The Griffith Project Volume 9: Films Produced in 1916-18 9781844570973, 9781838710736, 9781839020186

Citation preview

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 9 FILMS PRODUCED IN 1916–18

IN MEMORY OF RAYMOND BORDE (1920–2004)

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT VOLUME 9 Films Produced in 1916–18

G ENERAL E DITOR Paolo Cherchi Usai CONTRIBUTORS Gillian B. Anderson, Ben Brewster, Kevin Brownlow, Philip C. Carli, Claire Dupré La Tour, Karen Latham Everson, Tom Gunning, Lea Jacobs, Joyce Jesionowski, J.B. Kaufman, Charlie Keil, Francis Lacassin, David Mayer, Russell Merritt, David Robinson, Scott Simmon, Roger Smither, Paul Spehr, Kristin Thompson, Yuri Tsivian A SSISTANT E DITOR Cynthia Rowell

Publishing

First published in 2005 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 2005 Set in Italian Garamond by Ketchup, London British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–1–84457–097–3 eISBN 978–1–83902–017–9 ePDF 978–1–83902–018–6

CONTENTS

Foreword Notes on Contributors Note on Layout

vi ix xii

534. 535. 536. 537. 538. 539. 540. 541. 542. 543.

1 7 9 13 17 20 23 27 29 31

Hoodoo Ann Betty of Greystone Little Meena’s Romance Sold for Marriage The Habit of Happiness Sunshine Dad The Good Bad Man Susan Rocks the Boat Macbeth Intolerance PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION NARRATIVE STRUCTURE EDITING STYLE AND TECHNIQUE

39 46 52 57

PERFORMANCE AND CHARACTERIZATION MUSIC INTERTITLES ARCHAEOLOGY CRITICAL RECEPTION

544. Reggie Mixes In 545. The Mystery of the Leaping Fish 546. An Innocent Magdalene 547. The Wild Girl of the Sierras 548. Flirting with Fate 549. The Little School Ma’am 550. The Half-Breed 551. The Marriage of Molly-O 552. The Devil’s Needle 553. The Social Secretary 554. Fifty Fifty

62 75 81 88 96 100 102 106 109 112 114 116 120 122 125 128

555. 556. 557. 558. 559.

Diane of the Follies Manhattan Madness The Old Folks at Home American Aristocracy A Day with Governor Whitman 560. The Matrimaniac 561. The Americano 562. [Film pour les américains, I, II, III] 563. Griffith at the Front 564. [Griffith Meets Society Ladies] 565. Hearts of the World 566. The Hun Within 567. Gaumont News, Vol. XVI, No. 2-L 568. The Great Love 569. Lillian Gish in a Liberty Loan Appeal 570. A Romance of Happy Valley 571. Battling Jane 572. The Greatest Thing in Life 573. The Hope Chest 574. The Fall of Babylon 575. The Mother and the Law 576. Broken Blossoms

130 132 135 138

Bibliography Index of Titles: 1916–18 Cumulative Index of Titles: 1907–18

218 220

140 143 146 151 153 156 157 165 169 170 173 176 192 196 200 203 207 212

221

FOREWORD

Within three years, D.W. Griffith completed two of the most acclaimed silent films ever made, Intolerance (the Babylonian episode was finished in April 1916) and Broken Blossoms (shot in December 1918). The parallel between a grandiose epic intertwining four different stories and the linear trajectory of an intimate drama is echoed by the shift between the collective tragedy of World War I (Hearts of the World) and the chamber-work structure of A Romance of Happy Valley. By then, D.W. Griffith was unanimously acclaimed in America as the world’s greatest director, the realization of cinema’s boldest aspirations. At the same time, he was still a contract director for Harry E. Aitken, in charge of supervising Triangle productions. Griffith’s increasing uneasiness with this role is demonstrated by the heated correspondence with Aitken (reproduced in this volume in the entry for The Americano [DWG Project, #561]), followed shortly by the break with Triangle and Douglas Fairbanks’ legal action against the company. In the context of The Griffith Project, Griffith’s role as supervisor of the films produced in this period – especially during the making of Intolerance – is no less a matter of conjecture than it was in relation to the films credited to him in the years 1914 and 1915. It is certain that some films were publicly attributed to his supervision even though his input was close to nil, but the truth of the matter is that we still don’t know enough to conclusively rule out his participation in a number of titles, even if they were made while Griffith was in the midst of shooting Intolerance. As we have pointed out in the foreword to the previous volume, we can’t rely upon any previous attempts to bring clarity in this quagmire and determine the extent of Griffith’s participation in these productions (the only exception being Russell Merritt’s 1988 article “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle”). The very term “supervision” is in itself vague enough, as it leaves room for conjecture on whether the term applied to the approval (or even drafting) of the script, cast and crew, or involved the actual overseeing presence on the set. Both possibilities may apply to Griffith’s case, but truth on this point may never be known. Inclusion of the “supervised” films in the corpus of The Griffith Project has inevitably been the object of debate within the editorial team since the beginning of this series. As we felt that this evidence could not be ignored altogether, we have decided to open the debate on this question by incorporating in this and other volumes of the series a number of titles plausibly supervised by Griffith. We obviously make no claim of completeness nor undisputable accuracy on this matter, and hope that further research will shed some light upon an obscure aspect of the director’s activity. The films directed and supervised by Griffith in the years from 1916 to 1918 define the parameters of this volume, the ninth installment in a multi-year research project commissioned by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Sacile, involving the analysis of all the films where D.W. Griffith was credited as director, actor, writer, producer and supervisor. Writers and editors have extensively verified the filmographic information published in modern scholarly books and essays with the data gathered from primary sources and, whenever possible, through the analysis of the prints viewed; nevertheless, question marks and unresolved contradictions still abound in many entries. As we ventured into a major terra incognita, editorial discretion had to be exercised on a number of occasions in this phase of the project. Contrary to the method applied to previous volumes in this series, assignments have no longer been given by consecutive groups of films; instead, we have chosen to give priority to the individual interest or expertise of contributors on specific topics (such as in the case vi

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

of Paul Spehr, who has concentrated his attention on the “lost” films presumably supervised by Griffith), and to distribute the other assignments as evenly as possible among the specialists who have generously helped to develop The Griffith Project through their work on previous volumes. As there is not enough information available at present on Griffith’s supervisory role in the one- and two-reelers directed by others (a function he had also served during his years at Biograph), it has been decided to leave them out of this survey except for a handful of shorts of special interest: the instance in this volume is given by The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (DWG Project, #545), whose very existence has puzzled generations of scholars for its incongruity to the aesthetic and moral canons of the time. As in previous volumes, films are listed in their presumed order of shooting (though the rule does not apply to The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law, assembled long after their main production was completed), with the last day or month of work on the set determining the chronology of the entries. It has been extremely difficult to do so in the case of the films supervised by Griffith, and the sequence proposed here should be considered as tentative. When the presumed date of filming is vague or ambiguous, the dates of copyright, release or premiere in large cities have been taken into account in establishing the entries’ sequence. Filming dates of the Fine Arts films have been extensively researched by Ben Brewster in the Harry and Roy Aitken Papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society (for a discussion of this source, see the foreword to Volume 8 in this series). It is thanks to these production ledgers that the estimated filming dates have been established for several entries, and I gratefully acknowledge Ben Brewster for facilitating what would otherwise have been a thankless and often fruitless task. The methodology adopted for the inventory of archival sources has been discussed at some length in the forewords to previous volumes of this series, but is worth summarizing here. The archival sources listed in each entry of The Griffith Project represent the extant preservation material (closest to the original camera negatives) utilized for the making of viewing copies. According to this definition, the term “archival source” is used exclusively for the ur-elements from which viewing copies are made, such as paper prints, nitrate negatives, positive prints generated at the time of the film’s commercial release and re-release, archival negatives struck before the corresponding nitrate print decomposed, or fine grain masters and modern positive prints or negatives if no other material is available. For example, a camera negative, a nitrate 35mm release print with English titles and a nitrate 35mm release print with German titles are listed as separate archival sources of the same film, as it is presumed that all the known preservation material and access copies in existence derive from one or more of these prints. Therefore, a 16mm generated from one of the above elements (such as many Biograph shorts distributed by Blackhawk in the 1970s for non-theatrical use) is not included in the inventory. On the other hand, a 16mm copy derived from a nitrate 35mm print distributed in Spain would be regarded as an archival source as long as the corresponding nitrate print or 16mm reduction negative is no longer extant. Whenever in doubt about the nature of an archival element, we made mention of it with the caveat that its printing generation has not been determined. Detailed information (including format, footage and source) on some of the prints available for viewing at the time of publication of this volume can be found in the official catalogue of the 2005 Pordenone Film Festival in Sacile, held from 8 to 15 October. As a rule, we have not cited websites in the bibliography, given that there is no guarantee as to their longevity. A very few exceptions were allowed when no suitable alternative could be devised at the time of printing. The Griffith Project is the direct outcome of the generous help provided by all the individuals and institutions involved in the preservation and study of Griffith’s work. Mike Mashon (Library of Congress), Elaine Burrows (National Film and Television Archive, London), Steven Higgins (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Paul Spehr, Russell Merritt and vii

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Kevin Brownlow have replied with admirable patience and insight to the hundreds of inquiries I have submitted to them for almost a decade. Our special thanks go to Mary Lea Bandy and Anne Morra (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Greg Lukow, Madeline Matz and Linda Shah (Library of Congress), all of whom are currently involved in this massive undertaking initiated several years ago by Iris Barry and Eileen Bowser at MoMA and by the staff of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress. Film preservation is by definition an international effort: several archives have restored other Griffith titles, or helped with additional documentation and research. We wish to express our gratitude to Tim Kittleson, Eddie Richmond, Charles Hopkins and Jennifer Teefy (UCLA Film and Television Archive); Mark-Paul Meyer, Rommy Albers, Catherine Cormon and Simona Monizza (Filmmuseum, Amsterdam); Eva Orbanz (Film Museum Berlin); Dan Nissen and Thomas C. Christensen (Det Danske Filmmuseum); Stéphanie Côté (Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal) and Robert Daudelin, former director of the Cinémathèque Québécoise; Anca Mitran and the staff of the Arhiva Nationala de Filme (Bucarest); the late Paulina Fernandez Jurado (Fundación Cinemateca Argentina); Carlos Roberto de Souza and Patricia De Filippi (Cinemateca Brasileira); Lúcia Lobo (Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro); Michelle Aubert, Eric Le Roy and Jean-Louis Cot (Archives du Film, Bois d’Arcy); Michael Pogorzelski and Fritz Herzog (Academy Film Archive); Alberto Del Fabro (Cinémathèque française); Catherine Gautier (Filmoteca Española); Antonia Kovacheva (Bulgarska Nacionalna Filmoteka, Sofia); Dinko Tucakovic (Yugoslovenska Kinoteka, Belgrade); Agata Zalewska (Filmoteka Narodowa, Warsaw), Vladimir Dmitriev (Gosfilmofond of Russia); Antti Alanen (Suomen Elokuva-Arkisto, Helsinki); Catherine Surowiec, Edward E. Stratmann, Caroline Yeager, Chad D. Hunter, Deborah Stoiber, Daniel Wagner, Tim Wagner, Jared Case, Benjamin Tucker, Kelli Hicks, Anthony L’Abbate and all the staff of the Motion Picture Department at George Eastman House for their generous help in retrieving and sharing information on film credits and archival sources. Last but not least, we are grateful to all the interns and students of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation who contributed to the early stages of preparation of this and other volumes: Kelly Chisholm, Sonia Genaitay, Sungji Oh, Christina Porterfield, Heather Stilin, John Woodard (in the academic year 2001–2002); Susan Busam, May Dea, Andrew Lampert, Diana Little, Ember Lundgren, Brianne Merkel, Robert Nanovic, Heather Olson, Brent Phillips, Magnus Rosborn, Alexandra Terziev, Edward Tse (2002–2003); Daniel Blazek, Brendan C. Burchill, Christina Nobles, Loubna Regragui, David Rice, Jennifer Sidley, Marcus Smith, Anna Sperone (2003–2004). Albert Steg, recipient of the 2005 Pordenone/Selznick School Fellowship, has assisted with supplementary research. My colleagues on the Board of Directors of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Davide Turconi, David Robinson, Piera Patat, Livio Jacob, Carlo Montanaro, Piero Colussi, Lorenzo Codelli and Luciano De Giusti) were instrumental in turning the Griffith retrospective into a unique opportunity to reassess the extraordinary contribution of D.W. Griffith to the art of film. Commentaries on the goals and methodological issues raised by The Griffith Project before and after the series started in October 1997 have been published in Griffithiana, Vol. 21, Nos. 62–63, May 1998, pp. 4–37; in the French journal 1895, No. 29, December 1999, pp. 187–88; and in Luca Giuliani (ed.), The Collegium Papers I (Gemona: Cineteca del Friuli/Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2001, pp. 23–32), the inaugural volume of an annual collection of essays and workshop transcripts written or assembled by students participating in the festival. Paolo Cherchi Usai Canberra, January 2005

viii

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

GILLIAN B. ANDERSON is an orchestral conductor and musicologist. She has participated in the restoration and reconstruction of the original orchestral scores written to accompany thirty of the great silent films and has conducted throughout the United States as well as in Europe, South America, and Canada. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1921) with the Brandenburg Philharmonic (Potsdam) is available on BMG Classics; Carmen (Cecil B. DeMille, 1915) with the London Philharmonic from Video Artists International (VAI); Häxän (Benjamin Christensen, 1923) from The Criterion Collection; and Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst, 1928) from Criterion. She performed the score for Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927) for the 75th anniversary gala of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 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, 1927) 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 Cecil B. DeMille – American Epic (2004). PHILIP C. CARLI is a musicologist, film and sound recording historian, composer, conductor, and silent film accompanist living in Rochester, New York. He regularly performs at George Eastman House, the New York Public Library, Northeast Historic Film, the Nottingham (UK) British Silent Film Festival, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and other venues in the United States and Europe. He has also composed and recorded over fifty silent film scores for both piano and orchestra, and his history of American band and orchestral recording in the early acoustic era, “Looking for the Band” (and Orchestra), is due to be published shortly. PAOLO CHERCHI USAI is director of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. He is co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. His latest book is The Death of Cinema (2001). He is currently working on a film based on music by Arvo Pärt. CLAIRE DUPRÉ LA TOUR is completing a doctoral dissertation on intertitles at the University of Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. She has authored several articles on the subject and also directed the international colloquium “Intertitle and Film. History, Theory, Restoration” at the Cinémathèque française in 1999. She is a co-editor of Iris, a member of Domitor’s executive committee, and has co-edited, among other collective works, Le Cinéma au toiurnant du siècle/Cinema at the Turn of the Century (1999), with André Gaudreault and Roberta Pearson. ix

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

KAREN LATHAM EVERSON has been an independent filmmaker and also has worked as an archivist, with her late husband and at George Eastman House. She has now returned to her roots, living in Texas and doing historical research and freelance writing. 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 Publishing. LEA JACOBS is professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her latest book, in collaboration with Ben Brewster, is Theater to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (1997). 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. J.B. KAUFMAN is a film historian who has written extensively on topics including Disney animation and the films of Blanche Sweet. He is co-author, with Russell Merritt, of Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992) and of a second book on the Silly Symphonies. CHARLIE KEIL is associate professor of History and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style and Filmmaking, 1907–1913 (2001) and has published extensively on early cinema. FRANCIS LACASSIN, literary advisor and editor for the Presses de la Cité (1971–91) and Laffont (1982–2000), has been a regular contributor to the weekly French magazines Le Point and L’Express. He introduced the teaching of cartoon drawings at the Sorbonne with a course on the History and Aesthetics of the Cartoon Drawing (1971–84), and served as President of the Commission d’aide à l’édition de la bande dessinée at the French Ministry of Culture (1984–88). He is the author of several books on film history, including Pour une contre-histoire du cinéma, Alfred Machin, Louis Feuillade, and La Légende de Tarzan. He has also published works by Georges Simenon, and is the author of Conversations avec Simenon (2002). DAVID MAYER is emeritus professor of Drama and research professor at the University of Manchester, England. His books include Harlequin in His Element: English Pantomime, 1806–1836 (1969) and Playing Out the Empire: Ben Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films (1994). He is author of numerous essays on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular stage entertainments and links with early film. RUSSELL MERRITT is visiting professor in the Film Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written with J.B. Kaufman an account of Walt Disney’s silent cartoons, Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney (1992), and a forthcoming book on the Silly Symphonies. He directed and produced “The Great Nickelodeon Show”, presented at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival 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.

x

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

DAVID ROBINSON is the author of Chaplin (1985). He is director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. SCOTT SIMMON is professor and director of Graduate Studies in English 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 “More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894–1931” (2004). Among his books are The Films of D.W. Griffith (1993) and The Invention of the Western Film, which won the 2003 Theatre Library Association Award. CYNTHIA ROWELL graduated in 1999 from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. She has worked for Milestone Film & Video and New Yorker Films creating and distributing DVDs. ROGER SMITHER is keeper of the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive since 1990. He is editor of the FIAF Code of Ethics (1998), and a trustee of the North West Film Archive charitable trust since 1999. His books include Imperial War Museum Film Catalogue Volume 1: The First World War Archive (1994), Newsreels in Film Archives (with Wolfgang Klaue, 1996), First World War U-Boat (2000), and This Film Is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film (2002). 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. 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), Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (1999), and Herr Lubitsch Goes to Hollywood: German and American Film after World War I (2005). YURI TSIVIAN is professor of Film at the University of Chicago. He earned a PhD in Film Studies from Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema, Leningrad, in 1984. Among his books are Silent Witnesses: Russian Films, 1908–1919 (1989), Istoricheskaja recepcija kino (1991), translated as Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception (1994), and, in collaboration with Yuri Lotman, Dialogues with the Screen (1994). His most recent book is Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties (2004).

xi

NOTE ON LAYOUT

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

xii

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

534 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

HOODOO ANN Working titles: The Trail of Blood; The Trail of Blood (Hoodoo Ann) Filming date: August 1915–January 1916 (Reliance–Majestic production ledgers: 74 days of production); “now completed” (according to The Moving Picture World, March 11, 1916) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 26 March 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 14 February 1916 (LP8298) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Lloyd Ingraham Scenario: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: not known Titles: Anita Loos Cast: Mae Marsh (Hoodoo Ann); Robert Harron (Jimmy [or Jimmie?] Vance); William H. Brown (Wilson Vance); Wilbur Higby (Samuel Knapp); Loyola O’Connor (Elinor Knapp); Mildred Harris (Goldie); Pearl Elmore (Miss Prudence Scraggs); Anna Hernandez (Sarah Higgins); Charles Lee (Bill Higgins); Elmo Lincoln (Officer Lambert); Robert Lawler (Constable Drake); Carl Stockdale (Gordon Sanderson); [according to modern sources:] Madame Sul-Te-Wan (Black Cindy) Archival sources: George Eastman House, 16mm acetate reversal positive; Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Donald Nichol Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate positive (received 1954 from George Eastman House); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) This is the story of “Hoodoo Ann” a little waif in an orphan asylum, who was left there on the thirteenth of the month and therefore invested with her bad-luck nickname. But, in spite of the fact that the crabbed old matron, while petting little Goldie, makes “Hoodoo Ann” wash dishes and scrub floors, she continues to be happy until temptation overcomes her and she steals little Goldie’s doll. She is about to confess when a fire burns the orphanage to the ground. In the midst of the conflagration she rushes in and saves Goldie. As a reward for her heroism she is adopted by a neighboring couple of the name of Knapp, who lost their little girl some time before, and they bring her up in a manner quite in contrast to the old. But even to the Knapps it appears she is going to bring ill luck, for one night, after seeing a particularly lurid photoplay at the town theatre, in company with Jimmie, the son of the lawyer, she takes to practising [sic] with Mr. Knapp’s loaded revolver. Of course it goes off. Now in the house next door live a couple who are constantly quarreling. The husband has dropped off to sleep quite in line with Ann’s revolver, and, when the shot goes off, he drops prone to the floor. In dismay and horror Ann, going to view the consequences of her act, sees the prostrate body and a trail of blood. She is certain she has committed murder.

1

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Meanwhile the man’s wife is accused of making away with him, and Ann yields herself up as the guilty person. But at the next moment the supposed dead man appears to tell how he wandered away under the influence of hard cider and spent the night sleeping under a haystack. The trail of blood is explained by discovery of a cat wounded by the stray bullet. This explanation leaves Ann free to marry Jim, who has come to claim her. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 14, 1916, LP8298 [stamped with date May 17, 1916]

Ann is an orphan, and the unpopular drudge in her orphanage, at best ignored, at worst persecuted by the teachers and her fellow orphans. Her only friend, the cook Cindy, tells her she is hoodooed, and will remain so until her marriage. One night, the orphanage burns down, and Ann saves the life of Goldie, the orphanage favourite (and her particular enemy, whose doll she “borrowed” and could not return as it broke). She is taken in by the Knapps, a childless couple in the small town where the orphanage is located, who have witnessed her bravery, and they decide to adopt her. Next door to the Knapps lives Jimmy Vance, an aspiring cartoonist, with his father, and on the other side, the Higginses, a couple forever quarreling about the husband’s penchant for hard cider. Two years pass, and Ann and Jimmy date one another. On one of their dates, they go to see the Western movie “Mustang Charley’s Revenge”, in the course of which the eponymous villain shoots the hero in the back, and the latter crawls away, leaving a trail of blood followed by his girlfriend to the corpse. Next day, searching for costumes to re-enact the film, Ann finds a revolver in the attic. Pretending to be the heroine of the movie, she pulls the trigger, and to her surprise the gun goes off. Looking through the hole in the wall made by the bullet, she sees that it might have gone in the window of the Higginses’ sitting room next door; peeping in that window, she sees Bill Higgins lying motionless on the floor. Later, Mrs. Higgins enlists Ann’s help to find her missing husband; Ann discovers he is no longer in the sitting room, but she sees bloodstains on the porch and, remembering the movie, follows them into the bushes, without finding Higgins, dead or alive. Jimmy receives news that one of his cartoons has been accepted by a newspaper, and he proposes to Ann, but she refuses, believing herself a murderess. The police, investigating Higgins’ disappearance, find the bloodstains and decide Mrs. Higgins must have murdered her husband. When they confront Mrs. Higgins, and all the neighbours seem convinced of her guilt, Ann confesses she shot Higgins, and faints away. At that moment, Higgins returns alive and well; once Ann has recovered and everyone is convinced they are not dealing with a ghost, Higgins explains he fell into a drunken sleep the day before, and on waking decided to leave his nagging wife, but a cold night in a haystack with a snake for company has persuaded him to return home. Two small boys appear bearing the Higginses’ cat with a bandaged forepaw, explaining that someone must have shot it. When Jimmy renews his proposal, Ann accepts, and, despite her fears that something will go wrong at the last minute, the couple get married.

Hoodoo Ann was one of the last productions entered into the “Feature Book”, the ledger started by the bookkeepers of the Reliance-Majestic Los Angeles studio in March 1915 to record the production costs of four-reel and longer films made in that studio to be released as Mutual Masterpictures; those completed after the establishment of Triangle were released as Fine Arts Film Co. productions in late 1915 and early 1916 (this ledger is now Volume 55 in the microfilmed bound volumes of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Harry and Roy Aitken Papers). Despite an exceptionally long shooting period, 74 days between 28 August 1915 2

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

and 29 January 1916, it eventually cost $30,695.93, standard for a five-reel feature produced by the company in the second half of 1915 (but double the cost of early 1915 features like Old Heidelberg or Pillars of Society, planned as four-reelers but eventually released under the Fine Arts “five-reelers-only” policy). Its lead players, Robert Harron and Mae Marsh, had been regularly cast together since Biograph days, a partnership that continued throughout the Reliance-Majestic and Fine Arts periods, until Marsh left the company at the end of 1916. Before Hoodoo Ann, they had appeared in the Majestic two-reeler Big Jim’s Heart, which was shot in the first two weeks of July. In the interim, they may have been working on Intolerance, where they are similarly paired (though the Modern story, in which they appeared, was substantially finished by the Summer of 1915), but a news item in The Moving Picture World (March 25, 1916, p. 2020) suggests that before Hoodoo Ann, Mae Marsh was prevented from working by illness. The same item (headlined “Griffith directs ‘Hoodoo Ann’”) claims that Griffith himself was unusually active in the production; the director, Lloyd Ingraham, is not even mentioned. The claim has been repeated by Richard Schickel (D.W. Griffith, p. 318 of the Pavilion Books edition), and (with more caution) by Anthony Slide (The Kindergarten of the Movies, pp. 16, 84), apparently solely on the basis of this item and the authors’ detection of Griffithian touches in the film itself. In fact, Griffith is not credited even as supervisor in the print I viewed (the Library of Congress’ reference copy), or in the distributor’s promotional magazine The Triangle (as he is for some five other Fine Arts releases: see Slide, op. cit., p. 16). Nothing in the Feature Book suggests any other director than Ingraham; not only is his name entered on the top of each page devoted to Hoodoo Ann, he received a five hundred dollar director’s bonus on 27 February. Moreover, most of the work on the picture was done in November and December of 1915 (there are no transactions recorded in the Feature Book for October), when, according to Slide (op. cit. pp. 10–12), Griffith was preoccupied by the death of his mother and her funeral in La Grange, Kentucky, which he attended, going on from there to Eddyville, New York, for the incorporation of the Wark Producing Corporation. It thus seems appropriate to read the Moving Picture World story less as a factual account of Griffith’s contributions to the film than as planted because he was, as it says, “determined that her [Mae Marsh’s] first appearance as a Triangle star shall be a success”, given her importance for the yet to be released Intolerance. “Granville Warwick”, the story credit in the print, is one of Griffith’s pseudonyms. The Feature Book reveals another contributor who is not even pseudonymously credited: on 16 February, a payment of $25.00 to Anita Loos is entered into the column headed “Titles”. Twenty-five dollars seems rather little for titles to the whole of a five-reel feature, and Loos herself, in her not overly reliable memoirs (A Girl Like I, p. 103), says she began regular titlewriting at a rate of twenty-five dollars a reel (in addition to her salary as a contract scriptwriter for the studio). However, this seems to be after she had (by her account) been commissioned to write titles for Intolerance later in the Spring of 1916; she may be referring to her personal contract with Griffith, dated 20 July 1916 (Aitken Papers, Box 12), which guarantees her twenty-five dollars a day when working on titles (twenty-five is obviously a magic number where titles are concerned). At any rate, all the rest of the $182.81 attributed in the Feature Book to “Titles” for Hoodoo Ann consists of design and photographic costs. At this point, title writing is only just beginning to be distinguished from the writing of the scenario itself (for which Griffith received five hundred dollars). Loos’ contribution might thus be anything from writing a completely new set of titles to editing some of the titles included in Griffith’s scenario. Slide argues that “many of the subtitles have the Griffith ring to them” (op. cit., p. 85), but to me they have a Loosian lightness of touch distinct from the heavier irony or straightforward earnestness of the typical Griffith title. 3

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

All the pages relating to Hoodoo Ann in the Feature Book are headed “The Trail of Blood”, with “Hoodoo Ann, formerly” added in above it. This suggests that the eventual title was determined quite late in the production history, but before 14 February 1916, when the film was copyrighted as Hoodoo Ann. The last page in the Feature Book, still labeled “The Trail of Blood”, was begun on 31 January; the entry for the film in a Majestic inventory for 31 December 1915 still calls it “The Trail of Blood”, that in the inventory for 31 January “The Trail of Blood (Hoodoo Ann)”, and that for 29 February simply “Hoodoo Ann” (these inventories are in Box 33 of the Aitken Papers). A late January date thus seems likely for the change in title, around the time shooting of the film ceased. It may be that the working title was felt inappropriate for a comedy. By modern standards there would seem to be no doubt Hoodoo Ann is a comedy (though The American Film Institute Catalog calls it a “comedy-drama”), but at the time of its release this seems to have been less clear. Some of the trade press references to the film on its release call it a “drama” (e.g., The Moving Picture World, April 15, 1916, p. 528), and there was always uncertainty about the genre to which light-hearted films that were not Keystone-style slapstick comedies were to be assigned, especially if they involved “serious” elements like suspected murders. An alternative hypothesis is more intriguing. Examined closely, the “hoodoo” theme seems quite superficially imposed on the plot; apart from being an unpopular orphan, Ann really only has two pieces of bad luck: her breaking of Goldie’s doll near the beginning of the film (from the consequences of which she is quite fortunately saved by the burning of the evidence), and the accidental shooting toward the end (which also turns out to have no unpleasant aftereffects). The real difficulty with the working title may have arisen rather from a characteristic problem of early features, how to handle the exposition. Hoodoo Ann takes so long to establish its heroine’s predicament that it is reel four before the incident referred to in the working title occurs. Louis Reeves Harrison complained about this in his Moving Picture World review (April 15, 1916, p. 458): The initial characterization, very promising in its way, is lost sight of in the badly arranged structure and an apparent abandonment of original purpose. It starts as a Cinderella story, poor Ann despised by her sisters, in this case her schoolmates and leads up to the child’s adoption by a tender-hearted old couple in easy circumstances. At this point, when some amusing consequences of a sudden change of environment were to be expected, the story jumps a couple of years for no visible purpose, a thing not to be done under any circumstances if it can be avoided. Another story is started about the quarrels of neighbors and an accidental shot which nearly involves an innocent party.

Anticipating this kind of response, the filmmakers might have added the hoodoo theme (and hence the title) as an afterthought, because it could be introduced near the beginning and help hold together an otherwise disparate set of incidents. Given that it only features in intertitles and in the one scene where the maid Cindy reads Ann’s palm, which might have been shot for other reasons – perhaps even to anticipate the heroine’s eventual good fortune – the rescue job might have been Loos’. But an alternative hypothesis is that Griffith himself returned from New York in January to find a broken-backed picture, devised a solution, and hence, in the March interview, claimed a particularly prominent part in the production by comparison with other Fine Arts features. If any of this is correct, then the rescue was successful, since only Harrison seems to have remarked on the structural weaknesses of the film. Despite the lack of hard evidence to corroborate any of these claims as to Griffith’s special attention to the film, even to me there are some moments that do suggest his touch. Perhaps most notable is the scene of Ann and Jimmy’s first kiss. This is reminiscent of kisses in Grif4

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

fith’s own films, in particular the one at the end of True Heart Susie (1919). Marsh and Harron are standing side by side on her porch after a date. After much hesitation as he tries to summon the courage to kiss her and she waits in anticipation, there are three cutaways to a rooster crowing, the sound deflating the already diffident Jimmy; they then shake hands in farewell, but fail to release their hold; three intertitles repeat “‘GOODNIGHT!’”, while one or the other is pulled off screen as they tug in opposite directions in the returns to scene; finally, Marsh retreats fully off left, followed by Harron, who leans out of frame, then releases Marsh’s hand and exits right; she re-enters, touching her cheek where he kissed her off-screen, before running off left. The same sequence introduces another comic touch, which mystified me on first viewing what turned out to be an incomplete print. It does not seem very Griffithian; it might, of course, be the director’s contribution (I would not be able to recognise an “Ingraham touch”), but it seems a very Loosian invention, though it could not have been added in post-production unless several extra scenes were shot specially, or material shot for an abandoned sub-plot (perhaps concerning the discovery of Ann’s missing parents?) was reworked. Just before the first kiss, there is a title, “A CASUAL AND MYSTERIOUS STRANGER, WHOM WE ADVISE YOU TO REMEMBER”, followed by a shot of a well-dressed gentleman with a cane standing on the sidewalk, and we see him again, seemingly watching, after the kiss. Later, this same character follows Ann and Jimmy to the movie house and sits in the row behind them, apparently carefully observing them. He then vanishes from the film. I wondered if he might not be one of the policemen who appear later, similarly dressed and similarly occupied in spying on Ann, but none of them seemed to be the same actor. The print I viewed breaks off just as Ann and Jimmy are about to seal their marriage with a kiss, but reviews in Variety (April 7, 1916, p. 22) and Wid’s (April 6, 1916, p. 486) make it clear there was originally an epilogue. To quote the latter: “When the finale arrives, with everyone happy, we get another title stating that the next day the mysterious stranger left town because he had nothing to do with the story anyway. This is an innovation, to be sure, but I know it will be welcomed as a truly clever bit of comedy.” Another comic element is the pastiche of a late 1900s Western that Ann and Jimmy see in the movie house, in an alternation between shots of the movie on the screen being vigorously accompanied on the piano and one-shots and two-shots of Ann and Jimmy watching and commenting in the auditorium, with the stranger sitting behind them. This contains “oldfashioned” mime acting, as the heroine persuades the hero to refrain from strong liquor, and offences against verisimilitude and continuity such as were continually denounced in the trade press of the period: as Wid Gunning notes, “in one place the ‘willun’ comes to the window and shoots the hero, shooting at the ceiling, yet the hero falls over wounded”; in another, the metal pail the heroine carries from her cabin becomes a wooden bucket as she fills it at the well, only to revert to metal as she returns to the cabin. These jokes were in the main appreciated by the trade press reviewers themselves (and presumably also by the studio manager, Frank Woods, who had pioneered the style of criticism that singled out such targets in his reviews in The New York Dramatic Mirror), but Louis Reeves Harrison (who seems to have gotten out on the wrong side of the bed the morning he wrote his review) finds this episode, too, a reprehensible diversion from a unilinear plot (and perhaps also too much of a professional in-joke): “An interminable moving picture exhibition ... something entirely foreign to the main story interest. A mere glimpse of the motion-picture story within the main story would have served the purposes of suggestion, but the whole thing is a studio melange, like one of those salads men think they know how to make.” The same delicacy that characterises these comic features is also seen in the way the film handles a more structural matter, misleading the spectator about the consequences of Ann’s 5

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

firing of the revolver. The shot in which Ann pulls the trigger is followed by three quick reaction shots: in the sitting room, Higgins, dozing in a chair, suddenly falls from it to the floor and lies still; on the Higginses’ porch, the cat jumps up and runs away; in the street, Mr. Knapp runs to his Ford and inspects it for a blown-out tyre. Eventually, it turns out that it was the cat that was the victim of the bullet, but the likelihood of the spectator working this out at the time is diminished by the complacency induced by the third shot, which the spectator knows shows a false interpretation of the sound of the shot. This seems something it would be hard to attribute to anyone but the director, so we should give Ingraham his due (though, according to Karl Brown, he was anything but delicate in his direction of actors – see Adventures with D.W. Griffith, p. 167). Ben Brewster

6

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

535 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

BETTY OF GREYSTONE Alternate title: Betty of Graystone Working title: Betsy Ann Filming date: October 1915–February 1916 Location: Fort Lee, New Jersey; upstate New York; Connecticut; some exteriors: Riverdale, New Jersey Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 20 February 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 14 February 1916 (LP8070) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Scenario: F.M. Pierson Camera: not known Cast: Dorothy Gish (Betty Lockwood); Owen Moore (David Chandler); George Fawcett (Jim Weed); Kid McCoy (Weed’s son); Kate Bruce; Albert Tavernier; John Beck; Warner P. Richmond; Grace Rankin; Macey Harlan; Eugene Ormonde; Leonore Harris Archival sources: Filmmuseum (Amsterdam), 35mm nitrate positive, incomplete (Dutch intertitles) This is the story of a shy New England girl who finds herself alone in the world. In her neighborhood is a beautiful unoccupied mansion called “Greystone”. She breaks into the house and lives there in a world of her own, peopled only by men and women from books and her fancy. One day the young owner of the estate returns and much to his surprise finds that the great mansion has become the playground of the shy little girl. He becomes infatuated with her and encourages her to remain. In her innocence she does so and continues with him her game of make believe. Naturally their friendship and relationship cause gossip in the little community and finally forces the pair to leave. They go to New York, where the young man provides a home for her with a woman of refinement and character, and where the young man sees quite as much of the girl as he did before. His infatuation deepens and broadens into love, and the gossips are finally silenced by an elaborate wedding reception in “Greystone Gables”. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 14, 1916, LP8070 [stamped with date April 15, 1916]

In the missing early sections of the film, it appears that Betty’s father, the caretaker of Greystone Gables, has died and that her mother has remarried Jim Weed. Weed and his sons have forced Betty into a Cinderella role from which she seeks escape by trespassing into Greystone, where she is discovered by the returning owner, David Chandler. This is the point – obviously much later in the story than the copyright synopsis would suggest – at which the surviving section of the film begins. David gives her a beautiful dress, which was presumably his mother’s. The outraged Weeds force her back home, and encourage the scandalised village 7

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

to mass against her. She flees and hides in the countryside where she is discovered and rescued by David. He arranges for her to stay with his upper-class city friends the Sherwoods, who introduce her into polite society. When Betty’s dying mother pleads to see her daughter, Weed will not permit Betty return to the house. Nevertheless, by a ruse she manages to enter, and her mother dies peacefully in her arms. The Weed family find her and redouble their persecution. Betty struggles with Weed’s daughter (?); but when Weed’s son threatens her, David arrives in time to overcome him in a hand-to-hand fight. Betty, who had come to doubt David’s love, is now convinced and becomes mistress of Greystone, after a wedding enlivened with further fisticuffs with the Weeds, who are finally and ignominiously routed.

The problems of recreating an impression of Betty of Greystone from the surviving fragment is not helped by the disparity between the synopsis submitted for copyright deposit and descriptions of the film in the contemporary trade reviews, published in February and March 1916. It is clear from the surviving film material, as well as the contemporary accounts, that this synopsis ignores entirely the central motive of the film, Betty’s victimisation by her brutal stepfather and his brood – backwoods ruffians hardly less frightening than the Hatburn cousins in Henry King’s Tol’able David (1921). To judge from what survives of the film, it is a good example of the early maturity of Allan Dwan, who seems to have brought belief and vigour to a somewhat far-fetched melodrama, and style gusto to the fight scenes. The underlying grimness of the family story is constantly offset by Dorothy Gish’s and Owen Moore’s deft touches of humour: Dwan evidently responded to the vitality of Gish, whom he had previously directed in Triangle’s Jordan Is a Hard Road (1915) and with whom he was later to work on Night Life of New York (1925). The intelligent George Fawcett gives a human dimension to what could have been a stock villain; while it was presumably Dwan’s idea to cast the prize fighter Kid McCoy (1873–1940) in the role of the younger Weed. McCoy’s enthusiastic performance launched a film career under his true name of Norman Selby: between Betty of Greystone and 1930 he appeared in fifteen further films. McCoy was the kind of larger-than-life character who attracted Dwan: he married nine times, was charged with the murder of an intended tenth bride, Mrs Teresa Mors, and died by suicide at sixty-six. David Robinson

8

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

536 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

LITTLE MEENA’S ROMANCE Working title: Katie Bauer; Kittie Bauer (according to Motography, January 22, 1916, p. 205) Filming date: January–February? 1916 (See note on the filming date for Daphne and the Pirate [DWG Project, #532 in Volume 8].) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: week prior to 15 April 1916, Knickerbocker Theatre Release date: 9 April 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 9 April 1916 (LP9541) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Story: F.M. Pierson Camera: not known Cast: Dorothy Gish (Meena Bauer); Owen Moore (Count Fredrich von Ritz); Fred J. Butler (Matthew Bauer); Robert Lawler (Jacob Kunz); Alberta Lee (Jacob’s mother); Mazie Radford (Jacob’s sister); George Pierce (Jacob’s father); Fred A. Turner (Meena’s uncle); Kate Toncray (Meena’s aunt); Margaret Marsh, James O’Shea (Meena’s cousins); William H. Brown (The butler) Archival sources: Library of Congress, 9.5mm acetate positive (AFI surplus collection) Meena Bauer, a little Dutch girl living with her father in a small Pennsylvania town, falls in love with the Count von Rits [sic], who is peddling clothes-wringers as a means of tiding over a gap in his finances. He suddenly receives remittances from home, and goes out of her life. In the course of time, Meena’s father dies, leaving her everything he had, which is a considerable fortune; and taking this in a large telescope bag, Meena goes to live with her wealthy aunt in the city. At first her snobbish relatives are inclined to despise Meena, whose hatred of dirt impels her to scrub their brownstone steps; but, learning that she has money, they fawn upon her. It so happens that the Count von Ritz is now coming to call upon Meena’s cousin, and when he arrives he finds Meena, scrubbing-brush in hand, on the steps. He naturally supposes she is the maid, and she, seeing under his arm some books that he has brought for the daughter of the house, takes him for a book-agent. In this natural belief, they meet on the “Girl’s day out” in the park each week, and their love progresses mightily. Upon one occasion, the German ambassador passes and reminds Von [sic] Ritz of his rank, and that he must not marry beneath his station. But he persuades Meena to go with him to a road-house on the outskirts of the city. While there they are seen by Meena’s cousin. The Count proposes to Meena, who accepts him and they are married at once. They then go to the Count’s apartment. Meena not having returned home that night, the next morning, her aunt and cousin worried about her, trace her to the Count’s apartment and learn of the marriage. Meena then discovers that she has married a Count and the Count learns that he has married an heiress. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, April 9, 1916, LP9541 [stamped with date November 17, 1916]

9

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Meena Bauer is the heroine of this romance of a Pennsylvania Dutch girl, who is loved by the son of a Mennonite family. Meena treats Jacob as a joke in spite of the arrangement their parents have made that they should wed. The Mennonite simplicity has no charms for Meena, who proceeds to fall in love with Count Fredrich von Ritz, who is temporarily out of funds and comes to the little Pennsylvania town as a canvasser for a clothes wringer. Meena wants her father to buy one, but the latter believes that woman’s hands were made for that work. Von Ritz next goes to the house of the town constable, where he is arrested for peddling without a license. Arraigned before Squire Bauer the prisoner is fined. He cannot pay and faces jail until Meena suggests that he be allowed to sell wringers until he makes enough to pay the fine. In partnership the count and Meena go and soon sales are brisk. Now comes the time when von Ritz receives a check from his estate and with sad farewell of Meena he returns to New York. Soon Meena follows, her father having died, leaving much property, to live with a relative in the metropolis. Here she finds many servants to do the work but they are an unclean lot and Meena takes a scrubbing assignment and is busily at work on the front steps when the count comes along with a present for her cousin. He thinks she is working out; she thinks he is canvassing with a new line. They meet often and one night von Ritz takes her to a noisy resort near the city. Before they return they have stopped at the minister’s across the road. She does not return home and a search the next morning finds her in her new apartments. Only then do the newlyweds discover each other’s true identity. Von Ritz has married a rich wife and little Meena is a countess. The Moving Picture World, April 29, 1916, p. 868 “Little Meena’s Romance” is one of those finished productions that delight the critic even more than the producer can believe, and it will delight many an audience in exactly the same way, the only difference being that the critic has an added satisfaction in saying so. How gladly such refined and well-perfected productions are welcomed! The story is fascinating from the outset, though the happy beginning is due almost entirely to characterization, characterization in which Owen Moore shines as never before, the biggest surprise in a production of many surprises. Without a blemish in construction, with delicate preparation at every step and adequate realization in setting, acting and subtitles, “Little Meena’s Romance” moves softly and sweetly into our hearts, keeping us busy guessing as well as perpetually entertained. At about this stage of a review the critic usually has to inject some iron in the marmalade, but ‘Little Meena’ does not deserve any. This role could not have been assigned to Dorothy Gish – she IS “Little Meena”. We feel that there could be no other. Dorothy of the soft eyes and tiny rebellion that is only spiced submission is in a part for which she was born and raised. She is, in the story, an exquisite little apostle of non-resistance, that which resists the most with big-hearted men. The very purity and trusting simplicity of her love wins a man who is compelled to sacrifice all material considerations to wed her when he might have wronged her. The best in him, like the best in all of us, gives right recognition where there is nothing but right in the offering of a woman’s love. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, April 1, 1916, p. 101 This is a pretty story built around an innocent little Pennsylvania Dutch girl, a Count; that is to say, Dorothy Gish and Owen Moore, respectively. It is entirely off the beaten path of hackneyed themes and uninspired acting, and is, in every sense, a thoroughly good, a thoroughly human picture. Excellent effects are gained not alone through the Class A acting of Miss Gish and Moore, but also through the very human quality of the theme. The earlier background is the rural life of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Their quaint ways – particularly their brilliant stupidity – are utilized for purposes of subtle comedy, with a vein of pathos just beneath.

10

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Here the subtitles get in their work. Many of these are phrased in such a way as to bring laughs; others to bring quiet smiles of appreciation. When Little Meena, who is, of course, Miss Gish, goes to live with her city relatives, after the death of her father, her real romance begins. The Count is officially scheduled to marry Meena’s cousin, but Meena’s arrival upsets that. Meena is unaware of the Count’s identity, as the Count is of hers. When she met him in Pennsylvania, he was selling clothes wringers. When she meets him in the city, she thinks he has become a book agent. He thinks her the servant girl of her rich relatives. Their identities do not become known to each other until after they are married. The element of surprise and suspense also adds to the appeal of the picture, especially near the end. The Count, in an evil mood, takes Little Meena to a road house with rather sinister purposes. When the two are shown entering the Count’s apartments a few hours later, the spectator naturally wonders what has happened in the meantime. Not until Meena’s anxious relatives arrive at the apartment, does the spectator learn that the Count, his better nature asserting itself, has taken Meena to a nearby minister’s house and married her. There are numerous touches, both of comedy and pathos, which enrich the whole, and make its appeal to any kind of audience absolutely certain. The supporting cast is fully competent, and includes Fred J. Butler, Robert Lawler, Alberta Lee, Mazie Radford, George Pierce, Fred A. Turner, Kate Toncray, Margaret Marsh, James O’Shea and William H. Brown. Some fine types are introduced. Settings and photography are excellent. Director Paul Powell and Author F.M. Pierson deserve credit for their superior work. Oscar Cooper, The Motion Picture News, April 1, 1916, p. 1917 The producers of “Little Meena’s Romance” have made a picture which approaches perfection in photoplay offerings of its kind. If “Little Meena’s Romance” is not a perfect example of the camera’s artistic possibilities at least it reaches a plane far above any picture dealing with a story of this class we have ever seen. Stars who have built success and popularity on their characterizations of Cinderella-like roles are continually exploited in stories which are so much star and so little anything else that it is little wonder that one would as soon not avoid these sweet, simple pictures – the very ones which should have an especial attraction. “Little Meena’s Romance” is simple, it is sweet, and it has a star, one of great brilliance, in Dorothy Gish, and it tells a tale that will win the hearts of all who have the good fortune to see it. This picture is an exceptional one. It is one of those which happen only once in a while in spite of the perseverance in the effort to produce highly artistic screen plays by the many high class producing companies contributing to the market at present.… Miss Gish gives a remarkable characterization as Meena. Meena is innocent but not ignorant, delicate but not weak, she is intelligent, so it only remained for Miss Gish to make her beautiful and magnetic of personality. This Miss Gish does, and more; she is a Pennsylvania Dutch girl in her every action. Owen Moore is Rudolph, Count Frederich Von Ritz to be exact. Mr. Moore is capital, perhaps he gives a more artistic and effective performance as Rudolph than he ever did since he has been acting before the camera. There is a splendid supporting cast. Thomas C. Kennedy, Motography, April 1, 1916, pp. 763–764 Mr. Griffith once heard one of his actresses call a film a “flicker”. He told her never to use that word. She was working in the universal language that had been predicted in the Bible, which was

11

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

to make all men brothers because they would understand each other. This could end wars and bring about the millennium. We were all to remember that the next time we faced a camera. Lillian Gish, in Dorothy and Lillian Gish, p. 60

A 9.5mm print of this film is preserved at the Library of Congress. However, no viewing copy was available at the time of this writing. By April 1916, when Little Meena’s Romance was released by Triangle-Fine Arts, Dorothy Gish had established herself as a respected and popular comedienne. She was still the number two Gish and never displaced her older, more demure sister, but the critics and other film people thought very well of her. Dorothy was wholesomely pretty and as gay and vivacious as her sister was delicately ethereal and demure. Lillian called her “the side of me that God left out” (Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, p. 213). Dorothy’s strong suit was her lively personality, sense of fun and reputation for responding well to direction. Allan Dwan called her a great clown and a natural actress. “She was a quick study, a real ‘just-tell-me-what-youwant-me-to-do’ type, and she could provide an instant characterization that needed little refining” (interview with Stuart Oderman in his Lillian Gish, p. 65). Griffith’s production company began featuring her in comedies created to take advantage of her versatility and appealing personality. If the film had been made twenty years later, it could have been a screwball comedy. The picture received a very favorable review from The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison: “one of those finished productions that delight the critic even more than the producer can believe”. Harrison was pleased with the performances of Gish and Owen Moore (April 1, 1916, p.101). Reviews in The New York Times and Variety were favorable, but not enthusiastic. In a tribute to Dorothy Gish in his Movies in the Age of Innocence (p. 225), Edward Wagenknecht noted that Julian Johnson, writing about her in Photoplay in September 1916, listed Little Meena’s Romance as one of Dorothy’s outstanding productions. Although Griffith is credited as supervisor, there is nothing in any supporting material to indicate that he took more than a minor role in the production. Paul Spehr

12

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

537 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

SOLD FOR MARRIAGE Alternate title: Marja of the Steppe Working title: Martha of the Steppe; Marja of the Steppes; Marja of the Steppe (Sold for Marriage) Filming date: late December 1915–late February 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors in snow: Truckee, California (according to The Moving Picture World, February 19, 1916); additional scenes filmed on the Pacific Coast liner Congress, leased for trip between Los Angeles and San Diego (according to The Motion Picture News, March 25, 1916, p. 1744) Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 16 April 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 10 April 1916 (LP8702) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: William Christy Cabanne Scenario: William E. Wing Camera: William E. Fildew Cast: Lillian Gish (Marfa); Frank Bennett (Jan); Walter Long (Colonel Gregioff); A.D. Sears (Ivan); Pearl Elmore (Anna); Curt Rehfelt (Dimitri); William E. Lowery (Georg); Fred Burns (A policeman); William Siebert (Peter, the undesirable suitor); Frank Brownlee (Nicholas) Archival sources: Cineteca del Friuli, 16mm acetate positive (Glenn Photo Collection); George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive (William K. Everson Collection/New York University); Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Donald Nichol Collection) Marfa, belle of a Russian village, lives with her aunt and uncle, a scheming pair who are seeking to marry her to a rich, but ugly, old peasant. She loves a young fellow who once rescued her from a pair of ruffians who sought to kidnap her in their sled as she was dragging a heavy bundle home through a snow storm. Jan is poor and finds no favor in the eyes of the covetous couple. But he is sure of Marfa’s love as he goes away to make his fortune. Col. Gregioff, the governor of the district, is attracted to the girl, but when he forces his attentions on her as she is busy with the washing she knocks him senseless with a club. In a driving rain storm the girl and her relatives flee from the village to escape the wrath of Gregioff. Revived by his men, the colonel goes at once to the home of the family. Only the aged and crippled grandfather is there and, as he recognizes the intruder as the man who had eloped with Marfa’s mother fifteen years before, only to desert her, he feebly seeks revenge. Gregioff easily brushes him aside and goes out into the highway, where a lightning bolt strikes him dead. Meanwhile Marfa and Jan have been reunited on a ship bound for America. Again the scheming pair, now determined to make rich marriage for the girl in California, intervene, and in San Francisco Jan loses track of them completely. In despair he runs into a friend of the voyage who tells him the others have gone to Los Angeles. In the latter city a rich bargain was been made for

13

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Marfa’s hand. She escapes, but her ignorance of the language is fatal and she is brought back. Jan sees a rabbi on his way to perform the ceremony and follows him, but is refused admission to the house. While he is obtaining the aid of the police Marfa is tortured into submission and is about to be married when help arrives. The conspirators are bundled off to jail and Jan and Marfa face the future together. The Moving Picture World, May 6, 1916, p. 1042 [Note: the plot synopsis submitted for copyright to the Library of Congress, April 10, 1916, LP8702, is unreadable due to paper deterioration.]

In a village on the Russian steppes, Marfa lives with her crippled grandfather, Dimitri. Her grasping Uncle Ivan and Aunt Anna want to marry her to Peter, a rich old neighbour, but she loves Jan, a penniless young man who has recently returned to the village from America. Marfa also attracts the interest of the local military governor, Colonel Gregioff. Marfa treats Peter with such scorn that he decides to marry a more compliant girl. Jan is called back to America, and says goodbye to Marfa. One day, as she is doing the laundry by the river, Gregioff comes looking for her. A storm breaks out and drives the other villagers away to shelter. Gregioff tries to rape Marfa, so she hits him over the head with her washing paddle. Believing she has killed him, Marfa and her aunt and uncle flee the village under cover of the storm. When the recovered Gregioff comes to the family cabin, Dimitri holds him at gunpoint; then, when he overpowers Dimitri and runs out of the cabin calling his soldiers, he is struck dead by lightning. Marfa and her aunt and uncle board a ship for America, and find Jan is a passenger on the same ship. Ivan allows Marfa and Jan to court, in order to ensure Marfa’s good behaviour, but plans to sell her as a bride to a rich man in America. When they reach San Francisco, they are welcomed on the dock by Ivan’s brother, Georg, an important member of the Los Angeles Russian community. Ivan confides his plans for Marfa to Georg. Jan accompanies them to a boarding house, but has to leave to see to his own affairs. In his absence, the family board the train for Los Angeles, explaining to Marfa that Jan will follow. When Jan returns to the boarding house, no one can tell him where Marfa has gone. In Los Angeles, the family rent a house in the Russian quarter, and soon Ivan and Georg find a suitor for Marfa, Nicholas, who is willing to pay them a thousand dollars. Marfa overhears their plans and decides to escape. A shipboard acquaintance of Jan’s tells him he saw the family boarding the Los Angeles train, so Jan goes to Los Angeles and starts to search the Russian quarter for Marfa. Marfa climbs out of the window at night, but does not know where to go, and hides in an alley. Jan passes her hiding place in the dark. Later, a policeman finds her there; he has seen her earlier with Georg, whom he knows. She tries to explain that she is fleeing a forced marriage, but she does not speak English, so, failing to understand her, he takes her back to the family’s house. After the policeman has left, Ivan beats Marfa into submission. Next day, Nicholas arrives for the marriage with the thousand dollars, and Georg goes to get a priest. Jan sees him and follows, but Georg prevents him from entering the house after the priest. Jan goes instead to the police, and they send a squad car, which arrives just in time to prevent the marriage. Georg, Ivan, Anna, and Nicholas end up in jail, while Marfa marries Jan.

The shooting of Sold for Marriage began after the Reliance-Majestic Los Angeles studio’s 1915 “Feature Book” – which includes cost records for Hoodoo Ann and is discussed in my commentary to that film – had been filled up. I am fairly sure that a new book was begun, and that similar books were kept throughout the period when the Fine Arts studio was making films for release by Triangle, that is, until Griffith broke with the Aitkens and departed for Europe 14

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

in March of 1917, but such books are among neither the Aitken nor The D.W. Griffith Papers; if they survive, I do not know where. Entries in the monthly Majestic inventories (Harry and Roy Aitken Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 33) first mention the film (as Martha of the Steppe) in the one dated 31 December 1915, with a value at that time of $4,338.46. By the end of January, it was Marja of the Steppe (Sold for Marriage) and valued at $15,250.63. At the end of February it was listed solely by the release title, and valued at $27,382.07; a month later it was valued at $29,623.70, and 125,349 feet of prints had been struck, with 15,708 feet of uncompleted prints (twenty-five to thirty prints, depending on whether five reels was nearer 4,000 or 5,000 feet – the print viewed, the Library of Congress reference copy, was 3,952 feet long); by the end of the next month, two weeks after the release, only 15,023 feet of prints remained on inventory (three or four prints). Thus the bulk of the shooting must have been between late December 1915 and the end of February 1916, and the final value represents a standard production cost for a five-reel Fine Arts picture at this time. The only other production information I could find was a story in Motography (March 25, 1916, p. 719) to the effect that “Director William Christy Cabanne chartered a special space on ‘The Congress’, a steamer travelling between Los Angeles and San Diego, for the concluding scenes of the Lillian Gish Triangle play ‘Sold for Marriage’”. The shipboard scenes are not the final ones in the film, occurring in the middle, between the Russian and American parts of the story, but perhaps they were the last shot, in late February. The Moving Picture World summary (May 6, 1916, p. 1042) says that when Dimitri, Marfa’s grandfather, holds up Gregioff in the cabin, it is because he “recognizes the intruder as the man who had eloped with Marfa’s mother fifteen years before, only to desert her”. There is no evidence of this in the print viewed, where Dimitri is simply trying to delay the pursuit, and no contemporary review mentions it, so it might be something that was in the scenario used by the publicity department to prepare summaries for the press, but was not shot, or was cut before release. The summary also says Georg goes to get a rabbi to solemnise Marfa’s marriage, but the figure in the film looks to me like an Orthodox priest. Nothing in the print suggests that the family is Jewish – the most prominent building in the village they live in is an Orthodox church, and their names, if not all exactly Russian, are not Jewish. Both at the time of the first release, and more recently, commentators on Sold for Marriage seem obliged to take away with one hand what they give with the other. Although there are no reviews as directly hostile as Louis Reeves Harrison’s of Hoodoo Ann, discussed in my entry for that film [see DWG Project, #534], even the most favourable express reservations. The general tone is well captured by one of the most positive, The New York Dramatic Mirror’s (by-lined “E.”): “In this picture William Christy Cabanne has ... taken a slight story, that instrinsically contains very little of the dramatic, but by laying emphasis on his atmosphere and local color, the artistic beauty of his settings, and a spectacular feature in the shape of an extraordinarily severe rainstorm, has made of it a picture” (April 8, 1916, p. 28). Anthony Slide concludes: “Despite some beautiful early scenes in the snow and one brief shot of Lillian’s lover, ... on a train speeding from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Sold for Marriage is not a great film” (The Kindergarten of the Movies, p. 88). The same ambivalence is found in comments on what is now perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film, Lillian Gish’s performance. In 1916, despite her important part in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gish was by no means self-evidently a star like Mary Pickford, Anita Stewart, or Clara Kimball Young (though Oscar Cooper accorded her that status in his review of Sold for Marriage in The Motion Picture News, April 15, 1916, p. 2217). Although he grants that “Miss Gish’s portrayal of Marfa wins her the sympathy of the audience, she assumes the role of a Russian peasant in a thoroughly convincing manner”, Thomas Kennedy goes on, “Just why Miss Gish impresses one as an actress of great skill and little warmth is indeed a question, but the fact that her 15

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

work seems to lack natural color and spirit remains. In fairness to her we must insist again that her characterization is technically beyond criticism, and it is not at all unlikely that others will experience the natural warmth and sincerity we missed” (Motography, April 15, 1916, p. 881). Louis Reeves Harrison offers the actress rather patronising technical advice: “Lillian Gish carries her role with her accustomed intelligence, holding attention by sheer weight of intense personality. She has improved in divesting herself of the habit of crooking her elbows in at the body and gesticulating with her hands alone, in favour of a free-arm movement much more effective, but she still manifests a high nervous organization in her movements. She is such a capable actress in other respects, that it is to be hoped she will acquire greater control of little nervous workings of which she is unconscious, which give a sameness of characterization to the roles she assumes” (The Moving Picture World, April 15, 1916, p. 458). But the problem seems to be the same that bedevils the film as a whole: uncertainty about what Russia and Russians, and particularly Russian-Americans, are like, for both filmmakers and spectators. As “E.” put it: “Not possessing a wide acquaintance with Russian peasant girls we cannot express an opinion on the faithfulness of her characterization, but we can say with truth and justice that it was delightfully pleasing” (The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 16, 1928, p. 28). On seeing the film again many years later, Gish herself remarked, “I didn’t really know what I was doing” (cit. in Charles Affron, Lillian Gish, p. 100). The problem is not so much that the Russians in Sold for Marriage are stereotyped, or that the stereotypes used are false or prejudiced, as that there are few stereotypes to resort to and what there are are not well suited to plot generation (no one would suggest that the early American film industry’s stereotypes for Italian-Americans are historically accurate or unbiased, but that does not prevent filmmakers from devising engrossing movies about Italian-American characters). Most of the interest of the film is thus to be found in its decoration rather than in the story it tells. Among the decorative features singled out by many reviewers are the highly convincing storm, which uses flash frames of lightning streaked sky (the lightning being represented as wavy lines, not conventionalized zigzags, and hence probably influenced by real photographs of lightning), powerful winds and heavy rain in night-for-night shooting, and the snow scenes, presumably shot in the Sierras. I would add the remarkable Russian village street set, with two rows of thatched cottages leading to a square and an Orthodox church, often filmed in depth to show off the considerable size. Where could such a large set have been accommodated in the Sunset Boulevard studio? During the whole production period of Sold for Marriage, the lot north of the main studio buildings on which exterior sets were usually built was occupied by the set for the Belshazzar’s feast sequence in Intolerance. It seems impossible it could have been a California location (even if, as the film rather incongruously claims, there was a “Russian quarter” in Los Angeles in 1916). Could the filmmakers have found a rebuilt Russian village in California at some exposition or trade fair? Ben Brewster

16

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

538 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE HABIT OF HAPPINESS Alternate title: Laugh and the World Laughs Filming date: late January–February 1916 Location: New York State Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued in 1922 by Boltons Trading Corp. Release date: 12 March 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 21 February 1916 (LP8343) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Scenario: Allan Dwan, Shannon Fife Story: based on an idea by D.W. Griffith (see Merritt, “The Griffith Third”, p. 250) Camera: not known Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Sunny Wiggins); George Fawcett (Jonathon Pepper); Macey Harlam (Mr. Forster); Dorothy West (Miss Elsie Pepper); George Backus (Mr. Wiggins); Grace Rankin (Clarice Wiggins); William Jefferson (Jones); Margery Wilson NOTE: The Boltons Trading Corp. reissue print credits John Emerson as director and Anita Loos as scriptwriter. The story is attributed to Douglas Fairbanks. Archival sources: George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive (abridged version, Boltons Trading Corp. reissue); Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (reel 1 only), AFI/AMPAS Collection In this picture the hero “[Sunny”] [...] wealthy banker, is consumed with a desire t[...]. He has come to the conclusion that what the [...] anything else is to laugh occasionally; and, [...] exercises morning, noon and night, his success [...] a certain Dr. Stone, who has all but given up [...] make Jonathan Pepper, his richest patient, rel[...] As Stone’s assistant, therefore, h[e...] mansion of Pepper, where the power of the finan[...]sour state listening to a superannuated minstre[…] “Funeral March” on a bass viol. Poor “Su[nny”] [...]couraged, but he suddenly finds that old man [...] daughter who is well worth going after. So [...] In the course of events some bus[...] delegate a band of thugs to visit his home a[...] are consummating a crooked deal. “Sunny” [...] [...]ing them ill-disposed to laugh at the best [...] another course, uses his fists in a manner [...] Unfortunately, the thugs draw their [...] proves too many for the hero, and he drops in his [...] the stairs. He is not seriously injured a[...] the beautiful daughter of Pepper. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 21, 1916, LP8343 [extensive damage on sheet due to chemical deterioration] Sunny Wiggins is blest with a disposition that even outshines his surname [sic], and with a father who has oodles of money. Of course, having a dad of that type would almost tempt anyone to have a sunny disposition. But with it all Sunny has “ideas”, one of them is the brotherhood of

17

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

mankind, which he applies practically one night by weeding out about ten of the human derelicts from the bread line and taking them to his home and disposing of them in his room. At the opening of the picture there are a number of leaders which start the picture off much after the manner of a George Ade fable. The Wiggins family, comprising old man Wiggins, his daughter and Sunny, live on the outer edge of society and have risen to the plane where they are snubbed by all the best people in town. So much for the family history, except for the side remark. “Sis” Wiggins is one of those females who would rather have a male Salome trailing her than a flock of real two fisted “regular” fellows chasing in her wake. On the morn that Sunny awakes to discover he has as fine a collection of down-and-outers in his room as were ever gathered together under one roof outside of a Bowery Mission lodging house, Sis has invited a “mob” of social scavengers to luncheon. This luncheon means a lot to Sis, for on it she hopes to be “taken up” (but how far the leader fails to tell). Sunny takes his gang of ragamuffins into the bath room and treats them all to a free wash and then marches them into the dinning room, where the covers are laid for twelve. He and the bunch wade right into the feed, and when Sis and her squadron of selected society somebodies arrive there is a sweet scene. However, Sunny makes the best of it, and hands each of the down-and-outers “five” and sends each of them on their way rejoicing. Naturally Sis makes a howl to father and Sunny is taken to task. He pleads for the poor “guys” who never had a chance, with the result that dad tells him to go and live among them if he likes them so well. The boy takes pater at his word and starts a happiness society in a Bowery lodging where he makes his headquarters. Back up on “the Avenue” there is a grouch who has millions, dyspepsia and a pretty daughter. But, like an island, he is surrounded by a sea of gloom, which is of his own manufacture. His physician, who tries to rouse him, fails. The doctor on a charity visit to the lodging house, discovers young Wiggins is teaching the unfortunates there the art of laughing and makes him an offer to pull the millionaire out of the “dumps”. Sunny tackles the job, and makes a success of it and incidentally wins the old man’s daughter, his father’s forgiveness and was happy ever after. Variety, March 24, 1916, p. 29

Sunny, an eccentric heir to a rich family, refuses to live by the rules and taps his lighthearted humor to cheer up the have-nots of this world. His talent is spotted by a doctor who asks Sunny to help with what appears to be a hopeless case: brighten up a depressed millionaire. Nothing works – no jokes, no hunger treatment – until an unplanned gruesome incident wins Sunny the millionaire’s laughter and the heart of his beautiful daughter.

