The Griffith Project Volume 7: Films Produced in 1913 9780851709918, 9781838710804, 9781838718961

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THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 7 FILMS PRODUCED IN 1913

TO HOWARD LAMARR WALLS, DISCOVERER OF THE PAPER PRINT COLLECTION AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AND IN MEMORY OF KEMP R. NIVER, WHO HELPED IN MAKING IT ACCESSIBLE

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 7 Films Produced in 1913

G ENERAL E DITOR Paolo Cherchi Usai CONTRIBUTORS Eileen Bowser, Ben Brewster, Kevin Brownlow, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, Steven Higgins, Joyce Jesionowski, J.B. Kaufman, David Mayer, Russell Merritt, Charles Musser, Scott Simmon, Paul Spehr, Kristin Thompson, Linda Williams A SSISTANT E DITOR Cynthia Rowell

Publishing

First published in 2003 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 2003 Set in Italian Garamond by Ketchup, London British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–0–85170–991–8 eISBN 978–1–83871–895–4 ePDF 978–1–83871–896–1

CONTENTS

Foreword Notes on Contributors Note on Layout

vi ix xii

458. Love in an Apartment Hotel 1 459. Broken Ways 4 460. A Girl’s Stratagem 7 461. Near to Earth 9 462. A Welcome Intruder 12 463. The Sheriff’s Baby 14 464. The Hero of Little Italy 16 465. The Perfidy of Mary 18 466. A Misunderstood Boy 21 467. The Left-Handed Man 26 468. The Little Tease 28 469. The Lady and the Mouse 31 470. If We Only Knew 35 471. The Wanderer 38 472. The House of Darkness 42 473. The Stolen Loaf 46 474. Just Gold 49 475. His Mother’s Son 52 476. A Timely Interception 55 477. Death’s Marathon 58 478. The Mothering Heart 67 479. The Yaqui Cur 78 480. The Ranchero’s Revenge 84 481. Her Mother’s Oath 86 482. The Sorrowful Shore 91 483. The Battle at Elderbush Gulch 96 484. The Enemy’s Baby 101 485. The Mistake 104 486. The Coming of Angelo 107 487. [Mary Pickford and David Belasco on the Set of A Good Little Devil] 109

488. Brute Force 110 489. Two Men of the Desert 117 490. The Reformers, or the Lost Art of Minding One’s Business 121 491. [Judith of Bethulia (Outtakes)] 129 492. Judith of Bethulia 131 493. The Adopted Brother 143 494. Classmates 148 495. Strongheart 153 496. Lord Chumley 156 497. Men and Women 160 498. Man’s Enemy 163 499. Liberty Belles 167 500. A Fair Rebel 170 501. The Wife 174 Bibliography Descriptions of Scenes from Copyright Records Index of Titles: 1913 Cumulative Index Of Titles: 1907–1913

179 181 240 242

FOREWORD

In its first six months, the year 1913 – the first major turning point in D.W. Griffith’s career as a filmmaker – appears to be one of the best known in the context of his creative trajectory; much of the second half, however, is largely shrouded in mystery. This paradox is the result of an intriguing (and ultimately unclear) chain of events. Toward the end of his involvement with the Biograph Company, D.W. Griffith produced some of his most widely acclaimed films with titles such as The Lady and the Mouse (DWG Project, #469), The Mothering Heart (#478) and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (#483). Griffith’s reputation as a major personality was thus firmly established in the American film industry. In all likelihood, his emerging status as “the Biograph producer” was one of the circumstances that set the filmmaker and his company on a collision course, culminating in a confrontation during the production of his first feature film, the four-reeler Judith of Bethulia (#492). In a famous one-page advertisement published in The New York Dramatic Mirror (September 29, 1913), Griffith declared himself the “producer of all great Biograph successes”, listing about 150 films to his credit and claiming the invention of technical innovations such as cross-cutting, close-ups, long shots and “restraint of expression”. A few weeks earlier, while Griffith was still in California with his cast and crew, Klaw & Erlanger – a wealthy theatrical production organization based in New York – had teamed with Biograph in order to produce three- and four-reelers. They set up a new firm, the Protective Amusement Company, with an initial investment of $500,000 to copyright plays and handle the production end, with Griffith as head of production. According to plans, the films would be played at the East Coast theaters owned by Klaw & Erlanger (one of them was the Liberty Theatre in New York), filling slots that were not taken with stage productions. The agreement between Klaw & Erlanger and Biograph was announced in Motion Picture News (June 21, 1913, p. 12), which called it a “combine” and an “association”. Production started in the late Summer or early Fall of 1913 (for details, see Paul Spehr’s entry on Lord Chumley, #496). Releases were scheduled to begin in September 1913 but were soon delayed, and the first showing took place some four months later at the Palace Theatre in New York (January 19, 1914) with The Fatal Wedding. The results of this hastily planned joint venture were disappointing at best, both in terms of quality and box-office revenues. In the early days of its alliance with Biograph, Klaw & Erlanger was expected to produce 104 feature films from plays owned by the company; the number was quickly pared down to 52, and ultimately only 26 titles were copyrighted by the Protective Amusement Company. After unsuccessfully trying the programs in their theaters, Klaw & Erlanger changed the policy in June 1914 and began releasing through Biograph’s arrangement with the General Film Company, which offered the films to moving-picture theaters that were booking longer productions in three and four reels. The degree of Griffith’s involvement with these films is unknown, as we have no clear idea of what Griffith was doing in the late Summer or Fall 1913 at Biograph. He officially resigned from the company on 1 October (as announced in Motion Picture News, October 4, 1913, and reported in The Moving Picture World, October 11, 1913), but it is possible that by then he already had little or no contact with what was happening in the studio, as

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he had been filming in California earlier in the year and came back to New York only at the end of the summer. In his notes at the Museum of Modern Art (D.W. Griffith Papers), Billy Bitzer indicates that Griffith supervised a handful of Klaw & Erlanger titles: Classmates (#494), Strongheart (#495), Men and Women (#497) and The Wife (#501). However, we have no convincing proof that he actively participated in any of these productions, and the cameramen who were there were never asked about this point. It should also be stressed that none of the actors involved (Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Blanche Sweet, Lionel Barrymore, or Linda Arvidson) mention any Griffith connection with the Klaw & Erlanger films in interviews, articles, or books. Nor does Griffith ever mention them in his memoirs. In the absence of conclusive evidence, this volume includes entries only for those Klaw & Erlanger films made until October 1913, and only where members of the core group of Griffith performers – from the Gish sisters to Henry B. Walthall and Blanche Sweet – are prominently featured in the cast. As the team followed Griffith at the time of his departure from Biograph, it may be inferred that their presence in a Klaw & Erlanger cast could indicate that some form of relationship, however perfunctory, existed between the company and its would-be chief of production beyond the supervision of one-reelers. It must be stressed, however, that this is only a matter of conjecture. Griffith’s break with Biograph defines the boundaries of this volume, the seventh 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. As in previous volumes, contributors to The Griffith Project were asked to analyze groups of consecutive Biograph films, listed here in their shooting order. Please note that it is the last day or month of shooting that determines the chronology and perimeters of each volume. The primary source for filmographic information on the Biograph period is D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Company (Cooper C. Graham, Steven Higgins, Elaine Mancini, João Luiz Vieira. Metuchen, N.J. and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1985). We gratefully acknowledge its authors and publisher, with special thanks to Steven Higgins – a longtime friend of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival – who provided invaluable advice on various aspects of the overall project. An annotated filmography of the Klaw & Erlanger films was published by Kemp R. Niver in Klaw & Erlanger Present Famous Plays in Pictures (Los Angeles: Locare, ca. 1976); supplementary information can be found in Angelo R. Humouda and Renato Venturelli (eds.), I cerchi del mondo: la produzione Klaw & Erlanger (Genoa: Cineteca Griffith, 1983 [Quaderni della Cineteca # 3]). Contributors to The Griffith Project have added or amended information contained in the Biograph and Klaw & Erlanger filmographies after viewing of extant prints and further research on written sources. The criteria adopted for the inventory of archival sources have been discussed in the foreword to previous volumes of this series. The same applies to the Biograph plot summaries and continuity sheets deposited at the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. An asterisk (*) following the sequence number at the beginning of each entry indicates the titles for which a continuity sheet is available. The Griffith Project would not exist without the generous help of all the individuals and institutions involved in the preservation of Griffith’s work. Our special thanks go to Mary Lea Bandy, Anne Morra and Steven Higgins (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Greg Lukow, Patrick Loughney, Madeline Matz and Mike Mashon (Library of Congress), who are currently in charge of this massive undertaking, initiated several years ago by Iris Barry and Eileen Bowser at MoMA and by the staff of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress. Film preservation is by definition an international effort: several archives outside the United States have restored other Grifvii

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fith titles, or helped with additional documentation and research. We wish to express our gratitude to Elaine Burrows (National Film and Television Archive, London), Robert Daudelin (former director of the Cinémathèque Québécoise), Mark-Paul Meyer, Rommy Albers and Simona Monizza (Filmmuseum, Amsterdam), Eva Orbanz (Film Museum Berlin), Eddie Richmond and Charles Hopkins (UCLA Film and Television Archive), Dan Nissen (Det Danske Filmmuseum), Anca Mitran and the staff of the Arhiva Nationala de Filme (Bucarest), Paulina Fernandez Jurado (Fundación Cinemateca Argentina), Lúcia Lobo (Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro), Michelle Aubert, Eric Le Roy and JeanLouis Cot (Archives du Film, Bois d’Arcy), Michael Pogorzelski and Fritz Herzog (Academy Film Archive), Edward E. Stratmann, Karen Latham Everson, Caroline Yeager, Chad D. Hunter, Deborah Stoiber, Daniel Wagner, Tim Wagner, Anthony L’Abbate and all the staff of the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House, and Bo Berglund for their generous help in retrieving and sharing information on archival sources. André Gaudreault’s entries for this volume have been translated from the French by Timothy Barnard. Last but not least, we are grateful to all the interns and students who contributed to the early stages of preparation of this volume: Jared Case, Kelly Chisholm, Sonia Genaitay, Kelli Hicks, Sungji Oh, Christina Porterfield, Linda Shah, Heather Stilin and John Woodard, 2001–2002 graduates of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. Ember Lundgren, graduate at the 2002–2003 Selznick School, 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, 4–37; in the French journal 1895, No. 29, December 1999, 187–88; and in Luca Giuliani (ed.), The Collegium Papers I (Gemona: Cineteca del Friuli / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2001, 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 2003

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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. KEVIN BROWNLOW has been collecting films since he was eleven. He joined the industry as an office boy in 1955, and embarked on his first feature a year later (it took eight years to complete). His passion has always been for silent films, and his restoration of Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1926) has still not been completed, although several versions are in circulation. With David Gill he produced the 13-hour TV series on the silent era, Hollywood. His latest film is about Chaplin and Hitler, The Tramp and the Dictator (2002). 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. Co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, 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). ANDRÉ GAUDREAULT is professor of Cinema at the Département d’histoire de l’art at Université de Montréal, where he is responsible for GRAFICS (Groupe de recherche sur l’avènement et la formation des institutions cinématographique et scénique) and is also director of CRI (Centre de recherche sur l’intermédialité). A visiting professor in various universities (São Paulo, Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle, Bologna et Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne), he has published Du littéraire au filmique (reissued in 1999 with a preface by Paul Ricœur), co-author with F. Jost of Le Récit cinématographique, Pathé 1900: Fragments d’une filmographie analytique du cinéma des premiers temps (1993), and Au pays des ennemis du cinéma (1996). 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. STEVEN HIGGINS is curator in the Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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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. 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 at 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. CHARLES MUSSER is professor of Film Studies and American Studies at Yale University. His books include The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (1990), Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (1991) and Edison Motion Pictures, 1890–1900: An Annotated Filmography (1997). He received the Prix Jean Mitry at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in 1996. CYNTHIA ROWELL graduated in 1999 from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. She is director of Acquisitions for Milestone Film & Video. SCOTT SIMMON is professor of English and co-director of Film Studies at the University of California, Davis. For the Library of Congress, he supervised restorations of Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1919) and Lois Weber’s Where Are My Children? (1916). For the National Film Preservation Foundation, he curated the DVD sets “Treasures from American Film Archives” (2000) and the forthcoming “The Silents: 50 More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894–1931”. Among his books are The Films of D.W. Griffith (1993) and, most recently, The Invention of the Western Film (2003). 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.

