); Robert Harron (Henry Gaylord); Loyola O’Connor (Miss Gaylord); William Higby (Jasper Starr); Elinor Stone (Mrs. Starr); Norma Talmadge (Myra Holburn); Jack Brammall (C.P. Martin); Hal Wilson (James Haskins); Constance Talmadge (Laura Haskins); Robert Lawler (Chris Tompkins, detective) Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor, 51 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corp., New York 1916, “Triangle Plays” series); copyright C1 E 377240, 7 January 1916. NOTE: inside title page says “Music selected and arranged by: George W. Benyon”; location: LC M1357.B; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 92 Henry Gaylord elopes with Myra Holburn. He takes his bride to the home of his father, the local banker. Jasper Starr, the justice of the peace, is bitter against the Gaylords, as he is stepfather of Myra and resents her marriage. There is a run on Gaylord’s bank and Jasper is appointed receiver. He acts in a very harsh manner toward the banker, who dies. Henry threatens to kill Jasper. Some time after he finds the justice lying dead in the bank. Beside the head of the dead man is a cuff link. Henry shows the link to his brother Horace. The brothers suspect each other of the crime. Henry is arrested, as he has been seen near the bank on the night of the supposed murder. Chris Tompkins, an amateur detective, discovers C.P. Martin, the excashier of Gaylord’s bank, burning some papers. He finds a scrap of writing which corresponds with some forged notes. Later Chris ransacks Martin’s suitcase and discovers the mate of the cuff link found near Jasper’s body. Martin is arrested and breaks down when confronted with the cuff link. Henry is cleared of the crime. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, January 10, 1916, LP8010

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“The Missing Links” indicates in its title that it needs a guardian. To use any name so near the Darwinian “Missing Links,” long a subject of comedy comment, as the title of a story dependent on the solving of a murder mystery for interest, is, to say the least, deplorable. The story contains some dramatic elements and, worked out in true motion-picture form, the form that Griffith did so much to create and make popular, it might be developed into a thrilling one-reel or two-reel story. In its attenuated five-reel form, in spite of good acting, good directing and fine scientific work, it is not up to the standard set by earlier Fine Art films. The director has evidently done the best he could be expected to do with scant material, a murder mystery solved through the finding of one of a pair of cuff links left by the murderer at his victim’s side, rounded out by the weakest of endings, the criminal’s confession. The Moving Picture World, December 18, 1915, p. 2200 Not a comedy, as the title indicates, but a wandering domestic drama that slowly develops into a murder mystery easily solved by one of those convenient clues authors place at the side of the murderer’s victim, in this case one of a peculiar pair of sleeve links. The Moving Picture World, December 25, 1915, p. 2390 “The Missing Links,” the Fine Arts offering, introduces Robert Harron and NormaTalmadge to the Triangle screen in a story of powerful appeal staged under the direction of Lloyd Ingraham.… Rural atmosphere is presented in a wonderfully convincing fashion and many triffling [sic] little incidents are so worked out as to create a perfect whole. The mystery part of the story is well handled and it is well along toward the end of the picture before the audience can even begin to guess the outcome. Neil G. Caward in Motography, January 1, 1916, pp. 39–40

No, even though it featured Bobby Harron, The Missing Links was not a sequel to Man’s Genesis or Brute Force and the “links” referred to in the title are not unidentified ancestors of humankind. This was a comedy-murder mystery and the “links” in question were cuff links, which were the “link” that reveals that Henry Gaylord (Harron) was not guilty of murder. The reviewer for The Moving Picture World pointed out that the title was misleading and audiences would assume it was another parody of the search for the missing Darwinian link. But the title was not all that bothered him. He gave director Lloyd Ingraham and the actors good marks, but said the plot was suitable for one or two reels and had been stretched to fill five reels. He dismissed the film as not up to the standards set by other Fine Arts productions. On the other hand, “Jolo” (Joshua Lowe), reviewing for Variety (December 17, 1915, p. 18), thought the plot “ingenious” and praised director, cast and camerawork. The story was credited to Granville Warwick, a Griffith pseudonym, and Griffith was also credited with supervision. The plot centered around the murder of Jasper Starr (William Higby) who was Henry Gaylord’s (Robert Harron) father-in-law. The murder caused friction between Henry and his brother (Elmer Clifton) who suspected each other of committing the crime. While this is an interesting situation, other elements of the story were drawn from conventional melodrama. The father-in-law was a spiteful and malevolent person who couldn’t forgive Henry for eloping with his stepdaughter (Norma Talmadge). The father-in-law’s efforts to ruin Henry’s father by causing a run on the family’s bank resulted in Starr having a fatal heart attack, which gave the boys a motive for murder. The complications were resolved when an amateur detective (Robert Lawler) found the cuff link and proved that the murder was committed by an embezzling bank clerk. There is speculation that the credits for Griffith were put on the film by Triangle to improve the prospect of a weak release but there is 154

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little evidence to support or deny this. Lacking other evidence (as no print of this film is known to exist at the time of this writing), the mystery of Griffith’s link to this film remains unresolved. Paul Spehr

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DON QUIXOTE Filming date: September–November 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 69 days of production) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: Santa Barbara, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: week prior to 25 December 1915, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 27 February 1916 Release length: five reels (seven reels, according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers). [The film was shortened to five reels after the premiere at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York City during the week before Christmas 1915. At least 1000 feet were reportedly removed.] Copyright date: 21 February 1916 (LP8166) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Edward Dillon Scenario: Chester Withey Source: El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605) and Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha (1615), the novels by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Camera: Alfred Gosden Cast: De Wolf Hopper (Don Quixote); Fay Tincher (Dulcinea); Max Davidson (Sancho Panza); Rhea Mitchell (Lucinda); Chester Withey (Don Fernando); Julia Faye; George Walsh; Edward Dillon; Carl Stockdale; William Brown Archival sources: none known This picture shows Don Quixote as conceived by Cervantes, to be a cracked brained idealist who thinks the world has all gone wrong, and following Cervantes’ story, shows him bedecked in armor mounted on an old grey horse named Rosinante starting out as a knight errant to set the world right again. He is accompanied by his faithful hostler Sancho Panza. At an inn he selects a servant girl as the lady of his devotions and names her Dulcinda [sic]. He gets in a fight with the landlord and the servants and together with his Sancho Panza is thrown out. The picture shows him charging windmills in the belief that they are giants and depicts him aiding in the love affairs of two beautiful ladies, Lucinda and Dorothea, whereby he foils a gentlemanly villain, Don Fernando, and finally shows him mortally injured in the fight with Don Fernando’s retainers. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 21, 1916, LP8166 [stamped with date April 28, 1916] His mind unbalanced by much reading about knight errantry and lack of sleep and loss of food, Don Quixote decides to sally forth and right the wrongs of the world. The muddle-minded old idealist takes with him Sancho Panza, his stable man, who from then on vainly tries to dissuade his master from embarking upon all sorts of rash adventures. Notable among them is the episode of the windmills, which the Don thinks are devils, even after he has charged them and been carried around and around and dropped unconscious on the ground.

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When he recovers Dorothea tells him of her affair with Don Fernando, which has forced her to leave home to avoid disgrace. He determines first of all to right the young woman’s wrong and goes to an inn, which he imagines is a castle. The maid-of-all-work he dubs the fairest lady in all Spain. One night at the inn is enough. The proprietor throws him and his man out the next morning. While riding along the road they meet several prisoners and their guards on their way to the galleys. Without hesitation the Don spurs his ancient steed, Rosinante, among them, and puts the guards to rout. It develops that one of the prisoners is Cardenio, who has been guilty of loving Lucinda against her father’s will. Don Quixote offers to intercede in his behalf and together they start back. Cardenio goes ahead and arrives as his beloved is about to become the wife of Don Fernando. Thinking she has been faithless he seeks to end his life with the poison of an adder. The Don, arriving later, invades mansion and halts the wedding just in time. “How about Dorothea?” he asks, and Fernando cowers. Then the Don seeks Cardenio and brings him back to his lady. But Don Fernando is not so easily defeated. With his retainers he kidnaps Lucinda. A pursuit follows and there is much matching of steel when the two parties meet. Don Quixote, who has gone his way, incidentally rescuing Dorothea from a cruel master for whom she has been tending goats, arrives in the midst of the melee. He has become more insane on his favorite subject and every time he comes upon a prostrate form he rushes forward and claims the honor of slaying the villain. As the encounter becomes hotter a blunderbuss is brought into play and the Don is shot in the breast. While he is dragging himself to the inn of the fair Dulcinea, the scoundrel Don Fernando has been attacked by Cardenio. At length the latter is victorious and the body of Fernando crashes into a ravine. Dorothea, who has seen the struggle, goes to it as the others repair to the inn. There is a happy reunion between Lucinda and Cardenio and permission to wed is freely granted. Into this happy group staggers the Don. His faithful Sancho Panza and Dulcinea help him into the stable, discover the hole through his armor and try to staunch the would. But all efforts fail. To the accompaniment of the merry making above the lovable old character expires in the straw and the devoted pair beside him grieve. The Moving Picture World, March 11, 1916, pp. 1914, p. 1716 [D. W. Griffith’s Flying Trip. In New York for business on The Mother and the Law. Accompanied by his secretary, A.E. Bidwell and J.J. McCarthy. In East for her mother’s funeral.] “.... He expressed himself as pleased with the way large numbers of new theaters are being signed up for the Triangle service. Among other things he remarked that ‘Don Quixote’ starring De Wolf Hopper, was one of the best productions recently made by any of his sub-directors and he paid a high compliment to Edward Dillon who had charge of it. ....” [The Birth of a Nation to close at the Liberty Theatre on 8 January. Will do further work on The Mother and the Law when he returns 22 December] “The project of staging ‘The Holy Grail’ by Mr. Griffith is only tentative as yet, he declared.” The Moving Picture World, December 25, 1915, p. 2344 “Don Quixote,” with De Wolfe [sic] Hopper in the title role, is a production of the highest order, showing throughout appreciation of a romance that has warmed the human heart for three centuries, and a delicate picture sense in such charming combination that the famous story is told better ever than when Gustave Dore illumined it with his wondrous imaginative drawings. The photodrama so successfully illustrates the masterpiece of Cervantes that it must eventually serve as an educational release, yet it is entertaining in itself, a veritable pictured story, its only fault being a tendency to overplay certain scenes and thus deprive the movement of swift continuity. At least one whole reel can be removed in bits, especially those unnecessary fades and dissolves