The overall mood this film attempts to create – mild mockery of the rich – is what charmed people about Fairbanks’ early films, though this time the attempt cannot be called successful. Its dramatic idea is this: depression is the disease that hits the rich as hard as it does the poor, but with the poor it is perhaps more curable. The hero: Sunny Wiggins, a rich man’s son who practices what the titles refer to “eccentric charity”. His idea of charity is to visit the poor quarters of the town, pick the worst down-and-out bums at the breadline, bring them to his place, feed them well and give them money on parting. This practice wins little approval on the part of Sunny’s father, even if a certain young lady who belongs to the same smart set as him looks very impressed. “GO ONE THERE AND LIVE FOR A WHILE WITHOUT MONEY, AND YOU’LL FIND FOR YOURSELF WHAT A WORTHLESS LOT THEY ARE”, is the father’s suggestion to Fairbanks’ hero, and without thinking twice Sunny does exactly as his father says. He moves to live in a lodging house for the poor where he makes the acquaintance of one professor Warren, a scientist and student of human nature, which – Warren thinks – opens best in an environment like this. Sunny, too, has a scientific theory, which he shares with his new friend: the reason for 18

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

human misery is that most people lack the habit of happiness. “I WONDER IF A FELLOW COULD TEACH THEM TO LAUGH”, thinks Sunny looking at the gloomy old men that surround him. Some funny stories and calisthenics bring easy results, but at this point a harder task confronts our charitable entertainer: the hopelessly laughless millionaire Jonathan Pepper. Even Dr. Stone, the eminent depression specialist, is baffled by old Pepper’s “dyspeptic grouch” and sends for the funny Sunny for help. When Sunny arrives at Pepper’s house he recognizes the sympathetic young lady (Dorothy West) who turns out to be gloomy Pepper’s daughter, and for some time both engage in futile attempts to cheer him up. “WHEN IT COMES TO MAKING PEOPLE HAPPY,” Sunny concludes, “MILLIONAIRES ARE NOT IN THE SAME LEAGUE WITH BUMS.” They decide to try the starvation treatment. But even this fails to help: when their well-starved patient is shown a piece of steak, instead of smiling happily he grabs and eats it. Meanwhile, a new line of action is introduced. Burglars are planning a holdup on old Pep’s house, a perfect occasion for Fairbanks to demonstrate his fighting prowess. A brief showdown results in four lifeless bodies. This landscape in his lobby does the work: finally the millionaire laughs! The last shot: Sunny recovers consciousness exactly at the moment when Pepper’s daughter leans over him. He instantly closes his eyes so as not to scare off the kiss. Disappointingly, in The Habit of Happiness Fairbanks does not do any jumping. In terms of direction, there is nothing noteworthy about this film (except perhaps for its fast cutting rate). One may even have doubts whether Griffith did a lot about supervising it (we know there was a lack of mutual admiration between Griffith and Fairbanks). One good thing about this film is the dry humor of intertitles. One is worth quoting. It comes up in the beginning of the film, when the invitees at some classy party need to be introduced, which the title does in estranged, almost technical terms, as a film scholar might: “IN THE FOREGROUND IS THE DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE, WHO HAS WRAPPED HER AFFECTION AROUND THE TALL BEANPOLE TO THE LEFT.” Whoever wrote this line (I fancy I recognize Anita Loos credited as the script writer in Boltons’ 1922 reissue) must have hated the film and all its sons and daughters of the house. Speaking of the credits, the ones found in the Boltons reissue (the only print that I was able to see) differ from the ones cited above. Boltons credits John Emerson for direction, Anita Loos for the script and Douglas Fairbanks for the story. Paolo Cherchi Usai and I asked Russell Merritt who answered: “The credits on the Boltons 1922 reissue are nuts. Allan Dwan discusses directing The Habit of Happiness at length in his interview with Peter Bogdanovich (Allan Dwan, pp. 40–42). Dwan and Shannon Fife are credited as the sole writers in The Moving Picture World, 22 April 1916. I think my DWG credit comes from Kalton Lahue’s Triangle book”. As to my feeling that some titles sound very Loosian, Merritt wrote: “I think Loos may be the hidden hand. When I wrote up the note on Fairbanks’ The Lamb [see DWG Project, #518], I thought I heard her voice too. But I could never find any evidence. It may well be that Loos did the actual writing, but for whatever reason the studio – at least at first – spread the writing credits around”. It is so nice having someone like Russell Merritt within an e-mail’s reach. Yuri Tsivian

19

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

539 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

SUNSHINE DAD Working title: A Knight of the Garter Filming date: November 1915–March 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 23 April 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 17 April 1916 (LP8603) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Edward Dillon Scenario: Chester Withey, Tod Browning (or Chester Withey and F.M. Pierson, according to copyright records) Story: Chester Withey, Tod Browning (or Chester Withey and F.M. Pierson, “authors”, according to copyright records) Camera: Alfred G. Gosden Cast: De Wolf Hopper (Alonzo [or Alfred?] Evergreen); Fay Tincher (Widow Marrimore); Chester Withey (Count Kottschkoff [or Ketchkoff]); Max Davidson (Mystic Seer); Raymond Wells (Mystic Doer); Eugene Pallette (Alfred Evergreen); Jewel Carmen (Charlotte [or Minerva], Alfred’s fiancée); William De Wolf Hopper, Jr. (Baby); Leo (A lion); Julia Faye?; Bobbie Fuehrer? NOTE: According to a news item in The Moving Picture World (February 26, 1916), Governor Hiram Johnson visited Griffith and De Wolf Hopper on the set. Archival sources: Library of Congress, 16mm acetate negative (William K. Everson Collection) This is the story of Alonzo Evergreen, a middle aged retired actor, who never has outgrown his youth, and who, in his pursuit of pleasure, suffers only from shortage of funds. He has, fortunately, a son Fred, who sticks closely to his desk, and who, by dint of long slaving, has accumulated a fair share of worldly goods. These Alonzo longs to dissipate and indeed, by frequent appeals, succeeds in extracting from him no inconsiderable share of them. The action opens with Alonzo interested in a charming widow who is matrimonially inclined, but who has been debarred from likely wedded bliss by the stipulation of her late husband’s will that if she marries again the successor must be over fifty. So Alonzo’s chances seem very good until he discovers a rival in the person of Count Ketchkoff. The Count has been so ungentlemanly, however, as to steal the sacred jewels of Jujab from a neighboring Hindu shrine. To escape the vengeful guardians of that shrine, the Count gives the jewels into the keeping of the widow, and one evening she wears them as a garter to the ball, and while dancing they slip to the floor unnoticed save by Alonzo Evergreen. He having been imbibed somewhat freely, thrusts the jewels into his pocket and forgets all about them. In the morning paper he sees the widow’s advertisement for their return; so, overjoyed that he may be of service, he does them up neatly, with a card enclosed addressed to “My Charming

20

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Widow”. The card happens to be one of his son’s but Alonzo is too shaky from his dissipation of the night before, to observe that fact. He leaves the package momentarily on his son’s desk. That starts the trouble. Fred’s fiancée having been on a shopping tour, happens in to see her beloved, and in leaving, gathers up the precious parcel with her own miscellaneous packages and carries it home. There she opens the parcel, sees the card, and recalls where she had picked it up. She returns it to Fred with her engagement ring. Alonzo having discovered the absence of the jewels and the mishap that carried them off, hurries to the home of his daughter-in-law, and after ascertaining to his satisfaction that she is not wearing it as a garter, gets the jewels from his son who has come with them, demanding explanation. He barely has given the jewels to the widow when the watchful Count carries them off. The Hindus [sic] leaders by this time have discovered Alonzo and the widow, so they bind Alonzo and carry the widow off to their shrine to be sacrificed unless the jewels are returned. To make her confess, a ferocious lion confined in a cage nearby is released. But at the crucial moment, Alonzo, who has worked himself loose, comes to the rescue. He carries the lady off, while the lion goes in pursuit. At last the lion dashes into the apartment of the Count, who is hidden in a folding-couch, and by his royal scent, corners the scoundrel. The Hindus follow and recover the jewels and release Alonzo and the widow, who, of course, decide to crown their adventures by entering hand in hand into the paths of all true lovers. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, April 17, 1916, LP8603 [stamped with date June 29, 1916]

Alonzo Evergreen, a “retired Thespian”, vies with Count Kottschkoff, a smooth international jewel thief, for the affections of the rich Widow Marrimore while the devotees of the pagan cult of Jujab try to figure out which one of the men has stolen a treasure in jewels from their idol. While the Hinyat “Seer” and the “Doer” stalk both men to recover their treasure (and make sure that the villain is punished), the diamonds of Jujab circulate from the count to the widow to Evergreen to his potential daughter-in-law. Misunderstandings multiply, thwarting young love and calling the wrath of the Hinyats down on each person in turn. In the final chase, the Widow is saved from the jaws of a lion, the son’s fiancée is restored to him, the count is marched off to justice and Evergreen finds true love at last.

In his review of the fortunes of Triangle in the July 1917 issue of Photoplay, Alfred A. Cohn noted that the company’s original intent was to produce “stories of everyday life” with “an element of humor”. Additionally, the films were supposed to be immune from censorship (Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks at the New York Public Library, Volume 212). As if to pre-empt anyone’s objections on the latter issue, Sunshine Dad opens with an aggressive title: “EVERY STATE, CITY OR TOWN HAS LAWS FOR THE ARREST AND TRIAL OF THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR IMMORAL EXHIBITIONS OR PUBLICATIONS, AND THIS INCLUDES MOTION PICTURES. THEREFORE, WHY CENSORSHIP?” Clearly, Griffith’s experience with The Birth of a Nation (1915)

had its effect. Though twenty-first-century sensibilities might find many questionable stereotypes in Sunshine Dad, its offenses and liabilities to censorship seem mild indeed. The film affects a light-hearted, wise-acre pose, especially in its titles. Sprightly, inconsequential, entertaining, Sunshine Dad certainly meets the Triangle objective of providing an “element of humor”, for there is not a moment of seriousness and not a character who is not silly in the film. 21

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The plot is the sort of deliriously complicated mélange that Preston Sturges would reintroduce with such charm – a mad whirl of knife-wielding pagan cultists (here called “Hinyats”), their bejeweled idol “Jujab”, sleazy counts who say “ze” for “the”, widows whose fortunes are hunted, harmless lechers, and young love triumphant. The set pieces – essentially physical situation comedy – include a scene in a café where the bill, a hat, and a hole in a pocket prolong the question of who will pay the tab; a set-up where the sight of a girl’s garter tests the character of her soon-to-be father-in-law; and a dizzy chase that lands a lion in a bathtub. The story is really a pretext for a set of physical turns that suggests a hybrid between Griffith’s type of melodrama and the more madcap temperament of his Triangle business associate Mack Sennett. But wherever Eddie Dillon found his inspiration, the situations are neatly worked out in cinematic terms. Though Dillon occasionally stages a scene from varied angles, he generally patterns his scenes with cuts in on the axis very much as Griffith would have done. The “supervising director”’s influence is strongest in passages like the opening in the Hinyat temple. Spying is set up very much in the way Griffith would have constructed “watcher-lurker” situations in the Biographs. Here the structure is turned toward comedy and recalls the venerable “Jones” Biograph farces as well as Mack Sennett’s contributions to Griffith’s early work. Joyce Jesionowski

22

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

540 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE GOOD BAD MAN Alternate title: Passing Through Working title: [Dwan Picture – Not Yet Named] Filming date: January–April 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: possibly Joshua Tree Wilderness near Twentynine Palms, San Bernardino County, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued by Tri-Stone Pictures, Inc., 19 October 1923 Release date: 7 May 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 19 October 1923 (LP 19514) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Scenario: Douglas Fairbanks (according to Motography, May 13, 1916, p. 1099) and/or Anita Loos (according to Boltons Trading Corp. 1974 reissue) Story: Douglas Fairbanks (according to 1923 copyright records) Camera: Victor Fleming Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (“Passin’ Through”); Sam De Grasse (Bud Frazer, a.k.a. “The Wolf”); Doc Cannon (Bob Evans); Joseph Singleton (“The Weazel”); Bessie Love (Amy); Mary Alden (Mary [or Jane] Stuart); George Beranger (Thomas Stuart); Fred Burns (Sheriff); [according to Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Dwan, p. 178:] Pomeroy Cannon (Marshal) NOTE: A news item in Motography (May 6, 1916, p. 1016) shows a photograph of director Allan Dwan directing in the Fine Arts studio of Los Angeles, with Fleming at the camera. Archival sources: Library of Congress, 16mm acetate positive (Boltons Trading Corp. 1974 reissue, with new [copyrighted] intertitles) An eccentric outlaw, himself ignorant of his parentage, exhibits as the motive for the majority of his crimes his desire to aid unfortunate children. For instance, he robs a grocery store and gives the loot to a little orphan kid. Always cheerful, always smiling, he goes to such lengths as to hold up the Pacific Express to get the conductor’s ticket punch. One day he rides into the alleged mine where Bud Frazer’s band of bandits made their rendezvous. Just “Passing’ [sic] Through”, he replies to their queries as to his identity. They send him to the shack of “The Weazel” for shelter and there he finds Amy. It is love at first sight and the stranger doesn’t stay long. He doesn’t know who he is so he rides away from the girl and shoots up a saloon in Maverick City just because he is in love and doesn’t care what happens. A sheriff handy with the rope puts a halt to the proceedings but a United States marshal prevents a lynching. The marshal proves to be a former suitor of the prisoner’s mother and from him “Passin’ Through” learns that he has a right to hold his head as high as any man’s. Bud Frazer coveted her and when he lost her he shot his rival and hounded the mother and child until the former died. Meanwhile Frazer, now known as “The Wolf”, has learned the real identity of the stranger. He now covets Amy and she is forced to accompany his band to Maverick City to await the killing

23

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

of “Passin’ Through” and then become the wife of “The Wolf”. “Passin’ Through”, gunning for Frazer, is taken by surprise but escapes when the marshal arives [sic] with his posse, and “Passin’ Through” rides away to the horizon with Amy sitting behind. The Moving Picture World, May 27, 1916, p. 1582

A whimsical badman, known only by the nickname “Passin’ Through”, holds up trains because he wants to play with the conductor’s ticket-punch, and steals from stores to give the proceeds to fatherless children. Passing through a mining settlement near Maverick City, he stays in the cabin of a paralysed old miner known as “The Weazel”, who has an attractive daughter, Amy. Maverick City is under the thumb of “The Wolf”, whose gang’s hideout is in the Weazel’s settlement, and the Wolf is courting Amy. Passin’ Through intervenes to protect Amy from the Wolf, and the Wolf backs down when Passin’ Through demonstrates his prowess with a revolver, but vows to get even. Amy asks Passin’ Through why he engages in his eccentric crimes. He explains that he does not know who his father is; his mother died when he was young leaving only a letter to a certain Bob Evans warning him not to tell her son her story, or he might try to kill Bud Frazer. Realizing that he is falling in love with Amy, and believing himself no fit husband for any woman, Passin’ Through flees to Maverick City, where he shoots up the saloon because he is in love. Arrested by the sheriff, he is handed over to a U.S. marshal who has arrived in town with a warrant for Passin’ Through. When he learns that the marshal is Bob Evans, Passin’ Through tells him he has a letter for him. Evans reads the letter, and tells Passin’ Through that his mother Mary rejected Bud Frazer to marry Thomas Stuart, and Passin’ Through was the legitimate fruit of this union. One day, however, Bud Frazer shot Stuart in the back, and Mary Stuart lost her wits and fled with her baby, and no one knew what had become of either of them. Evans agrees to let Passin’ Through go, and in gratitude for all his help, Passin’ Through gives him a locket with a portrait of his mother. Passin’ Through is spotted by one of the Wolf’s lieutenants, who rides to the settlement to tell his boss. The Wolf and his gang ride into town. Evans recognises the Wolf as Bud Frazer, and warns him to look out for Passin’ Through, since he is Mary Stuart’s son. The Wolf returns to the settlement. Evans tells Passin’ Through that the Wolf is Bud Frazer. Passin’ Through rides to the settlement, and tells Amy he can marry her, but they are surrounded by the Wolf and his gang. Passin’ Through shoots his way out, but Amy is captured by the gang. The Wolf tells the Weazel he is going to marry Amy once he has dealt with Passin’ Through, and when the Weazel protests, he beats him to death. Evans secretly assembles a posse to capture the Wolf and his gang at a nearby ranch. The Wolf rides into Maverick City, bringing Amy with him, meaning to kill Passin’ Through and marry Amy. He leaves her in a hotel room guarded by one of his lieutenants. Passin’ Through returns to the settlement, finds the Weazel dead, Amy gone, and proof of the Wolf’s identity. He rides into Maverick City and arrives at the hotel just in time to save Amy from rape by the Wolf’s lieutenant. Telling her to wait for him, he goes to the saloon. The Wolf has been informed of his arrival, however, and gets the drop on him as he enters the saloon. Returning a short distance in front of the posse, Evans enters the saloon and diverts the Wolf long enough for Passin’ Through to draw and shoot him, then holds up the gang so that Passin’ Through can run to collect Amy and ride out of town. The wounded Wolf shoots Evans; the gang burst out of the saloon and ride in pursuit of Passin’ Through, with the posse in pursuit of them. Evans shoots the Wolf dead; the locket Passin’ Through gave him had deflected the Wolf’s bullet. The posse round up the remnants of the gang, while Passin’ Through and Amy escape to another state, where Passin’ Through promises her he will start a new life.

24

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The account above is based partly on the print viewed, Library of Congress’ Bolton Trading Corp. 16mm reissue dated 1974, and partly on plot summaries and reviews from the time of first release, from which I have taken all character names. The titles in the print use different names for nearly all the characters except those that appear in inserts (thus the Amy above is called Sarah May, the hero’s mother is called Nan Wilson, and the Weazel is simply Sarah May’s Pa, while Bob Evans and Bud Frazer are still so called). The inserts in the print are flash titles that look like 1910s inserts, followed by typewritten full-length versions with the same wording. All the other titles clearly date from the 1970s. Interestingly, the main titles give Fairbanks story credit and Anita Loos scriptwriting credit. 1916 sources all attribute the script to Fairbanks, and I know of no evidence from that time that Loos made any contribution to the film. All the flashbacks detailing the hero’s criminal feats are concentrated in a prologue, as two old-timers discuss a newspaper story over a campfire at night, whereas the reviews and summaries suggest that at least some of them were originally located much later, when Passin’ Through tells his life story to Amy in the settlement. Some of the cutting – e.g., the alternations between shots of the frightened Amy and the drunken and lascivious half-breed guarding her in the hotel room – look too fast for a 1916 film, and might have been “doubled up” in a reissue. According to The American Film Institute Catalog, Tri-Stone Pictures (the company through which the Aitken brothers rereleased titles in which they retained rights after the collapse of Triangle) reissued the film in 1923 “in a slightly different form”. I do not know if the Bolton Trading Corp. print derives from this reissue, but it seems likely. Thus many vicissitudes intervene between the first-release version and what can be viewed today. The film first appears (as “Dwan Picture – not yet named”) in the 31 January 1916 Majestic Motion Picture Company monthly inventory (Harry and Roy Aitken Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 33), with a value of $2,630.00; in the 29 February inventory, still unnamed, it is valued at $1,713.87 (this seems to be an error – how could a film lose value while it is being made? – and the January figure has a handwritten query against it); by 31 March, it is listed as The Good Bad Man at $25,811.49, with 58,380 feet of uncompleted prints; in the 30 April inventory it is valued at $25,851.19, with no prints specified (does this mean they had already been sent to exchanges, even though the film was not released until 7 May?); and one completed print (4,890 feet – the print viewed is the equivalent of 3,456 feet) is listed on 31 May. The film was thus made quite quickly, with almost all of both the shooting and the post-production completed in March 1916. It is also a relatively low-budget film for the date. Unlike some of the other Dwan-Fairbanks pictures, it was made on location in California, not in the New York area – indeed, the prominence of joshua trees in some of the shots suggests it was probably made in what is now the Joshua Tree Wilderness near Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County. The Good Bad Man is the fifth of the films starring Douglas Fairbanks made at Fine Arts, and the second directed by Allan Dwan. Unlike all the others (except The Half-Breed), its plot is not really that of a comedy, but rather a straightforward Western, with a central situation and a hero not dissimilar from those of a film like Hell’s Hinges, produced by Thomas H. Ince and released while The Good Bad Man was being shot, in March 1916. The protagonist of both is an outlaw and criminal who is a sympathetic figure, a “good bad man” (the term was current though fairly new – the Oxford English Dictionary’s citation is from Clarence Mulford’s 1910 novel, Hopalong Cassidy) who is eventually turned wholly to the good side by the love of a woman. However, Fairbanks and Dwan make this story into something quite unimaginable from W.S. Hart and Thomas H. Ince (if it is true that Ince and Hart between them really directed Hell’s Hinges, rather than the credited Charles Swickard). This is odd 25

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

on the face of it, since the stoical Hart character would seem much more likely for a hero weighed down by childhood trauma, as Passin’ Through tells Amy he is. But Fairbanks never seems conflicted (unlike Hart, in the scenes in the church, torn between his love for the heroine and his camaraderie with the desperadoes bent on shooting it up, with the anguish then externalised in the inferno of the burning saloon). Rather, not having a father seems to justify the hero’s childish eccentricity (no pa, no super-ego), and finding his father simply lifts the inhibition that prevents him marrying Amy. The result is unquestionably a comedy, and a Fairbanks comedy, too (though the hero does not jump over any cactuses), and all 1916 commentators take it as such, and the twisting of an essentially dramatic plot into a comedy is rightly seen as offering “that saving grace, that rare good quality, originality”, as Louis Reeves Harrison puts it (The Moving Picture World, April 22, 1916, p. 643). Dwan, meanwhile, contributes more conventional, but beautiful, Western characteristics, notably the extensive use of extreme long shots in the desert landscape, and a carefully worked out and spatially coherent and convincing final shoot-out. Ben Brewster

26

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

541 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

SUSAN ROCKS THE BOAT Working titles: The Little Joan; Brotherhood Justice Filming date: February–April 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: (week prior to?) 15 May 1916, 81st Street Theatre Release date: 14 May 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Story: Bernard McConville Camera: John W. Leezer Cast: Dorothy Gish (Susan Johnstone); Owen Moore (Larry O’Neil); Fred J. Butler (Jim Cardigan); Fred A. Turner (Jasper Thornton); Edwin Harley (Randolph Johnstone, Susan’s grandfather); Clyde E. Hopkins (Percy Winton [or Percy Winston]); James O’Shea (Patrick Casey); Kate Bruce (Mrs. Randolph Johnstone). NOTE: according to Variety (April 8, 1916): “Griffith stayed through the night supervising the re-cutting of scenes”. The news item reported on how much Griffith’s intervention improved the film. Also, Kate Toncray and Marguerite Marsh are identified by Lillian Gish (in Dorothy and Lillian Gish, p. 61) in the cast of this film. However, Paul Spehr has pointed out that the photograph reproduced in the book with the caption Susan Rocks the Boat refers to Little Meena’s Romance, as confirmed by Dorothy Gish’s costume and the bag in her hand matching the image from Little Meena’s Romance reproduced on p. 60 of the same volume. Kate Toncray and Marguerite Marsh are included in the cast of Little Meena’s Romance (see DWG Project, #536). Archival sources: none known Susan Johnstone, with a large fortune and no responsibility, tires of her brainless existence and, after much reading of the story of Joan of Arc, is inspired to become a modern Joan. She decides to give her life to the emancipation of the poor and persuades Jasper Thornton, a brilliant criminal lawyer, to aid her in founding the Joan of Arc Mission is the slums. The local element looks upon her work as an easy solution to the prevalent slum desire to avoid work. All the loafers in the neighborhood take advantage of the young girl’s innocence to get gifts of money. The owner of the property, Cardigan, who runs the principal dive in the district, looks upon Susan with different eyes and schemes to get her in his power. Meanwhile Larry O’Neil, son of the late political boss of the ward, resents the society effort to uplift the district. Susan, who has a speaking acquaintance with the young man, naturally resents his attitude. As time goes on, Larry finds himself more interested in Susan’s work, so much so that he puts an end to much of the petty gambling of which she has been the victim. But there remains a trace of resentment for her interference, and this is almost fatal. A no-

27

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

good character discovers that the girl has been lured to Cardigan’s rooms and tries to tell Larry so that he can rescue her. Larry is pestered almost to the breaking point before he will listen. Then he loses no time. Susan has been putting up a fair defense but is about exhausted when Larry breaks in. Several of Cardigan’s followers interfere but are overcome. The end is obvious. The Moving Picture World, June 3, 1916, pp. 1760, 1762 “Susan Rocks the Boat” is in the high comedy style of “Little Meena’s Romance”, with Dorothy Gish and Owen Moore in the leading roles, and with a dash of Griffith suspense toward the end. It is well constructed, well acted and well handled, its distinguishing feature a nice appropriateness of types and settings, its general merit that of fine craftsmanship straight through. Its chief demerit lies in the story told, that of not having something really attained by little Dorothy’s good intentions, a compensation for effort. Something is attained – she transforms the leading character – but her noble purpose is disregarded in the end for the sake of story value. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, May 13, 1916, p. 1175

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. Although the story had a grim setting and a dramatic climax, it was another comedy designed to take advantage of Dorothy Gish’s lively personality and growing reputation as a comedienne. The author, Bernard McConville, was a former journalist who based his story on his observation of misguided philanthropic work in San Francisco slums. In outline, the plot seems the unlikely basis for a comedy, but apparently it worked. It made Julian Johnson’s list of outstanding films of the year in the September 1916 issue of Photoplay (Wagenknecht, Movies in the Age of Innocence, p. 225). The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison, who usually looked favorably on Dorothy, gave it a positive review (May 13, 1916, p. 1175) but “Fred”, who reviewed for Variety, thought the story was wishy-washy and not up to the standards that Triangle had set for itself. Harrison saw a Griffith touch in the suspenseful rescue at the climax of the film, but other than that, there is no indication that Griffith acted in any other capacity than producer. Paul Spehr

28

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

542 RELIANCE MOTION PICTURE CORP.? FINE ARTS FILM CO.?

MACBETH Filming date: shooting begun late January? 1916 (according to The Moving Picture World, January 15, 1916, p. 403); still in production in early April 1916 (according to The Moving Picture World, April 8, 1916) Location: Reliance-Majestic [Fine Arts] studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Producer: Harry E. Aitken Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 4 June 1916 Release length: eight reels (cut to seven and five reels?) Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John Emerson Adaptation: John Emerson Source: Macbeth, the play (1605–06) by William Shakespeare Camera: George W. Hill Assistant to John Emerson: Erich von Stroheim Art director: R. Ellis Wales Set decorator: Erich von Stroheim Cast: Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (Macbeth); Constance Collier (Lady Macbeth); Wilfred Lucas (Macduff); Spottiswoode Aitken (Duncan); Ralph Lewis (Banquo); Mary Alden (Lady Macduff); Olga Grey (Lady Agnes); L. de Nowskowski (Malcolm); Bessie Buskirk (Donalbain); Jack Conway (Lennox); Seymour Hastings (Ross); Carl Formes, Jr. (Bishop); Jack Brammel (Seyton); L. Tylden (First witch); Scott McKee (Second witch); Jack Leonard (Third witch); Francis Carpenter, Thelma Burns, Madge Dyer (Macduff’s children); Raymond Wells (Thane of Cawdor); George McKenzie (Doctor); Chandler House (Fleance) NOTE: Paul C. Spehr to Editor (August 3, 2002): “My guess is that the confusion [about the identification of the production company] is caused by the mix-up over what the Los Angeles studio was called. When Aitken left Mutual he took the Reliance and Majestic properties with him – he was principle stockholder. Films in production at RelianceMajestic and not released by Mutual became Triangle products, so there is some confusion in the July–September period of 1915. This should have been straightened out by 1916, but the name of the studio facilities caused confusion. The names I have seen are Kinemacolor, then Reliance, then Reliance-Majestic. I’ve also seen it called the Griffith studio and Fine Arts. The AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1911–1920 credits Reliance and I assume this was picked up from the studio name, but Triangle could still use Reliance as a production company name because they owned it. I don’t think that what I’ve found so far gives a clear-cut answer. The Moving Picture World, January 15, 1916, p. 403 has a photograph of Herbert Beerbohm Tree with DWG and Frank Wood. According to The Moving Picture World, March 18, 1916, Harry E. Aitken visited the set of the film the week before.” See also the correspondence from Ben Brewster to the Editor (November 2, 2003), quoted in a note to the entry (DWG Project, #516, in Volume 8) on Pillars of Society (1916). Archival sources: none known 29

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

As shown at the Rialto, the film is in two parts, the first preceded by a brief interlude. Up to the time of the intermission the story is carried to the point where MacDuff decides to drive Macbeth from the throne of the murdered king. The last half closes with the coronation of Malcolm, after he and MacDuff have defeated the hosts of Macbeth and captured the Royal Palace. “Fred”, Variety, June 9, 1916 [T]he birth of ambition after the prophesy of the witches and … the force of temptation as Lady Macbeth urges courage that his deeds may fulfill his hopes. … Macbeth, suffering from the conscience that “makes cowards of us all”, shrinks before the phantom dagger of the pursuing ghost of Banquo. The Moving Picture World, June 24, 1916, p. 2258

Macbeth, billed according to some sources as a “Fine Arts” film – a designation contractually agreed in September 1915 between Griffith and Triangle’s president Harry E. Aitken to specify Griffith’s artistic supervision – appears to have been made (in the view of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s biographers) without Griffith’s participation. Griffith, at the time Macbeth was being shot and edited, was fully occupied filming Intolerance, and, although he and Lillian Gish socialized with the leading actors, he seems to have had little or no direct contact with the production. Early in 1915, the New York theatrical impresario Daniel Frohman arranged that the eminent British actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who had experienced two successive theatrical failures at his London theatre, should take the title role in Triangle’s Macbeth, with Constance Collier – frequently Tree’s leading lady – as Lady Macbeth. Tree, whose previous experience of films had been extracts from King John (W.K.L. Dickson, 1899) and a truncated Trilby (Harold Shaw, 1914), assumed that he was to restage his 1911 His Majesty’s Theatre Macbeth for the camera and arrived in Hollywood with Collier and their entire stage wardrobe. Tree’s intent to simply record the play on film was frustrated by the director John Emerson who, with his wife and behind-the-scenes scenarist Anita Loos, determined that the film would reflect the “American technique” (Emerson’s term) of incident and action, as opposed to entire scenes complete with lengthy passages of dialogue and a static stage production. Tree, nonetheless determined to include full dialogue in the scenes in which Macbeth appeared, was filmed – and tricked – with three cameras apparently operating simultaneously. Two cameras recorded action, and the third, a dummy, turned as Tree spoke his lines. Reviewers commended Tree for the vitality of his performance – fighting with a broadsword and shield, leaping into the saddle and riding swift horses – and for his interpretation of an usurping king, terrified of apparitions but ruthless and energetic in defending his crown. Constance Collier was also praised for a Lady Macbeth outwardly ambitious and resolute but inwardly disintegrating. However, most critical praise fell to Emerson for confounding the public’s expectation of a laboured “Shakespearean” production and, instead, offering pageantry, out-of-door action, flying witches, and the spectacle of Birnam Wood on the move. The film’s intertitles were praised for the judicious editing of Shakespeare’s text whilst eschewing a modernised vocabulary. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest play, but there is no conclusive evidence on whether the film was distributed in eight, seven, or even five reels. In any event, whilst dialogue was abridged, there appears to have been no elisions of meaning or reduction in characters or incidents. David Mayer

30

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

543 D.W. GRIFFITH; WARK PRODUCING CORP.

INTOLERANCE Alternate title: Intolerance. Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages; Intolerance; A Sun-play of the Ages (copyright deposits); The Downfall of All Nations, or Hatred the Oppressor Working title: The Mother and the Law Filming date: late October–December 1914 and August–September 1915 (Modern story); September–October 1915 (French story); November–December 1915 (Judean story); January–April 1916 (Babylonian story); additional footage of unspecified episodes shot in late Summer 1916, after New York premiere; additional footage of Babylonian episode shot in February 1917 (with Elmer Clifton and Constance Talmadge) and September 1917 (Babylonian harem scene). Reliance-Majestic production ledgers report payrolls from 17 October 1914 to 23 January 1915, and from 4 June 1915 to 27 February 1917 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; additional footage (Babylonian harem scene) shot by Joseph Henabery?, possibly at the Famous PlayersLasky Studio, New York; exteriors: California Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Wark Producing Corp.; Road Show Riverside, California trial showings: 4 and 5 August 1916, Orpheum Theater (as The Downfall of All Nations, or Hatred the Oppressor by Dante Guilio [pseudonym of D.W. Griffith]) New York premiere: 5 September 1916, Liberty Theatre European premiere: 7 April 1917, Drury Lane Theatre, London Moscow premiere: 25 May 1919, Artistic Teatr (probably a private, illegal screening) Release date: 5 September 1916 Revival date: 3 November 1926, Cameo Theatre, New York Release length: thirteen reels (per 5 September 1916 copyright records) or fourteen reels (footage as of 16 October 1916: 11,663 ft.). Other recorded footage counts during the distribution of the film: 31 December 1921: 11,538 ft; 1933: 11,305 ft., 11,203 ft. Copyright date: 24 June 1916 (as Intolerance; A Sun-Play of the Ages) [LU8570]; 5 September 1916 (as Intolerance) [CIL 9934] Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: D.W. Griffith Story: D.W. Griffith Source: [All Ages:] “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, the poem by Walt Whitman, from “Book XIX: Sea Drift” in Leaves of Grass (1860) Camera: G.W. Bitzer Assistant cameraman: Karl Brown Assistants to the director: George Siegmann, W.S. Van Dyke; according to modern sources: Edward Dillon, Tod Browning, Joseph Henabery, Monte Blue, Elmer Clifton, Mike Siebert, George Hill, Arthur Berthelon, W. Christy Cabanne, Jack Conway, George Nichols, Victor Fleming, Erich von Stroheim Production advisor (Babylonian episode): Allan Dwan Executive and production assistant: J.A. Barry Art director: Ralph Dyer (among others) 31

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Set design: Walter L. Hall, Frank “Huck” Wortman (both according to modern sources) Set design assistant: R. Ellis Wales Construction: Frank “Huck” Wortman Carpenter: Shorty English (according to modern sources) Assistant carpenter: Jim Newman (according to modern sources) Costumes provided by: Western Costume Co. Costumes assistant: R. Ellis Wales Choreography: Ruth St. Denis (according to modern sources) Makeup assistant: Robert Anderson Film editors: James Smith, Rose Smith Musical accompaniment arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil; D.W. Griffith (according to modern sources) Musical accompaniment arranged by (for Great Britain and various European venues): A.J. Beard Musical accompaniment arranged by (for abridged version screened in four venues in Germany): Dr. Felix Günther Titles: D.W. Griffith, Anita Loos; Frank E. Woods (according to modern sources) Color: Handschiegl process (in some prints, according to modern sources; French episode only?) Special effects: Hal Sullivan (according to modern sources) Technical direction assistant: Robert Anderson Property master: Ralph DeLacy (according to modern sources) Assistant property: Hal Sullivan (according to modern sources) Research assistants: Joseph Henabery, Lillian Gish, R. Ellis Wales (all according to modern sources) Production assistant (unspecified capacity): Erich von Stroheim Religious advisors: Rabbi M[e]yers, Rev. Neal Dodd (both according to modern sources) Historical authorization: R. Ellis Wales Stills: James G. Woodbury (according to modern sources); Madison Lacy (Babylonian set) Cast: [ALL AGES] Lillian Gish (The Woman Who Rocks the Cradle). [JUDEAN STORY (27 A.D.)] Howard Gaye (The Nazarene); Lillian Langdon (Mary the Mother); Olga Grey (Mary Magdalene); Gunther von Ritzau (Pharisee); Bessie Love (The Bride of Cana); George Walsh (Bridegroom of Cana); William [H.] Brown (The Bride’s Father); [according to modern sources:] W.S. Van Dyke (A Wedding Guest). NOTE: Joseph Henabery and Arthur Lennig (in Lennig, Stroheim, p. 39–40) identify William Courtright and Joseph Henabery (Pharisees); they dispute the presence of Erich von Stroheim in this episode of the film in the role of a Pharisee (see also Henabery, Before, In and After Hollywood, pp. 66, 94). [MEDIEVAL FRENCH STORY (1572 A.D.)] Margery Wilson (Brown Eyes); Eugene Pallette (Prosper Latour [or Jean Etienne]); Spottiswoode Aitken (Brown Eyes’ Father); Ruth Handforth [or Handford] (Her Mother); A.D. Sears (The Foreign Mercenary); Frank Bennett (Charles IX, King of France); Maxfield Stanley (Henri, duc d’Anjou); Josephine Crowell (Catherine de Medici); Georgia Pearce [= Constance Talmadge] (Marguerite de Valois); W.E. Lawrence (Henry [or Henri] of Navarre); Joseph Henabery (Admiral Coligny); Louis Romaine (Catholic Priest); Morris Levy (Duc de Guise); Howard Gaye (Cardinal Lorraine); Raymond Wells, George James, Louis Ritz, John Bragdon (Counsellors of the King); [according to modern sources:] Chandler House (A page). [BABYLONIAN STORY (539 B.C.)] Constance Talmadge (The Mountain Girl); Elmer Clifton (The Rhapsode); Alfred Paget (The Prince Belshazzar); Seena Owen 32

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

(The Princess Beloved, Attarea); Carl Stockdale (The King Nabonidus); Tully Marshall (The High Priest of Bel); George Siegmann (Cyrus the Persian); Elmo Lincoln (The Mighty Man of Valor); Grace Wilson (First dancer of Tammuz); Lotta Clifton (Second dancer of Tammuz); George Beranger (Second Priest of Bel); Ah Singh (First priest of Nergel); Ranji Singh (Second priest of Nergel); Robert Lawler?/Lawrence Lawlor? [or George Fawcett?] (Babylonian Judge); Kate Bruce (Babylonian Mother/Old Woman); Loyola O’Connor (Attarea’s slave); James Curley (Charioteer of Cyrus); Ed Burns (Charioteer of the Priest of Bel); James Burns (Charioteer of the Second Priest of Bel); Howard Scott (Babylonian Dandy); Martin Landry (Auctioneer); Arthur Meyer (Brother of the Mountain Girl); Charles Eagle Eye (Barbarian Chieftain); William Dark Cloud (Ethiopian Chieftain); Charles van Cortland (Gobryas, Lieutenant of Cyrus); Jack Cosgrove (Chief Eunuch); Alma Rubens, Ruth Darling, Margaret Mooney (Girls of the marriage market); Winifred Westover (Favorite of Egibi); Ethel Terry [not to be confused with Ethel Grey Terry, also in cast as a favorite of the harem according to modern stories] or Ellen Terry [not to be confused with British stage actress Ellen Terry] (Slave girl/Egyptian slave girl); Mildred Harris, Pauline Starke, Daisy Robinson? (Favorites of the harem); [according to modern sources:] Ethel Grey Terry, Carmel M[e]yers, Jewel Carmen, Eve Southern, Natalie Talmadge, Carol Dempster, Anna Mae Walthall (Favorites of the harem); Wallace Reid (A Boy Killed in the Fighting); Ted Duncan (Captain of the gate); Ruth St. Denis? (Solo dancer) [actual participation was denied by her in an interview]; The Denishawn Dancers (Dancers); Gino Corrado (The Runner); Felix Modjeska (Bodyguard to the princess); Mme. Sul-Te-Wan (Girl of the marriage market); Owen Moore, Wilfred Lucas, Douglas Fairbanks, Frank Campeau, Nigel de Brulier, Donald Crisp, Tammany Young (Extras). [MODERN STORY] Mae Marsh (The Dear One); Fred Turner (Her father); Robert Harron (The Boy); Sam De Grasse (Arthur Jenkins); Vera Lewis (Mary T. Jenkins); Miriam Cooper (A Friendless One); Walter Long (The Musketeer of the Slums); Tom Wilson (The Kindly Policeman); Ralph Lewis (The Governor); Lloyd Ingraham (Judge of the Court); Barney Bernard (Attorney for the Boy); Rev. A.W. McClure (Father Farley); Max Davidson (The Kindly Neighbor); Alberta Lee (Wife of the Kindly Neighbor); Frank Brownlee (Brother of the girl); Marguerite Marsh (Guest at ball); Tod Browning (Owner of the racing car); Edward Dillon (Chief Detective); Clyde Hopkins (Arthur Jenkins’ Secretary); William [A.] Brown (Warden); Mary Alden (Society social worker); Eleanor Washington, Pearl Elmore, Lucille Brown, Luray Huntley, Mrs. Arthur Mackley (Self-styled uplifters); Kate Bruce (The city mother); Tully Marshall (A friend of the Musketeer); [according to modern sources:] J.P. McCarthy (Prison guard); Monte Blue (Strike leader); Billy Quirk (Bartender). Additional cast in unspecified episodes: Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree [according to a Photoplay news item], De Wolf Hopper (Extras); Hal Wilson; Francis McDonald; Clarence H. Geldert; Ernest Butterworth; Wilbur Higby? Archival sources: FILM – Academy Film Archive, 35mm acetate negative; two 35mm acetate positives; 16mm acetate positive; 16mm acetate negative (generation undetermined for all elements); Cinémathèque Québécoise, 35mm acetate positive, English intertitles (generation undetermined); Cineteca Nazionale (Roma), 35mm acetate positive, English intertitles (received in 1964 from Danske Filmmuseum, Copenhagen [from George Eastman House source]); 35mm acetate negative (presumably collated from Danske Filmmuseum print and 35mm nitrate positive with Italian intertitles, destroyed in 1979); Det Danske Filmmuseum, 35mm acetate negative, English intertitles (from 35mm nitrate positive donated by George Eastman House; printed in Denmark 26 August 1954, no longer extant. See note below); Filmoteka Narodowa (Warszawa), 33

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

35mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); George Eastman House, 35mm acetate negative (printed 1953 from 1916–17 35mm nitrate positive, donated to Det Danske Filmmuseum in 1954 [no longer extant]); 35mm nitrate positive (excerpt); two 16mm acetate positives (a: George Eastman House Collection; b: Martin Scorsese Collection); Gosfilmofond of Russia (Moscow), 35mm acetate negative (abridged version for 1919 Russian release); Library of Congress, 1,101 glass slides of nitrate frames submitted for copyright in 1916; 16mm acetate negative (4,724 ft), AFI/David Shepard Collection (assembled in tinting sequence, not continuity); 16mm acetate positive (4,428 ft), D.W. Griffith, Inc., reissue (1970), tinted; 16mm viewing copy (4,800 ft.), Killiam reissue; 16mm acetate positive (4,932 ft), Ralph Sargent reissue (1974); 16mm acetate positive (excerpt from “Act II”, 800 ft.), Kemp R. Niver Collection; 35mm acetate positive (12,549 ft), MoMA restoration (1989), tinted and toned; National Film and Television Archive, 35mm acetate negative # 2,025,719 M, 11,965 ft. (acquired in 1948); 35mm acetate fine grain master # 2,021,968 M, 10,957 ft. (struck in 1949 from unidentified negative); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate positive (ca. 1926, received 1938 from D.W. Griffith; 10,900 ft.); Österreichisches Filmmuseum (Wien), 35mm acetate positive (generation undetermined, English intertitles); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive (John Hampton/David W. Packard Collection), edge code 1936. MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), original score (unspecified parts); Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), Bruxelles, original score (unspecified parts), 224 pages; Library of Congress, a) orchestral parts (1,1,2,1; 2,2,2,0; drums; harps; strings); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 42 (The Museum of Modern Art Collection); b) piano score, 258 pages; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 42a (The Museum of Modern Art Collection); c) selection from the incidental music, piano (published by Chappell & Co., Ltd., London 1916), 52 pages; copyright E 391398, 4 November 1916; R 122566, 4 November 1943, Jean S. Breil, New York and Clarence Lucas, London; location: LC M1527.B7315; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 70; d) cue sheet, 4 pages (The Museum of Modern Art Collection). NOTE: photocopy of typescript; pages are pieced together and held with tape; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 421 NOTE on Archival Sources: According to Russell Merritt (“D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Reconstructing an Unattainable Text”, 1990, p. 375), the Museum of Modern Art purchased from Griffith the following elements: 35mm original nitrate negative; two 35mm nitrate positives (both tinted); 35mm nitrate positive (“several thousand feet” of outtakes). With the exception of a 35mm nitrate positive, these elements are no longer extant. According to a letter from Eileen Bowser to Russell Merritt, 6 November 1990 (notes in brackets are by Russell Merritt), “We cannot trace [what happened to] the black and white nitrate [made in 1935]. It does not appear on any old inventories. One possibility, but just speculation, is that this print was given back to DWG to stop him from trying to borrow our materials. Possibly [this was] the print used in the 1940s commercial showings? Maybe this print ended up in the Hampton Collection, now at UCLA?” Russell Merritt to Paolo Cherchi Usai, 29 July 2003: “I think the Hampton print, which came to UCLA via David Packard, could not have been the MoMA [print]. According to David Shepard, Griffith gave the print to Hampton only shortly before his death.” In a letter to Ib Monty (then Director of Det Danske Filmmuseum) dated 6 November 1990, Russell Merritt writes: “The earliest reference to [the Danske Filmmuseum] print can be found in The D.W. Griffith Papers at the Museum of Modern Art. On 11 November 1933, Lloyds Film 34

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Storage, 345 W. 40th St., New York, reported to Griffith on the lengths of four different Intolerance prints held in their vaults. Your footage count [181,341 frames in the 35mm acetate negative: 11,304 ft. 1 frame, long pitch; 11,280 ft. 4 frames, short pitch, according to a report submitted by Uffe Lomholt Madsen in October 1990] matches down to the foot print #3, which totalled 11,305 ft. This means that Griffith had access to this version of Intolerance as late as 1933, long after he had made his final revisions. How the print made its way from Lloyds vault to George Eastman House is something of a mystery. Mr. James Card at GEH remembered that the House bought it from Lloyds when the vault went bankrupt. Others at MoMA have suggested that the print was purloined from Lloyds and subsequently traded or sold to the House. In any case, a 16mm copy of your print was made in 1953 at the John E. Allen lab and sold to film collector-distributer [sic] Georges Korda in Caracas, Venezuela. This is the print that David Shepard at the AFI found in 1963, and which later was distributed by Blackhawk Films in 1974. The Blackhawk version is not an exact copy of yours because in the first two 16mm reels Blackhawk interpolated a number of shots from the standard version of Intolerance…. My own judgement is that your print represents a version of Intolerance that circulated in late 1917 or 1918: before Griffith re-edited his film into The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law but substantially after the start of the original 1916 road show tours.” A golden thread binds the four stories – A fairy girl, with sun-lit hair Her hand on the Cradle of Humanity – Eternally rocking – Program, Chestnut Street Opera House, Philadelphia, undated [1916] PREFACE. The book of this play is arranged in four parallel plot-threads, or lines of action, telling four stories with four sets of characters and dealing with four periods of history, all bearing on the one theme of intolerance. The play as screened is represented as being contained within a single volume and as the play progresses, leaves of this book are shown, whereon are recorded titles descriptive of the pictured events which follow; these being founded upon ancient, sacred and medieval history, as well as narrating a modern story as it develops; all of which, intermingled, forms the substance of INTOLERANCE – A Sun-play of the Ages. The modern episode tells the life of a Boy and a Girl. Because of the intolerance of a slavedriving mill owner, who denies his workers the right of freedom to think and live according to their own lights, and cuts their wages; a strike is ordered and the mill is shut down. The Boy and the Girl, unacquainted, having lived in the mill town in a fair degree of happiness and contentment, go to the city. Here in the maelstrom of poverty and loneliness, they meet and wed. The Boy encouraged to break away from the tough gang of which, through stress of bitter hardships, he had become a member, is railroaded by the gang to prison – the house of intolerance. The Girl, becoming a mother, is broken in spirit and health. A committee of “uplifters” from the charitable association founded by the mill owner, discovers the Girl using liquor for a cold and they report her case to the juvenile court. She is adjudged unfit to care for her child. It is taken from her by the court and placed in a public institution. The Boy serves his term and the Girl listening to the head gangster when he promises to get her child back to her, is persecuted by his attentions. His mistress becomes jealous and kills him. The Boy is accu[sed] of the murder and sentenced to be hanged. The mistress murderer of the gangster repents and confesses. The Boy is released. He and the Girl are reunited, their child is restored and they begin life anew.

35

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The episode of sacred history opens at the Jaffa gate where are assembled visitors to and residents of Jerusalem. Among the crowd is seen Mary Magdalene, scorned of righteous men. At a marriage in Cana of Galilee, the miracle of turning water to wine is performed by Jesus of Nazareth. Later He, the most tolerant of men, is scoffed at by the intolerant Pharisees. He grants forgiveness to the repentant Magdalene and pronounces judgment upon those who, sinful themselves but intolerant of the weakness of others, would cast stones at her. Jesus is condemned to die and travels the sorrowful way, bearing His cross, to the Crucifixion. The medieval period chronicles events that took place when Charles IX was King of France. Many Huguenots are shown arriving in Paris to celebrate the wedding of Henry of Navarre and Reine Margot, sister of the king. Dealing with the lives of the great people in the palace – Catherine de Medici, Charles IX, Henry of Navarre, M. La France, Coligny and Reine Margot – and with their political and religious intolerance which brought destruction to the Huguenots of France, the story tells in particular of one humble little family of which “Brown Eyes” is the chief character. Jean Etienne and she are betrothed. The massacre, ordered by the half-demented king through the machinations of his evil mother, takes place and the agonized Jean finds among those butchered the entire family of his sweetheart; then he comes upon the tortured lifeless body of the girl herself – the victim of a lascivious, murdering soldier of France. The ancient episode opens in 539 B.C. and is founded on the history of Babylon as recorded on the cylinders of Cyrus and Nabonidus. The story opens as a concourse of people throng through Imgur Bel, the great gate of Babylon; among them are ambitious Persians spying upon the city. King Nabonidus, apostle of peace, engrossed in the pursuit of archaeology, has turned the reins of government over to his son Belshazzar, the sybarite. Nabonidus wishes to reunite the gods of the Assyrian temples in one House. This enrages the intolerant High Priest of Bel, god of Babylonian destinies, for with the introduction of rival foreign gods and priests, he sees his own powers and privileges diminishing. On a festive occasion a Mountain Girl of Susiana, by her weird beauty, attracts the attention of Prince Belshazzar who spares her life and wins her adoration and gratitude. Later at the marriage mart when this wildly incorrigible girl cannot, even with a dower, secure a husband, she is given the freedom of the city by the prince. Cyrus, after conquering the Medes – in his hand the sword of war, that weapon of intolerance – approaches Babylon as the agents of the envious Priest of Bel have spread discontent among the subjects of Belshazzar while he, infatuated with beautiful Attarea, promises her that after Cyrus is conquered he will build her the city of her whims. Cyrus attacks Babylon and is repulsed. A feast is held in celebration by Belshazzar. The Mountain Girl, learning of the proposed return of the traitorous Cyrus from a boastful adorer of hers, follows the Priest of Bel to the outposts of Cyrus and returns to warn Belshazzar. But the prince will not heed the report that a great army is marching on Babylon. Amidst the feasting Cyrus enters through the gate left open by the treacherous Priest, and Babylon falls. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, June 24, 1916, LU8570 (title, description and 2,203 prints [= frames]) “Intolerance”, the photoplay spectacle by David Wark Griffith, is a tremendous representation of big historic events in three distinct periods of the world’s history, placed in apposition with a story of life among the people in the America of today, and with an embellishment of orchestral music and of illustrative song heightened by theatrical effects. The theme of the spectacle, love’s struggle throughout the ages, is told in four separate stories paralleling side by side. The scenes of the modern story takes [sic] place in America of today – first in a factory town, then in a large city. The story: –

36

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

A mill magnate, a so-called philanthropist, cuts the wages of his employees in order to increase his contributions to charity without expense to himself. A strike results with loss of life and increased poverty from lack of work. To a big city in search of employment drift the Dear One, the Boy and a Friendless One – leading characters in the story. They get entangled in the toils of the underworld. The Dear One and the Boy meet, love and get married. The Boy offends an underworld boss, is framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and sent to prison. While in prison, the mill magnate’s Charity Foundation for the Uplift of Humanity decrees that the Boy’s wife is unfit to raise her own child and that institution takes it away from her. On the Boy’s release from prison he is accused of a murder committed by the Friendless One, adjudged guilty and condemned to be hung. The murderess confesses and the Boy is saved from the gallows through the timely intervention of a Governor, sought by the confessed murderess and the Dear One in a racing automobile and caught aboard an express train overtaken by the motorcar. The final scene shows the Boy, the Dear One and the baby reunited. The locale of the second story is Judea, 27 A.D., the leading characters are Christ, Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene. In this story the Man of Men is depicted walking among and teaching His people His law, the law of love and always kind tolerance. The principal scenes show the Humble Nazarene performing the miracle of turning water into wine at the Marriage in Cana; rebuking those who would stone the woman taken in adultery; outside the Roman Judgement [sic] Hall after the verdict of Pontius Pilate; the fall of Christ before the lash of the Roman soldiery; His crucifixion on the Cross of Calvary. The third story is located in France in the middle ages, 1527 A.D. The principal characters are Brown Eyes, a Huguenot maiden, Prosper Latour, her sweetheart, Charles IX, King of France, Catherine de Medici, the Queen Mother. Here is shown the magnificence of the court of Charles IX[:] the festivities in the streets of Paris in honor of the betrothal of the Catholic princess, Marguerite de Valois and the Protestant prince, Henry of Nevarre [sic]. Brown Eyes, her family and Prosper Latour visit Paris to view the celebrations. Catherine de Medici is shown citing the incident of the massacre of the Catholics by the Huguenots, at Nimes, to inflame her followers against the Protestants. She is successful in her plotting, eventually inducing her son, the King, against his will, to order that act of intolerance known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Morn. The King’s soldiers mark the doors of the doomed Protestants with a cross. A Catholic friend tells Prosper Latour of the intended massacre and provides him with the badges of safety that distinguish the Catholics from the Protestants. The Bell of St. Germain tolls the signal for the massacre to begin and Prosper rushes wildly through the tumultuous streets in an effort to save his sweetheart, Brown Eyes, who with her family, is barricaded in their home. Prosper arriving too late to save Brown Eyes becomes a victim too, of the intolerance of the Catholic party. The fourth story is placed in Babylon, at the time Belshazzar, the golden prince, was ruling for his father Nebonidus [sic], 539 B.C. Nabonidus was a lover of peace and religious toleration. On this account he welcomed the worship of Ishtar, the Love Goddess. This aroused the antagonism of the intolerant high priest of Bel. A little Mountain Girl, from the wilds, is in love with Belshazzar. He saves her from being sold in the marriage market. On another occasion he saves her from a sentence of death imposed upon her by the High Priest of Bel. She had nearly strangled an under-priest for speaking ill of Belshazzar, and the high priest had ordered her condemned to death. Belshazzar is madly adored by the Princess Beloved. The Mountain Girl worships him from afar. Cyrus, the Persian Conqueror of the world, attacks Babylon at the close of the first act. While the Princess Beloved prays for Belshazzar in the temples, the Mountain Girl fights for him on the walls; Belshazzar wins and vanquishes the armies of Cyrus.