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KRISTIN THOMPSON is an honorary fellow in the Communication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her books include The Classical Hollywood Cinema (1985), co-written with David Bordwell and Janet Staiger, Exporting Entertainment: America in World Film Markets 1907–1934 (1985), and Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (1999). She is at work on a study comparing Ernst Lubitsch’s silent German and American features. 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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458* BIOGRAPH

LOVE IN AN APARTMENT HOTEL Filming date: begun December 1912, finished January 1913 Location: New York/California Release date: 27 February 1913; reissued by Biograph, 18 June 1915 Release length: 1000 feet Copyright date: 21 February 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: William M. Marston [“The Thief”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Blanche Sweet (Young woman); Adolph Lestina (Her father); Henry B. Walthall (Her fiancé); Harry Carey (Thief); Mae Marsh (Angelina Millingford, a maid); Edward Dillon (Pinky Doolan, a bellboy); John T. Dillon, Walter Miller (Fiancé’s friends); Frank Evans, W.C. Robinson (Hotel detectives); Kathleen Butler (Young woman’s maid); Kate Toncray (Head chambermaid); Robert Harron (Desk clerk); Joseph McDermott (Fiancé’s valet); Clara T. Bracey (Maid); Jack Pickford (Bellhop); Matt B. Snyder, Harry Hyde, Gertrude Bambrick, Lionel Barrymore, Hattie Delaro?, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Walter P. Lewis (In hotel lobby) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 117 frames plus intertitles), Paper Print Collection; 35mm acetate negative (AFI/The Museum of Modern Art Collection), incomplete, no intertitles In the apartment hotel lived the aspiring maid, whose solicitude maintained order in the bachelor’s apartment. He was her ideal, and the all-adoring bell-boy was firmly but gently given to understand that maids who read “Heliotrope Glendening’s Advice to Young Ladies” look higher than ice-water toters. A compromising complication, however, with an unexpected visit from a beautiful lady, quite convinces the aspiring one that wealthy young bachelors may be the grandest men ever, but their aspirations, when it comes to the crucial test, are not for chambermaids. The Moving Picture World, February 22, 1913, p. 806

A young chambermaid in an apartment hotel brushes off a co-worker, a bellboy, when he reveals his feelings for her. For the chambermaid has greater ambitions: she is secretly in love with a well-to-do young man who resides in the hotel. The latter is about to begin a game of cards with some friends when he learns that his fiancée is in the lobby, having come to pay him a visit. He quickly does his best to hide any trace of his more-or-less licit activity and hustles his poker companions out the door. No one is aware that a burglar, only a few minutes before, had tied up the chambermaid and shut her in the closet of the young man’s bedroom. Just when the fiancée is visiting the bedroom, the chambermaid, who has regained consciousness and escaped her bonds, stumbles out of the closet and falls, half-unconscious, into the young man’s arms. The fiancée has seen quite enough and quits the apartment forthwith. The thief, who had remained hidden under the bed, then does battle with the young man, who delivers him to the hotel detective. Realising her mistake, the fiancée rejoins her sweetheart, while the chambermaid, for her part, realises the social distance that separates her from the well-to-do young man and resolves to accept the bellboy’s advances.

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This film’s production straddled December 1912 and January 1913, and also straddled New York and California. Love in an Apartment Hotel is in fact the first film that the Biograph acting company completed in California after its arrival there just after the Christmas holidays. Numerous sources indicate that the film was shot in the 14th St. studio in New York and that Griffith only completed it after he was installed in California. It is thus the very first film made by Griffith in the last year of his employment with Biograph. As for the 14th St. studio, Love in an Apartment Hotel represents, in a way, its swan song. As Richard Schickel (p. 182) recounts, “[Griffith] then began a romantic comedy, Love in an Apartment Hotel, was unable to finish it before it was time to leave for Los Angeles and, planning to finish it there, walked out of the old Brownstone on East Fourteenth Street for the last time”. The new Biograph studio, in The Bronx, was then under construction, and “was to be completed and ready when the company returned from California” (Henderson, p. 148). The film’s first scene, made up of three shots (an establishing shot into which is inserted a close-up of a bank book being examined by the bellboy in love with the chambermaid), takes place in an interior, the chambermaid’s pantry. This interior scene, however, appears to have been shot outdoors, in California, on sets erected against the four winds, since on several occasions the wind lifts the chambermaid’s apron – just like in the days of the first shoots of staged action, at the turn of the century, when there were no studios (apart from that of Méliès). The wind will return to play tricks in the film’s very last shot, which was filmed on the same set. It should be noted that the film makes no use whatsoever of California’s natural settings, its action taking place exclusively “indoors”. The print viewed (a 16mm copy from the Museum of Modern Art in New York) appears to be fairly complete, although it is probably missing a certain number of shots. The order of the shots does not correspond exactly with the continuity script, which Biograph produced for its films for a time with the purpose of registering them with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, between 1912 and 1914. These continuities consisted of shot-by-shot descriptions of the film’s action. Nevertheless, the differences between the screened copy and this master are relatively few in number and of minor importance. Love in an Apartment Hotel is a good example of how, at Biograph in 1912–13 (and in the Griffith’s work in particular), the filmic narrator (the editor) was not sparing in his use of cuts and matches; he might even be said to be prodigal in his use of them. This is true of the film’s second sequence, which shows the two principal characters chatting affectionately on the telephone. Indeed the sequence is edited according to the conversation’s rhythm, with the camera alternating shots from one speaker to the other, moving briskly from one space to the other and following the cadence of the characters’ repartee. This sequence’s editing, which represents a kind of virtual shot-countershot construction (because it is made up of a coming-and-going between two interlocutors who, in a certain sense, are facing each other), even matches the sweethearts’ gestures as they send each other little kisses through the intermediary of the telephone (it is, as an intertitle suggests, a case of “LOVE BY WIRE”). The sequence’s temporal matches thus, for their part, work effectively. The same cannot be said, however, for the spatial matches. The two characters, each in their own space, are both turned toward the right, one situated on the right side of the frame and the other on the left. In this way the spectator is deprived of the illusion of an artificial proximity between them, an illusion the classical cinema would attempt to create in similar situations. We could say that the relatively frantic editing in this film is influenced by the frantic editing of this second sequence, that of the telephone conversation. It is as if the same rhythm was retained for the rest of the film. This is true in any event of the long sequence of the 2

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attempted burglary. This sequence, moreover, includes a segment that is a special case in its own right, one thoroughly representative of Griffith’s approach to suspense (here, in one of its more restrained manifestations). This segment consists of a series of shots following upon one another once the chambermaid discovers the burglar after having, for a few seconds, the sensation of a strange and troubling presence in the room next to the one she is in. The segment then develops over fifteen or so shots, alternating between the two adjacent spaces, the hero’s bedroom and his sitting room. The difference between this segment and the sequence of the telephone conversation is, of course, that during the telephone conversation the movement from one space to the other was motivated by an action of one of the characters. Here the alternation is derived from the profilmic itself, whereas in the burglary sequence the motivation for cutting is of a purely narrative order. It is the narrator, in this sequence, who decides when to cut – quite often, considering the lack of any profilmic motivation. The film’s editing is peculiar in another sense. In the sequence of the telephone conversation, the first two shots of the fiancée (Blanche Sweet) are establishing shots. The “monstrator” foresaw the entry of her maid into the frame, in order to answer the telephone and then pass it to her mistress. To have framed this scene in closer from the start would have required, at the very least, a reframing of the action, if not a form of montage. As soon as the maid has left the room and Griffith returns to this space, the framing, which maintains the same axis as before, is now in medium close-up – as it “should be” for a telephone conversation, particularly an intimate conversation of this sort. Love in an Apartment Hotel is a privileged example of the effort Griffith and some of his actors expended in order to impose a new acting style – a “verisimilar byplay”, to adopt the term suggested by Roberta Pearson in her Ph.D. dissertation. Pearson offers an interesting analysis of Henry B. Walthall’s acting in the first shot in which he appears, the day after proposing marriage to his fiancée. Indeed this segment is exemplary of an acting style in which the film character allows himself to breathe and to let certain emotions and personality traits transpire without there being any animated action on screen. The character is there, before the viewer; he acts as if nothing was happening and allows himself seemingly innocuous little gestures that the camera captures in a completely innocent manner. This adds to the realism of the scene and gives depth to the character. Moreover, as Pearson argues (1987, pp. 257–58), “the props are somehow more personalized: rather than serving as general symbols of a man in love, they aid the actor in the construction of a particular character in a particular situation … throughout the film, Walthall’s gestures and use of props combine to create the picture of an elegant ‘toff’ in a romantic daze”. These efforts to create a higher degree of realism contrast with the rather summary acting style, which dates from an earlier era, of Edward Dillon, who plays the role of the more humble suitor, Pinky Doolan – whose name is quite a story in itself! What is at work here then is a form of co-habitation, within a single film, of the sort of contradictory signals that the entire period often bears witness to. André Gaudreault

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459* BIOGRAPH

BROKEN WAYS Filming date: finished 13 January 1913 Location: California Release date: 8 March 1913; reissued by Biograph, 16 July 1915 Release length: 1045 feet Copyright date: 3 March 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: T.P. Bayer [“Heart Throbs”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Henry B. Walthall (The road agent); Blanche Sweet (His wife); Harry Carey (Sheriff); Frank Opperman, Joseph McDermott (Road agent’s gang); Charles Gorman (Hold-up victim); Walter Miller (In town); Alfred Paget, William Carroll (In posse); Robert Harron, Dorothy Gish, Adolph Lestina, Gertrude Bambrick (In telegraph office); Gertrude Bambrick (On street) Archival Sources: George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive (Hirsh–Aywon reissue); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 92 frames plus intertitles); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master (Hirsh–Aywon reissue) In this story the young wife concerned is called upon to solve a rather momentous question. After separating from her husband, whom she has discovered to be a brute and a criminal, she is about to give herself to another man, believing her husband dead, when he appears before he[r] fleeing from justice. Shall she deliver him to the law or surrender to his claims? She yields [i]n one instance, but not in the other. Then justice intervenes. The Moving Picture World, March 1, 1913, p. 922

In the 1880s, a young telegraph operator marries a man she believes to be good, but not only does he turn out to be brutal and unscrupulous, he is also a highway robber – a “road agent”. Because of his cruelty towards her, the young woman decides to leave him. She finds new work as a telegraph operator and develops a friendship with the local sheriff in her new home. The sheriff would very much like to marry her, but she refuses him without explaining why. In order to escape the law, the young woman’s husband spreads news of his own death. She thus considers herself to be free of obligation, but realises her mistake when her husband, on the run from the law, turns up in her office and demands that she hide him. The bandit ends up being shot by his pursuers, and the young woman is finally able to give her heart to the sheriff.