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where no mental operation is involved. Most of the editing can be done near the conclusion to the advantage of the whole product. De Wolf Hopper is amazing. All that he has done on the stage will die with him, but his impersonation of Don Quixote in the Fine Arts film will assure his immortality – it is a performance without a flaw, an ideal. He is well supported, but only the Dulcinea of Fay Tincher stands out from the generally good cast – her personality is altered, but it cannot be suppressed – she is a born comedienne. More carefully edited “Don Quixote,” the photodrama, may rival the printed story in the matter of enduring popularity. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, December 25, 1915, p. 2386 “Don Quixote” in revised form, about a thousand feet eliminated, runs with greater snap and vigor, a decided improvement on the version originally presented. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, January 1, 1916, p. 91

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. Fine Arts Company’s production of Don Quixote was the Christmas 1915 presentation at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York City and it was greeted with very warm reviews in the trade press. The crowds, which included many school children, were so impressive that it was held over for a second week – unusual for a company pledged to present a new film every week. Louis Reeves Harrison, reviewing the film for The Moving Picture World, said it assured immortality for De Wolfe Hopper, who played the Don. “De Wolf [sic] Hopper is amazing. All that he has done on the stage will die with him, but his impersonation of Don Quixote in the Fine Arts film will assure his immortality – it is a performance without a flaw, an ideal” (December 25, 1915, p. 2386). Harrison had seen a pre-release screening of the film, and though he was very positive about it he recommended that Fine Arts should cut about 1000 feet to tighten it up – and they did just that, cutting it from seven reels to five. If they followed Harrison’s recommendation, they eliminated fades and a number of irises in and out, along with some of the action. This was De Wolfe Hopper’s first film. He was one of a number of prominent stage performers who were lured to the screen in the mid-1910s – several signed by Mutual. A couple of lean years for the “legitimate” theater, the phenomenal earnings of film stars, and Griffith’s reputation for quality undoubtedly made the less “legitimate” dramatic form more palatable to theatrical veterans. Hopper was known for larger-than-life comedy and had appeared in revivals of several Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in recent years, among them H.M.S. Pinafore (1911), Patience (1912) and Yeoman of the Guard (1915). The part of the romantically deluded Don probably seemed well suited for him. The director, Eddie Dillon, was a Griffith protégé who had become a veteran comedy director. His approach to comedy was probably very broad. He had been in charge of Mutual’s Komic company, whose comedies were fed to the same exhibitors who showed Sennett productions, which were also produced under Mutual’s umbrella. Chet Withey, who did the scenario, Fay Tincher (Dulcinea) and Max Davidson (Sancho Panza) were comedy veterans who also worked at Komic. The pairing of Hopper with the versatile, invariably amusing Max Davidson is an intriguing notion. Not all of the reviewers shared Louis Reeves Harrison’s enthusiasm. The anonymous reviewer for The New York Times admired De Wolfe Hopper, but thought the film was “about 95 percent movie and 5 per cent Cervantes … just as D.W. Griffith is granted permission to announce at the beginning of this film that he merely supervised the direction of its making and did not produce it personally, so Cervantes should be given a few luminous lines in which 158

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he might disclaim credit for everything but the basic idea” (December 20, 1915). He or she was particularly annoyed that there were only two windmills and that they were transformed into Titans which appeared and faded away, inciting the Don to charge them. Louis Reeves Harrison’s certainty that this film would provide immortality to De Wolfe Hopper is an ironic reminder of the transient nature of cinema. Summaries, reviews, and a few pictures are all that remain of Don Quixote, so Hopper’s immortality will have to be based on another film. This one proved too mortal. Paul Spehr

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THE WOOD NYMPH Filming date: finished Fall 1915 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 2 January 1916, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 23 January 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 17 January 1916 (LP8008) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Scenario: Monte Katterjohn Source: Prunella o’ the Pines, the unpublished (probably spurious) novel by Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: John Leezer Assistant director: Roy Hiram Rice Musical accompaniment selected and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil Cast: Marie Doro (Daphne); Frank Campeau (David Arnold); Wilfred Lucas (Fred Arnold); Charles West (William Jones); Cora Drew (Mrs. Arnold); Fred Graham (Pete); Pearl Elsmore [probably Elmore] (Hippolyta) Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor, 69 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corporation, New York, “Triangle Plays” series); copyright C1 E 377022, 4 January 1916; location: LC M1357.B; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 151 Daphne has been reared by her mother in the woodcovered mountains. Having read about the Greek gods, she peoples the forest with creatures of her imagination. One day as she is running and dancing through the trees, she suddenly stops before a giant of the forest. She imagines that Apollo lives in the tree. Clapping her hands, she calls for him to appear. A youth dressed in hunting garb stands before her. She thinks it must be the god, but he tells her he is William Jones. Fred Arnold also meets the wood nympth [sic]. William and Fred have a fight over the girl, but finally shake hands as friends. The woods are set on fire by tramps. Jones seeks to rescue the girl, but returns to camp almost overcome by the flames. The wood nymph wanders near the camp and is carried unconscious to safety by Fred. The mother of Daphne is found by David Arnold, the father of Fred. With the help of the guide he takes her to camp. He is overjoyed to find the woman is his wife, who had left him many hears before on account of a misunderstanding. William is happy when he finds the wood nymph safe. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, January 17, 1916, LP8008 “The Wood Nymph” is entirely dependent upon the charming personality and fine acting of Marie Doro for interest. Without her, or without an actress as attractive and capable, it would fall very

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flat. It drags as it stands except at bright moments, when there is promise of high comedy in its material. There is a painful monotony of scene, a lack of characterization in all other roles save that of the principal, a confusing sameness of types and costumes among the four leading men, especially during the obscurity of the fire scenes, and those scenes, well enough done in themselves, are repeated and attenuated to the limit of good-natured tolerance. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, January 8, 1916, p. 259

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. The thought of strolling through redwood country and stumbling upon an innocent girl dancing about in classical garb and talking to imaginary Greek gods must have stirred more than a few male hormones back in 1916 – even more so if it turned out that she had never seen a man before and was as strikingly beautiful as Marie Doro. The Wood Nymph is just such a fantasy. The story was replete with a man-hating and classics-loving mother; a sylvan paradise suddenly overrun with males; an attempted rape with a hint of incest; a raging forest fire; thrilling rescues; and plenty of coincidence. When the man-hating mother was saved by her former husband, she learned that it was all a misunderstanding and they all left the forest and returned to the real world. Griffith may have been more involved with this film than with some of other productions made at the Fine Arts studio. Although he would claim that his name was often used when he really had little to do with the films, this could certainly be a Griffith plot. Paul Powell directed, but Griffith was credited with supervision and the scenario was based on a novel by Granville Warwick, one of Griffith’s favorite pseudonyms. So far as anyone knows, Granville Warwick’s novel, Prunella o’ the Pines, was unpublished and unread, but the story had familiar elements. It was adapted from Harley Granville-Barker and Laurence Houseman’s 1904 play Prunella, or Love in a Dutch Garden, which had been successfully revived in 1913 with Marguerite Clark in the lead. In the play, Prunella was an isolated innocent raised by three protective aunts. She discovered love in the form of Pierrot but after they eloped, she left him when she discovered that he was unfaithful. But Pierrot loved her; thus he sought her out at her home and they were reunited. The script for The Wood Nymph changed the locale from Holland to California; instead of Comedia del Arte, a classical ambiance was provided by references to Greek mythology; stylized sets were replaced with a natural setting in the woods; the mother was substituted for the three aunts and the marital problems were shifted to her. Although Griffith was deeply into the ever-evolving production of Intolerance (1916) when The Wood Nymph was being filmed, his interest in the interplay between classical themes and modern life certainly could have produced this story. The similarity between Mountain Girls and Wood Nymphs may not be coincidental. This was Marie Doro’s only film for Griffith’s Fine Arts studio (though not her first film) and it was created as a vehicle for her. Although it was apparently intended to be a satire, the comic elements seem to have misfired. Louis Reeves Harrison, who reviewed it for The Moving Picture World, liked her performance but was not impressed with the male leads or by the staging of the film: “‘The Wood Nymph’ is entirely dependent upon the charming personality and fine acting of Marie Doro for interest. Without her, or without an actress as attractive and capable, it would fall very flat.” (January 8, 1916, p. 229). Variety’s “Jolo” (Joshua Lowe) thought the film was “[t]oo drawn out for the light weight of the story”. When the filming was complete, Marie Doro returned to New York and married actor Elliott Dexter. Wouldn’t it be interesting to compare this version of Prunella with Maurice Tourneur’s wonderfully stylish adaptation made two years later? Paul Spehr 161

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HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS Filming date: Summer–early Fall 1915 Location: Reliance studio, Yonkers, New York; production completed in September 1915 at the Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 10 February 1916 Release date: 13 February 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 7 February 1916 (LP8071) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John Emerson Scenario: John Emerson, Anita Loos Camera: George W. Hill Assistant directors: Erich von Stroheim, Emmett Flynn (according to modern sources) Set decorator: Erich von Stroheim Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Pete Prindle); Clarence Handyside (Proteus Prindle); Rene Boucicault (Pansy Prindle); Jean Temple (Pearl Prindle); Charles Butler (Christopher Cadwalader [Cassius Cadwallader]); Loretta Blake (Christine Cadwalader [Cadwallader]); Homer Hunt (Melville); [according to modern sources] Erich von Stroheim (Gangster); Nick Thompson Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); Archives du Film, Bois d’Arcy, 16mm acetate positive, English intertitles (generation undetermined); Cinémathèque française, 35mm nitrate positive (title on print: Mariage et publicité. The film was advertised in France as Amour et publicité); George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 28mm diacetate positive (AFI/David Shepard Collection); National Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) Pete Prindle wins the affections of Christine Cadwalader, but the father of the girl demands that Pete shall get a half interest in his father’s food product company before he is allowed to marry her. Pete accepts the ultimatum. Proteus Prindle, father of Pete, is angry when he receives the request from his son. He shows how his two girls have broken into print with an illustrated article in “Vegetarian Gazette”. Pete offers to get his picture on the front pages of all the New York papers. Proteus gives Pete $100 and tells him not to come back until he makes good his boast. Pete wrecks an auto, wins a prize fight, swims to shore from a steamer and is locked up after a fight with the police. But none of these adventures net him more than a line or two in the papers. Then he foils a band of yegs [sic] and rescues a train from being wrecked. Christopher and his daughter are on board and congratulate him. It ends with his getting his picture in all the metropolitan papers. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 7, 1916, LP8071 [stamped with date April 15, 1916]