37

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

In the last act is shown the feast of Belshazzar, in celebration of his victory over Cyrus. They give honor to Ishtar, the love goddess, for victory. Enraged at this, the high priest mans the gates with his chosen guards, bribes many of the king’s guards, and goes to the tents of Cyrus with a proposition to open the gates for the entrance of Cyrus’ army in the night into Babylon. Through the youthful Rhapsode, madly in love with the Mountain Girl, the latter hears of the Priest’s visit to Cyrus, and follows them in her chariot. She sees Cyrus and his army start on their march, and dashes ahead in an attempt to warn Belshazzar of his danger. Though the girl is delayed on the way, she dashes into the Banquet hall in time to warn Belshazzar, but too late to save him. Belshazzar with only a few guards, [sic] fights to the last at the gates of his Palace, while the Princess Beloved prays to Ishtar. Mighty Babylon falls conquered by the Great Cyrus. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, September 5, 1916 [stamped with date January 8, 1917, CIL 9934]

Intolerance incorporates four separate stories, each occurring in a distinct time frame: the fall of Babylon takes place in 539 B.C.; the Judean narrative chronicles episodes in the life of the adult Christ, leading up to his crucifixion; the story set in sixteenth-century France culminates in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; and the modern-day tale shows a young man and woman whose paths cross once labour woes bring them to the city and then find their married life nearly destroyed by the husband’s incarceration and near-execution. Interwoven amongst these four stories are recurring shots of a woman rocking a cradle, unrelated spatially or temporally to the surrounding narratives. In the Babylon story, as Prince Belshazzar prepares for marriage to the Princess Beloved, forces conspire against him on two fronts: within the city, the High Priest of Bel is infuriated by Belshazzar’s devotion to the goddess Ishtar; while in Persia, Cyrus gathers troops to assail the walls of Babylon. Prior to Cyrus’ attack, a Mountain Girl arrives in the city and catches the attention of Rhapsode, a poet agent in the service of the High Priest of Bel. Consigned to the marriage market, the Mountain Girl is saved from being sold off to a husband by the intervention of Belshazzar, which causes her to be in thrall to the Prince from that moment onward. The inhabitants of Babylon are able to repel Cyrus and his forces during the initial attack, but the High Priest of Bel meets with Cyrus afterward and conspires with him, facilitating a second, surprise assault on the city. The Mountain Girl learns of the plan and rushes off to warn Belshazzar. Informed of the attack, the Prince is unsuccessful in his efforts to fend off Cyrus this time, and the city falls. The Mountain Girl dies during the battle, while Belshazzar and the Princess Beloved take their lives rather than surrender to the Persians. The Judean story details key events in the Christ story, including his provision of food and drink for the guests of the Wedding of Cana and the defence of Mary Magdalene against her attackers. It culminates in the Passion of Jesus and his death upon the cross. The French story chronicles the efforts of Catherine de Medici to convince her son Charles IX to approve the slaughter of the Huguenots. Spurred by her memory of the killing of Catholics at Nîmes, Catherine desires revenge, and the result is the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Caught up in this purge of Protestants is the Huguenot family of a young woman named Brown Eyes, who is the fiancée of another Protestant, Prosper Latour. Though Prosper tries to intercede and save his bride-to-be, she and her family perish before he can reach their home and he meets his death at the hands of the Catholics as well. In the Modern story, Mary Jenkins, the sister of a wealthy industrialist, becomes commit38

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

ted to a program of social uplift. She convinces her brother to fund her efforts, which leads him to cut wages at his mill. The resultant strike invites violent retaliation by management, and in the ensuing mêlée, the father of a young man (known as the Boy) is killed. Like many of the mill employees, including a young woman (the Friendless One) and an older man (accompanied by his daughter, the Dear One), the Boy is forced by the mill’s closure to move to the city and seek employment there. Both the Boy and the Friendless One fall in with the Musketeer, a small-time hoodlum who controls the neighbourhood in which they and the Dear One and her father live. The Dear One attracts the attention of the Boy, and, after the death of her father, they are wed. Determined to reform, the Boy tries to leave the Musketeer’s gang, but the leader frames him for a burglary charge and the Boy is sent to prison. While she is at home alone without the Boy, the Dear One gives birth to their child and tries to raise it on her own. Mary Jenkins’ forces of uplift, who have swept the city enacting social reforms, drop in on the Dear One unexpectedly and determine that she is an unfit mother. The child is removed to the Jenkins Foundation just prior to the Boy’s release from prison. The Musketeer becomes interested in the Dear One and, promising to help her retrieve her baby, gains her confidence. Alone with her in her apartment, he makes advances, but is interrupted by the Boy. At the same time, the Friendless One has learned of the Musketeer’s intentions and followed him to the apartment. As the Boy and the Musketeer struggle, the Friendless One positions herself outside the apartment on the window ledge. The Musketeer’s attack on the Boy is cut short when the Friendless One, unnoticed, shoots her unfaithful lover from her perch. She then tosses the gun into the apartment, leaving circumstantial evidence to incriminate the Boy for the Musketeer’s murder. Tried and convicted, the Boy faces execution by hanging. A sympathetic neighbourhood policeman befriends the Dear One and reaches the conclusion that someone else shot the Musketeer. He catches the Friendless One lurking about and extracts a confession from her. Racing against time, the cop, the Dear One and the Friendless One rush to alert the governor to secure a pardon. Finally catching the governor on a train, they are able to use the pardon to avert the Boy’s execution at the last minute. (Plot synopsis by Charlie Keil)

PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION A detailed account of the tangled production history of Intolerance is beyond the scope of this essay, but the essentials can be quickly summarized. True to what had already become his customary practice, Griffith started work on his new movie while editing The Clansman [The Birth of a Nation] in late Fall 1914. The new film, called The Mother and the Law, was intended as a companion piece to The Escape, released earlier that year. In it, Griffith recast Mae Marsh and Bobby Harron for another study of prostitution and gangs in the city slums. By January 1915, the three-reeler was virtually complete, enabling Griffith to turn his full attention to the exhibition of his Civil War feature. In late February he left California to oversee its New York premiere and battle his antagonists in the accompanying censorship brawls. Not until May, after The Birth of a Nation’s controversies were at their peak, did Griffith return to his slum story, now determined to build on The Birth of a Nation’s success. He famously decided to expand his story, transforming The Mother and the Law into an exposé of industrial exploitation. He built lavish sets (notably the Mary Jenkins ball, the millworker dance hall, the Chicago courtroom, and the San Quentin gallows); added the strike sequence and last-minute rescue; and introduced the motif of mill owner Jenkins, his ugly sister, and the wicked civic reformers. The expansion was, in part, an effort to capitalize on the headlines surrounding John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who had stirred up controversy and resentment with the creation of the Rock39

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

efeller Foundation in 1913 and was now being raked over the coals by a government board of inquiry for his role in a miners’ strike that led to the 1914 Ludlow Massacre at his Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Griffith interwove details from that strike and the even bloodier riots that accompanied the Rockefeller Standard Oil strike in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1914, to create his powerful new introduction. In this new, expanded version of The Mother and the Law, an oppressive industrialist and a Puritanical welfare foundation provide the trigger for the misfortunes that befall Mae Marsh and her hapless sweetheart, leading not just to Bobby Harron’s wrongful murder conviction, but also to the confiscation of a baby and an elaborate, greatly expanded rescue sequence that involves a locomotive, racing car, telephone, and the famous death yard razors. Griffith continued shooting his Modern story through the Summer of 1915, re-shooting Harron’s trial and penitentiary scenes and Marsh’s ride to the rescue. Meanwhile (in midSeptember), he started work on his French story. This was the first of two momentous developments in the evolution of the film – the decision to create an historical counterpart to the modern story that would be told simultaneously. We have no way of knowing whether at this point Griffith intended to contrast only the French and Modern episodes – juxtaposing events stemming from the Ludlow Massacre with those ending in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France in 1572 – or whether the idea of a four-part structure came to him all at once. All by itself, the French sequence opened up the film in startling, innovative ways, providing a striking inversion of the Modern story. The focus was now sharply centered on two bloody catastrophes resulting from neurotic, violent women hardened against the claims of the family in a film still aptly named “The Mother and the Law”. But whether or not Griffith ever contemplated stopping with the French story, the stress from the start of the expansion was on spectacle. Surviving copyright frames show that the interiors of the Louvre palace were hand-tinted [EDITORS’ NOTE: or maybe colored with the Handschiegl process?], and that Griffith filmed an extended version of the deadly court intrigue involving Admiral Coligny, Navarre, and the Guise family, which he would subsequently trim. Not until the end of the year did evidence of his second momentous decision emerge, when the famous sets for his Babylon sequence began to loom over the cottages on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. The start of his costliest story was treated like the first day of a new production, as in a sense it was. Griffith radically reoriented and redefined his film as now his French and Modern stories were to be set off against the Utopian pageantry of a preChristian hedonistic wonderland. Celebrities – including California governor Hiram Johnson – were permitted to tour the sets. By January 1916 Griffith commandeered the full resources of the Fine Arts studio. Fourteen cameramen were available to Bitzer between program assignments, and according to The Brooklyn Citizen (November 6, 1916), “eight cameras working at the same time was no unusual sight”. The Babylonian sequence took four months to shoot, from January to April 1916, longer than it had taken to shoot all of The Birth of a Nation. And when it was over, Griffith returned yet again to his Modern story. Griffith, still dissatisfied with the trial and execution scenes, had the sets he had torn down the previous summer built yet again. A production still of the Babylon set found by Marc Wanamaker in the late 1980s shows the gallows and portions of the courtroom set freshly constructed on the floor of the Babylon’s Great Hall. He then redressed the set to shoot Lillian Gish rocking a cradle. The result, when combined with the Passion sequence (shot December 1915), was a conglomerate of stories and styles in search of a unifying principle. Part morality play and part three-ring circus, the movie was of a piece with the new eclectic aesthetic that had all but buried the older ideal of organic synthesis. Along with Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (1911) and Charles Ives’ Third Symphony (completed in 1904), Intolerance remains one of the period’s great hybrids. 40

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The release and distribution of Intolerance provides a more complex tale, which I described in some detail on the occasion of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1989 reconstruction (Merritt, “D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Reconstructing an Unattainable Text”, pp. 337–375). [EDITOR’S NOTE: The MoMA restoration débuted in New York in October 1989, and had its European premiere at Pordenone a year later.] But from the start, Griffith continued to treat his film as what Richard Schickel called “a mighty improvisation”, tinkering with it off and on for the next ten years. Intolerance first saw light of day at the Orpheum Theater in Riverside, California, on 4 August 1916, where it had a two-day run under the rather grandiose title The Downfall of All Nations, or Hatred the Oppressor, directed by one Dante Guilio – a “famous Italian director”, according to news accounts, “who is now held a prisoner by the Austrians in Vienna”. According to the advertisements, Dante Guilio’s epic – self-proclaimed as “GREATER THAN ‘THE CLANSMAN,’ ‘CABIRIA,’ and ‘BEN-HUR’ COMBINED” – played in eleven reels. This was the famous performance that drained at least two members of the audience with its soporific titles and tedious detail; and in retrospect, these two – rather misleadingly – assigned it Wagnerian running times. In the 1920s, Lillian Gish remembered it as an exhausting experience that seemed to last “forever”. Stanford University president David Starr Jordan, recalling the preview six months after he saw it, imagined that it went on for some six hours, though he admitted that he sat through only the first part of it. From these accounts, legends have arisen about the film’s inordinate length, but in fact the film – even in preview – appears to have been somewhat less than three hours. What is clear from the reviews, however, is that the film was considered slow and the titles verbose. The Riverside screening was only the first of Intolerance’s public previews. Griffith traveled back to Los Angeles to rework both his titles and continuity, and ten days later previewed the film again, this time in Pomona, California. The film was still The Downfall of All Nations, Griffith was still calling himself Dante Guilio, but now the film was advertised at twelve reels and described by the man at the Pomona Progress as lasting “almost three hours”. The film, performed with an eight-piece “symphony orchestra”, drew a front-page rave, but the production was clearly still in trouble (The Pomona Bulletin, August 17, 1916, p. 1). Behind the scenes, assistant director Joseph Henabery recalled the sense of disillusion he and others felt at this second try-out. “I was utterly confused by the picture”, he said. “I was so discouraged and disappointed ... He just had too much material... But the thing that disturbed me more than anything else was the subtitles” (Henabery, Before, In and After Hollywood, p. 148). The local press picked up the cry. The Pomona Progress reported, “The only human interest in the drama is in the scenes where the poor little mother shows her devotion to her baby and her persecuted husband”. After interviewing Griffith another reporter wrote, “There is to be a rearrangement of the thousands of scenes, a lot of work in cutting out of unnecessary scenes, and the music is to be yet made appropriate to the scenes – the reaching of climaxes in proper shape and fitting of music to the character of the scene. Mr. Griffith has many a long day of hard work yet to do on his immense drama before it is ready for the public”. Griffith reworked his film once again, had a third preview in San Luis Obispo, California, followed by a private press screening at Tally’s Broadway Theater in Los Angeles; then finally he took his film to New York for its formal début. Opening night at the Liberty Theatre, 5 September 1916, provided a spectacle all its own. Griffith’s art director had the theater made over into an Assyrian temple, with incense burning in a lobby festooned with Oriental décor and carpentry. Female ushers were dressed as Babylonian priestesses, while male ushers were decked out in red and black satin tuxedoes. Preparing for the performance, Griffith lived in the theater for ten days supervising rehearsals 41

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

not only of the forty-piece orchestra and chorus, but also a specially designed lighting system to tint the screen various colors, and a baggage carload of sound-effects machinery that, according to press reports, was so large it had to be crammed into the Liberty’s backstage. Projectionists, too, were kept on call eighteen hours per day to rehearse the various speeds required to synch the picture to the sound effects and music. All told, The Moving Picture World (September 30, 1916, p. 2084) estimated 134 people were involved in the theater presentation, including seven men responsible for “the considerable amount of explosives” used with the battle scenes. All in all, one way or another, the first-night New York critics were stunned. For all its reputation as a critical dud, Intolerance attracted consistently favorable reviews. Trades, fan magazines, and local newspapers alike jumped on the bandwagon, expressing only minor misgivings. Julian Johnson in Photoplay wrote, “Here is a joy-ride through history; a Cook’s tour of the ages; a college education crammed into a night. It is the most incredible experiment in story-telling that has ever been tried” (December 1916). According to the New York Herald, “the Babylonian warfare thrilled a thoroughly wise audience into involuntary applause with its intense realism. Then Belshazzar’s Feast in celebration of the repulse of Cyrus took place in halls a mile in length, with the all-seeing camera moving through every foot of the spectacle” (September 6, 1916, p. 10). The reviewer for the N.Y. Call showed his own flair for epic in the title of his review: “The Most Majestic Thing Yet Recorded by Art of Motion Picture Director”. His review began: “It makes Cabiria look like a penny-poppy show – if that’s the way you spell it” (October 10, 1916, p. 10). Even Alexander Woollcott, who gave Intolerance a critical drubbing in The New York Times (“Unprecedented and indescribable splendor of pageantry is combined with grotesque incoherence of design and utter fatuity of thought”) consider the “scenes of wonder richly reward a visit to the Liberty…. The imagination and personal force represented in such an achievement suggest a man of stature. Really, Mr. Griffith ranks with Cyrus. They both have taken Babylon. And the Babylonian picture would in itself be worth going miles to see” (September 10, 1916, sec. 2, p. 5). And so it went as Griffith opened his film across the country, first in Brooklyn, then in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. Griffith modified and refined the performance, adjusting parts of his film as he went along. Among other things, he and his company enlarged the vocal chorus when the film came to Chicago and Pittsburgh; in Washington, D.C., he experimented with soloists rather than a chorus, singing the songs of Babylon and the music of France. When he sold nationwide distribution rights to Intolerance in June 1917, he put in the proviso that the distributor “gives [his] entire attention to Intolerance and experiment with a lecturer” (emphasis added; Wark/McCarthy contract, June 9, 1917; cf. Wark/McSween agreement, September 6, 1917). The role that Griffith’s co-workers played in all this remains something of a mystery. For instance, how involved was composer Joseph Carl Breil? And were the revisions made in Breil’s original score cumulative – the changes made in Chicago worked into the Pittsburgh score, the Chicago-Pittsburgh changes then carried over to Washington, D.C., and so forth? Or did each city make its own revisions based on the original score? There is evidence that Griffith was dissatisfied with Breil’s score and that Breil left the Griffith company in high dudgeon shortly after the New York début. Critics who had raved over Breil’s score for The Birth of a Nation generally singled out his music for Intolerance as the worst part of the show. Ten years later, Griffith himself called Breil’s score “one of the great box office handicaps of Intolerance”, complaining that it lacked any emotional appeal. His 1916 response is unknown, but the actions he took are ominous. With The Birth of a Nation, Breil had not only arranged and adapted the score, he had also toured with the film alongside Griffith, conducting orchestras in New York, Chicago, 42

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Philadelphia, Boston, and elsewhere. With Intolerance, on the other hand, he suddenly vanished after the luke-warm Pomona preview, reportedly “heading for San Francisco to take a vacation from writing music for Intolerance” (The Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1916, p. 2). He never resurfaced. His contract with Griffith’s Fine Arts studio as music director was allowed to expire later that month. The severance in itself is inconclusive – Griffith himself was disengaging from Triangle, and Breil may have resigned from the business of supervising music for the Griffith-produced Triangles in order to devote his full energies to the nerve-racking business of keeping up with the ever-changing Intolerance. But if he stayed with Intolerance beyond Pomona, there is no trace of him. Although scheduled to rehearse and conduct the New York premiere, he was replaced by Frederick Arundel, and when Intolerance toured, it invariably opened without him. In Los Angeles it was Albert Pesce, not Breil, who conducted and “drilled several orchestras and choruses for the various [California] cities in which ‘Intolerance’ is to be shown” (Los Angeles Express, November 8, 1916). Even more curious, when Intolerance opened in Pittsburgh, Breil’s home town, the native son was invisible in the press and missing from the Griffith entourage. By all indications, Breil was dissatisfied with his score too. He published an article in The Metronome two months after Intolerance’s premiere where he took jabs at an unnamed producer with Philistine musical tastes who imposes impossible deadlines. [The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance] contain about fifty per-cent of original music. But the perfect moving picture score, for which I am aiming, is the one which will be entirely original in composition and construction. It is not quite possible for me to say when that will arrive. An important factor towards such an event will be that the composer is given ample time in which to do his work and ... producers of the great photo-plays gradually realize that a mixing up of all the good and bad composers of the past and present is not at all interesting to the audience. Uniformity in design and construction is impossible especially when the film producer prefers “pretty” music, while the composer believes that red-blooded, dramatic music is the proper thing. Since the film producer pays “the piper”, conditions are hard to change. However, some day a thorough artist-producer will arise who will tell his composer, “as far as the music is concerned that is entirely up to you” (Breil, “Moving Pictures of the Past and Present and the Music Provided for Same”, p. 42).

Breil was pushed further to the background when Intolerance went overseas. On 4 April 1917 the film had its European début in London, and Griffith had a new score commissioned, compiled by a certain A.J. Beard, that toured the British Isles. This and other scores were used in continental Europe where according to contract each foreign distributor was expected to supply his own music. And when in late 1918 the film was re-edited into The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law, Griffith commissioned yet another score, compiled and arranged by Louis F. Gottschalk. As for the film itself, mainly Griffith pruned. There is no hard evidence that Griffith added any pictorial footage after the New York premiere, but if he did, it would have been within days of the début. The shots in question are of the semi-nude women who pose in the Temple of Love and who are also cut into the Dance of Tammuz. Whether or not the Love Temple and Dance of Tammuz scenes that we now see appeared in time for the New York premiere is unknown. But we know the sequences were in place by mid-November because a New York enthusiast sent Griffith a twenty-six foot scroll of doggerel verse that refers to them. We also know they were in the film when it played Chicago, because the Chicago Board of Supervisors insisted Griffith take them out. The semi-nudes survived that fight, as they had similar encounters in San Francisco and Los Angeles. They were also targets in the furious battle Griffith waged with the Pennsylvania censor board. In Pitts43

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

burgh and Philadelphia, the semi-nudes were used as bargaining chips or distractions to keep the censors away from the labor strike and the anti-reform satire that several boards considered defamatory. Sacred virgins aside, the alterations Griffith made in his film from September 1916 through late February 1917, when he finally stopped attending the American Intolerance débuts, were relatively small refinements in a strange unwieldy work that from the start had been developed as a mighty improvisation. Exactly when he deleted the expository shots from his Christ story, dropped the short distractive sequence of Coligny’s assassination from the Huguenot slaughter, or altered this or that title is virtually impossible to chart because Griffith never stopped thinking of his film as an ongoing creation. The alterations continued through 27 February 1917, when in St. Louis, Griffith attended his last American roadshow premiere. After that, the original roadshow version was finally locked into place – at least until the end of June when Intolerance’s roadshow season ended. At this point, Intolerance’s history divides in two, as Griffith began to circulate prints to international markets and plan his campaigns for the American general release. The international prints, struck from the 1917 Intolerance negative, set out for their assorted destinations in London, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Paris, Rome, and Cairo as identical twins, all graphic images intact, and all titles cut away except for two- and three-frame “flash titles”, which the distributors were expected to translate and replace. What happened to these prints when they finally reached their targets and went through the grinders of local customs provides a juicy tangent and need concern us only in passing. All evidence points to drastically altered editions that were re-edited not only by foreign censors, but also by individual foreign distributors and exhibitors as well. Then there were the alterations made by foreign film pirates. Aside from major roadshow runs in the British Isles and an abortive run in Rome, Intolerance officially never reached Europe’s largest markets until the 1920s. Because of the war blockade, Griffith could distribute his film only in the small neutral countries of Northern Europe and in a smattering of miscellaneous markets such as Australia and North Africa. But pirates saw to it that unauthorized prints of Intolerance got to Germany, Russia, Mexico, and Japan where they were further trimmed to meet the requirements of the underground theaters. Intolerance’s negative, of course, was unaffected by the assortment of mutilations and transformations endured by this first round of international tours. But the negative was demonstrably affected by Griffith’s evolving domestic plans. Despite the limited second-run release of Intolerance in grind houses throughout the Midwest where the first-run companies had been the most profitable and the audiences most enthusiastic, Griffith fought the idea of putting his film into the conventional distribution pipeline where, like rival 1916–17 roadshows such as Herbert Brenon’s A Daughter of the Gods (1916), Cecil B. DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1916), and Thomas H. Ince’s Civilization (1916), it would be shortened and performed with cheap accompaniment. Instead he decided to excerpt his Modern story and Babylonian sequences and present each of them individually as two new roadshow attractions. The Fall of Babylon, with an elaborate prologue and live acts interspersed between movie sequences, opened in Los Angeles on 19 January 1919 at Tally’s Kinema, followed shortly by The Mother and the Law. The remarkable history of Intolerance’s Babylonian spin-off need not detain us here, but what is relevant is Griffith’s decision to cut into his original negative in order to carve out the pocket roadshows. From this decision has grown the fanciful idea that once he had disassembled Intolerance, Griffith could never properly put it back together again. Support for this claim comes from the wild days in late 1919 and early 1920 when Griffith’s staff was being driven mad trying to keep up with overseas orders for the original 44

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Intolerance while simultaneously supplying American distributors with prints of the newly produced The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law. To add to the confusion, Griffith insisted on touring with The Fall of Babylon as he had with Intolerance, adjusting and refining the new film as he had the old. Meanwhile, Griffith had moved his studio from Los Angeles to Mamaroneck, New York, and his newly opened Mamaroneck laboratory was inundated with orders while still getting itself organized. Negatives and records were in transit from the West Coast, the new lab was only partially built, operating without electricity for over a month, and to top it off, the lab’s construction crew went on a two-week strike. In short, for over two years Intolerance’s negative lay partially disassembled, and for business reasons was not put back together again until after the market for The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law was exhausted. However, once Griffith decided to reassemble Intolerance, all indications are that the restoration was completed quickly and without difficulty. For instance, the Intolerance print that Griffith’s lab processed on 31 December 1921, one week after the request for Emil Wertheimer’s two British prints was submitted, came to 11,538 feet, within 125 feet (or about two minutes) of the prints circulated in 1916. Once the tug-of-war between Intolerance and the short films stopped and Griffith had Intolerance’s negative reconstructed to fill further overseas and domestic orders, the footage counts remain remarkably consistent. And even as late as 1933, after another round of revivals and tentative plans for a reissue with a synchronized sound track, Griffith’s storage company reported that the two longest prints in their possession measured 11,305 feet and 11,203 feet. In other words, some eighteen years after the premiere, after having been taken apart and put back together again, edited, retitled, and revised, Griffith’s film had lost less than 300 feet of its footage – slightly less than five minutes. When Griffith had Intolerance reassembled in December 1921, his film differed somewhat from the work he had taken apart in late 1918. In particular, ten intertitles that he had reworked for The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law returned to Intolerance in their revised form. For the most part, these involved changes of phrasing imperceptible to a general audience. The re-edited texts are simple efforts at condensation. But even the simplest changes have curious nuances. For instance, the wicked High Priest’s exultant cry after the overthrow of Belshazzar shifts from “TO BEL THE GLORY!” to the more pointed “TO GOD THE GLORY!” Linguistic references to “Intolerance” are pruned, while references to “fate” are multiplied. The Rhapsode, described in the original titles as a spying “secret-agent” for the High Priest, in the new titles is turned into a misguided dupe, “UNAWARE OF THE [high-priest’s] DASTARDLY PURPOSE” (H941 in Theodore Huff’s transcription of the film: Intolerance, the Film by David Wark Griffith: Shot-by-Shot Analysis, r. 9, p. 89). These, to repeat, were changes made in late 1918 when Griffith was preparing his Intolerance spin-offs. There is absolutely no evidence that Winter 1921, when he had the film restored, was the occasion for any new revisions. Griffith himself would not have had the time: he was off with his editors to New England, testing and revising Orphans of the Storm at sneak previews. In his absence, it is highly unlikely anyone would have dared meddle with Intolerance on his or her own authority. There is even less evidence that Intolerance had to be reassembled “from memory” or that there was any lack of reference material on which to base the restoration. On the contrary, given the speed at which the work was done (no more than a week for the Wertheimer order) and the fact that the studio had at the very least one 1916–17 print of Intolerance at hand (which Griffith kept in his storage vault until the end of his life), the 1921 reconstruction appears to have been little more than a routine if tedious mechanical exercise. In this regard, the interlude provided by The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law 45

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

is a non-event, a smoke screen that has obscured the true circumstance and nature of Intolerance’s final revision. Griffith certainly did make an important overhaul of Intolerance in the 1920s, but if it was unconnected to the 1921 reassembly of Intolerance, what was the occasion? And if the changes were deliberate, rather than part of a botched job done from memory, what was the nature of the alterations? The questions are of interest, because those 1920s changes result in the familiar versions of Intolerance we commonly study today. The occasion was Intolerance’s 1926 revival at the Cameo Theatre for Symon Gould’s Film Arts Guild, which was part of the first comprehensive Griffith retrospective. 1926 was also Intolerance’s tenth anniversary, and Griffith decided to use the Guild’s retrospective as a showcase for his misappreciated film. A reporter sent to interview Griffith for his recently opened The Sorrows of Satan, visited him at the George M. Cohan Theatre where The Sorrows of Satan was playing: “Most of the time he spends either backstage [at the Cohan], or in the darkened auditorium cutting Intolerance”, the paper reported. Reporter Dorothy Herzog sat in on another cutting session, this one at the Cameo Theatre, interviewing Griffith while he supervised more alterations. His plan, she learned, was to use the revival at the Cameo as a springboard for a nationwide reissue of Intolerance in early 1927 (New York Daily News, November 11, 1926). The revised print débuted 3 November 1926 and played for six nights. As Griffith predicted to reporters, his film reached a new audience – the New York intelligentsia who wrote his film up in little magazines like The American Mercury, The Little Review, and The Greenwich Village Quill, as well as New York’s embryonic art-house film community that started comparing Griffith to younger European and Russian directors. As part of the Griffith festival, Intolerance was written up as frequently as The Birth of a Nation and Broken Blossoms. But despite critical raves in the general press (Richard Watts in the New York Herald Tribune [November 7, 1926] compared Intolerance to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1919], calling it “a timeless masterpiece ... [that] should make the producers of the expensive Ben-Hur feel just a bit ashamed of themselves”), the nationwide tour never materialized. As late as 1929, Griffith kept his hopes alive, exploring the possibilities of a reissue, with a synchronized music and effects track recorded at the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey. For the occasion, Griffith’s business manager wired editor Jimmie Smith: “Ship immediately latest revised print [of] Intolerance”, and then wired the Victor sound manager: “Since [there is] no satisfactory print of Intolerance [in New York], I have sent on to California for one which I know will be in good condition. When you have had sufficient time to view these pictures, please advise about synchronization scores” (telegrams: R.A. Klune to Smith, February 19, 1929; Klune to W.W. Clark, February 21, 1929). The sound track was never recorded, and after the disappointing runs of the sonorized The Birth of a Nation and Way Down East, plans were permanently scrapped. What remained, however, was a silent version of Intolerance that Griffith could finally live with. By the end of the 1920s, Griffith finally declared himself satisfied with it – or at least willing to leave it alone. Russell Merritt

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE In his autobiography (written in the 1950s) Cecil B. DeMille described his excitement on seeing D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation at its Los Angeles premiere in 1915. “Here was a picture that held its audience spellbound through not five or six reels but twelve”. He then contemplates Griffith’s later career and asks, “Why was not every Griffith picture another Birth of a Nation?” His answer is revealing: “Griffith was not a dramatist”. DeMille’s key example of this failing is Intolerance. 46

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

[A]udiences left the theater simply bewildered by his attempt to tell all at once four separate stories, from four widely distant periods of history, linked together only by a common theme, which it took some mental effort to keep in mind and by the repeated and memorably beautiful shot of Lillian Gish and the cradle “eternally rocking”…. I have always dated the beginning of his decline with Intolerance.… the one secret of success in picture making is sound dramatic construction; and Intolerance showed that Griffith did not have that gift. (The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, pp. 124–126)

Such complaints make up the litany of what Miriam Hansen, in by far the most important study of Intolerance ever written, has called the myth of the magnificent failure (Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon, pp. 129–131). But in recent decades, led partly by Hansen’s revisionist reading of the film, the complexity of Intolerance’s non-traditional dramaturgy has gained a new appreciation. One might follow DeMille’s lead and assert a split in Griffith’s style between the classical epic style of The Birth of a Nation and the experimental, non-linear style of Intolerance. Before we enshrine Intolerance as the exemplar of alternative film narrative, we should recall Sergei Eisenstein’s equally devastating critique of the film (also written some decades after the film, in the 1940s) as a failure at achieving a new style based on the metaphoric possibilities of montage (“Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today”, in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, pp. 195–255). Eisenstein faulted Griffith for not truly following the path of abstraction that editing can offer: intellectual montage – the transcribing of the thinking process through editing. Instead, Eisenstein claimed, Griffith employs editing in the service of oldfashioned dramaturgy, Manichean dualisms, and simple suspense. “Griffith”, Eisenstein claimed, “announced his film as ‘a drama of comparisons’. And that is what Intolerance remains – a drama of comparisons rather than a unified, powerful generalized image” (Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 243). For Eisenstein this clinging to old-fashioned melodramatic dramaturgy and dualistic capitalistic thinking kept Griffith from achieving a new form of film language. Griffith’s conception of comparisons limited him to a structure of parallelism, “symbolized by the two never-convergent parallel racers, interweaving the thematically variegated strips with a view towards the mutual intensification of entertainment, tension and tempi” (Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 254). Bookended between attacks from the left and the right, denounced both for its lack of dramatic construction and its excess of melodrama and suspense, Intolerance may stand not simply as the magnificent failure that pleases no one, but as a film whose narrative structure is so unique it cannot be subsumed into any single tradition. Intolerance offers a bizarre confluence, which became a source for varied later practices, all of which took something from the film, but none of which could resist simultaneously distancing themselves from it. This ambivalent reception does not derive from the film’s material (as with the racist ideology of The Birth of a Nation), but very specifically from its narrative structure. Perhaps no other film in history has so foregrounded its process of storytelling – and yielded such complex reactions. Intolerance combines and juxtaposes, rather than creating smooth syntheses, drawing on the variety of narrative sources to fashion a schema simultaneously novel and familiar. Melodramatic plotting and staging shaped both Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation, but the latter film drew on the traditional epic or the historical novel to blend family stories with historical sweep. Intolerance approached history even more self-consciously, but the epic and novel could not supply the unique multiple perspective Griffith sought. Intolerance’s logic of juxtaposition and comparison suggests instead the encyclopedic ambition of the early twentieth-century modernist works of Joyce, Pound, or Proust. Griffith’s film subordinates individual characters 47

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

to a logic of comparisons and unbalances linear action with a plethora of detail and digressions, including intertitle footnotes referring to scholarly sources and visual digressions into the workings of technology, from the trap door of a gallows to the operation of Babylon’s great gate. This encyclopedic accumulation of detail and reference relies on Intolerance’s innovation in narrative structure, the intercutting of four separate stories from widely distant historical eras and cultures, an innovation condemned equally by both Eisenstein and DeMille from opposite perspectives. As the film opens, its intertitles (the strong meta-textual role of these intertitles, announcing how the film should be read, stands as another of the film’s unusual narrative devices) instructs the viewer to watch this unusual multiple narrative in terms of both continuity and discontinuity: “THEREFORE YOU WILL FIND OUR PLAY TURNING FROM ONE OF THE FOUR STORIES TO ANOTHER, AS THE COMMON THEME UNFOLDS IN EACH.” As Hansen says, “This thematic continuity motivates and justifies the discontinuity caused by the interlacing of the discrete narratives” (op. cit., p. 135). This dialectical narration pulls a viewer into the unfolding story, but it can simultaneously pull a viewer out in order to recall parallels with the other ones. This push/pull structure gives Intolerance its peculiarly modern feel, as switches from one storyline to another continually intersect the linear development of each individual story. These switches function sometimes as structural breaks in each story (in most of the film they break each story into narrative units, individual chapters or episodes with some coherence of narrative action, time and place), sometimes as overt comparisons (certain key cuts, such as between the Boy being led to the gallows and the Crucifixion of Christ, offer direct contrasts or comparisons), and sometimes (primarily toward the end of the film) as suspenseful delays (cutting from the ongoing action of each story as the outcomes of the Crucifixion, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Fall of Babylon, and the Boy’s execution interweave, each story suspending the outcome of another one). In spite of relevant criticism of his approach by both David Bordwell and Hansen, Christian Metz offers a profound insight as he claims Griffith manufactured this unique narrative structure out of the narrative device he had been developing in his films for the past eight years: parallel editing. Metz describes Intolerance as an elaboration of “the passion for parallel editing” (Language and Cinema, p. 112). Griffith’s stylistics before Intolerance are certainly complex, but it would be hard to suggest that any other device dominates his choices as thoroughly as parallel editing does. Griffith used parallel editing for many functions besides creating suspense in his “race to the rescue” climaxes. As I have shown in my treatment of Griffith’s Biograph films (Gunning, D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Films, passim), during his early filmmaking Griffith developed parallel editing as a means of conveying character motivations, making moral judgment through contrasts, and as a basic “narrative armature” as he interweaves storylines of different characters. Parallel editing is usually defined as the intercutting of scenes that are distant in space but simultaneous in time, as in the canonical race-to-the-rescue scenes, cutting from those in peril to those coming to the rescue. However, cutting between events that are spatially separate but not clearly related in time (such as cutting between rich and poor to emphasize semantic contrast rather than causal or narrative interrelation) has also been closely associated with parallel editing, and usually been terminologically indistinguishable from it, in spite of some attempt by recent scholars to reserve the term parallel editing for this practice and to call cutting to indicate simultaneity “crosscutting” (a terminological reform that has some logic but would render incomprehensible much previous writing using the terms as synonymous: see David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, p. 48). This non-temporally specific form of parallel editing appears much less frequently, and often seems to carry some implications of simultaneity. In Griffith’s stylistics the figure of contrast created by parallel editing, as in A Corner in Wheat (1909), not only 48

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

appears later than the use of parallel editing to indicates simultaneity, but also seems to develop from it (one can read most of Griffith’s contrasts in the Biograph films as being at least weakly simultaneous). I have claimed Griffith’s refinement of parallel editing (a device introduced shortly before he began making film in brief segments of film by Pathé and Vitagraph in 1906–07) constituted a radical reworking of filmic narration. Griffith’s intercutting strongly intervened on the unrolling of action within a shot. By interrupting an action (say the hero racing in an auto to the rescue) with a cut to another action in another location (say his fiancée about to eat a poisoned chocolate), Griffith was able to redefine action narratively and cinematically. Such patterned interruptions restructured action in order to create effects, whether playing with audience expectations by delaying outcomes or creating contrasts or comparisons between actions spatially separate. In Intolerance Griffith extends this impulse toward mastery over action, carving out another axis of significance. No longer does the editing simply switch between lines of separate, but related, actions within a single story. In Intolerance Griffith intercuts separate stories occurring not only in different spaces but also in entirely different centuries. Thus in these cuts between storylines Griffith transcends the primary signification of parallel editing – simultaneity – in favor of a timeless realm of semantic contrast and parallel. Metz claims parallel editing “is defined by the directly connotative bringing together distant events in the time and/or space of fictional reality” (Metz, op. cit., p. 110), but he neglects to note that Intolerance extends parallel editing’s bringing together of spatially distant events to historically distant events, a technique never used before this film and rarely explored since. Of course, parallel editing of the traditional sort also appears throughout Intolerance within any single story, indeed occurring more frequently than the interstory parallel editing. But switching between stories defines Intolerance’s unique narrative structure, transforming a shot-to-shot relation into a model for juxtaposing larger narrative units. Intolerance’s structure anticipates the experimental form of William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms (recent editions, returning to Faulkner’s original intention, are titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem), which seemed radical (in 1939!) when it interleaved the chapters of two apparently separate stories. Discussions of Intolerance’s possible antecedents often cite earlier films (including films by Griffith, such as the 1909 Biograph film Pippa Passes, or his 1914 feature Home, Sweet Home) that include multiple storylines as important precursors to the film. Although part of Intolerance’s narrative structure derives from telling four separate stories, such episodic form is hardly unusual, either in the era of early narrative film or in contemporary cinema. But intercutting the stories constitutes the radical structure of Griffith’s film. Griffith’s 1909 Biograph film A Corner in Wheat, with its structure of economic contrasts conveyed by parallel editing, provides a more relevant precursor to Intolerance than Home, Sweet Home or other “episode” films that avoid intercutting their stories, through its exploration of abstraction and significance derived from contrast and juxtaposition. The pattern of parallel editing between stories in Intolerance performs a variety of roles, as I mentioned earlier, including dramatic paragraphing, creating suspense, as well as drawing ideological contrasts or parallels. But does the intercutting between stories also display its own structure? Most commentators have claimed such a pattern, well summarized by Metz’s description: At the beginning of the film, each episode is presented at length before passing onto the next; eventually the unfolding of images increasingly intermixes the four stories, according to an alternation whose rhythm becomes more and more rapid, until a final crescendo where the mixture becomes a visual whirlpool and induces in the spectator a sort of four-termed mental superimposition… (Metz, op. cit., p. 105)

49

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Metz therefore describes the system of the film as an interaction between parallel editing and the effect of acceleration achieved by intercutting successively shorter sequences (Metz, op. cit., p. 105). Certainly the film has been remembered this way, but does this impression really reflect Intolerance’s structure of interstory cutting, with an accelerating pattern of intercutting sequences reaching a stunning climax? The lack of a single canonical print or version of this mercurial film (which Griffith himself re-cut and reissued in a variety of versions) makes any statement of the exact length of individual segments dependent on the version consulted. However, a preliminary analysis of the most widely circulated version, the one distributed by the Museum of Modern Art and on DVD by Kino, shows that a pattern of acceleration through progressively shorter segments does not appear as consistently as Metz claims. In the first part of the film (lasting about two hours) there is a wide difference between the lengths of segments, but the differences seem to relate more to which story is being shown than a clear pattern of acceleration. Thus the Modern story segments vary between 8 and 2 minutes with this pattern of successive lengths: 8, 5, 8, 8, 5, 8, 7, and 2 minutes. The Christ story segments in Part One show this pattern: 3, 5, 3 minutes, and finally 30 seconds. The Babylonian segments follow this pattern in Part One: 11, 13, 5.5, and 16.5 minutes; and the Paris segments consist of 6, 2, and 2 minutes. Thus the French and Judean stories are always briefer then the Babylonian and Modern stories no matter where they fall in Part One, and although some segments get shorter as we move toward the end of Part One, the siege of Babylon which ends Part One is actually the longest segment in the film. One assumes, however, that the second part of Intolerance, the last third of the film, would clearly show a pattern of acceleration – and to some degree it does. The first half of Part Two does not show acceleration in segment lengths to any clear degree, with the first Babylonian sequence lasting 12 minutes, the third longest segment in the film as a whole. But in the film’s last half hour, the segment lengths drop precipitously, as most segments are actually under a minute and only one is more than 3 minutes. But the pattern does not follow an actual curve of acceleration, since most of the brief segments lasting about the same length are clustered together. This gives the effect of an extended section of rapidly intercut segments, rather than a steady change and drop in their lengths. Not too surprisingly, the film ends with longer segments, including the final Babylonian segment which lasts 8 minutes. Thus the sense of acceleration Metz and others have described does not really occur; the segments do not correspond to a strict pattern of proportionally shortened length, such as that which characterizes the climaxes of many suspense films. For Griffith the logic of narrative action within a segment takes on greater importance than any consistent cross-segment pattern of acceleration. Dramatic sequences such as the siege of Babylon, or the final deaths and defeat of Belshazzar, are allowed plenty of time regardless of their place in the pattern. The main sequence of rapid interstory cutting occurs when the actions in each story are closely parallel, such as the similarly suspenseful races to the rescue being staged in the Parisian, Babylonian and Modern stories and rapidly intercut. Here Griffith cuts dynamically among the Dear One racing in the motorcar to get the Governor’s pardon, the Mountain Girl’s chariot rushing to warn Belshazzar of the oncoming Persians, and Prosper trying to make his way through the riot with badges of safety for his beloved’s family. Griffith even cuts on the formal similarity of the racing Persian chariots and the charging locomotive. Although the less-than-a-minute lengths of these segments play an important role in building a dynamic tempo, it is the common energy of action and suspense, an anxiety about reaching endangered loved ones in time marked by a dynamic of fast motion, that blends these segments from different eras and narratives together. Thus parallels of action and narration rule over the accelerating patterns, more than vice versa. From Eisenstein on, critics have observed an opposition between the epic and the inti50

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

mate Griffith, a contrast that also determined which films were acclaimed, with advocates of intimacy preferring True Heart Susie (1919) or The White Rose (1923) to The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance. However, Eisenstein’s point was that Griffith’s films often combined both the rural small-town intimacy and the modern tempo or historical sweep of action. No account of the narrative structure of Intolerance should ignore the many moments of intimate details, revelatory small gestures, and even a refined sense of the everyday. Griffith’s historical films always portray historical events as catastrophes which descend on uncomprehending innocent people, interrupting the routines of their simple lives, a pattern repeated in each of the stories of Intolerance. Thus such epic elements as the scale of the walls of Babylon, the tempo of the chase between race-car and locomotive, and the masses crowded before the Crucifixion gain their full meaning by being balanced with the simple actions of the Boy and the Dear One returning from a Coney Island day, Prosper’s little sister munching her apple as she slyly observes her brother’s romance, or the Mountain Girl chowing down on her onions. Roughly, one could relate this alternation between dramatic action and moments characterized by simple everyday details to the contrast in scale between action-filled long shots and the sense of nearness brought by a close-up. If Griffith creates an epic of overwhelming ambition and scale in Intolerance, he also maintains a sense of human behavior persisting beneath the monumental, and even pokes ironic fun at his own taste for pomp and circumstance. Although not edited together, two shots in separate stories echo each other and underline Griffith’s taste for the common beneath the ceremonial. In the court of France, Griffith cuts in to a small boy attendant as he yawns; later in Babylon, Griffith highlights the same action as a servant yawns as well. It might be useful to think of the narrative structure of Intolerance as moving between two axes: first, a horizontal axis for each independent story, moving toward their climaxes of tragedy or deliverance. The vertical axis consists of the parallels established on a number of levels (similarities of melodramatic dramaturgy; parallels of behavior – young lovers, yawning attendants; cuts between stories which establish contrasts or parallels – Jesus’ charity to the woman taken in adultery versus the reformers’ scorn of the prostitutes, the doomed races of historical rescuers). This axis sketches an ideology of recurrence, staging the drama of comparisons the intertitles announced. This timeless pattern marks the film as more than a linear narrative, aspiring less to the philosophy of history that Eisenstein and Metz find so horribly lacking in the film, than to an allegory of providential progress, moving through historical catastrophe to religious redemption. Thus the film’s epilogue of utopian and millennial imagery plays a key role in reconciling the two axes of the story, resolving the meaning generated by intercutting diverse historical periods through deliberately non-realistic imagery relying largely on superimposition and conflicts in scale. Thus, as Hansen has pointed out in Babel and Babylon, in Intolerance Griffith created a narrative form that finds its fulfillment in allegory, rather than either political philosophy or classical drama. Griffith referred his style of montage back to the inspiration of Walt Whitman, a reference Hansen has related to the millennial theme of a universal language. Griffith claimed the ideal of a universal language comprehensible to all was being fulfilled by the picture language of the cinema, those modern hieroglyphics theorized by poet Vachel Lindsay, inspired partly by Griffith’s parallel editing. Thus a description of the narrative structure of Intolerance must not neglect that relay point between stories, the image that realizes Whitman’s title “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”. Found inadequate by both Eisenstein and DeMille (one looking for abstraction and meaning, the other for character and glamour), this shot stands precisely for the power of alternation, embodying the sense of a rhythm rocking back and forth between eras, marking, like a metronome, the hopes for the future cradled within an allegorical space inhabited by both the classical three Fates and the cradle of the Christian nativity. In its obsessive return 51

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

throughout the film, marking the space between stories, an allegory that belongs to no one story yet unites them all, this shot images the act of joining, as its rocking rhythm rides the film’s confluence of catastrophe and redemption. Or, as W.B. Yeats put it (in his 1920 poem “The Second Coming”, written only a few years after Intolerance), envisioning a millennium perhaps not so different from Griffith’s: … but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.

Tom Gunning

EDITING There is not much one can add to what has been said about Intolerance in or soon after 1916. It has been argued that stunning as it may at first appear Griffith’s idea of cross-story cutting “is not so much a departure from Mr. Griffith’s past as many will think,” for it evolves from the “flash back” technique used in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and “may be traced technically to his earlier Biograph films … made in those almost prehistoric but immortal days when the future of the photoplay and of Mr. Griffith was being made at old Biograph studios” (Boston Evening Transcript, quoted in Wagenknecht and Slide, The Films of D.W. Griffith, p. 86). It has been observed that “[t]he hardest thing the film audience had to swallow was the revolutionary construction employed by Mr. Griffith in building four separate stories in such a manner that the audience could hold the thread of each and jump from one to the other in a manner that would have been considered impossible had anyone else suggested it without being able to construct it” (Film Daily, September 7, 1916, p. 7). A vague kind of phrase, I admit, but then, so is Vachel Lindsay’s razor-sharp remark about Babylon seeming to signal across the ages to Judea as the modern factory couple wave their hands back to Babylon. This was also said at the time when Intolerance was a new, hard-to-swallow movie, as was Griffith’s phrase that in Intolerance “he was not attempting to follow the accepted ideas of continuity, but was rather offering his themes in a development much the same as thoughts that might flash in one’s mind” (Film Daily, ibid.). This is not all there is to know about the editing of Intolerance, but this about sums it up. All we can do nowadays is to add sharpness to the picture. A special computer software program, Movie-Metrics, makes it easy to ask the kinds of questions that would have required a daunting amount of skill and patience in earlier days. Take the real-estate question, for instance. No one will dispute that there is an internarrative hierarchy in Intolerance that does not coincide with the perceived global significance of the events that the film claims to depict. The Babylonian story feels more important than the French and the Judean ones, but is second to the Modern story (which opens the film, and which is the last of the four to appear). But does this hierarchy translate in numerical terms, in other words, does the actual space taken up by each of the stories correspond to what we feel about their respective significance? There are two slightly varying answers to this, depending on what we decide to call the space of the film. It may be footage and it may be the number of shots. In terms of footage the story hierarchy looks like this: forty-two percent goes to the Modern story, forty percent to the Babylonian one, and eleven and six percent to the French and the Judean (Figs. 1 and 2). The number of shots per story is a little different from this picture: forty-three, thirty-six, fourteen and six percent. The buffer shot with the Mother that rocks the cradle takes one percent on both scales. 52

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

One must be careful not to interpret these data in causal terms. What they tell us is not that this or that story is longer because it is more significant, or that we perceive it as more significant because it is longer. Simply, these numbers point to a correlation between the footage (and the number of shots) allotted to this or that story on one hand, and its role in Griffith’s transnarrative game on the other. Another thing most people will agree is characteristic of Intolerance is the impression that its tempo quickens toward the end. A method exists that helps film historians estimate the overall tempo (or “cutting rate”) of a film by calculating its average shot length. This operation has its limits: it does not tell how the cutting rate fluctuates within the duration of the film, and it really makes sense only when compared (or contrasted) to the average shot length of a larger group of relevant films. Intolerance, however, is a different matter. It is a film and a group of films at the same time, and if we calculate its overall average shot length and the average shot length of each of its stories we will be able to draw an internal comparison, as it were, asking whether all the stories of Intolerance unroll at a similar pace, and if not, whose editing is faster. The result may at first appear counter-intuitive. Most people (such as myself) would have bet on the Modern Story, but numbers show that the French story comes first (4.9 seconds) followed by the Modern one (5.6 seconds), with the Babylonian (6.5) and the Judean (6.7) closing the race. There is a way perhaps to account for the discrepancy between numbers and senses. That the Modern story loses to the French one is not because this story is poorer in short takes, but because it is richer in long ones. There are enough short shots in both, but while the longest French shot takes only thirty-two seconds, the longest Modern runs for fifty-three. It is due to this contrast between the fast and the slow that the Modern story appears to run faster than its average shot length shows. Luckily, a method exists to make statistics look less static. We can try to represent the average shot length numbers obtained for Intolerance not as a blind figure, but as a line (known as a “linear trendline” among statisticians) that will climb if the cutting rate shows a tendency to accelerate, and dive if the opposite is true. And if we want to know how the cutting rate falls and rises, there is another trendline (called “polynomial”) that will represent its dynamics as a curve. This new toolkit enables the student of Intolerance to ask newer, never-asked questions. Question one: we all feel that this movie becomes faster as things move on, but does it happen because its stories alternate with increasing frequency, or because its shots become shorter and shorter? Two: if we can say that Intolerance becomes faster, will the same hold true when 53

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

we inspect its stories separately? And three: does Intolerance – as a whole and as four separate stories – grow faster steadily or exponentially, or perhaps the film slows down after the final climax? Let us start with the second part of the first question, namely, with the shot length. The average shot length of Intolerance is 5.9, but of course it is not evenly distributed all the way through. Its linear trendline shows an increase in the film’s overall cutting rate (Fig. 3, dotted line). More accurately, the shots tend to be longer at the beginning and grow longer again at the end (Fig. 3, polynomial curve). Those who remember Intolerance will easily explain this by the fact that it begins with a series of longish expository titles, has an upsurge in film’s tempo when the troops attack the strikers in the Modern story, and another one when the Persian troops attack Fig. 3 Babylon, and ends with an epilogue – an apotheosis, or a series of tableaux promising eternal peace. This is true, but it should be added that the curve also complies with a widely shared view according to which the best drama (or story, or film) must start calmly, have two peaks of activity and end in a coda. It pays to take a look at the trendline indications for each of the stories taken separately (Figs. 4–7) to discover that while three of them confirm the film’s general tendency to pick up the pace, the Judean story (the slowest of the four) slows down as we follow the Christ story from Cana to the cross. This anomaly is hardly surprising given the tradition of Passion Shows (then as now) not to hurry up the last events in the earthly life of our Savior but relate to them in painful details. There is also an interesting similarity between the dramatic curves of the Modern and Babylonian stories: do they reflect some general rule of dramatic rhythm or perhaps this is just Griffith’s patent way of shaping the narrative flow of his films? The future may show. Note that the curve of the French story does not dive toward the end as the other three stories do – in other words, that this story never slows up. This is not hard to explain knowing that the French story ends in medias res, as it were: Griffith quits this story before the massacre is over. A trickier question might be what makes him do so and it is here I think that metrics can help us account for the subject matter instead of the other way round. I do not think anyone will disagree that leaving it off in the heat of a battle is not Griffith’s normal way of ending a story, so little so that his biographer has tried to explain this anomaly by a loss of a miss on Griffith’s part. Let me quote Richard Schickel’s monograph D.W. Griffith: An American Life: “As for the French story, it has a truncated feeling about it, as if, perhaps, Griffith shot more of it than survived the final cut” (p. 314). It seems more likely, however, that Griffith intentionally sacrificed a neat narrative closure of the French story to maintain the metric flow of Intolerance as a whole. Remember, the French story ends only some fifteen minutes before the end of the film as a whole, and if Griffith decided to close it off with his usual slow-down it would beat down the tempo at the moment when two major stories, the Babylonian and the Modern ones, are gathering speed. To return to the general picture, the majority of shots in Intolerance (except for the ones that belong to the Judean story which is only six percent of the entire number) tend to become shorter and shorter. But even though the balance shows a considerable increase in the cutting rate, is the shortening of shots the only factor accountable for the increasing action tempo of 54

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 7

Fig. 6

Intolerance or is it that the crosscutting between its four main stories also accelerates as the film nears its end? To answer this, we need to find a way of quantifying the pace with which the stories alternate. One way of doing it is to use the same method as before, only instead of shots we apply it to the stories. As Griffith’s stories come in so many chunks, we can count the chunks (there are 55), ascertain the time they take, and calculate their average length (it is 211 seconds). This enables us to ask the same question about story chunks as we asked earlier on about shots: does their frequency increase, and if so, how? The answer is easily read from the diagram of cross-story dynamics presented on Figure 8. Here the linear trendline points to a decisive increase, while the wavy polynomial one betrays an amount of sophistication Griffith must have thought was needed to get across his – highly unusual – experiment in four-track narrative structure. That he begins with comparatively brief story chunks is perhaps in order to bring it home as early as possible that there is a connection between Fig. 8 55

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

the four times. This done, Griffith thinks he can now afford to linger on some of the stories a little longer (on the Modern and Babylonian ones, mainly, for these are by far the longest), which is shown by the fall of the wave around the middle of the film. But the higher the tension within the stories, the more often Griffith feels he must switch between them. This, again, is followed by a coda. Let me point, in conclusion, to an amazing consistency in Griffith’s approach to editing on two levels: the micro-level (the handling of shots within and across stories), and the macro-level (the handling of story chunks across the film). The wavy line that reflects the rise-and-fall in the crosscutting frequency between the stories (Fig. 8) is quite similar to the one obtained from the average story spans of the Modern (Fig. 9), Babylonian (Fig. 10) and Judean (Fig. 12) stories if we examine them separately. Only the French story differs: it lacks a coda (Fig. 11), which, we recall, the French story also lacks on the level of shot lengths (Fig. 6). In other words, neither the last segment of the French story, nor the shots that this segment consists of are longer than the ones that precede it. Is it a pure coincidence or perhaps a calculated stratagem that this specific story – and it alone – denies us a final relax, something that the other three stories offer? As we know, Richard Schickel who calls the French story truncated thinks it happened by accident, and it may well have, but looking at the elegant wave on Figure 8 one cannot help thinking that here, too, Griffith may have sacrificed a neat narrative closure of one of the stories in the interest of the overall tempo of Intolerance as a whole. Who knows? No one; but looking at lines and numbers won’t hurt as long as they help to form new hypotheses.

Fig. 9

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 12 56

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Postscript. Statistics, like math, works with numbers, but, unlike the ones produced by mathematicians, statistical models are not about exactness but about approximation. The time-based editing model of Intolerance attempted in this essay is (I believe) accurate but approximate. Three factors are responsible for that. One is the tool. Movie-Metrics – handoperated software – measures shot lengths in whole numbers of seconds (the average shot length numbers like 4.9 or 6.7 seconds result from averaging, not from measurements). The other is the print. Intolerance is a classical example of a case in which the “final cut” question is irresolvable. I could have used a variety of prints, depending on which the results would vary but not the general picture I assume. For my own reasons I worked with a DVD version of Intolerance produced by Kino, though ideally I should have measured a good 35mm copy on a flat-bed viewing table. Thirdly, there is always a problem of taxonomy. Do we include the credits into the calculations? I did not. And intertitles? I did. And where does one include the intertitles that belong to no story and merely help to shift between them? Where do these belong? I separated them as a special category (“buffer titles”) treating these as a no-man’s land which is nevertheless counted in when we speak of the film as a whole. And so on. But all in all, I repeat I think the data are accurate, and I thank Gunars Civjans for his help with graphs and calculations. Yuri Tsivian

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE The perception of Intolerance as a monumental folly finds ample support in both the film’s production history and its demonstrated aesthetic ambitions. At a cost far in excess of D.W. Griffith’s previous feature, The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance is typically understood as an attempt to surpass that milestone in the director’s career, to stand as a longer, grander and even more formally audacious work. Comprising four distinct narratives, each set in a different historical epoch, the scope of Intolerance outstrips that of any of the epics it was patterned after, including Griffith’s own Civil War saga. Released when the stylistic and narrative elements that comprise the fundamentals of an American approach to filmmaking were crystallising into the classical system, Intolerance’s uneasy relationship to classicism’s operations and principles have forever marked the film as an anomaly. Seizing on the film’s evident difference, critics of the day characterised Intolerance’s formal achievements in terms as grandiose as the film itself: “a milepost in the progress of film” (Smith, “Intolerance in Review”, p. 22); “the most incredible experiment in story-telling that has ever been tried” (Johnson, “The Shadow Stage”, p. 77); “a departure from all previous forms of legitimate or film construction” (Variety, September 8, 1916). Efforts to revive the film in the early sound era by the likes of Iris Barry reformulated Intolerance’s aesthetic importance by inserting it into an alternative tradition of anti-classical masterpieces grouped under an art cinema rubric. Fully aware of how “its status in the masterpiece and art film discourse may in turn be responsible for blocking any serious critical debate on the film”, Miriam Hansen’s more recent magisterial analysis of Intolerance has made a case for understanding it as a “gigantic ruin of modernity” (Hansen, Babel and Babylon, pp. 131–32). In Hansen’s view, the film’s insistence on a mode of parallel construction collides with the emergent tenets of classicism, and Griffith’s attempt to compensate for the attendant lack of clarity through insistent “authorial interventions [only intensifies] the problem by constantly violating the principle of unobtrusive narration” (Hansen, op. cit., p. 140). What results is a film destabilised by a refusal/inability to reconcile its aesthetic project with the narrational and stylistic self-effacement required to establish a circumscribed and unified diegetic universe. Ironically, Griffith’s own accomplishments in The Birth of a Nation had contributed to the ascendancy of the classical paradigm that Intolerance challenges. 57

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

What, then, is one to make of the style of Intolerance? Do the four worlds of Intolerance represent four modes of film style, resulting in the culmination of not only Griffith’s Biograph career, but also the achievements of international cinema up to this point? Or do the structural demands of four separate stories create a splintering effect, wherein integral stylistic systems inherent to each narrative line find themselves undone by the film’s devotion to a process of alternation? Do the film’s aspirations – to extend the principle of accelerated crosscutting beyond the multi-pronged rescues of The Birth of a Nation; to forge a union of the intimately observed detail and the overwhelming vastness of pageantry, amplifying an approach already initiated by The Birth of a Nation and Judith of Bethulia (1914) – constitute the first stage in what would eventually become the ”epic” Hollywood style of DeMille and his successors? Or does Griffith’s determination to produce a film that will demonstrate the aesthetic possibilities of the medium inevitably result in a stylistic approach so self-aware that coherence has been abandoned? Does the director’s tendency toward echoing effects, wherein stylistic elements gain force and increased resonance by repetition in similar narrative contexts, find its apogee in the incessant parallelism of Intolerance? Or must we conclude, as Russell Merritt does, that in this film Griffith demonstrates a mastery of invoking “impossible” comparisons, creating “unresolved contradictions” (Merritt, “On First Looking into Griffith’s Babylon”, p. 20)? If, on closer examination of the style of Intolerance, we find affirmation of all these possible readings of the film’s method and effects, we come closer to appreciating its paradoxical achievements and to an increased understanding of its singular position as a “radiant crazy quilt”, as it was so labelled at the time of its release (Johnson, op. cit., p. 113). Any study of Intolerance’s style must contend with the issue of clarity. The film’s purported deviance from the nascent classical system stems from the manner in which the narrative confounds easy comprehension. Typically, commentators identify Griffith’s decision to move from one storyline to the other as creating spectatorial confusion. While not wanting to deny the structural challenges Intolerance poses for viewers trained to expect unifilar narratives, I would suggest that the film’s difficulty derives as much from the composition of individual shots and from shot-to-shot combinations as from the shifts amongst the different stories. If anything, the film’s parallelism merely exacerbates a principle of reduced intelligibility already present at the localised level of each shot’s represented space. Russell Merritt has explored this facet of Intolerance’s limited intelligibility in his detailed examination of the set for Belshazzar’s feast in the Babylonian section. Finding the set to be defined by distortions of linear perspective, non-functional architectural details, unidentifiable shapes and nonsensical crowd movement, Merritt suggests that such infelicities leave the viewer “simply overwhelmed by the distractions of the mise-en-scène, surrendering to the spectacle laid out for us” (Merritt, op. cit., p. 18). Merritt convincingly demonstrates how the set not only creates a perceptually perplexing collection of spatial cues, but also defies Bazinian notions of a filmic space that extends beyond the boundaries of the frame. It is this aspect of Intolerance’s space, one both potentially confusing and also insistently self-contained, that I wish to pursue further, for if such a quality manifests itself most flamboyantly in Belshazzar’s court, it is by no means restricted to that one instance. If we examine the introductory moments of each storyline, we can gain a more exacting sense of how Griffith sets up the respective narrative spaces, while also seeing how his use of style contributes to the difficulties these spaces pose for full comprehension. The first true establishing shot of the film occurs three shots into the Modern story and functions to introduce chief reformer Mary Jenkins. In fact, the character does not appear in the opening extreme long shot of the ballroom of the Jenkins residence, though viewers could be forgiven for thinking that she does. This shot is a hive of activity, with different pools of action occurring in various sectors of the frame, all potentially vying for the viewer’s attention. Nonetheless, 58

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

a pronounced sense of directionality dominates the image, with most of the architectural details of the set and the figures within the frame drawing the eye toward the centre from the left. The frame is bifurcated, lending it a semblance of order: a wall with two panels divides the image, erecting a backdrop for the left foreground action and serving as a contrast to the receding perspective dominating the right side, where dancers swirl in the background. The right foreground of the frame is left relatively open, and one might well expect the image’s centre of narrative interest to appear here. But one searches in vain: the composition creates a privileged site for a pivotal action, but provides none. As the shot continues and the extras begin to traverse the frame, one wonders which one might be Mary Jenkins. An apparent clue comes in the form of a slight panning motion, moving the frame’s boundaries toward the right. But even with the aid of a mobile camera, we cannot locate a protagonist. At this moment, however, a cut intercedes, introducing a new shot featuring characters who have not appeared previously. Central to this group, with her back to the camera, is the elusive Mary Jenkins. We realise retrospectively that this grouping of figures existed on the far right edge of the frame, barely visible prior to the cut (though Mary herself always remained beyond the frameline in the master shot). Further spatial anchoring comes in the form of the background behind this group, which on inspection proves to be the distinctive panels from the left side of the initial shot of the ballroom. Yet the frontality of the camera’s positioning and the group’s location at what must be the extreme right of the ballroom space renders it physically impossible for these panels to be visible behind them. In microcosm, the presentation of Mary Jenkins within her ballroom also introduces us to the spatial logic of many of Intolerance’s establishing shots: impossibly busy compositions which, when broken down into details, often confound us further, revealing only the suspect physical laws upon which their visual construction depends. The curious spatial connections inaugurated in the first two shots of the ballroom only continue in subsequent shots, which shift the action from ballroom to library. No sooner is Mary Jenkins introduced in the second shot than we cut back to a version of the first shot (the edit accentuated by a failure to match Mary’s turning action across the cut), allowing her to depart the frame. Rather than moving with her, the camera maintains its focus on the young woman within the group, as though her attractiveness to the men accompanying her compels the camera to rest there. Meanwhile, Mary’s exact whereabouts cause confusion because we cannot establish how her new location (a library) relates to that of the ballroom. Mary encounters a young man in the library, and the directionality of his gaze (passing beyond Mary to be reciprocated by a young woman in the ballroom) tells us the library must be just to the right of the ballroom. The cues, such as they are, come late and must be read retroactively; whereas the classical system would use a relay of character looks to confirm spatial relations already established by such devices as matches-on-action, contiguity cuts and consistent directionality, Intolerance’s partial and confusing spatial logic makes us wait for characters to reveal where they are. A telling demonstration of how the film denies expected visual cues comes in the moment when Mary espies her reflection in a mirror. Though Griffith cuts to a masked closeup of the mirror, the closer-scaled shot shows us nothing more than we saw in the wider framing: the mirror remains turned in such a way that we cannot glimpse Mary’s view of herself. In the spatial system of Intolerance, we often search fruitlessly for the edifying detail; even when we are encouraged to think we will see more, full comprehension eludes us. For the remaining three storylines, the introductory sequences depend more evidently on mobile framing than do the comparable shots from the Modern story, but the animating spatial principles remain similar, even as the procedures vary. In the Judean story, the initial establishing shot of the Jaffa gate echoes the split composition of the ballroom shot, but here a pronounced perspective effect appears on the left side of the image, with a seemingly endless 59

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

set of arches receding into the distance. The main lines of activity move parallel to the wall, but the vast number of figures, combined with the scale of the shot, renders it difficult to know which of those activities should invite particular attention. Eventually, a much more closely scaled backward tracking shot tied to the forward movement of a camel selects the salient action for us, though the import of the camel scarcely becomes clear through emphasis. The eventual focus of attention within the scene will be the Pharisees; tellingly, they are introduced in an identical manner, walking along a wall while the camera tracks backward away from them. In retrospect, then, one can see the inserted shot of the camel as setting up a formal rhyme completed by the first glimpse of the Pharisees. Even so, grasping the significance of the shot of the camel creates a challenge for the viewer. As Hansen notes, Intolerance “displays a large number of unauthorized, unclaimed, spatially ambiguous shots, especially close-ups of objects and faces that assume an autonomous, emblematic quality” (op. cit., p. 149). The tracking shot of the camel, then, serves as an appropriately inscrutable example of the unmotivated camera movement Griffith will favour throughout Intolerance. Most memorably employed for the feast of Belshazzar in the Babylonian sequence, Griffith’s insistent mobile framing, doubtless influenced by similar deployment of large-scale camera movements in Italian epics such as Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914), rarely aids in enhancing viewer comprehension. As Russell Merritt describes its effect in relation to the feast sequence, the track exists as sheer ornament. It serves no narrative function, nor does it represent an affective point of view. More striking, the forward movement does not work to discover or pinpoint any particular detail … The effect of the track is not to draw us centripetally towards a central focal point, but rather to propel the set outward, setting … architectural details in motion, and to pull us centrifugally to the margins of the screen as these drift out of view. The track draws us away from any single attraction, giving us too much to see to concentrate on details. (Merritt, op. cit., pp. 18–19)

Of course, Griffith’s devotion to mobile framing in Intolerance extends beyond the stately track that dominates the feast of Belshazzar. In the other two sequences designed to introduce separate epochs, one finds the employment of pans and directional tracks as well, but these camera movements produce no greater degree of narrational clarification. In the opening of the French story, one sees Griffith deliberately altering the compositional principles evident in initial establishing shots of the Modern and Judean narratives. The set of the town square opens up toward the camera, much in the manner of a proscenium stage, with activity confined mostly to the outer perimeter. Only at the end of the shot, with the lateral movement of a carriage and horses across the frame, does any single action invite special attention from the viewer (save for one earlier irised cut-in of a female bread-seller). The horizontality of the carriage’s trajectory finds a compositional echo in the layout of the following set, the court of Charles IX. Here, figures are spread out across the width of the frame, with Charles and his mother positioned at the far left, while the empty foreground, recalling the previous shot, becomes even more noticeable in the vast interior space. A track-in toward the two figures performs what proves to be the most conventional of narrational functions, singling out the narratively significant characters. But it is immediately supplanted by an extensive pan, the distinctiveness of which is amplified by the camera’s positioning at such a height that the upper reaches of the room are emphasised over the occupants of the space. The heads of the members of the court pop up at the lower edges of screen, severed from their bodies by the frameline. The next shot, which focuses on Monsieur La France, heir to the throne, does not derive from the earlier pan, as he is simply one of the many massed figures the camera passes over as it traverses the width of the set. If the pan has any focal point at 60