This film, which was released in March 1913, was also shot during the Biograph acting company’s annual sojourn in California. Unlike Love in an Apartment Hotel, however, Broken Ways makes use of California’s natural settings, in particular the Apache Pass, which separates the two villages where the action unfolds. The only extant print of this film is a version that was modernised in the 1920s (“Nathan Hirsh Presents …” and “Distributed by Aywon Film Corporation”, we learn from the cred4

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its). We thus do not know for certain exactly how the film appeared in its original version. We have a good idea of what this version would have looked like, however, from the continuity script (a shot-by-shot description of the film’s action) deposited by Biograph with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. Comparing this continuity script to the extant version of the film is a highly instructive exercise, because it allows us to identify certain practices still in use in 1913, even by Griffith – practices classical cinema would attempt to correct a few years later when it tried to bring this film more into line with the new 1920s vision of what was understood as film language. In this light, the major difference between the original film and the 1920s version resides in the use and placement of the intertitles. In fact the modernised version is stuffed with dialogue intertitles, while the original version contained only explanatory intertitles. What is more, the modernised version’s dialogue intertitles are systematically cut into the precise spot where the character speaks the dialogue, which was far from being a consistent practice in early 1913. Naturally, films with dialogue intertitles existed in the early 1910s (and even before!). (In this sense, the film discussed here could very well have contained a certain number of these.) But, as a rule, the prevailing custom at that time was to place dialogue titles (as well as those representing the voice of the narrator, for that matter) before the shot and not to insert them into the shot. (On this subject, see my discussion of the intertitles in The Heart of an Outlaw [1909, DWG Project, #180].) This was true even if the dialogue rendered by the intertitle was uttered only at the very end of the shot. This out-of-sync quality was typical of early cinema – a particularly startling example is the appearance in The Ex-Convict (Edison, 1904) of the exclamation “THAT MAN SAVED MY LIFE!” in an intertitle that appears before the shot in question and which refers to a line of dialogue that comes extremely late in the shot. Those responsible for the modernised version of Broken Ways also altered the narrative intertitles. In the original version, these were few in number and highly laconic. The new titles shed new light on the film’s action, and even on its narration. At times these titles make it possible to render the context in which the action is unfolding more precise, while at other times they provide a new interpretation of the action from the point of view of the narrator. The narrator in the modernised version, for example, adopts a moralising tone when he remarks that “VICES, LIKE MEN, ARE RIPENED AND STRENGTHENED BY THE PASSAGE OF TIME”, in contrast with the much more restrained commentary in the original version: “AS TIME GOES ON”. The intertitles in the modernised version can also serve to let the action breathe a little: “AFTER THE MARRIAGE – THE WIFE LEARNS THE TRUTH” becomes “AFTER HER BRIEF HONEYMOON HAS FADED, AND LIFE AGAIN TAKES ON THE SOBER HUES OF EVERY-DAY”. Or, the intertitles can bestow a soul upon those shadowy spots that are the film’s characters, particularly by encouraging us to view them as having individual identities; in the modernised version, the lead character is no longer just “the wife”, she now has a full name: “KATHERINE COLLINS, THE DEMURE AND PRETTY TELEGRAPH OPERATOR AT APACHE PASS”. So too are the husband and sheriff given names, Mike Donovan and “Rawhide” Dick Dawson. Even the town where Katherine takes refuge finds itself with an identity: Caliente. Those responsible for this modernisation, who adopted a relatively critical attitude toward the film language Griffith employed in early 1913, finding this language too rudimentary, are the titler (who was responsible for the new texts) and the editor (who was responsible for inserting these titles into the action). In a certain sense, we might think of these two figures as having elevated themselves to the rank of “co-authors” of the film in its modernised version. In any event, the “producers” of this new version made no mistake and included mention of their role in the credits: “Edited and Titled by M.G. Cohn and J.F. Natteford”. One thing stands out when consulting the continuity script deposited with the Copyright 5

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Office, and that is the systematic – one might even say systemic – alternation between the film’s adjacent sets. Indeed it is remarkable that this film, whose form is actually quite linear, most often operates on a simple but effective procedure of alternating between two adjacent and contiguous sets (one sequence alternates almost mechanically between the two rooms of the young couple’s home, while two others alternate between the interior and the exterior of the station where the woman works). On the level of the mise-en-scène and the arrangement of the sets, we can see that here Griffith has solved one of the problems which certain spatial configurations had caused him. We see in this film (as well as in a few others before it) a situation I have already drawn attention to in my analysis of the film The School Teacher and the Waif (1912; see DWG Project, #414), when a character passes through a door and thus moves from outside a building to the inside, or vice versa. This kind of action always poses a matching problem, because the interior décor is often a set constructed in a studio, which could be miles from the outdoor setting. The matching problems that arise when working with one scene shot in a studio and another shot out-of-doors are generally related to the actors’ movements, the camera’s placement, the characters’ eyelines, etc. These are problems that were generally resolved in 1913, as we can see in Broken Ways, where such transitions are executed fluidly and without interruption (even if the two sets do not match exactly – notice the window, for example). Another problem that filmmakers of this period encountered quite often in similar situations concerned the placement of the camera in the interior set in relation to the door opening onto the outdoors. Whenever this door is situated at the back of the set, facing the screen, a matching problem will arise between what is seen of the outdoors when the door is opened and the outdoor setting as it is seen in shots showing the building from the exterior. The image we see of the outdoors when the door is opened will necessarily be of an artificial set (if the interiors were shot in a studio) whose disparity with the real outdoor setting will be apparent. This was precisely the problem that Griffith encountered with The Lonedale Operator (1911) in particular (here the station’s waiting room opened directly onto the exterior of the building, but this was not clear in the film, which sent out contradictory signals in this regard). The same kind of set reappears in Broken Ways (here again there is a telegraph office opening onto the exterior of the building), and Griffith’s simple solution to the problem was to place the door causing the problem at a right angle to the screen; this is something he would henceforth do more often. By the way, isn’t it odd to see Griffith make a film in a telegraph office without the telegraph being used to send calls for help or create suspense? André Gaudreault

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460 BIOGRAPH

A GIRL’S STRATAGEM Filming date: finished January 1913 Location: California Release date: 10 March 1913 Release length: 998 feet Copyright date: 5 March 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith or Anthony O’Sullivan Script: George Hennessy [“The Midnight Hour”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer or not known Cast: Mae Marsh (Girl); Kate Bruce (Mother); W. C[hrystie] Miller (Father); Joseph Graybill (Sweetheart); Charles West (Burglar chief); Dell Henderson (Loafer); Alfred Paget (Saloon keeper) NOTE: Partial cast identification taken from The Moving Picture World, March 23, 1913, p. 1219 (source provided by Russell Merritt). Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 78 frames plus intertitles; nitrate damage and fusion, soaking required); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative (incomplete) The young man has been deceiving his mother in his letters home and upon the reception of a letter from her his better self is for the moment aroused, but only for the moment, as he finds evil associates hard to ignore. But it seems that the letter has brought with it a blessing and his mother’s prayers have been heard because his meeting with a young woman in the tenement district proves to be his moral uplift. She, by a clever scheme, prevents him from committing a crime which would have been his irretrievable downfall. The Moving Picture World, March 8, 1913, p. 1018

No print of this film is currently available for screening, although the Museum of Modern Art in New York possesses an incomplete nitrate print. The Library of Congress in Washington holds a few fragments of the film, which are in too poor condition to be consulted or examined. This film was released in March 1913 and was also produced during the Biograph acting company’s annual sojourn in California. According to some sources, the film was not made by Griffith but by Tony O’Sullivan. This is the opinion of Russell Merritt who, in an e-mail message to this writer in December 2002, wrote: A Girl’s Stratagem was directed by either DWG or Tony O’Sullivan (Dell Henderson, the third Biograph director in winter–spring 1913, was restricted to split-reel comedies). I’m partial to thinking O’Sullivan directed it only because of the timing of its release. Based on the Biographs we can positively identify, the company released one Griffith, two split-reel comedies, and one non-Griffith per week in late 1912–early 1913. A Girl’s Stratagem was released the week of March 10, 1913, along with two Henderson split reels and Griffith’s The Unwelcome Guest.

In another e-mail message, also from December 2002, Merritt adds the following, concerning 7

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the presence in the cast credits of the names Joseph Graybill and Charlie West: Griffith stopped using West as a lead after 1912; instead, he became one of O’Sullivan’s regular leading men. Of course he’s not the lead here, but the plot summary makes it sound like a bigger role than anything Griffith assigned him in 1913. This is likely Graybill’s last appearance; he died in 1913. The corkscrew is Mae Marsh in the lead. Griffith hadn’t let anyone else direct her since 1912. She was arguably Griffith’s favorite actress at the time.

Take notice, everyone: the bets are open! André Gaudreault

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461* BIOGRAPH

NEAR TO EARTH Filming date: finished January 1913 Location: California Release date: 20 March 1913; reissued by Biograph, 13 November 1916 Release length: 999 feet Copyright date: 15 March 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: James Orr Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Lionel Barrymore (Gato); Robert Harron (His brother); Gertrude Bambrick (Gato’s sweetheart); Mae Marsh, Kathleen Butler (Her friends); Frank Opperman (Friend); Walter Miller (Stranger); Joseph McDermott, W. Christy Cabanne (Businessmen) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 99 frames plus intertitles); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative This is the story of Gato, an Italian emigrant, who lives with his wife, Marie, and his younger brother, Giuseppe, on a small truck farm in the West. Gato becomes so intent on his work that he neglects to show his wife the little attention she demands. A foppish wandering Italian, Sandro, sees in this an opportunity to work his ends, but is prevented by the timely interference of Giuseppe. The Moving Picture World, March 15, 1913, p. 1128

As the film opens, Gato is seen shaving, with his brother looking over his shoulder. The reason for his concern about his appearance soon becomes obvious, as Gato goes down to the shore to meet his sweetheart. After a small lovers’ quarrel they embrace and he brings her home to meet his brother, passing a roadside shrine along the way. After they are married, Gato becomes so engrossed in his truck farm and bookkeeping that he ignores his new wife. She becomes increasingly restive. A handsome stranger arrives and is hired on as a laborer, but his true intentions are soon revealed when he makes an unwanted advance on the young woman. Later, Gato is in the midst of closing an important business deal and is playfully dismissive of his wife’s concerns. She storms out of their house, encounters the stranger and agrees to leave with him. As Gato departs the bank with a full wallet, his wife leaves him a note and runs off with the stranger. Gato’s brother hears her depart and pursues the two lovers, knife in hand. As the wife passes the little roadside shrine she has a crisis of conscience and hesitates. The brother catches up with them and, after a scuffle with the stranger, he and his sister-in-law return home. Gato has since arrived and read his wife’s note. He threatens to kill her and she readily gives him a knife to do so, but he relents and showers her with presents bought with his newfound wealth.

Within a month of his arrival in southern California in early January of 1913, D.W. Griffith managed to direct three, perhaps four, one-reel subjects, while also finishing a film that he 9

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had begun in New York before the trip west (Love in an Apartment Hotel). In addition to Griffith, Biograph’s directorial staff now included Dell Henderson, who had taken over the comedy unit in mid-1912 after Mack Sennett’s departure for Keystone, and Anthony O’Sullivan, who was given charge of what were advertised as Biograph’s melodramas. In theory, this second dramatic unit was established to generate enough “product” to fill the regular release schedule while Griffith devoted more time to the making of fewer films. From the evidence of the surviving Biograph films, the only real difference between Griffith’s and O’Sullivan’s 1913 work would seem to be the latter’s regular use of the company’s secondstring actors, thus limiting somewhat his dramatic palette. In every other respect, including story selection, editing and photography, Anthony O’Sullivan mirrored his mentor. It took a while, however, for O’Sullivan to make his presence felt in the release schedule. At the beginning of 1913, Griffith was still responsible for virtually all of Biograph’s dramatic output. This meant that he was expected to supply two full reels every week; by comparison, Dell Henderson supplied two split reels, or the equivalent of one full reel of comedy in the same amount of time. As a result, Griffith often lacked for inspiration and fell back on hackneyed stories and stock characters to carry his films. This had been the case throughout his career at Biograph, of course, but by 1913 Griffith’s command of his craft had developed to such an extent that even the most banal scenario could – and often did – receive the same care as a more challenging one. Such is the case with Near to Earth. The plot synopsis outlined above says it all, at least in terms of dramatic incident. Griffith had told this story of a wife led astray by the wiles of an unscrupulous tempter many times before, if not exactly in the same manner. In this version of the tale, her husband’s brother brings about the wife’s rescue, while the husband remains blissfully ignorant of his wife’s misery. This variation leads to an unexpected confrontation between the brother-in-law and the wife’s lover, but it does little more than pad the story out to a full reel; without it, Griffith would have come up short of the required thousand-foot release length. As with so many of his late Biographs shot in California, Griffith finds striking locations within which to stage the action of his film. The shoreline of the Pacific Ocean and its surrounding bluffs, while somewhat incongruous for a story set on a truck farm, nevertheless provide Near to Earth with dramatic possibilities. Gato’s house is set high up on a cliff, overlooking the ocean, and the constant comings and goings near the front door of the cabin attain a certain urgency when set against such an unusual background. By situating Gato’s home so far above the shoreline, Griffith requires his characters to climb up toward the house, thus suggesting a variety of emotional and psychological subtexts when convenient. Gato goes down to the beach to court his future wife, bringing her up to their new life together by climbing the bluffs, passing a shrine on the way. Most notably, the stranger who will wreak such havoc on the couple first encounters Gato’s wife sitting by her door, literally walking up to her, as if from some netherworld. When the two make their escape, they frantically descend the bluffs, signaling to the audience a tragic loss of innocence. As if to drive home the point, Griffith has them come to a fork in the road, before which they briefly hesitate. Throughout the film, Gato is oblivious to his young wife’s distress. Concerned as he is with making a success of his business, he good-naturedly ignores her pleas for attention, laying the groundwork for her inevitable receptiveness to the stranger’s overtures. The novel touch in all of this is Gato’s brother. He maintains a respectful distance from, and concern for his sister-in-law, even encouraging her to seek Gato’s approval for the simple baking of a loaf of bread. It is he who discovers the note left behind by the wife to explain her departure, and it is he who chases after the pair as they attempt to escape. Why he should be so incensed by this turn of events is never explained, but one can easily surmise an injured sense of family honor in the violence of his actions. His pursuit is relentless and his scuffle with the stranger 10