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Though Proteus Prindle would like his son to share his commitment to vegetarianism, particularly as the family business depends on it, Peter Prindle only becomes interested when he is introduced to his father’s fellow advocate, Cassius Cadwallader, the father of the enticing and attractive Christine. But father Cadwallader is an obstacle. He’ll only consent to a courtship if Pete distinguishes himself. Pete hits on the idea of “boosting” Prindle’s products by getting his picture in the papers. But every scheme fails, or worse, brings only bad publicity to the family business. It’s only when Pete unwittingly stumbles into the subplot and foils gangsters who have been trying to blackmail Cadwallader that he gains the much-desired attention of the press. He prevents the villains from wrecking Cadwallader’s train, fights them off, and finally gets his picture in the papers and a kiss from Christine.

His Picture in the Papers is a comic stew of crypto-criminals (“Weazels” in the copy viewed; “Gophers” in the Knickerbocker Theatre programme), rich American entrepreneurs, generational conflict and young love. Douglas Fairbanks occasionally interjects moments of the physical gracefulness for which he will soon be well known. The exact opposite of DeWolf Hopper’s stagey comic character in Sunshine Dad (1916), Fairbanks already is pure film, exuberant action bursting out of a totally conventional “juvenile” role. Here he plays the son of a vegetarian “fast food” tycoon who feels betrayed by his heir’s lack of seriousness and love of meat. The fact that Fairbanks’ Pete finally gets his picture in the papers by means of a tried and true old train chase and rescue says much about the control Fairbanks would have to take of his projects to make them his own. Like many of the visual opportunities (notably the strangely composed boxing match), Fairbanks’ momentum often seems squandered in unedited long shots and repetitious wandering from one anemically executed comic situation to another. This was not the opinion of the reviewer of the Los Angeles Examiner (February 15, 1916), however, who found that “there is a constant and most exciting action to the photoplay, and many fights which are done so realistically and with reckless disregard of injury to the combatants that they almost cause the spectators to yell approval”. Griffith’s own influences are hard to find in His Picture in the Papers, but it is clear that Triangle had recruited a sparkling personality and potential box office powerhouse that the company would continue to exploit through re-releases even after Fairbanks had left. Joyce Jesionowski

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MARTHA’S VINDICATION Alternate title: The Silence of Martha (announced as title change but apparently not made [The Moving Picture World, March 11, 1916]) Filming date: finished Fall 1915 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 19 or 20 February 1916 (according to The American Film Institute Catalog, 1911–1920); 19 March 1916 (according to The Moving Picture World, March 25, 1916) Release length: five reels Copyright date: 7 February 1916 (LP8266) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Directors: Chester M. Franklin, Sidney A. Franklin Scenario: Ella Carter Woods; D.W. Griffith? Camera: not known Cast: Norma Talmadge (Martha); Seena Owen (Dorothea); Ralph Lewis (Deacon Hunt); Tully Marshall (Sell Hawkins); Charles West (William Burton); William Hinckley (John); Francis Carpenter (Francis); George Stone (George); Alice Knowland (The frump); Alberta Lee (The nurse); Edwin Harley (Her husband); George Pearce (The minister); Porter Strong (Hotel clerk); Josephine Crowell (Jennie Hawkins) Archival sources: none known This is a picture of two devoted girl friends, Martha and Dorothea. The latter being threatened with disgrace because the man she loves is killed before he can keep his promise to marry her, Martha accepts the burden. She takes Dorothea away to the country and when a boy is born carries the baby to her old nurse. While in a hotel with the child she is seen by the unscrupulous Sell Hawkins, whose wife runs a boarding house for children whose parents want to get rid of them. Hawkins remembers this when the house is raided at Martha’s instigation. Their well paying business gone, the Hawkinses [sic] try a new deception. They become workers in the church of which Martha and Dorothea, now the wife of Deacon Hunt, are members. Martha adopts a child from the Hawkins house and when Sell, angered by criticism of his wife in the church, hints that there are worse sinners in the congregation, Martha is accused of being the mother of the boy and is haled [sic] before the parish body for trial. John, her sweetheart, comes at her summons, wrings from her the truth, but fails to move Dorothea to confess and save her friend. Meanwhile Dorothea has brought her own son to a house where she can visit him frequently. On the day of the trial she orders him taken out of town and agrees to be at an obscure park to say goodby [sic]. When she rises to leave the church, John jumps to his feet and declares that she and not Martha should be on trial. There is an uproar, which is interrupted by the arrival of an aged woman carrying a child. The old nurse and her husband have tired of waiting for Dorothea and soon after leaving the park their taxicab has been run down by a heavy motor truck. The boy, Francis, is badly hurt. As Dorothea sees them at the door she rushes from the platform and clasps her boy in her

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arms. Deacon Hunt, John and Martha follow her. She openly confesses it is her own child. The scandalized deacon forgives her, and Martha is vindicated before the congregation, while all concerned ask her pardon. John and Martha are happily married. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 7,1916, LP8266 [stamped with date May 12, 1916] “Martha’s Vindication” is a motion picture story of vital theme, new material, admirable structure, artistic treatment and interpreted by a cluster of stars. That is saying a great deal, but it comes over like a refreshing draught of cool water, sparkling and invigorating, in comparison with a lot of stale beer of adaptation from exhausted sources. While all the story elements are present, there is a strong undercurrent of protest against religious bigotry, particularly that of organizations which arrogate to themselves the privilege of making a superficial examination of the lives of members and of bringing about social destruction where social helpfulness would be more in accord with the spirit of Christianity. This is popular motif just now, particularly in the smaller towns, hence “Martha’s Vindication” will meet with warm approval among big-hearted and magnanimous American people throughout the land. The story is far from being an easy one to tell, but its structure is without blemish, and the sparkling subtitles help every inch of the way. The author is to be congratulated for getting away from the beaten track into new fields without wandering or wasting time. Interest never sags, as it does in padded five-reel releases. Several lines of forces are in operation during the development, but they are skillfully gathered up and woven into a highly dramatic plan. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, March 25, 1916. p. 2028 It seemed to us also that there are too many subtitles – a disposition to explain everything a little too fully. In general, though, the direction is superior, and in the trial scene it is excellent. “Martha’s Vindication” will please your audiences not alone because of its acting. It also satirizes small town religious hypocrisy, and contains a gallery of characters, a lot of whom will be mirrors to many of your spectators. Oscar Cooper, The Motion Picture News, March 25, 1916, p. 1771

No print of this film is known to exist at the time of this writing. Martha’s Vindication was a melodrama with a message. The heroine, Martha (Norma Talmadge), was unjustly branded a sinner by his wife and bigoted church members who were quick to condemn and anxious to impose their narrow version of morality on others. Martha was accused of adultery for trying to care for the illegitimate baby of her best friend, Dorothy (Seena Owen). Dorothy’s sweetheart was killed in an auto accident before the couple could marry and she hoped to use her friend to hide her “sin”. Martha antagonized the deacon and his wife by reporting their questionable practices at a boarding house for unwanted children – a baby farm – that they operated. So this was a film about revenge, hypocrisy, gossip, false accusations, hasty judgements and – intolerance. Themes which were frequently repeated in Griffith’s Biograph films and much on Griffith’s mind at the time this was made – though there is no other evidence that he played a significant role in the production. The cast was filled with Griffith veterans: Norma Talmadge, Seena Owen, Ralph Lewis, Tully Marshall, Charles West, and William Hinckley. The directors, the Franklin brothers, Chester and Sidney, began making films at the Reliance-Majestic studio when Griffith was supervising production for Mutual and they followed him to Fine Arts. The script was by Ella Carter Woods, possibly wife or family of Frank E. Woods who was head of the script department at Griffith’s Fine Arts studio and Griffith’s right hand man at the studio. The Moving 165

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Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison gave Martha’s Vindication a very favorable review with particular praise for the careful and artful handling of a difficult subject. Paul Spehr

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DAPHNE AND THE PIRATE Working title: Daphne Filming date: November–late December 1915. (Completion of production might have been delayed by a fire in the Fine Arts laboratory in January or February 1916, which destroyed a number of films and delayed the release of several titles.) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: week prior to 26 February 1916, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 20 February 1916 (according to The Moving Picture World, 12 February 1916, p. 961) Release length: five reels Copyright date: 28 February 1916 (LP8165) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: William Christy Cabanne Scenario: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: William E. Fildew Music arrangements: Artur Bodanzky. (S.L. “Roxie” Rothapfel, manager of the Knickerbocker Theatre, hired Artur Bodanzky, conductor of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, to write a score for Daphne and the Pirate for showings in New York and Chicago. Hugo Riesenfeld conducted the score for the run at the Knickerbocker. [The Moving Picture World, March 18, 1916, p. 1804]) Backup cameraman: Karl Brown (Adventures With D.W. Griffith, p. 103) Cast: Lillian Gish (Daphne La Tour); Elliott Dexter (Philip de Mornay); Walter Long (Jamie d’Arcy); Howard Gaye (Prince Henri); Lucille Younge (Fanchette); Richard Cummings (Francois La Tour); Jack Cosgrove (Duc de Mornay); Joseph Singleton; George Pearce; W.E. Lawrence; Pearl Elmore; Jewel Carmen; Tom Wilson (Pirate; also stand-in for Elliott Dexter, per Karl Brown, op. cit.) Archival sources: none known Tiring of the idle life at court, young Philip de Mornay goes on a hunting trip with his father, Duc de Mornay. Philip comes across Daphne La Tour, the daughter of the gamekeeper. As she eludes him, he has some toughs in his pay steal her. She is taken to the home of one Fanchette in Paris. All the women of this place are seized by officers and sent on a ship to America, where they are to be auctioned off as wives for the planters. Meanwhile, Philip has quarreled with the King’s Counsellor. In a fight he thinks he has killed the official. He flees to the purlieus of the city, joins a band of pirates and goes to sea. There is a fight between the pirate ship and the ship bearing the women. The pirates are defeated at the last moment by the bravery of Daphne. As a reward she claims the life of Philip. On shore he rescues her just as she is to be married to Jamie d’Arcy. Philip and Daphne are married and afterward live happily in France as people of rank. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 28, 1916, LP8165 [stamped with date April 28, 1916]