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

all, it is the elaborate tapestry hanging on the wall, perfectly framed by the camera by virtue of its high positioning. In this way, the pronounced height functions as a variation on the celebrated masking effects Griffith employs throughout Intolerance, though ornamentation becomes the ultimate goal as often as directing viewer attention to a narrative end. The opening shot of the Babylonian section emphasises a diagonal directionality, with the gate jutting into the frame at an oblique angle. (A secondary prominent shape emerges in the curve of the gate’s main arch, which finds its first echo in the rounded roadway that passes before the gate, accentuated by the massed movement coursing along its length.) Much as the horse and carriage’s movement introduced a lateral principle which the subsequent compositions within the French court developed, here the diagonal lines of the wall find their equivalent in the camera’s repositioning by about forty-five degrees for the cut-in to the subsequent shot of the main gate’s entrance. The continuity of action from the first shot, via the movement of the elephants passing through the archway leads one to conclude that this, the final opening, will prove to be the most conventionally constructed of the four. However, the third shot, still more closely scaled, confounds that expectation on two levels. First, one realises that the elephants are now travelling in the opposite direction, meaning that the camera has crossed the axis and has now adopted a vantage point on the opposite side of the gate. Without warning, Griffith has moved us inside Babylon, even as his cutting pattern suggests spatial continuity. Moreover, the move to a closer shot scale coincides with another instance of moving camera, as the camera tracks on a diagonal toward the arch. Now positioned inside the gate, the camera moves insistently toward the arch as though to take us back out again. Before this trajectory can be completed, however, the next cut introduces yet another undulating camera movement, this one following Rhapsode as he snakes his way through the crowd, turning his back to the camera as he disappears into the left background. In the next shot, however, he appears in a position similar to the one he initially occupied in the previous shot, though he is now seated on a different bench than before. As much as Griffith’s method may complicate our understanding of already complex spaces, it also helps draw our attention to formal rhymes and graphic dominants (on the level of shape, direction and mass) in a way that prefigures Eisenstein’s cultivation of “the compositional dependence between the plastic side of … shots” (Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, p. 115). That each of the openings studied develops a distinct approach to its construction of space lends credence to the idea that Griffith sought to emulate an identifiable mode of contemporary film practice associated with the representation of the epochs chosen. Thus, the Babylonian story invites comparison to Italian epics, the Judean narrative recalls the filmed Passion Play, the French story invokes the Film d’art, while the Modern story makes reference to Griffith’s own Biograph dramas. As Miriam Hansen has pointed out in this regard, Intolerance concerns itself “with the connotations attached to specific traditions of representation, … thus acknowledging – in order to manipulate – the iconographic conventions associated with the respective historical periods” (Hansen, op. cit., p. 175). But beyond mere citation of familiar formal approaches, Intolerance’s attempt at deliberate stylistic diversity attests to the malleability of film style, and ultimately, the power of style to signify independent of narrative function. Intolerance’s structure facilitates the potential for an increased polysemy of style, encouraging viewers to see connections among its different narrative strands on the level of formal repetitions. Griffith had already experimented with this technique on a large-scale canvas with The Birth of a Nation, when he created visual echoes by repeating certain emphasised techniques in altered narrative contexts, thereby expanding the meaning and effect of these techniques beyond that achieved by a singular use. This approach becomes even more ambitious when employed in Intolerance, because techniques become distributed across as many 61

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

as four storylines. Again, if one looks at introductory moments, one can see that the film adopts a similar manner of initial presentation for each of the individual narratives’ three primary female protagonists. For the Dear One, a long shot gives way to medium shot, whereas the Mountain Girl receives a medium shot followed by a close-up, and Brown Eyes appears via a trio of progressively closer shots, the last bringing her face startlingly near to the camera. This moment of intense scrutiny will be replicated later during the assault on Brown Eyes by the mercenary ultimately responsible for her death; a similarly intimate scale is employed when the Dear One reacts to the sentencing of the Boy after she returns to her apartment. (In the latter instance, Mae Marsh’s face comes so close to the camera that focus is lost.) In this way, the introduction of the female figures anticipates their ultimate victimisation, and the legacy of intolerance is reinforced across the multiple narratives. In other instances, the intended meanings generated by parallels among repeated images and techniques prove more difficult to discern. The clenched fists of the Mountain Girl, rendered in close-up, as she is put on display in the marriage market, will later find their double in the Dear One’s outstretched hand, holding on to her baby’s bootie after the child has been torn from her arms. But the one gesture bespeaks defiance, inviting admiration of the Mountain Girl’s indomitable spirit, while the other underlines the hopelessness of the Dear One’s situation, establishing her as a figure of pity. As Russell Merritt has argued when examining other instances of parallelism in Intolerance, oftentimes the connections implied on the level of repeated technique cannot be sustained when comparing the function of the elements so linked: “The spectator’s process of association is continuously interrupted by unassimilated disparities” (Merritt, op. cit., p. 20). The very structure of Intolerance, which renders the goal of linking imagery and style across disparate storylines so ambitious, also exposes the film’s compositional seams whenever the idea of pervasive intolerance falters as a connective heuristic. Intolerance often gestures towards coherence, but when the different storylines fail to reinforce one another, their interconnection comes to resemble an overlay of intermittently similar tales rather than the integration of innately related aspects of the same message. Ironically, Hollywood would practice its own version of overwriting when borrowing from Intolerance’s methods to film more conventional epics, but only by rejecting Griffith’s structural innovations and incorporating a streamlined version of the film’s style. The Babylonian sets, which remained standing, would find themselves used sporadically in films for years to come: this parasitical dependence on Griffith’s excessive mise-en-scène mirrors classicism’s opportunistic approach to formal deviation. Cognisant of the potential use value of Intolerance’s unwieldy yet impressive style, the classical system did what it does best – selectively assimilate those aspects that would enhance classicism’s principles without compromising them. Thus, Intolerance’s stylistic legacy lived on in later classical practice, but dissected and diluted, for the eccentricity of the original proved unsustainable. Charlie Keil

PERFORMANCE AND CHARACTERIZATION (for Stefan Sharff)

Introduction If “soul music” seemed to be the guiding principle of affective response in The Birth of a Nation (1915), the “contemplating mind” was proposed as the measure of D.W. Griffith’s next great epic. “Intolerance is a combination of the poetic and drama in epical form”, the New York Dramatic Mirror review of the film asserted (May 20, 1916). This review echoed the link between Homeric epics and cinema that Griffith himself had made in 1913 (Colgate Baker, “David W. Griffith the Genius of the Movies”, The New York Review, December 13, 62

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

1913, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks at the New York Public Library, Volume 446). But the New York Dramatic Mirror reviewer went further: “[Intolerance] is designed to indicate the visions that could flash across the mind while contemplating a crisis in one’s personal affairs.” Later that year in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (September 9, 1916, Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 446), Griffith was describing Intolerance from that same perspective. “There are subsequent interruptions as the different stories develop along similar lines”, he explained, “switching from one to another, as the mind might do when contemplating such a theme” [emphasis added]. In terms of acting, Intolerance poses the question: who is contemplating? Up to and including The Birth of a Nation, the mental realm of a Griffith film was progressively located in the actor’s face. Though dialogue clearly was recited by some of the players, it was the ability to demonstrate emotions fleeting in rapid, sometimes contradictory succession across the face that conveyed the essence of character in “the Griffith style”. Referred to in the press of the time as “sunshine and shadows” acting, this stream of facial expressions was a physical indicator of interior activity and was meant to reveal the complexity of a character’s “crisis in personal affairs”. Through the mediation of the actor’s performance, the audience was given the impression that it actually knew how a character was thinking through a particular moment. At the very least an act of intense emotional identification was being elicited. But Griffith theorized further that this externalization of inner life was a strategy to involve the audience in the creation of the total film effect. In 1915 he explained that if actors performed “as two people very much in love would be expected to behave in like circumstances … the audiences weave their own romance and do the larger share of the acting for that scene” [emphasis added] (Motion Picture Supplement, November 1915, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 209). The ideological argument of The Birth of a Nation required this coincidence of identification with an internalization of the actors’ and ultimately the filmmaker’s point of view. In the end, the viewer was meant to embrace the Southern outlook on the Civil War and especially of Reconstruction. Intolerance also makes an argument, and much more pointedly, but its scope is ambitiously expanded to assume a cross-epochal breadth. Performances do remain grounded in the specifics of each of the film’s four time periods. However, Griffith elevated his directorial intentions to lead audiences beyond sympathetic identification with individual characters and toward a pan-cultural interpretation of nothing less than the human condition. As the New York Dramatic Mirror review suggests and Griffith confirms, Intolerance, the “drama of comparisons”, aimed to emulate a flow of thought, stand as surrogate act of contemplation. The whole film would represent a mental realm for the audience. The Birth of a Nation was one of the great triumphs of performance in early cinema. Across the epic screen D.W. Griffith was able to create a convincing depiction of the great American civil conflict from an apparently transparent amalgamation of gesture and composition that harmonized very different styles of acting available in 1915. How would the tenuous harmony of theatrical and cinematic techniques created among the actors in The Birth of a Nation fare in the globally enlarged and theoretically “mentalized” realm of Intolerance? Comparison was not a new structural concept. Griffith had compared lives within the Biograph stories. But would the grander conception of Intolerance maintain the integration of theatrical and cinematic acting that seems to exist to seamlessly in the earlier epic? Or would the four-part structure break performance into distinctive modes as the cutting between the four distinctive locales of the film broke into the surrogate flow of thought? Where would a style sufficient to Intolerance’s conception be found? How would the “Griffith style” itself evolve? What dramaturgy was appropriate to such a grand scheme? Contemporary reviews seemed to recognize that the overall plan of the new film created 63

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

a different sympathetic effect. In short, Intolerance was a different sort of epic from The Birth of a Nation, in which acting was so breathlessly praised. For one thing, audiences already were cheering the appearance of recognizable stars. “Zit” of The New York Journal notes that “the cast was a delirious medley of Triangle favorites. The audience hailed each with a storm of applause, but they were so many that the theater rang with personal plaudits for the first half hour of the performance” (“Intolerance at Liberty Impossible to Surpass. Griffith Sets a New Mark for Imitators to Shoot At”, July 6, 1916, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 446). On the other hand, Lynde Denig of The Moving Picture World felt that the cast was challenged with “difficult characterizations” and noted that “in a production of this description where thousands of men and women contribute to the total impression, individual performances are naturally relegated to secondary consideration” (“Intolerance World’s Greatest Motion Picture”, September 23, 1916, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 446). This sentiment was echoed by The Des Moines Register later in the film’s run. “In a play which depends so much upon the mammoth effects, the work of individual actors is of little moment [emphasis added], but valuable work is done by Mae Marsh in the modern story and Constance Talmadge as the mountain girl in the Babylonian story, with Lillian Gish as the woman who rocks the cradle contributing a poetic picture of the universality of human problems as the scene shifts from one story to another” (April 22, 1917, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 203). True, as the film played across the United States, and as the performers appeared in subsequent productions, their work in Intolerance was valued. For instance, Josephine Crowell (Photoplay review of The Old Folks at Home, December 1916, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 353) and Miriam Cooper (The New York Telegraph, February 4, 1917, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 326) received praise for their earlier work in Griffith’s epic. The standout story of the film, however, was Mae Marsh, who seemed to be the “discovery” of the moment. Denig noted that her performance was “if anything, more expressive than her work in The Birth of a Nation”. And her story was especially interesting as it could be played out as a triumph over a rival, the star who might have been expected to take the lead role in Intolerance, Lillian Gish. The central icon of beauty, the prize in The Birth of a Nation, was relegated in Intolerance to a strange “poetic” isolation, pensively rocking the cradle of the world’s sorrows. Once again, Griffith seemed to have confounded expectation. But immediately notable or not, the vast cast of Intolerance was no less scrupulously directed than the cast of any other Griffith film. The fate of hard-won intimacy in the context of mammoth scale and intellectualized intent is the chief story of performance in the film. Monuments, Sacred and Profane The population of The Birth of a Nation represented a blend of theatrical types with Griffith’s own natural and detailed style of screen portrayal. Performance in Intolerance also would be gripped by a syncretic spirit – one that seemed to be in the very California air in which Griffith was conceiving his new project. The zeitgeist was public and popularizing. The ancient was blending freely and imaginatively with the modern. Progressive uplift movements produced physical-education ventures like Marion Morgan’s Art Dancers “[who enacted] among other things, [a] tragedy in a Roman Vestal temple…” (Harper’s Bazaar, 1915). “A Dionysian dance group” was photographed for Vanity Fair (July 1915). Volume 281 of the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks contains additional magazine spreads from The Theatre, Musical Courier, and Town & Country with similar themes. “Living Reproductions of Old Greek Frescoes” were still being published in Vanity Fair as late as the September issue of 1918. The Tower of Jewels that rose above the San Francisco Panama Pacific Exhibition of 64

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

1915 was another public manifestation of the cultural moment. Both Karl Brown (Adventures with D.W. Griffith, p. 150) and Richard Schickel (D.W. Griffith, An American Life, p. 312) mention the impact this edifice had on the development of Intolerance. Neither author makes any particular historical claims for the building beyond a vague “orientalism” that, according to Schickel, seemed to be circulating freely in the early days of the twentieth century. But the Tower of Jewels was “the most unforgettable and tallest [building of the Panama Pacific Exhibition. It] had forty-three stories and was covered by more than a hundred thousand colored glass ‘jewels’ that dangled individually to shimmer and reflect light as the Pacific breezes moved them. [The] architecture … found its inspiration … in the Orient and the Moorish age of Spain. The designers appeared to seek, next to spaciousness and even vastness, color and sensuous beauty at once mystical and commanding” (“The 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition of San Francisco”, ). This combination of spectacle, exoticism and civic revivalism also was effecting a revolution in another gestural art form that would contribute performances to Intolerance. In Denishawn: The Enduring Influence, Jane Sherman chronicles the transformation of Ruth St. Denis from vaudeville “skirt-dancer” to serious early modern choreographer. Together with her partner and husband, Ted Shawn, St. Denis explored the cross-cultural conjunctions of dramatic gesture, utilizing intense library research into “books, paintings, sculptures and music [of ancient and exotic traditions], even to discovering in a museum a tiny ancient coin that showed the correct headdress for St. Denis to wear in her Abyssinian ballet, Ishtar of the Seven Gates” (p. 35). In 1916 the newly named “Denishawn” dancers appeared in the Greek Theatre of the University of California in Berkeley, where St. Denis and Shawn and a large company presented A Dance Pageant of Egypt, Greece and India (Sherman, op. cit., introduction). Finally, as the titles of Intolerance proudly assert and Karl Brown confirms (op. cit., pp. 145–56), contemporary archaeological discoveries formed the basis for the imaginative recreation of the betrayal of Belshazzar, the “very young king” of Babylon to the conqueror, Cyrus the Persian. It is no wonder that Griffith, ever attuned to – if sometimes at odds with – his cultural moment, would draw on themes that were developing in other arts and sciences. The mysterious Middle East manifested in the Tower of Jewels and appropriated by St. Denis was concretely demonstrated in strikingly detailed friezes recently excavated from ancient Mesopotamian sites (C.E. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars, pp. 317–336). Griffith had long been interested in representing distant cultures for contemporary viewers. He had visualized the Stone Age, medieval Europe and Native American villages among others during the Biograph period. He had approached Middle Eastern society in Judith of Bethulia (1914). Moreover, he had an interest in creating a faithful rendering of other times and places, and his recreations were based, like St. Denis’ were, in research and documented detail. Brown mentions, for instance, the paintings that had been revisualized to authenticate the historical veracity of scenes in The Birth of a Nation. Brown and Schickel both mention the scrapbooks of documentation assembled by Joseph Henabery for Griffith’s use on the set of Intolerance. What photographs and paintings had done for the earlier film, the ancient stones would for Intolerance. Any photo or exhibit of Mesopotamian antiquities reveals the design elements that both Griffith and St. Denis used as foundations for performance. Extended arms end in hands positioned at uncomfortable ninety-degree angles (especially characteristic of Seena Owens’ Princess Beloved; also part of the St. Denis repertoire). Ritual distances express kingly status, and eye contact is either special in its favor or terrible in its wrath with little “ordinary” middle ground. Beards are meticulously curled; dress intricately decorated. In battle, shields upraised, soldiers protect both Belshazzar and Cyrus from harm. At one ceremonial moment, Belshazzar is given 65

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

the gauzy wings seen on Assyrian gods or demons. These details and poses can be found in some form in the stones, mosaics and seals that were excavated from Mesopotamian sites and that are replicated on Intolerance’s vast Babylonian set. “Art of the First Cities: The Third Millenium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus”, a 2003 exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, additionally includes headdresses and ornaments that lend further credibility to the composite “Babylon” that Griffith recreated on the screen. But St. Denis meant her dances to be, in large part, new public ceremonies that invoked the sacred. (See Jane Desmond’s account of St. Denis’ “Radha” in Dils and Albright’s Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, p. 259.) In this, St. Denis’ dance appropriations accorded with the intent of the public arts of the Middle Eastern ancients. Certainly, the gestures of kings and gods suited the mammoth scale Griffith was preparing for Babylon. But his aim in utilizing archaeological material was different from St. Denis’. Just as he had begun to do in Judith of Bethulia, he meant his Babylon to revivify an ancient time for a contemporary audience – to put them, as it were, in the streets of history. But unlike the photos of Civil War trenches or the realist paintings from which he connected earlier work, the stones of Mesopotamia were a people’s ritualized depictions of the spirits of their culture. If contemporary audiences were to empathize with the royal characters that verified Intolerance’s Babylon, a continuity had to be found between ancient conceptions of gods and heroes and performances that conveyed the individual feelings and thoughts that always had been a performance goal of the “Griffith style”. Translating gestures frozen for centuries in monumental stones to living bodies performing on the screen would prove more challenging to Griffith than it was to St. Denis. While the figures cut by Alfred Paget’s Belshazzar and Seena Owens’ Princess Beloved may evoke the aura of ancient nobility, the performances required of them also elicit the responses the ancient arts meant to provoke. The god-king and his paramour are idealizations of noble love and desire. In peace, Paget and Owens parade regally and gaze afar as though inhabiting a distant dream of grandeur. In the midst of their sexualized court, their own relationship expresses desire always trembling on the brink of consummation, save for one celebratory kiss. In war, each can be forced to overlarge (and sometimes repetitive) gestures. Seena Owens, for instance, windmills her arms anxiously to urge banqueting Babylonians to their city’s final defense. Alfred Paget’s upraised arm signifies all of Belshazzar’s imposing royal authority, as George Siegmann’s imposing bulk encased in shining fish-scale armor embodies the overwhelming power of Cyrus the Persian. Otherwise, each leader stands sternly in the chariot, as he would in an ancient frieze. Though Belshazzar takes an occasional stab with his sword, it is his war-like pose that expresses the scope of his generalship. Conceived in grandeur, the royals of Babylon ultimately must harmonize with the magnificent spaces Griffith gives them to command – even if they sometimes are swallowed by them. The intimacies of Babylon are expressed in the heady confrontation between perverted religiosity and sexuality that links the noble creatures of the ancient court to the themes of Intolerance. In terms of the film’s story, the repressive and traitorous priests of Bel are pitted against the new love-cult of Ishtar over which Belshazzar reigns. The sexual availability of the Princess Beloved, “favorite” of the king, is masked in regal delicacies and authoritative costuming. The erotic virgins that tend the sacred fires of life, on the other hand, are depicted in a more freely conceived series of specialized “beauty shots” in which scantily clad devotees of Ishtar assume inviting poses not so obviously drawn from ancient arts. Singly and in tableaux, these actors convey a sensuality consistent with the court’s epic scale, but in a more accessible mode. Their semi-nude images add a luxurious element to the Babylonian set, though not one of the posing courtesans seems to have the individuality that sparkled among the pretty dancers who celebrated the victory of Bull Run at the Cameron ball in The Birth of a Nation. 66

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Consequently, while the Babylonian court is a thrilling combination of awesome magnitude, exotic detail and salacious allure, it is a curiously generalized emotional experience. The audience, thrilled in battle, loses contact with characters whose gestures sometimes appear to be no more than details in the epic design of the set – a fate that, interestingly, was not suffered by Lincoln or even Grant and Lee, all of whom were referenced to popular illustrations, and all of whom Griffith was at great pains to humanize in The Birth of a Nation. The Judean segment of Intolerance also was referenced to material freely circulating in the culture, but while the Passion Play might have been a “sure-fire” piety, it also was a risky business that suggested the safeguard of both priest and rabbi on Griffith’s set (Brown, op. cit., p. 137). In Judith of Bethulia, Griffith had been free to imagine the details of the Biblical milieu. Judith’s passion had been illustrated by artists no less powerful than Caravaggio and Gentileschi, but still she was a living woman, not a direct manifestation of the sacred. As a dramatic character, Jesus always had presented the difficulty of melding the divine aura with the quotidian gesture, and, as Brown reports (op. cit., p. 134), Griffith’s own imaginative latitude was further constrained by centuries of familiar and beloved images. In the end, Howard Gaye’s Jesus comes across as a rather flimsy presence, his gestures as small and confined as Belshazzar’s (Alfred Paget) are overlarge – and to somewhat the same distancing effect. Jesus is more manifest as a character when Gaye moves on the streets and interacts with the Pharisees and the crowd. Otherwise, he seems insubstantial. But this very quality may actually have been central to Griffith’s conception of the role. Brown hints at this possibility in his account of the “mysterious aura” Griffith sought to create around Christ. Gaye’s close-ups were a constant disappointment, unable to convey the miraculous presence Griffith was trying to manifest. In the end, neither makeup nor dramaturgy achieved a satisfactory characterization of Jesus. Instead, Brown reports that he retouched the negative to elicit recollections of a painted Christ – a confirmation of a familiar image rather than a fresh dramatization by an actor (op. cit., pp. 137–141). This displacement may represent a loss in immediacy and constitute a barrier to identification, but pragmatic gains also resulted. The final Jesus who appears on the screen in Intolerance probably accorded better with Griffith’s overall plan of the film. Intolerance does not propose to tell the story of Christ, but to use Jesus’ ordeal as the archetype of injustice and suffering boldly intercut with the Boy’s “crucifixion” by “society” in the film’s Modern story. Gaye’s casting then becomes more interesting as it links his Jesus with his Robert E. Lee, the Southern hero and martyr in The Birth of a Nation – a depiction also rooted in a pictorial source. Babylon and Judea represent the challenges to performance leveled by images circulating in popular culture. In the one case, Griffith creatively selected bits and pieces from material that was entering the popular imagination to create a simulacrum that could stand for an authentic experience of an ancient time. In the other, he acquiesced to an established tradition of representation – in fact, embraced and emphasized it – to serve the greater structural and ideological purposes of his film. Monumental Space and the Internal Life In some sense, Intolerance represents the desire of a miniaturist of individual emotion to create a large-scale mural of public passion. The concern for detail remains. Individual feelings are most poignantly expressed. But dramaturgic strategies also are stretched, sometimes to limits where they are distorted by the enlarged scale of the new work. Scope does not always swallow or flatten characterization in Intolerance, but vast expanses of space are never absent in any of the four narratives. In every milieu where actors had to scale their performances locally, intercutting positioned those performances globally in the context of the film’s large message. 67

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The first characters to appear in Intolerance are a familiar group of busybodies. Griffith’s opinions of social engineers were previewed in The Reformers, or the Lost Art of Minding One’s Business (1913). The special contempt Griffith expressed for these people in the earlier film explodes into a magnificent rage over the “meddlers” of Intolerance. Once again these women and their sniffy male counterparts are represented as types – a bustling, joyless, homely crew attired in plain, even severe garb. Only one of them shows any individuality, and her compassion is too weakly pressed to stem the disastrous tide of “reform” advanced by her compatriots. The first passage of the film illustrates the genesis of the type. An “uplifter” is born in the character of Miss Mary Jenkins (Vera Lewis). The wealthy Miss Jenkins is unveiled in the same spatial grandeur that characterizes the Babylonian and French courts – with consequent overtones of spoil and languor that undercut the integrity of her Puritan aspirations. The composition implies that the sexuality joyfully flouted around the sacred fires of life in Babylon and seething in the irrational rages of the French court, also simmers in Miss Jenkins’ pinched breast. Accordingly, Miss Jenkins first appears against the backdrop of a vast ball, with all its potential social and sexual contact. Unlike the later comparative scene in the workers’ hall where everyone joins the social whirl, Miss Jenkins does not dance. She stands in the decorously darkened foreground that forms a frame and separates her from the lighter background of dancing pairs and charming conversationalists. After greeting some guests, she moves right to enter a more intimate parlor. But here, too, background overcomes foreground. Miss Jenkins is disappointed when a young male acquaintance prefers the company of a younger woman who emerges from the depth of the set. Another youthful companion is drawn away left toward the ballroom by a second young lady. Finally, as she stands sadly alone, attention is focused on the relationship between Miss Jenkins’ face and a mirror on the parlor table. Here, in the slower, expository passages of Intolerance, Vera Lewis performs one of those moments in which smiles and dolor alternate to express the emotional conflict the character feels. As the title explains, the mirror reveals an unwanted truth. Miss Jenkins feels passed up – too old to attract male attention or experience sexual satisfaction. This epiphany between actress and mirror recalls such Biographs as The Painted Lady (1912), which also dealt with sexual repression; or Brutality (1912), where audience, not character, sees an ugly raging monster reflected in a strategically placed mirror. As these earlier cases suggest, mirrors can forecast inner truths to viewer and character alike. Miss Jenkins, however, derives no self-knowledge from her image. Fleeting pity for her quickly hardens into judgment and prepares for the film’s condemnation of her psychological blindness. Later, Sam De Grasse also is given one scene in which to establish the dour character of Mr. Jenkins, uplifter by proxy. The brother of the would-be reformer is revealed to be a man who would rather polish a penny he finds in a street than exchange a kind, much less flirtatious word with a pretty factory miss who gives him the eye (a vivacious thumbnail performance delivered by an uncredited actress). Thereafter, Mr. Jenkins is imprisoned at his desk, fairly engulfed in the overlarge expanse of a darkened and otherwise empty office space that echoes his sister’s spiritual aridity and sexual isolation. Like the Jesus character, the Jenkinses also serve a metaphorical function in Intolerance, albeit with a different effect and accomplished by different dramatic means. Miss Jenkins is undesirable. Mr. Jenkins rejects desire. In terms of the film’s message, they are the modern equivalents of the hypocritical Pharisees and the traitorous priests of Bel. But the Jenkinses are especially cowardly. After their characters are established, the Jenkinses loom over the rest of the film’s Modern story in surrogate acts of cruelty performed in their name by armed factory goons and sour-faced sob-sisters (and a couple of self-satisfied sob-brothers) who always do more harm than good. Just as Jesus is the “Man of Men” to whose innocence all 68

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

unjust persecution can be referenced, the Jenkins are the hidden hand of injustice that pushes forward false and damaging reform. The covert activities performed in their name not only relate the Jenkinses to the Pharisees, their cousins in intolerance, but recall the proxy damage done by the Wheat King (A Corner in Wheat, 1909), and the Usurer (The Usurer, 1910), the wealthy villains of the Biograph allegories. Unlike the Jesus character, the depictions of the Jenkinses do not derive from external sources, but arise from the atmosphere of the film itself. Spatial expanse plays an allusive role in Sam De Grasse’s portrayal of Mr. Jenkins. Vera Lewis establishes Miss Jenkins in the deft and concise strokes of the “Griffith style”. The fluctuation between intimacy and allegory demonstrated in the Jenkinses characterizations is echoed in a variation between “natural” and stylized acting throughout Intolerance. As previously discussed, the Babylonian segments illustrate the effects authenticating material and spatial magnitude on performance. But there is another sort of magnitude that appears in the film at moments of extreme stress. Balancing the great halls and mighty walls of Intolerance are moments of superabundant emotion magnified either by extravagant gesture or by extreme close-up – sometimes by a combination of the two. Griffith introduced excessive performance in the Biograph period, cresting in Lillian Gish’s post-partum meltdown in The Mothering Heart (1913). In The Birth of a Nation many characters experience emotions that are illicit or too deeply felt to easily express. In either case, the feelings that arise resist “natural” performance and break out of the continuity of character building with exceptional gestures. Sightless catatonia might erupt into a display of unrestrained violence. Passionate love or hatred may suddenly break the surface of simulated control. These tantrums and rages might seem predictably suitable for performances like Mary Alden’s in The Birth of a Nation. After all, her Lydia Brown is a portrayal of duplicity and, ultimately, of villainy. But Lillian Gish’s Elsie Stoneman kisses her bedpost in a flight of displaced passion too intense to display to Ben Cameron, her would-be lover. And Mae Marsh’s Flora, the beloved and playful little sister, also was given to demonstrations of feeling that did not just alternate shadows with sunlight, but paralyzing gloom with flashes of lightning. Marsh’s Dear One in Intolerance’s Modern tale experiences crises in the same vein. Standing near her dead father’s body, for instance, Marsh demonstrates the Dear One’s loss in a short sonata of grief. Starting from a blank-faced stare and accelerating to an extravagant collapse at bedside, the character, first immobilized by a loss too deep to access, finally finds an outlet in a large-scale gesture of sorrow. It is as though the sunlight and shadows strategy of facial expressiveness had been writ large on the whole body. Facial and bodily distortions also assume nearly expressionist extremes in Intolerance. Seena Owens’ Princess Beloved is driven to hysterical tears during the siege of Babylon. Josephine Crowell, her work so light and delicate in The Birth of a Nation, becomes a beetlebrowed “heavy” in Intolerance. Her Catherine de Medici is a masculinized monster who grimaces broadly and hangs over Frank Bennett’s Charles IX like a spider until he throws up in a fit of passion when he finally acquiesces to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The scene resolves itself in a sharp reversal of dramatic direction. Maxfield Stanley’s obviously feminized Duke d’Anjou frivolously amuses himself with a child’s ball and paddle game after the fateful decision has been made. This callous gesture contrasts with the preceding histrionics ironically to underline the corruption of the relationship between mother and sons, and by implication convicts the French court in toto. In the Modern tale, Miriam Cooper may start building her character with the pensive restraint that so marked her performance in The Birth of a Nation. But when her Friendless One discovers that her gangster boyfriend is unfaithful, she stands outside the Dear One’s apartment, gnawing her lip with jealousy until blood is drawn – a gesture recalling the sexual perversity that Mary Alden’s clothes-rending performance attributed to the villain, Lydia Brown. 69

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Of these examples of performed excess, Crowell’s might be considered the most “theatrical” in conception, but in each case the actor is being asked to externalize passions so overwhelming that they bring the character to the brink of violence. Postures result that contrast wildly with the natural restraint of classic Griffith playing and, in Crowell’s case, may even look “bad”. But quite the contrary, these performances are options. They express dramatic intentions similar to later expressionist performances that sought to materialize in bodily contortions the anguish of a soul overcome by irrational forces beyond reason’s control. This same effect may be achieved through technical means. Marsh’s close-up goes out of focus when reform-driven persecutions finally overwhelm the Dear One. Cooper’s teary face is magnified at the brink of her confession to murder. An early extreme close-up of Margery Wilson’s liquid brown eyes is paired to a later close-up of her face distorted, tongue protruding, before she is raped and murdered by the Mercenary on St. Bartholomew’s Day. In the opposite emotional direction, Robert Harron’s Boy relinquishes any further display of feelings and stoically gives himself up to heaven in close-up when all earthly justice seems to have deserted him. Just as Karl Brown intervened to glamorize Gaye’s Christ, the artifices of lens and focus were called upon to intensify the audience’s experience of events that went beyond the scope of normal human tolerance and thus beyond the actors’ abilities to portray them. In terms of the film’s emotional map, these exaggerated images of individual passion balance the roiling excitement of bodies massed in battle. These are the extremes of the magnificent spectrum of human behavior on which Intolerance’s global claims rest. The Street and the Home The street always has important functions in Griffith films. It provides the backdrop of stories from which an individual is plucked for the viewer’s consideration. It contains the potential for a credible reconstruction of ordinary life, even in a remote time. It relates the space of the individual story to the scope of that re-imagined world. In accord with the vast scale of Intolerance, the streets of Babylon, France, Judea and modern America teem with people who represent the epochal wealth of human narrative. Like the extras in earlier films, the thousands of incidental players of Intolerance are directed to perform bits of business that illustrate individuality in the quintessential crowd. Some extras bear the signifiers that establish a particular place, such as the young woman who hawks long loaves of French bread in the Paris streets, or the man who operates the stone drill in the marketplace of Judea. Others, like the man on his porch who pours water from a pitcher in the Modern story, or the women who shield their children from the uplifters, are simply the other lives lived in the world of Intolerance. Some characters are witnesses like the crowd on the Via Dolorosa or the men and women of the Modern story who watch the Dear One and the Kindly Heart speed off to see the governor about a reprieve for the Boy. Many specifically illustrate the horrors of war, as incidental characters are caught in the whirlwind of violence that the film details in shootings, stabbings, piercings and even graphic decapitations. All these fragments of human behavior contribute to the typicality that supports the film’s comparative intent. Griffith drew praise for his fidelity to the details of ancient Babylon from academics like the Assyriologist, Dr. Archibald Henry Sayce (as reported by Ormesby Burton in The New York Morning Telegraph, London edition, April 11, 1917, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 212). But the people of that place are most vigorously represented by the fictionalized Mountain Girl. Constance Talmadge is hardly an extra; hers is a key performance and one of the most detailed in the film. The individual she plays embodies the contrasts between court conventions and the spontaneity of the Babylonian street that humanizes the ancient story. 70

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The construction of the Mountain Girl is an interesting combination of naturalism and stylization. Her stiff-arm, stiff-leg strut and tossing head are good examples of the gamine that had emerged in Griffith’s oeuvre with Mae Marsh’s Flora in The Birth of a Nation and would be reprised in roles like Dorothy Gish’s Little Disturber of Hearts of the World (1918). In contrast to either Marsh’s or Gish’s playing, Talmadge’s gestures are clearly meant to physicalize the Mountain Girl’s boyishness and express the general masculinization of her character, a direction that accorded with the actress’s own expressed interest in playing boys’ roles (Triangle Magazine, November 4, 1916, p. 4). When Talmadge is not striding or kicking people in the shins, however, she is allowed to do the same quiet and affecting facial work that other Griffith actors are allowed in the “natural mode”. Several close-ups demonstrate the attractive femininity of the actress as well as the vulnerability her virginal character hides from everyone save her ideal, Belshazzar. The Mountain Girl’s death is the occasion for one of the most touching instances of animal symbolism in Griffith’s work. As she expires in battle, a dove pulling a cart arrives at her side. This love token previously had delivered a white rose from the Princess to Belshazzar, “to Beloved from Beloved”. The mute testimony to the Mountain Girl’s fidelity to her king and his cause condenses the large story of Babylon into a single gesture of affection between court and street. Striding or standing still, the Mountain Girl is a focal point of spontaneity, spunkiness and individuality that seems all the more necessary as the spatial expanses of Babylon expand and expand and the grand gestures of the court, including those of the Denishawn dancers, seem exotically remote. Domesticity is a sort of way-station between court and street in Intolerance. The primary domestic sites in the film are located in France, in the Huguenot household, and in the Modern story, where the Dear One’s apartment is contrasted with the degraded robber’s lair inhabited by the Friendless One and the Musketeer of the Slums (Walter Long). The Huguenot household seems almost like a shorthand version of the Cameron family in The Birth of a Nation’s Piedmont – and, like the Mountain Girl, reflects Griffith’s interest in recalling previously constructed types that had arisen from his own dramaturgic workshop. Spottiswoode Aitken’s patriarch is a sketch of the kindly Southern slaveholder he played in The Birth of a Nation. Brown Eyes and her suitor are tormented by a mischievous little sister like Flora. The mercenary who rapes and kills Brown Eyes echoes Gus, who chases Flora to her death in the earlier epic. In fact, the way the characters are depicted in the Huguenot household raises the same misgiving Karl Brown expressed about another aspect of the film. “Others were copying Griffith all the time”, he observes, “but for Griffith to copy himself seemed to be a little out of keeping with one who had become known as the great originator” (Adventures with D.W. Griffith, p. 130). In a sense, Griffith always had “copied himself”. The Biograph period is replete with narrative and gestural tropes that are tried, replayed by different actors, replaced in improved structures, turned against types, against character, against genre. It is not even unlikely that the French family intentionally recalls the Camerons of The Birth of a Nation. But the household is so swiftly drawn that its characterizations seem diminutives rather than enlargements or insightful variations on its predecessors. Moreover, Brown Eyes is no Mountain Girl. The design and gestures of her character are not conceived to connect her to the French court. If anything, her home offers a counterexample of wholesome domesticity compared with the febrile relationships among the corrupt French royals. In contrast to the connection between street and court in Babylon, the French court is connected to Intolerance’s cross-temporal gallery of rogues by the action of the “contemplating mind”. Brown Eyes and her family serve as comparative cases of injustice to be understood in the context of the film’s grand design. Locally, the Huguenot household represents the modest ordinary that contrasts with the grotesque excesses of space and emotion at the court, but as individuals Brown Eyes and her family seem too thinly drawn to support 71

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

the audience’s involvement with the luridly staged rapes, murders and general slaughter in which her story culminates. Though they suffer terribly, the Huguenot family never seems to achieve the vitality of fully performed characters. On the other hand, the Modern household seems freshly imagined even though its depiction is the most directly related to the conventional characters and the style of acting developed in the Biographs. Considering the familiarity of this material, the level of invention is remarkable. The performances are invested in particulars that continually overcome the danger that familiar characters will lapse into clichés. As he had done in the Babylonian sequence, Griffith frankly unveils sexual themes that had been emerging in the domestic environs of the Biographs and his early features. Consequently, the emotional palette from which he draws the people of the Modern story is by far the most subtle and variegated in all of Intolerance. The actors achieve a level of characterization that was duly noted by Lynde Denig, who praised the “playing of Mae Marsh as the girl of the modern story [for being] if anything, more expressive than her work in The Birth of a Nation”, and commended “Robert Harron [as] the ideal exponent of the Boy” (The Moving Picture World, September 23, 1916, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 446). Some of the details of Marsh’s performance already have been discussed. Indeed, in moments when she is singled out by the camera or is required to deliver a special demonstration of emotion, she is a Griffith creation par excellence – her face alternatively mobile with joy then sorrow. The roots of her performance are sunk in the earlier Brutality where she was required to mature from a fresh-faced romantic into the cowering spouse of an abusive alcoholic. Here in Intolerance, Marsh is given the opportunity to explore that character in greater detail than the short form of the Biograph allowed. She begins as a coltish youngster, with the same skips and mule-kicks that were mean to express Flora’s vigor, enthusiasm and exuberance in The Birth of a Nation. Her maiden in Intolerance is a portrait of tenderness (expressed in delicate pantomime with the “hopeful geranium” in her tenement apartment), comedy (her naïve emulation of a streetwalker), and a filial regard for her father that has a very rich Biograph history. Her young wife is a marvel of particulars, of gestures and intimacies with her husband and child so seemingly spontaneous that Hannah Hinsdale of The Spokanean Review marveled “Mae Marsh in her sincerity is not acting, but living her part” (“Spokane Thrills at Griffith Film. Intolerance Leaves Audience Shaken by Night of Emotions. Pictures are Marvelous. Music Adds to Effectiveness of Four Wonderful Tales Unfolded by Movies”, February 7, 1917, in the Robinson Locke Theatrical Scrapbooks, Volume 212). But it is perhaps Robert Harron’s performance as the cocky Boy that is the real revelation of the film. The extra who grew up in the Biograph Studio suddenly takes the stage in the epic as an adult. Shedding the adolescent friskiness that Griffith required of him in The Birth of a Nation, Harron’s playing here is crisp invention. His emotional authority nowhere seems out of proportion to a character who must mature from son to father. The portrayal spans a range of colors – jaunty confidence limned with a new and slightly threatening darkness. As a member of a criminal gang, Harron’s Boy anticipates the physical charm of Jimmy Cagney’s later street toughs of the 1930s. As a suitor, he is not at all shy or unaware of his allure. As a young husband, he credibly portrays a dawning responsibility to his spirited wife. Even when the character is “spiritualized” near the end of the film – as the Boy, emotionally drained by his ordeal, is confessed and then passively led to the gallows – the character remains relentlessly grounded and fully present on the screen. It is this ability to convey vulnerability and defenselessness that underscores Harron’s performance and ties him to the Christ who is his archetype. Griffith’s conception required a hero who must be rescued and, in this “feminized” position, Harron is able to retain a sort of charisma that complements his earlier tough-guy posing for a thoroughly breakthrough performance. 72

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Harron and Marsh together have a wonderful physical chemistry sprung perhaps from their Biograph familiarity with each other. Their complementary domestic pair is that of the Musketeer of the Slums of Walter Long and the Friendless One of Miriam Cooper. The jealous volatility of the criminal and the prostitute is cautionary – the negative fate of the Boy and the Dear One in a modern world disordered by labor wars and attacked by hypocritical reforms. Accordingly, the domesticated affection of their home is locally contrasted to the sexualized lair in which the Friendless One languishes. Through décor as well as the physical details of their amorous relationships, daughter and apparent orphan, wife and prostitute, husband and crime lord are compared. In contrast to the religious image of the Virgin that oversees the Dear One’s home and the geranium that signifies her hopes for a better life, the Musketeer’s apartment is introduced through a pan that lingers on statues and pictures of naked women, as well as a volume tantalizingly titled The Love of Lucille. Its bedroom is a boudoir sunk in the frame beyond an archway. The layout is an inversion of the Dear One’s open home, and through the gestural array employed by the pairs of actors, male and female relations are explored. Between Musketeer and Friendless One interchanges are crude and violent. Long is a true “heavy”, and Cooper’s character reacts to his lowering jealousy by slapping him before they passionately embrace. Trust is contrasted with suspicion, tender regard with physical violence, mutual affection with lust, energy with languor, hope with despair. Within the larger network of comparisons drawn between epochs in the film, the Princess Beloved is the Friendless One’s counterpart, the temple prostitutes of Ishtar her sisters, save that none of the devotees of sacred sexuality ever seem enslaved by passion as their Modern counterpart becomes. In “Griffith’s Real Intolerance” (Film Comment, September–October 1989, pp. 28–29), Miriam Hansen notes Griffith’s ambivalence about women’s sexuality. Nowhere is this complex response localized as intensely as in the strange sympathy that accrues around Miriam Cooper’s murderess. The film leaves her storyline unresolved. While it is clear that her confession exonerates the Boy, the audience never learns if she takes his place on the gallows as her crime would suggest she deserves to do. The pathos that Cooper is allowed to inject into this desolate character suggests Griffith’s larger sympathies with the friendless of the world – prostitutes, prisoners, soldiers in senseless wars – at the same time that his social ideology leaves him helpless to consider any remedy for their plights beyond the angelic intervention that Intolerance’s coda ineffectually proposes. Out of the Cradle For all its scope, its references to history, its reproductions of actualities, the emotional impact of The Birth of a Nation ultimately resides in the ability of one heroic Southern man to win the heart and mind of one Northern woman. The rationale for the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and the justification of their ride is embedded in the rescue of Elsie Stoneman from the mulatto villain, Silas Lynch. Amplified by the peril of all Piedmont, Elsie’s rescue implies the salvation of the South itself from Northern carpetbaggers and Negro climbers. Elsie is the stone thrown into the pool from which the resolving action radiates. Lillian Gish’s performance is the transcendent expression of the noble values that are being contended and won by her Southern cavalier, Ben Cameron. The intensity of the audience’s involvement in The Birth of a Nation, its ability to put aside its uneasiness with the film’s racist argument, resides in Gish’s ability to implicate them in Elsie’s plight. For Intolerance, it was as though Griffith deliberately sidelined the powerful personality of this key actress as he subordinated the film’s major performances to his large conceptual plan. The overall theme of Intolerance is embodied by many characters and dispersed in the crisscrossing relationships the surrogate mind is drawn to make between and among their 73

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

tales. Cases had been compared by crosscutting in the Biographs, but the epoch-spanning scope of Intolerance placed special strain on relationships to individuals through whom the audience could access the film’s message with the usual emotional intensity. On the one hand, the film is invested in local characterizations of considerable detail and depth. The spectrum of human behavior, colored in varying degrees of sensuality and sexuality, is fully exposed. The resulting human picture is much more complex than it was in the earlier epic. Sexuality, for instance, no longer is a badge of villainy. Passion can erupt from the most virtuous characters. Conversely, sexual repression, as expressed by the clan of reformers or implied in the battle between Ishtar and Bel, can lead to terrible miseries. On the other hand, the argument against intolerance is advanced through similarities and contrasts between types – of lovers, betrayers, oppressors, hypocrites, reformers – who have the names of types: Dear One, Boy, Princess Beloved, Brown Eyes. The emotional impact of the film seems deferred; sympathy becomes the fruit of retrospective contemplation of the film’s many comparative illustrations of its great theme. Therefore, though Intolerance provides ample food for thought, its immediate performances sometimes strain to fill the film’s cavernous spaces. The Boy and the Dear One are the most accessible characters, partly because they have the least baggage to haul as “authenticators”. Unlike Brown Eyes and Prosper, or Belshazzar and the Princess Beloved, the couple of the Modern story seem relatively unconstrained within their filmed environment – “natural” in the parlance of the acting style most often associated with Griffith’s work. Like Brown Eyes and her suitor, the Dear One and the Boy are ordinary versions of the extraordinary lives of the film. But they are more fully expressed than the French pair, as normally proportioned and open in their modern intimacies as Babylonian King and paramour are constrained by their ancient gestures and burdened by the vast spaces they are forced to fill with them. In fact, the contemplating mind of the film keeps returning to the Modern couple not as another exemplum of the effects of intolerance, but as the emotional touchstone that gives the complicated story heart. It is not surprising that Griffith, the poet of the hearth, would construct his grand epic so. Nonetheless, the breathtaking element in Intolerance is its simulation of the speeding rush of thought, the swiftly moving simulation of the imagining ur-brain. And perhaps for acting, that concrete and physical art, that is the film’s challenge. Intolerance’s greatest actor is space itself and its locale is a rushing, ever-shifting, restless flow of time. This large structural notion disperses the impact of individual lives in the accelerating storm of expression and challenges any single actor to register a performance that has the depth and detail demonstrated in previous Griffith films. While the contemplating mind of Griffith’s construction hectically races from one thought on the subject of intolerance to another – connecting types, metaphors, historical parallels – it has less and less time to spend in intimate imagination of the individuals in one locale. When the great conceiving mind does pause, the effect is all the more powerful. The scenes between Harron and Marsh are some of the most tender and affecting in all of Griffith’s work. Marsh’s maturation is a beautifully measured elaboration of her role, the manifestation of a strong personality that battles as tenaciously in her own realm as Belshazzar’s troops fight to preserve the city of Babylon. In this sense, perhaps the key to the film does reside in the battle between “the mother and the law”, the smaller project that seeded Intolerance’s grand design. The Dear One, in one of the reversals of type so characteristic of Griffith’s oeuvre, is required to play the hero rather than the heroine of the film, i.e. the rescuer rather than the rescued. Like Mary Pickford in The Informer (1912), Mae Marsh has to step into the typically male role vacated by her incapacitated lover. What no other man in the film is able to do, the “strong-jawed Jane” of Intolerance accomplishes: she saves her Boy 74

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

and secures a future with him, and she does it by engaging in her own battle with the Mountain Girl’s two-fisted vigor. In the context of the film’s iconography, the sidelined Lillian Gish may be the objective correlative of the film’s large conceptual intent. But it is the feisty Marsh who is able to launch a character who will stand up to the forces of intolerance and win. Joyce Jesionowski

MUSIC The Birth of a Nation (1915) was a great success for both D.W. Griffith and composer Joseph Carl Breil (1870–1926), but their collaboration had been stressful, even occasionally acrimonious. Although his musical skills were limited, Griffith had insisted on controlling all musical matters and disliked Breil’s criticism and resistance. “If I ever kill anyone, it won’t be an actor but a musician”, he had said (Lillian Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, p. 152–53). Breil privately had noted his contempt for Griffith’s profligacy, disorganization and egotistical lack of consideration (in his scrapbooks, cited in Martin A. Marks, Music and the Silent Film, pp. 283–84, Note 55). In 1916, after contemptuously dismissing the film accompaniments of a decade before as “the same lurid type as the melodramas of some thirty years ago”, Breil no doubt was referring to Griffith when he said: [T]he perfect moving picture score ... is the one which will be entirely original in composition and construction. It is not quite possible for me to say when that will arrive. An important factor towards such an event will be that the composer is given ample time in which to do his work and another highly important item will be that the producers of the great photo-plays, will gradually realize and understand that a mixing up of all the good and bad composers of the past and present, as well as a conglomeration of suitable and unsuitable music is not at all interesting to the audience. (Joseph Carl Breil, “Moving Pictures of the Past and Present and the Music Provided for Same”, The Metronome, vol. 32, no. 11, November 1916, p. 42)

The tensions between Griffith and Breil might not have bode well for their next collaboration, but they set about creating a musical accompaniment for Intolerance which illustrated each of the four stories in much the same way that they had chosen the music to illustrate the two stories in The Birth of a Nation. Motion picture music is essentially program music, for it is a commentary and illustration of the play, entirely subservient to the action presented. It should be subtle, suggestive and seductive. (“Movie Music and Joseph Carl Breil”, Music News, September 26, 1919, p. 16)

The Birth of a Nation was set during the American Civil War. Breil and Griffith reinforced the imagery and narrative by using suitable period music, folk and popular songs combined with more elaborate nineteenth-century dramatic music. The audience was already familiar with the story of The Clansman and the Civil War period. They knew the songs, and there were expectations, which had to be met, about how to handle music and image, many of which had been taken from other dramatic representations of the Civil War going back forty years. By capitalizing on these pre-existing expectations, Griffith and Breil heightened the seeming realism of their picture. The music, illustrating the images, changing every twenty to thirty seconds, seemed to be cut from the same cloth as the movie. Although the stories in Intolerance were more problematic, Griffith adopted the same pseudo-documentary realism. Protestant hymns were an accepted theatrical accompaniment for early twentieth-century American stage depictions of Jesus, so the introduction of “Lead 75

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Kindly Light” into the Intolerance score during the Biblical story seemed a realistic and reasonable accompaniment, but there was also a Biblical wedding and procession to accompany. Here the conventions were not clear. In the Modern story, set largely among the urban working class, the public would have expected popular ballads such as “My Wild Irish Rose” and vernacular dance music, such as two-steps and waltzes in addition to hurries and agitatos. The conventions were clear, and Breil and Griffith followed them accordingly. For ancient Babylon and sixteenth-century France, on the other hand, few popular preconceptions existed. Griffith sent Karl Brown to find recorded music specific to these stories: For some reason I had become known and accepted as a musician, which I was not in the accepted understanding of the term. I couldn’t play anything. But I could read music, not only well but easily as you can read the printed words that are before you. Griffith was deep in the rehearsing of the various dances to be done at the great feast of Belshazzar and I was tabbed to find the right kind of authentic Oriental music – on records, mind you – and bring it back to the rehearsal hall so our girls could perfect their dances to the sounds of what had to pass for Babylonian music. So while Huck was building the great hall of the king of Babylon, I was scouring the music shops for anything that could be played on a phonograph for the girls to use for dancing purposes. Of all the stacks of records I brought to the rehearsal room, only one survived to go into the picture as underscoring: the ‘“Bacchanale”’ from Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah. Then Griffith sent for some real Oriental musicians, who brought their ancient instruments to the studio and played all the traditional music they could remember. But most of it was dull, reedy, and to our ears, out of tune. It might have done very well as music to charm cobras with, but it did not fit in with Griffith’s ideas of lushly luxurious sensuality. Amy Woodford Finden was going great guns at the time with her make-believe Oriental music, mostly set in the idiom of her famous songs, such as “The Kashmiri Song”. These held his attention for quite some time, because they were so popular, these songs about being less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel, or those pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar. Griffith’s instinct was absolutely correct and he should have followed it. If the people (the audience, not the critics) believed this to be the true feeling of the mystic East, then you’d better concur with their beliefs. But he didn’t. [Emphasis added] After trying everything else, he finally sent for Carl Breil and put him to work on the job of thinking up main themes for the main action of the four different pictures all called The Mother and the Law. Breil chose to bite into the Biblical picture first, sent for some gray-bearded Hebrew musicologists, and the sounds of the Hebrew wedding-dance and of “Mazel Tov” echoed through the studio for days to come, with Breil striving valiantly to adjust his musical thinking from the diatonic scale. (Karl Brown, Adventures with D.W. Griffith, pp. 168–69)

Initially, Griffith’s instinct was to use faux-exotic music, associated in the public’s mind with the East, but in his mind authentic music was equivalent to costumes or sets based on historical research and was tied to his desire to bring history into reality spectacularly. The urge for authenticity overcame his instinct. Brown’s account shows that Griffith and Breil were using musical experts to approximate this authenticity. In the Liberty Theatre program (p. 3) for Intolerance (where Breil is credited only with the “musical arrangement”, Frederick Arundel with musical direction) one notes that the Persian musical themes were “supplied by Farahanguize Khanum and Sidney Sprague”. Further evidence of Griffith’s tendency to go with authentic music is found in the program book. It lists among the “Facts concerning the production” the following: The musical sources of the production embrace contributions known both to primitive and civilized man, from the “Hyman [sic, hymn?] of Apollo”, the most ancient melody preserved and

76

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

probably sung in the days of Babylon, down through the first operatic forms in the days of Catherine de Medici, to the great classic masters since the 17th century, and even to the ballads of the Francois Villons of our own asphalt streets. (“Intolerance” The Story. Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages, Liberty Theatre program [from the Theatre Collection, The Research Libraries of the New York Public Library], p. 6)

This information is considered to be equivalent to the following found under the same heading: Incidents of the modern story are founded on actual scenes, from the brutal taking of the baby from its mother to the pursuit of the governor’s train by the automobile. Misha Applebaum, the head of the humanitarian cult, pursued Governor Whitman’s car sixty miles. While he was talking to the Governor the electrodes were being prepared for the electrocution of Stielow. (ibid.)

The consequences of bringing all this kind of historical detail to bear on the music were very different from bringing it to bear on the sets or costumes. Authentic music, totally unfamiliar to the audience, made the production seem odd rather than spectacular. Breil was faced with something that no other composer had faced before, writing music that spanned dramatic situations placed throughout two millennia. He was a composer of modest means who described himself as a “practical democrat”, that is, someone who was concerned about his music being clearly understood by a wide public (Dorothy J. Teall, “Mr. Breil’s ‘Legend’ embodies his theories of practical democracy”, Musical America, September 28, 1918, p. 5). His opera The Legend, presented at the Metropolitan Opera in 1919, was very straightforward and uncomplicated in its musical language, so Breil probably would have been in sympathy with Griffith’s “intense realism” (“‘Intolerance’ Biggest of All Film Spectacles”, New York Herald, September 6, 1916). However, such an approach demanded that each of the four stories in Intolerance have its own culture-specific accompaniments. Perhaps because of Griffith’s drive for “authenticity” or “intense realism” and Breil’s plain, almost naïve style, the music could not expand beyond the narrowly representational. The failure of Intolerance to achieve a true “mingling” pictorially, dramatically, and musically lies also in another circumstance: “the four episodes chosen by Griffith are actually un-collatable. The formal failure of their mingling in a single image of ‘intolerance’ is only a reflection of a thematic and ideological error” (Sergei Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today”, reprinted in Jay Leyda (ed. and trans.), Film Form, p. 243). The absence of this “supra-representational” element in the film made Breil’s task more difficult, if he was inclined to add unifying elements to the score, and, given Breil’s stated “practical democracy” as a composer, it is unlikely that he desired such structural sophistication for a “regular medley of well-known things” (Musical America, September 28, 1918, p. 5). Even allowing for his difficulties and modest artistic goals, Breil’s work did not come up to his own ideals. The New York Times film reviewer referred to Intolerance’s “utter incoherence, the questionable taste of some of its scenes, and the cheap banalities into which it sometimes lapses” (The New York Times Film Reviews: A One-Volume Selection 1913–1970, p. 10) – words that equally describe aspects of Breil’s score. However, Breil composed or compiled according to what he saw – at best adequately capturing atmosphere and motivation, at worst merely treading musical water while waiting for a sequence to end. Breil’s score consists of a prelude and seventy-eight numbers, corresponding to different parts of the film, many of which are further divided. Within these numbers there are 325 cues, which guided the synchronization of the score to the film. (For further details see Gillian B. Anderson, “‘No Music until Cue’: The Reconstruction of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance”, pp. 165–68.) Among these cues are eighty-three metronome markings in addition to conven77

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

tional literary tempo indications (such as moderato, allegro vivace, lento, etc.) The score for Intolerance is absolutely unique in this regard. No other accompaniment for films of this era has more than one or two metronome markings and most have none. (Breil never had used them before and never used them again.) We conclude for lack of a better explanation that Breil was attempting to guide the synchronization with these markings. However, we cannot explain why he did not give a metronome marking to every cue. Of the compositions in the score that have been identified, seventy-five percent are not by Breil. In one article Breil claimed to have written fifty percent of the score (Breil, op. cit., p. 42); while in another he claimed, in language far removed from the verbiage he used in other articles detailing his contributions to film scoring: [I] … settled down to hack-work and cooking up the music for Griffith’s big shows. The Intolerance stuff I did wasn’t much more than a regular medl[e]y of well-known things, but while I’d done a lot of adapting for “The Birth of a Nation” too, big stretches of that score were my own work entirely. (Musical America, September 28, 1918, p. 5)

By his own admission, reinforced by the credit “music arranged by” in the program book, Breil did not compose or even attempt to compose much original music for Intolerance, nor did he attempt to arrange or develop the pre-existing music. He plugged it into the score, merely clothing the images with obvious ready-to-wear music. Even the linking sections, which Breil wrote to connect one pre-existing section to another, are elementary and harmonically repetitive and simplistic. Breil appears to have written the music for Intolerance in the same amount of time that he had for The Birth of a Nation, which was a film of approximately the same length. Therefore, the overly simplistic, static and mechanical connective sections, the unaltered, repetitive main themes, and the excessive use of compiled materials did not come apparently from the absence of time. Perhaps the heavy reliance on pre-existing classical repertory was per Griffith’s instruction, to make the accompaniment grander, the presentation really high class. “This production will never be shown except in first-class theatres, at prices customarily charged for first-class productions” (“Intolerance” The Story. Love’s Struggle throughout the Ages. Program for the Liberty Theatre, p. 1). As in The Birth of a Nation (The Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1915, pt. 3, p. 4, quoted in Marks, op. cit., p. 138), in Intolerance Griffith assigned “a distinct theme as in opera” to each character and each of the four stories. However, operatic leitmotivs or character themes do not work individually or simply but are supposed to be developed and transformed in myriad ways, often into completely different themes which may carry many dramatic meanings according to the composer’s skill and inclination. Griffith’s concept of one theme for each character or story and the purpose of Intolerance – “to express thoughts as they might flash across the mind”– became a formula for a disjunct, fragmented mode of musical expression. Breil’s constant deployment of naked, chantlike themes (in the case of the Persian theme it probably was a chant) fits perfectly with Griffith’s simplistic view of musico-dramatic conventions. He was trying to make the film work, and he knew that audiences might require precise aural as well as visual elucidation. The bald, chantlike motifs associated with each of the four stories probably were meant to suggest antiquity and add a unifying element, but as they would have been completely unfamiliar to his audiences (as they are to us today), they did not succeed in carrying the association of antiquity nor did they help in the unification. Neither, as one might have expected at the beginning of such an epic, did they evoke or suggest the exotic, spectacular Babylon steps, the tumultuous murder of the Huguenots, the betrayal of Christ, or the race to save the boy in the Modern story. In fact, one of the weakest sections of the score is the very first piece, the Prelude. It 78

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

presents the film’s main musical themes in the simplest manner, unharmonized, one blandly following the other, in various ranges and instrumental colors, accompanied by timpani rolls. Since none of the themes are memorable, such an exposed presentation bodes ill for what is to come. This may have been a way to prepare viewers for the film’s unusual structure, but from a dramatic point of view (at least to our modern ears) it is a series of static and ineffective gestures, hardly expressive of the project’s grandeur and ambition. Another early example of this misguided oversimplification is the accompaniment for the image of Lillian Gish rocking a cradle: When we ran out of things to do with the Assyrian army, we went back to the studio and did some shots of Lillian Gish rocking a cradle, all to the tune of Walt Whitman’s poetry [in this case, Leaves of Grass], which Griffith recited with great feeling and surprisingly good delivery, considering how outstandingly lousy he was as an actor. It must have been one of his good days. (Brown, op. cit., p. 166)

Breil’s music for the image of Gish rocking the cradle is a very straightforward, ordinary lullaby. It has nothing to do with Whitman’s mysticism from which the image derives nor does it elevate the image as a linking device. “Class Hatred”, the theme which Breil composed to represent the monied class of the Modern story, is heard in the Prelude. It comes back when Miss Jenkins examines her wrinkles after a young man chooses a young girl instead of her as a dancing partner. In both of these cases it is an unadorned melody without any accompaniment. In rehearsal 13 the theme is presented within a texture of orchestral tremolo (at the octave). Then in rehearsal 14 a naked version of the theme precedes one of Breil’s most successful agitatos, which accompanies the militia’s attack on the workers. This agitato functions well partly because its rhythmic gestures and melodic runs suggest the wavelike motions of the crowds and because Breil uses a slightly more complex, even harsher, musical language than was usual for him, as well as because of one of Breil’s undoubted strengths: his mastery of orchestration. Often, in fact, Breil’s Intolerance score works due to his cunning use of colorful instrumental effects to strengthen (or disguise) repetitive, uninspired, or downright banal thematic material. As a whole the musical accompaniment for the Modern story is successful because it follows well-established musical conventions. The music for the French story is often well chosen, particularly the jaunty number that accompanies a woman throwing refuse from a balcony onto the passersby below. The chase music at the end of the film is also quite successful. The increasing tempo during which each of the stories is concluded has a unifying theme: speed, danger, and the tension of a chase. Finally having loosened the restraint of changing every twenty to thirty seconds, for ten minutes the music plunges ahead, and in terms of inventiveness, color, and vigor, the orchestration has something of a clear run as well. With Breil’s and Griffith’s use of pre-existing music in Intolerance, most of their choices are illustrative, as he mentioned rather cynically in the 1918 Musical America article cited earlier. One choice, however, has an unusual effect in performance, and may be cited as one obvious attempt at a sophisticated emotional and dramatic coupling of music and image. For the end of the Babylonian story, for several minutes leading up to the deaths of Belshazzar and the Mountain Girl, Breil uses “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Richard Wagner’s Götterdammerung (1874). Although specifically criticized in 1916, the deliberate pacing of the funeral march seems, on the surface, at odds with the furious action of the battle, which up to this point has been accompanied with suitably vigorous and violent music from several sources (including original Breil). However, the heavy orchestration of the march and the monu79