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results in the latter’s fall down a cliff. The young man is momentarily taken aback by this turn of events, but quickly regains his righteous anger when he sees that the stranger is not seriously injured. With a thump of his chest, he turns on his heel and goes home, leaving his sister-in-law to follow. In the meantime, Gato has returned home and found his wife gone. When she admits to her flight, she hands him a knife and bares her breast, offering herself in atonement for the wound she has inflicted. Gato looms over her, but he cannot bring himself to commit so terrible an act. As a title, Near to Earth makes sense only if one assumes that it describes the characters, both physically and psychologically. Griffith had no equal in the American cinema of the time when it came to his ability to plumb the psychic depths of his characters, but his success was always dependent upon the empathy he could bring to them. Unless he was dealing with protagonists who were WASPs, and thus could connect to their psyches through personal experience, Griffith invariably fell back upon ethnic typing and its coded patterns of behavior to give his characters substance. Lionel Barrymore and Robert Harron act the stereotypical Italian immigrants in this film, their every movement grossly exaggerated, their reactions to events passionate and emotional. Their portrayals express perfectly the nativist American assumption that southern Europeans are wild and earthy, prone to spontaneous and irrational behavior. Barrymore’s Gato is, at least, genial, but Harron’s brother is all stoop-shouldered and snarling disaffection. In fact, his acting in Near to Earth is unsettlingly close to his portrayal of Weakhands in Man’s Genesis (1912), a fact that apparently went unnoticed at the time, but which is nevertheless troubling in its implications. Such performances, grounded as they are in caricature and ignorance, mar a great many of Griffith’s films, not only because they are unnecessary dramatically but because they also bespeak a troubling tendency in Griffith to pander to his audience’s prejudices, as well as his own. Steven Higgins

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462* BIOGRAPH

A WELCOME INTRUDER Filming date: finished ca. January 1913 Location: California Release date: 24 March 1913 Release length: one reel Copyright date: 22 March 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith or Anthony O’Sullivan Author: Belle Taylor Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer or not known Cast: ? (Child); Kate Toncray (Neighbor); Charles Hill Mailes (Father); Charles H. West (Workman); W. Chrystie Miller (Shopkeeper); Joseph McDermott (Policeman); Frank Opperman (Hurdy-gurdy man); John T. Dillon (On street); William Carroll, ? (Wagon drivers); Claire McDowell (Their sister, a widow); Adolph Lestina (Construction boss); Frank Opperman (At second site); ? (Desk sergeant) Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 91 frames plus intertitles; brittle); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative A widower received aid from a kind-hearted neighbor, who not only helped the man with the light housework, but usually kept a watchful eye over the little boy. The father is a boss carpenter and is forced to leave the little one alone the whole day long. A discharged workman sees in the boy a chance for revenge, which opportunity he takes and while it nearly drives the father insane, it results as a great blessing for all concerned. The Moving Picture World, March 22, 1913, p. 1248

A widower with a young son makes his living as a construction foreman. One day, he finds a workman drinking on the site and fires him. The disgruntled man exacts his revenge on the foreman by abducting the little boy, who has wandered away from home to follow a hurdygurdy man, and placing him in the back of a hay wagon. The sleeping child is taken, unknowingly, to the home of a widow and her two brothers. They take the child in and care for him as if he were their own. Meanwhile, the father becomes so distraught he is unable to work. His boss visits and urges him to return to the job. At the new construction site, where by coincidence the widow’s two brothers also work, he finds a teddy bear on the ground. When the widow comes to retrieve it, he tells her of his lost boy and she realizes at once that he is the father of the little foundling. She hesitates briefly, but soon reunites the boy and his father, giving the child a picture of herself in remembrance of their short time together. Back home, around the Christmas tree, the father comes to miss the widow. He and his son leave hurriedly for her house, where the two adults agree to marry.

While the attribution of A Welcome Intruder to D.W. Griffith is likely, the records that survive in the Biograph Collection at the Museum of Modern Art do not absolutely confirm it. The film’s scenario was written by Belle Taylor, a writer favored by Griffith. Eight of her stories 12

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had already been filmed by him, and two of them – The Broken Doll and A Child’s Stratagem (both 1910) – also featured children as protagonists. A Welcome Intruder’s story is slight, being little more than an extended device to bring together the film’s two adult characters, played by the Biograph husband and wife team of Charles Hill Mailes and Claire McDowell, yet it is handled deftly and with a gentle touch. The film opens with a happy family breakfast. The widowed father of the little boy rushes off to his work as a construction foreman, leaving his son in the care of a neighbor. From the outset, the audience is shown that the father is caring and responsible, and that great affection exists between him and his son. On the job site, he chastises a workman for being late and, after work, the employee is shown entering a bar. This contrasts sharply with the behavior of the father, who is shown stopping off at a toy store to buy his son a teddy bear. The next time we see the father he is confronting the workman for drinking openly at the job site and fires him on the spot. This leads quickly to the abduction of the boy by the disgruntled worker and his placement of the child in the back of a hay wagon, where he is eventually found and cared for by a widow and her two brothers. It is just a matter of time, and handy coincidence, before the widower and the widow meet and agree to marry. It would be wrong to suggest that A Welcome Intruder is a major work, filled with the telling psychological touches for which Griffith is justly admired. Even so, and despite the fact that it is almost completely driven by its plot, and not by character, this minor film is a well-crafted and simple tale that engages and touches the viewer by its very simplicity. Small details make all the difference. When the little boy wanders away from his home, he does so not in a fit of pique or through any willfulness, but because he is attracted to the happy sounds of a hurdy-gurdy man and the crowd of children that follows him down the street. The discharged workman does indeed abduct the boy, but he then places him gently in a wagon full of hay, after he has fallen asleep. The scenes of the father looking desperately for his lost son are intercut with shots of the wagon making its way through the streets of the town, but no attempt is made to create tension through the editing; rather than anxiety, the audience is made to feel the father’s sadness. The widow and her brothers clearly care for the child and make every effort to make him comfortable and welcome in their home, so we never feel as if the boy is in any actual danger. In fact, the two brothers smoke the same kind of pipe as does the boy’s father, thus signaling to the audience that they, too, are honest laborers, and that the child is in good hands. And if there were ever any doubts as to the widow having the child’s best interests at heart, they are laid to rest when she willingly returns the little boy to his father, even though her heart is broken in the process. So then, who is the intruder of the title? One could well argue that the discharged workman is the intruder, because it is his act, committed in vengeance, which leads to the happy ending. Perhaps the widow is the intruder, for even though she comes between the father and son, she does so in such a way as to lead to the best of all possible solutions. A good case can even be made for the boy himself being the intruder, inserting himself as he does in the widow’s life and thus bringing a happy change to her situation, as well as his father’s. No matter who the intruder is, the premise of the film remains the same – that unforeseen circumstances, though often a cause of great sadness or distress, can sometimes lead to great happiness. Through its stubborn refusal to build any real sense of danger or fear into the abduction of the boy, as well as in the calmly unaffected acting of Mailes and McDowell, A Welcome Intruder proves to be not a cautionary tale about a kidnapping, but rather an adventure story in which an innocent child manages to bring together two souls saddened by loss. To make anything more of it would be to weigh it down unfairly with a significance it was never meant to sustain. Steven Higgins 13

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463* BIOGRAPH

THE SHERIFF’S BABY Filming date: finished February 1913 Location: California Release date: 29 March 1913; reissued by Biograph, 27 August 1915 Release length: 1004 feet Copyright date: 31 March 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Script: Edward Bell [“The 3 Bad Men of the Desert”] Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Alfred Paget (Sheriff); Henry B. Walthall, Harry Carey, Lionel Barrymore (Bandits); John T. Dillon, Kate Bruce (Settlers); Robert Harron (Deputy); ? (Baby) Archival Sources: Academy Film Archive, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 99 frames plus intertitles); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master (Hirsh–Aywon reissue); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive (tinted, edge code 1922) After the death of his wife the baby was all the sheriff had left, the promise of hope in the future, and the reflection of all that was dear in the past. But a sheriff has no time to tread a cradle rocker, so the baby started off on the long journey to relatives across the desert. Then the sheriff was called away to hunt the “bad men” of the desert, and found there a deserted prairie schooner, the occupants dead and his baby gone. A “bad man” triumphed, but later forgot self in a baby, who found its own, while a sheriff solved a perplexing question. The Moving Picture World, March 22, 1913, p. 1248

At the same time that he receives word of outlaws in the area, a widowed sheriff sends his baby across the desert with settlers, to be cared for by relatives. The covered wagon wanders off the trail and the two settlers die for lack of water. In the meantime, a trio of bandits and their gang rob the express office in town and are pursued into the desert by the sheriff and his posse. The three bandits find the abandoned baby and, after a half-hearted attempt to kill it, they take it with them into the desert. After one of the trio dies, the other two are attacked by horse thieves. One of the pair escapes with the baby while the other one sacrifices himself, remaining behind to face certain death. Realizing that the baby will not survive in his care, the last bandit gives himself up to the sheriff. Grateful, the sheriff gives the bandit a canteen of water and rides away, leaving the good bad man to go free.

Although Biograph purchased the scenario for The Sheriff’s Baby from an Edward Bell, who titled his submission “The 3 Bad Men of the Desert”, its true source was probably the Peter B. Kyne story “The Three Godfathers”, which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post of 23 November 1912, and was published as a novel the following year. Kyne’s story was itself a variation on another of his submissions two years earlier to the same magazine, entitled “Broncho Billy and the Baby”. The name Edward Bell appears nowhere else in the Biograph Story Register of 1910–1916, so it is just possible that it is a legal cover for the studio’s lifting of the basic elements of Kyne’s story for their film. 14

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The first part of The Sheriff’s Baby is simple exposition, designed to get the three bandits and the baby in the same place, at the same time. A series of coincidences sends the baby with the ill-fated couple across the desert while, at the same time, the bandits must retreat into the same desert, ahead of the sheriff’s posse, after the botched robbery of an express station. That the pair of settlers could lose their way so easily and collapse from thirst so quickly strains credibility, but as no reliable time frame is ever established in this short film, the audience is encouraged to suspend its disbelief. All that matters is that the three bandits find the baby and care for it. Griffith even attempts a bit of nail-biting tension immediately before the bandits stumble upon the baby, by having a large mountain cat wander into the camp and sniff around the abandoned infant. However, the threat is not really played out in any credible manner and the cat is less ominous than exotic. The real threat to the lost child is, of course, the three bandits themselves. On finding the baby lying on its back, one bandit’s first impulse is to smash its skull in with the butt-end of his pistol, but he hesitates. Next, we are offered a close-up of the child as it fingers the barrel of another bandit’s six-shooter, in an interesting reference back to the second shot of the film, where the baby similarly reaches for its father’s index finger. The first bandit then picks the baby up, roughly, and holds it in plain view so that the second bandit may shoot it, point blank. The latter man relents, and the baby is swung down to the first man’s side like a sack. Finally, they decide to feed the child and offer it condensed milk straight from a can. The third bandit, realizing that this won’t work, takes the first bandit’s canteen water and mixes it with the thick, sweet liquid, thus successfully feeding the infant. The first bandit gruffly, yet efficiently wipes the baby’s mouth with his sleeve and the three get on their horses and ride out of the camp – surprisingly enough, with the infant. This entire sequence is played out in one long shot, except for the close-up of the baby reaching for the gun barrel, and it is a tour de force. Harry Carey, Henry B. Walthall and Lionel Barrymore portray the first, second and third bandits, respectively, and they do so with a remarkable combination of surliness and tenderness. This, of course, is the entire point of the film, but these three actors could just as easily have walked through their characters as inhabit them, which they do with amazing skill. Harry Carey, especially, plumbs the depths of his character’s ambivalence toward the child in his understated, yet noble portrayal of the “good bad man”, revealing little with his face, yet everything with his body. Appearing as it does within the restrictive confines of a one-reel film, Carey’s performance is all the more amazing for its subtlety and grace. Clearly, Carey was deeply affected by this little film; six years later he and John Ford turned to the same source material to make what Ford considered to be his best film with the actor, Marked Men (1919). The motif of three bandits resurfaces next in Ford’s career with Action (1921) and then, most successfully, in Three Bad Men (1926). By the time John Ford made his last version of the Kyne story, 3 Godfathers (1949), Carey had passed away. In a prologue to that film, Ford inserted the following dedication: “To the memory of Harry Carey – Bright Star of the early Western Sky”. Steven Higgins