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The kind of story Robert Louis Stevenson sighed for when he said he wished he could find a good one to read, “Daphne and the Pirate” is crowded with the interesting adventures of two lovers, all pictured with the highest sort of artistry, a production of rare beauty and, but for some minor faults of construction, whose aggravating little errors which seem impossible to avoid in a composite product, it would stand with the best of its kind. In addition to all the other merits, the pictured story presents what is possibly the most remarkable characterization ever attempted by Lillian Gish. Her work exhibits finer capabilities than she has hitherto shown, though she easily holds the eye whenever she is in evidence. In a feature displaying an exceptional quality of craftsmanship and infinite pains so far as the pictures themselves are concerned, it is almost a pity that some one could not furnish subtitles with more “bite” in them. Many of them are commonplace, some are carelessly expressed, and at least one should be cut out, together with action it explains, the one speaking of a letter from De Mornay’s father about an event no longer material, not plausible considering the circumstances, and serving as an anti-climax where there is need of a swift and strong conclusion. Very few portrayals of conflict between vessels at sea, if any, have been so original in treatment and generally effective as is the clash between the King’s ship, conveying Lillian and a number of ladies of less scruple to the marriage market of New Orleans, and the pirate ship on which her lover De Mornay, is unwillingly serving. From an almost infinite variety of viewpoints the chase and final struggle are shown, and those viewpoints are so admirably chosen that the audience passes a whole gallery of spirited portrayals in swift review. The entire presentation excels in picture composition. Of almost equal value, possibly of greater, are the quick changes of mood so exquisitely revealed by Lillian Gish. She has never been given to the simple smile of the tiresome chorus girl, and yet she conveys the impression of the light-hearted Daphne, now a timid child, now a teasing minx, always lovable. She has demonstrated in “Daphne” that she is a veritable artist. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, February 26, 1916, p. 1312 “Like the majority of his films, Griffith wrote this under a pseudonym. He felt that if the public thought you could do everything they wouldn’t like you”. Lillian Gish, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, pp. 56–57

No copy of this film is known to be extant at the time of this writing. Daphne and the Pirate may be the grandfather of the pirate-adventure film and a forerunner of the vehicles for Fairbanks, Flynn, and all the other swashbucklers that were popular during Hollywood’s halcyon years – as well as the recent additions to the genre. It also offered Lillian Gish a chance to escape the virginal, girl-next-door stereotype that was so often her lot. As Daphne, the daughter of a seventeenth-century French gamekeeper, she was lively and flirtatious. She talked back to people and was even known to beat some. She spent time in a Paris brothel (though, apparently not as an employee) and was conscripted with a group of women being sent to New Orleans to be auctioned off as wives. While at sea she fired the crucial cannon shot that settled a battle with a marauding pirate ship. She also rescued the hero from the plank – and her relationship with the hero (Elliott Dexter) was unusual to say the least. He was the son of a nobleman who early in the film had her abducted and sent her to the Paris brothel. This novel courtship apparently appealed to Daphne and somewhere along the line they fell in love. The unconventionality came to an end, however and at the film’s conclusion Daphne embraced orthodoxy. After heroically rescuing the hero and being saved from a marriage auction in New Orleans, she gave up the life of adventure, married and settled down in France as a person of rank. The Moving Picture World’s reviewer, Louis 168

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Reeves Harrison, said it was “possibly the most remarkable characterization ever attempted by Lillian Gish. Her work exhibits finer capabilities than she has hitherto shown” (February 26, 1916). The scenario was credited to Griffith via his pseudonym, Granville Warwick. It was directed by Griffith protégé W. Christy Cabanne, who was well suited for the job. Cabanne was experienced at directing battle scenes and had some nautical experience. He assisted Griffith in staging battles in several pictures and had directed fights and battle sequences in Griffith-supervised productions, among them The Dishonored Medal, Gangsters of New York, The Martyrs of the Alamo and The Life of General Villa (1914). Before his movie career, he attended the Naval Academy and was at sea for a while. It is a matter for speculation whether or not his naval experience contributed to directing the battle at sea between the pirates and the French ship, but it was one of the highlights of the picture and something of a novelty. Sea scenes were complicated and expensive to stage and battles between vessels were usually awkwardly staged with models. The Triangle company had two wooden sailing ships available: the “Alden Bessie”, a former whaler, and the “John C. Fremont”, a clipper. The “Alden Bessie” was purchased the previous fall for use in the Griffith supervised film The Sable Lorcha and Triangle’s Thomas Ince had used both of them. According to Karl Brown (Adventures With D.W. Griffith, pp. 103–104) they were used for the sea scenes in Daphne. If we can believe Harrison, the battle scenes were successful. “Very few portrayals of conflict between vessels at sea, if any, have been so original in treatment and generally effective ... From an almost infinite variety of viewpoints the chase and final struggle are shown, and those viewpoints are so admirably chosen that the audience passes a whole gallery of spirited portrayals in swift review”. According to Variety’s anonymous reviewer it was staged to appear like it was taking place at night (February 25, 1916), and Harrison’s comments in The Moving Picture World indicate that a series of takes were intercut to give the impression of conflict, much like the battle scenes in The Birth of a Nation. The film was apparently finished by late December 1915, because at Christmas time the male lead, Elliott Dexter, was in New York to marry Marie Doro. Paul Spehr

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THE FLYING TORPEDO Working title: The Scarlet Band; In 1921 Filming date: July–late December 1915 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers; 96 days of production; last payroll: 1 January 1916) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: Santa Monica, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 12 March 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 31 January 1916 (LP8297) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John B. O’Brien Scenario: Robert M. Baker, John Emerson Camera: Karl Brown? (Brown, Adventures with D.W. Griffith, p. 104) Director of the battle scenes: William Christy Cabanne Miniatures: Karl Brown, Cash Shockey, Tommy Thompson, “Dutch” Schultz (per Karl Brown, Adventures With D.W. Griffith, pp. 105–108) Special effects: “Fireworks” Wilson (per Karl Brown, Adventures With D.W. Griffith, pp. 104–105) Musical accompaniment selected and arranged by: J.A. Raynes Cast: John Emerson (Winthrop Clavering); Spottiswoode Aitken (Bartholomew Thompson); William E. Lawrence (William Haverman); Fred J. Butler (Chief of international crooks); Raymond Wells, Lucille Younge, Erich von Stroheim (His accomplices); Viola Barry (Adelaide E. Thompson); Bessie Love (Hulda); Ralph Lewis (Head of the board) Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress, piano conductor, 47 pages (published by G. Schirmer, Inc., for the Triangle Film Corporation, New York, “Triangle Plays” series, copyright C1 E 377163, 20 January 1916); location: LC M1357.R; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 51 This picture is supposed to record happenings in the year 1921. At that time the relations between the United States and a coalition of foreign powers have become strained and war seems imminent. Winthrop Clavering, an alert and ingenious writer of detective stories popular at that time, reads of the offer of the United States board of defense of a substantial prize for the invention of a powerful weapon of destruction. He urges his friend, Bartholomew Thompson, an inventor, to perfect a flying torpedo controlled by wireless on which the latter has been working, and agrees to furnish the required capital. A band of international spies learns of the plan of the novelist and inventor and on the day of the successful test of the flying torpedo its members are in positions of vantage. While Clavering takes Thompson before the board of defense they conspire to rob him of the prize which seems to be in his grasp. The disappearance of the model from Thompson’s shop convince[s] the scientists on the board that he and Clavering are a pair of visionaries. The inventor is broken-