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

mental, yet elegiac character of the music provide a strong emotional buildup to the point when the Mountain Girl is struck by an arrow. Wagner’s music symbolizes the noble death of a hero; what is surprising, and quite moving, when Wagner’s music joins Griffith’s images at this point is that the intercutting shows, in fact, that the humble Mountain Girl is a more potent, emotional heroic figure than Belshazzar although both Belshazzar and the Mountain Girl have died as heroes. The tragedy and humanity of this climax is heightened – unusually, in the context of what is often an uninvolving score – by what only can be described as an inspired choice. Within most of the other individual cues the constant changes of tempo and meter seem to be apt on a micro-level. This is consistent with what Breil did in The Birth of a Nation, what other composers did for other Griffith films, and what other composers did in other American film scores, but in Intolerance it has the long range effect of emphasizing the jumps and cuts of the whole film. Theoretically, Intolerance might have provided more opportunities for the synthesis and development of musical and dramatic relationships than did The Birth of a Nation, but this possibility was never realized by either the director or the composer. The music for the four stories remains as separate and unrelated as the four stories themselves, but some of these musical disparities are due to a basic conceptual divergence between Griffith and Breil. Breil felt that a thoroughly composed, wholly original score for both The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance would have been more satisfying than the mosaic of original and pre-existing music he eventually used. He had created an original score for Queen Elizabeth (Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, directed by Louis Mercanton) in 1912 (The Metronome, July 1916, p. 19), but by 1916, to create such an original score would have countered the conventions already in place in the movie industry. It also would have countered Griffith’s predilections. Following Griffith’s authority and direction, therefore, Breil created a “Birth-style” score, but for four separate stories. Breil’s four scores for the four separate stories were workmanlike, in an illustrative rather than thematic or symbolic manner, if taken individually as four complete units. However, Breil’s own small but distinctive voice – certainly present in his Birth of a Nation score – was not present in Intolerance. What Griffith did not acknowledge was that the four films comprising Intolerance, despite their ranging over the vastnesses of time and experience, had Griffith’s own homogenous style and authorial imprint in narrative technique, staging, and acting, and that such a single-minded project demanded a homogeneous authorial musical viewpoint in order to make the entire experience even a little cohesive. Any more than many other self-conscious “creators”, Griffith seems to have been unable to conceive of incorporating another clearly defined personality into his conception, even if it would have benefited the overall production. Instead, Griffith commissioned Breil to fit suitable, i.e., functional and illustrative, music to Intolerance, in much the same way he commissioned his costumers, carpenters, and scenic artists, and in intending the Intolerance music to be as exact and “realistic” as the film’s costumes and sets, Griffith effectively suppressed any scope for Breil’s compositional individuality. Breil responded to Griffith’s dictates as an accomplished tailor, fitting the music to his client’s wishes exactly and (as can be sensed from Breil’s own later reminiscences) despite his own misgivings. That on occasion the musical clothing Breil cut to fit Griffith’s corpus seems to emphasize the production’s inconsistencies, and that the Intolerance score appears very much a mixed bag, is perhaps as much Griffith’s responsibility as Breil’s. Gillian B. Anderson Philip C. Carl

80

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

INTERTITLES [EDITOR’S NOTE: Intertitles from the film quoted in the body of the text are reproduced between square brackets.] Intolerance fully and extensively took advantage of the possibilities offered by intertitles in 1916. Griffith particularly exploited them as background as well as for the discursive power of writing, with footnotes, citations, historical indications, and moral and political commentary. First used in an artisanal fashion by film editors, intertitles were gradually becoming commonplace by the beginning of the 1910s, and over the course of the decade became a norm in the industry. As the average length of films increased, already by 1907 one can observe a correlation in the number of shots, intertitles, and words, which were increasing in equal proportions. The institutionalization of the feature film occurred at the same time as the texts of intertitles multiplied and became more diverse. The mid-1910s marked a pivotal moment in the history of the intertitle, which had been undergoing empirical transformations since the beginning of the decade. Between 1910 and 1914, transcribed direct speech found a place in the middle of shots of speakers. Around 1913 punctuation appeared, and upper-case letters were replaced by lower-case letters, making it possible for longer texts to be presented on the screen. Narrative intertitles became more substantial. Discursive marks such as adjectives and demonstratives multiplied, underscoring the discourse of editing with the epitome of discourse itself, language, thus exploiting its potential to express abstract concepts and delineate causal relations. An omniscient scriptural voice thus began to emerge. Like the novelistic narrator, it seemingly knew everything about what was being recounted, and shared it with the spectator. It gave a voice to the characters, formulated their intentions, feelings, knowledge, social status, and history, the ties that bound them together, and the causal chains formed by events, as well as providing spatio-temporal cues. Affirming the possibilities of writing as with a pen, directors saw horizons open anew. Intertitles made it possible to tell more complex, longer stories, while channeling their meaning for the audience and supporting the narrative process. With such a tool, production could resolutely move toward a narrative mode. Around 1916 another change also took place: more and more, the usual standard lettering (white on a dark background, marked with the company’s logo) was replaced with distinct typographies, accompanied by symbolic backgrounds, emblematic illustrations, and illuminations, which were called “art-titles” in the United States. Did this shift signal a trend toward granting the intertitle the status of a full-fledged image? Perhaps. At any rate, the art-title came to strengthen the meaning and context of the intertitle visually. Besides its graphic and decorative value, it represented a new asset to guide spectators in their understanding of the film. Griffith undoubtedly relied on intertitles while dealing with the composition of his extremely long feature-film epic, with its four parallel stories illustrating the same theme, exceeding the usual single narrative line to follow a notably didactic logic. Intertitles were, for instance, to make explicit the comparison resulting from the parallel montage and to thread together this imposing metaphor. The intertitles in Intolerance are indeed very numerous, and their composition was not empirically simple: they were rewritten several times during the film’s preparation and after its premiere (5 September 1916). Griffith continued to make changes until February 1917, during the film’s road show. The examination of several versions of these texts shows how they were always the object of careful attention, and, accordingly, how crucial they were thought to be to the film. Griffith had entrusted Anita Loos, a scriptwriter in his team, to write them: That night I sat alone in the projection room with D.W., the first viewer ever to see Intolerance. I must be honest and say I thought D.W. had lost his mind. It is difficult to realize in these days of

81

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

non-sequitur film technique what a shock Intolerance provided. In that era of the simple, straightforward technique for telling picture plots, Griffith had crashed slam-bang into a method for which neither I nor, as was subsequently proved, his audiences had been prepared. The story of Intolerance jumped back and forth between four different periods of time with nothing to tie the pieces together except its theme of man’s inhumanity to man. That the scenes in themselves were visual poems of great beauty was easily recognized, and it was true that each period had a thematic unity with others; also, toward the end a tremendous crescendo was achieved by a mass “run to the rescue,” which in the Babylonian period was shown as a chariot race; in the Huguenot episode, the heroine was saved in the nick of time [sic] on the Eve of Saint Bartholemew; and the modern story concerned a reprieve that was on its way to stop a miscarriage of justice on the gallows. But when the film was over I sat a moment in stony silence, which I could only explain to the Great Man by telling him I had been moved beyond words. Actually, he was so absorbed in his films I doubt he realized my bewilderment. At any rate, I went to work writing the subtitles for Intolerance and for weeks went about the studio nursing that mighty secret. I spent every day alone in the projection room, running the picture over and over and fitting it with words. D.W. bade me put in titles even when unnecessary and add laughs wherever I found an opening. I found several. At one point I paraphrased Voltaire in a manner which particularly pleased D.W.: “When women cease to attract men, they often turn to reform as a second choice.” (Anita Loos, A Girl Like I, pp. 102–104)

She did not receive recognition for the work, however; only the film’s actors were credited. While she wrote the first drafts for the texts, they were revised and rewritten by the team, including Griffith. Anita Loos later popularized the idea that intertitles could contribute to the success of a film, and launched the trend of witty, punning intertitles. She was instrumental in the emergence of intertitling as a specific practice and profession (it was then still done as teamwork at the end of editing). Lillian Gish recounted in her autobiography (The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, pp. 165–183) that D.W. Griffith had enrolled the cast and crew in the writing of the intertitles. The film was sent for copyright in the form of a fifty-three-page album by Griffith to the Library of Congress on 24 June 1916. This album, providing the planned intertitles after two months of editing, may be consulted at the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress. It contains 2,203 photograms (one per shot), including 309 intertitles. The film’s title is one of them: INTOLERANCE A Sun-play of the Ages in A prologue and two parts

At the film’s first preview screening, at the Orpheum Theater in Riverside, California, on 4 August 1916 (under the title The Downfall of All Nations – or – Hatred the Oppressor, and the pseudonym “Dante Guilio”), spectators complained that the titles were too long and soporific. At the second preview, on 10 August, in Pomona, California, the audience pointed out that the film’s rhythm was too swift, and that the titles were difficult to understand. Joseph Henabery, one of the assistants who had done research for the film’s costume and set design, remembered helping to rework the texts. The next day he told Griffith, who had asked him his opinion: Well, I was disappointed. The worst feature, as I see it, is that you have many titles in there that mean absolutely nothing to the audience. You and I, and a few people around here, have been

82

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

close to the subject. We know the relationship between certain characters and certain events. But you’re asking an audience, some of whom are almost illiterate, to absorb points beyond their grasp. It’s impossible. It’s –

Griffith allegedly got angry at that point. Then, later the same day, he told Frank Woods, “Frank, Henabery’s right. How do they know that Cyrus the Great was related to so-and-so? How could they know?”, and then told Henabery, “Come into the office after lunch.” Henabery recalled: “I sat in there about three hours. I hit the titles I particularly objected to. I made suggestions and they worked my ideas over and revamped the titles” (Interview with Joseph Henabery, in Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By…, Chapter 6: “From Birth of a Nation to Intolerance”, pp. 41–64). From 5 September 1916 in New York City, to 27 February 1917 in St. Louis, Griffith, as was his habit, attended the premieres of his film in the main American cities. He reworked and refined the film’s editing and texts as he went along, taking into account the reactions of the various audiences. It is complicated to retrace precisely the modifications he made during the film’s road show. A list of titles at the end of 1916 exists, however. It comes from the personal papers of Richard Wallace, an assistant editor who accompanied Griffith on the trip. This list was donated to the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles by Wallace’s daughter. It may be consulted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at UCLA, as well as at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. The Wallace list features yet more intertitles: 353, of which only 94 (all short texts) are identical to the intertitles on the copyright deposit list. This does not indicate a concern about length, since the Wallace list numbers 5,131 words, 1,252 more than the copyright list. Nor does it show a desire toward simplification of vocabulary: the Wallace list features 1,664 different words, 322 more than the copyright list. Generally, the Wallace list testifies to a desire for specification, increased focus on intentions, and a radicalized discourse. The presentation of the main title itself is more straightforward: INTOLERANCE Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages in a prologue and two acts

A total of thirty-five intertitles introducing secondary actions have been done away with. Attention is drawn to the characters: most of the seventy-five added intertitles underline their affective relationships, their intentions, or their feelings. They are described in politically more radical terms, and, to avoid confusion, each character is systematically referred to in the same words throughout the texts. Some longer texts have been split across two intertitles, while notes and quotations have been added to others. The film itself contains more instructions, warnings on its moral, factual indications on actions as they unfold, noun phrases, possessives, comparatives, and personal pronouns. Useless redundancies of images have been elided or cut. Griffith certainly modified the editing of images during the film’s road show. He added the sequences of the Temple of Love and the Dance of Tammuz (see Russell Merritt, “D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Reconstructing an Unattainable Text”, p. 348), but did not shoot new scenes. Changing the intertitles was much simpler. Most of these intertitles can be found in prints dating from 1917. The most reliable prints from 1917 come from a 35mm nitrate print that Griffith had kept at Lloyd’s Storage, which was purchased by George Eastman House after Griffith’s death. Several prints were made from it by George Eastman House, one of which was sent to the 83

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Danish Filmmuseum. Another was sold to distributor and collector George Korda in Caracas. It is this Venezuelan print, bought by scholar and collector David Shepard in the 1960s, which was distributed commercially under the Blackhawk label in 1973 with a score by Gaylord Carter, an introduction by Arthur Lennig, and shots added from the 1926 “standard” version (see Merritt, op. cit., note 4). This version features 327 intertitles, but 31 from the Wallace list do not appear in it. Seven of these missing Wallace intertitles are related to missing scenes (in the Modern story, the visit of the young woman and her baby to her imprisoned husband, and the court’s decision to withdraw the custody of her child from her; in the French story, the sequence in which Catherine de Medici goads the King into signing the order for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre). Eight intertitles which introduced the prologue and Act 1, fifteen which presented secondary characters or facts, or pointed out details about the traditions and customs of the period, and one which featured poetic verse celebrating Belshazzar, are also missing from it. Here again, the concern was to focus on the essentials, and the overall cohesiveness of episodes. In that spirit, four intertitles were added: two repeated the leitmotiv of the cradle; a third, “SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN–”, was superimposed in Gothic script over an image of Christ (one of only two superimpositions over a scene in the film, the other being a superimposition of Walt Whitman’s verse over the shot of the cradle); a fourth referred to the Rhapsode’s setting out on a distant journey while the Mountain Girl was being auctioned in the market. Late in 1918, Griffith cut the negative of Intolerance in order to use the Babylon and Modern episodes as material for two films, The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law. Finally, Griffith re-edited the film in December 1921 to honor a commission, and rereleased it in 1926 on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. The 1926 version is the bestknown, standard version, and the one usually studied. The Photoplay Productions version, originally from the Rohauer Collection, now available with a score by Carl Davis, dates from the same period. Of its 317 intertitles, 50 have a different typography, are centered, and most certainly come from the 2 medium-length films made in 1918–19. Three of these intertitles are new, and thirty show slight changes with respect to the Blackhawk version. Among other modifications, the word “intolerance” has been withdrawn, the idea of destiny is emphasized, and the sociological and political judgment is more pronounced (see Merritt, op. cit., pp. 353, 356, 358, 361). A sequence not featured in the Blackhawk version, that in which Catherine de Medici goads the King into signing the order for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, with four intertitles, found its way back into this version. Griffith evidently never stopped working on the intertitles of this film; it remains a floating text, in perpetual motion. It is the 1926 version, his last, to which I will refer from here on. This version features 317 intertitles, whose frequency is remarkable: on average, one shot in 5.5 is an intertitle. There is an end title [THE END], as well as two main titles which are found in the Blackhawk version, the one at the beginning of the film, and an intermediate one announcing the second part of the film: A Sun-play of the Ages Intolerance A drama of comparisons ACT II

Among the other texts, 232 are narrative; 8 are narrative and dialogue; 4 are explicit citations (with the sources referenced), one of them including a note; and 70 present dialogue. As the film progresses and the pace of the periods changes and the editing picks up, the frequency 84

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

and length of the texts decrease. The ratio of dialogue to other texts seems low, but at that period dialogue intertitles were generally in the minority, and by its nature and structure this film required constant direct discursive support and spatio-temporal indications. The number of narrative texts shows the importance of such a scriptural voice in ensuring understanding on the part of the spectators, and in providing guidance for them in reading the image (sometimes important words are even underlined). It is under sign of the written word that the structure and intention of the film are supported and legitimized. Intolerance parallels events belonging to the past – the fall of Babylon, the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day, episodes in the life of Christ until his Passion – and a fiction contemporaneous with the film. Their comparison is clearly announced as early as the title “Intolerance. Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages”, and the first shots, which are intertitles: SHOT 1 ¶Our play is made up of four separate stories, laid in different periods of history, each with its own set of characters. SHOT 2 ¶Each story shows how hatred and intolerance through all the ages, have battled against love and charity. SHOT 3 ¶Therefore, you will find our play turning from one of the four stories to another, as the common theme unfolds in each. SHOT 4 “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” SHOT 5 [Emblematic shot in which Lillian Gish watches over a cradle] SHOT 6 ¶Today as yesterday, endlessly rocking, ever bringing the same human passions, the same joys and sorrows.

In 1916, it had effectively become possible to develop a written discourse across several contiguous shots. Instructions involving recollection, transversality between episodes, and constant reminders are thus clearly given from the beginning of the film. Comparison will later result from the parallel montage of episodes from the four stories, and will be reconfirmed several times via the leitmotiv of the shot of the cradle and the poetic text “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking”, re-explained through explicit comparative markers: the intertitles. The intertitle opening Act II provides a clear clue in this regard: [... A DRAMA OF COMPARISONS ...]. 85

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The unification of the film under a single theme is materialized as early as Shot 7, by a book presented as a written source. After the first six shots, an old leather-bound book, with the title Intolerance inscribed on its cover, is presented in close-up. An invisible hand comes to open it, and once it has been opened another text in italics appears, superimposed over its pages: SHOT 7 ¶Our first story – out of the cradle of the present. ¶In a western city we find certain ambitious ladies banded together for the “uplift” of humanity.

Then comes the beginning of the Modern story. This book will reappear on the occasion of the numerous changes in episode (out of the forty-nine changes of episode, twenty are introduced by intertitles in italics superimposed over the same open book, and/or over one of its pages being turned). In the Judeo-Christian tradition stemming from the Religion of the Book, the written word denotes authenticity. The reference to an ancient book thus also has the effect of authenticating the film. (See Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, p. 144: “The initial close-up of the book shows a leather cover bearing the gilded inscription ‘Intolerance’. In the same shot the book is being opened by an invisible hand. With this device the film asserts its cultural respectability by invoking the Western tradition of the Book, a prime token of authority and continuity, of closure and truth.”) Further cultivating this strategy, the film presents other texts superimposed over other written backgrounds: 17 over stone tablets engraved with Hebraic characters, evoking the Tables of the Law as they are usually represented, with rounded upper corners (in the episodes from the life of Christ); 104 over a stone whose upper part is taken up with an Assyrian sculpted frieze featuring a scene with human characters flanked by cartouches (in the Babylon episode). The written medium is thus reinforced by stone engravings which symbolically seal its origin and its continuity. (These backgrounds also have other functions. See Miriam Hansen, “Hieroglyphics, Figurations of Writing,” in Babel and Babylon, pp. 188–98.) The particularly rich range in the possibilities of writing in the film is legitimized by its affiliation to an engraved text or a book. Such a legitimizing and stable foundation helped to provide a basis around which such an original montage could be organized. For the French episode, the backgrounds also mark the period: thirty-four texts are superimposed over a board with round jigsaw edges, ornamented with a fleur-de-lis on the upper left and a royal coat of arms on the lower right. As for the intertitles of the Modern story, like all the other cards they are written in white letters, but their background is black, according to the contemporary standard, and bears the logo [DG] at the bottom of the frame. The backgrounds vary with the episodes, but neither the typography nor the layout changes (save for the fifty occurrences previously mentioned): it is definitely the same narrative voice that always tells the story, the same theme of Intolerance that cuts across the ages. The affiliation to the Book can likewise be traced in the layout and distribution of the text in paragraphs. Small paragraph marks (¶), several sizes for lower-case letters, and footnotes are used. Thus, eleven narrative intertitles include historical explanations in the form of notes at the bottom of the title cards. Intertitle 27, for instance, is composed as follows: 86

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

¶Catherine de Medici, queen-mother who covers her political intolerance of the Huguenots beneath the cloak of the great Catholic Religion. Note: Huguenots – the Protestant party of this period.

The affiliation to the written word is likewise confirmed via the citation. For a few years already, intertitles had been used to restore original texts in adaptations of famous narratives, novels, poems, songs, or plays. Indeed, intertitles had the advantage of making the citation and reproduction of pre-existing texts possible. Intolerance features four explicit citations in the episode of the life of Christ; for each, the chapter and verse from the Old or New Testament from which they are excerpted are given. Intertitle 137 thus reads: ¶“Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned; but what sayest thou?” – John VIII[:5].

Sometimes sources are not mentioned. In the case of Biblical citations, for instance, context and texts belong to a collective knowledge, or logically follow from preceding intertitles. Here is Intertitle 138: ¶“Neither do I condemn thee; go thou and sin no more.”

As for the poetic leitmotiv “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” – from the title and first verse of the first part of Walt Whitman’s poem “Sea-Drift”, from Leaves of Grass (which I found using the edition Complete Poetry and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman, edited by James E. Miller, Jr., Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1959, pp. 181–84) – it is not explicitly cited either. The collection was first published in the United States in 1855. Some spectators in 1916 must surely have identified the well-loved poet as the source of this line. This line recurs in seven intertitles throughout the first part of the film, literally or with some variations, or with the reprise of some words. It is also evoked by the shot of the cradle, which represents and illustrates it. From the beginning of the film, the line (Shot 4) and the image of the cradle (Shot 5) are tied to each other. Either one or both of them appear on the occasion of a change of episode, and echo each other so as to help maintain the unity of the director’s intention. (On this issue, see Miriam Hansen, “Hieroglyphics, Figurations of Writing”, in Babel and Babylon, pp. 199–217.) In fact, Intertitle 63 appears superimposed on the shot of the cradle, and partially repeats another verse from the same poem, “I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter”: ¶Endlessly rocks the cradle uniter of here and hereafter. Chanter of sorrows and joys

Similarly, Intertitle 274 presents a poetic quotation (but not explicitly so) from Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1896): 87

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

¶“And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, For none can tell to what red Hell His sightless soul may stray.”

This type of text places the film under the sign of Poetry, and thus confers an artistic quality upon it. We should remember that, with the generalization of the fiction feature film, the quality of the writing for intertitles was increasingly emphasized. It could be poetic, even versified. Another film from the mid-1910s is famous for its intertitles: Giovanni Pastrone asked writer Gabriele d’Annunzio to write the intertitles for Cabiria (1914), in order to attract an educated audience with the stamp of quality. The intertitles in Intolerance present an extremely wide array of texts and backgrounds for their time period, and their large number has long been a source of commentary. Particularly useful for films presenting innovative forms, intertitles stabilized the meaning of the image and brought the audience a degree of security. In addition, their reference to source texts functioned as cultural, historical, and poetic support for the political and didactic point of view assumed by the film. Claire Dupré la Tour

ARCHAEOLOGY The curtest definition of archaeology I was able to find in a dictionary comes from Britannica World Language: the study of history from remains of antiquities. If we agree to stretch the term “study” to embrace art and film, and decide not to limit the term “remains” to first-hand excavated relics, nothing keeps us from speaking of archaeology in Intolerance. Like many things in this manifold movie, archaeology in Intolerance takes many different forms. Among these are: archaeologically footnoted intertitles (like the note for the marriage in Cana: “THE CEREMONY ACCORDING TO SOYCE, HASTING, BROWN AND TISSOT”, or the one specifying the size of the Babylon wall); archaeologically correct battles and archaeologically inspired dances; art titles which betray familiarity with palaeography; and, of course, Babylonian (and Judean) sets (and costumes) fuelled by nineteenth-century historical paintings. Archaeology informs the film’s visual style and gives shape to some of its story elements. There is even an archaeologist among the many characters of Intolerance caught in the middle of a monumental historical discovery – so, archaeology for Griffith is not only a source but also a theme. I will start with the latter. Archaeology as a theme As any science, archaeology has its own – internal – history, and it would be surprising if, trained as they are in tracing things back to remote past, archaeologists put up with the generally perceived idea according to which their field is only a couple of centuries old. Archaeology, many of them will tell you, is almost as old as the history it serves to study. Its place (and time) of origin is usually given as Babylon in the sixth century BC, exactly the where and when of one of the stories of Intolerance. Griffith was certainly familiar with this theory, for the elderly gentleman with a massive wedge-shaped stone in his hands that we see ushered into Prince Belshazzar’s throne room at one point in the film is exactly the person whom archaeologists honour as the forefather of their science. “BELSHAZZAR’S FATHER HAS A REDLETTER DAY”,

the title explains. “HE EXCAVATES A FOUNDATION BRICK OF THE TEMPLE OF [sic] 3200 YEARS BEFORE”. This is something known to have actually

NARAM-SIN, BUILDED

happened. The agitated old man is the Babylonian king Nabonidus, a ruler whose favorite pastime was to dig into ancient temple mounds in search of his predecessors, and the prop 88

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

in his hands is a cornerstone of a long-forgotten shrine of the Goddess Ishtar – Nabonidus’ famous discovery, which, according to ancient cuneiform tables, “made the king’s heart glad and caused his countenance to brighten” (George H. Michael and Brian M. Fagan, Brief History of Archaeology, ). It is also suspected that Nabonidus’ passion for digging into the past was not as harmless a hobby as it could have been were he not born a king. Sources paint Nabonidus as politically incompetent. Some say his devotion to Ishtar, the ancient goddess of love, antagonized the priests of god Marduk (Babylon’s official patron; Bel in Intolerance), which circumstance led to a popular uprising that eventually took Nabonidus out of office. Others complain that Nabonidus was too engrossed in the excavation and restoration of ancient temples to attend to the running of Babylon, the responsibility which he turned over to his son Belshazzar, whose weakness for feasts the Book of Daniel gives as a reason for the fall of Babylon. While on the whole, Intolerance clears both rulers of Babylon of this Biblical (and historical) gossip, some echoes of it are present in the film. Both the king and the prince underestimate the Persian threat – Belshazzar tragically, Nabonidus comically. Having shown Nabonidus presenting his precious brick to Belshazzar (who politely inspects it), Griffith inserts this title: “INCIDENTALLY HE REMARKS THAT CYRUS, THE PERSIAN, BABYLON’S MIGHTY FOE, IS NEARING THE CITY.” The intended irony of this title is that archaeological field research can sometimes result in a usable piece of human intelligence. Had Prince Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, apostle of tolerance and religious freedom, paid more attention to the old archaeologist’s babble, history may have taken a different course. Ishtar, we must not forget, was not just the goddess of sex, but also the mother of wars. Yes, she was, and she could be quite nasty, but Ishtar was a repenting, self-deprecating, not to say motherly kind of war deity, as we learn from the eleventh tablet of the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh – one of the greatest gifts from archaeology to the history of world literature. There was a moment, the Gilgamesh story tell us, when the Assembly of Gods declared a war on the human race, setting the flood on them – a flood so terrible that it frightened the gods themselves, and Ishtar was the first among the gods to admit they had overreacted: The gods shook like beaten dogs, hiding in the far corners of heaven, Ishtar screamed and wailed: “The days of old have turned to stone: We have decided evil things in our Assembly! Why did we decide those evil things in our Assembly? Why did we decide to destroy our people? We have only just now created our beloved humans; We now destroy them in the sea!” All the gods wept and wailed along with her, All the gods sat trembling, and wept….” (English translation from Richard Hooker, Gilgamesh Summary )

The image of Ishtar One of the things Griffith needed to look up was books on (and pictures from) the history of religions, since three of his four stories for Intolerance were, after all, about various religious conflicts. What effigies, for instance, did ancient Babylonians devote to their rival deities, Ishtar and Marduk? As we know from Karl Brown’s and Joseph Henabery’s accounts of the making of Intolerance, this was the kind of questions Griffith would typically ask to begin with. His second question would be how this or that answer to the first one helps Intolerance 89

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

as a film. Or could it be helped to help? Griffith’s idea of how Marduk was imagined to have looked – the big ear, the long Assyrian beard, and the characteristic pattern on his attire – stems from a drawing found on an excavated cuneiform cylinder seal (a roll-on matrix, like the one which Griffith’s Belshazzar is using to authenticate the Mountain Girl’s freedom not to marry). The difference is this: while in reality the seal drawing is small and has nothing dramatic about it, in Intolerance it became a larger-than-life painted sculpture of the god whose low brow and ferocious gaze cows even his own priest (dressed and made up – comically – to look like mini-Marduk). Such are the dramatic amplifications that archaeological sources inevitably undergo when summoned to serve in a movie. The image of Ishtar (Marduk’s female competitor) is a more interesting case, for here Griffith seems to be aiming at another of those transhistorical, cross-religious parallels that Intolerance is rich in. Griffith’s Ishtar is a white-stone female statue, naked. Unlike the statue of Marduk, the statue of Ishtar is not painted, which makes it look kind of timeless and universal. While her posture and attitude are always the same, Ishtar’s sizes vary from colossal (as she appears in Belshazzar’s banquet hall) to portable (four slaves carry the goddess along during Belshazzar’s public appearances). In Babylon, the image of Ishtar can be seen everywhere: worshipped in her temple, driven around the city by a crowd (in an odd cart with a male figurehead), or enshrined in a wall niche in the poor quarters where the Mountain Girl dwells. Now, is this image archaeologically grounded? It would take a historian and an iconographer to give an expert answer to this question. None of my quick attempts to match Griffith’s Ishtar with her pictures from the time were particularly successful. On clay tablets found on websites and in basic books Ishtar is depicted as a standing winged figure, often in company with falcons and lions, whereas in Intolerance she is shown seated, one of her hands cupped to hold a smaller figure – of grown-up proportions, but the size of a baby – between her breasts. Who is this little man? There existed one Tammuz, Ishtar’s son/spouse, and there is even a scene in Intolerance depicting a ritual dance in honor of Tammuz’s seasonal resurrection – but again, the story of Tammuz comes from a Babylonian myth, not from a contemporary picture showing little Tammuz nursed by Ishtar. The closest visual match – and I think this was Griffith’s source for the statue – is Isis, Ishtar’s counterpart from a neighboring culture, often depicted breast-feeding her son Horus (as on an often-reproduced statuette from the British Museum). A theory exists (and may well have existed at Griffith’s time) that links Isis, the goddess of love and motherhood worshipped in Ancient Egypt, to the Mother of God in Christianity, for indeed a resemblance exists between Egyptian sculptures of this type and depictions of Mary and Jesus in the Christian art. If we assume for a moment that this (or something like this) occurred to Griffith as he was going through source materials assembled to help him with Intolerance, three invisible rays will instantly link the statue of Ishtar, the Love Goddess of Babylon, with three points from three other stories of Intolerance: with a figurine of the Madonna to which the Dear One pledges that she will never let a man enter her room; with another wall-side sculpture of Madonna and the Child being smashed into smithereens by a zealous French Huguenot during one of those iconoclastic rallies; and, of course, with the touching reunion of Mary and Jesus at the marriage feast in Cana. That this – fourfold – interreligious parallel is not a mere coincidence but something that Griffith wanted to be part of his “drama of comparisons” is supported by an extra piece of visual evidence: as if to answer the people of Babylon in their desperate prayer for help against the Persian troops, a radiant halo appears around Ishtar’s sculpted head. One’s impulsive reaction is to think what a blasphemy, for not many people accustomed to seeing halos around the head of the Holy Virgin are quite prepared to find one around the head of Ishtar, the Holy Whore. But then, the way this film works is by creating contrasts within its four stories and parallels between them. The contrast between the intolerant Marduk and the 90

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

compassionate Ishtar is strong enough to justify a parallel between her and the many good mothers that are shown to withstand intolerance in Griffith’s film: the mother confronted by the law; the Protestant mother whose baby is killed by a Catholic beast; the mother of Jesus; the mother that rocks the cradle. The Babylonian story is the only one that does not have a mother among its characters, but it does have one among its gods. Paleography Two things every child knows about Babylon are noticeably absent from the Babylonian story of Intolerance: the fiery writing on the wall that appeared during Belshazzar’s feast, and the proverbial Tower of Babel. A simple (and not necessarily wrong) explanation of this might be a difference in opinion: both stories come from the Old Testament, and in both the God of Israel, unlike Griffith, takes a critical, openly anti-Babylon stand. But is this absence a simple dismissal? It is not: much as he tries to push it under the cap of archaeology, Biblical imagery sticks out from Griffith’s picture of Babylon like donkey’s ears. Miriam Hansen is right to call the Tower of Babel in Intolerance “a figure most powerful in its absence”. It may be absent, she argues, as a visual, architectural, and archaeological fact, but it is very much there as an “image, archetype, allegory” (Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon, p. 183). In a nutshell, Hansen’s point is this: the entire philosophy of Intolerance, the grandiose linguistic project behind its four-storied structure, was envisioned as a polemics with the Bible, Griffith’s Promethean attempt to mend the damage done by God when He divided the language once common to all men into many tongues – to prevent the people of Babel from building the tower higher than the sky. And here it was for the first time after the Babel crisis, that long-forgotten universal language, reborn as the universally understood language of cinema, the language of pictures, the language that Griffith reinvents in order to pass on the moral and philosophical lesson about intolerance. This (or something like this) is the claim that Miriam Hansen discovers in Intolerance. The main implication of this discovery is not in making us newly aware of Griffith’s millennial aspirations, but in drawing our attention to their visual corollaries. Griffith’s trick, it turns out, was to disguise his new (and old, Babel-related) mythology of cinema by dressing it in archaeological garbs. What are (Intolerance’s titles suggest) these newly found cuneiform tablets and cylinders if not the remains of the “DISTANT TIME WHEN ALL THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH SAT AT THE FEET OF BABYLON”? Or what does it mean (to quote another title) that “A CIVILIZATION OF COUNTLESS AGES WAS DESTROYED, AND A UNIVERSAL WRITTEN LANGUAGE (THE CUNEIFORM) WAS MADE TO BECOME AN UNKNOWN CIPHER ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH”? Taken literally, these two titles refer to mundane things (the first one to Babylon’s importance for international trade, the other to the high treason committed against the Babylonians by Marduk’s high priest), but there is no missing their second, anagogical sense: Griffith’s lament for the Time before the Tower. A strange idea, Miriam Hansen remarks, to make cuneiform – a form of writing not only not universal, but not even fully hieroglyphic – play the part of the Past Language of All Men – but, for all his respect for history, archaeological accuracy seems less important to Griffith than his stubborn belief that film (this film, to begin with) will help the human race to recover that “universal written language”, that cinema is destined to become the universal remedy against intolerance and confusion. To take this belief to the height that makes any hypothesis threadbare: is it by chance that the number of stories in Intolerance – four – agrees with the number of the Gospels? Most people are too busy reading intertitles to pay attention to title cards, but if we follow Hansen and pause to inspect the backgrounds of intertitles of the French or the Judean stories, and – in particular – of the Babylonian one we will be able to appreciate the intricacy of Griffith’s palaeographic games. Here, the English texts interact with French heraldic

91

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

cartouches, there, with Hebrew characters carved in tomb-like tablets, and if we look at the background of Babylonian titles we will discern a narrow strip covered by what looks like scenes from Babylon’s peasant life and, flanking the strip, thumbnail clay tablets covered, in their turn, by minuscule writings (allegedly, in cuneiform). Just as Intolerance comes in four epochs, three epochs in the history of writing are inscribed in these titles: picture stories, ancient ciphers, modern texts. Or even four – if we concede for a moment to Griffith’s selfserving fancy that cinema, too, was a new – universal – kind of script. Visionary archaeology Archaeology has two sides to it: detective and creative. Besides digging for relics and remains, archaeologists build replicas and create reconstructions. This other side of this science borders on art. I am not sure if archaeologists are ever tempted to cross the line, but artists do it all the time. There is a title in Intolerance that sounds like a caption in an historical museum: “NOTE: – REPLICA OF BABYLON’S ENCIRCLING WALLS, 300 FEET IN HEIGHT, AND BROAD ENOUGH FOR THE PASSING OF CHARIOTS.” This size estimate and this particular yardstick come from the book by that great ancient eyewitness, the Greek historian Herodotus, who also specified the size of the chariots – four horses (The History of Herodotus, George Rawlinson, ed. and trans., vol. 1. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1885, bk. 1, ch. 179). That Griffith’s title leaves out the four-horse detail is because Belshazzar’s chariot, which is shown moving on the wall after the title disappears, is driven only by two. (Actually, the height of the wall built of the set was 90 feet rather than 300, so, archaeologically speaking, Griffith’s replica was not full-size.) No matter two horses or four, two noted archaeologists found Griffith’s reconstruction of Babylon historically convincing. One of them, British Orientalist Archibald Henry Sayce (whose name, we recall, Griffith mentions in the intertitle authenticating the Cana wedding ceremony shown in the Judean story) sent Griffith a letter which the publicity office reproduced in the souvenir program for the film: Intolerance is astounding and is it not wonderful that it should be so successful. It appeals equally to the historian, the poet and the student of modern sociology. The Babylonian scenes are magnificent, as well as true to facts. I was much impressed by the attention that has been paid to accuracy in detail. The drama is educational in more than one direction and the interest it excites in Babylonian history is especially gratifying to the assyriologist. (Quoted in Bernhard Hanson. “D.W. Griffith: Some Sources”, p. 498.)

On the other hand, Griffith could hardly have hoped to fill the whole Babylon with trueto-fact replicas – even if he intended to, which seems unlikely. Art history (including film history, of course) has no optics that would permit us to speculate about the urges and impulses that gave this or that shape to this or that work, but to speak idly and generally, my guess is that it is not with their facts that history and archaeology tempt the artist, the filmmaker, or the novelist, but with gaps, or voids, between the facts. The scientist who reconstructs a prehistorical village, and the author who writes a historical novel about it do not duplicate (let alone compromise) each other’s efforts but complement them. Alongside the history of facts and together with the archaeology of replicas and relics there has always existed visionary histories and visionary archaeology. Yes, Intolerance shows the signs of acquaintance to archaeology as a science, but its relationship with visionary archaeology is more than acquaintance, it’s a kinship. This kinship is not just generic, but also genetic. Griffith’s Babylon is not Griffith’s own fantasy but rather other people’s fantasies transformed to suit the screen. There are many 92

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

links that lead Intolerance to nineteenth-century historical paintings, for instance – too many to be covered here. Fortunately, this part has been taken care of. Following Joseph Henabery’s account published in Kevin Brownlow’s The Parade’s Gone By… (pp. 51–56) and aided by the surviving scrapbook of images that Griffith used as his sources, Bernard Hanson (op. cit., p. 498) and Russell Merritt have traced scenes and images in Intolerance to Babylon-related paintings by Georges Rochegrosse, Edwin Long and John Martin, with the care and insight that leaves no worry about that particular flank. Also, Willian Feaver, an expert in John Martin’s art, has shown in some detail the iconographic transformations that Martin’s canvas Belshazzar’s Feast had to undergo to become the open-air hall in which this feast in Intolerance is set (Willian Feaver, The Art of John Martin, pp. 56–57). And yes, the elephants. As most scholars writing about this hall (the vastest among Griffith’s Babylon sets) agree, ten (or so – the number keeps changing from shot to shot) huge elephants sculpted on and below its columns (in attitudes more appropriate to tame doggies) have more to do with their (less idle) predecessors from Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914) than with anything coming from Babylonian past. Popular archaeology So far we spoke of still archaeology, the archaeology of objects: sets, costumes or props. But can we also speak of archaeology in a broader sense that will include movement, behavior and performance? In science, yes: according to one current of thought, archaeology is a part of anthropology. And how about Intolerance? Do actors playing people of different epochs act differently? In a much diffused sense, they do. Jesus walks as Jesus must, kings are kingly, and simple folks are rough but ready. But these distinctions never go beyond the conventions that would apply to any other movie. What about ceremonies like the wedding in Cana allegedly staged after Sayce and Tissot? Hard to tell, since neither words nor pictures from James Tissot’s illustrated Bible describe movement in terms too useful to actors and director. One scene perhaps is a delightful exception. “WHEN THESE PHARISEES PRAY THEY DEMAND THAT ALL ACTION CEASE”, says one title, and Griffith transforms this dry fact into one of the funniest pantomimes in the whole film. There is one area of performance, however, where the archaeology question makes more sense to ask: dance. We know that the dancers hired to perform in Intolerance came from the school founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, two key figures in modern American dance. St. Denis denies she danced in the film alongside her students, but she was on the set when the dance on the steps of the elephant hall was shot, and the choreography is hers. It would be an interesting thing to ask if this choreography was based on some kind of archaeological evidence about Babylonian dances, or simply made vaguely Oriental to match the general look of the set. A dance historian is needed to answer this kind of question, but a quick – and no doubt superficial – guess might serve as a stopgap before such an answer arrives. If we compare the way in which the dancers move on the Babylon steps with the pictures of Ruth St. Denis’ earlier dances, a strong similarity (the accent on profile, wristwork, parallel arm positions) between Intolerance and her famous ballets Egypta and Egyptian Ballet (both 1910) will strike the eye. The choreography of these dances was seen as revolutionary, for it replaced the classical ballet canon with the type of movements associated with Ancient Egypt’s wall paintings and sculpture. Assuming this observation is more or less accurate we can perhaps say that archaeology is – at least marginally – involved in the dance on the Babylon steps, even if it comes not straight from Mesopotamia, but rather from the valley of the Nile. But then, it is only in a very indirect way that we can say archaeology played a part here, for while it is true that the Egyptian pictures and statues which St. Denis imported to dance 93

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

had to do with archaeology, can we be sure that their rigid postures and profile positions relate to the way Ancient Egyptians moved and danced? And another but: Ruth St. Denis was a great dance reformer, but also a professional variety dancer who toured, occasionally performing on vaudeville stages and in restaurants – not for specialists in archaeology. The fact that her dance appealed to the taste of more than few was that they – these facts – chimed in with the popular archaeology, the folk Egyptology of everyday trivia like restaurant interiors, cigarette packs and, yes, of movie palaces as well. As Ruth St. Denis’ biographers point out, the idea that was to revolutionize American choreography occurred to St. Denis when she saw (in a drugstore in Buffalo, New York) a poster saying “Egyptian Deities: No Better Turkish Cigarette Can Be Made” (reproduced, together with photographs of St. Denis’ dance, in Walter Terry’s Miss Ruth: “The More Living Life” of Ruth St. Denis) in the center of which, erect in her chair, there is a picture of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of love. It is not surprising that Intolerance, too, fed on popular archaeology – as it tapped archaeology as a science and ripped off archaeological fantasies of high art. I have referred, albeit briefly, to Griffith’s debt to John Martin, British academic painter of renown. It so happens that along with the Martin that painted Belshazzar’s Feast, another man of the same name is found in the scrapbook of Babylonian motifs that Griffith consulted: Louis Martin, the owner of a large restaurant in New York whose Oriental-styled interiors (sketched by Henry Erkins) served as another prototype for Griffith’s Babylon (Hanson, op. cit., p. 506). High and low, ancient and modern, authentic and visionary, commercial and millennial – such are the polarities one needs to account for when we speak of archaeology in Intolerance. Archaeological specter The very specifics of archaeologists’ work make their digs a perfect site for ghost stories. One wonders how many specters and mummies have risen to settle scores with a perpetrator for an untimely wake-up call in film and fiction from our days to back to Méliès. Griffith, too, paid a tribute to this tradition on the ruins of Intolerance. When in 1919 he decided he needed a live prologue for the Los Angeles opening night of The Fall of Babylon (the solo release of the Babylonian story made of scenes taken out of Intolerance), he structured it around a ghost angry with Archibald Henry Sayce (two ghosts, to be exact, a he-ghost that talks and a sheghost that dances). It may take an additional piece of research to establish how exactly the Los Angeles premiere looked like, and who the players were, but we know thanks to Anthony Slide how a similar live action framing looked when The Fall of Babylon opened in New York. That frame, Slide says, was truly global: The curtain rose on a totally dark stage, on which was a globe representing the earth, and a woman (Betty Kaye) representing ancient Babylon. On the globe was projected film of New York City. Then began the film proper, showing Babylon in all its splendor, and introducing the Mountain Girl and the Rhapsode. Then, as the Moving Picture World (August 2, 1919) explained: “During a feast given by Belshazzar to his favorite, the action is transferred from the screen to the stage by a clever arrangement of lights, and the dance which follows seems an appropriate part of the story. It is called the shawl dance, and, as performed by Kyra, is a remarkable exhibition of skills and dexterity.” The presentation returned to the film at the point where Cyrus, King of the Persians, is introduced. Before the end of Act One of the program, at which the Persians are defeated, there was one further cutback to the stage, when Margaret Fritts and Samuel Critcherson, as the Mountain Girl and the Rhapsode, sang a duet. Act Two began with the stage set to represent a hall in the Babylonian Palace, and with a dance by Betty Kaye. The film, then, reopened with the Feast of Belshazzar. There was one further

94

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

stage sequence, immediately prior to the fall of the city, at which point Kyra performed the Dance of Undulation. (Edward Wagenknecht and Anthony Slide, The Films of D.W. Griffith, p. 89.)

To summarize, there were two dance numbers (the first one, performed on the steps that replicated the Babylon steps in the film, was probably choreographed in keeping with the Ruth St. Denis choreography, while the other one, performed by Lois Kyra, must have been one of those undulating serpentine affairs the fashion for which we owe to Loïe Fuller), a singing duo, and even some extra footage showing New York projected on a spherical screen (doubtlessly, to draw an analogy between this mammoth city and its archaeological twin), but Slide does not specify what the “woman representing Ancient Babylon” was doing in the prologue. However, there survives an undated typescript among Griffith’s papers called “prologue” that gives us a rough idea of what her part could have been – though, as I said, it has been typed to be recited at the Los Angeles premiere (which took place some time after 25 October 1919), and it may well be that nothing like this had been voiced from the George M. Cohan Theatre stage in New York (21 July 1919). The character who speaks it is not a woman but a man, an Ancient Babylonian: “Awake! Awake! Awake! “I am the spirit of Elgibi – Priest and Scribe of Babylon – the wisest man of an ancient day – but pardon –” (this first said in deep tones changing to clearer tones) “Pardon me, when in Rome one should to as the Romans do, so I shall speak as you do in Los Angeles. “Of course, you understand, I am a spirit. In floating over your city I saw by the billboards a play concerning my own people was to appear at your theatre. “I drifted in and saw this play. I see that the Reverend Sayce, of the British museum, has testified that this picture is true to facts. You see, this Sayce chap broke into our store rooms of Babylon that had been closed for thousands of years and found books that we had written. I wrote those books – I feel you tremble in the audience – you are awed at my great genius – they were the greatest books that have ever been written – I wrote them. We wrote our stories then on clay.”

The spirit then turns to introducing the screen characters, pauses for the orchestra to do a music demonstration – “the very music her lover played to her in Babylon over two thousand years ago” – then goes on to draw some political parallels between then and now: “Now, the High Priest of Bel – our God – you see, Bel was just the name through which we worshipped our God – just like the Methodist Church of today. Bel was the Methodist, and Ishtar, say was the Baptist and the Priest of Bel was so jealous of the growing power of the Priest of Ishtar that he plotted with Cyrus, a Persian gentleman, who like the present day Kaiser, was tearing around the world looking for more countries to conquer and as old Nabonidus was so busy looking up the history of the people of the past, he let Cyrus go too far before he tried to stop him.”

And so on. Then, at one point, the lights go out, and our scribe spirit stops to introduce “this young spirit, the very girl who danced in the halls of Belshazzar”. An entirely undocumented but not totally groundless guess: back in 1916, when Griffith visited the school of dance headed by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn (the same one whose students performed the dance in Intolerance), he got interested in one of the students, Carol Dempster, who would later become Griffith’s lover and the star of his late films. Was it perhaps her who danced the young girl spirit? 95

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Spirited by the young phantom’s dance, the scribe takes to discussing women, here and in Babylon. He detests the reformers and their prohibition ideas (in this I agree with the ghost), looks down at our suffragettes (here I strongly disagree), and explains how our marriage laws are inferior to theirs (I abstain). The prologue ends on a maudlin note: the spirit asks for “a little tear, a little sympathy, a little pity for we who are now so long in the dust – the dust”. Griffith and Balanchine: An Afterimage Intolerance owed much to dance, but it also gave something back. What it owed has been summed up by the dance historian Elizabeth Kendall: It is striking how closely Griffith’s Babylon matched the look of Orientale discovered simultaneously in America by such figures as Ruth St Denis and in Europe by people like Paul Poiret, and echoed and elaborated by Gertrude Hoffman in vaudeville and by the various Russian dancers on the concert stage. (Elizabeth Kendall, Where She Danced, p. 120)

Aside from this fashionable look, Griffith’s debt to dance included that (already discussed) bit of modernist choreography on the Babylon steps (Kendall points to Griffith’s “Fokinelike crowds” and their “hieroglyphic motions”, ibid.). Surprisingly, it was also a bit of choreography that the art of dance received from Intolerance in return. One day in the Winter of 1920, George Balanchine, then a sixteen-year-old student at a ballet school in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd), Russia, went to see Intolerance together with the class (their dance teacher Andrei Oblakov had called movies a must). According to musicologist Solomon Volkov, who interviewed George Balanchine in the early 1980s, “long after the show the young people continued to reenact scenes from the film. Balanchine would pretend to be King Belshazzar and his partner, Lydia Ivanova, was ‘The girl from the mountains’” (Solomon Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History, p. 345). I am not sure if this little episode adds much to the history of ballet, but it does give a new scale to our picture of cultural geography – for how other than through the movies would a young Russian dancer and future American choreographer get a glimpse of what was going on in the dance world of what would eventually become his adopted country? Yuri Tsivian

CRITICAL RECEPTION “Intolerance World’s Greatest Motion Picture” shouted the banner headline across the first page of The Moving Picture World’s review of the New York premiere, followed by the sub-head: “Griffith Surpasses Himself by a Spectacular Masterpiece in Which All Traditions of Dramatic Form Are Successfully Revolutionized”. This leading trade paper could not have been more enthusiastic: “Unlike anything that has been produced in the past, massive beyond all precedent, well-nigh universal in its scope, perfect in detail, astoundingly magnificent at one moment and intimately human the next”. The review ended by excerpting mainly positive comments from other New York papers. For the Evening World, “Once again D.W. Griffith proved himself the ruling genius of the motion picture world. Intolerance is nothing less than wonderful”. For The American, “The picture is so gigantic in spectacle, so universal in theme and so diversified in content that it seems almost impossible to believe that the brain of one man directed and planned it all”. The Tribune elaborated, “It should be remarked that the genius of this film director does not lie only in the handling of mass effects. Indeed much of the effectiveness of his pictures lies in the manner in which he will drop a big effect to hammer home an interesting detail. In all technical aspects of screen photography the picture is remarkable”. 96

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The Moving Picture World’s review came in the 23 September 1916 issue (pp. 1950–51), and its overwrought enthusiasm may have been partially in response to the generally positive but often qualified or perfunctory earlier reviews in both the trade press and mainstream newspapers. The New York Dramatic Mirror had given an extensive and positive review which kept its praise restrained (“Film reviewing has been over superlatived. But this new Griffith picture marks a milestone in the progress of the film”; September 16, 1916, p. 22). Variety, however, used more space listing the cast than discussing the film, which it found “at times difficult to follow” (September 8, 1916, p. 20). The New York Times’ equally brief initial review was an extreme combination of praise and blame. Headlined “INTOLERANCE IMPRESSIVE: D.W. Griffith’s New Picture Is a Stupendous Spectacle”, it went on to call the director “a real wizard of lens and screen. For in spite of its utter incoherence, the questionable taste of some of its scenes and the cheap banalities into which it sometimes lapses, Intolerance is an interesting and unusual picture” (September 6, 1916, sec. 7, p. 4). The New York Times’ best remembered comment deepened that mixed response four days later in “Second Thoughts on First Nights” by Alexander Woollcott: “Unprecedented and indescribable splendor of pageantry is combined with grotesque incoherence of design and utter fatuity of thought to make the long-awaited new Griffith picture at the Liberty an extraordinary mixture of the good and the bad – of wonderful and bad”. Several of Woollcott’s complaints would find many critical echoes over the decades. As an idea, “intolerance” failed to provide unity: “it has remained for Mr. Griffith to achieve a philosophy of history by a bland misuse of words and their meaning. The method is simple. You take any historical fact, from a Persian siege to a modern prison, and call it an example of intolerance. It may not be an example of intolerance, but never mind. Call it that, and there you are”. Woollcott seems also to have been the first to complain in print that Griffith, of all directors, had a certain chutzpah preaching about this idea: “And incidentally Mr. Griffith was scarcely entitled to berate intolerance, even in this confused manner, after the offensively bigoted Simon Legreeism of his own Birth of a Nation” (September 10, 1916, sec. 2, p. 5). Nearly as witty and considerably more positive was Julian Johnson, who by the December 1916 issue of Photoplay claimed that New York reviewers had used up all the praise: “The metropolitan critics who preceded me in learned discourse upon Mr. Griffith’s sun-play, Intolerance, shot away all the superlatives which were our common property…. Here is a joy-ride through history; a Cook’s tour of the ages; a college education crammed into a night. It is the most incredible experiment in storytelling that has ever been tried. Its uniqueness lies not in a single yarn, but in the way the whole skein of yarns is plaited…. It is much like listening to a quartet of excellent elocutionists simultaneously reading novels by Arnold Bennett, Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Elinor Glyn” (p. 77). Every early book-length history of film found a place for Intolerance, typically with qualified praise that separated admiration for “technical” experiments from condescension to Griffith’s “theme”. Vachel Lindsay incorporated the film when he revised his 1915 The Art of the Moving Picture for its 1922 edition. Although in a pairing with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Lindsay praised the German film for conveying a lot with a little, “Griffith is, in Intolerance, the ungrammatical Byron of films, but certainly as magnificent as Byron” (p. 11). Terry Ramsaye’s breezy 1926 history, A Million and One Nights, values the film purely for its formalism: “the most venturesome experiment in all the history of film technique – the picture entitled Intolerance. This production earns a place in motion picture history sheerly on that element of technique. It was the first and only film fugue…. Intolerance was a magnificent failure” (pp. 755, 759). Revival screenings of the film in the late 1930s, especially by the Museum of Modern Art, revived the praise, usually by then also in connection with the film’s “influence”. Iris Barry’s 97

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

1940 monograph for the Museum, D.W. Griffith: American Film Master, declared Intolerance “of extreme importance in the history of the cinema. It is the end and justification of that whole school of American cinematography based on terse cutting and distinctive assembly of lengths of film… and exercised a profound influence on men like Eisenstein and Pudovkin” (p. 26 of the 1965 reprint). The film’s formal experiments were equally central to Lewis Jacobs’ valuation of the film in his 1939 The Rise of the American Film, but he looked deeper into cutting and the close-up and found more to praise elsewhere: “Profound though its theme is, the commanding feature of Intolerance is its internal organization”; its weaknesses arose from “Griffith’s inherent sentimentality and his tendency to overdramatize”. Still, after quoting Iris Barry, Richard Watts (“a timeless masterpiece”) and Frank Nugent (“an opulence of production that has never been equaled”), Jacobs concluded that Intolerance “has thus reclaimed its rightful position as a peak in American movie making, the consummation of everything that preceded it and the beginning of profound new developments in the motion picture art. Its influence has traveled around the world, touching directors in Germany, France, and Soviet Russia in particular” (The Rise of the American Film, pp. 191, 201 of the 1968 reprint). For Barry, Jacobs and other pre-World War II writers, it was that last influence of Intolerance on Soviet filmmakers, then the highest standard of excellence in filmmaking, that most verified its value in the face of Griffith’s “sentimentality”. Soviet filmmakers were of course also critical theorists, and the essential nuanced summary of the film’s value for the Soviets came in Sergei Eisenstein’s long 1944 essay “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today”. Eisenstein broke from most previous critics of the film in admiring less the Babylonian splendor than Intolerance’s Modern story, which “stands unsurpassed by Griffith himself, a brilliant model of this method of montage”. Eisenstein’s subtlest complaint was about the montage, both in terms of the film’s editing and its large structural juxtapositions. In a more sophisticated way he echoed Alexander Woollcott’s problems with the film’s philosophy: “it turned out to be a combination of four different stories, rather than a fusion of four phenomena in a single imagist generalization. Griffith announced his film as ‘a drama of comparisons.’ And that is what Intolerance remains – a drama of comparisons, rather than a unified, powerful, generalized image … the four episodes chosen by Griffith are actually un-collatable. The formal failure of their mingling in a single image of Intolerance is only a reflection of a thematic and ideological error” (Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today” [1944], in Jay Leyda, Film Form and The Film Sense, 1957, p. 243). Have we reached a critical consensus in the post-World War II years regarding Intolerance? Surveys would suggest that its stock is sinking. The first “Critics’ Poll” conducted each decade by Sight and Sound beginning in 1952 placed Intolerance fifth (topped by Bicycle Thieves, City Lights, The Gold Rush, and Battleship Potemkin), but the film vanished from the 1962 top-ten and by 2002 it was tied for 45th place. In 2000, the Village Voice surveyed fifty mainly US film critics and Intolerance came in at a respectable 18th place (below The Birth of a Nation at 14th). Probably the most surprising recent critics’ list on which Intolerance appeared was one put together by the Vatican, under its Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and sent in 1995 to Catholic bishops worldwide in recognition of the 100th anniversary of cinema. Listed second under the fifteen films showing “Important Values” came Intolerance. One wonders how well the Pontifical Council remembered the film’s French story. Perhaps the Vatican was demonstrating forgiveness. The critical concept gaining most ground in recent decades places Intolerance as a site where the nineteenth-century battles with the art of modernism. The idea was anticipated by the conflict Eisenstein saw between the Dickensian and modern Griffith, and it was suggested in popular criticism in 1968 by the era’s most prominent reviewer, Pauline Kael, who declared that “Intolerance is one of the two or three most influential movies ever made, and I think it 98

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

is also the greatest”. For Kael the film looked both backward (it has “too naïve a conception to be anything more than four melodramas”) and forward: Griffith “was living in an era of experiments with time in the other arts, and although he worked in a popular medium, the old dramatic concepts of time and unity seemed too limiting; in his own way he attempted what Pound and Eliot, Proust and Virginia Woolf and Joyce were also attempting” (Pauline Kael, “A Great Folly and a Small One”, in Going Steady, pp. 51–52). The modernist Intolerance animated two books published in 1991: Jordon Leondopoulos’ Still the Moving World: “Intolerance”, Modernism and “Heart of Darkness” and Miriam Hansen’s Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. That Intolerance could inspire the core of Hansen’s book – the most sophisticated and influential work about American silent cinema in the 1990s – suggests that Griffith’s film has not yet exhausted its critical value. Scott Simmon

99

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

544 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

REGGIE MIXES IN Working title: The Deserted House [?]; The Bouncer Filming date: January–late April or early May 1916 (according to Motography, April 29, 1916, p. 1005) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 27 or 28 May 1916, Rialto Theatre (according to The New York Times, May 29, 1916) Release date: 11 June 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith (according to The Moving Picture World, June 24, 1916, p. 2213) Director: W. Christy Cabanne Story: Roy Somerville Camera: William E. Fildew Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Reggie Van Deuzen [or Reginald/Reggie Morton]); Bessie Love (Agnes Shannon); Joseph Singleton (Old Pickleface); W.A. Lowery (Tony Bernard); Wilbur Higby (Gallagher); Frank Bennett (Sammy, the dude); A.D. Sears (Sylvester Ringrose); Lillian Langdon (Susan, Reggie’s aunt); Alma Reubens (Lemona Reighley [or Dorothy Fleming]); Alberta Lee (Agnes’ mother); Tom Wilson (The bouncer) Archival sources: FILM – Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 28mm diacetate positive (AFI/George Ruckdeschel Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate positive (New Zealand Film Archive Collection), incomplete; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined). MUSIC – Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), cue sheet, 2 pages, Ms.; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 613 Reginald Morton is a wealthy idler of athletic tendencies. He has become bored with the shallow social set in which he moves, although he is engaged to marry Dorothy Fleming, a member of it. Dorothy is engaged to Reggie mainly because of his money, and is flirting desperately with all comers. While out in his automobile one day Reggie chances upon a lost little girl sitting on the curb. He takes her back to her home in the slums and there he sees and falls in love with Agnes Shannon, a sweet young girl of good family now compelled to earn her living in a cheap cabaret. He then discovers that Dorothy is faithless to him and breaks his engagement, leaving him free to pay court to Agnes. His rival for the affections of Agnes is Tony Bernard, the leader of the gangsters of the neighborhood, and Bernard has instructed one of his henchmen to bring Agnes to him. Reggie frustrates the scheme, beats up the henchman, and the owner of the dive in which Agnes works hires him as his bouncer.

100

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

But Bernard has not given up the idea of possessing the girl, and as Reggie is the only obstacle in the way of getting her, he orders him shot. They way-lay Reggie, but he beats them up one by one. Cornered at last, Reggie challenges Bernard to enter a room alone with him and have it out, the man who survives the battle to get the girl. Bernard agrees. A fight takes place. The light is smashed, but it continues until the two men, their shirts stripped from their backs, are too exhausted to go on. By a supreme effort Reggie deals the final blow and staggers out, where he is attacked by the band. But the police have been tipped off. How Reggie finally wins Agnes is the culmination of a romance. The Moving Picture World, June 17, 1916, pp. 2112, 2114

Fresh from college, rich Reggie idles at his aunt’s home while pursued by Lemona, a golddigger from his set. As he returns a lost waif to the city slums, he is drawn to a young woman, Agnes, who has found work in a seedy saloon to help support her widowed mother. Reggie dons working clothes, moves with his manservant to a boarding house, and gets a job as the saloon’s bouncer. To save Agnes’ virtue, he must fight the gang boss and most of his henchmen. Reggie concocts an “innocent deception” that makes Agnes think she has inherited a fortune – and she proves her love by her readiness to renounce it.

This routine Douglas Fairbanks feature only intermittently shows the star at his best, although he begins with astonishing, apparently casual agility in his morning bedroom. Griffith’s assistant Christy Cabanne directed Fairbanks for the fourth time in eight months, and seventeen-year-old Bessie Love (whom Griffith had stage-named) returns from the previous Fairbanks feature, The Good Bad Man. The personnel and Musketeers of Pig Alley-like settings make this feel more a Griffith production than most early Fairbanks features – which is not to its benefit. Here Fairbanks’ usual rich young dilettante learns to put on a tough front to blend into a low-class dive. In many static reaction close-ups, he takes in the underworld doings and the threats to Agnes. There is some uncomfortable roughhouse with his servant and some pointless interruptions from the two-timing Lemona, who “HAS ONE EYE ON REGGIE AND THE OTHER ON HIS BANK ACCOUNT”. Reggie Mixes In misses the wit and satire of Fairbanks’ best films, and the intertitles must strain for clever descriptions and bad puns. The tough gangsters have their orders – “TAKE THIS GAT AND BUMP THAT GUY OFF” – but they prove no match for Fairbanks’ acrobatics. The climax comes in a long fight with the gang boss (played by William Lowery, who would battle Fairbanks again as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood [Allan Dwan, 1922]). Their fight looks ordinary enough after a thousand subsequent B-Western barrooms, but impressed the critics. “Some scrapper that Doug. [sic] Fairbanks”, said Variety; heavyweight champion “Jess Willard had nothin’ on him” (June 2, 1916, p. 16). The New York Times spent two paragraphs detailing the “manly encounters” and concluded that “[i]t is quite probable that if there were many more like Mr. Fairbanks in the movies the Boxing Commission would be made film censors and the sporting departments sent to write about them” (May 29, 1916, sec. 9, p. 2). Scott Simmon

101

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

545 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE MYSTERY OF THE LEAPING FISH Working title: The Detective Filming date: May 1916 Location: California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 2 July 1916 Release date: 11 June 1916 (according to The Moving Picture World, July 29, 1916, p. 843) Release length: two reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith? Director: John Emerson Scenario: Tod Browning? Titles: Anita Loos Story: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith)? or Tod Browning (as credited on reissue print) Camera: John W. Leezer Assistant photographer: Karl Brown Leaping Fish patented by: J.P. McCarty Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Coke Ennyday); Bessie Love (Inane, the Little Fish-Blower of Short Beach); A.D. Sears (Gentleman rolling in wealth); Alma Reubens (The female confederate); Charlie Stevens, George Hall (The two Jap accomplices); Tom Wilson (I.M. Keene, Chief of the Secret Service) Archival Sources: Cinémathèque Québécoise, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive (reissue with sound track, music and sound effects); The Museum of Modern Art, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) I.M. Keene, the chief of police, receives a letter informing him of a mysterious gentleman about the neighborhood who is rolling in wealth. Unable to solve the mystery, he sends for the celebrated detective Coke Anneyday [sic], and he agrees to undertake the job. In locating the gentleman of wealth, Coke unearths a great opium plot. Two Japs ride leaping fish, which are swimming machines, out to a bell-buoy, where they get opium which has been left there by a smuggler’s ship. The plot thickens rapidly. The villains discover they are being watched, and try to make their getaway, observed by the little girl whose duty it is to inflate the fish. Coke, meanwhile, in eating some of the opium acquires an opium jag. He recovers, however, and takes up the trail with thrilling results in which he has a terrible duel in the dark with the gentleman of wealth, overcomes his enemies with a mysterious drug, and claims the little fish blower for his own. The Moving Picture World, July 29, 1916, p. 843

A “scientific detective”, who is also a bon vivant, snappy dresser, athlete, ladies’ man and drug addict, is asked to investigate just how a local “man of mystery” obtained his wealth. In 102

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

so doing, the detective discovers an opium-smuggling ring. He manages, despite his constant drug use, to break up the organization and to rescue a young woman who had been taken prisoner by the smugglers. But in a final twist, we learn that what we’ve just seen is actually a story being pitched by Douglas Fairbanks to the studio’s scenario editor (who turns it down).