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464* BIOGRAPH

THE HERO OF LITTLE ITALY Filming date: finished ca. February 1913 Location: California Release date: 3 April 1913 Release length: one reel Copyright date: 3 April 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith or Anthony O’Sullivan Author: Grace D. de Sellen Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer or not known Cast: Charles H. West (Joe); Blanche Sweet (Maria); Harry Carey (Tony); Kate Toncray, Charles Hill Mailes (Parents); ? (Boy); Kathleen Butler, John T. Dillon, J. Jiquel Lanoe (At ball); William J. Butler, Frank Opperman, Frank Evans, Walter Miller (In bar) NOTE: Partial cast identification taken from examination of paper print fragment on deposit at the Library of Congress. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 116 frames plus intertitles; nitrate damage and fusion, soaking required); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative It was on the night of the Italian ball when Maria, to tease her sweetheart, Tony, indulged in a mild flirtation with Joe, his enemy. At first Tony’s jealousy was aroused, but reasoning that it was no time nor place for anything but enjoyment, he smothered the feeling. However, Maria carried the flirtation too far and a tragedy was imminent. This tragedy, though, was averted through a small boy’s daring, the girl fully realizing what might have been the result of her thoughtlessness. The Moving Picture World, March 29, 1913, p. 1356

The Hero of Little Italy survives, but no viewing copy was available at the time of this writing. Although this film is set, as its title says, in New York’s Little Italy, it was shot in California during the Biograph Company’s annual sojourn there. It seems to have depended even more than usual upon suspense and crosscutting, as the Moving Picture World review suggests – though unfortunately the bulk of the review passes into generalizations and says little more about the film itself: There is a good story in this picture and the producer has made it exciting. As it approaches its climax, the scenes, flashed back and forth, keep the action concrete and almost breathless. But this playing for the thrill is not the best use of the motion picture camera; for in such there is almost no individual acting – every thing goes to situation, nothing to character. It justifies itself at the box office; but so does the higher kind; the first has a more immediate, the second a more lasting effect. Blanche Sweet, Kate Toncray, Charles West, Harry Carey, Charles Mailes, W. J. Butler and many others have roles with plenty to do. The photography is not quite up to Biograph standard. It is an excellent offering. (April 19, 1913, p. 279)

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This review makes the editing sound similar to that of the faster-cut action films of this period, such as The Misunderstood Boy. Fortunately the review in The New York Dramatic Mirror gives a more straightforward description of the film: The atmosphere of New York’s Italian quarter and types of characters to be found there are well set forth in this picture that also contains a story of unusual suspense and not a few exciting moments. In this instance the story has been developed purely for its own sake without the added purpose of pointing a moral. Maria, a beautiful Italian girl, has a sweetheart, Tony, who takes her to a dance. Joe, an ill-tempered young man, happens to be at the dance, and Maria is unwise enough to flirt with him. With one well directed blow Tony floors his rival, who later secures a pistol from a friend, planning prompt revenge. The hero of little Italy is a small boy, whose heroic act is to prevent a murder. Suspense is finely maintained throughout this film that toward the close contains a rough-and-tumble fight of startling realism. (April 16, 1913, p. 35)

The list of actors in the first review quoted is interesting, since The Hero of Little Italy was one of the first group of films released after the Biograph Company finally yielded to popular demand and began giving out the names of its actors. An article in Motography, “Biograph Identities Revealed”, gave a brief description of one method of dispersing this information: Motion-picture fans the country over will be surprised, and yet surely delighted, to know that at last the Biograph Company is ready to make known the identity of its players. For years this concern has jealously guarded the names of [its] employees and it has been almost impossible for the exhibitor to answer the numerous queries that have deluged him from his curious patrons, who wanted to know who played this or that role in the Biograph film they had just seen, but now publicity is to be given the players. A handsomely printed, tastefully designed poster, 16x23 inches in size, containing the names and photographs of twenty-six of the players has been prepared by the Biograph company and will, it is understood, be sent to anyone remitting ten cents in stamps or coin to cover the cost of wrapping and mailing. The following players’ faces appear on the poster: Gus Pixley, Lionel Barrymore, Charles Hill Mailes, Charles H. West, Edward Dillon, Walter Miller, W. Chrystie Miller, Henry Walthall, Mary Pickford, Kate Toncray, Blanche Sweet, Grace Lewis, Florence Lee, Kate Bruce, Claire McDowell, Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Harry Carey, Robert Harron, Charles Gorman, Alfred Paget, Walter Chrystie Cabanne, G. Jiquel Lande [Lanoe], G. Dell Henderson, and W. J. Butler. (April 5, 1913, p. 222)

Griffith’s name, however, remained unknown to the public. Kristin Thompson

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465* BIOGRAPH

THE PERFIDY OF MARY Filming date: finished February 1913 Location: California Release date: 5 April 1913; reissued by Biograph, 15 May 1916 Release length: 1004 feet Copyright date: 5 April 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: George Hennessy Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Dorothy Gish (Rose); Mae Marsh (Mary); Walter Miller (Rose’s suitor); Harry Hyde (Mary’s suitor); Lionel Barrymore (Mary’s father); Kate Bruce (Mother); Henry B. Walthall, Gertrude Bambrick, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Viola Barry (Storybook lovers); W.C. Robinson (Porter); Robert Harron (Boy who gives directions); Olive Fuller Golden? (Maid); ? (“Lothario”) Archival Sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 65 frames plus intertitles); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; 16mm acetate positive (Blackhawk Collection) Rose and her cousin Mary dwell in the land of romance, but real Romeos are scarce in this prosaic age. Yet, Rose, in spite of a gay young Lothario who steps in the way of her own true love, finds her way to love-land. That was where Mary’s perfidy came in. It showed up Lothario’s true character, while at the same time it brought Mary back to her own determined young lover. The Moving Picture World, March 29, 1913, p. 1356

Rose and Mary, cousins living in different towns, both dream about “Loving-land”, a romantic fantasy realm they read about in a book. Awaking, Mary receives a proposal, but her father disapproves and sends her to visit Rose and forget her Fiancé. Rose receives a visit from a timid Suitor who flees after behaving foolishly. Lothario becomes engaged to Rose but turns to Mary when she arrives. Mary offers to help the Suitor, agrees to elope with Lothario, and sends a mysterious note, all part of a plan that unites Mary with her Fiancé and Rose with the Suitor, leaving Lothario alone. At the end, Rose and Mary wander in Loving-land with their sweethearts.

Tom Gunning (1991, p. 118) has pointed out that subjective scenes are extremely rare in Griffith’s Biographs. According to Gunning, there is a long gap in Griffith’s career where no such scenes appear: from an apparent “anticipation of future events” in The Christmas Burglars (1908) to the dream sequence in The Perfidy of Mary. The dream sequence in the latter is particularly interesting, not so much in its content as in the fact that it is shared by two characters. Its function in the film seems tangential, and it creates a strange imbalance in both tone and pacing. 18

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Although the opening title announces that “ROSE AND HER COUSIN MARY READ THE SAME Mary does not appear for quite some time. The first shot after the title instead shows Rose alone in her middle-class sitting room, reading. There are three shots of her, including a cut-in to a closer view, all suggesting her abstraction as she mulls over what she has just read. She falls asleep, and her dream is represented by a single shot of a man and woman in period costume, obviously lovers, meeting in a garden. The cut at the end of this shot returns us not to Rose but instead reveals a new character, her cousin Mary. Counting the opening intertitle as the first shot of the film, Mary does not appear until shot 6, an unusually long series of actions for a single intertitle to summarize in advance. Although the book that Mary holds bears no resemblance to Rose’s, we must assume she is reading the same poem or story, since she too falls asleep and somehow shares Rose’s dream. This time we see couples from various eras of history (including the lovers dreamt of by Rose) strolling happily in “Loving-land”, represented by a stretch of California beach. A bit of dark drapery hung at the right of the frame represents some sort of portal through which the couples pass to reach this idyllic place; in this shot, the lovers seen in Rose’s dream enter past it and look around delightedly. A single cut back to a closer shot of Mary dozing, with a smile on her face – perhaps to suggest that she is more caught up in the dream than is Rose. A second shot of the “Loving-land” beach follows, ending the dream. The next shot returns us to Rose, waking and rising to greet her Mother, who has brought her a new hat. An intertitle, “REALITY’S LOVERS”, seems to establish a contrast between the dream lovers and the two women’s perceptions of their actual suitors. As Mary wakes, her initial gesture of blowing a kiss to an imaginary companion makes it clear that she believes herself still to be in the romantic land of the dream, but she immediately points to the book, shakes her head sadly, then points at herself and shakes her head again, suggesting that there is no such romance in her life. In fact, however, the two women have suitors whom they seem to find quite acceptable. Indeed, their problem is that there is one suitor too many. Immediately after Mary makes her sad gestures, a handsome and prosperous-looking man immediately enters and offers her an engagement ring, which she happily accepts. Both couples end up in Loving-land in the final shot, so the treatment of the dream’s end and Mary’s reaction to it seem somewhat misleading. This double dream is certainly an intriguing technique, though the story does not develop on the implied parallels between the two women. “Loving-land” is quite as mawkish as its name suggests, being one of the embarrassing conceits that occasionally crop up even in Griffith’s best films. In the case of The Perfidy of Mary, the round robin of deceptions and unsuitable pairings that the two women and three men go through would in itself have provided enough material for a charming film with a twist ending. With the dream sequence at the beginning, a seemingly serious romantic tone is established, and it is not until shot 18 that it becomes clear that this is in fact supposed to be a comedy: the Suitor reacts broadly to his failure of courage when he tries to embrace Rose, by grimacing, striking himself in the chest with both fists, and finally tearing up Rose’s new hat. Walter Miller’s performance across the film is considerably broader than those of the other actors; he seems to be aiming at slapstick where they aim at light romantic comedy. Indeed, from here on the film plays out as the latter type of comedy until the very end, when the Suitor reads aloud from the book seen earlier, and both couples enter “Loving-land” in the final shot. The inclusion of the fairly lengthy fantasy frame device leaves the rather complex series of flirtations, engagements, and elopements overly compressed. “G.” commented in the New York Dramatic Mirror review, “The spectator is apt to confuse these two girls during the first portion of the film” (April 23, 1912, p. 35). This seems odd, since they do not look at all alike, but perhaps the fact that both are seen dreaming the same dream baffled the reviewer. One might be excused, however, for confusing the Fiancé who proposes to Mary early on with VOLUME”,

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the timid Suitor who courts Rose so ineptly, both of them being in similar dark suits. The Moving Picture World’s largely favorable review (which names cast members Mae Marsh, Dorothy Gish, Lionel Barrymore, and Walter Miller) concluded, “The story is artistically told; but the picture seems crowded by its unimportant incidents” (April 19, 1913, p. 280). Sadly there is no clue as to which incidents might be considered unimportant, but the film’s frame and central portions seem ill-suited to each other. Despite this sense of the film speeding along in a somewhat confusing way, The Perfidy of Mary contains fewer shots than many of Griffith’s 1912 and 1913 one-reelers – only 76 (including intertitles). In comparison, A Misunderstood Boy, a film shot in the same month and containing suspenseful action and chases, has 151, almost exactly twice as many. One point of interest is the visual depiction of Loving-land. The beach and the series of happy couples seen stretching into the distance look like nothing so much as a bunch of actors rehearsing for Intolerance (1916). The opening of the first beach scene has a woman just to the right of center in the middle distance move toward her lover, who stands with his back to us much closer to the camera. Her rapture is expressed in modern-dance movements not unlike those that would later be performed on the great Babylonian set, and the bearded male member of the regal couple at the right rear who watches her calls to mind Belshazzar (albeit in a cheaper costume). In general, the dream sequence seems to look forward to the genre of quasi-symbolist, allegorical films, such as Lois Weber’s Hypocrites (1915) and Maurice Tourneur’s Woman (1918), that enjoyed a brief vogue later in the decade. Three shots across the film echo each other visually, creating a Griffithian motif fairly typical for this period. The shot (#22) after the title “LOTHARIO BRINGS ROSE CONSOLATION” shows the young man walking forward along a broad sidewalk, framed by trees, that stretches to the horizon. Here Lothario meets Rose, who enters from the foreground right of the camera. He offers to escort her, whereupon she points toward the front and then the rear, clearly indicating that they are going opposite directions. He turns and walks with her toward the rear; after they have walked a few steps, she indicates that she is making a right turn. He blithely turns and goes with her off right, clearly indicating that he is determined to go her way, wherever that might be. A short time later (shot 37), a landscape with a similar, though narrower sidewalk stretching toward the horizon, with a row of trees to the right, forms the setting for Lothario’s attempt to kiss Mary, whom he has picked up at the train station and is taking to Rose’s home. The two sidewalks, both stretching away from the camera and narrowing to a point at the horizon in classic single-point perspective, create a parallel in Lothario’s actions. Still later (shot 67), the same view of the narrow sidewalk is used again as Lothario and Mary go back toward the depot on their supposed elopement – soon to be revealed as Mary’s trick to disentangle both Rose and herself from Lothario’s attentions. Thus a distinctive visual motif charts the course of the cad’s rise and fall. One final note: I am fairly convinced that two titles in the print examined (16mm, MoMA), “LOTHARIO BRINGS ROSE CONSOLATION” (shot 21) and “LOTHARIO’S NEW FANCY” (shot 26) were switched unintentionally at some point, probably when the film was first made. Shot 22, which in the viewed print follows “LOTHARIO BRINGS ROSE CONSOLATION”, is simply Lothario meeting Rose on a sidewalk and offering to escort her. Shot 27, which currently follows “LOTHARIO’S NEW FANCY”, shows the fickle man slipping an engagement ring onto Rose’s finger. The “new fancy” would most likely introduce the couple’s initial meeting, while the “consolation” is probably the engagement ring. Kristin Thompson