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hearted, but his friend does not despair and optimistically furnishes money for the construction of a new model. The spies had not expected this turn of affairs, but they are determined. After a conference they send a threatening letter to the inventor. He contemptuously throws it into a waste basket, from which it is recovered by a Swedish maid, who reads Clavering’s stories, and is keen to try the detective faculties of which he writes. When no attention is paid to their threat the spies plan to assassinate Thompson by the use of a poisonous capsule, which is secreted in his telephone instrument. As he lifts the receiver from the hook the capsule expl[o]des and he is asphyxiated. While Clavering, now assisted by the Swedish servant, works on the mystery of his friend’s death, Thompson’s assistant continues work on the new model. As war becomes imminent the defense board increases its prize offer. This spurs the assistant and makes the foreign band more determined than ever to put out of the way anyone who interferes with their plot. Again they resort to the capsule, but Clavering frustrates their plan. During his investigation the novelist has discovered the rendezvous and eventually locates the stolen model. He is overpowered and held a prisoner, to be rescued when the police respond to the alarm given by his Swedish assistant. The crooks are locked up and the stolen model returned to Thompson’s workshop. The recovery is made just in time. Completion of the substitute model is a long drawn out task and foreign invaders are already intrenched [sic] in southern California preparatory to marching on the big coast cities. The board of defense now cooperates with Clavering and the young inventor, great quantities of aerial torpedoes and wireless controls are manufactured and quickly sent to California. Naval and land battles have been lost by the American defenders and the situation is desperate. At the critical time the new weapons of destruction arrive. In deadly swarm they demolish the trenches of the enemy and force him to retire from our shores. Clavering and young Haverman are the heroes of the hour. Their rewards are great and fitting. And the eccentric novelist’s joy is further increased by the marriage of Haverman and the daughter of the inventor who gave his life to his country. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, January 31, 1916, LP8297 [stamped with date May 17, 1916] “The Flying Torpedo,” a war story of the year 1921, has been shipped East and will soon be disclosed at the Knickerbocker theater with general release a few weeks later. The Triangle-Fine Arts, in making this war play, preferred to pack the material in five reels instead of extending it a la the familiar type of military serial or of a long-reeler taking up an entire evening. The motif of an impending foreign invitation of the United States controls the action of the piece. In response to an appeal of the National Defense Board, an old inventor (Spottiswoode Aitken), perfects an aerial torpedo controllable by wireless mechanism. A band of international outlaws who sell their booty to foreign governments steal the plans and the torpedo boat itself and murder the inventor. Prior to his death he has made one duplicate of the mechanism. Winthrop Clavering, chemist, detective and Conan Doyle type of novelist (John Emerson), enters the action vigorously at this point. Aided by a clever servant girl (Bessie Love), his tracing of clues brings him finally to the crooks’ den, whither the police are summoned and the robbers and their spoils are taken. Clavering and Haverman (W. E. Lawrence) start the manufacture of the torpedo. An army of yellow men from the Far East invade the West Coast. The deadly swarm of novel missiles annihilate most of the enemy, and those that are not killed are driven back ignominiously to their ships, thus removing forever the threat of foreign invasion of these shores. The exciting war scenes of “The Flying Torpedo” were directed under D.W. Griffith’s super-

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vision by W. Christy Cabanne, whilst the earlier scenes were stage by Jack O’Brien. Besides Mr. Emerson, the star, and those already mentioned, the cast includes Ralph Lewis, Fred J. Butler, Raymond Wells, Viola Barry and Lucille Younge. The working title of the story was “The Scarlet Band,” changed to “The Flying Torpedo” recently. A notable characteristic, lifting it out of the class of ordinary war-plot dramas, is the strong vein of comedy that runs through it. The Moving Picture World, January 8, 1916, p. 231 The early subtitles clearly announce that the story which is to follow is a purely imaginary one, thus evading any possible suspicion as to the picture’s being one which will offend the laws of neutrality or cast reflections upon any of the warring powers of the present European conflict. Neil G. Caward, Motography, January 29, 1916, p. 261 An imaginative romance whose melodramatic thrills are built around an ideally destructive military invention of the future is “The Flying Torpedo,” a Triangle Fine Arts production released March 12. Neither the thrills furnished by the villainous schemes of the international crooks, nor the comedy of John Emerson as the peculiar genius are as impressive as the invasion of these shores by a foreign enemy and his subsequent repulsion, not to say annihilation, thanks to “The Flying Torpedo.” Of course, one can no more take any of the characters of developments seriously than they can the marvelous war machine. Consequently, the spectator, living for the time being in a world of pure imagination, may sit back and await the forthcoming entertainment unassailed by those mental jars resulting from the improbable versus the probable. The action occurs in 1921, and who knows what that year may bring forth? The story was directed by John B. O’Brien and the battle scenes by William Christy Cabanne. Both directors have done well, though “The Flying Torpedo” does not impress which is due probably to the story’s limitations. But there is no denying the fact that it is an entirely interesting picture. John Emerson is a commendable Winthrop Clavering who writes popular detective stories and is a bit of a scientist into the bargain. Clavering aides his friend Thompson to win the prize offered by the United States board of defense for the invention of an effective weapon of war. The representatives of a coalition of foreign powers steal the model of the aerial torpedo and murder Thompson to prevent the manufacture of other such deadly machines. Clavering then outwits the international crooks and recovers the model. “Flying Torpedoes” are manufactured by the United States and they prove the salvation of the country when the foreigners commence the invasions. The battle scenes are very well done, while the story of the torpedo’s invention and the struggle for possession if the model has been produced with a keen eye to its dramatic value and the amusing eccentricities of Clavering’s character. Spottiswoode Aitken is Bartholomew Thompson, the inventor, and William E. Lawrence is his youthful assistant. Bessie Love, as the slavey, who is endeared to Clavering when she is seen reading one of his novels and proves a valuable assistant in recovering the coveted machine, scores a personal success. Thomas C. Kennedy, Motography, March 25, 1916, p. 708

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. In his account of working with Griffith, Karl Brown (p. 104) said the idea for The Flying Torpedo, a cinematic speculation about America’s future, came from Frank Woods’ scenario office at the Griffith studio. Brown called Woods’ office the source of “[s]trange, weird, and impossible story ideas” and classified The Flying Torpedo as “fantastically impossible”. The 172

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story was set in the future – but not too far, just to 1921. It was about the possibility of war and the need to be ready for it, but it avoided taking sides in Europe’s war. Five years into the future may have seemed enough to put the story beyond the international conflict that was all too real in 1916. It had a message: be prepared. But the message was delivered without a hard edge. The story was a blend of melodrama, mystery, adventure, and realistically staged battle scenes, with a touch of comedy to sweeten the message. John Emerson co-wrote the scenario with Robert M. Baker and gave himself the role that lent humor to an otherwise melodramatic and improbable war story. Emerson plays an eccentric writer of mystery stories who befriends the inventor (Spottiswoode Aitken) of the flying torpedo, a guided missile that would save America. Aided by a Swedish maid (Bessie Love) who was a fan of his mystery books, he battled the band of international crooks and got the invention into hands of the government in time to save America from its enemies. Europe had been at war for a more than a year when this production was begun. Americans were learning that war was nasty business and were debating whether to take sides or remain neutral. The Flying Torpedo was one of the first American films to take an American position – albeit very subtly. The public had seen newsreels and documentaries about the war, but only a few fictional films had been made and most of them dealt with the problems confronting Europeans – and a number of those avoided reality by setting the story in Ruritanian Europe. In The Flying Torpedo the threat to America comes from an invading hoard on the West Coast and not from across the Atlantic. Although the invaders were not identified by country, they were, by implication, Asiatic. This gives the picture an unpleasant racial overtone which is troubling today but would have been less worrisome to audiences in 1916. They were fed a conflicting mixture of films that often romanticized the exotic and mysterious Orient, but occasionally raised the specter of the “Yellow Menace”. Invading armies were not the only threat confronting America. Subversive groups were also at work and were the most immediate threat to the inventor of the flying torpedo. The studio’s summary of the plot called them a gang of “international crooks”, but they were clearly European. The presence of Erich von Stroheim gave them a Germanic tone and the original intent may have been to identify them as Bolsheviks – the film’s working title was The Scarlet Band. Although the Russian Revolution was a future event that the filmmakers could not have foreseen, when The Flying Torpedo was made, Americans often blamed bombings and assassinations on the Bolsheviks, regardless of the true character of the disgruntled group. The gang could not have been too formidable because the writer, the Swedish servant, and the inventor’s assistant overcame them. The Flying Torpedo was directed by John B. O’Brien but the battle sequences – which drew favorable comments from Moving Picture World and Motography – were directed by W. Christy Cabanne. A still very young Karl Brown helped solve problems the filmmakers had filming the battleships threatening the West Coast. The water action did not look right with the models they were using so Brown filmed cutouts of the battleships against the ocean at Santa Monica. He timed the take very carefully to get the right effect as the sun set. It worked and Brown credited this with getting him a regular contract with Griffith. Brown’s account indicates that Griffith was only marginally involved with the production. Brown worked with Frank Woods, and mentioned discussions between Woods and Griffith who had adjacent offices. But Brown’s comment is the only hint about Griffith’s role in production of The Flying Torpedo (Brown, Adventures With D.W. Griffith, pp. 104–112). Paul Spehr

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. Volume F1: Feature Films, 1911–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) ARVIDSON, Linda (Mrs. D.W. Griffith). When the Movies Were Young (New York: Dutton, 1925; reprinted by Dover Publications, 1969) BARRY, Iris. D.W. Griffith, American Film Master (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1940) BARRY, Iris, and Eileen Bowser. D.W. Griffith (1965) BITZER, Billy. Billy Bitzer: His Story (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1973) BORDWELL, David. On the History of Film Style (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) BRION, Patrick (ed.). D.W. Griffith (Paris: L’Equerre/Centre Georges Pompidou, 1982) BROWN, Karl. Adventures with D.W. Griffith (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1976) BROWNLOW, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence (New York: Knopf, 1990) CHERCHI USAI, Paolo (ed.). The Griffith Project: Volumes 1–7 (London: BFI Publishing, 1999–2003) CHERCHI USAI, Paolo and Lorenzo Codelli (eds). Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–20 (PLACE: PBLISHER, DATE) COURTNEY, Susan. Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903–1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004) CRIPPS, Thomas. “The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture, Birth of a Nation”, in The Historian [1963]; reprinted in Fred Silva (ed.), Focus on The Birth of a Nation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971) pp. 111-124 DELLUC, Louis. “Lillian Gish”, in Cinéa (not dated); reprinted in Louis Delluc, Ecrits cinématographiques I, Pierre Lherminier (ed.) (Paris: Cinémathèque Française, 1985), p. 148, ibid., pp. 143–44 DELLUC, Louis. “Griffith”, in Cinéa (not dated); reprinted in Louis Delluc, Ecrits cinématographiques I, Pierre Lherminier (ed.) (Paris: Cinémathèque Française, 1985), p. 143–44 D.W. Griffith Papers, 1897–1954 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982) [originals held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York]

DUPRÉ LA TOUR, Claire. “The Written Word and Memory in Griffith’s Intolerance and Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc”, Iris 19 (1995–1996), 55–72 EVERETT, Anna. Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001) EVERSON, William K. American Silent Film. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) GAINES, Jane. Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) GILL, David. “The Birth of a Nation: Orphan or Pariah?”, Griffithiana, Vol. 60/61, October 1997, pp. 17–29 GISH, Lillian. Dorothy and Lillian Gish, James E. Frasher (ed.) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973) GISH, Lillian. The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969) GRIFFITH, D.W. D.W. Griffith, The Man Who Invented Hollywood, James Hart (ed.) (Louisville, KY: Touchstone Publishing Co., 1972) GUNNING, Tom. D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Films: The Early Years at Biograph (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991) HAMMOND, Michael. “‘A Soul Stirring Appeal to Every Briton’: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation in Britain (1915–1916)”, in Film History, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1999, pp. 353–370 HANSEN, Miriam. “The Hieroglyph and the Whore: D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance”, South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 88, no. 2 (1989), pp. 361–92 HANSEN, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) HENABERY, Joseph. Before, In and After Hollywood: The Autobiography of Joseph E. Henabery (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997) HENDERSON, Robert. D.W. Griffith: His Life and Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972) KEIL, Charlie. “Transition through Tension: Stylistic Diversity in the Late Griffith Biographs”, Cinema Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Spring 1989), pp. 22–40 KOSZARSKI, Richard. “‘So Long, Master…’: Stroheim, Griffith, and the Griffith Studio”, Griffithiana, Vol. 24, No. 71, 2001, pp.