Perhaps the biggest mystery about The Mystery of the Leaping Fish is how it got made and who was involved. But possibly, as with any good detective story, clues are present to lead toward a solution to this mystery. Was D.W. Griffith the author of the original story? Did Griffith supervise the production of the film? The trade papers contain some clues, but, just as often, information is either absent or contradictory. Biographies and memoirs are even worse, as conveniently contrived or actual memory lapses make it almost impossible to pin down facts. The Mystery of the Leaping Fish seems to have been a film made practically under the industry radar and then purposely forgotten – at least until it was turned into something of a cult, decades later, by those who found its depiction of drug misuse curiously entertaining. Lest there be any misunderstanding, although “Coke Ennyday”’s use of drugs is obviously a reference to the similar use by Sherlock Holmes, whom Ennyday resembles in other ways as well – scientific deduction methods, deerstalker cap, superiority to the police – there are some real differences. In the first place, while Holmes used a seven-percent solution of cocaine to relieve boredom between cases, Ennyday clearly uses it, constantly, to energize himself. He even wears a bandoleer full of needles! In the second place, drug use was legal, although known to be dangerous, in Holmes’ day. By 1916 that was changing: first in the individual states and then on the Federal level (the Harrison Act of 1914 made cocaine a controlled substance; heroin and opiates were made illegal in 1920 with the Dangerous Drugs Act). So Ennyday’s drug eccentricities, even though dictated by the burlesque nature of the film, are much more shocking. This film would seem to be the antithesis of anything Griffith would have wanted any involvement with. It presents a pro-drug message at the same time he was supervising the cautionary drug melodrama The Devil’s Needle. Griffith cared little for comedy, and this film is a wild farce. In terms of production logistics, at the time The Mystery of the Leaping Fish was made, Griffith was preoccupied with the mammoth Intolerance. Around this time he had also been supervising a number of other Fine Arts productions, most notably Hoodoo Ann, which, unlike The Mystery of the Leaping Fish, bears his imprint in every detail of its subject matter, style and casting. And yet some reference books have listed Griffith as the supervisor of The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (it was, after all, a Fine Arts picture) and said that he wrote the original story, as “Granville Warwick”. Conceivably, as Kevin Brownlow has written (Behind the Mask of Innocence, p.103, based on Bessie Love’s diary) the film could have been shot once by William Christy Cabanne, abandoned, and then reshot by John Emerson, with a new screenplay by Tod Browning and titles by Anita Loos. Perhaps the original concept was the story by “Warwick”, which would have been more Griffithian in tone than the final farce? The trade papers do provide some interesting information. In the 20 May 1916 issue of The Motion Picture News (p. 3041), a new development at the Fine Arts studio is announced: the production of a series of short subjects for Triangle release. These shorts “will be made at intervals by the regular directors of the staff, with the same Fine Arts stars that appear in five-reel subjects.” The reason given is “the insistent demand from exhibitors for shorter subjects to run in connection with five-reel productions”. 103

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The piece goes on to say that the first of the “light comedy dramas” would be directed by Emerson and would star Fairbanks. “This is a radical departure, as Fairbanks is one of the highest-salaried players of the producing staff. This actor realized the advantage of appearing in short and long subjects, and willingly accepted the role in this picture. He is to play the part of a secret service man of a different type than usually seen in pictures. The play deals with a class of wealthy persons who are under suspicion by government officials, as there is no visible source of their income.” The article gives a fairly accurate cast list, including several actors (Love, Sears, Reubens and Wilson) who had just completed Reggie Mixes In with Fairbanks. Of course one wonders whether the Emerson-Fairbanks team was being purposely evasive by leaking this synopsis to the press (or to the Fine Arts front office) or if this is “proof” that the original story was more in line with something Griffith would have written. One also must wonder just what “secret service man of a different type” might mean. Surely no one reading this article and anticipating the new film would have guessed just how radically different this Fairbanks character would be. The piece makes no mention of Christy Cabanne having had any involvement in the production. Nor had there been any coverage of Cabanne at any time in 1916 having directed Fairbanks or anyone else in any sort of detective film. The Motion Picture News followed up the story on 3 June (p. 3392) by noting that a “Fine Arts Triangle play finished last week…. The Douglas Fairbanks subject of two reels is known at the studio under its working title The Detective. It is a burlesque which deals with the secret service detective who exposes a gang of Japanese smugglers.” According to The Moving Picture World (July 29, 1916, p. 843) the film opened 11 June. But it’s not until 15 July, in The Motion Picture News (p. 277), that a review appears. Character names are spelled as we find them in the extant prints today, the short is identified as a “Fine Arts-Triangle film” and the story is accurately described. The article calls it “refreshing nonsense, farcical to the last degree” and seems to take the protagonist’s drug use fairly matter-of-factly. When The Moving Picture World finally mentions the film in the 29 July issue, the piece calls it a Keystone film and spells the detective’s last name “Anneyday” instead of “Ennyday”. Surviving prints no longer have the original title card so it’s impossible to know for certain whether the original prints identified the film as being from Fine Arts or not. But it was released more like a typical Keystone, playing the bottom of a bill with the De Wolf Hopper feature Casey at the Bat, opening 2 July at the 81st Street Theatre in New York and running for a half-week. So what are we to make of this film? There is no correspondence, outraged or otherwise, to Emerson or Fairbanks among Griffith’s papers. Anita Loos isn’t much help. Despite having written several books about her life in Hollywood, she mentions The Mystery of the Leaping Fish in none of them. She has said that she didn’t keep a diary in those days and only started saving her “datebooks” in 1927. She does say that she, Emerson and Fairbanks had a lot of fun working together and that their “blissful hilarity [invaded] the decorum of the Griffith studio” (A Girl Like I, p.155). Griffith didn’t understand or appreciate Fairbanks’ penchant for irreverence (in fact, was threatening not to renew the actor’s option), and that fact only seems to have encouraged Fairbanks’ “spontaneous horseplay” (Loos, Kiss Hollywood GoodBy, p.8). As Kevin Brownlow has suggested, the film has the feel of an elaborate home movie (Behind the Mask of Innocence, p.102). If it weren’t for some special effects with the inflatable leaping fish of the title and similar effects with the detective’s gadgetry, one could almost imagine the three friends along with Tod Browning, throwing the film together over a week104

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

end. It seems like something spontaneously designed not only to thumb their noses at the boss but also to parody the William Gillette Sherlock Holmes playing in theatres (and filling page after page of the trade papers) during the same period. Whatever the truth about the making of the film, it seems to have been forgotten soon after its release. Neither The Motion Picture News nor The Moving Picture World mentioned it again. It never appeared in Triangle ads. It was never included in lists of Triangle releases either with the Fine Arts-Griffith titles or among the Keystone titles. Fairbanks apparently tried to have the film withdrawn (Brownlow, op. cit., p.103) – maybe he had second thoughts about drug addiction as burlesque, or maybe it was seeing himself hyperactively hamming his way through two reels. And just maybe, if it weren’t for the American public’s fascination with drugs, he might have succeeded in suppressing it into oblivion. Karen Latham Everson

105

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

546 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

AN INNOCENT MAGDALENE Alternate title: The Innocent Magdalene Working title: The Scarlet Woman; “A Granville Warwick Kentucky Story” (according to Motography, May 20, 1916) Filming date: March–late May/early June 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 18 June 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Scenario: Roy Somerville Story: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: not known. (See note to entry on camera credits for The Good Bad Man.) Cast: Lillian Gish (Dorothy Raleigh); Spottiswoode Aitken (Colonel Raleigh); Sam De Grasse (Forbes Stewart); Mary Alden (The woman); Seymour Hastings (The preacher); Jennie Lee (Mammy); William de Vaull (Old Joe); Robert Anderson? Archival sources: none known Dorothy Raleigh is a high-spirited Southern beauty who has been brought up by her father, Col. Raleigh, an unreconstructed Kentuckian, to have nothing to do with the townspeople of the little village of Norwalk, just outside of Louisville. She has no other companions than the old negro servants, her animals pets and her books. One day there comes into her life by chance a young millionaire gambler named Forbes Stewart. He makes love to her and asks the Colonel for her hand. Indignant at his presumption, the Colonel orders him from the house. But the young people elope. When Dorothy meets her husband’s friends she is grievously disappointed. He determines, rather than cause her unhappiness, to change his mode of living, and give up his old friends. But a detective who knows something of his past, tries to blackmail him. His defiance leads to his arrest and he is sentenced to a year in the penitentiary. Dorothy is loyal to him at first, but when another woman enters her home and seemingly proves that she is Stewart’s wife by an earlier marriage, she goes back to her father. The stern old man, however, has disowned her, and she is compelled to seek shelter in a cabin with her old negro mammy. When Stewart is released from the penitentiary he hastens to his home to find his wife. Instead he finds this other woman, an old flame who has taken this method to win him back again. He repudiates her, however, and hurries to Norwalk to see the Colonel and demand Dorothy. The Colonel refuses to tell her whereabouts, but from an old servant Stewart learns the truth. Dorothy in the meantime has been led to believe her baby illegitimate, and the villagers, glad to see the proud name of the Raleighs dragged in the dust, make her life miserable. She is about to kill herself when Stewart arrives. The outcome reunite [sic] the lovers and brings a change in the heart of the father that is supremely satisfying. The Moving Picture World, June 24, 1916, p. 2301

106

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

As sweet and dignified as its main characterization, ideal in conception, well designed and artistic in execution, “An Innocent Magdalene”, by Roy Somerville, is more than an enchanting story – it is a valuable contribution to the support of the moving picture business. The new art would drag along through [sic] a sickly youth if nourished only by the general run of makeshifts and plagiarisms. Bright hopes of its future and vigor of present existence depend for sustenance upon such occasional examples of true artistry, as “An Innocent Magdalene”, true and shining gems among a lot of lusterless past imitations. The story starts off with an exquisite characterization. It makes us well acquainted with a tender-hearted little Southern girl placed in small-town environment and brought up in strict seclusion by an egotistical father, an aristocratic gentleman of the old school, at odds with progress as well as with his unpretending neighbors. He represents the fast-decaying idea that distinguished ancestry must dominate present merit. Pride of family is all he has to sustain an assumption of superiority that lacks other reason for existence. Unable to meet conditions as he finds them, lacking in both mental breadth and gracious tact, the soured old pretender lives in a state of semiretirement and obtrusive respectability and attempts to keep his daughter from soiling contact with ordinary people, very much to their general amusement and occasional derision. This characterization presents some interesting contrasts and is so decidedly American that it gives atmosphere to the play. The girl is inspired by the better part of her father’s pride [sic] she carries herself with a fine deportment that results more from purity and elevation of mind than from over-estimation of herself. The characterization is complex, is that of a human being rather than of an ideal, and Lillian Gish presents it so clearly that the impersonation may justly be called the best she has ever done. Pure, sweet and grave, the Southern girl falls in love with a handsome stranger, and he boldly asks the father for her hand in marriage. He is turned out of doors. The lovers are married without parental consent, and the old aristocrat writes his daughter’s name in the Bible among dead members of the family. The young wife is not hurt by discovering that her husband is a man of light morality, a gambler in peril of arrest, for she inspires him to a change of occupation, though too late to save him from arrest. She is not broken down when he is sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. She exhibits great courage when a woman out of her husband’s past appears as his first wife, but she gives up her home and goes back to her father because she is with child. He rejects her as a soiled thing. Smalltown society turns upon her the finger of scorn. The church points to her as an example. She finds refuge in a negro cabin and gives birth to a child, but the strain of sustained ignominy proves too much for her fortitude after she has served her divine mission, and her mind begins to weaken. She is finally saved from self destruction by her husband, who finds an imposter in her place on his return from prison, and the cruel egotism of her father is bitterly punished. The whole story moves with clarity and vigor through its scenes, but there is no forced effort to rouse and sustain attention. Interest grows constantly and naturally out of fine development of a beautiful character. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, June 17, 1916, p. 2059

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. Lillian Gish was inclined to dismiss the films she appeared in that were directed by Griffith’s lieutenants, and An Innocent Magdalene falls into this category. But this is not a film to be overlooked. It was set in post-Civil War Kentucky and directed by Allan Dwan from a script by Kentucky-born D.W. Griffith who wrote it under his favorite pseudonym, Granville Warwick. Lillian plays the Magdalene, but as the title indicates, she is an innocent one. She is the daughter of a proud but impoverished Kentucky colonel (Spottiswoode Aitken) who refuses to mix with the “white trash” of their community. She has been raised by faithful 107

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

black servants (William de Vaull and Jennie Lee) and kept isolated from the others in the town. After eloping with a gambler from New York (Sam De Grasse) she returns home pregnant after he is jailed and a strange woman shows up claiming to be his real wife. She takes refuge with her former “mammy” when her father rejects her and the locals shun her. After he is released from jail, the husband comes to find her, exposes the other woman as a deceiver and reveals the shame and hypocrisy of the father and the community. An Innocent Magdalene is an interesting footnote to The Birth of a Nation (1915). With the exception of Seymour Hastings who played the preacher, the entire cast appeared in The Birth of a Nation and both William de Vaull and Jennie Lee reprised their blackface roles in this film. Its themes, pride and hypocrisy, echo The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance – as well as other Griffith films. But some interesting and significant modifications are probably attributable to the furor over The Birth of a Nation. Most significantly, the Kentucky colonel’s very Southern pride of station is treated as an anachronism. Almost as significantly, Dorothy’s infatuation with a visiting Yankee gambler is treated sympathetically – she reforms him and he is faithful to her. Their mutual interdependence is the moral backbone of the film. The presumption of Dorothy’s guilt by her father and the community is condemned as hasty and intolerant hypocrisy. But Griffith clung to one of his persistent themes, the trust and loyalty of black servants. He had featured this in His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled (both released in 1911), and it was strongly emphasized in The Birth of a Nation. But as in the previous films, black actors could not play the parts. The film was well received by the trade press. “Jolo” (Joshua Lowe), reviewing in Variety, thought the story was “very much above the general run of film tales” (June 16, 1916), and The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison called it “enchanting” (June 17, 1916). Harrison, who was always impressed by the Gish sisters, was particularly taken with Lillian’s performance: “The characterization is complex, is that of a human being rather than of an ideal, and Lillian Gish presents it so clearly that the impersonation may justly be called the best she has ever done.” Paul Spehr

108

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

547 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE WILD GIRL OF THE SIERRAS Alternate title: A Wild Girl of the Sierras (according to Motography, June 17, 1916) Working title: A Child of Nature Filming date: March–June 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors undetermined Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: July 1916 Release date: 25 June 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Scenario: F.M. Pierson, Anita Loos Source: “based on a legend of the Sierras” (according to reviews) Camera: not known Cast: Mae Marsh (The wild girl); Wilfred Lucas (Jim Hamilton); Maizie Radford (Mrs. Hamilton); Olga Grey (Moll); Robert Harron (Bob Jordan); James O’Shea (A Westerner) Archival sources: FILM – none known. MUSIC – Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), cue sheet, 2 pages, ms.; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 858 Fifteen years before the picture opens Jim Hamilton had gone with his wife and little three-year old daughter into the wilds of the West to prospect for a mine. One day while he was away from the cabin, Indians swooped down on it and killed everyone but the little girl, who had been some distance away and who had fled, at the sound of the shooting, into the woods. When Hamilton returned he found his wife dead and his daughter gone. He returned to the cities and became a professional gambler. Hamilton remembers the old worthless mine one day and decides to try and sell it. He induces Bob Jordan, a wealthy young man, to accompany him to the mine with the idea of purchasing it. On the trip, which is made across country, Jordan shoots at what appears to him to be a young deer. When he finally comes up to the object he finds it to be a strange wild little girl of rare beauty, but she is clothed in leaves of grass and she neither understands a word that is said to her nor can she speak. Jordan nurses the little girl who he has wounded by his shot back to health and she becomes his devoted slave. She is shy and afraid of all other humans, however, and prefers the company of wild animals and birds. When Jordan inspects the old abandoned mine thoroughly he decides it is worthless and refuses to purchase it. Hamilton determines to get possession of the young man’s money by robbing him at the point of a gun, but the little wild girl has hidden the money belt of Jordan as a prank and the gambler is frustrated. Jordan angered by the supposed loss of his money and by the knowledge that he had been picked as victim for an intended swindle, was unusually cross to the little girl and she decided to run away to the mountains again. When Jordan discovers she has fled he starts after her and finds

109

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

her in the bear’s cave where he had found her the first day. By treating her kindly, he wins back her confidence and she to show her gratitude to him restores his belt of money. The discomforted gambler returns to his old haunts, poorer than when he started, and, Jordan starts back to his home with the little wild girl following at his heels. The Moving Picture World, June 24, 1916, p. 2302 A legend of the Sierras, according to which there was once discovered in the mountains a girl who, as far as she could remember, had never come in contact with other humans, is the basis for this offering from the Fine Arts studio. “The Wild Girl of the Sierras” is by F. M. Pierson and Anita Loos. Beginning in the mountains and ending there, the story cannot be considered notable on any of its own merits. With a plot that could be adequately treated in much less than five reels and no character development to speak of, the story, one feels, claims no share of the praise due a picture that pleases but does not impress. Paul Powell, the director, has given his subject many rarely beautiful scenes. Numbers of charming pictures there are. These lend charm to the characterizations of Mae Marsh, whose skin is singularly fair for one who has been living out of doors for a period of fifteen years, Robert Herron [sic] and Wilfred Lucas. These three players form a cast of remarkable ability, and if they are hampered by a story that is wholly agreeable but quite thin, they are aided by an artistic production, whose pretty atmosphere is enhanced by exceptional photography. In the beginning we see the girl, playing about with wild animals and delighting in her friendship with the bears, the rabbits and the birds. She wears a tunic made of feathers and takes her afternoon nap gracefully stretched on the limb of a tree. Into this fairyland of the girl there comes one day a stranger. The stranger loves to shoot, and he mistakes the girl for some sort of animal and loses no time in firing at her. The result of this incident is that the girl becomes the companion of humans. She is unable to talk their language, but by making signs she and the other three get along pretty well. The boy is rich and his companions are anxious to sell him a mine whose value is nil. He refuses to buy, even after the woman who loves the gambler makes love to him. The girl, one learns, is the daughter of this gambler, but he never becomes aware of the fact. The visualized memories which come to her make this known to the spectator. The boy’s money belt is saved by the girl and in the closing scene the boy and the girl walk off towards the distant town, presumably, for each has a deep affection for the other. Mae Marsh does some excellent acting as the girl. When she first sees the strange beings who take her captive, she is for all the world like a frightened bird. Her performance throughout is noteworthy for the finish of her expression. Robert Harron is good as the boy and the same may be said of Wilfred Lucas as the gambler. Olga Grey is also pleasingly prominent in the picture. Thomas C. Kennedy, Motography, June 17, 1916, p. 1449

No copies of this film are known to exist at the time of this writing. Despite a script co-written by Anita Loos and the presence of Mae Marsh running through the woods dressed in feathers, The Wild Girl of the Sierras was not well received by the critics. The story seems to have been too contrived to be acceptable – even in an era accustomed to fanciful melodrama. It was supposedly based on a legend that a girl had been found living with wild animals in the Sierras (Variety, June 23, 1916). In this version Mae Marsh was the eighteen-year-old nature girl. She had survived an Indian raid and lived with the animals for fifteen years without seeing another human when she was discovered by a pair of prospectors. It teamed Marsh with her frequent co-star Robert Harron in a role that recalled (but did not reprise) their pairing in Griffith’s Man’s Genesis (1912) and Brute Force (1914). Audi110

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

ences who enjoyed their work together had ample opportunity to see them during the Summer of 1916. They were also teamed in The Marriage of Molly-O, which was released a month later, and in Intolerance, which made its début a month after The Wild Girl of the Sierras was released. The trade press was hard on this film. Variety’s “Fred” called it “one of the poorest features that the Triangle-Fine Arts Company has released in some time”. He thought that the story’s continuity was lost in production, and felt that although the picture had some life at the beginning, it “dwindled down to almost nothing at the finish”. The Moving Picture World chose not to give the picture a full-scale review; their capsule review pointed out the inconclusive ending and complained that it was one of several films about persons raised in the wild. Motography’s Thomas C. Kennedy said there was little character development and that the story could have been told in less than five reels. The scenario was credited to F.M. Pierson and Anita Loos and it is not clear whether they worked together or separately. Whatever the case, problems with the script were not resolved. The most interesting aspect of the story, the immersion of a “wild child” into modern society, was ignored while an all too familiar Western melodrama unfolded. In fact, the film revealed more about the shape of Mae’s legs than the fate of the character she played. Her unfamiliarity with language and custom became a source of comedy and she was turned into an accessory in a twice-told tale about a dishonest ex-miner (Wilfred Lucas) trying to foist a worthless claim onto a wealthy greenhorn from the East (Robert Harron). Motography’s Kennedy knew very well that this was a plot that had been frequently handled in one or two reels. If the surviving summaries of the story are accurate, the crucial dramatic element, the relationship between the young man and the girl, was vaguely defined and became less clear as the melodrama progressed. The summaries emphasized her child-like devotion to the greenhorn, but there was no indication of how he felt about her. At the end of the picture they went off together, the girl trailing behind him like a pet dog. There was no indication of what the future had in store for an eighteen-year-old girl clad in feathers and leaves. The audience could only speculate... Another potentially interesting plot element was also left dangling. A series of memory flashbacks revealed that the scheming miner was the girl’s father who had abandoned his wife and child before the mother was killed in an Indian raid. Although the audience knew of the relationship between the miner and the girl, there is no indication that the principals ever discovered it. Even Mae’s legs provided a source of criticism. The Moving Picture World commented that Mae Marsh’s “exposed limbs are not brown and hairy, but as white as nature and makeup can contrive, and her hair nicely waved”. Motography also thought she was strangely pale for someone living so long in the open. One hopes that Griffith had little or nothing to do with the production. Paul Spehr

111

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

548 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

FLIRTING WITH FATE Working title: [Dillon’s Picture Not Yet Named]; The Assassin Filming date: March–June 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 9 July 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: W. Christy Cabanne; previously assigned to Edward Dillon? (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Story: Robert M. Baker Camera: William E. Fildew Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Augy Holliday [or“Augy” Ainsworth]); Howard Gaye (Roland Dabney); Jewel Carmen (Gladys Kingsley); W.E. Lawrence (Harry Hansum); George [André] Beranger (Automatic Joe); Dorothy Haydel (Phyllis); Lillian Langdon (Mrs. Kingsley); J.P. McCarty [McCarthy] (Detective); Wilbur Higby (Landlord); Props, the Dog NOTE: A news item in Motography (May 6, 1916, p. 1036) lists A.D. Sears and Margie Wilson among the cast for the film yet to be made. Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate fine grain master (complete); 16mm acetate fine grain master (incomplete, r. 3 only); 35mm acetate fine grain master (incomplete, r. 5 only); Cineteca Nazionale, Roma, 35mm nitrate positive; 35mm acetate negative, incomplete (from nitrate positive with Italian intertitles, tinted, destroyed in 1979); George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate fine grain master; 16mm acetate positive (S.A. Lynch Enterprises, Inc., reissue); Library of Congress, 35mm acetate negative (AFI/Thunderbird Films Collection); 35mm acetate negative (incomplete), AFI/Jack Tillmany Collection (both of these were preserved in black and white from tinted nitrate prints deaccessioned to the Museum of Modern Art in 1981); The Museum of Modern Art, 28mm diacetate positive; 35mm acetate negative (from two combined 35mm nitrate positive prints from the American Film Institute, both no longer extant); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined). MUSIC – Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), cue sheet, 2 pages; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 320 “Augy” Ainsworth, a young artist, is long on art and short on funds. He sees Gladys Kingsley, a girl of wealth and social position, in the park one day and immediately falls in love with her. He manages to get an invitation to an affair at which Gladys is to be present and is introduced to her. An aunt of Gladys’, however, learns that he is penniless and consequently frowns on his suit. Instead she urges her niece to become engaged to Roland Dabney, who has great wealth. Despite her aunt’s prohibition, Gladys falls in love with “Augy” and he is on the point of proposing marriage. He loses his courage, however, and when Gladys’ friend Phyllis tries to help

112

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

him by allowing him to practice his proposal on her, Gladys overhears the rehearsal, thinks “Augy” is faithless and promptly accepts Dabney. “Augy” determines to commit suicide when he finds how things have turned out, but when he starts to inhale gas he discovers that the last bit of gas has run out of his quarter-in-the-slot meter and he has no quarter. He goes to a saloon to get change and meets “Automatic Joe”, a notorious gunman who is supposed to do murder for pay. He arranges with Joe to shoot him at some unexpected moment and then goes back to his room to await his fate. Then a wonderful change takes place. Gladys learns the truth; breaks her engagement to Dabney and sends for “Augy”. A relative also dies and leaves him a million dollars. His inheritance makes the aunt only too willing to accept “Augy”. Then poor “Augy” remembers that Joe is to shoot him at some unexpected moment. He remembers Joe is given to wearing disguises – particularly disguises of beard effects, and he thinks every man with a beard is Joe. He takes to wearing a beard himself and finally goes to the police station. A detective assigned to the case disguises himself with a beard and “Augy” thinking him Joe has the run of his life trying to escape from the detective, who merely wants to consult with him. In the meantime, Joe has been converted by the Salvation Army. He is anxious to return the money “Augy” has paid for his own killing. He sees “Augy” just as he is returning from church with his bride and when he approaches to give him the money, scares the life out of the poor bridegroom, who leaves his bride and flees for his life. The Moving Picture World, July 8, 1916, p. 306

August Holliday is an artist “who can draw everything except a salary”. Driven to despair by his lack of funds and consequent inability to marry the society girl of his dreams, Augy hires Automatic Joe to kill him. Then, having suddenly inherited a million dollars and gotten permission to marry the girl, Augy fears for his life; in fantasy sequences, he imagines Automatic Joe attacking him in different guises, and ends up ducking under windows and jumping past doorways, climbing walls and sliding down drain pipes at the slightest provocation. But Automatic Joe is not really after Augy, since, after promising his mother on her deathbed that he would reform, he joins the Salvation Army. He does, however, want to return the money that Augy paid for his own assassination. He manages to spy Augy and his new bride just after the wedding ceremony and, after chasing the groom up a tree, returns the money and explains his change of heart.

The exposition is long and somewhat tedious and the plot does not take off until the rather late introduction of Automatic Joe. A great deal of comedy comes from the false beard used by the “correspondence school detective” who is supposed to be protecting Augy and actually frightens the artist into acquiring his own false beard in the film’s best sequence. The end is rather an anti-climax; I think there should have been less exposition and more of a final chase. Anthony Slide (The Kindergarten of the Movies, p. 59) notes that Automatic Joe, credited as George Beranger, is the André Beranger of Ernst Lubitsch’s So This is Paris (1926). He is one of the delights of the film, especially in the scene in which he explains the different murder techniques available to his more and more intimidated client. Lea Jacobs

113

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

549 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE LITTLE SCHOOL MA’AM Working title: Nan, the Little School Ma’am [?] Filming date: Spring [May–June] 1916 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; “the Sunland School” (location not determined) Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 16 July 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Chester M. and Sidney A. Franklin Assistant director: Millard Webb (according to modern sources) Story: Frank E. Woods, Bernard McConville Camera: not known Cast: Dorothy Gish (Nan); Elmer Clifton (Wilbur Howard); George Pierce (Squire Tolliver); Jack Brammall (Jim Tolliver); Howard Gaye (Old Man Tyler); Josephine Crowell (Widow Larkin); Luray Huntley (Sally); Millard Webb (Jebb); Hal Wilson (Washington); G.M. Blue; The Fine Arts Children: George Stone (Billy), Carmen De Rue; Violet Radcliffe, Francis Carpenter, Ninon Fovieri, Fern Collier Archival sources: none known The little school ma’am has gone out to a western town from her home back in Virginia. The townspeople just can’t help making life miserable for the little school teacher, and when a young playwright, who happens to be from Virginia himself, arrives in town and meets the lonely little teacher, old Mrs. Grundy just runs riot. To make matters worse, the young people go off for a ride and when they wander off to a spring to get a drink, the horse runs away and they have to, perforce, stay out in the woods all night. Then there is a crash and the school teacher is summarily dismissed from her position. The Moving Picture World, July 22, 1916, p. 692 A fairly good story is this five reel Fine Arts, by F.E. Woods and Bernard McConville, made delightful in spots by the presence of a number of bright, pretty and talented children. They do so well in their natural roles and when they give a show of their own they easily carry off the honors, but Mistress Dorothy Gish, of the beautiful and expressive eyes, of grave manner and birdlike movement, does all that can be expected in a part of slim opportunity. She plays the antiquated role of the falsely accused girl in a narrow-minded village environment not seen off the stage since the days of our grandmothers. How dear to the heart theatric is that group of narrowminded, hypocritical villagers. Their puritanism has been used on the stage for the purpose of enlisting sympathy for erring heroines beyond the memory of any living man, but there is a loss of effect in the many screen stories where it is employed by ascribing it to raw types little better than caricatures of people as we know them. “The Little School Ma’am” has a fault which its capable authors should avoid in future work,

114

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

that of talking to the audience in “asides” that are not even amusing. The secret of holding interest, once it is enlisted, is to entertainingly preserve the illusion. There is an unreal vision being presented to the mind, a story of unreal lives made real and interesting so long as we are not reminded that it is only make believe. The authors seem to forget this. They possibly grow tired of their own story before they are through and lapse into amateurish reminders that all is not as real as it seems, destroying that important and difficult essential to sustained interest, verisimilitude. It requires no art to tear the veil of illusion. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, July 15, 1916, p. 473

No copies of this film are known to exist at the time of this writing. Fine Arts’ production The Little School Ma’am, released 16 July 1916, was a substitute for the film that had been announced for that date, The Devil’s Needle, and it was a radical change! Drug addiction and sordid urban neighborhoods were displaced by a tried-and-true story of an innocent outsider victimized by malicious small-town gossips. The only thing the two films had in common was a rescue from attempted rape – which, if the films of the era are any indication, seems to have been an all-too common problem during the 1910s. Reviewers for The Moving Picture World (July 15, 1916) and Variety (July 7, 1916) criticized the triteness of the plot, but gave credit to the directors for handling it well. The Franklin brothers, Chester and Sidney, specialized in directing films featuring children – a popular genre in the mid-1910s. They had been working for D.W. Griffith since 1915, first at his Reliance-Majestic studio, and they followed him to the Fine Arts company. From the beginning they had employed a group of children who were variously known as the “Reliance Children”, the “Majestic Juvenile Troupe” and now the “Fine Arts Children”. By the time The Little School Ma’am was made, several of these youngsters were veterans who had appeared in a half-dozen or more films. They appealed to the public and this production was tailored to this enthusiasm and it was embellished by the presence of the increasingly popular Dorothy Gish as their teacher. One of the features of the film was a show within the show, a performance that the children put on as part of their school activities – a sort of precursor of the cute kiddie activities popularized by “Our Gang” in the 1920s and 1930s. Not all of these juvenile antics were successful, however. “Jolo” (Joshua Lowe), reviewing for Variety, complained that too many recent Fine Arts productions had rabbits in them and he registered a protest against bunnies because he found rabbits not very interesting. Dorothy Gish’s co-star was Elmer Clifton, who would later become her director for several of her most popular comedies. Other than the presence of Gish, Clifton, Howard Gaye and Josephine Crowell, who were Griffith veterans, there is little evidence that the master was involved in making this film. Although the theme of small-town pettiness has Griffith overtones, as Harrison’s comments indicate, this was not a topic exclusive to Griffith. Paul Spehr

115

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

550 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE HALF-BREED Alternate titles: The Carquinez Woods; Lo, the Halfbreed; The Half Breed; The Halfbreed Working title: In the Carquinez Woods Filming date: April–July 1916 (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles (A news item in Motography [May 27, 1916, p. 1229] lists the lumber district of Santa Cruz, the Sequoia National Park and the Yosemite Valley as possible shooting locations for exterior scenes.) Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 30 July 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Adaptation: Anita Loos Source: In the Carquinez Woods, the novel (1883) by Bret Harte Camera: not known. (See note to entry on camera credits for The Good Bad Man.) Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Lo Dorman); Alma Reuben (Teresa); Sam De Grasse (Sheriff Dunn); Tom Wilson (Dick Carson [or Curson?]); Frank Brownlee ([Rev.] Winslow Wynn); Jewel Carmen (Nellie); George Beranger (Jack Brace); ? (Silver Fawn) Archival sources: Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (Public Archives of Canada/Dawson City Collection); 16mm acetate positive (Boltons Trading Corp. 1974 reissue) Lo Dormante, or “Sleeping Water” – called by white men Lo Dorman – is a halfbreed Indian. He has been raised by an old botanist who has a cabin in the Carquinez woods; but now that the old man is dead, Lo finds that white men will have nothing to do with him. So he goes to live in a hollow tree deep in the forest. In the mining camp, close at hand, Winslow Wynn, a free-and-easy Baptist preacher, has arrived with his pretty daughter Nellie. Nellie is a butterfly, shallow and insincere; but half the male population of the town is in love with her. Even Lo is in love with her; and his interest is returned by Nellie in a way that leads him to hope that he may marry her. Meanwhile, Teresa, a dance-hall girl who has stabbed her lover and is fleeing from justice, seeks refuge in the Carquinez woods and finds herself before the habitation of Lo. He takes her in and gives her shelter. To get a dress for her he begs one from Nellie. Wearing this dress, Teresa is seen by a suitor of Nellie and mistaken for her. Nellie has a great curiosity to see the home of Lo, so takes the stagecoach from her home to the village at the other side of the wood. Descending at the border of the woodland, she ventures along the trail. She is seen by the suitor who previously took Teresa to be her; and convinced that Nellie is meeting Lo clandestinely in the woods, he goes home and tells her father the scandal. Lo has by this time found the insincerity of Nellie and the true worth of Teresa; but he saves Nellie’s reputation in a thrilling sequence of scenes and wins his own happiness. The Moving Picture World, August 5, 1916, p. 1002

116

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

In California, an Indian woman, Silver Fawn, is seduced and abandoned by a white man. In despair, she leaves her baby, Lo Dorman, with a kindly old man who raises and educates him. When the old man dies, local citizens accuse Lo Dorman of poisoning him and drive the young man away. The young man goes to live in a forest of giant redwoods near the town of Excelsior. The hypocritical Reverend Wynn gives a sermon on intolerance, inviting Lo Dorman into the church to serve as an example. There the young man meets Nellie, Wynn’s daughter, and a courtship develops, to the preacher’s disgust. Nellie’s other suitors, Sheriff Dunn (Lo Dorman’s father) and Jack Brace, an express agent, try to discourage the romance. Dick Carson’s Medicine Show arrives in town, and Teresa, a Spanish woman with the show and also Carson’s mistress, is attracted to Lo Dorman. After she stabs Carson in a fit of jealousy, she takes refuge in the hero’s home in a giant hollow tree, and Lo Dorman lures two of the pursuers away from her. Dunn finds her, however, and she stabs him. Nellie, still attracted to Lo Dorman, tells her father she is going to visit friends in the next town, but gets off the stagecoach early and goes into the woods to see the hero instead. Jack tails her there and finds Lo Dorman’s home, discovering a dress of Nellie’s that Teresa had been wearing as a disguise. Jack tells Dunn that Nellie is with Lo Dorman, and the Sheriff vows to kill the halfbreed. In the woods, however, Teresa offers Dunn evidence that he himself is the young man’s father. Weakened by his wound, Dunn collapses. Reverend Wynn forces Nellie to write a note to Lo Dorman saying that they are only friends. Meanwhile, drunken Indians set fire to the forest where Lo Dorman lives. He manages to rescue Teresa. Nellie declares her love for Jack, who tells her that Dunn is dead and hints that Lo Dorman is as well. Lo Dorman and Teresa stand quietly together looking at the smoldering woods. (NOTE: The copy examined, a 16mm reference [reissue] print from the Library of Congress, is missing considerable footage in various scenes. All of the intertitles have also been replaced. This plot synopsis and the analysis that follows must therefore remain somewhat tentative. – Kristin Thompson)

The Half-Breed was the ninth of the thirteen Fairbanks films that Griffith supervised and the third of four from this period directed by Allan Dwan. While most of the modern screenings showcasing the prolific actor’s films of the pre-1920s era favor the comedies, Fairbanks was also noted for his Westerns, and The Half-Breed is an impressive example. Despite the fact that Griffith’s involvement in the Fairbanks films famously was almost nil, Dwan was a great admirer of Griffith’s and attributed most of his early knowledge of film technique to watching the Biographs (see Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer, pp. 25, 27). By 1916, however, Dwan and John Emerson, one of Fairbanks’ other frequent directors, were making films in a somewhat more modern-looking style than was the revered director who was credited as supervising these films. The opening of The Half-Breed appears to have a livelier, more economical exposition than those of Griffith’s features of this era. The difference is difficult to judge from the print examined; clearly some footage is missing from the opening. Dwan’s brief discussion of the film mentions the hero swimming across a river when he first appears as a grown man (Bogdanovich, op. cit., p. 42), but in this print the scene begins with Lo Dorman already on the shore drying off. Nevertheless, the introduction of the characters and settings appears to be accomplished in scenes of action. In contrast, Griffith tended to introduce all his characters in static situations, then set the narrative moving – a tradition that reaches back to the early years of the feature film, when theatrical-style bows were often used as an opening. Griffith’s habit of beginning with strings of intertitles and posing characters would persist into the 1920s. In The Half-Breed, we first see Silver 117

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Fawn with her baby, climbing a hill with a beautiful riverscape behind her. She is headed for the cabin of John Bowers, the elderly white settler and scholar who will raise Lo Dorman. After an expository title that establishes Bowers’ respect for Indians, again we first see Bowers as the action progresses: Silver Fawn immediately enters and reveals that the father of her child wants nothing to do with her or her baby. Dwan’s film pursues the same strategy in introducing the town of Excelsior. A fairly lengthy scene in the local tavern shows us Reverend Wynn as he circulates among the regulars and tries to get them to go to church. The action of having one of the men passing a hat to collect donations for an ailing widow connects the people in the various areas of the large, deep set, and it also helps characterize Wynn as hypocritical when he refuses to donate because the woman is not a member of his congregation. Overall the scene contains no really important action, and yet the complex staging, sense of bustle, and little vignettes make it a lively way of presenting exposition. One wonders whether Fairbanks, Dwan, and Loos were aware of the irony of this project, in which the hypocritical Reverend Wynn preaches a sermon on intolerance, being made at the same time that Griffith was working on his epic. Griffith’s film touches on more than one type of intolerance, but racial bigotry is not among them. The Half-Breed, however, confronts the issue in a direct, restrained way that seems remarkable for the era. Having Reverend Wynn pay lip service to racial tolerance and temporarily welcome Lo Dorman into the community helps the narrative avoid harping entirely on the harsh treatment of the hero by nearly all of Excelsior’s citizens – or the men, at any rate. Nellie and her friends seem to be attracted to the handsome, athletic young man, leading the jealous suitors to condemn Lo Dorman as a savage and hence a threat to white women. The filmmakers take care to have Bowers give Lo Dorman a good education, so that there can be no excuse for the other characters’ prejudice against him – he is far more civilized than most of them. The treatment of race is aided by the comparative realism of the depiction of Excelsior. The interior of the tavern looks like something straight out of a William S. Hart Western. (Both Dwan and Fairbanks were familiar with Hart’s films, which were also being made for Triangle at this time.) A group of prostitutes is clearly visible in a hallway to the rear, and their presence is not watered down by depicting them as mere dance-hall girls, as so often happens in Westerns. Nor is their presence de-emphasized by keeping them as a background detail of authenticity. A major plot point occurs when Dick Carson joins one of them in a back room and thus draws Teresa’s jealous rage upon himself. A mixing of races seems to be tolerated in the tavern, with a nouveau riche black man playing cards with one group, and a pair of Chinese men doing the same with other white gamblers. Even so, the tavern becomes the site of racist behavior as Sheriff Dunn amuses himself and others by getting the Indians from the medicine show drunk. Stylistically, The Half-Breed displays much of the sophistication that characterizes most of Fairbanks’ 1910s films, no matter who their director is. The state of the print examined makes it difficult to judge the quality of the cinematography, but even so the scenes shot in the forest, particularly amid the giant redwoods, appear beautiful indeed. Of course, it would seem likely that virtually anyone filming in such a spectacular location would end up with lovely shots. Dwan goes beyond pretty images, however, in his handling of the space of the woods. In particular, the scene in which Lo Dorman lures two of Teresa’s pursuers away from her hiding place contains some remarkable compositions in depth down the length of a huge fallen redwood. The hero’s ruse to make the two end up at opposite ends of the log and fire their pistols at each other involves some impressive compositions in depth – especially one slightly low-angle framing where Lo Dorman’s head protrudes from his hiding place within the log, popping up through a large hole in the foreground to observe the two men jumping down off the log in the background. 118

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Dwan also makes clever use of the large doorway of Excelsior’s church. Early in the film, a busy depth framing shows Nellie emerging from her house and immediately surrounded by a group of admirers. One woman from a group clustered at the left foreground drags her husband away, exiting at the right foreground up a small flight of offscreen steps. Women in the foreground gossip about Nellie, then exit left. The group of men around Nellie walk with her to the right foreground, also up the unseen steps. A cut directly backward shows the church interior, with the group coming through the door and forward along the aisle. Thus the previous shot is revealed as having been filmed with the camera positioned in the church doorway. The edge of a pulpit is unobtrusively positioned in the foreground right. This same framing is used for the rest of the church scene, punctuated by cut-ins to various members of the congregation. This use of depth within the church and our familiarity with the space of the street outside prepares the way for a dramatic shot shortly after Wynn starts his sermon when Lo Dorman arrives in town. Wynn is in the foreground by the pulpit, preaching, when the hero becomes visible in the street, just to the left of dead center and framed in the open doorway. Spotting him, Wynn moves toward him to invite him in as a convenient way of giving his parishioners an object lesson in tolerance. The film’s narrative structure is also skillfully handled. In particular, the romantic triangle among Lo Dorman, Nellie, and Teresa is balanced remarkably well, leaving us wondering which woman we should be hoping will end up with the hero. Nellie is characterized as friendly and generous, the only person in town who seems truly to have no prejudice against Lo Dorman. He seems quite smitten with her, and they share a kiss, to the disgust of Nellie’s other suitors. Nellie also takes considerable trouble to visit Lo Dorman in his woodland home, and the brief scene of them sitting by a stream again seems to hint at them as the central romantic couple. All this is set against the fact that she seems a bit flirtatious and full of herself, and at one point she makes a slightly catty (though not racist) comment about Lo Dorman to her friends. Teresa also appears to be in some ways a suitable partner for the hero. She admires him for getting the drunken Indians away from Dunn and out of the tavern, and she remarks to the sheriff, “‘THAT HALF BREED IS WORTH A DOZEN OF YOU, SHERIFF’”. Teresa then tells Lo Dorman that she would like to visit his home in the forest. She is Mexican, and therefore presumably shares the hero’s status as a second-class citizen. Working against her is the fact that she is Carson’s mistress and stabs him, though not fatally, after he spends a night with a prostitute. Lo Dorman’s willingness to help her elude her pursuers suggests, however, that he sympathizes with her as an outsider to the community. This doubt about which woman, if either, Lo Dorman will end up with lasts until quite late in the film. The ending in the copy viewed is particularly choppy, but the implication seems to be that the hero will stay with Teresa after the forest fire. Such an outcome would be logical in terms of the pervasive racism that the film has posited among the townspeople, and that implication creates a bittersweet conclusion. Kristin Thompson

119

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

551 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE MARRIAGE OF MOLLY-O Working title: Irish Story Filming date: April–July 1916 (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; location shooting in Santa Barbara, California Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: week prior to 23 July 1916, Rialto Theatre Release date: 6 August 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Story: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: John W. Leezer Cast: Mae Marsh (Molly-O); Kate Bruce (Mrs. Malarkey); Robert Harron (Larry O’Dea); James O’Shea (Denny McGuire); Walter Long (Joseph McGuire); Alice Knowland, Edwin Harley Archival sources: none known “Marriage of Molly-O” is a story of Irish life in Ireland, with much hard work in providing atmosphere, hard work with exterior flaws like the presence of gum trees, common enough in California, but unknown in Erin. An old Irishman makes a verbal will on his deathbed, giving his cow to Molly-O and the pig to his dear wife, intelligently impersonated by Kate Bruce. Molly-O is impersonated by Mae Marsh, and she is never anything else than Mae Marsh, in spite of poverty costumes. Of course there is a prince Charming, Sir Larry O’Dea, playing car driver, and the usual villain, the landlord’s son, who attempts a mock marriage when times are so hard that the rent can’t be paid. He promises a silk dress for the mother, a bell for the cow and a ribbon for the pig as the price of Molly-O’s hand. He leads her to an inn, but is foiled in his purpose by Larry O’Dea when all seems lost. Larry then provides all that the villain promised, and the poor girl marries her Prince Charming. A large amount of space is given to a fairy story told by Larry, having no intrinsic interest and not impressively appropriate. This cut in the straight story has little other excuse than the absence of materials for a five-reel feature, and it operates to divert whatever interest was aroused in the opening scenes. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, July 29, 1916, p. 805

No copy of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. The Marriage of Molly-O was Granville Warwick’s (D.W. Griffith) foray into the Irish countryside. It teemed with pigs, poverty, brutal rental agents, an unscrupulous seducer, and a romantic hero who turned out to be rich and well-born. The film’s attempt at quaintness was embellished with a fantasy interlude in which the heroine, an impoverished colleen (Mae 120

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Marsh), was visited by fairies. Robert Harron was the hero and James O’Shea the villain. The Irish charm masked a rather standard melodrama in which the immoral son of the rental agent tried to seduce the destitute but attractive heroine with the promise of a false marriage. A handsome, more principled (and richer) hero saved her in the nick of time – and married her himself. Victorian melodrama decked out with a touch of blarney. The trade reviews were mixed, but generally favorable. There was praise for the attention to detail – the sets, costumes, etc., although The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison pointed out that gum trees were common in California, but unknown in Ireland (July 29, 1916). Oscar Cooper reviewing for The Motion Picture News found the picture quaint and appealing (July 20, 1916). “Fred”, reviewing for Variety, felt it was not up to the TriangleFine Arts standard (July 21, 1916). All three thought that the fairy-fantasy interlude was too long, though Cooper found it “a bit of rare beauty in setting and photography”. Harrison thought it padded out a story that otherwise would not fill five reels, the usual length of a Fine Arts feature. The most interesting aspect of the film is that it reunited Mae Marsh and Robert Harron, frequent co-stars and the principals of the Modern story in Intolerance. The Marriage of MollyO was released on 6 August 1916, the day after Intolerance had its trial showing in Riverside, California, and a month before the New York premiere. Their parts in Molly-O contrasted rather sharply with their roles in Intolerance. Poverty played a role in both films, but the similarity ended there. Paul Spehr

121

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

552 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE DEVIL’S NEEDLE Working title: The Dope Fiend Filming date: April–July 1916 (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: streets of Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued by Tri-Stone Pictures, 2 November 1923 Release date: 13 August 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 2 November 1923 (Tri-Stone reissue) [CIL 19559] Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Chester Withey Scenario: Chester Withey, Roy Somerville Camera: not known Cast: [1916 release] Tully Marshall (David White); Norma Talmadge (Rene, his model); Marguerite Marsh (Wynne Mortimer [or Florence Mortimer]); F.A. Turner (William Mortimer, her father); Howard Gaye (Hugh Gordon); John Brennan (Fritz); Paul Le Blanc (Buck); D.W. Griffith? (Extra). [1923 reissue] Tully Marshall (John Minturn); Norma Talmadge (Renee Duprez); Marguerite Marsh (Patricia Devon); F.A. Turner (Matthew Devon, her father); Howard Gaye (Sir Gordon Gassoway); John Brennan (Janitor); Paul Le Blanc Archival sources: Library of Congress, 35mm acetate negative (AFI/Voelker Collection), 1923 reissue David White, [sic] is a brilliant young artist who is rapidly making a name for himself. Rene, his pretty model, is deeply in love with him and he, in an indulgent way is fond of her. He falls in love, however, with Florence Mortimer, an heiress who is engaged to marry Gordon, her father’s partner in business. David succeeds in getting Florence to pose for one of the figures in a picture he expects to be his masterpiece. Gordon, however, interrupts the sittings and takes Florence from the studio. Her father orders her never to see the artist again. David is despondent over the loss of his model and his love, and Rene induces him to try a shot of morphine. She admits [sic] have used it for some time and assures him that it will give him wonderful inspiration. David takes to it readily and is soon a rabid addict. Rene sees that the genius has disappeared from his work and decides to break hersel[f] of the habit show [sic] that she can convince him that it can be done. Her plans are very much upset, however, by the sudden appearance of Florence at the studio. Florence has found that she loves the artist and has defied her father to be with him. They marry. Rene becames [sic] a stranger around their home. David gets into dire straits through the use of drugs. His genius leaves him and finally his desire to create. His money is soon exhausted and one morning, without the money to buy the drug, he starts out to seek Rene, believing that she is still an addict. Florence follows him. Gordon has been active in fighting the drug traffic and Florence, finding herself in a dangerous neighborhood, calls him and asks him to join her. Gordon still loves her and responds quickly.

122

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Members of the drug ring see them together and Florence is immediately suspected of being a spy for the reformers. Gordon and Florence go to Rene [sic] room and there find David in a frenzy. He fights his wife and Gordon madly and they leave. Rene nurses David until the fit is over and then asks him to give up the drug, that fresh air and hard work will let him do it. He sneers at her and leaves to go back to his own home. Gordon has gotten a pretty good idea of the misery of Florence’s existence. He is at David’s home when David returns and is coaxing Florence to return to the home of her father. David gets a gun with the intention of killing Gordon but does not shoot when he hears Florence saying that it is her duty to stay and help David fight the drug habit. David, resentful, decides that he won’t leave her that excuse for staying with him, and without announcing his intentions to any one goes to the country and begins his battle. Florence, depply, [sic] worried, over his disappearance, seeks Rene to try and find out where he is. She gets no answer to her knock, but is enticed by one of the members of the drug ring into a hang out under the belief that she is again spying. Rene just returns to her room as Florence disappears into the hang out [sic] of the drug ring. She has been to the country is [sic] response to a message from David. David is cured of the drug habit, and satisfied that Florence has divorced him intends to marry Rene to soothe his heart ache. Rene suspects that he still loves Florence. Watching through a window she sees Florence locked in the cellar of the drug ring’s hangout and immediately telephones David. David comes and battles his way into the cellar and rescues Florence. They find that they still love each other and Rene, sadly, again takes up her work as his model. Synopsis from Copyright Material deposited at the Library of Congress, November 2, 1923 [copy stamped November 3, 1923, CIL 19559]

An artist is introduced to drugs by his free-spirited model, and soon becomes a helpless addict. His life and marriage in ruins, he is rescued by his building janitor, who takes him to a farm where hard work and healthy living effect his cure. The artist returns home just as his wife, who has gone looking for him, is captured by the drug ring. With the help of his model and the janitor, the artist rescues his wife and returns to a normal life.

By mid-1916, when The Devil’s Needle was released, drug melodramas had become so commonplace on the screen that Variety (July 28, 1916, p. 24) greeted this one with an undisguised yawn. The film was apparently concocted as a vehicle for Tully Marshall, who had attracted attention on the stage as a desperate drug addict in Clyde Fitch’s The City, so that he could play a similar role on the screen. (The City had already been filmed in 1915 by a rival company, with Allan Murnane in Marshall’s stage role.) Today’s viewer, like the viewer of 1916, may find little novelty in the film’s depiction of drug use and addiction. But there are other matters of interest here. Marshall’s performance in the lead is a fascinating look at this phase of his career, especially in light of the colorful roles he would later play for Stroheim and others. Even better is Norma Talmadge, who invests what could have been an ordinary role with a compelling measure of personality. The exteriors, as Kevin Brownlow has pointed out (Behind the Mask of Innocence, p. 101), preserve a remarkable record of authentic slum streets in Los Angeles. One of those exteriors may have special interest for the Griffith enthusiast: as Marshall hurriedly hails a taxi in the fifth reel he passes a group of bystanders, one of whom looks, to this writer’s eye, very much like Griffith himself. The print of The Devil’s Needle we see today comes from a 1923 reissue, doubtless designed 123

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

to cash in on Norma Talmadge’s rise to top stardom in the intervening seven years. New intertitles were prepared for the 1923 edition; interestingly, it was found necessary to change most of the character names, and the titles likely reflect other changes too. Unfortunately, not even this reissue edition completely escaped the ravages of nitrate decomposition. The problem is scarcely noticeable in the early scenes, but it becomes far worse in the last reel, with Norma’s emotional closing scene the most notable casualty. J.B. Kaufman

124

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

553 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE SOCIAL SECRETARY Filming date: Summer 1916 Location: Triangle (formerly Reliance) studio, Riverdale, New York (first film shot in this studio according to Russell Merritt, correspondence to Editor, 17 November 2003) Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued by Tri-Stone Pictures, 8 December 1924 Release date: 17 September 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 8 December 1924 (Tri-Stone reissue) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John Emerson Scenario: Anita Loos, John Emerson, Alfred Huger Moses, Jr. Camera: not known Assistant director: Erich von Stroheim (The Moving Picture World, June 17, 1916, p. 2039) Cast: [1924 reissue:] Norma Talmadge (Mayme, the Social Secretary); Kate Lester (Mrs. Peabody de Puyster [Mrs. Von Puyster, in the original release]); Helen Weer (Elsie Peabody de Puyster, her daughter); Gladden James (Jimmie Peabody de Puyster, Elsie’s brother); Herbert Frank (Count Limonittiez); Erich von Stroheim (Adam Buzzard); Nathaniel Sack; Vivia Ogden Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, a) 35mm nitrate positive (Raymond Rohauer Collection), 1924 reissue; b) 35mm nitrate positive (reels 1 and 5), Raymond Rohauer Collection (1916 version on 1919 stock, revised by inserting 1924 titles into the print); National Film and Television Archive, 9.5mm acetate positive (identification uncertain. Title on print: Lady’s Companion); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined). NOTE: The FIAF Treasure of the Film Archives database indicates the existence of a print (format and generation undetermined) in Brazil, either at the Cinemateca do Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro or at the National Archives of the same city; however, a survey of the holdings conducted in 2003 has not supported this information. Mayme is a beautiful young woman who is forced to earn her own living. Her beauty proves a serious handicap in that it attracts the attention of every man who is forced to come in contact with her, the result being that she is forced to resign from place to place in order to escape from their attentions. Finally, in desperation, she sees an advertisement for a social secretary and answers it. Before doing so she disguises her comliness [sic] as much as possible. She is accepted for the position by the society matron who has inserted the advertisement. In the household there is a young son, who is a most estimable young man with but one fault – drink. There is also a daughter – a foolish young thing, who believes her cup of happiness would be filled to overflowing were she able to announce her marriage to a titled person. One night, the son coming home late after a spree, climbs into the window and comes unexpectedly on the social secretary, who believing herself safe from prying eyes, is satisfying a natural feminine desire to make herself look as pretty as possible. The young son is astounded, and attempts to embrace her. The young woman escapes, however.

125

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The following morning the social secretary announces that she is going to resign, but the son, seeing her alone, begs her to remain, and promises that he will never offend again. She does so, and shortly afterwards meets a count who is paying court to the young daughter of the household. The secretary recognizes him as one of the men with whom she had an ugly experience in former years, but realizes that her word would not be taken at that time, as against the count’s, who has completely won the girl. The secretary determines to thwart the count, however, and permits him to flirt with her again. He makes an appointment to meet with her in the garden, and she keeps it, first making certain that they will be discovered by the family. They are, and the engagement is broken by the girl’s mother. The count is persistent, however, and telephones the girl to meet him at his apartment. The secretary overhears the telephone conversation by “listening in” on another wire and determines to prevent the meeting, or at least to protect the girl. A reporter who has observed the meetings of the count, the girl and the secretary and the young son of the family, anxious to secure a story for his paper, takes to following the various members of the family, and in this manner trails the girl to the count’s apartment. The secretary also having anonimously [sic] warned the girl’s mother of the meeting, hurries off to the apartment and climbs the fire escape to effect entrance unobserved. When the girl has been in the apartment but a few minutes, her mother and the reporter seek admittance. The girl, in a panic, is thrust into a rear room by the count. The secretary is on the fire escape outside this room, and when she is certain the girl is alone, opens the window and urges her to flee by means of the fire escape. The girl does so, and the secretary takes her place in the room, but as the enraged mother, her son, and the reporter rush into the room, the astonishment of the count is as real as that of the others in the room when he sees who is really there. The mother is naturally indignant that a person who would be found in so compromising a position would dare enter her home. The son is the soul of loyalty, however, and sticks to the girl whom he wants to marry, even in the face of the incriminating circumstances. When it seems certain that the girl must stand convicted of whatever people choose to think of her, the young daughter comes to her rescue and confesses that she was in the room, and that she had been able to escape only through the generosity of the social secretary. Vindicated, the social secretary rewards the young man for his loyalty by accepting his love and giving him her promise to be his wife. The Moving Picture World, September 16, 1916, p. 1889

Mayme leaves her job as a secretary in the offices of the New York Purity League when her boss begins to make ardent advances. At a boarding house for stenographers, she recounts her plight to the younger denizens of the establishment, recalling an incident with a previous employer, the Portuguese Count Limonittiez, in which she took some work to his apartment and had to use the fire escape to avoid his embraces. One of the older stenographers remarks skeptically to her equally unattractive companion that in thirty years of being a stenographer, no man has ever made a pass at her. This is far from a throwaway line, because the plot conspires to put Mayme in the position of the ugly stenographers. Mrs. Von Puyster [the family name is changed to Peabody de Puyster in the 1924 reissue] is tired of losing her secretaries to matrimony and advertises for a secretary who is unattractive to men. Mayme disguises herself and gets the job. She watches with some concern as the daughter of the family, Elsie, falls for the Count Limonittiez who is merely out to make a wealthy match. Meanwhile, when the son Jimmie comes home drunk one night, Mayme mistakes him for a burglar and hits him over the head with a flower vase. While she is caring for his head wound, he discovers she is not quite as unattractive to men as he had first supposed. They begin dating, and are observed by the Buzzard, a gossip columnist who prints something about them in one of his 126

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

columns and is promptly trounced by Jimmie. The Count persuades Elsie to run away with him and takes her to his apartment. The Buzzard phones and reports this to Mrs. Von Puyster (and is overheard by Mayme). Mrs. Von Puyster and her son make their way to the Count’s, followed by the gossip columnist. Mayme slips up the fire escape with which she is already acquainted and manages to get Elsie out of the way, but is herself discovered in a compromising position in the Count’s bedroom. As she prepares to leave her employer the next morning, Mayme finds out that Elsie has cleared her by explaining Mayme’s presence at the Count’s. She and Jimmie plan to marry, and write a new advertisement for a private secretary who is extremely unattractive to men.

Dismissed as “tedious” by Anthony Slide (The Kindergarten of the Movies, p. 90) and misdescribed in The American Film Institute Catalog (p. 857), The Social Secretary deserves better press. The film sets up a complicated dramatic climax which is very carefully motivated by previous, seemingly unconnected incidents – the ugly secretaries of the prologue, Mayme’s prior acquaintance with the Count, her later courtship with Jimmie, the altercation with the Buzzard and his vendetta against the family (for a discussion of this scene as a “situation”, see Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema, p. 33). It also uses scene dissection as opposed to alternation as a method for developing and punctuating this dramatic high point. After the Buzzard phones and is overheard by Mayme, the film establishes an alternation between Mrs. Von Puyster (the family name is changed to Peabody de Puyster in the 1924 reissue, presumably to avoid any German connotations) and Jimmie, who climb the front stairs to confront the Count in his sitting room, and Mayme, who sneaks up the back way to locate Elsie, hidden in the bedroom. Jimmie argues with the Count and demands to be allowed to search the flat. Meanwhile, Mayme tries to persuade a reluctant Elsie to descend the fire escape. Elsie finally leaves, but Mayme does not have time to climb out herself before Jimmie breaks down the door. So far, the film has relied upon the kind of room-to-room cutting that Griffith developed to a high art and Sennett imitated in his comedies. But at this point, when Jimmie drags Mayme, hiding her face with her coat, into the sitting room, the film moves into scene dissection to exploit the discovery of Mayme’s identity. Following an establishing shot, we see a close-up of Mayme, then a medium shot of the Count and Jimmie, both amazed and, in Jimmie’s case, horrified. The Buzzard enters and his amazement is also registered in close-up. The film continues in the same vein. Mrs. Von Puyster expresses disapproval. Mayme is shown tight-lipped, unable to provide any explanation of what she is doing there in the presence of the Buzzard. With the partial exception of The Lady and the Mouse (1913), I cannot think of a single narrative climax in any film made by Griffith before 1916 that relies upon intrascene cutting in the manner of The Social Secretary. It seems quite modern, not only in its representation of the independent and savvy young working woman, but also in its use of the devices of editing. Lea Jacobs

127

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

554 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

FIFTY FIFTY Alternate title: Fifty-Fifty Filming date: Summer 1916 Location: New York Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 22 October 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Scenario: Robert Shirley (and Tod Browning, according to modern sources) Camera: not known Cast: Norma Talmadge (Naomi); J.W. Johnston (Frederic Harmon); Marie Chambers (Helen Carew); Ruth Darling (Louise O’Mall[e]y); H.S. [Harry] Northrup (The man from Sing Sing); Frank Currier (The judge); Dodson Mitchell (The detective); Warner P. Richmond (The man about town) Archival sources: George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive (incomplete); 35mm acetate negative (complete; from 28mm diacetate positive, partially discarded in 1994 due to decomposition); National Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (identification uncertain; unexamined) Naomi, a girl of the studios in New York’s artist quarter, is possessed of a superabundance of vitality and a desire for continuous frolic and adventure. One night, at a gay party, one of the men is deceived by Naomi’s effervescent spirits into thinking that she is a much more unconventional girl than she herself has any idea of being. He is told by his companions that Naomi is not the sort of girl he thinks her to be, but insists that he can prove that she is, and even makes a wager to that effect. Naomi, really quite unsophisticated, is tricked by the man into accompanying him into a hotel of questionable repute, where the two, innocent of any wrong doing, are captured in a police raid, and Naomi has an unpleasant experience in the night court. Friends come to her aid and she is released. Not long after this, Frederic Harmon, a broker, comes into the girl’s life. The two fall in love and are married. The birth of a baby completes the transformation of the girl’s character and she cares only for her home, her husband and her child. The husband, however, does not settle down to home life. He is still much inclined to the gayeties of the set in which he had become acquainted with Naomi, and when she refuses to take further part in the revels of the Bohemian crowd, he fares forth by himself. It is not long before he meets Helen Carew, a woman with a past and without a conscience, who fascinates him partly for her amusement and partly for mercenary reasons. Eventually Harmon’s infatuation for the other woman becomes known to Naomi. She is heartbroken, particularly when Harmon goes so far as to ask her to divorce him in order that he may marry Helen. This she refuses to do. Helen, anxious to get the man entirely in her clutches, enters into a plot with a crooked detective whereby Naomi is to be caught in a compromising situation, thus giving her husband grounds for divorce from her. The detective picks up a convict

128

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

just out of Sing Sing and by means of a decoy message Naomi is induced to go to a hotel room where the man from Sing Sing is waiting for her. Once the two are in the room together it is raided by newspaper reporters and a photographer, and a flashlight of Naomi in the arms of the convict is obtained. The husband brings suit for divorce, offering as evidence the stories of the witnesses at the raid and the flashlight photograph. He also asks custody of the child. Naomi startles the judge and spectators when she declares she should be allowed to keep the child, because Harmon is not its father. The judge, however, suspects that Naomi is sacrificing her reputation in order to keep her baby, and calling the girl into his private office, he gets the truth from her. Meantime there has been an unexpected development in the affairs of Helen. The man from Sing Sing had been her lover before he went to prison, and she is unpleasantly surprised when the detective’s use of him brings him again into her life. The ex-convict is in Helen’s rooms, trying to renew their old association when Harmon comes to see her. Helen hastily hides the jail-bird, but while she is talking to Harmon the convict comes out and tells Harmon of the woman’s past and his connection with it. Horrified at the revelation of Helen’s true character, Harmon goes out of her life at once and forever, but in the course of time succeeds in winning his way back into his home. The Moving Picture World, October 28, 1916, p. 610

Businessman Frederic Harmon meets the unconventional, childlike Naomi at a “Bohemian” party and falls in love with her. The two are married, but after the birth of their child he feels she has lost interest in him, and finds solace with another woman. His dawning realization of the other woman’s true nature, and the intervention of a kindly judge in divorce court, combine to reunite the couple.