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466* BIOGRAPH

A MISUNDERSTOOD BOY Filming date: finished February 1913 Location: California Release date: 19 April 1913; reissued by Biograph, 19 June 1916 Release length: 998 feet Copyright date: 18 April 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: W. Christy Cabanne Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Kate Bruce, Lionel Barrymore (Parents); Lillian Gish, Robert Harron (Children); W. Christy Cabanne (On street); Alfred Paget (Vigilante leader); William Carroll, Antonio Moreno, Joseph McDermott, W.C. Robinson? (Vigilantes); Charles Hill Mailes, Viola Barry (Thieving merchants); Frank Opperman (In next town); ? (Girl) Archival Sources: Academy Film Archive, 35mm acetate negative, incomplete (reel 1); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 134 frames plus intertitles; brittle); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive Everything he did seemed to be misconstrued, except by the little lady he loved. The town roisters made fun of her and his love. That made trouble and the chief vigilante believed him the cause of it all. So he was “in wrong” all around. The girl’s father also sided with the opinion of the world, and sent both the boy and girl away. Mother was on a visit at the time, and therein the need of such a one at home was proved, for once back she sent the father out to bring them home again. The boy in the gold hills had been misunderstood again. Marauding merchants had left their victim on the mountain pass and the boy, coming on the scene, was again accused, but the lie in the end destroyed itself. The Moving Picture World, April 12, 1913, p. 200

The Mother leaves on a journey, instructing the Father to look after their Daughter, who is carrying on a romance with a local Boy. The Boy is mistakenly blamed by vigilantes for a street brawl, and the Daughter elopes with the Boy after her Father denounces him. Later the Boy goes prospecting for gold and is nearby when a thief murders and robs a traveler. Blamed again by the vigilantes, the Boy flees and reaches home, taking the Daughter away to hide in a shed near the next town. The real murderer and his female companion are staying there as well; the murderer is attracted to the Daughter, and his jealous companion shoots and wounds him. The vigilantes arrive and prepare to lynch the boy, but the companion reveals all and the murderer is lynched instead. The Father, sent by the Mother to retrieve the young couple, arrives and reconciles with them, taking them home to a warm welcome.

A Misunderstood Boy offers an excellent example of how nuggets of brilliant technique lurk in even the most routine of Griffith’s Biographs. It also demonstrates vividly how the one21

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reel format was by now limiting his capacity to achieve the subtleties of characterization that he and his actors were capable of creating. The film is an odd combination of a somewhat comic initial situation and conclusion framing a serious, suspenseful inner story. It begins as a tale of thwarted romance in a small Western town, with the Mother leaving the Father to watch over their Daughter while the Mother goes on a trip. The opening few shots play out as typical light romance, with the Boy escorting the Daughter home from the stagecoach stop and the couple’s conversation being interrupted by the unwelcome presence of her Father. After that point, the plot develops in a more serious direction with the Boy’s first run-in with the vigilantes who will hound them, the Daughter’s break with her Father, and the move into the gold-prospecting and murder action. The film’s main claim to our interest comes early on: a single shot as the Boy and Daughter reach her home and linger to talk by the gate. This one shot contains what is arguably as brilliant a case of staging and acting as Griffith ever created, working with Bobby Harron, Lillian Gish, Lionel Barrymore, and the gate of an unpainted picket fence. Given the compressed nature of the one-reeler, however, this action fleets by, with Griffith’s typical staging of simultaneous bits of business making it impossible for the viewer to notice details in projection. Because it is so unreadable, a description and analysis are warranted. The shot (the seventh in the film, not counting the opening title card) is a medium-long framing into depth along a fence. A broad, unpaved road stretching away from the camera fills much of the shot with blank white. A few background buildings and trees are visible at the upper left, with some distant hills at the upper right. It is a bleak landscape that creates a vista beyond the main action without offering significant distraction – only a few cowboys who ride by in the far background in the course of the shot. A similar framing had shown this space in the film’s third shot, when the Mother exited the house and moved toward the stagecoach, followed by the Daughter. From that shot we know, as shot 7 also begins, that the house is located off right. For this shot (#7), however, the framing has changed, placing the fence further to the right, so that more of the blank background of the road dominates the frame and sets off the foreground action. The Boy and Daughter move into the frame from the foreground left, and she opens the gate as if to go into the house immediately. The gate, a crucial component of the staging to come, swings into the foreground, filling much of the lower third of the screen. Its top consists of a peaked arrangement of seven slats with pointed tops shaped rather like spear heads or candle flames, with the central one being the tallest and coming roughly halfway up the frame. The Daughter looks shyly back at the Boy as she opens the gate, and he grabs the top of the last slat at the left, preventing her from closing the gate. She clearly wants to stay with him and grasps the top of the second slat from the left, though she glances nervously toward the house. This arrangement, with the pair holding the tops of two contiguous slats, places them close together for a romantic conversation. The Boy smiles and talks, cupping one hand over the pointed top of the slat and rubbing the back of it nervously with the other. She raises one hand to her hair briefly, smiles and nods, and then plays delicately with the top of the slat with both hands. We had last seen the Father in the opening shot, when he saw the Mother off, agreeing to keep a close eye on the Daughter. Her nervous glance off screen has reminded us of his presence, and now he comes in at the right, into a space left for him. (The shot up to this point has not seemed unbalanced, despite the fact that the Boy stands at the far left and the Daughter at the center, because the dark line of the fence into depth has provided a counterweight for the Boy.) As soon as the Father enters, he leans on his forearms resting on top of the gate and listens to the couple’s conversation with a sour expression. His nearly unmov22

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ing, hulking presence is emphasized by the way his weight settles heavily on top of the fence, and he occupies all three slats to the right of the central peak, while the two lovers together only hold one apiece, leaving the central slat and the one immediately to its left vacant at this stage of the shot. Initially the lovers seem too wrapped up in each other that they fail to notice him, but the Boy soon registers his presence. His smile fades and he glances down to the ground as the Daughter turns with a smile to look at her father. The Boy remains with his hands cupped over the last slat, moving the top one slightly, while the Daughter has her gracefully bent fingers held so as to lightly frame the pointed top of her slat. Her smile fades, her father adjusts his glasses fussily, and the Boy raises the top hand to place his index finger to his mouth. (The fact that no reflectors were used in this scene and the actors’ faces remain partially in shadow makes small gestures as important as facial expression; here Bobby Harron’s face is largely dark.) At this point, the Daughter turns back to the Boy, pulling her hands away from the second slat and placing them on the third one from the left, enlacing her fingers over its point as she again listens to the Boy. This places an empty slat between the two, suggesting their determination to continue their conversation, but more discreetly in the presence of the disapproving Father. Their occupation of the area defined by the three slats to the left of the peak (which is never touched in the course of the shot) now exactly balances the three on the right occupied so ponderously by the Father. The Boy continues to talk, but more nervously. He points again at the Daughter with his right hand and moves it as if to grasp the second, empty slat that separates their hands. Instead he turns briefly away, and at the same moment the Daughter glances with a worried expression and then smiles at her Father, who continues to stare at the couple impassively. The Boy’s right hand moves toward the slat at the far left, where his left hand still rests. Again he crosses the right hand over the left, stationary wrist and points to her, then himself, the standard silent-film pantomime for declarations of love and/or for proposals. The Daughter is still turned toward her Father at this point, but she glances down at her hands, which leave their enlaced position to gracefully frame the entire flame-shaped top of the slat. Her bent fingers barely touch its edge as she looks again at the Boy with a smile. He tips his hat with his right hand, with the left now lightly grasping the slat rather than resting on it. As he replaces his hat and turns to go, looking down, she makes a brief, nearly invisible gesture, removing her right hand from the slat and touching his wrist as he turns. Her left hand brushes down along the side of the third slat. As he exits left, she pulls her left hand back from the gate down to her side, and rests the right briefly on the gate’s upper crossbar, exactly between the first and second slats – the two where the couples’ hands had been before the Father’s entrance. She moves both arms behind her body as she smiles again at her Father and exits rightward toward the house, glancing back, still smiling, in the direction of the departed Boy. As the shot ends, the Father puts the fingers of his left hand up to his lips thoughtfully and stares off left after the Boy. Clearly by this stage in his career Griffith had fully worked out a precise, detailed acting style, combining naturalistic facial expressions and gestures with occasional touches of conventional pantomimic signals to convey specific story points (here most notably the Boy’s apparent proposal). He also had become adept at using props and setting elements to aid the actors, though the slatted gate used here provides a remarkably precise but unobtrusive way of gauging the couple’s intimacy and their reactions to the Father’s unwanted presence. Gish’s gesture of moving her hands away from the slat next to the one where the Boy’s hands rest suggests her worry about her Father’s reaction, but her immediate grasping of the third slat conveys her desire to linger with the Boy rather than move into the house. The fluttering of the lovers’ 23

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hands around the tops of the slats suggests their desire for more intimate contact, achieved only for an instant near the end as the Daughter surreptitiously touches the departing Boy’s arm. The central slat is never touched, but it points roughly upward to Gish’s face as she turns back and forth, balanced between the two men. In all, the shot is a virtuoso moment, frustratingly brief in a film that must rush on to its core plot developments. Griffith again uses this setting a few scenes later, when the Daughter defies her father and leaves with the Boy; he angrily stops outside the gate and shouts and gestures toward the house. The violent, broad gestures in this moment of crisis contrast sharply with the earlier courtship scene in the same space. These developments primarily involve a move out into a hilly desert countryside where the Boy searches for gold and accidentally gets caught up in a murder committed by another man. A three-way crosscutting pattern develops, moving among the actual murderer committing his crime, the Boy rushing to the scene and then fleeing, and the vigilante band pursuing him. By this point Griffith is cutting quickly in such stretches, with 151 shots in this one-reel film. Even when the fleeing Boy and Daughter (now married) come to the next town and hide in a shed, the movements of the Daughter going to town to fetch food and her return are handled in many short shots. A few cut-ins during the film’s central section indicate that Griffith had not gained any desire to match action or position between shots. He does not, however, disregard continuity principles as flagrantly here as in many earlier films. Movements between interiors and exteriors do not jump across the line, as happens so often in Griffith’s work. The placement of the door to the shed at the center rear of the interior set means that exits from and entrances to this space involve a ninety-degree cut between exteriors and interiors – and even a few reasonably accurate matches on action. A number of eyeline matches showing the actual murderer’s female companion spying jealously on him and eventually shooting him are handled in a fairly clear fashion. More confusing is the segment in which the Boy seems to be looking out the shed’s window at the approaching vigilantes, when in fact the following shot is a cutaway to them still seeking him in the nearby town. Aside from the shot described above, the film contains one very impressive moment when the pursuing posse is filmed against a sunset. Throughout the film Griffith and Bitzer have consistently filmed exterior action from a position opposite the sun, but here the sun is low enough to be in the shot, sinking above the distant hills as members of the posse pose as near silhouettes in the foreground. Griffith tops this shot by returning back to the same space after a bit more intercutting between the fleeing Boy and the posse; in this second shot, the sun is lower in the sky, without any characters present. This empty sunset shot (#58) follows up on the earlier expository intertitle (#53), “KINDLY DARKNESS”, and also prepares for a cut to blue-tinted shots as we see the Boy, later on that night, arrive in town. Less spectacularly, Griffith uses a cutaway to a man finding the Boy’s abandoned horse (shot 61) to cover the time lapse during which the Boy and Daughter pack to flee. Also during this section of the film, the tone shifts abruptly as the action switches back to the Daughter’s home, which has not been seen for quite some time. The Father is eating a meal as the Mother arrives back from her trip. When she discovers that he had been so strict with the Daughter as to drive her away, she angrily sends him out to search for the couple, hurling teacups after him to emphasize her point. This bit of slapstick contrasts strangely with the bleak predicament of the Boy and Daughter’s situation as fugitives, to which the film then returns. Another rather strange touch comes when, in the middle of a very compressed story, Griffith pauses to show the Boy having a nightmare (not itself dramatized) – a redundant touch of psychological depth under the circumstances. Later, when the vigilantes arrive and start to batter down the door of the shed, Griffith shows unusual restraint 24