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45–81 LANG, Robert. “The Birth of a Nation: History, Ideology, Narrative Form”, in Robert Lang (ed.), The Birth of a Nation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), pp. 3–24 LAURITZEN, Einar and Gunnar Lundquist. American Film Index, 1908–1915; American Film Index, 1916–1920 (Stockholm: Film Index, 1976, 1984) LENNIG, Arthur. Stroheim (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2000) LINDSAY, Vachel. The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Macmillan, 1915; reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1922; reprint, New York: Modern Library, 2000) MARKS, Martin M. Music and the Silent Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) MERRITT, Russell. “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle”, in Paolo Cherchi Usai and Lorenzo Codelli (eds.), Sulla via di Hollywood 1911–1920 (Pordenone: Edizioni Biblioteca dell’Immagine, 1988), pp. 242–269 MERRITT, Russell. “D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: Going After Little Sister”, in Peter Lehman (ed.), Close Viewings: An Anthology of New Film Criticism (Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press, 1990), pp. 215–237 MITRY, Jean. “Griffith”, Anthologie du cinéma (2 Fevrier 1965), 44–45, Supplément à L’AvantScène du Cinéma no. 45 (1 Fevrier 1965) NEWHALL, Beaumont. “A Note on the Photography of Griffith’s Films”, in Iris Barry, D.W. Griffith, American Film Master (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1940), pp. 34–37 The New York Times Film Reviews 1913–1968 (New York: The New York Times/Arno Press, 1970) PEARSON, Roberta E. Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) PETRI?, Vlada. “The Avenging Conscience: An Early Dream Film”, Film Criticism (Winter 1982), pp. 5–27 POUND, Ezra. “Mr. James Joyce and the Modern Stage”, The Drama (February 1916), pp. 130–132. PRATT, George C. Spellbound in Darkness (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1973) ROGIN, Michael. “‘The Sword Became a Flashing Vision’: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation”, Representations 9 (Winter 1985), pp. 150–195; reprinted in Ronald Reagan, the Movie, and Other Episodes in

Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) SCHICKEL, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984; London: Pavilion Books, 1984) SIMMON, Scott. The Films of D.W. Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) SLIDE, Anthony. Kindergarten of the Movies: A History of the Fine Arts Company (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980) SLIDE, Anthony. The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998) SPEHR, Paul C. The Civil War in Motion Pictures: A Bibliography of Motion Pictures in the United States Since 1897. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1961) STAIGER. Janet. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (Princeton U Press, 1992) STERN, Seymour. “Griffith I – The Birth of a Nation”, Film Culture, Spring–Summer 1965 STUDLAR, Gaylyn. “Building Mr. Pep: Boy Culture and the Construction of Douglas Fairbanks”, in This Mad Masquerade (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) TAYLOR, Clyde. “The Re-Birth of the Aesthetic in Cinema”, Wide Angle vol. 13, nos. 3/4 (July–October 1991), pp. 12–30 TAYLOR, Clyde. The Mask of Art: Breaking the Aesthetic Contract – Film and Literature (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1998) WAGENKNECHT, Edward and Antony Slide. The Films of D.W. Griffith (New York: Crown Publishers, 1975) WAGENKNECHT, Edward. Movies in the Age of Innocence [1962] (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971) WHITE, Jack, Jules, and Sam. The White Brothers (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1990) WILLIAMS, Linda. Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)

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INDEX OF TITLES: 1914–15 Note: Release dates are given after each title. Numbers refer to program sequence.

ADOPTED BROTHER, THE

HOME, SWEET HOME

(30 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .493

(late May 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .509 JORDAN IS A HARD ROAD (19 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .523

AVENGING CONSCIENCE, THE

(24 August 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .510 BATTLE OF THE SEXES, THE

LAMB, THE

(by 25 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .503 BIRTH OF A NATION, THE

(early October 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .518 LET KATIE DO IT

(1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .513 CROSS CURRENTS

(9 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .526 LILY AND THE ROSE, THE

(2 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .525 DAPHNE AND THE PIRATE

(12 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .521 MARTHA’S VINDICATION

(20 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .532 DISHONORED MEDAL, THE

(20 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .531 MARTYRS OF THE ALAMO, THE

(by 25 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .507 DON QUIXOTE

(24? October 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . .517 MISSING LINKS, THE

(27 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .528 DOUBLE TROUBLE

(16 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .527 MOUNTAIN RAT, THE

(5 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . .522 ENOCH ARDEN

(May? 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .508 OLD HEIDELBERG

(8 April 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .514 ESCAPE, THE

(October–mid-November 1915) . .519 PAINTED LADY, THE

(June 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .505 FLOOR ABOVE, THE

(19 July 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .511 PENITENTES, THE

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .506 FLYING TORPEDO, THE

(25 or 26 December 1915) . . . . . .524 PILLARS OF SOCIETY

(12 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .533 GANGSTERS, THE

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .504

(27 August 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .516 [PRODUCTION FOOTAGE OF THE BIRTH OF A NATION]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .512

GHOSTS

(1? June 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .515 GREAT LEAP, THE; or UNTIL DEATH DO US PART

SABLE LORCHA, THE

(29 November 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .520 WOOD NYMPH, THE

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .502

(23 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .529

HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS

(13 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .530

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CUMULATIVE INDEX OF TITLES: 1907–13 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. 320–392: Vol. 5, 1911; 393–457: Vol. 6, 1912. 458–501: Vol. 7, 1913.

"1776" or, THE HESSIAN RENEGADES

BALKED AT THE ALTAR

(6 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .181 ADOPTED BROTHER, THE

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

(30 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .493 ADVENTURE IN THE AUTUMN WOODS, AN

(16 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .449

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

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

(13 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

ADVENTURES OF BILLY, THE

(19 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .368 ADVENTURES OF DOLLIE, THE

BATTLE AT ELDERBUSH GULCH, THE

(14 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 AFTER MANY YEARS

(28 March 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .483 BATTLE, THE

(3 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 "AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM"

(22 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115

(6 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .370 BATTLE OF THE SEXES, THE

(by 25 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .503 BEAST AT BAY, A

(27 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .409

ARCADIAN MAID, AN

(1 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275

BEHIND THE SCENES

(11 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

AS IN A LOOKING GLASS

(18 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .378

BETRAYED BY A HANDPRINT

(1 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

AS IT IS IN LIFE

(4 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245

BETTER WAY, THE

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

AS THE BELLS RANG OUT!

(21 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .273

BILLY’S STRATAGEM

(12 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .388

AT THE ALTAR

(25 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .106

BIRTH OF A NATION, THE

(1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .513

AT THE CROSSROADS OF LIFE

(3 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

BLACK VIPER, THE

(21 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

AT THE FRENCH BALL

(30 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 AVENGING CONSCIENCE, THE

BLIND PRINCESS AND THE POET, THE

(24 August 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .510 AWAKENING, THE

(17 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .348 BLOT IN THE ’SCUTCHEON, A

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

(29 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .387 BOBBY, THE COWARD

(18 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 BABY AND THE STORK, THE

(13 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351 BRAHMA DIAMOND, THE

(1 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .382 BABY’S SHOE, A

(4 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 BROKEN CROSS, THE

(13 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136

(6 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328

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BROKEN DOLL, THE

CHOOSING A HUSBAND

(17 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .292 BROKEN LOCKET, THE

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

(16 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .187 BROKEN WAYS

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

(8 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .459 BROTHERS

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

(3 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .455 BRUTALITY

(14 February 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .494 CLOISTER’S TOUCH, THE

(2 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .439 BRUTE FORCE

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

(25 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .488 BURGLAR’S MISTAKE, A

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

(25 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 BURGLAR’S DILEMMA, THE

(9 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 COMING OF ANGELO, THE

(16 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .443 CALAMITOUS ELOPEMENT, A

(26 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 CONCEALING A BURGLAR

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

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

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

(15 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 CONSCIENCE

(25 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .274 CALL, THE

(9 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 CONVERTS, THE

(20 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .226 CARDINAL’S CONSPIRACY, THE

(12 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160

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

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

(28 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

CAUGHT BY WIRELESS

(21 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

CORNER IN WHEAT, A

(13 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .216

CHANCE DECEPTION, A

(24 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . .451

COUNTRY CUPID, A

(24 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .352

CHANGE OF HEART, A

(14 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .194

COUNTRY DOCTOR, THE

(8 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158

CHANGE OF SPIRIT, A

(22 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425

CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, THE

(27 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142

CHIEF’S DAUGHTER, THE

(10 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .329

CRIMINAL HYPNOTIST, THE

(18 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

CHILD OF THE GHETTO, A

(6 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260

CROOKED ROAD, THE

(22 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .341

CHILD’S FAITH, A

(14 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .270

CROSS CURRENTS

(2 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .525

CHILD’S IMPULSE, A

(27 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265

CRY FOR HELP, A

(23 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .444

CHILD’S STRATAGEM, A

(5 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .303

CUPID’S PRANKS

(Edison, 19 February 1908) . . . . . . . 5

CHILDREN’S FRIEND, THE

(13 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .186

CURTAIN POLE, THE

(15 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

CHILD’S REMORSE, A

(8 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .423 178

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DAN, THE DANDY

ENOCH ARDEN – PART ONE

(18 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .359 DANCING GIRL OF BUTTE, THE