This is a routine domestic drama (“soap opera” in today’s terms) which, like other Norma Talmadge vehicles of this period, achieves some distinction through her performance. Her character matures visibly in the course of the story, running a gamut of emotions in the process and always making them interesting. Fifty Fifty also benefits from the direction of Allan Dwan, whose value to the Fine Arts company was becoming increasingly obvious. Without slighting the contributions by writer Robert Shirley, it’s tempting to credit Dwan for such interesting touches as Norma’s remarkable scene with the butler on first entering her new home, the introduction of released convict Harry Northrup by a close-up of his shadow on the sidewalk, or Northrup’s action, immediately afterward, of submerging his feet in water to remove the squeak from his prison shoes. And one of Dwan’s early trademarks, the moving camera, is used to good effect even in this compressed storyline. The film’s title refers to its theme of equality in marriage and other relationships. That theme becomes a little garbled by film’s end, and one might argue that it has little to do with the story, but Dwan and Shirley do take a laudable stand against the double standard. Of course the film is designed as a Norma Talmadge vehicle, and there’s never any doubt where the audience’s sympathies are meant to lie. J.W. Johnston as the husband, and the rest of the cast, give creditable performances (although Marie Chambers as the “other woman” seems miscast), but in the end it’s a Talmadge picture all the way, and once again she demonstrates that some of her best work came early in her career. Best scene: Norma’s dance as Salome, alternately sending sexy come-on gestures in Johnston’s direction and viciously brandishing a knife at his would-be mistress! J.B. Kaufman 129

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

555 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

DIANE OF THE FOLLIES Alternate titles: Diane of the Follys; Diana of the Follies Working title: Diana of the Follies Filming date: June–September 1916 (Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 24 September 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: William Christy Cabanne Scenario: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Source: based on “Trelawny of the Wells”, the play (1898) by Arthur Wing Pinero Camera: not known Cast: Lillian Gish (Diana [or Diane]); Sam De Grasse (Phillip [or Phillips] Christy); Howard Gaye (Don Livingston); Lillian Langdon (Marcia Christy); A.D. Sears (Jimmie Darcy); Wilbur Higby (Theatrical manager); William de Vaull (Butler); Wilhelmina Siegmann (Bijou Christy); Adele Clifton, Clara Morris, Helen Walcott, Grace Heins (Girls from the follies) Archival sources: none known Phillips Christy, a millionaire aristocrat, is a man of delightful theories, one of which is that environment is the sum and substance of life. He is writing a book promulgating this theory, which his ambitious sister, Marcia, urges him to finish. His chum, Don Livingston, coaxes him to join a theater party. At a supper after the performance he meets Diana, the gayest of the girls of the Follies. To Diana, Phillips Christy falls captive. He tells his sister he will lift Diana of the Follies to their level – to the heights. After a few years of married life, Diana wearies of life on the heights. Her husband, engrossed with his studies, does not realize this. She pines for her own people of the theater. Even her child’s exquisite charm fails to interest her. Hungry for applause, Diana invites some of her former chums to visit her. Phillips Christy realizes that his theory has proved false – his wife, after the most careful training toward the uplift, has sought her level in the chorus and filled his house with cigarette-smoking, cocktail-drinking women of the theater. Resentful at her husband’s attitude regarding her friends, Diana deserts her husband and child and is immediately installed as the star of the Follies. In the midst of her triumph a message comes to her from her husband requesting her presence at the sick bed of their child. Before she arrives little Bijou, the child, has passed away. After the sad rites over the little child are performed, Phillips Christy asks Diana if she desires to remain in the home under the protection of his name. She answers him truthfully: “I am going back to my own life, to the people who understand me. You and I walk different paths and talk different languages. Our paths need never cross and we have nothing to say to each other. The one interest that bound us together, our little girl, is no more. Neither of us has anything to forgive, nor to remember. I wish you success and happiness[.] I am going now to seek them for myself.”

130

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The husband and wife separate and each knows that the separation is as final as if the world had ceased being. The Moving Picture World, September 23, 1916, p. 2036

No print of this film is known to survive at the time of this writing. According to the plot described by published sources, Diana, performing in the Follies, is courted by the wealthy, studious, and naïve Phillip Christy, who had been taken to the Follies by a worldly friend. Christy, who fails to recognise that Diana is a “vamp”, believes that marriage and living in comfort will have a settling effect, dampening her feverish energy and reconciling her to a life in respectable society. However, Diana, once wed, pines for her former life of excitement. Even the birth of a child fails to still her restlessness. She invites her theatrical friends to their home, and their bohemian presence provokes a break with her husband. Diana returns to her former life, and even the death of her child is not enough to end her fecklessness. The film was said to end unhappily for Diana. As Lillian Gish was completing the small but key role of the Eternal Mother (“The Woman Who Rocks the Cradle”) in Intolerance in the summer of 1916, she was also filming Diane of the Follies, a role she enjoyed and which gave her the opportunity to perform something other than her previous “Gaga-baby [or] sweet little girl roles” (Gish’s words, from a letter quoted in Charles Affron’s Lillian Gish, p. 100) in a film which has, regrettably, disappeared. Griffith himself, deeply involved with Intolerance between March 1915 and August 1916, was not involved in a supervisory role, despite his contractual agreement with Aitken and the film’s identity as a Fine Arts picture. However, Griffith contributed the screenplay for Diane of the Follies under the nom de plume of “Granville Warwick”. Insofar as can be deduced from the plot synopsis, Diane of the Follies is an updated and Americanized version – plagiarised may be appropriate here – of Arthur Wing Pinero’s Trelawny of the Wells (1898) in which a young actress, performing in London theatres in the 1850s, marries into the gentry and scandalises her new husband’s family. In Pinero’s version, the husband himself turns actor, and the family is happily reconciled to vital new blood in the family. It would seem that Griffith also revisits his 1908 Behind the Scenes to depict an actress and Follies dancer mother who, obliged by financial need to maintain her stage career, is absent when her fatally ill child dies. David Mayer

131

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

556 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

MANHATTAN MADNESS Filming date: August–September? 1916 Location: New York Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 10 September 1916 Release date: 1 October 1916 Release length: four or five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Allan Dwan Story: C.T. Dazey (“based on a story by E.V. Durling”, according to Connelly, The Motion Picture Guide, p. 164) Camera: not known Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Steve O’Dare); Jewel Carmen (The girl); George Beranger (The butler); Ruth Darling (The maid); Eugene Ormonde (Count Marinoff); Macey Harlan (The villain); Warner P. Richmond (Jack Osborne); [according to Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Dwan, p. 179:] John Richmond (Cupid Russell); Albert MacQuarrie NOTE: There is a discrepancy between the date of the New York premiere of this film and those in the Reliance-Majestic production ledger. In a correspondence to the Editor (December 12, 2003), Ben Brewster writes: “The New York Times reviewed a screening in New York City on September 10, at which Fairbanks was present. The film was reviewed in several other New York-based based journals later in September, but (according to the AFI Catalog) not released until October 1st. I don’t have an explanation for why the inventory value of the film on September 30 could still be nearly $50,000, unless the New York screening was a single, special print, perhaps not even a finished version – some kind of rough assembly – though The New York Times review doesn’t hint at any shortcomings, and all the actual release prints were still the property of Majestic-Fine Arts at the end of the month. But it does make me a little less confident of the reliability of these inventory figures for dating actual work on production. Clearly, some payments were made and recorded in books well after the work for which they are payments was actually done, and perhaps the prints might have been shipped before the check arrived to pay for them.” Archival sources: FILM – Cineteca del Friuli, 16mm acetate positive (National Cinema Service Collection), generation undetermined; George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate negative; The Museum of Modern Art, 9.5mm (unconfirmed). MUSIC – Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), cue sheet, 2 pages, ms.; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 497 Steve O’Dare, a rich young man who has lived for some years on his Nevada ranch, returns to New York for a visit. He goes to the University Club, of which he is a member. There follows a week of New York gayety with his club companions, but Steve fail to get thrills out of the plea-

132

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

sures of the Great White Way. He tells the boys there isn’t a thrill in Manhattan. This announcement is made while he is lunching at a country club. Through an open doorway he sees at a table in the garden outside a middle aged couple of distinguished appearance and a beautiful girl. Upon inquiring of his companions who the people at the table in the garden are he is told that they are the Count and Countess of Marinoff and their ward. One of the men at the table offers to bet him $5,000 that if he will stay in New York a week he will get the thrill of his life. Steve takes the bet. Remembering that he has sold stock to Count Marinoff he wonders whether it might not be possible for him to meet the ward. The problem is solved when the Count calls Steve up and asks him to come to his home. Steve goes and meets the ward, who mystifies Steve by making mysterious signs to him. The Count informs Steve that the girl is crazy. A note is passed to Steve by the girl’s maid which tells him that the girl is in great peril and wants him to help her. The Count, being called away, the maid directs Steve to go up to the second floor. Ascending the stairs he drops through a trap door on the landing is bound and gagged by the Count’s butler, but the maid releases him, and he telephones to the boys at the club and asks some of them to come out to the Count’s house. The boys come, and a battle follows between the Count and his servants on one side, Steve and the clubmen on the other. Steve battles up through the house to the roof with one of the Count’s henchmen, who had carried the ward off in his arms early in the conflict. After finally knocking the villain cold Steve searches for the girl but cannot find her. All the men who have been fighting, both his friends and the Count have mysteriously disappeared. As he is at his wits end he sees the face of the butler peeping through a sliding panel in the wall. The panel quickly closes and Steve kicks his way through it and finds himself in a banquet hall where the whole company of his friends and supposed foes are dining together, the persecuted ward beaming at him from the end of the table. It is then explained to Steve by his friend with whom he made the bet that he had been given the promised thrill, the members of the party, except the clubmen, being members of the theatrical profession, especially engaged for the doings. Just then there arrives four of Steve’s cowboys, for whom he telephoned at the same time that he telephoned the club. With their aid Steve quickly turns the tables on the jokers. While cowboys cover the party with their guns Steve, announcing that he, like Lochinvar, came out of the west, grabs the girl and rides away with her. She is not an unwilling captive and an hour later the weary party still held under the guns get a wireless from Steve that he is quite willing to pay his bet – he has had the thrill of his life, for he is married and sailing away on his wedding tour. The Moving Picture World, October 7, 1916, p. 138

Steve O’Dare brings a herd of warhorses to a buyer in New York City. Waiting for the buyer to show, he contrasts life in the East and the West with a group of city friends at their club, much preferring his rough life in the wide-open spaces of Nevada. But then he notices a girl whose smile haunts him. When Steve finally visits the buyer in his shadowy Manhattan mansion, he finds the girl held prisoner there and the buyer part of a gang of criminals. He calls his friends at the club for help, as well as some of his cowboy buddies. A general mêlée follows, but suddenly it seems that everyone has vanished. Steve then learns the whole thing was a prank set up by his friends to show him Manhattan could be as thrilling as the West. Steve’s cowboy friends arrive at this moment, and, wanting the last laugh, Steve draws his guns, claims actually to be a Western outlaw named Black Burke, and absconds with the young girl. After his joke is explained, the girl is charmed by his derring-do and they are married.

133

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

This early Fairbanks film has considerable charm, even if the direct influence of Griffith seems unlikely, except in the most general manner. The first reel is mainly taken up with a form Griffith pioneered, a drama of contrasts, as the film cuts between life in the West and life in Manhattan (a view of the city from the top of a Fifth Avenue bus; a view from the top of a stage coach; a Manhattan café and a chuck wagon on the range; an effete Manhattan dandy and Western tough guy; etc.). Perhaps the most Griffithian moment comes with the opening intertitle which states: “THE ARGUMENT OF THIS STORY CONTRASTS THE EAST WITH THE WEST IN RESPECT TO THEIR JOY-YIELDING QUALITIES” – a bit like the opening explanatory titles of Griffith’s own drama in contrasts, Intolerance, if more tongue-in-cheek. A number of Fairbanks’ later films play with the contrast between East and West (such as Wild and Woolly [1917] or The Mollycoddle [1920]), but usually the pattern places an Eastern city slicker out West, encountering comic and dramatic hardships and becoming a man. The pattern here is reversed with Fairbanks as a Westerner visiting Manhattan and being bamboozled by his Eastern friends. Although Fairbanks’ athletic energy certainly galvanizes the film from the beginning (leaping over fences, hopping over a chair in the Manhattan club and ultimately climbing in and out of windows and leaping from the roof), the film does not seem to be structured as an action film as the later Fairbanks films will. Primarily the film seems to contrast two popular genres of the era, portraying them as respectively rural and urban. On the one hand the Western (which appears mainly in the contrasts of the first reel), and on the other the mystery which takes up most of the film’s second and third reel (perhaps based mainly on the serials or the era, such as The Exploits of Elaine [1915]), characterized by a creepy mansion with hidden passageways, trap doors, innocent women held prisoner and sinister plots underway. While the opening contrasts could be described as parallel editing, in sharp contrast to Griffith’s style, director Allan Dwan does not use parallel editing to create suspense in the mystery plot. The action is very rapidly cut, but with cuts on continuous action rather than crosscutting. The third reel, for instance, contains nearly 180 shots (plus over a dozen intertitles), surpassing even Griffith’s rapid rate of cutting in his late Biograph films. Fairbanks frequently looks directly at the camera, smiling and seeming to acknowledge his role-playing (not only at the end, the supposed privileged site of such self-conscious devices, but at several points in the film, especially during cuts to life in the West). All in all, this is a very sophisticated film, adept in cutting on action within a single location, aware of playing with genre conventions, but also not totally given over to a classical diegesis, aware of its parody nature in a self-conscious manner. Tom Gunning

134

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

557 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME Filming date: June–September 1916 (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 15 October 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Chester Withey Scenario: Chester Withey Story: Rupert Hughes Source: “The Old Folks at Home”, the short story by Rupert Hughes Camera: not known Cast: Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (John Co[l]burn); Josephine Crowell (Mrs. Co[l]burn); Elmer Clifton (Steve Co[l]burn); Mildred Harris (Marjorie [or Eleanor]); Lucille Younge (Lucia Medina); W.E. Lawrence (Stanley [or Charles Fynes]); Spottiswoode Aitken (The judge); Alfred Paget; Wilbur Higby Archival sources: George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive (Rusty Casselton Collection) James Colburn and his wife have grown old and gray. He is elected to Congress and his wife and son, Steve, leave his farm home. Steve’s country sweetheart, Eleanor, later is employed in the same city in a candy factory. Steve spends his father’s money in dissipation, and one day Eleanor discovers Steve in the streets, where he had fallen. In an endeavor to keep Steve’s condition a secret from his parents, Eleanor calls on a middle-aged man friend, Charles Fynes, who supplies Steve with funds for a doctor and a nurse. Fynes buys the girl fine clothes and takes her to dinners against the warning of Steve. Finally the girl confesses to Steve that Fynes has promised to marry her and that they are going to sail on a South American steamer. Steve, believing that Fynes has betrayed the girl, shoots him. In the meantime the parents call upon Steve in his apartment. He comes down stairs with the revolver in his hand after killing Fynes. Steve is arrested and held for trial. The father spends much of his money in fighting for the boy, two trials having been given him. His mother, who is a star witness, perjures herself to save her son. Finally Eleanor in a South American city hears the news of the trouble and through council is brought back to America. Through the grief of the mother the jury declares that Steve is not guilty and he is freed. In the general courtroom Eleanor is welcomed, and back at the farm the old couple begin life anew, where Steve makes their last days happy and marries Eleanor. The Moving Picture World, October 21, 1916, p. 452 “The Old Folks at Home” Fine-Arts, gives some inkling of a delicate analysis of human nature which has made the short stories of Rupert Hughes very attractive. But Rupert Hughes, the writer and master of his medium portrays human nature as he has known it in days gone by, and his

135

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

grasp of motion picture methods is those of days barely gone by. But for some delightful characterization and daring philosophy “The Old Folks at Home” is a mere repetition of what has been discarded by modern writers for screen productions. The story will get over in good shape because it comes from a true creative font and is handled with a fair amount of skill, but the material it contains could be best seen to advantage in three reels. The attenuation visible at times causes interest to drag when it needs augmentation. It is the old story of the country boy going to the city with sudden wealth and falling into the hands of an unprincipled woman, our dear old friend, the adventuress, who regularly appears several times a week. He commits murder and is shielded by his parents, one of them a “Senator.” Their lying and evasion in condoning the capital crime is about to be discovered when the simple-minded old mother, caught lying on the witness stand makes a personal appeal to the jury and frees her guilty son. In that scene, admirably done by Josephine Crowell, lies the intense moment of the story, its crisis and its only reason for existence. She is the real star, with a good second in the foolish boy, impersonated by Elmer Clifton, but Mr. Beerbohm Tree is in the cast as the “Senator” and does fairly well. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, October 14, 1916, p. 222

In a bit of casting against type, The Old Folks at Home featured the legendary English actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as a wealthy and prominent American farmer-politician. The screenplay was adapted from a story by the popular contemporary author Rupert Hughes. Even though it was supposed to take place in the present, the reference to the elderly in the title and the very familiar song by Stephen Foster creates the impression that this was an oldfashioned story and, indeed, the plot was a reworking of old-fashioned themes with decidedly Victorian overtones. It was a variation on the Biblical story of the prodigal son, but in this case the son’s return from the fleshpots of the city was less than joyful. He (Elmer Clifton) had killed his rival for the affections of a fickle adventuress and was on trial for murder. Despite his father’s wealth and influence, the guilty boy was about to be convicted when his mother (Josephine Crowell) pleaded for his life and moved the jury to bring in an innocent verdict. To offset possible complaints about allowing the boy to get away with murder, Rupert Hughes wrote closing titles in which he confessed that even though the situation was improbable and legally wrong, he felt that the impact of the son’s conviction on “the old folks at home” deserved sympathetic consideration. This was Tree’s second production for Griffith’s Fine Arts company. He had made his American film début a few months earlier in Macbeth, a role from his stage repertoire that suited the expectations of the movie audience. Casting such a highly regarded actor against type may have been a bold move, but it seems a very strange one. The switch to down-home America could have given the actor the opportunity to demonstrate versatility and provide contrast to the previous production, but since the story did not really revolve around his role as the father, the chance was lost. The son’s debauchery, corruption and trial provided the dramatic frame, and the motherly plea for mercy was the film’s climax. Although Tree was the credited star, he was left with what was essentially a supporting role and it seems not to have been to Sir Herbert’s liking. As soon as the film was completed, in September 1916, he departed for England and this despite an announcement two months earlier that he would appear in a series of Fine Arts productions. How much Griffith had to do with all this is open to debate. Intolerance had been released and he was busily involved in promoting it. His name is not on The Old Folks at Home, but it is hard to avoid speculating that Griffith kept an eye on how things were going with this production. Tree was an important international celebrity and his presence on the screen 136

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

symbolized a new degree of legitimacy for the movies. Triangle’s publicity department made ample use of his presence, producing articles about meetings between Griffith and Tree and photos showing them together. It also seems possible that Griffith either chose the subject or played a part in developing it, since the choice of an old-fashioned, down-home story seems to predict his later choice of another well-known pot-boiler, Way Down East (1920). The critics gave The Old Folks at Home mixed reviews. There was ritualistic praise for the Tree’s rather restrained performance. The Motion Picture News’ Peter Milne commented that “his scenes are not full of slow gesticulations, studied movements and impressive parades” (October 21, 1916). Josephine Crowell drew general praise as did Chester Withey for direction and screen adaptation. Milne commented: “to our mind, of all Griffith’s staff of directors [Withey] comes nearest to absorbing his master’s ideas”. But Motography’s Thomas C. Kennedy (October 14, 1916, p. 887), The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison (October 14, 1916, p. 222) and Milne complained that the film was too long and had been padded to reach the standard release length of five reels. Mildred Harris played the son’s faithful girlfriend. It was the first grown-up role for the teenager (soon to turn sixteen). She had previously worked in children’s roles. Lucille Younge was the urban adventuress and the publicity department was happy to quote her calling it “the vampiriest vampire part she ever had”. Paul Spehr

137

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

558 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY Filming date: September–October 1916 Location: New York; Watch Hill, Rhode Island (according to Motography, September 23, 1916, p. 741) Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. Release date: 12 November 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Lloyd Ingraham Scenario: Anita Loos? Story: Anita Loos Camera: not known Titles: Anita Loos Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Cassius Lee); Jewel Carmen (Geraldine Hicks [or Hick]); Charles DeLima (Leander Hicks [or Hick]); Albert Parker (Percy Peck [or Horton]); Arthur Ortego (Delgado?) Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 28mm diacetate positive, incomplete (reel 5 discarded in 1987), AFI/David Shepard Collection; 28mm diacetate positive (AFI/George Ruckdeschel Collection); National Film and Television Archive, 9.5mm acetate positive (identification to be confirmed; title on print: The First Man); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) Leander Hick is anxious that his daughter should marry Percy Horton, a wealthy manufacturer, who has dealt extensively in war munitions and who has secretly sold to the Mexican government despite a government prohibition forbidding it. Horton is a mollycoddle and in no way measures up to Miss Hick’s ideas of the man she wants to marry. Horton’s legitimate business is the manufacture of malted milk. One day Miss Hick declares to a number of girl friends with whom she is riding in her machine, that the first real man she sees, she intends to kiss. As the machine rounds a corner, Miss Hick sees in the roadway a beautiful specimen of young manhood. He is unknown to her. In reality he is Cassius Lee, the son of an old aristocratic family with unlimited wealth. Lee has volunteered his services as a secret service agent to the government. The unexpected osculation over with, Miss Hick jumps back into the car and speeds away. The young man decides he will know the girl and proceeds to haunt all the hotels. There is to be a ball that night at the best hotel in the place and the young man attends. So does Miss Hick, accompanied by her father and Percy Horton. While young Lee, who chances to be attired exactly the same as Percy Horton, is standing on the edge of the crowd, trying to pick out the girl of the afternoon, a Mexican spy who is disguised as a hotel porter, slips up beside him and mistaking him for Horton, puts a note in his hand. Lee’s suspicions are aroused when he discovers the note to be a message directing Horton to ship the 20,00 [sic] rounds of munitions the next day. The note contained the information that the yacht would be in waiting.

138

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Late that night, Lee steals into the Horton factory and a hasty examination reveals the fact that the malted milk cans really contain gun powder. He is set upon by hired guards of Horton and beaten, locked and tied in the cage of an elevator. He finally makes his escape. The next morning, Lee, having notified the governmental officials that he is on the trail of one of the gang [sic] he has been on the lookout for, starts in pursuit of the yacht. No tug being available, he uses a hydroplane; leaps from that to a speed boat and just as a United States torpedo boat destroyer comes up and takes a hand in the case, overhauls the yacht in a powerful speed boat. The undoing of Horton is complete and the girl – of course, she marries the real man she has chanced upon so accidentally. The Moving Picture World, November 25, 1916, pp. 1230, 1232

While on a drive with her girlfriends at an East Coast seaside resort, restless Geraldine Hicks vows to kiss the first man she sees. That turns out to be Cassius Lee, who interrupts his field research on insects to break into the resort’s exclusive party. To Geraldine’s father a more acceptable suitor is malted-milk tycoon Percy Peck, whose secret scheme is to ship gunpowder disguised as malted milk. Cassius sorts out the machinations and saves Geraldine and her father before they can be abducted to Mexico.

By the time of Douglas Fairbanks’ tenth Fine Arts feature in just over a year, there was a sense among reviewers that his considerable charm was becoming routine. Still, on its own, American Aristocracy is another small-scale delight. Fairbanks is amusingly cast as an entomologist leaping through the woods in an energetic search for specimens (“ENTOMOLOGIST – HIGH-BROW TERM FOR BUG-HUNTER”, as a footnote reads on one of Anita Loos’ witty intertitles). The Moving Picture World thought that the film “drivels out into a mere vehicle” for Fairbanks’ acrobatics but admitted that it “starts out bravely enough as a satire” (November 4, 1916, p. 691). The satire is directed toward pretensions among the rich at a summer retreat modeled on Newport, Rhode Island, where we find America’s “aristocracy”. In this nouveau riche resort where distinctions matter, distillers’ wives look down on brewers’ wives, and the heroine’s father is inordinately proud of self-promoting advertisements for the gimmick that made his fortune: “HICKS – THE MAN WHO PUT THE HUMP IN THE HATPIN”. Lloyd Ingraham keeps things moving in directing his only film with Fairbanks, and Jewel Carmen, in the last of her four films with the star, is called upon to do little more than look lovely and aristocratic. A “mysterious dark-skinned foreigner” at the resort ties the gunpowder melodrama to offscreen threats from the Mexican Revolution (Pancho Villa had raided into New Mexico earlier in 1916). Except for a sequence in the malted-milk/gunpowder warehouse, American Aristocracy is shot entirely outdoors, increasing its feeling of dynamism. Whatever Griffith’s supervisory role, the film that results is nothing like his own work. Surrounded by racing autos and rescues by hydroplane, even the resting place for America’s aristocracy is overtaken by Fairbanks’ modernity. Scott Simmon

139

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

559 D.W. GRIFFITH

A DAY WITH GOVERNOR WHITMAN Filming date: October 1916 (one or two days of shooting) Location: Albany, New York Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp. and others (according to Motography, November 4, 1916, p. 1027) Release date: no official release; distributed Fall 1916 Release length: one reel Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: George Siegmann Camera: G.W. Bitzer Production manager: John C. Flinn Production advisor: Thomas Hanley Cast: Charles Whitman (as himself) Archival sources: none known As a testimonial to Governor Whitman, who last spring vetoed the Christman-Wheeler motion picture censorship bill, which would have worked serious hardships on producers, distributers [sic] and exhibitors in New York State, David W. Griffith at his own expense and gratis, has produced a one-reel film entitled “A Day With Governor Whitman.” Many of the motion picture producing and distributing companies have united to take care of the making of one hundred prints and their distribution throughout the state. It is the purpose of the movement on the part of the motion picture industry represented in New York state [sic] that every exhibitor in the state, numbering about 2,000, should have an opportunity between now and Election Day to show the Griffith picture on his screen one or more days. The presidents of the big distributing companies have notified their exchanges to obtain prints of sufficient number to efficiently cover requests from exhibitors on their books. Fifty one-sheet posters will accompany each print sent to exchanges to be given away free to exhibitors using the picture. In the organization of the plan for printing and distributing the following film companies, in addition to others, gave their unqualified support and enthusiastic co-operation, including Metro Pictures Corporation, Eclipse Studio, on behalf of Jules Brulatour; International Film Company, Pathe, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Famous Players Film Company, Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company, Pallas Pictures, Triangle, Universal, Mutual, World, Fox, V-L-S-E and General Film Companies. “Griffith Makes Political One-Reeler”, Motography, November 4, 1916, p. 1027

The film is a chronicle of assorted events in the daily public life of Charles S. Whitman, governor of New York. No detailed summary of the film is currently available. A Day with Governor Whitman is a lost piece of ephemera (at the time of this writing) that was shot in one or two days in the Fall of 1916 to help re-elect one of the film industry’s most important political allies. Charles S. Whitman had vetoed a New York State censorship 140

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

bill earlier in June; Griffith, a leading spokesman against screen censorship, pledged solidarity. During the whirlwind months that followed New York’s September premiere of Intolerance, he took time off from overseeing regional opening night performances in order to visit Albany for a day, meet the governor, and arrange to produce a publicity film. He also promised an assortment of campaign slides. Virtually all that we know about the film comes from two trade articles, the first reported in The Moving Picture World, the other in The Moving Picture Mail. According to The Moving Picture World, Griffith, “at his own expense and gratis”, was to make a one-reeler that would be distributed statewide by Famous Players-Lasky and others: “Many of the big motion picture producing and distributing companies have united to take care of the making of one hundred prints and their distribution.” In addition to spending several days himself in Albany, Mr. Griffith took with him to the state Capitol his personal artistic staff which he brought on from the West. He also has circularized the exhibitors of the state and sent broadcast free slides for screens in an effort to materially aid the Whitman campaign for re-election. The plan for the distribution of the Griffith-Whitman film was conceived by John C. Flinn of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, working in co-operation with Thomas Hanley of the Whitman Committee. (The Moving Picture Wold, November 4, 1916, p. 722)

At the time of the actual filming, Griffith was back in the West Coast attending Intolerance premieres in San Francisco and Los Angeles. George Siegmann, according to The Moving Picture Mail, directed the actual footage, by now called A Day with Governor Whitman, using Bitzer as his cinematographer (October 21, 1916, n.p.). The film did its job. Whitman won re-election, and New York State was spared a censor board for another five years. A Motion Picture Commission finally did materialize in 1921 but only after the famous movie scandals put new pressure on the New York legislature to regulate a tarnished industry. The Commission lasted until 1965. This is surely enough to say about the film. But maybe it’s more interesting to end the note with Charles S. Whitman, today an obscurity, but one of New York’s political celebrities during the Wilson era. We’ve run into him before, as the prosecutor in the Rosenthal-Becker case that became the inspiration for The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). His successful prosecution of police lieutenant Charles Becker and the four gunmen who shot down Herman Rosenthal catapulted him to the governor’s seat in 1914 where, in his first term, his single compelling achievement was his refusal to commute Becker’s death sentence. Passionately convinced that Becker deserved the electric chair, he had no qualms about signing the execution order for a man he had put on death row as city prosecutor. Whitman had come to power as the scourge of the New York City police department; and in the rough and tumble politics of New York the electrocution of a corrupt policeman (the only state-ordered execution of a policeman in the city’s history) was considered a political coup. Whitman was already making serious plans to run for the Presidency. But by Fall 1916, when Griffith produced A Day with Governor Whitman, Whitman’s handlers perceived the liabilities of their man’s one-note campaign. Newspapers sniped at the governor for the ferocity of his ambition. Whitman’s defense of working-class amusements and his attacks against film censorship were linked to his wooing of the powerful Prohibitionist coalition, necessary to carry the districts in the upper state. Like Vachel Lindsay, Whitman was one of those who saw the movie theater as an alternative to the saloon, which had increasingly become one of his favored targets. By the end of the 1916 campaign,

141

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

anti-Saloon rhetoric had replaced the Law and Order issue, and Whitman came into his second term carrying the dry vote en bloc. But this proved Whitman’s last hurrah. Impressed by the Temperance vote that had given him his second term, Whitman now made frequent appearances with the head of the AntiSaloon League and uttered obliging-enough sounds in favor of Prohibition to impress the hard-shell evangelist Billy Sunday. But in the 1918 election his political career came to an end with the emergence of Al Smith who, according to Andy Logan (Against the Evidence, pp. 370–71), became a full-fledged wet out of his contempt for Whitman. Like Teddy Roosevelt, Smith saw Whitman as the consummate hypocrite, the Prohibitionist with a serious drinking problem. Smith swamped Whitman in the 1918 election, and within a generation Whitman would hardly be mentioned in the history books except as an incidental obstacle in the meteoric rise of Al Smith, the East Side reformer from Tammany Hall. Russell Merritt

142

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

560 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE MATRIMANIAC Filming date: October–November 1916 (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp. New York premiere: 3 December 1916 Release date: 16 December 1916 Release length: five reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Paul Powell Scenario: Anita Loos, John Emerson Story: Octavius Roy Cohen, J.U. Giesy Camera: not known Titles: Anita Loos? Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Jimmie Conroy); Constance Talmadge (Marna Lewis); Wilbur Higby (Col. Theodore H. Lewis); Clyde Hopkins (Wally Henderson); Fred Warren (Reverend Thomas Timothy [or Tobias] Tubbs); Winifred Westover (The maid); Monte Blue? (Assistant hotel manager); Carmel Myers? NOTE: Ben Brewster to Editor, 2 November 2003: “September 30, 1916, October 31, 1916 and November 30, 1916 inventories [in Reliance-Majestic production ledgers] have production numbers; The Matrimaniac is #473 in the October inventory; #473 is not in the September inventory.” Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); Cineteca Nazionale (Rome), 9.5mm acetate positive (unconfirmed); George Eastman House, 28mm diacetate positive; Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/George Marshall Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Dennis Atkinson Collection); 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/Donald Nichol Collection); 28mm diacetate positive (AFI/George Ruckdeschel Collection); 35mm acetate positive (George Eastman House Collection); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined) Jimmy [sic] Conroy plans to marry Marna, stepdaughter of the wealthy Theodore Lewis, who disapproves of Jimmy as a son-in-law. His idea of a husband is Wally Henderson. Jimmy and Marna decide to elope. Jimmy cuts the tires of father’s automobile and secures a rope ladder, while Marna packs up. Wally sees them eloping and informs father, who hustles him down to the train to prevent a ceremony until he can obtain injunctions and follow on the limited to serve it, Marna being under legal age. Jimmy has the marriage license, but has no time to get married before getting to the train. Wally takes the same train and lectures them on parental deference, but is shoved away. The train stops ten minutes at a way station. Jimmy rushes to the Rev. Tobias Tubbs, who is bathing. When

143

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

he comes to the door, clad only in a bathrobe, Jimmy hustles him to the train just as it pulls out. Wally is on the platform and prevents them from boarding the cars. By the liberal uses of money and I.O.U.’s Jimmy digs up a variegated costume for Tubbs and forces him along by hand car, mule back, afoot, and on the bumpers. After numerous adventures the limited, with father aboard, is flagged by Jimmy, who is thrown off, but pulls Tubbs up with him on the observation platform. He is about to be put off again when father pretends to be friendly. Instead he conspires with the conductor to have them arrested for stopping the limited. Meanwhile, Wally has convinced Marna that Jimmy has deserted her. She, weepingly [sic] accompanies him to the hotel, there to await the father’s arrival. Jimmy and Tubbs are arrested when they disembark. Jimmy escapes and Tubbs is locked up. Father gives the injunction for service and has a scene with Marna. Jimmy has a hairbreadth escape from father and the officers as he attempts to get Marna from the hotel. Then he communicates by telephone and arranges for her to go to the city jail, where he will try to break in and Tubbs will marry him. Changing clothing with a sympathetic hotel maid, Marna eludes her guard and reaches the jail. Jimmy is sighted trying to break in, and a heart-breaking chase follows over rooftops, up and down the walls of buildings and over apparently unsurmountable [sic] obstacles. Marna, discouraged, is sent back to the hotel room. The search for Jimmy continues. He takes refuge on the telegraph wires over head. Walking past several poles, he comes to one where a lineman is working. After explanations, the lineman agrees to make a three-cornered telephone connection between Tubbs in jail, Marna in her room, Jimmy on the pole. While pursuers howl threats below, the unique wedding is under way. Father suddenly realizes it, and dashes for the jail, arriving as the ceremony is completed. In conclusion, Jimmy is shown in his office settling I.O.U.’s. When alone again, he opens the vault and out steps Marna into his arms. The Moving Picture World, December 23, 1916, p. 1866

Marna and Jimmie elope and, planning to be married in Jazboro, take the train. Wally, who has Marna’s father’s approval to marry her, manages to get on the same train. Faced by this threat, Jimmie gets off when the train stops at a station and races back with a minister, one Reverend Tubbs, hoping to have the marriage ceremony performed en route. They miss the train, however, leaving Marna and Wally on board. While the minister and Jimmie encounter numerous obstacles in their attempts to get to Jazboro, Marna’s father, alerted by Wally, himself catches a Jazboro train, after having asked that the court send officials with injunctions forbidding the marriage. Wally and Marna arrive at the hotel that she had planned to stay at with Jimmie, and she scornfully banishes him from her hotel room. The Reverend Tubbs and Jimmie, out of cash after buying their way out of several scrapes, finally stop the Express and find themselves on the same train as Marna’s father. He pays their fare, but, unbeknownst to his companions, sends ahead a telegram to the Jazboro sheriff informing him that there are two lunatics on the train. Upon their arrival, the sheriff arrests both men, but while Reverend Tubbs is put in jail, Jimmie manages to escape. Marna’s father chastises her, and sets Wally to keep watch outside of her hotel room door. Jimmie manages to contact Marna by phone and tells her to meet him at the jail to get married. She exchanges clothes with the hotel maid, who takes her place in the room, and, in the maid’s clothes, Marna is able to slip past Wally. The court officials arrive and serve the injunction intended for Marna to the maid in Marna’s room. Other officials, in the company of the father, chase Jimmie, making it impossible for him to be at the jail when Marna arrives there to be married. Returning to her hotel room, she finds the unwitting Wally making love to the disguised maid and, pretending to be shocked, she denounces him. Jimmie finally evades the officials who are

144

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

pursuing him and arrives at the hotel, only to find other agents of the court in the hotel lobby. Leapfrogging over one of these men and making his way out a second-story window, he climbs onto the adjacent telephone wires. Finding a workman up a telephone pole, he has the man patch up a three-way conversation between Marna, himself and the minister. While the court officials wave their injunction below, and the father threatens, the wedding ceremony takes place by phone.

At the time of its release, Variety (December 8, 1916) said it would have been better as a two-reel Sennett comedy. With different handling, the plot of The Matrimaniac could be a two-reel Sennett comedy: the father and prospective son-in-law flummoxed, the Reverend Tubbs dragged out of his bathtub and running desperately for a train, officers of the court called in for a final chase. But it is distinguished from a Sennett comedy by the absence of the grotesque, largely a function of Fairbanks’ pleasant and urbane persona. He may drag the Reverend Tubbs in his bathrobe down the track but, when the Reverend loses a slipper in the attempt to climb onto the back of the retreating train, Jimmie gamely jumps off to retrieve it. When he steals clothes and shoes for the Reverend to wear, he faithfully leaves IOU’s. When he meets the girl’s father by chance on another train, he politely shakes hands and sits down for a chat. The figures of authority are outwitted but never treated with disrespect. Unlike Variety, I do not think the film has been padded out to five reels. It begins in medias res with the elopement – a very economical opening. The film has three lines of action which are very cleverly interwoven, especially at the end. For example, Marna changes clothes with her maid to escape Wally’s watchful eyes and meet Jimmie at the jail; she thereby innocently avoids the officers of the court who deliver their injunction to the wrong girl. Moreover, this device also permits her to have her revenge on the deluded Wally. The ending is also extremely well worked out. Anthony Slide thinks the evidence is good that the titles were written by Anita Loos, although she is not credited (The Kindergarten of the Movies, p. 63). I particularly like the opening titles which introduce Jimmie slashing the tires of the father’s car with the title “PREPAREDNESS”, then Marna with the title “WATCHFUL WAITING”, and finally the father and Wally with the title “PREPAREDNESS AND WATCHFUL WAITING”. Lea Jacobs

145

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

561 FINE ARTS FILM CO.

THE AMERICANO Alternate title: The Trouble Hunter; Pet of Paragonia Working title: [No Name Emerson] Filming date: October–November 1916 (according to Reliance-Majestic production ledgers) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: San Diego, California; (according to unverified modern sources) Baja California, Mexico Presented by: Triangle Film Corp. Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Triangle Film Corp.; reissued by Hallmark Pictures Corp. on 15 June 1920 and by Tri-Stone Pictures, Inc., on 21 August 1923 (“re-edited and re-titled”) Release date: 28 January 1917 Release length: five reels Copyright date: 21 August 1923 (Tri-Stone reissue, CLL 19328) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: John Emerson Scenario: Anita Loos, John Emerson Source: Blaze Derringer, the novel (1910) by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. Camera: Victor Fleming Titles: Anita Loos Cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Blaze Derringer); Alma R[e]ubens (Juana de Castalar); Spottiswoode Aitken (Presidente Hernando de Castalar); Carl Stockdale (Salza Espada); Tote Du Crow (Alberto de Castille); Charlie Stevens (Colonel Gargaras); Mildred Harris (Stenographer); Lillian Langdon (Señora de Castille); Tom Wilson (Hartod Armitage White, “Whitey”) Archival sources: FILM – Cineteca Italiana, Milano, 35mm nitrate positive, tinted, Italian intertitles (1920 reissue, incomplete); George Eastman House, 16mm diacetate positive (Tri-Stone Pictures, Inc., reissue); 28mm diacetate positive; 16mm acetate positive, “Silents, Please” reissue (Phil Serling Collection); Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (r. 5 only, 1923 reissue; AFI/George Marshall Collection); UCLA Film and Television Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined). MUSIC – George Eastman House, cue sheet Blaze Derringer refuses to accept the position of manager of the American Mining Company’s properties in Paragonia until he meets the charming Senorita de Castalar, daughter of the Presidente, who is visiting in New York. The senorita is called suddenly home and Blaze follows on the next boat, only to find upon arriving in Paragonia that the young woman is held prisoner, as is her father. In his cell in the San Mateo prison the latter discovers that the underground entrance, built years ago and since sealed up, opens into his “apartment”. The code notes he throws from the window are found by Blaze, who has been arrested, but released on promises to aid the cause of the usurper, Espada. According to plans, Blaze is to appear on the balcony of the palace and announce the opening of the mines to the people simultaneous with the marriage of the senorita to the insolent partner of Espada. But when Blaze appears he brings before the people Hernando de Castalar, who is again made Presidente, and Blaze himself participates actively in the wedding ceremony of the senora. Exhibitor’s Trade Review, January 6, 1917, p. 349

146

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

This story is laid in a country called Paragonia in Central America. The story opens with a conference by the President and his Cabinet anent [sic] the renewal of a contract with the American Mining Company which operates concessions in the country. In spite of the spirited opposition of the Minister of War, the Cabinet decides to renew the contract and the Premier, accompanied by his wife and the daughter of the president, portrayed by Alma Rubens, leaves for New York to close it. In the meantime, the head of the mining company in New York has written the Dean of the School of Mines, asking him to recommend one of the graduates to go to Paragonia and operate the mines. The Dean of the School of Mines sends Douglas Fairbanks, who listens to the proposition, but refuses to go because of the distance of the country from New York. While he is talking to the mining president, however, the President’s daughter enters the outer office. Doug, on leaving, sees her and is smitten with her, so that he immediately changes his mind and decides to take the position. The next morning, however he is very much disappointed to find a message from the girl saying that she is leaving for Paragonia and begging of him not to follow her. In spite of this he follows on the next boat. When he arrives in Paragonia, he inquires the way to the president’s residence, but ineffectually; until an old cigarette vendor spills him the desired information. On going to the palace he is refused admission, but skirts the grounds and climbs over the wall. He cannot raise anybody inside but a note dropped at his feet tells him to come back at midnight. He goes to the office of the mining company where he finds a negro, an employee of the mining company, in the smashed up office. The negro tells him that there has been a revolution, in the course of which the Minister of War has usurped the reins of the government and wrecked the mining company’s office. He tells the negro to come with him. At midnight he and the negro make their way to the palace and Doug scales the wall to the balcony where he meets Rubens. She informs him that her father is in prison. In the meantime Doug has encountered the cigarette vendor again and, after following him, finds him to be the Premier in disguise. He confers with him the next day and the two go out on the beach and inspect the prison from the outside. They find, while looking around, a number of scraps of paper with a date thereon. They are curious to know what these scraps mean and Doug takes some of these when he goes to visit Rubens, on the balcony that night. They go into the palace and look in a diary which the president kept, discovering from the diary the existence of a secret passage from the base of the cliff to the cell in which the president is confined. Doug upon conferring with the Premier the next day, ascertains that this passage has been walled up, but he determines to go that night at 9 o’clock accompanied by the Premier and the negro to chisel through the wall. In the meantime, the populace has become very much aroused over the non-operation of the mines (because there is no one in the country who knows how to work the machinery) and they demand they be re-opened. The Minister of War determines to seize Fairbanks and get him on his side. Accordingly they have Fairbanks arrested while he is on his way to the prison and bring him back to their office. They make him a proposition to split the army graft with him and Doug, seemingly, accepts their proposition. The minister [sic] also decrees that his Chief Lieutenant marry Rubens the next day on the balcony of the government building. Doug accedes and goes out. The minister has him followed but Doug outwits his pursuer and joins the two at the mouth of the tunnel. They chisel through the wall and rescue the President and rush back to the government building just in time to prevent the forced marriage of Rubens and restore the President to his seat, after which Doug and Rubens are married. Synopsis from Copyright Material deposited at the Library of Congress, August 21, 1923 [Tri-Stone reissue, CLL 19328]

147

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM RECEIVED AT CORNER JACKSON BOULEVARD AND LASALLE STREET, CHICAGO D W GRIFFITH CR CONDR EAST BOUND CNW TRAIN NO 8 CHICAGO ILLS THINK WOMANS SUFFRAGE SCENES WITH TITLES AS NOW RUN SHOULD APPEAR IN PICTURE FOLLOWING SCENE IN JENKINS HOME WHERE UPLIFTERS CELEBRATE THEIR SUCCESS – IF SUFFRAGE SCENES ARE RUN AT COMMENCEMENT OF PICTURE WE DO NOT KNOW WHO THE WEEDS ARE AND HAVE NO WAY OF IDENTIFYING THE CHARACTERS – SUPPOSE YOU KNOW ABOUT MAE MARSH SIGNING – WHO DO YOU THINK BEST TO CAST HARRON WITH NOW OR CAN I LET HIM HAVE A PICTURE BY HIMSELF – FAIRBANKS HAS BONAFIDE OFFER FROM BIG FINANCIAL PEOPLE IN NEW YORK TEN THOUSAND PER WEEK WITH TWO HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND CASH ADVANCED AITKEN SUGGESTS JANE GREY FOR COUPLE OF PICTURES BUT HAS SAID NOTHING FURTHER TO ME ABOUT OTHER STARS HE HAS STATED HOWEVER AND IT WAS BROUGHT DIRECT TO ME THAT HE INTENDS MAKING A CLEANING OUT AT THIS STUDIO COMMENCING WITH ME AND EPPING REGARDS FRANK E WOODS

(11 November 1916; reproduced in The D.W. Griffith Papers, Roll 2, frame 1705) WESTERN UNION NIGHT LETTER

Chicago, Ill., Nov. 14th, 1916 To: Mr. H.E. Aitken, c/o Majestic Studio, Sunset & Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, Cal. I have a wire from Mr. Woods in reference to using stars in the Majestic Pictures. I had told you in the other Triangle crowd last Fall repeatedly that Mae Marsh was receiving offers from other Companies from $1000 to $2000 a week, and that she and other stars that I had selected were being slighted for Talmadge and others. We had been repeatedly told that Mae Marsh had no drawing power from the Triangle offices, and we naturally could not expect her to work and take second place to tentrate [sic, read as “tenth-rate”?] people for the rest of her life as for these new names suggested by Mr. Woods [hand-written in margin: “for stars,”] any street-car conductor would draw just as much money. I would suggest that you attend to managing the Triangle which is conceded to be the worst managed business in Film History and let Mr. Woods alone in handling the Majestic, the Majestic stars being considered everywhere the best in Moving Pictures with the exception of Mary Pickford and Marguerite Clark. I insist that none of these fake stars be put on through The Fine Arts Co. I insist on this in the interest of the debt due me in every direction from the Triangle Company, after putting over such samples of lemons as two or three we had last year, leave this line alone. I would advise using your efforts while they are very much needed in the advertising and managerial offices of the Triangle. D.W. GRIFFITH (reproduced in The D.W. Griffith Papers, Roll 2, frame 1706) Douglas Fairbanks Declares He Quit Majestic After Aitken’s Alleged Attempt to Include Him in Stock Deal Former Triangle Star, Facing Injunction, Says Company Skimped on Later Pictures

148

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

FAITH IN GRIFFITH Douglas Fairbanks, answering the injunction suit brought against him by the Majestic Motion Picture Company, declared this week before Justice Hotchkiss in New York Supreme Court, that he left Majestic because he refused to become a party to a stock jobbing deal which, it was alleged, H.E. Aitken had in mind. Lengthy and spirited arguments were heard by the Court, but decision was reserved. Many sensational disclosures were made on behalf of Fairbanks, and in the course of his address, Mr. Malevinsky, attorney for the actor, said that W.N. Seligsberg, secretary and general counsel for the Majestic, was an “all around swearer”. Fairbanks in his affidavit says that he had conceived, while on the speaking stage, a deep prejudice against motion pictures, but after seeing “The Birth of a Nation” in a $2 theatre decided there was something in the game. Previously he had received all kinds of flattering offers. Fairbanks wanted to see David W. Griffith after seeing “The Birth of a Nation.” They met. Out of this meeting grew the contract with Griffith at $1,538.46 a week. About the same time, Fairbanks swore, Henry [sic, read as Harry] Aitken began an extensive advertising campaign throughout the United States. These ads, it is alleged, were so extravagant that Fairbanks thought there [was] a possibility that Triangle, in whose […]f the ads appeared, might not be able [to wo]rk out its salvation according to the [adverti]sements. Fairbanks said he thought [there] might be financial difficulties and [rec]ent developments, he alleged, have […]ut his beliefs. [How]ever, Fairbanks alleges, he had confidence in Griffith, and in his contract with Majestic desired to be under his super-vision. Fairbanks enumerated all of his pictures with Majestic, declaring that his directors, among them W. Christy Cabanne, Allan Dwan, John Emerson and others all worked under the supervision of Griffith. After a story had appeared in the Los Angeles papers that Griffith had left Majestic, Fairbanks asked him if he had quit and he made denial. He told Griffith that if he (Griffith) quit Majestic he (Fairbanks) would quit, too. After producing “The Americano”, the affidavit says, an attempt was made by Aitken and some of his associates to trick Fairbanks into waving his right to quit Majestic, if Griffith severed his connection with the concern. An efficiency man was hired by Aitken and expenses were cut, Aitken, it is alleged, interfering with the studio operation. All the actors and actresses who had been selected by Fairbanks were let out and inferior ones procured. As a result, Fairbanks alleged, a man who had played the parts of bartender, gunman and rough neck was chosen to play the part of a modern millionaire. In the millionaire character this actor, the affidavit says, wore a pair of patched full dress trousers and as he was ascending the ladder in an important scene the patch showed and spoiled the film. Then he used an automobile that was eight years old, and, as Fairbanks says, “no modern millionaire would do that”. Fairbanks says he asked Aitken if Griffith was still with Majestic and Aitken assured him he was. About this time, Fairbanks alleges Aitken requested Fairbanks and Director Emerson to meet Mr. Parker, of the American Radiator Company, who, as Aitken expressed it, was going to become interested in the company. A dinner was arranged. Fairbanks and Emerson met Aitken and Parker. Parker, it is alleged, told of two good ideas for plays he had and he produced paper bound copies of Nick Carter’s “Diamond Cut Diamond” and “Detective Against Detective”, saying that these were the money-making things. Fairbanks swears he told Parker that the matter was absurd; that Parker might just as well expect him (Fairbanks) to suggest ideas about radiators as well as Parker might suggest screen productions. The two books, Fairbanks says, “were unadulterated bunk”. On December 24, 1916, Fairbanks alleges, he came East and learned that a misunderstanding in Triangle had arisen; that a loan of $500,000 was due bankers from Triangle and the bankers were about to call the loan. Subsequently Frederic L. Collins secured an option upon the indebtedness on behalf of himself and associates through a corporation. Fairbanks said that in this situation he saw a repetition of what happened to Biograph after Griffith had left its service. He also found that Griffith had

149

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

left Majestic and he decided to withdraw from his contract, which he did upon advice of counsel. It was disclosed in the affidavit that Griffith often wrote scenarios for Fairbanks under the nom de plume of “Granville Warwick”. In opposition, Seligsberg declares that Griffith got out of Majestic about May, 1916, because he was spending too much time on his own production, “Intolerance”. It was asserted in court that Majestic paid Griffith $49,000 a year for his work. The complaint and other papers in the injunction and damage proceedings brought in the Supreme Court, New York by the Majestic Motion Picture Co. against Douglas Fairbanks and his director, John Emerson, were filed this week. They disclose that Majestic asks $250,000 damages from Fairbanks and $100,000 against Emerson for their alleged failure to perform their contracts. It is further disclosed that Mrs. Beth Fairbanks, wife of the actor, took a prominent part in the transactions leading up to Fairbanks’ severance of relations with Majestic. The salaries of Fairbanks and Emerson are also made known. The agreement which it is alleged was broken was made between Majestic and Fairbanks on October 11, 1915 and his services were to begin October 4, 1915 [sic] and end October 3, 1918. For the first six months he was to receive $2,000 a week; for the second six months $2,250 a week; for the third six months, $2,500; for the fourth six months, $2,750; for the fifth six months, $3,000, and $3,250 for the remaining weeks of the sixth six months. These amounts were to be paid weekly not later than the first Wednesday following the end of each week. He was to devote his time exclusively to Majestic. Exhibitor’s Trade Review, March 3, 1917, p. 880 (for a commentary on this article, see Merritt, “The Griffith Third”, pp. 250–252)

A brash young American engineer becomes embroiled in a coup d’état on the lovely Caribbean island of Paragonia. He aids the lawful president to resume office, rescues Paragonia from financial ruin, saves American mining interests and wins the heart of the president’s daughter, Juana de Castalar.

The Americano is concocted of coup and counterplot in the fictional Caribbean republic of Paragonia, “JEWEL SET IN THE GIRDLE OF THE WORLD”, as the opening title states. Anita Loos worked Eugene Lyle’s pulp fiction into a slangy, smart script in which a country’s wealth is plundered, maidens are menaced by oily commandants, American mining interests are threatened and racist comedy abounds – an adventure relayed at a rather leisurely, though muscular and athletic, pace and set in a landscape where the plazas are wide and sunny and the locals sing and dance. Douglas Fairbanks sails well in these hospitable seas as only Fairbanks could, playing the can-do Americano who is endlessly and airily resourceful, veritably able to leap tall buildings to save the girl he loves and, by the way, to save a vulnerable republic from villains who would have closed his company’s mines. There’s as little doubt that he will prevail as there is that he will fail to attract all the island’s señoritas by film’s end. It’s not too surprising that D.W. Griffith would disavow vehicles like this which bear so little resemblance to his kind of filmmaking. On the other hand, critics of the time saw exactly what Griffith missed about the film’s star. “The fact that Douglas Fairbanks is the star of [The Americano] is sufficient proof that it’s good”, raved the critic of Motion Picture Magazine (March 1917, p. 11). John Emerson’s leisurely, relaxed style of filmmaking seemed a fitting showcase for a steadily rising star. Joyce Jesionowski 150

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

562 PATHÉ; SERVICE CINÉMATOGRAPHIQUE DES ARMÉES

[FILM POUR LES AMÉRICAINS, I, II, III] Country of production: France Alternate title: Film spécial pour les américains; Film spécial pour M. Griffith, I, II, III Filming date: 29 April 1917 Location: Lassigny (Oise), France Producer: Service Cinématographique des Armées Distribution: not distributed Release date: not released Total length: 238 meters (780 feet) in three reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Supervision: Alfred Machin Camera: Alfred Machin and/or D.W. Griffith Pathé catalog numbers: 190, 191, 192 Archival sources: none known

In 1917, when the Allied cause seemed to be approaching victory over Germany in World War I, Griffith visited the region of Oise (about 100 kilometers north-east of Paris) a barren and forbidden area, filled with unexploded shells and landmines. While the cannons could be heard thundering from a distance, he took shots of devastated villages, carcasses of animals and vehicles, wild poppies and golden bud fields scarred with craters of bombs, labyrinths of trenches and makeshift graves. The French Ministry of War had given him this unique privilege, thanks to the mediation of the American Committee for the Support of France (Comité américain de soutien à la France), under the auspices of the banker John Pierpont (1867–1943), the son of John Pierpont-Morgan. The headquarters asked Griffith to present himself on the morning of 28 April in Lassigny, before the local church, the only building in the area still recognizable among the ruins. The Service Cinématographique des Armées gave Griffith its best guide and cameraman for the excursion, Lieutenant Alfred Machin. One of the most trusted filmmakers working for Charles Pathé, a specialist in films of exotic subject since 1907, he had been decorated twice for his valiant behavior on the battlefield. The registry of the orders of mission for 28 and 29 April indicates a “film spécial pour les américains”, with Machin as cameraman. On the same date, a production ledger lists a “Film pour les américains, I, II, III” (three reels), 238 meters (780 ft., approximately twelve minutes of screening time), with the following note: “Annulé: film remis à M. Griffith” [“Deleted: film handed over to Mr. Griffith”]. The Service Cinématographique des Armées gave away the reels, but certainly didn’t lose interest in them, as the headquarters later received the text of the intertitles of Hearts of the World for review. Shortly afterwards, it would also obtain by diplomatic pouch a workprint of the completed feature, then return it to an unnamed “representant de M. Griffith”. The inclusion of footage from these reels in the final version of Hearts of the World was reported by two close collaborators of Machin: Paul Buisine and Maurice Bessy. The temporary partnership between Griffith and Machin is also documented by a photograph, showing Griffith at the camera and Machin standing nearby: either Griffith stood there

151

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

for a souvenir photo, or Machin simply allowed him to turn the crank at his leisure. By doing so, however, he would have infringed the orders of the authorities. Francis Lacassin EDITOR’S NOTE: The date of the film reviewed in this entry contradicts previous claims that D.W. Griffith had this footage taken in September 1917. In a correspondence with the Editor dated 9 February 2004, Roger Smither comments upon the chronology of Griffith’s visits to France and the filming date of the [Film pour les américains, I, II, III]: “Francis Lacassin’s SCA [Service Cinématographique des Armées] sources seem pretty solid and first hand, whereas mine are decidedly second hand. The chronology I used is based mainly on an article by Russell Merritt (“D.W. Griffith Directs the Great War: The Making of Hearts of the World”) in Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Winter 1981, which seems also to have convinced Kevin Brownlow: Kevin cites Merritt (individually, not his article) when describing the history of Hearts of the World in The War, the West and the Wilderness. Merritt’s own sources for Griffith’s relations with the British authorities seem largely to have been the Beaverbrook papers in the House of Lords Record Office. Merritt has DWG on a visit to the Front with British facilities in May, and returning to France, with the Gishes, with French facilities, in September. Merritt’s source for the claim that it was a September visit for which DWG received French facilities is footnoted as the Histoire Encyclopedique du Cinéma III by René Jeanne and Charles Ford. Perhaps you could ask Francis Lacassin for his opinion of this source – and whether the French Army sources he (FL) has seen say anything about a further visit in September? … I sense uneasily that if Lacassin blows Merritt’s chronology completely out of the water, some more of my own piece will start to look shaky – but if we swap the two filming episodes ([Film pour les américains, I, II, III] and Griffith at the Front) around and Griffith at the Front dates from September then there are a lot of other problems to resolve... You will know the various Gish sources for Hearts of the World, which seem to confirm a visit to France with DWG (with “French army cameramen” but without Billy Bitzer) toward the end of their stay in Europe. Intriguingly, I was able to come up with some circumstantial evidence to confirm their movements by contacting the Savoy Hotel, whose 1917 records show the Gishes in residence from 23 May to 12 September, from 23 September to 27 September, and from 4 October to 6 October; the Savoy also shows Billy Bitzer in residence from 8 June to 6 October. Thanks to Susan Scott, the archivist for the Savoy Group with whom I exchanged emails in October 2002, [there is an indication] that the Gish family (both daughters and the mother) shared the same room with varying double/treble occupancy. In much the same way, Bitzer’s guest card indicates that his room was occasionally shared with Bobby Harron. Sadly, the “G” records for 1917 – which would indicate DWG’s own movements – have been lost.” Francis Lacassin replies (letter to Paolo Cherchi Usai, September 20, 2004): “It may be that Griffith came back to France in September 1917; however, the filming on the French front took place on April 29, as documented in the “registre des missions” [register of assignments] held by the S.C.A.T. (Service Cinéma de l’Armée de Terre).”

152

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

563 WAR OFFICE CINEMA COMMITTEE

GRIFFITH AT THE FRONT Country of production: United Kingdom Filming date: May 1917 Location: Cistercian Abbey, Mont des Cats; Kemmel Ridge; Wytschaete Ridge; Elverdinghe; Cloth Hall, Ypres; Houlthulst Wood and Shrewsbury Forest (all in West Flanders, Belgium); Cassel (Porte de Bergue), Nord, France Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: not distributed Release date: not released Length: one reel (685 feet) Copyright date: not copyrighted Camera: Frank Bassill On camera: (among others) D.W. Griffith; Philip Gibbs? NOTE: Footage from the film is included in the prologue to Hearts of the World and in Cameramen at War (Len Lye, 1943). Archival sources: Imperial War Museum, London, 35mm acetate duplicate negative (produced in 1939 from original 1917 nitrate positive; nitrate print destroyed 1960–61)

The film starts with Griffith talking to the abbot and another monk outside the Cistercian abbey at Mont des Cats, used as a casualty clearing station. Griffith is then shown with two British officers entering and leaving a Red Cross station on Kemmel Ridge. The main part of the film shows Griffith’s tour over the Ypres ridges. This begins in a trench with British soldiers “60 YARDS FROM THE GERMANS, FOUR MILES FROM YPRES”, probably on Wytschaete Ridge south of Hill 60. Griffith goes to the top of the observation post and comes down to set up his camera. There is a test scene of two British soldiers rushing down the trench and slamming a barbed wire screen behind them. Griffith is taken by an escort through Polygon Wood. He watches six-inch Mk VII guns firing in the Elverdinghe area. With his production crew he surveys the ruins of Ypres Cloth Hall. He talks to Belgian soldiers in a reserve trench in Houlthulst Wood. Finally he inspects a German pillbox, probably at Shrewsbury Forest. He and his escorts try on their gas masks for the camera. The last scene is of Griffith meeting with British official war correspondents in Cassel, Porte de Bergue area. One of these may be Philip Gibbs of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Chronicle.