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in the acting of the couple inside. There is nothing of the cowering or frantic movement typical of Griffith’s endangered characters, especially women. Instead, the Daughter and Boy stand embracing, nearly motionless, as they listen to the sound, and it is the heroine who tries to calm the hero as he makes gestures indicating growing panic. One tiny motif, which probably was deliberately included by Griffith, is worth mentioning. At the murder scene, when the vigilantes discover the Boy stooped over the body, they see a second gun lying on the ground, and the leader holds up two fingers to indicate that the Boy must have had an accomplice. Later, when the Boy and Daughter are hiding in the shed, he checks the remaining money in his pocket and despairingly holds up two fingers to indicate how little he has. This motif serves double duty in creating ironic parallels. The vigilantes had assumed that robbery was the motive for the murder, while the Boy in fact was searching for gold to support his wife and now has been reduced to even greater poverty. Moreover, the vigilantes must have assumed that the “accomplice” (i.e., the real murderer) had taken the victim’s money, since the boy does not have it. At this point, as the Boy checks his money supply, the real murderer is eavesdropping at the door, presumably planning to rob him of what little he has and to rape the Daughter, whom he had accosted during her shopping trip to town. Despite its brilliant touches, however, The Misunderstood Boy remains an uneven film to the end. The final resolution, with the vigilantes preparing to lynch the Boy then abruptly transferring their anger to the real murderer, takes place in a confusing bustle. The Father also arrives during this apparent lynching, now blocked by the crowd of men just behind the reunion scene going on in the foreground. The move back to the family’s home provides a slightly comic, busy epilogue as the parents and young couple sits down for a meal. One is left with the feeling that Griffith was bursting with ideas and could have developed them into consistently wonderful one-reelers had he been given more production time on each. As it is, one can often sift through even the relatively undistinguished films of this period for captivating treasures. The review in The Moving Picture World contains a charming comment on A Misunderstood Boy: “Circumstantial evidence plays a big part in too many pictures to affect us deeply any more. Of course this is true only for those who have seen pictures for a long while” (May 3, 1913, p. 487). For those who think of 1913 films as “early”, the comment provides a healthy corrective, demonstrating that people in that era could think of themselves as having “seen pictures for a long while” and could have become blasé about narrative conventions. Kristin Thompson

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467* BIOGRAPH

THE LEFT-HANDED MAN Filming date: finished ca. February 1913 Location: California Release date: 21 April 1913 Release length: one reel Copyright date: 19 April 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith or Anthony O’Sullivan Author: Frank E. Woods Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer or not known Cast: ? (Old soldier); Lillian Gish (His daughter); Charles H. West (Her sweetheart); Harry Carey (Thief); ? (Desk clerk); Charles Gorman (In bar); Frank Evans, Joseph McDermott, William Elmer, Alfred Paget (Policemen); William J. Butler, Kathleen Butler (In court); William Carroll (Extra) NOTE: Partial cast identification taken from examination of paper print fragment on deposit at the Library of Congress. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 77 frames plus intertitles); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative The thief was clever and he forged around the girl’s sweetheart a chain of circumstantial evidence that seemingly had no flaw. The girl’s faith was great and in unraveling the mystery the detective she engaged used the scientific methods of today, making a brilliant detective story. The Moving Picture World, April 19, 1913, p. 304

The Left-Handed Man is preserved in 35mm fine grain from the original negative at the Museum of Modern Art, but there is no viewing copy at the time of this writing. Fragments exist in the Library of Congress copyright collection, consisting of a few frames from each shot, which enabled the research team to make some cast identifications for D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company (Graham et al.). While the synopsis from The Moving Picture World doesn’t tell us much about the contents, the review tells us a little bit more: A very cleverly worked up picture dealing with bright detective work that brings a criminal to justice. This criminal has fixed things so that his crime will be traced to his friend, and it seems as though there can be no escape except by the culprit’s confession. The detective finds it an easy one – he knows how. It has been made convincing by carefulness in even small details, and the interest has been heightened by weaving a love story in as a natural part of the whole. It is well acted by Lillian Gish, Charles West and Harry Carey, as the left-handed scoundrel. These are supported by a large cast. Finally, it is well photographed. The offering took strongly with the audience. (May 3, 1913, p. 487)

The detective thriller as a genre began in late 1909 with a series of films produced by the independent firm, Yankee, featuring a fearless girl detective. By 1911, an exhibitor addressed 26

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himself to The Moving Picture World to complain of too many detective stories. Popular literature featured detective stories that utilized the so-called “scientific detection methods”, which the films were said to portray, in the solution of mysteries. These methods often meant use of the “dictograph” or “detectaphone”, as it was called by the real-life Burns detective agency, which claimed to have incorporated into its work. The dictograph was manufactured and distributed by the Edison Company, and its use in films was undoubtedly good advertising for the company. It does not seem likely that such technology was used in the detective work shown in The Left-Handed Man. It is a safe bet that the thief’s left-handedness is a crucial factor in proving his guilt, if that can be called “scientific detection”. These detective thrillers with their brave heroines were the forerunners of the serials that began in 1914, The Exploits of Elaine and The Perils of Pauline, announced by Motion Picture News as “a series of high-class scientific detective stories. Instead of thrills created by smashing property, there will be those caused by tense situations and marvelous achievements of science” (quoted in Bowser 1990, p. 186). It seems from the synopsis that we cannot claim Lillian Gish as one of these clever and fearless girl detectives: she is the faithful believer in the man she loves and her initiative consists of hiring a male detective to find him innocent. We must wait for the viewing print to find out whether she does any of the detection herself. Or whether she appears as an example of the “New Woman”– brave, independent, and wearing less restrictive clothing to enable her free and active movement. In any case, The Left-Handed Man is probably part of the trend at Biograph away from the moral melodrama that had been its mainstay during Griffith’s time there as chief director. We don’t even know whether this is a film directed by Griffith, or by Anthony O’Sullivan. It can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference by 1913, when the secondary directors had all been trained by Griffith, and their productions were closely supervised by the master. The Museum of Modern Art archival collection of Biograph title sheets contain the following list for The Left-Handed Man: THE OLD SOLDIER RECEIVES A CHECK FOR HIS BACK PENSION MONEY THE OLD SOLDIER HAS CASHED HIS PENSION CHECK HIS PLAN “HELP! POLICE!” IDENTIFIED BY THE OLD SOLDIER THE GIRL’S FAITH IN HER SWEETHEART INDUCES HER TO APPEAL TO DETECTIVE DUGAN “IS THE PRISONER LEFT-HANDED?” SEARCHING FOR A LEFT-HANDED MAN BY MEANS OF A FAKE PETITION THE DAY OF THE TRIAL

Eileen Bowser

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468* BIOGRAPH

THE LITTLE TEASE Filming date: finished ca. March 1913 Location: California Release date: 12 April 1913 Release length: 1500 feet Copyright date: 12 April 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: D.W. Griffith Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Mae Marsh (The Little Tease, grown); ? (The Little Tease, as a child); W. Chrystie Miller, Kate Bruce (Her parents); Robert Harron (Jimmie, the neighbor boy); Henry B. Walthall (The valley man); Viola Barry (The other woman); Lionel Barrymore (In bar); Frank Opperman, Walter Miller? (On street); Edward Dillon, Frank Opperman (In lunchroom); Frank Opperman, ? (Prospectors) NOTE: Partial cast identification taken from examination of paper print fragment on deposit at the Library of Congress. Archival Sources: Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 197 frames plus intertitles; heavy damage, soaking required) The supposition was that she was born a tease, for from her first teeth to the time she was almost grown, she vented her witcheries on her unsuspecting parents and the wild things of her mountain home. But that was before the man from the valley lost his way and later found it back again, bearing away the little tease to the valley. While she suffered the qualms of broken faith, her father passed through a like struggle, for he felt the precepts of the “beloved book” had failed him. He closed the door of his cabin upon the world and the light from his window, lighting the wayfarer over the mountain path, disappeared. The struggle over, it came back in its place in time to beckon the little tease as she left the valley behind. The Moving Picture World, April 5, 1913, p. 80

Tomboyish mountain girl Little Tease has her head turned by a smooth-talking, charismatic stranger she finds wandering through the woods. The stranger persuades Little Tease to run away from home, but in the valley she discovers his true colors. In a hotel, she sees him making love to another woman, and considers shooting him. Instead she runs away and finds work in a roadhouse where her childhood sweetheart urges her to return home. Pride keeps her at the roadhouse, but the mountain flower her sweetheart leaves behind stirs irresistible family memories. She starts up the mountain while, by degrees, her father moves out of his bitterness while reading his Bible. Softened by his reading, he opens his window to let in the sunshine, sees his daughter at prayer over her mother’s grave, and calls her back into his arms.

The Little Tease is among the handful of lost Griffith Biographs. In it, Mae Marsh pulls a bear 28

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cub’s tail, stares down a wolf, and confronts a lion in the wild after flirting, bare-armed and barefoot, with Henry Walthall. A year after walking around in a grass dress without a corset in Brute Force, she was still venturing where no other Biograph actress had dared go before. On paper The Little Tease looks like a patch quilt stitched together from assorted hillbilly Biographs featuring familiar backwoods types: the harum-scarum beguiled by the smoothtalking stranger; the stern Bible-reading parents devastated when their daughter runs away; the faithful boy next door; and the successful seducer in stovepipe hat and cape who inevitably proves false after the first infatuation. The first half of the plot, in fact, is a literal reworking of The Mountaineer’s Honor, a highlight of the Fall 1909 season. But after the elopement, the newer film sets off in an incongruous direction, ignoring the formula of hillbilly pursuit and revenge in order to create a quasi-allegorical soul struggle where the embittered father reconciles with his chastened daughter over mother’s grave. In summary form, the story appears fractured, but trade critics thought the film one of Griffith’s best. Reviewers were particularly struck, not for the last time, with the power of Mae Marsh’s performance in a homecoming scene. But just as tantalizing is the sequence where, off by herself in a hallway, Marsh reacts to seeing her lover fondling Viola Barry. The scene survives – or at least a trace of it – in the 35mm frame cuttings included in the movie’s original copyright application. Although the cuttings account for only the first three frames of each shot, they are enough to suggest remarkable possibilities. Laid out side by side, the frames show Griffith limiting his scene to two set-ups: a close-up of Marsh in a corridor, her head propped up against the door; and a long shot of a typical Biograph hotel room where Walthall and Barry interact. By now Marsh has confronted the couple and pulled a gun, but retreated into the hall leaving the pair unharmed. Griffith disposes of that action in three shots (#117–119). But the aftermath, where Marsh – alone – contemplates what has happened, crosscut with Walthall consoling Barry, extends to no fewer than thirteen shots (#120–132), seven of them close-ups of Mae Marsh’s face, all taken from a single vantage point. Except for the final shot, the changes in her expression are microscopic: her mouth forms a stoic, straight line; her eyes stay lowered, her hand kept on her cheek or pressed against her chin. Then, in the first frames of #132, the eyes become watery and the expression turns to one of sheer exhaustion. Of the films we’ve seen so far, only Blanche Sweet in The Painted Lady (1912) received this amount of solo screen time. In Marsh’s case, it was only the beginning. In The Mountaineer’s Honor Griffith ended his movie with a melodramatic shocker: a mother shoots her son to prevent the disgrace of a public hanging. The Little Tease ends with another type of derring-do: bereaved father reconciling with his fallen, unwed daughter. In earlier Biographs, errant parents reconcile over the corpses of neglected children, and alienated fathers routinely make up with their widowed daughters. But this may be the first Biograph in which a father forgives and takes back a deflowered, unmarried daughter who has willingly run away, untricked by false marriage vows. The door opened up by the pointed liberality of The Painted Lady and The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) has led to further risk taking. Griffith clearly recognized he was playing with censor fire. He wraps the father’s decision in Biblical quotation. Accepting his daughter goes hand in hand with the father returning to Scriptures, reading lines like “God is Love” and “Blessed are the merciful”. And the redemption of The Little Tease is dramatized as a struggle up the mountain where the repentant girl faces down Dante-esque wild animals, including a lion and a wolf (the copyright frame fragments show an actual lion leaping up a tree, then sitting on a branch, waiting for Mae). By 1913 the Biograph Bible is used to sanction forgiveness rather than stern moral reproach. The risk paid off. The trade critics gave the film raves, going out of their way to comment on the extended length of the film (The Little Tease ran a reel and a half), then wishing the film were even longer. Mae Marsh came into her own, with her best notices yet: 29