(12 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .336 ENOCH ARDEN – PART TWO

(6 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224 DAPHNE AND THE PIRATE

(15 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .337 ERADICATING AUNTY

(20 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .532 DAY AFTER, THE

(31 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 ESCAPE, THE

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

(June 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .505 ETERNAL MOTHER, THE

(2 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 DEATH’S MARATHON

(11 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .362 EXAMINATION DAY AT SCHOOL

(14 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .477 DECEIVED SLUMMING PARTY

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

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

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

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

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

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

(17 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151 FAILURE, THE

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

(7 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .376 FAIR EXCHANGE, A

(20 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .315 DISHONORED MEDAL, THE

(23 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .190 FAIR REBEL, A

(by 25 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .507 DON QUIXOTE

(not known) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .500 FAITHFUL

(27 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .528 DOUBLE TROUBLE

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

(5 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . .522 DRINK’S LURE

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

(17 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . .456 DRIVE FOR A LIFE, THE

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

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

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

(1 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 DUKE’S PLAN, THE

(18 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 FATE

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

(22 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .452 FATE’S TURNING

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

(23 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .314 FATE’S INTERCEPTION

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

(8 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .400 FATHER GETS IN THE GAME

(24 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 ENEMY’S BABY, THE

(10 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 FATHER’S LESSON, A

(10 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .484 ENGLISHMAN AND THE GIRL, THE

(17 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .234

(13 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . .453 FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, THE

(15 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .401 FEUD AND THE TURKEY, THE

(8 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

ENOCH ARDEN

(8 April 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .514 179

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

FEUD IN THE KENTUCKY HILLS, A

(3 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .430

GIRLS AND DADDY, THE

(1 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 GOD WITHIN, THE

(26 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .445

FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, THE

(17 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 FIGHTING BLOOD

GODDESS OF SAGEBRUSH GULCH, THE

(29 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .349 FINAL SETTLEMENT, THE

(25 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397 GOLD AND GLITTER

(28 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .236 FISHER FOLKS

(11 November 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .436 GOLD IS NOT ALL

(16 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .320 FLASH OF LIGHT, A

(28 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246 GOLDEN LOUIS, THE

(18 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .272 FLOOR ABOVE, THE

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

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .506 FLYING TORPEDO, THE

(12 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .304 GOLD-SEEKERS, THE

(12 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .533 FOOL’S REVENGE, A

(2 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 GREASER’S GAUNTLET, THE

(4 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 FOOLS OF FATE

(7 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192

(11 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 GREAT LEAP, THE; or UNTIL DEATH DO US PART

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .502

FOR A WIFE’S HONOR

(28 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40

GUERRILLA, THE

(13 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .64

FOR HIS SON

(22 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .384

HEART BEATS OF LONG AGO

(6 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318

FOR LOVE OF GOLD

(21 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

HEART OF A SAVAGE, THE

(2 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .322

FRENCH DUEL, THE

(10 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125

HEART OF AN OUTLAW, THE

(not released) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180

FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, THE

(15 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152

HEART OF O YAMA, THE

(18 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .45

FRIENDS

(23 September 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .428

HEAVEN AVENGES

(18 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .417

FUGITIVE, THE

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

HELPING HAND, THE

(29 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .77

GANGSTERS, THE

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .504

HER AWAKENING

(28 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .366

GETTING EVEN

(13 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .185

HER FATHER’S PRIDE

(4 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276

GHOSTS

(1? June 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .515

HER FIRST ADVENTURE

(18 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

GIBSON GODDESS, THE

(1 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .198

HER FIRST BISCUITS

(17 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138

GIRL AND HER TRUST, THE

(28 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .398

HER MOTHER’S OATH

(28 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .481

GIRL AND THE OUTLAW, THE

(8 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

HER SACRIFICE

(26 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .346

GIRL’S STRATAGEM, A

(10 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .460 180

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

HER TERRIBLE ORDEAL

HOW SHE TRIUMPHED

(10 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225 HEREDITY

(27 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333 HULDA’S LOVERS

(4 November 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .435 HERO OF LITTLE ITALY, THE

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

(3 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .464 HINDOO DAGGER, THE

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

(18 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90 HIS DAUGHTER

(3 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .289 IF WE ONLY KNEW

(23 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .321 HIS DUTY

(1 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .470 IMPALEMENT, THE

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

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

(21 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .235 HIS LESSON

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

(16 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .407 HIS LOST LOVE

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

(18 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .196 HIS MOTHER’S SCARF

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

(24 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .332 HIS MOTHER’S SON

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

(31 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .475 HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS

(20 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .183 IN THE AISLES OF THE WILD

(13 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .530 HIS SISTER-IN-LAW

(14 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .431 IN THE BORDER STATES

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

(13 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262 IN THE DAYS OF ’49

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

(8 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .335 IN THE SEASON OF BUDS

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

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

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

(25 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .200 IN THE WINDOW RECESS

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

(29 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .211 INDIAN BROTHERS, THE

(19 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 HOME FOLKS

(6 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410

(17 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .345 INDIAN RUNNER’S ROMANCE, THE

(23 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .171

HOME, SWEET HOME

(late May 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .509

INDIAN SUMMER, AN

(8 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .416

HONOR OF HIS FAMILY, THE

(24 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229

INFORMER, THE

(21 November 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .438

HONOR OF THIEVES, THE

(11 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

INGRATE, THE

(20 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .68

HOUSE OF DARKNESS, THE

(10 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .472 HOUSE WITH CLOSED SHUTTERS, THE

INNER CIRCLE, THE

(12 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .424 INVISIBLE FLUID, THE

(8 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .277

(16 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 181

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

IOLA’S PROMISE

LAST DROP OF WATER, THE

(14 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .396 ITALIAN BARBER, THE

(27 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .350 LEATHER STOCKING

(9 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309 ITALIAN BLOOD

(27 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .191 LEFT-HANDED MAN, THE

(9 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363 JEALOUS HUSBAND, THE

(21 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .467 LENA AND THE GEESE

(10 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .344 JEALOUSY AND THE MAN

(17 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .412 LESSER EVIL, THE

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

(29 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .404 LESSON, THE

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

(19 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .306 LET KATIE DO IT

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

(10 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100

(9 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .526 LIBERTY BELLES

(not known) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .499 LIGHT THAT CAME, THE

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

JONES’ BURGLAR

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

LILY AND THE ROSE, THE

(12 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .521 LILY OF THE TENEMENTS, THE

(18 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83 JORDAN IS A HARD ROAD

(19 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .523

(27 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .319 LINES OF WHITE ON A SULLEN SEA

(28 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .199

JUDITH OF BETHULIA

(8 March 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .492

LITTLE ANGELS OF LUCK

(8 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .284

[JUDITH OF BETHULIA

(OUTTAKES)] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .491

LITTLE DARLING, THE

(2 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .182

JUST GOLD

(24 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .474

LITTLE TEACHER, THE

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

JUST LIKE A WOMAN

(18 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .402

LITTLE TEASE, THE

(12 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .468

KENTUCKIAN, THE

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

LODGING FOR THE NIGHT, A

(9 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .406

KING OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

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

LONEDALE OPERATOR, THE

(23 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .326

KING’S MESSENGER, THE

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

LONELY VILLA, THE

(10 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150

KNIGHT OF THE ROAD, A

(20 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .330

LONG ROAD, THE

(26 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .369

LADY AND THE MOUSE, THE

(26 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .469

LORD CHUMLEY

(27 June 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .496

LADY HELEN’S ESCAPADE

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

LOVE AMONG THE ROSES

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

LAMB, THE

(early October 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .518

LOVE FINDS A WAY

(11 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

LAST DEAL, THE

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

182

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

LOVE IN AN APARTMENT HOTEL

MESSAGE, THE

(27 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . .458 LOVE IN THE HILLS

(5 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 MEXICAN SWEETHEARTS, THE

(30 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .371 LUCKY JIM

(24 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE, A

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

(18 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .205 MIDNIGHT CUPID, A

(15 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 MADAME REX

(17 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .331

(7 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268 MILLS OF THE GODS, THE

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

MAKING OF A MAN, THE

(5 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .365

MISAPPROPRIATED TURKEY, A

(27 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .454

MAN AND THE WOMAN, THE

(14 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

MISER’S HEART, THE

(20 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .375

MAN IN THE BOX, THE

(19 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

MISSING LINKS, THE

(16 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .527

MAN, THE

(12 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241

MISTAKE, THE

(12 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .485

MAN’S ENEMY

(1 August 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .498

MISUNDERSTOOD BOY, A

(19 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .466

MANIAC COOK, THE

(4 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

MIXED BABIES

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

MAN’S GENESIS

(11 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .419

MODERN PRODIGAL, THE

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

MAN’S LUST FOR GOLD

(1 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .415

MOHAWK’S WAY, A

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

MARKED TIME-TABLE, THE

(23 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264 MARTHA’S VINDICATION

MONDAY MORNING IN A CONEY ISLAND POLICE COURT

(20 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .531 MARTYRS OF THE ALAMO, THE

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

(24? October 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . .517 [MARY PICKFORD AND DAVID BELASCO ON THE SET

OF A GOOD LITTLE DEVIL] . .487

(4 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 MOTHERING HEART, THE

(21 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .478 MOUNTAINEER’S HONOR, THE

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

MASSACRE, THE

(7 Nov 1912, Europe; 26 Feb 1914, USA) . . . . . . . . . . . . .418 MEDICINE BOTTLE, THE

MOUNTAIN RAT, THE

(May? 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .508 MR. JONES AT THE BALL

(29 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 MEN AND WOMEN

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

(? August 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .497 MENDED LUTE, THE

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

(5 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .170 MENDER OF NETS, THE

(15 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .393

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

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

MESSAGE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

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

183

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

MUGGSY’S FIRST SWEETHEART

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

ONE IS BUSINESS; THE OTHER CRIME

(25 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .403

MUSIC MASTER, THE

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

ONE NIGHT, AND THEN–

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

MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY, THE

(31 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .434

ONE SHE LOVED, THE

(21 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .432

MY BABY

(14 November 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .437

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

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

MY HERO

(12 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .442

OPEN GATE, THE

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

NARROW ROAD, THE

(1 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .422

’OSTLER JOE

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

NEAR TO EARTH

(20 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .461

OUT FROM THE SHADOW

(3 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .353

NECKLACE, THE

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

OUTLAW, THE

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

NEW DRESS, THE

(15 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .338

OVER SILENT PATHS

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

NEW TRICK, A

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

PAINTED LADY, THE

(24 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .433

NEW YORK HAT, THE

(5 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .441

PAINTED LADY, THE

(19 July 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .511

NEWLYWEDS, THE

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

PEACHBASKET HAT, THE

(24 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146

NOTE IN THE SHOE, THE

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

PENITENTES, THE

(25 or 26 December 1915) . . . . . .524

NURSING A VIPER

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

PERFIDY OF MARY, THE

(5 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .465

OATH AND THE MAN, THE

(22 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .287

PILLARS OF SOCIETY

(27 August 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .516

"OH, UNCLE"

(26 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177 OIL AND WATER

PIPPA PASSES or, THE SONG OF CONSCIENCE

(6 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .448 OLD ACTOR, THE

(4 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 PIRATE’S GOLD, THE

(6 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .405 OLD BOOKKEEPER, THE

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

(18 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .385 OLD CONFECTIONER’S MISTAKE, THE

(7 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .364

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

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

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

OLD HEIDELBERG

(October–mid-November 1915) . .519

PRANKS

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

OLD ISAACS, THE PAWNBROKER

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

PRIMAL CALL, THE

(22 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343

ON THE REEF

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

PRINCESS IN THE VASE, THE

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

ONE BUSY HOUR

(6 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134 184

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

[PRODUCTION FOOTAGE OF THE

ROMANY TRAGEDY, A

BIRTH OF A NATION] . . . . . . .512 PROFESSIONAL JEALOUSY

(29 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .340 ROOT OF EVIL, THE

(4 January 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 PRUSSIAN SPY, THE

(18 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .390 ROSE O’ SALEM-TOWN

(1 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104 PUEBLO LEGEND, A

(26 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .288 ROSE OF KENTUCKY, THE

(29 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .421 PUNISHMENT, THE

(24 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .356 ROUE’S HART, THE

(4 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399 PURGATION, THE

(8 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 RUDE HOSTESS, A

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

(8 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 RULING PASSION, THE

(23 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .255 RANCHERO’S REVENGE, THE

(7 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .355 RURAL ELOPEMENT, A

(2 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .480 RECKONING, THE

(14 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 SABLE LORCHA, THE

(11 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 RED GIRL, THE

(29 November 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .520 SACRIFICE, THE

(15 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .43 REDMAN AND THE CHILD, THE

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

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

(11 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278 SALVATION ARMY LASS, THE

(9 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .214 REFORMERS, THE

(11 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 SANDS OF DEE, THE

(9 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490 RENUNCIATION, THE

(22 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .420 SAVED FROM HIMSELF

(19 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166 RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE’S NEST

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

(11 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .379 SCHNEIDER’S ANTI-NOISE CRUSADE

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

RESTORATION, THE

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

SCHOOL TEACHER AND THE WAIF, THE

(20 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140 REVENUE MAN AND THE GIRL, THE

(25 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .361

(27 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .414 SCULPTOR’S NIGHTMARE, THE

(6 May 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 SEALED ROOM, THE

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

RICH REVENGE, A

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

SERIOUS SIXTEEN

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

ROAD TO THE HEART, THE

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

SEVENTH DAY, THE

(26 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159

ROCKY ROAD, THE

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

SHERIFF’S BABY, THE

(29 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .463

ROMANCE OF A JEWESS

(23 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN HILLS, A

SIMPLE CHARITY

(10 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .297 SIREN OF IMPULSE, A

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

(4 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .395

185

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

SISTER’S LOVE, A

SUMMER IDYL, A

(8 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .386 SLAVE, THE

(5 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .283 SUNBEAM, THE

(29 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168 SMILE OF A CHILD, A

(26 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .391 SUNSHINE SUE

(5 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342 SMOKED HUSBAND, A

(14 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .299 SUNSHINE THROUGH THE DARK

(25 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .48 SO NEAR, YET SO FAR

(27 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .377 SWEET AND TWENTY

(30 September 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .429 SON’S RETURN, THE

(22 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167 SWEET REVENGE

(14 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 SONG OF THE SHIRT, THE

(18 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .208 SWORDS AND HEARTS

(17 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .65 SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTE, THE

(21 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .300

(28 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358 TALE OF THE WILDERNESS, A

(8 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381 TAMING A HUSBAND

(24 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .237

SORROWFUL EXAMPLE, THE

(14 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .354

TAMING OF THE SHREW

(10 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .61

SORROWFUL SHORE, THE

(5 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .482 SORROWS OF THE UNFAITHFUL, THE

(22 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279

TAVERN-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER, THE

(24 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 TEACHING DAD TO LIKE HER

(20 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .325

SOUND SLEEPER, A

(12 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 SPANISH GYPSY, THE

TELEPHONE GIRL AND THE LADY, THE

(30 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327 SPIRIT AWAKENED, THE

(6 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447 TEMPORARY TRUCE, A

(20 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .413 SQUAW’S LOVE, THE

(10 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .411 TENDER HEARTED BOY, THE

(14 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .360 STAGE RUSTLER, THE

(23 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .450 TENDER HEARTS

(10 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 STOLEN JEWELS, THE

(19 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .162 TERRIBLE DISCOVERY, A

(29 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .55 STOLEN LOAF, THE

(21 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .380 TEST OF FRIENDSHIP, THE

(15 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .473 STRANGE MEETING, A

(15 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 TEST, THE

(2 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164 STRING OF PEARLS, A

(16 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .217 THAT CHINK AT GOLDEN GULCH

(7 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .392 STRONGHEART

(10 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .291 THEY WOULD ELOPE

(9 March 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .495 STUFF HEROES ARE MADE OF, THE

(4 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .357

(9 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 THIEF AND THE GIRL, THE

(6 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .347 THOSE AWFUL HATS

(25 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94

SUICIDE CLUB, THE

(3 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 186

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

THOSE BOYS!

TWO PATHS, THE

(18 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 THOU SHALT NOT

(2 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312 TWO SIDES, THE

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

(1 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .334 TWO WOMEN AND A MAN

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

(15 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .206 UNCHANGING SEA, THE

(2 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .446 THREE SISTERS

(5 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252 UNDER BURNING SKIES

(2 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313 THROUGH DARKENED VALES

(22 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .394 UNEXPECTED HELP

(16 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .373 THROUGH THE BREAKERS

(28 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248 UNSEEN ENEMY, AN

(6 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .213 TIMELY INTERCEPTION, A

(9 September 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .426 UNVEILING, THE

(7 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .476 ’TIS AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO GOOD

(29 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

(16 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .367 UNWELCOME GUEST, THE

(15 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .440 USURER, THE

(15 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .280

TO SAVE HER SOUL

(27 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .221

VALET’S WIFE, THE

(1 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

TRAGIC LOVE

(11 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95

VAQUERO’S VOW, THE

(16 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

TRAIL OF BOOKS, THE

(9 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .372

VICTIM OF JEALOUSY, A

(9 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261

TRANSFORMATION OF MIKE, THE

(1 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .389

VIOLIN MAKER OF CREMONA, THE

(7 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141

TRAP FOR SANTA CLAUS, A

(20 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .218

VOICE OF THE CHILD, THE

(28 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .383

TRICK THAT FAILED, THE

(29 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .210

VOICE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

(18 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114

TROUBLESOME SATCHEL, A

(19 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130

WAITER NO. 5

(3 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .296

TRYING TO GET ARRESTED

(5 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117

WANDERER, THE

(3 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .471

TWIN BROTHERS

(26 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126

WANTED, A CHILD

(30 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .193

TWISTED TRAIL, THE

(24 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244

WAS HE A COWARD?

(16 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .324

TWO BROTHERS, THE

(12 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256

WAS JUSTICE SERVED?

(21 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154

TWO DAUGHTERS OF EVE

(19 September 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .427

WAY OF MAN, THE

(28 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153

TWO LITTLE WAIFS

(31 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .295

WAY OF THE WORLD, THE

(25 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251

TWO MEMORIES

(24 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145

WELCOME BURGLAR, THE

(25 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89

TWO MEN OF THE DESERT

(23 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .489 187

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 8

WELCOME INTRUDER, A

WINNING BACK HIS LOVE

(24 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .462 WHAT DRINK DID

(26 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .307 WINNING COAT, THE

(3 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144 WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD

(13 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .316

(12 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 WITH HER CARD

(16 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 WOMAN FROM MELLON’S, THE

(3 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231

WHAT THE DAISY SAID

(11 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269

WOMAN SCORNED, A

(30 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .374

WHAT’S YOUR HURRY?

(1 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .201

WOMAN’S WAY, A

(24 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .60

WHEN A MAN LOVES

(5 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305

WOODEN LEG, THE

(8 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113

WHEN KINGS WERE THE LAW

(20 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .408

WOOD NYMPH, THE

(23 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .529

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD

(20 May 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

WREATH IN TIME, A

(8 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80

WHEN LOVE FORGIVES

(2 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .457

WREATH OF ORANGE BLOSSOMS, A

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

WHERE THE BREAKERS ROAR

(22 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .47

YAQUI CUR, THE

(17 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .479

WHITE ROSE OF THE WILDS, THE

(25 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339

YELLOW PERIL, THE

(7 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

WIFE, THE

(no official release) . . . . . . . . . . . . .501

ZULU’S HEART, THE

(6 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

WILFUL PEGGY

(25 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281

188