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This two-reel Biograph drama deserves to be released as a feature – not for a long time have we witnessed a photoplay of this kind that proves so delightfully pleasing, that has such a big heart interest. It is a play of heart appeal with the master hand displayed in the adroit touches of comedy… Mae Marsh plays the ingénue lead and what a winsome amusing creature she is…. Deftly drawn action, warm acting, beautiful photography, and picturesque scenery. It is a tworeel picture worthy to take its place among any of the features we have. (“G.”, The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 30, 1913, p. 30) … Biograph at its best. It is a story of today and of anywhere – the story of the unsophisticated girl whose head is turned by a smooth stranger, who leaves her home and parents to go with him only to discover that there is another… The film exceeds the regulation thousand feet, and the surplus is amply justified. (The Moving Picture World, April 26, 1913, p. 381)

Russell Merritt

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469* BIOGRAPH

THE LADY AND THE MOUSE Filming date: finished ca. March 1913 Location: California Release date: 26 April 1913; reissued by Biograph, 13 March 1916 Release length: 999 feet Copyright date: 23 April 1913 Director: D.W. Griffith Author: D.W. Griffith Source: not known Camera: G.W. Bitzer Cast: Lillian Gish (The Lady); Lionel Barrymore (Her father); Harry Hyde (Rich man/tramp); Dorothy Gish (Ailing sister); Kate Toncray (The aunt); Robert Harron (Ailing sister’s sweetheart); Adolph Lestina (Doctor); Frank Opperman (Landlord); Joseph McDermott, W.C. Robinson (Creditors); ? (Tramps); Henry B. Walthall (The garden party rival); Viola Barry (The garden party flirt); J. Jiquel Lanoe (With second flirt); ? (Poor customer) Archival Sources: Arhiva Nationala de Filme, Bucuresti, 35mm acetate positive (English and Russian titles), generation undetermined; Gosfilmofond of Russia, 35mm acetate negative (English and Russian titles); Library of Congress, 35mm paper print (fragment: 120 frames plus intertitles); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate negative; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive (tinted) The question is, would the young tramp really have fallen in love with the groceryman’s [sic] daughter if he had not caught her in the heart struggle. Be that as it may, she could not find it in her to drown the unwelcome visitor to the pantry, so she let it go and the silent little drama witnessed by the tramp greatly impressed him. Not so the strict aunt. She declared the whole thing to be in exact accordance with everything else in the family. Their hearts ran away with their heads. That was why they lost money on credit, could not pay off the mortgage and send the sick sister to a better climate. As for the tramp, they had no business to take him in. He could not pay for his keep. But the tramp surprised them all. The Moving Picture World, April 19, 1913, p. 304

An easy-going grocer takes in an ailing tramp, a millionaire in disguise. When the recuperating guest sees the grocer’s daughter struggle over whether or not to drown a trapped mouse, he is charmed and falls in love. His health returns and he leaves still in his tramp disguise but soon returns in plutocratic splendor. He hops out of his expensive car to pay off the grocer’s business debts, proposes to the Lady, and sends her infirm sister to a sunny climate to recover her health.

Not since the black chicken tripped up a cop in At the Altar (1909) has a Biograph animal shown more personality than Lillian’s terror-stricken rodent in The Lady and the Mouse. By his last years at Biograph, Griffith had developed an enthusiasm for animals – most spec31

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tacularly the black bears in The Massacre (released in the US in 1914), the wolves that feast on Harry Carey and Claire McDowell in In the Aisles of the Wild (1912), and then the lion and bear cub in The Little Tease. But the struggling mouse may be the single performer who ever threatened to steal a scene from Lillian Gish. What is truly remarkable is that it doesn’t. As winsome as the furry little fellow is, Gish holds her own in what is arguably her finest Biograph performance. True, she has no bravura moment comparable to the famous slaughter of the rosebush in The Mothering Heart, but the juicy part of the quiet, steely-eyed daughter lets her create a comic character steeped in contradictions that add up to an unusually quirky, individualized ingénue. For starters, she loves three people in the film and as Gish plays the part, each of the relationships gets distinctive treatment. Significantly – and strangely – the most physical and passionate affair is with her bedridden sister (played by Dorothy Gish), permitting a full display of kisses and long embraces, the stroking of hair, and lingering glances. Nothing is coded or acts as a metonymic substitute for Lillian’s feelings. When, in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gish and Walthall spoon with each other, each kisses a bird and strokes its neck as a way of indicating affection for the other. In The Lady and the Mouse the girls kiss and fondle each other while the bird stays put in its cage. At the other extreme is her romantic attraction to the stranger, played by Harry Hyde, built on an ingenious array of signs and substitutions. The punch-line – Gish’s disembodied hand and arm working the sleeve and glove of Hyde’s topcoat as she playfully accepts his marriage proposal – is a particularly charming example of the Griffith encounter distilled through isolated body parts. But no less economical and coded is the way Griffith and Gish work costume to start the romance. Gish first appears wearing a shapeless smock as she helps her father with the groceries. When the ailing Hyde is brought to the bedroom across the hall from the ailing Dorothy, Lillian unobtrusively looks him over and, while Barrymore prepares to prop him up in a chair with pillows, she leaves to fetch him magazines. But when she returns, she has taken the smock off, revealing a gorgeous brocade dress that looks as though it were made for a Renaissance ball – Fortuny fashion elegance by way of Montgomery Ward. Gish plays the entire scene deadpan, with a quiet smile on her face as she leans next to Harry the better to display the magazines. He responds with his eyes darting back and forth between the magazines and the dress, and then stares impassively at Lillian as she poses in the doorway tugging at a lock of her hair. From first flirtation to final clinch, this is an affair marked by the display and deciphering of signs. Finally, there is Gish’s love for her hapless father, Lionel Barrymore, one of those droll Dickensian relationships between an industrious, competent daughter and a bumbling, goodnatured widower. This is the first of Gish’s Molly Whuppie roles that the actress will refine in True-Heart Susie and A Romance of Happy Valley (both 1919), the prototype of the quietly determined, infinitely patient, and ingeniously manipulative youngster intent on saving the slow-witted men in her life from the follies of their naïveté. In these scenes, Gish’s performance is built entirely around the vocabulary of clasped hands, mouth zipped tight, and expressive eyes – glances that are by turns reproachful, imploring, tearful, excited, and apprehensive. Eye contact is everything, and thanks to Barrymore’s wonderful timing, Gish needn’t hold a glance more than necessary. The actors appear to be having a fine time – Barrymore responding to Gish’s cues, improvising miniature comic routines, and challenging Gish to underplay him with her micro gestures and tiny changes of expression. What gives Gish’s multi-faceted performance particular interest is the way it underscores a subtle but important shift in Griffith’s family drama. The story of a daughter pressured to surrender to a wealthy suitor for the sake of an indigent parent is, as we have seen by now, one of the most frequently used formulas in the Biograph canon. Up until The Lady and the Mouse 32

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the variations were limited to turning the wealthy suitor into a sensitive soul (one who gives up his fiancée but provides for the family anyway; or who marries the heroine and proves a loving husband), or having the heroine escape the marriage. The Lady and the Mouse reinvents the formula by making the primary relationship one between the strong and ailing sisters, and having the heroine take the initiative in starting the heterosexual romance. By keeping the millionaire’s wealth a secret, Griffith avoids the issue of ulterior motives. But once Hyde’s wealth is revealed, the practical side of Lillian’s character instantly surfaces. She agrees to marry Harry after she playfully makes him promise to care for Dorothy. She in fact presents him as a trophy in her sister’s bedroom. As father weeps gratefully in the background and the ailing sister looks up in adoration, Lillian presides triumphantly over the scene with head perched high. Griffith has designed a film in which the daughter of an impoverished family, far from appearing the victim of indigence, is seen as a comic rescuer. She doesn’t bow to the demands of marriage; she negotiates them. Hyde’s character represents a newish figure at Biograph, the rich romantic hero who lifts the heroine and her family from poverty into affluence. But what makes everyone look good [and what separates the film from A Midnight Cupid (1910) where another bored millionaire finds love while impersonating a tramp and working among the poor] is not just the idea of generosity that pervades The Lady and the Mouse. The heroine has something to offer beyond her virtue: a spirit of altruism combined with a cool, appraising eye, a keen sense of independence, and, for those who can see it, the wit of a stage manager. Pictorially, Griffith and Bitzer are up to familiar tricks, providing a pleasing, eye-catching environment for the tale without coloring the narrative. Introducing Harry Hyde in a series of seven shots that keep his face hidden from us shows dramatic flair, the logical culmination of two years worth of shots foregrounding actors’ backs. But it doesn’t quite make sense, unless Griffith imagines that by withholding Hyde’s face until he has assumed the disguise of a tramp, the audience will be surprised to learn his true identity at the end. The elegant shot of Lillian in her sister’s bedroom, her head mirrored as a silhouette in the thatched window as she nurses her sister, is more suggestive (especially when compared with the older special lighting shots that end films like The Drunkard’s Reformation and Pippa Passes [both 1909]). But as usual, it is his ingenuity with props that take Griffith furthest into counterpoint and narrative shading. The caged bird speaks for itself, but the overcoat that Lillian lays on her sister’s bed creates fine economies. Originally meant to keep Dorothy warm, Lillian comes to fetch it when the debt collectors call to take away the family property. From her bed Dorothy toughs it out, bravely gesturing that she doesn’t need the coat. But Dorothy’s stoicism stiffens Lillian’s resolve. She defiantly leaves the coat on the bed and marches down to confront her father. She demands he resist the creditors for her sister’s sake. A weak-jawed parent, Barrymore doesn’t; but when Harry Hyde arrives, deus ex Oldsmobile, Lillian scoots back to her sister’s room and contemptuously throws the coat on the floor. Lillian’s new husband will take Dorothy to a climate where no coat is needed, and when she returns – in the final shot of the film – the two sisters are arrayed in matching coats and suits. Even the cars in the film may have provided a meaningful contrast lost to modern viewers. The creditors arrive in a yesteryear low-end Olds, a 1905 REO; Hyde trumps their wagon when he pulls up beside it in an up-to-date luxury model. Contrariwise, the biscuit boxes Barrymore and his sister sell have an unintended way of catching our eye – festooned as they are with swastikas. The red swastika was the innocent logo on P.W. Cracker tins, a product of Indiana’s Perfection Biscuit Company. Older readers will recall a later Perfection brand: Sunbeam Bread with the “Sunshine Little Girl” trademark. But in its early years, Perfection was famous for its outrageous publicity stunts that included, in early 1913, the aerial bombardment of Los Angeles with swastika-wrapped Perfection Wafers. Its ubiquitous presence in Barrymore’s grocery store marks a more familiar kind of blitz – an early example of product placement. 33

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Finally, the history of the print is of some interest. The Lady and the Mouse is a late addition to the Biograph canon, unseen in the West until the early 1970s when Gosfilmofond gave the Museum of Modern Art a 35mm dupe positive as part of a curatorial trade. The print is striking for its bilingual titles – in English and in Russian – the only Biograph uncovered so far in this form. Virtually all that we know of the Gosfilmofond 35mm comes from the film itself – as far as we know, there are no supporting documents. But markings on the film are suggestive. Thanks to the wonders of e-mail, which enabled me to draw on the expertise (and test the patience) of Yuri Tsivian, Martin Koerber, David Shepard, and Eileen Bowser, I’ve come to the following conclusions. The dupe was made at Gosfilmofond long after the original bilingual print was made. The Russian leaders survive on the current print, and final words, “J