Characterised by Russell Merritt (“D.W. Griffith Directs the Great War: The Making of Hearts of the World” in the Quarterly Review of Film Studies) as “as eerie a war souvenir as a film director ever collected”, Griffith at the Front offers a documentary vignette of the director at a particular stage of his career, rather than a specific part of his oeuvre. Griffith almost certainly did not actually “direct” this record of his preliminary visit to the Western Front in May 1917 – an important symbolic step in his preparatory work for the project that was to

153

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

become Hearts of the World – although the evidence of the material itself confirms that he was fully aware of what the camera was doing, and ensured his own starring role in most of what it covered. The film was shot by an “Official Cinematographer” supplied by the British authorities, identified by Kevin Brownlow as Frank Bassill, a former Pathé newsreel cameraman. Griffith’s own cameraman, Billy Bitzer, was not summoned to Europe until June 1917, and even then would be denied access to the Front himself – security concerns meant that permission to film at the Front was rarely given, and Lillian Gish and others would half-seriously claim that Bitzer’s full name (Johann Gottlob Wilhelm) did not exactly help his application. The visit which Griffith at the Front records served ironically both to assist the publicity claims that much of Hearts of the World had been filmed on the real battlefields of western Europe and to ensure that the opposite was, in fact, the case. The intertitles originally included with the film appear to have tried to strengthen the impression of proximity to real combat (see the shot list below), although as Brownlow observes, the feeling given by the film itself is that “Griffith, dressed for a grouse shoot, appears to be on a thoroughly pleasant afternoon outing in the midst of the bloodiest war in history” (The War, the West and the Wilderness, p. 144 of the British edition). Footage of the visit was included in Griffith’s unusual onscreen prologue to Hearts of the World, where the intertitle disingenuously noted: “IT HAS NO POSSIBLE INTEREST EXCEPT TO VOUCH FOR THE RATHER UNUSUAL EVENT OF AN AMERICAN PRODUCER BEING ALLOWED TO TAKE PICTURES ON AN ACTUAL BATTLEFIELD”.

At the same time, however, it was this very visit that led Griffith to the conclusion which was later summarised in his notorious remark in an interview for Photoplay (March 1918) – “Viewed as a drama, the war is in some ways disappointing.” As Brownlow points out, the remark sounds “single-minded and callous” unless it is quoted in the context of Griffith’s full text, which goes on to observe that the war “is too colossal to be dramatic”. Experience led Griffith to conclude that the reality of war was difficult to shape to the needs of the kind of story he wanted to tell. Griffith continued to receive extensive support from the British authorities, whose initiative the Hearts of the World project was. (Merritt has shown that Griffith’s own version of events – that his presence in England to promote Intolerance happened to coincide with a group of intellectuals determining that a powerful “drama of humanity” would be a useful medium for stating the Entente Powers’ case – fails to acknowledge direct approaches made to him before he even sailed for England in March 1917.) After three weeks shooting reconstructed battle footage with thousands of British Army “extras” on training grounds in southern England, Griffith made a second visit to France in September [EDITOR’S NOTE: the first visit had taken place in April]. Griffith had paid the French for filming facilities, apparently including the service of French official cameraman Alfred Machin (see [Film pour les américains, I, I, III, DWG Project, #562]). He returned with more stories of narrow escapes and, it was alleged, up to 10,000 feet of film. Most analysts conclude, however, that very little of this authentic location material made it into the finished film, despite publicity claims to the contrary – although in this context Nicholas Reeves (Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War) points out that such analysis is based on surviving prints that are in all cases significantly shorter than the original release. Apart from the fragment used in the prologue to Hearts of the World, it is uncertain how much of Griffith at the Front was ever seen by contemporary audiences. Merritt asserts that film taken at the time of the visit was the basis of “at least two War Office newsreels”, but the work of the British Universities Film and Video Council’s BUND project (British Universities Newsfilm Database, accessible through the BUFVC website () has yet to provide confirmation of this. 154

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The material held by the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive is catalogued as follows: “IWM 122 – GRIFFITH AT THE FRONT (GB, 1917) – The visit of D W Griffith to the Western Front while preparing the filming of Hearts of the World, May 1917”. The (missing) main title of the film, and the transcription of the intertitles, are taken from a shotsheet made in the Museum during the 1930s when the original film was prepared for archival preservation copying. The credit of Griffith as “producer” acknowledges his role in the visit, rather than his specific responsibility for this film; the identification of Bassill as the cameraman is made by Brownlow in The War, the West and the Wilderness (although Griffith’s visit pre-dates by a few months the next earliest known film by Bassill in his “Official Cinematographer” role). The Imperial War Museum shotlist has recorded the intertitles as follows: D W GRIFFITH – WHO PRODUCED “THE BIRTH OF A NATION” – AT WORK ON HIS LATEST PRODUCTION, PRODUCED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE BRITISH WAR OFFICE OFFICIAL CINEMATOGRAPH COMMITTEE. PICTURES PRODUCED IN ACTUAL BATTLE. D W GRIFFITH SETS HIS CAMERA IN A BRITISH FRONT LINE TRENCH, 60 YARDS FROM THE GERMANS, FOUR MILES FROM YPRES. THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT BATTLE FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE LAST GERMAN HIGH GROUND IN THE YPRES SECTOR. AT THE CLOTH HALL IN YPRES. IN A CONCRETE DUG-OUT. A MEETING WITH WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

Roger Smither

155

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

564 —

[GRIFFITH MEETS SOCIETY LADIES] Filming date: Summer? 1917? Location: not known Camera: not known On camera: D.W. Griffith Archival sources: Producers Library Service (Los Angeles), 35mm acetate negative? (generation undetermined)

This clip, lasting only a few seconds, depicts Griffith with a group of several women who have not been identified. (Tentative identifications of them as Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford are plainly mistaken.) The shot is included in the collection of Producers Library Service, Los Angeles. Russell Merritt points out that Griffith’s wardrobe may provide a clue to the clip’s origin. Griffith is seen wearing a suit like the one he wears in still photos taken in England in the Summer of 1917, when he directed the scenes of society ladies that were later incorporated in The Great Love. However, Merritt also notes that this brief clip was shot indoors, while the society scenes in The Great Love are supposed to have been exteriors. J.B. Kaufman

156

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

565 D.W. GRIFFITH

HEARTS OF THE WORLD Alternate title: Love’s Struggle Filming date: May–October 1917 (overseas locations); November?–December 1917 (studio) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; Great Britain, France, Belgium, Ham (Somme) Producer: D.W. Griffith Financing: Famous Players-Lasky Corp. Distribution: State Rights; Road Show; reissued by D.W. Griffith on 11 August 1919: abridged, with additional scenes (“Peace Edition”) Pre-release showing: 15 February 1918 Los Angeles premiere: 12 March 1918 New York premiere: 4 April 1918 Release date: April 1918 Release length: thirteen reels Copyright date: 12 March 1918 (LP12521) Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: M. Gaston de Tolignac (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Translated into English by: Captain Victor Marier (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Camera: G.W. Bitzer Second Camera: Karl Brown Additional photography (Europe): D.P. Cooper (according to modern sources) Peasant dress for Lillian Gish created by: Nathan of London Film editors: James Smith, Rose Smith Music selected and arranged by: Carli Densmore Elinor Additional music arrangements: D.W. Griffith Production managers: William Elliott, F. Ray Comstock, Morris Gest (according to music scores; see archival sources, below) Production advisor: Erich von Stroheim Cast: Lillian Gish (The girl, Marie Stephenson); Robert Harron (The boy, Douglas Gordon Hamilton); Dorothy Gish (The Little Disturber); Adolphe Lestina (The grandfather); Josephine Crowell (The mother); Jack Cosgrove (Douglas’ father); Kate Bruce (Douglas’ mother); Ben Alexander (The littlest brother); Marion Emmons, Francis Marion (Douglas’ other brothers); Robert Anderson (Monsieur Cuckoo); George Fawcett (The village carpenter); George A. Siegmann (von Strohm); Fay Holderness (The innkeeper); L. Lowry (A deaf and blind musician); Eugène Pouyet (A poilu); Anna Mae Walthall (A French peasant girl); Yvette Duvoisin (A refugee); Herbert Sutch (A French major); Alphonse Dufort (A poilu); Jean Dumercier (A poilu); Jules Lemontier, Gaston Riviere (Stretcher bearers); Georges Loyer (A poilu); George Nichols (A German sergeant); Mrs. Mary Gish (A refugee mother); Mrs. ? Harron (Woman with daughter); Mary Harron (Wounded girl); Jessie Harron (A refugee); Johnny Harron (Boy with barrel); Noel Coward; David Lloyd George (as himself); René Raphael Viviani (as himself); Sir Edward Grey (as himself); (according to modern sources) Mary Hay (dancer); Erich von Stroheim (German soldier)

157

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Archival sources: FILM – Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); Library of Congress, 16mm acetate positive (Killiam reissue); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm acetate fine grain master (printed ca. 1950 from original negative received from D.W. Griffith in 1938, no longer extant); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive # 2,033,225 H, tinted, 7123 ft. (“Peace Edition”?); 35mm acetate positive # 400,012 E, 9183ft (received from MoMA in 1958), plus 589 ft. of Griffith setting up the camera before shooting: see entry #563 in this volume; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate negative (fragment; identification unconfirmed); 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined). MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), original score (unspecified parts); Library of Congress, a) piano conductor (0,1,2,1; 2,2,2,1; tympani; drums; harp; bells; strings), 236 pages (published by Tams Music Library, New York); location: LC M1527.E45H4; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 65; b) piano conductor and instrumental parts (1,1,2,1; 2,2,2,1; tympani; drums; harp; bells; strings), 131 pages (published by Tams Music Library, New York). NOTE: There are multiple copies of these parts (The Museum of Modern Art Collection; no microfilm); c) piano conductor, 131 pages (The Museum of Modern Art Collection); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 39. [The film opens] in a peaceful and lovely old French village before the declaration of war. Marie Stephenson and Douglas Gordon Hamilton are the lovers of the story. They are the children of two American painters who have made their homes in France. Nothing could be simpler than the incidents of the courtship, or more fragrant. That is the scent of the atmosphere during the time when the boy and girl are stealing away to the garden to meet each other – love, domestic tranquility, happiness and the laughter of children. Then comes the call to arms. Douglas hurries to fight for the land which gives him shelter, and the old, quiet life is shattered by the roar of cannon. The village falls into the hands of the Germans and the horrors of barbarous blood lust and sensuality are enacted before the eyes of Marie. In the meantime Douglas is doing a man’s part in the trenches. A brutal German officer named Von Strohm is the chief cause of Marie’s sufferings. She goes through the terrible experience of seeing her grandfather killed, and is driven beyond her strength by her captors when she is set to working in the fields. She finds a stanch [sic] friend in an elfish young street singer, known as The Little Disturber. The girl is blessed with courage, wit and a cheerful philosophy. She has cast longing eyes at Douglas, but when she finds he is not for her she consoles herself with the sensible reflection, “If you can’t get what you want, then want what you can get.” Marie’s trials are brought to a climax when she and Douglas meet in an upper room of the village inn. Von Strohm and several soldiers are battering at the door. The girl and her sweetheart know what her fate will be if the Germans enter the room. Before it is too late Marie wrings a promise from Robert [sic] that he will kill her with his own revolver. The lovers determine to die as man and wife. They murmur the vows of marriage. Just as the door is about to give way and Douglas raises his pistol to the girl’s head an explosion occurs outside. The street singer has hurled a hand grenade at the hated foes and the lovers are saved. Scenes showing the retaking of the village by the Allies follow, the final incident being the arrival of American troops. Edward Weitzel, “Griffith Picture Has Impressive Premiere”, The Moving Picture World, April 20, 1918, p. 369

In 1912, two American families share a semi-detached house in a small French village. The Girl of one household, where she lives with her grandparents, returns from a long absence 158

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

and meets the Boy, a gifted writer living next door. They fall in love. As they grow older, their love matures, and the Boy writes beautiful love poetry for the Girl. A street singer arrives in town, performing a comic number and attracting Monsieur Cuckoo. She meets the Boy and flirts with him. Von Strohm, a German spy, arrives in town; Kaiser Wilhelm is threatening war. The Boy’s three little brothers watch as he declares his love to the Girl. Von Strohm notices the Girl as he is snooping around the town and is attracted to her. In the street, the The Singer makes an aggressive play for the Boy; the Girl witnesses a kiss between the two but leaves before the Boy rebuffs the The Singer. Later the Girl and Boy argue, and gradually he convinces her of his innocence. At their betrothal party, the Girl charms the three jealous little brothers. The Singer rejects Cuckoo’s advances, but when she runs into the Boy and Girl and is rejected again, she returns to flirt with Cuckoo. As the Girl sews her trousseau and the Boy announces that his book has won a prize, World War I begins. The Boy, Cuckoo, and the local carpenter march off to war and are assigned to trenches in the nearby countryside. When the village comes under bombardment, the two American families refuse to leave. The boy’s father is killed as they try and take refuge in the inn, which has been spared because its owner is secretly working for Von Strohm. The Girl’s grandmother collapses and dies in the cellar shelter, and the Girl goes mad with grief. Wandering on the battlefield, she finds the Boy unconscious and assumes that he is dead. Medics come and carry the Boy away. The Boy’s mother and three brothers find shelter in a small cellar, while the Girl recovers in the inn, nursed by the The Singer. The Singer works as a waitress at the inn, where German soldiers explain to her how hand grenades work. The Boy’s mother dies, and the three little boys bury her in the dirt floor of the cellar. They are reunited with the Girl through an encounter in the street. Disguised as a German soldier, the Boy goes on a spying mission to the German trenches and hides, finally signaling for an attack. At the inn, the Girl is stealing food for the boys when Von Strohm finds her. He chases her in an attempt at rape, but a carload of officers arrives and prevents it. As the Girl takes food to the brothers, she meets the Boy outside the inn. She takes him into the inn to get some food and stabs a German sergeant who attempts to arrest him, after which the two flee to hide in an upper-story room. Von Strohm eats a meal in the inn as the Allies advance on the village. Believing they will be killed in the battle, the Boy and Girl perform their own wedding ceremony. Von Strohm discovers them and summons another soldier; a struggle breaks out as the French troops approach the village. The Singer tosses a German grenade at Von Strohm. The Singer is reunited with Cuckoo, and the refugees emerge from their shelters to celebrate and cheer American troops as they parade through the village.

How might a modern viewer react to Hearts of the World if he or she did not know the Biographs and the two great features that preceded it, The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance? It was shot in 1917, the year when filmmakers settled on the continuity style that was to dominate Hollywood far into the future. In 1915 and 1916, Griffith had been a pioneer of the cinema. By the Spring of 1918, when Hearts of the World was released, it already looked oldfashioned. By almost any standard, it represents a move into a new phase of his career – one which would see a few great films and mostly great moments in lesser films. It was perhaps with Hearts of the World that he went from being the father of the cinema to being its grandfather. Never again would he strive for the sorts of experimentation seen in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. Despite the innovative soft-focus cinematography in Broken Blossoms and the attempt at naturalism in Isn’t Life Wonderful, Griffith’s post-Intolerance films usually lead us to treasure isolated moments when he recaptures past strengths. 159

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The actual transition proceeded relatively slowly. Despite the breakneck speed with which Griffith worked during the Biograph years and in making his big features, Hearts of the World seemed to have had a downright leisurely path to completion. After being invited by the British government to make a film on the subject of World War I, he went to London just in time for the English premiere of Intolerance (7 April 1917) and the announcement of the American entry into World War I (6 April). Shots of his staged meeting with Lloyd George at 10 Downing Street made it into the prologue of Hearts of the World. That same month he visited the trenches in France and was photographed, though this footage was probably not used in the film. Upon his return to England the planning of the film went forward, and in May the principal actors and Billy Bitzer traveled to England. The group lived in London during the summer, not, apparently, doing much work on Hearts of the World. In May, Griffith had shot some exteriors in English villages, locales that would be replicated with sets in California for the principal photography considerably later. During the summer he filmed scenes with various society ladies, intended for future projects, and his cast apparently experienced the wartime attacks on London as preparations for their performances in Hearts of the World. Despite the prologue’s emphasis on location shooting in France, Griffith seems to have spent only two more weeks in France, during the autumn, and the only cast member who joined him there was Lillian Gish. They shot footage around the village of Ham, on the Somme, which Richard Schickel considers to be the only French location identifiable in the film. In October the group returned to the States, and by November the cast assembled in California for the principal filming in sets. During the lead-up to the filming, Griffith acquired some documentary footage of the fighting, which he spliced into his battle scenes. December saw a return to a frantic shooting schedule that probably recalled to many the days of the Biographs. Griffith began editing in January of 1918. Hearts of the World premiered in April and went on to make a $600,000 profit – a success cut short in part by the Armistice and in part by the great flu epidemic of 1918–19 (on the film’s production and release, see Schickel, D.W. Griffith, pp. 340–360). Schickel has commented on how unrealistic Griffith’s war scenes are: action, movement, and “sweeping movement” – not the grueling, static trench warfare that most of the fighting actually involved (op. cit., p. 353). He comments that the Boy’s two days in a shell hole come closest to that reality (op. cit., p. 357). In that scene, however, one has to ask what the Boy could learn after two days there that would allow him to know when to signal for the attack to begin. That one exception aside, however, Griffith’s lack of realism in depicting the war goes against his attempt to achieve authenticity by including scenes shot in France. Despite the usually seamless combination of English, French, and American-shot footage, Hearts remains as conventional in its depiction of war as the other WWI films made entirely in Hollywood. I have suggested that Griffith moved from the experimentation of his two great mid-1910s features to a sudden conservatism of film style. This was paralleled by an old-fashioned approach to story. Schickel (ibid.) also remarks on how clichéd and implausible the non-military scenes of Hearts of the World are, with Griffith trapped in stage melodrama, repeating the simplified and familiar notion of threatened rape standing in for the general horrors of war. Of course The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance had many melodramatic and outdated scenes, but they seems to fade into the background in the face of daring techniques. In Hearts of the World, the most impressive moments are usually those quiet scenes that recall the best of Griffith’s Biographs. And the strengths of Hearts of the World are definitely in its individual scenes, for the mechanics of the plot progression are clunky. The opening exposition introduces the char160

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

acters at great length without setting up the sorts of goals and expectations that were becoming part of current Hollywood plotting. One need only look at the Douglas Fairbanks films being directed at this same time by John Emerson and Allan Dwan to realize how lively the introduction of salient story information early in a film could be. Even in comparison with Griffith’s own exposition at the beginning of The Birth of a Nation, that of Hearts of the World seems careless. There are almost no dialogue titles – something that continues to be characteristic of Griffith films well into the 1920s, at a time when a preponderance of dialogue titles was rapidly replacing expository titles as the Hollywood norm. Hearts of the World is also plagued by Griffith’s predilection for very short scenes, often only a shot or two. The first reasonably skillful sustained Griffithian sequence comes after the title “THE LITTLEST ONE OF THE BOY’S THREE BROTHERS IS INCLINED TO HERO-WORSHIP”. This leads directly into the first major love scene, introduced by another title, “AFTERNOON. SHE READS HIS VERSE OF LOVE – DEATHLESS, UNENDING”. Here the Boy observes her as she toys with a rose and reads his poetry. Throughout this action, however, there is no real conflict introduced. The Boy is attracted to the Girl, she loves him, and there seems to be no misunderstanding or other barrier to their romance. Even the introduction of the Little Disturber (i.e., the The Singer played by Dorothy Gish) simply allows her to show off something of her character and to meet Monsieur Cuckoo, her befuddled suitor. An astonishingly long way into the film, the scene in which the The Singer encounters the Boy in the street introduces some dramatic conflict. Significantly, this is also the first scene to begin without an expository intertitle. We are at last left without guidance to observe for ourselves the characters’ actions and infer their motives. The scene itself is staged partly in depth along a sidewalk by a long stone wall and specifically in front of the door to the Boy’s home. The scene contains the film’s first real shot/reverse-shot conversation and creates a lively dramatic interest for the first time as the The Singer’s flirtation with the Boy develops. There is even a parallel created to the earlier scene of the Boy observing the Girl in the garden. There he had ogled her ankle, and he does the same with the The Singer here – though in a more shy and confused manner. Even after this scene, however, the plodding exposition resumes, with the introduction of Von Strohm, the villainous German spy, and his relationship to the treacherous woman who runs the local village inn. Interestingly, however, the lengthy exposition ends with a scene between Von Strohm and the Girl that parallels the flirtation between the Boy and the The Singer. Again the scene takes place on a sidewalk along a lengthy wall, centering around a doorway. Von Strohm notices the Girl, and as with the Boy’s interest in both the Girl and the The Singer, his attraction to her is conveyed by his glance at her ankle. Just as the The Singer presents a comic threat to the Boy’s romance with the Girl, Von Strohm now creates a more serious threat to that romance. A really striking touch comes at the end of this scene, as the Girl shuts the door in the German’s face, but he places his buttonhole carnation in a knothole and pushes it through toward her with the tip of his cane. This recalls the Girl’s rose in the love scene in the garden, but at the same time it is a bizarre, enigmatic gesture, perhaps suggesting defiance, perhaps seduction. A quick fade emphasizes this uncertainty. With this gesture we can say that the film’s lengthy exposition ends. The first truly sustained and well-handled scene occurs next, beginning with the title “PERSEVERANCE AND PERFUME”. The Singer and Boy meet again in the street outside his door. As she flirts with him again and tries to provoke him to kiss her, a single cutaway signals that the Girl is nearby, shopping. A medium-long shot along the wall places the The Singer and Boy in the right half of the frame, the empty left portion suggesting that someone, most likely the Girl, might enter. In fact the The Singer’s hesitating and reluctant movements away from the Boy carry her into depth at the left after he rejects her. It is a striking moment, since the perspective makes her suddenly 161

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

seem to shrink in size in relation to him. Her return to forcibly kiss the Boy again leaves the left area unoccupied. Once he responds to the kiss, a moment of stasis occurs, and this leads to a wonderful cut to a depth shot in the opposite direction, diagonally into depth with the couple in the right rear, still kissing, and the Girl at the far left foreground, standing still and watching. The fact that there had not been a shot showing her arriving in this space makes the revelation of her presence – and her shock at the sight of the kiss – very dramatic. Even if there had been a cut to this framing with the Girl entering from the left and stopping in shock, the revelation would have contained an element of melodrama (which would of course not be surprising for Griffith). Here he avoids it, however, and tops the moment with a cut to a beautiful medium shot of the Girl staring off right, with her hand on the offscreen door. She simply looks, with a somber expression, backing slightly away so that her hand brings the door into the frame at the right. One can forgive Griffith a lot when he gives us this kind of scene. The clumsy exposition and sentiment, the heavy, dragged-in humor and all the rest of it, are balanced out by such moments, and at this period, probably no one staged quiet pathos so discretely as Griffith. The same mixture of melodramatic sentiment with touches of brilliant staging and acting continues throughout the film. Despite Griffith’s reputation as a great and innovative editor, some of the best moments of the film occur in relatively long takes that allow the actors more time to develop subtle emotions and to move through space in leisurely ways that exploit the various areas of a setting. The scene in which the Girl, having gone a bit mad after her mother’s death, wanders through the battlefield looking for her fiancé exemplifies this strength. In an evocative long shot, she pauses to pray to a crucifix by the roadside. The wall and broken wagon at the left create a visual interest, and the dead body lying inconspicuously at the right middle-ground draws her attention briefly as she tries to see if it might be the Boy. All during her somewhat aimless movements, the smoke of battle or an unseen burning structure drifts in from off right in the distance. The whole scene is bathed in a strange light from off right that gives it an almost eerie feel, and Gish’s performance of the Girl’s madness takes her gradually forward and diagonally out past the camera (and even out of focus) in a staging that recalls the early days of cinema and chase-film conventions. Immediately after this there is a particularly lengthy and effective take of about eighty seconds as the Girl finds her lover’s body, apparently dead. Griffith again makes the scene more poignant by refraining from cutting to a more emphatic close framing of Gish’s performance, allowing her instead to slowly lower herself to crouch over his body and finally to nestle and sleep against him on what was to have been their wedding night. Much later in the film, another fairly lengthy take with limited movement allows Gish (and to a lesser extent Bobby Harron) to emote in a virtuoso fashion during their reunion in the courtyard of the inn. Apart from these long-held scenes, there are very effective touches in the staging of shorter actions. In the scene where the Boy and Girl are engaged and she cradles one of the garments she is sewing as if it were a baby, the Boy’s sudden entry leads to a lovely movement in which she stands and hides the garment behind herself, skipping backward toward the camera. As he follows, trying to see what she is hiding, the camera reframes up and they settle into a medium-shot framing as he shows her a letter saying that his book has won a prize. The Biographs had obliged young female stars to experiment with subtle sustained acting. In Hearts of the World, some acting styles are developed still further. In the garden, the Girl tells the Boy that she has seen him kiss the The Singer, and the scene turns into a fairly lengthy take as he tries to explain and she rejects his excuses – all without benefit of dialogue titles. Gish’s and Harron’s performances mingle realistic facial expressions and gestures with occasional conventionalized pantomime gestures. Repeatedly each makes an “embrace” gesture 162

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

to refer to the kiss, yet when the Boy registers guilt, Harron simply turns away from the camera so that we see his back rather than his face. Similarly, Gish coldly rejects him by crossing her arms over her stomach, clenching her hands together and moving them nervously. The crossed arms superficially resemble the “embrace” gesture, and yet they provide a far more realistic way of reflecting her character’s internal state. Here we can see a demonstration of the pantomimic style giving way to the use of more naturalistic, psychologically nuanced gestures. Ironically, the old-fashioned quality of Hearts of the World manifests itself quite obviously in the editing – an area of film technique usually thought of as the core of Griffith’s innovations. Griffith’s reputation for never having learned classical continuity conventions could well be based on this film, which displays a startling inattention to matching positions and actions. His one strength is in maintaining screen direction, which he does in almost all cases where movements or eyelines link shots. In the street scenes where the Singer encounters the Boy and Cuckoo, her directions of movement are perfectly consistent, and the same is true for the Girl’s gaze as she sees the Singer and Boy kissing. Similarly, his occasional use of shot/reverse shot is perfectly competent, with balanced framings and characters looking off in directions consistent with their positions. The initial meeting and flirtation between the Singer and Boy uses shot/reverse shot in an unexceptionable manner, as does the scene of the boy interrogating a German prisoner in a trench. Griffith also maintains his use of the false eyeline match that he had pioneered in the Biographs. There a look directed offscreen can lead to a shot of what the characters is thinking about, even though that scene may be very distant. In Hearts of the World, an intertitle introduces the action when the Boy is in a trench: “THE BOY, BROKEN-HEARTED, KNOWING THAT RETREAT HAS DOOMED HIS LOVED ONES IN THE VILLAGE”. In medium close-up, the Boy initially looks off left toward the German trenches. He then turns and stares off right. A cut leads to a medium close-up of the Girl praying, and another cut returns us to the same framing on the Boy, reacting in despair. As is usual with this device, Griffith implies that the action “seen” by the looking character is actually happening and that the character somehow knows it – despite the fact that he could not possibly see what he seems to be looking at. Despite Griffith’s loyalty to it, this device did not catch on widely with other filmmakers – though it does appear occasionally, as in Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1921), when the heroine appears to appeal to Count Orlok to spare her husband and he appears to respond, despite the huge distance between them. One impressively up-to-date aspect of the film’s style comes with its occasional uses of effects lighting and night-for-night shooting. Effects lights, or selective lighting created by a source within the scene, had become more widespread during the mid-1910s. The scene in which the Girl sneaks into a storeroom to steal food for the Boy’s three young brothers has Gish carrying an arc lamp in the form of a kerosene lantern. When she first enters, this very bright lamp provides all the light in the scene, casting realistically moving shadows as the lantern bobs slightly in her hand. This attempt at realistic lighting, however, quickly gives way to the practical necessity of allowing the action to be clearly visible. After a cutaway, the return to this locale has the Girl stealing the food, but a strong key light from the top left now provides the main illumination, while the bright lamp is relegated to the background of the set. More impressive and unusual are the night scenes on the battlefield. Griffith had experimented with the use of flares for the night battle in Intolerance. Here one spectacular extreme long shot of the battlefield is lit only with explosions, with the troops being quite visible at the lower portion of the frame. Other shots of the fighting are also made at night, apparently using powerful floodlights to illuminate the trenches and field. Such lighting was still quite unusual in 1917. It would become common about a year later, after the introduction of power163

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

ful arc spotlights developed for military use during the war. Griffith himself makes only limited use of such shooting, quickly introducing a title – “BENEATH THE RISEN MOON” – to motivate a switch back to shots taken in daylight representing action at night. Perhaps partly because it was filmed over a relatively lengthy period in different countries, Hearts of the World seems a particularly uneven Griffith feature. He would achieve more consistent, unified filmmaking in some of the simpler, less pretentious features to come. Nevertheless, Hearts of the World marks a transition when Griffith ceases to be an innovator and becomes a director struggling, with varying degrees of success, to live up to his earlier, exalted reputation. Kristin Thompson

164

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

566 F-4 PICTURE CORP.

THE HUN WITHIN Alternate title: The Enemy Within Working title: F-4 Filming date: Winter 1917–18 Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; A Paramount-Artcraft Special Producer: D.W. Griffith; Famous Players-Lasky Corp. (according to Paul Spehr) Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; A Paramount-Artcraft Special Pasadena, California premiere: 1 May 1918, Clune’s Theatre New York premiere: week prior to 24 August 1918, Rialto Theatre Release date: 8 September 1918 Release length: six reels, 6,319 feet Copyright date: 6 August 1918 (LP12734) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Chester Withey Scenario: Granville Warwick (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith and Stanner E.V. Taylor) Story: Stanner E.V. Taylor Camera: David Abel Music arrangements: cue sheet prepared by James C. Bradford (according to The Moving Picture World, 18 May 1918, pp. 1426, 1428) Cast: Dorothy Gish (Beth, an American girl [Dorothy in the French release version]); George Fawcett (Henry Wagner, a German American [Hermann Wagner in the French release version]); Charles Gerard (Karl Wagner, his son); Douglas MacLean (Frank Douglas, a young American agent); Bert [Herbert] Sutch (Krippen, a German diplomatic agent); Max Davidson (Max, a servant); Lillian Clarke (Leone “the Lynx”, a German spy); Robert Anderson (Krug, a sailor); Erich von Stroheim (Von Bickel); Adolph[e] Lestina (Beth’s father); Kate Bruce (Frank’s mother) NOTE: Some unused footage from Hearts of the World may have been incorporated in this production. An entry on this film is included in Tirages et restaurations de la Cinémathèque française, II (Paris: La Cinémathèque française, 1987), p. 68. Archival sources: Cinémathèque française, 35mm nitrate positive, French intertitles (French release title: Bas les masques) In a large city near New York lives Henry Wagner, a German-American who had left Germany years previously because of his hatred for Prussian autocracy and who has become intensely American. His son Karl however, whose nature is cold, is pro-German despite his father’s protests, and after being educated in Germany he returns home just before Germany involves the world in war. Near the Wagner home lives an invalid, with her daughter, Beth, a charming patriotic girl. The girl’s father at his death begs Wagner to watch over Beth and as the girl seems devoted to Karl, he offers no protest. Frank Douglas, a schoolmate of Beth’s is devotedly attached to her and her seeming preference for Karl causes him great anxiety. Beth is living in the Wagner home and there meets Krippen, a German spy who is assisted by Leone, known as the “Lynx”, a German

165

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Secret Service agent and Krug, a spy, who is a sailor on a transport. Douglas enters the United States Secret Service as operative and is trailing Leone. At a dinner, young Wagner takes the oath binding himself to the service of the Kaiser. It is determined by Krippen and his agents to destroy American shipping and when war is declared by the United States against Germany, Krippen resolves to destroy transports conveying troops to France. Beth is seated in an easy chair one night when she overhears Leone tell Karl that Krug had planted a bomb, secreted in a thermos bottle on board a transport and it had been timed to explode at midnight on the date of sailing of the vessel. Shocked at this proof of the perfidy of the man she believed she loves, Beth upraids [sic] Karl, whereupon he binds and gags her and then conveys her to the mountains where Krippen’s lair is located. Douglas is trailing the spies persistently and […] they decide to get rid of him. He is kidnapped and when his senses leaves [sic] him, the spies throw him out of an automobile into a creek. This revives him and he makes his way with difficulty to the spy rendezvous where he discovers Beth is a prisoner. He eludes the guard and obtains access to Beth who tells him of the attempt to be made to destroy the transport. He has a fierce battle with the guards but manages to place Beth in an automobile and start at full speed to warn the authorities of the transport’s peril. They reach the Wagner home after Karl’s departure and when the father hears of his son’s traitorous conduct, he is frantic with rage. The telephone having been put out of commission by Karl, Beth leaves for a wireless station near by. Karl returns home and when his father upraids [sic] him, he shoots him. A mob gathers outside and Karl is about to be lynched when a troop of cavalry saves him. He and Krippen are taken in custody for trial. Meanwhile Beth and Douglas reach the wireless station and although the bomb is to explode at midnight, the operator at ten minutes of that hour has failed to get in touch with the transport. Krug is about to jump overboard to escape the fate he and his confederates have prepared for the troops aboard the transport, when Beth’s wireless message is received and he apprehended [sic]. The bomb is discovered at one minute of twelve o’clock and it explodes as it is hurled into the water. The elder Wagner recovers from his wound and Beth and Douglas plight their troth. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, August 6, 1918, LP12734 [stamped with date August 10, 1918] The first public showing of the newest D.W. Griffith production was held on May 1 at Clune’s theatre in Pasadena, Cal., and the producer had the satisfaction of watching the audience following the picture with rapt attention, frequently breaking into applause. As is customary when a new picture is finally completed, Mr. Griffith brought the picture out without giving a hint of his connection with it. The picture is scheduled for release on a state rights basis and is temporarily titled “The Enemy Within”. The main title carried the similar announcement that the picture was produced by the F-4 Picture Corporation, “F-4” being the name by which the picture has been known about the studio during its production. Dorothy Gish and George Fawcett are featured and the cast also includes Douglas MacLean, Charles Gerrard, Kate Bruce, Herbert Sutch and Max Davidson. The production was personally directed by Chet Withey, under the supervision of D.W. Griffith. While the picture was not shown for review, it may be said that it is an intensely interesting story and in every way worthy of the Griffith trade-mark. The story deals with German intrigue and the plotting of spies in this country and will undoubtedly prove a money-making attraction. Exhibitor’s Trade Review, May 18, 1918, p. 1905

166

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

There is one brief but vigorous touch in “The Hun Within” that will fill the soul of the spectator with righteous joy. It occurs when a loyal German-American father comes behind his pro-German son while that wry-minded youth is drinking to the portrait of the Kaiser, and the indignant old gentleman plants the toe of his boot where it will best express the state of his feelings. Henry Wagner, the father, can hardly justify his own act in permitting the portrait to hang in his library after this country has declared war with Germany, but the kick he administers to his son, Karl, also wakes up the elder Wagner, and he orders the painting of William, the Hun, destroyed. “The Hun Within” is a Paramount-Artcraft special production written by Granville Warwick and directed by Chester Withey, Dorothy Gish and George Fawcett being the featured players. It is a war story, with practically all the scenes laid in this country. Beth, Henry Wagner’s ward, is engaged to his son, Karl. Beth has another admirer, a onehundred per cent American boy, by name, Frank Douglas. An aspiring mustache worn by Karl tips the beam in his favor, and Frank enters the United States Secret Service and tries to forget his heartache. He is rewarded by discovering that Karl is working for the German cause and assisting in a scheme to blow up a transport after she is at sea. Both Frank and Beth risk their lives in trying to save the ship. They are successful, and Beth does the only thing possible for a true daughter of Uncle Sam – Discards the traitor and marries Frank [sic]. The action after Frank starts to hunt the Huns moves at a rapid rate. Some of the dramatic incidents will not bear very serious consideration, but the theme makes for sound American principles, and many of the thrusts at Hun treachery are sent home with a force that is fine to behold. Chester Withey shows himself a capable director, and David Abel’s camera work is of excellent quality. Dorothy Gish as Beth appears in her first part under her Paramount contract. The character she plays is that of a sweet and lovable little American girl of the best type. The arch spirit of fun that is so closely identified with many of her screen portraits helps to make Beth’s conquest of the spectator an easy task. Some of the mannerisms of the actress are a little too pronounced, and recall the volatile temperament of the jaunty young street singer in “Hearts of the World”. It is in the serious phases of the character of Beth that Dorothy Gish registers much of her best work. The close-ups of her are beautifully done, and arrest the attention by their revelation of true feeling and beauty of expression. George Fawcett handles the part of Henry Wagner with the ease and authority to be expected of an actor of his attainments. Douglas MacLean as Frank and Charles Gerard as Karl contrast their characters skillfully. Able impersonations are contributed by Bert Sutch, Max Davidson, Lillian Clarke, Robert Anderson, Eric [sic] von Stroheim, Adolph Lestina and Kate Bruce. One noticeable slip in the direction is an exterior scene showing a transport lying motionless at the dock followed by an interior view of the same transport with the good ship rolling under the influence of quite a heavy sea. Edward Weitzel, The Moving Picture World, May 18, 1918, p. 1459

No print of this film was available for viewing at the time of this writing. The Hun Within was made shortly after the completion of Hearts of the World and released in the midst of the surge of patriotism that followed America’s entry into World War I. American theaters were awash with anti-German films during the summer of 1918 and provocative titles such as The Kaiser – The Beast of Berlin, The Geezer of Berlin, To Hell with the Kaiser, The Prussian Cur, The Hand of the Hun and Kultur fed the public’s wish to excoriate the enemy. The mood of the public did not allow for subtlety, and the script that Griffith and his old compatriot Stanner E.V. Taylor put together under the joint pseudonym of Granville Warwick was pure wartime melodrama and propaganda for the American cause. Although its title and

167

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

the story of German spies plotting to blow up a ship filled with American soldiers fit the jingoistic mood of the period, Griffith and Taylor added an interesting leavening element: the conflict between a German-born father who was loyal to his adopted country (George Fawcett) and his American-born, German-educated son who joined the spy ring (Charles Gerard). As a good, patriotic American girl should do, Dorothy Gish as Beth, a ward living with the German-American family, switched her affections from the son to the detective who was attempting to foil the plot (Douglas MacLean). Griffith started the picture during the late Winter or early Spring of 1918 as an independent production and assigned Chet Withey to direct it. It was given the working title of F-4 and produced with much secrecy. He apparently intended to incorporate some unused footage from Hearts of the World in this film. It was completed in late April and given a pre-release showing (as The Enemy Within) at Clune’s Theatre in Pasadena, California, on 1 May 1918. Griffith intended to offer it for state rights release, but Famous Players-Lasky decided to release it and in September it became the company’s first Paramount-Artcraft release. The strong and favorable response from the trade press following the Pasadena showing may have influenced Famous Players’ decision to release it. Although she was not the star of Hearts of the World, Dorothy Gish’s role as “The Little Disturber” won critical praise which enhanced her reputation as a versatile actress. It not only led to this part, but also additional offers. Lillian Gish said that Famous Players offered a contract for a million dollars for one or both Gish sisters to make seven films. Dorothy turned it down saying that that much money would ruin a girl just out of her teens (she turned twenty in March; see Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, p. 210). Dorothy had made her reputation as a pretty and lively comedienne, but in The Hun Within she had a chance to play a more serious role – though with some comic touches. She had the help of a strong supporting cast which included Griffith veterans George Fawcett, Lillian Clarke, Adolphe Lestina, Kate Bruce, Max Davidson and relative newcomer Erich von Stroheim. The otherwise melodramatic plot was saved by the tension between father and son. Several critics, including the anonymous critic for The New York Times, singled out George Fawcett for skillfully handling the conflict between family and country. Sympathy for German-Americans (called “hyphenates”) was unusual during a period when people with German names were changing them to avoid the vicious anti-German prejudice sweeping the country. Griffith’s more sympathetic attitude may have been influenced by harsh treatment that Billy Bitzer (Johann Gottlob Wilhelm Bitzer) received while in England filming Hearts of the World. The New York Times critic acknowledged the melodrama – which included kidnapping, a last-minute rescue, and a climax that came as the bomb exploded immediately after it was thrown off the troop ship – but he or she found it “not only acceptable, but stirringly convincing ... to those who are not repelled by the inherent nature of melodrama” (August 26, 1918). “Jolo” (Joshua Lowe) of Variety reviewed it as a Griffith production and paid it an unusual compliment: “In its comparatively unpretentious way – unpretentious for a modern Griffith feature – it is one of the best things he has ever done.” (August 30, 1918). Both praised Chet Withey’s direction and David Abel’s camerawork, and felt that Granville Warwick’s script was important to the film’s success. Following The Hun Within, Dorothy Gish was given a contract to appear in a series of films to be produced under Griffith’s aegis by a new company – The New Art Film Company – and released by Famous Players. Paul Spehr

168

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

567 GAUMONT

GAUMONT NEWS, VOL. XVI, NO. 2-L Subtitle: The Pacific Coast. Liberty Loan Tanks Tour California – Motion Picture Industry Starts Drive for Millions Filming date: Spring 1918 Location: Los Angeles Release date: 1918 Release length: one reel, 110 ft. Copyright date: not copyrighted Camera: not known On camera: D.W. Griffith; Mary Pickford; Lillian Gish; George Fawcett; Neil Hamilton? Archival sources: George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive (William K. Everson/New York University Collection); Kevin Brownlow Collection, 16mm acetate positive

This one-reel newsreel contains several items about motion picture people, and there are two on D.W. Griffith. The first is introduced with the title “D.W. GRIFFITH MAKES STIRRING APPEAL IN LOS ANGELES”. It shows him atop a wooden tank, tilt down over heads of a crowd to massed speakers below (I suspect these are the men who go out into the crowd to take the money). The second item is introduced with the title “LOS ANGELES, CALIF. – MOTION PICTURE PRODUCER IS HONORED BY THE GOVERNMENT – D.W. GRIFFITH WHO DIRECTED AND PRODUCED HEARTS OF THE WORLD AND OTHER GREAT PHOTO-DRAMAS, IS PRESENTED WITH THE CHEVRON OF HONOR”.

Griffith is on an interior set of The Great Love with Lillian Gish as a nurse and Robert Harron as a British army officer, George Fawcett as an army chaplain and an actor resembling Neil Hamilton. Griffith finishes talking to the cast and sits beneath a Debrie camera when two officials enter and shake hands with him. “MR. GRIFFITH IS THE ONLY MAN TO RECEIVE THIS DECORATION FROM THE GOVERNMENT”. Once it is pinned on his sleeve, we see in close-up the rather modest cloth badge: “US War Savings Service”. The officials shake hands again and they are followed by the cast. This is all that survives of The Great Love, a film which used much of the footage shot in England for Hearts of the World and exploited the recent drama of Sir Roger Casement, Irish patriot (here called Sir Roger Brighton and played by Henry B. Walthall) who is presented as a German collaborator. Kevin Brownlow

169

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

568 D.W. GRIFFITH

THE GREAT LOVE Filming date: Summer 1917 (United Kingdom footage); April–May 1918 Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; Griffith Park, Los Angeles (according to Karl Brown); Convalescent Hospital on the estate of Lady Diana Manners, United Kingdom Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; Artcraft Pictures New York premiere: 11 August 1918, Strand Theatre Release date: 12 August 1918 Release length: seven reels, 7,048 ft.; five to eight reels (according to contemporary reviews) Copyright date: 3 August 1918 (LP 12720) Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: Captain Victor Maurier (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith and Stanner E.V. Taylor) Story: Captain Victor Maurier Camera: G.W. Bitzer, George Schneiderman Assistant photographer: Karl Brown? (according to Karl Brown) Special effects cameraman: Karl Brown Set designer: Charlie Baker? (according to Karl Brown) Film editor: James Smith (according to modern sources) Music arrangements: Carli Densmore Elinor, Louis F. Gottschalk Cast: Lillian Gish (Alice Susanna “Susie” Broadplains); Robert Harron (James Young of Youngtown, PA); Henry B. Walthall (Sir Roger Brighton [Giovanni Alighieri, according to some sources]); Gloria Hope (Jessie Lovewell [Jessie Holloway, according to some sources]); Maxfield Stanley (John Broadplains); George Fawcett (Rev. Josephus Broadplains); Rosemary Theby (Mlle. Corintee, a dancer [Mlle. Gabrielle, according to some sources]); George Siegmann (Mr. Seymour of Brazil [formerly of Berlin]); D.W. Griffith (A passerby); Queen Alexandra of England, Lady Diana Manners, the Princess of Monaco, Miss Elizabeth Asquith, the Countess of Drogheda, the Countess of Massarene, Lady John Lavery, Hon. Mrs. Montague, Miss Violet Kippel, Miss Bettina Stuart-Wortley, Sir Frederick Treves, the Baroness Rothschild, Sir Henry Stanley, Mrs. Buller, aka Lily Elsie, the Duchess of Beaufort? (as themselves) NOTE: A copy of the musical arrangement was sent with every print to exhibitors. Archival sources: FILM – none known. See Gaumont News, Vol. XVI, No. 2-L (DWG Project, #567). MUSIC – Library of Congress, violin part, 77 pages (Los Angeles 1918); location: LC M1527.E45G7; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3212, Item 60 When Jim Young of Youngstown, Pa., hears of the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium he enlists in the Canadian army. While on a few hours’ leave from his London training camp Jim meets and becomes acquainted with Susie, an Australian girl. The acquaintance ripens into love, and when Jim leaves for the front Sir Roger Brighton, an unscrupulous fortune hunter, tries to persuade Susie, who has inherited twenty thousand pounds, to marry him before he leaves

170

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

on a business trip to France. The rest of the story tells of the love adventures of the girl and her two suitors, interrupted by international complications and the machinations of German adventurers masquerading as radicals, with whom Sir Roger becomes entangled. The transformation of England’s garden of fair women from butterflies to society workers in hospitals and munition [sic] factories is shown. Among them is Susie, who finds “the great love” in service for country and the great cause of democracy. The Moving Picture World, July 27, 1918, p. 593

This “nasty little offbeat melodrama … with a typically bad title” – in the words of its specialeffects cameraman Karl Brown (Adventures with D.W. Griffith, p. 201) – is a lost feature, probably of seven reels (although reports ran from five reels to eight). Notwithstanding Brown’s intriguing characterization, it is doubtful that recovery of The Great Love would much change our assessment of Griffith. “It is ahead of the average feature in handling but it isn’t anything to add to the Griffith laurels”, in Motion Picture Classic’s verdict (October 1918, p. 77). While in England for Hearts of the World, Griffith had shot footage of titled society nobles, especially noblewomen, who were supporting the war effort, and for a time thought of using the footage in a film to be called Women and the War. Instead, drawing from the story of Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement’s World War I flirtation with Germany and his execution for treason by the British, D.W. Griffith and Stanner E.V. Taylor (writing together pseudonymously as “Capt. Victor Maurier”) came up with the uninspired story for The Great Love, set in England and France and featuring Henry B. Walthall as “Sir Roger Brighton”. Walthall and Griffith were working together for the first time since The Birth of a Nation (1915). This time, Karl Brown remembered, “Walthall played the dirtiest kind of scoundrel possible…. He was a respected, honored Briton by day, but by night he drove his expensive car to the target areas the Germans wanted to destroy and shone his spotlight upward to show the Zeps where to drop their bombs”. The leads of Hearts of the World were also reunited. Lillian Gish played a visiting Australian minister’s daughter, “Susie Broadplains”, who escapes Sir Roger’s clutches thanks to the great love of Robert Harron’s character, an American who has enlisted early in the war through Canada. In Griffith’s version, Sir Roger meets his end by shooting himself. Reviews were not merely mixed – they seem contradictory, making the film’s style and quality difficult to guess. Depending on the critic, it was edited either remarkably slowly or with notable speed. The special effects of the Zeppelin attack were either exciting or painfully drawn out. Walthall’s performance was either the best of his career or wildly melodramatic. Of the editing, for instance, The Moving Picture World found the most “notable innovation” in the use of “the tableau effect of a portion of its scenes. Groups of characters are shown that register but one thought, sometimes with the immovable concentration of plastic creations…. The man who popularized the cut-back on the screen makes such slight use of it in his latest picture it is practically not used at all” (August 24, 1918, p. 1156). Variety evidently saw something different: “Griffith appears to have edited the film with a carving knife. If other directors who have followed him in everything else will also ape this item, the film public will be pleased. Likewise they may have to watch two-reelers, for if the others ever cut like he did in this one, the ordinary five-reeler with its padding out will be at once reduced to the short length” (August 16, 1918, p. 36). One explanation of the apparent contradiction may be that Griffith was editing together relatively static shots of British nobility with new action scenes shot in Los Angeles. In a generally positive appreciation of the film’s incorporation of actuality footage of battles and hospitals, The New York Times suggested that “sometimes there seem to be missing links” between the film’s various parts (August 12, 1918, sec. 7, p. 1). 171

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

In any case, it is not likely that Griffith’s sycophancy before British royalty brought out his best. As he put it in the film’s pressbook: “I never really knew the full meaning of the word ‘graciousness’ until I went over to England…. Queen Alexandra was gracious enough to come down to Lady Diana Manners’ hospital which she conducts on her country estate and devoted nearly an entire day in arranging the hospital scenes and appearing in them herself…. It was an honor paid the photodrama which could not be equalled” (Wagenknecht and Slide, The Films of D.W. Griffith, p. 101). Also appearing in the film were the Princess of Monaco, Elizabeth Asquith (daughter of the former Prime Minister), and assorted countesses, baronesses, knights, and ladies. The footage of these nobles had not made it into Hearts of the World, and no doubt one purpose of The Great Love was to prevent Griffith from having to inform British royalty that their images had been left entirely on the cutting-room floor. Lost, too, with this film is one of Griffith’s rare cameos. As The Moving Picture World reported, “In The Great Love, the director appears in person for an instant, one of the idle throng that saunters past the tables in front of a Paris restaurant…” (op. cit., p. 1156). Scott Simmon

172

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

569 D.W. GRIFFITH

LILLIAN GISH IN A LIBERTY LOAN APPEAL Filming date: Summer 1918 Location: California Producer: D.W. Griffith Distributor: not known Release date: September–October 1918 Release length: one reel Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Author: D.W. Griffith? Camera: not known Cast: Lillian Gish, Kate Bruce, George Fawcett, Carol Dempster Archival Sources: none known Despite her mother’s pleas to buy Liberty Bonds, Lillian decides to buy wearing apparel. Falling asleep, she dreams her home has been captured by Huns, her brother killed and her mother and sister carried away. Two Hun officers enter her room and she tries frantically to escape. She awakens and her relief is so great that she puts all her money in Liberty Bonds. The Moving Picture World, October 5, 1918, p. 123

At the time of this writing, no viewing material of this film is known to survive. Apparently all that remains of this one-reel Liberty Bond short is a single photograph. In this image (copy obtained thanks to Barbara Hall, of the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles) Lillian Gish stands with outstretched arms, hands full of cash, as if desiring to give the money away. She is dressed in an elegant outfit, one would suppose purchased before her radical change of heart. Behind, to her left, sits a smiling Carol Dempster, seemingly approving of Gish’s gesture; standing are George Fawcett and Kate Bruce as her parents, appearing solicitous; at right is a young actor as her brother, looking rather astonished. Although nothing else is known about this short – Gish mentions nothing in her memoirs, neither does Karl Brown nor any other member of Griffith’s production family – much information is available on Griffith’s activities in support of the World War. In an extremely well-researched book by Craig W. Campbell, Reel America and World War I, a detailed picture emerges of all war-related goings-on within the movie industry at this time. Films urging preparedness were made in the United States as early as 1915. During 1916, moviegoers were bombarded with both sides of the issue – while there were documentaries, newsreels, features and serials with titles like The Price of Liberty and If My Country Should Call, there were also films such as Intolerance, expressing anti-war sentiment. But war fever and what some have called “hyperpatriotism” overwhelmed all else after the United States declared war on 6 April 1917. Soon recruitment films were being shown throughout the country. Recruitment booths were set up in theatre lobbies. Carl Laemmle even had one of these booths erected at Universal City! Before long, Hollywood was making such pro-war features as Mary Pickford’s The Little American (Cecil B. DeMille, 1917). By far, however, the biggest and most enthusiastic involve173

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

ment by Hollywood stars and studios was in the five Liberty Loan drives (1917–19). Images of Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin selling bonds are very familiar. William S. Hart, Marguerite Clark, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and other stars toured the country as well, encouraging eager crowds to buy bonds. An interesting aspect of the loan drives is that they were headed up by the Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, who would later play an important role in the creation of United Artists, along with Pickford, Fairbanks, Chaplin and Griffith. Griffith was busy at this time striking a blow for the Allied cause by producing his film Hearts of the World. He spent a good part of 1917 in England and France, meeting with British officials, touring the war zone, and shooting footage for the film. But he also was involved with specifically American causes, agreeing to chair a special War-Cooperation Committee, which was formed to assist the government in the dissemination of propaganda. This position seems to have been largely symbolic, with other representatives of the industry throughout the country doing most of the actual work. We know that Griffith was occupied making several features during this period, but yet he was also active in buying bonds, marching in parades, and making sure his studio raised money for the Liberty Loan drives – some $86,000 at one point in 1918. And he produced one of the thirty-six one-reel “Liberty Loan Specials”, for the fourth campaign in September–October of that year. Craig Campbell’s book lists all of these films, among them: A Bullet for Berlin (William S. Hart, 1918), 100% American (director unknown, 1918, with Mary Pickford), Sic ’Em, Sam (Albert Parker, 1918, with Douglas Fairbanks), Banzai (director unknown, 1918, with Sessue Hayakawa) and The Bond (Charlie Chaplin, 1918). Other stars taking part in these “Specials” were George M. Cohan, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Alla Nazimova, Dustin Farnum, William Farnum, Norma Talmadge, Charles Ray, Alice Brady, Geraldine Farrar, Mae Murray and Louise Fazenda. So at some point, probably in mid- to late summer, Griffith shot his contribution to the effort. He used the actors who were working in his features of the moment. Not even Russell Merritt recognizes the young actor who played Lillian Gish’s brother in the short, but speculates that perhaps he also had a small role in The Girl Who Stayed at Home (D.W. Griffith, 1919). This was the first time that Carol Dempster had a featured role in a film starring Lillian Gish – and it was just at the beginning of the period when she would be supplanting Gish as the director’s favorite. And the story, as described in The Moving Picture World, sounds like a typical Griffith scenario. Eileen Bowser’s index to The D.W. Griffith Papers quotes an article that appeared in The Moving Picture World on 7 September 1918. This article mentioned Griffith shooting footage in the U.S. House of Representatives in late August and reported that “he will use these scenes in an American propaganda film he is making for the government”. From the description of Lillian Gish in a Liberty Loan Appeal, this footage most likely was not used in this short. A letter from Griffith to Frank R. Wilson of the Liberty Loan Executive Committee, on 13 September 1918, does seem to refer to the Gish film. Griffith thanks Wilson “for your words of encouragement regarding the little picture. I only wish I could do something of real help.” He goes on to say: “we find it very difficult to know just how far to go and just what to do … to get the effect to the mass of the people. We have to hit very hard to hold an influence over their interest. Yet, as I know, it is your desire that we be careful in this delicate matter to make just the impression desired.” Also in The D.W. Griffith Papers is a letter written by Griffith on 5 November 1918, to another government official. This, of course, was well after the Liberty Loan short had been completed. The letter says: “At this writing we are engaged in the production of a propaganda 174

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

motion picture for the War Department under the command of General Crowder, United States Provost Marshal General. This is a very important picture and will consume some time in making and the handling of a great number of all kinds of people in and around Government posts and various municipal, state and government buildings.” So we can assume that Griffith was contemplating another government-sponsored film. But the letter quoted above was written just three days before the signing of the Armistice, which ended the war and made the production unnecessary. A fifth, and final, Liberty Loan drive began in April 1919, reusing (and in some cases re-editing) some of the previous drive’s “Liberty Loan Specials”. A few new shorts were made (Fairbanks and Hart both contributed new films), but nothing on the scale of the film Griffith had planned. Karen Latham Everson

175

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

570 D.W. GRIFFITH

A ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY Alternate title: The Romance of Happy Valley (probably spurious, from copyright records) Series: Griffith’s Short Story Series Filming date: June–early August 1918 Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; Artcraft Pictures New York premiere: 26 January, 1919, Strand Theatre Release date: 29 January 1919 Release length: six reels, 5,905 feet (cited for the original release in The American Film Institute Catalog) Copyright date: 31 December 1918 (LP13262) Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: Captain Victor Maurier (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith) Story: Mary Castleman Camera: G.W. Bitzer Second cameraman: Karl Brown Film editor: James Smith (according to modern sources) Music arranged by: Harley Hamilton Cast: Lillian Gish (Jennie Timberlake); Robert Harron (John L. Logan, Jr.); George Fawcett (John L. Logan, Sr.); Kate Bruce (Mrs. Logan); George Nicholls (William Timberlake); Bertram Grassby [Grasby] (Judas [The City Man]); Porter Strong (The Negro farmhand [or The Negro servant]/[The funny waiter]); Adolphe Lestina (Vinegar Watkins [or Jim Darkly]); Lydia Yeamans Titus (Old Lady Smiles [Auntie Smiles]); Andrew Arbuckle (The minister); Frances Sparks (Topsy); (according to modern sources) Carol Dempster (A girl met by John Logan, Jr., in New York) Archival sources: FILM – Gosfilmofond of Russia, 35mm acetate negative (Russian intertitles). This is the source of all the known archival elements of the film. The Museum of Modern Art created a 35mm acetate negative with reconstructed English intertitles from a 35mm acetate positive received from Gosfilmofond in 1960. The Donnell Library in New York holds a 16mm acetate positive of undetermined generation. MUSIC – Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), orchestral parts (flute, clarinets, cornets, trombone, tympani and drums; violin I, cello, bass); printed by Felix Violé, Los Angeles, December 1918; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 68 In a sleepy little Kentucky town, entirely mythical but whose counterpart we all know – in the County of Make-Believe, on the Pike that Never Was – a town which conveys a deeply religious atmosphere, still clinging to the doctrine of complete sanctification – this simple romance is laid. Here the dour, pessimistic Vinegar Watkins continually wages an unseen battle with joy and hope typified in Old Lady Smiles, holding her post year in and year out at the old toll gate on the pike. Down this same Pike let us travel to an inn in the back country, popular in the summer with Louisvillians [sic], and occasionally a New Yorker finds its quiet seclusion attractive.

176

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

John L. Logan, Jr., a lanky, gawky, country boy of maybe nineteen, dressed in overalls and wide-brimmed straw hat, comes home from the fields every evening and listens with bated breath to the extravagant tales of that magical city – New York – as told by some traveling salesman, with the assistance of a Sunday Supplement. This particular salesman is somewhat of a dandy, very sleek and well groomed and, [sic] to the lad’s ignorant ears the story of success he tells is truly marvelous. The city man’s statement – “I was a poor country boy like you. Now I make twenty-five dollars – nearly every week.” – gives added tone to the boy’s dreams. But the ambitious dreams of a country boy are not uncommon and John Logan’s may not have been unlike those dreamed by Abraham Lincoln in a not far distant cabin. The owner of the Inn [sic], John L. Logan, Sr., is a hard-fisted, shrewd, narrow man, whose hopes all center in his boy. His wife, a gentle soul, goes quietly singing about her work – usually a favorite hymn – “Shall we gather at the river?”. Together these two sit under the great shade trees and while he smokes his pipe and she prepares the corn for the evening meal, they discuss their plans for the boy. He looks proudly from his well-kept acres to the plentifully stocked barns. “Well, Ma, the place is nearly paid for – John will get the best farm ’round.” The mother merely says “Yes, Father”, but in her face is a look of pride and content. Fresh from his dreams, young John comes to his father and mother and tells them with very little ceremony that he wants to go to New York and make money. The father jumps up in quick rage and orders the boy back to his work – “and to forget such nonsense”. Sheepishly, John turns with his hoe and goes back to the corn patch – but in his heart is determination. The father heatedly exclaims to Mrs. Logan, who has shown only surprise at the boy’s outburst – “That’s gratitude for you! Just when he gets of some use to us, he wants to gallivant away”. The farm adjoining does not show results of the same care that have made the Logan place the best place around. Here lives Jennie Timberlake, a quaint, motherless, pretty little girl, who has been trying since the Third Reader to show John Logan how important her affection is to him. On this same afternoon she is busily engaged in a struggle between duty to her father, who wants her clothes patterned after Mother’s and the terrible fear that unless she follows a more up-to-date model, Kentucky will lose John. She is examining pattern books and comparing styles and with it all is so excited that she forgets a lot of important things and we can plainly see why she is sometimes known as “forgetful Jennie”. She finally chooses a most attractive pattern, sent with the monthly Farmers’ Almanac, and brings it somewhat hesitatingly to her father. He is big and slow and can find no beauty in the new style and all her cute pleadings go for nothing. A curt – “What was good enough for your maw, is good enough for anybody” – settles the matter of the up-to-date dress. Nothing troubles her shiftless, lazy father for very long and when a little while later he takes his afternoon nap, she is at her regular occupation of keeping the flies away from him. Later they go together to work in the garden. But the work is far too strenuous for father and he finds it necessary to take another nap under the trees. Jennie works on until her hoe breaks. John is working in the adjoining field and she knows it; so of course she must take the hoe to him for fixing. The matter of mending the hoe takes very little time and then he blurts out his ambitions. She is horror-stricken at such radical ideas but gives him due admiration when he tells her that “New York’s the place for a man”. “It’s a grand place, of course –” she tells him – “But they say the weather’s TURRIBLE! There are no farms, no corn, no flowers, – and they come away as soon as they get there.” But her arguments carry very little weight against the lure of the city. Father awakens and with very few words tells her she is not yet through hoeing the corn patch and she goes back to work. Saturday night comes around and Jennie makes more strenuous efforts in the battle against

177

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

the allurement of New York. She carefully cleans her hat with a brush and soap and trims it with a fresh sprig of flowers and ribbon and adds the finishing touches to the wonderful new pink gown. Sunday evening she is decked in all her finery long before the church hour and with a last self-satisfied look in the mirror decides that if this rig doesn’t keep him home nothing will. John and his mother leave alone for services while John Logan, Sr. remains at home to nurse an aching back. Jennie and her father come first to the Locust Grove Sanctificationist Church and take their places. The Locust Grove Church – how many of them are throughout the land. A little narrow perhaps – but if we smile at these quaint people, let it be through tears of sympathy for from similar strongholds of Faith have come the very highest ideals. Sometimes they do backslide but remember, the DREAM is always UPWARD. Soon John and his mother arrive and she leaves him to enter alone [sic] she goes to the minister, standing hospitably at the door to welcome his flock, and asks for a special effort to bring her boy back to the fold – to save him from the terrible temptation. During the sermon Jennie has a very hard time keeping awake. She finds a nibble of candy now and then [sic] helps some but has a dreadful fear of being caught in the act of putting it in her mouth. When the minister has finished his usual exhortation he causes a stir in his congregation by telling them that “There is a poor soul here struggling against temptation – lured away from Love and Duty by Sodom and Gomorrah – the Great City of New York!” This statement causes a sensation and each member looks at his neighbor to see who may be the tempted one. John is no exception to this and looks around mildly interested in who this might be. The minister goes on with his pleading – “We want the soul of that boy – while we sing Hymn 206, we want that struggling soul to come to this front bench and place himself in God’s keeping.” Slowly it dawn’t [sic] on John’s mind that it is his case the minister refers to. In terrible distress he is torn between a desire to atone and dislike of this publicity. Jennie watches him and prays earnestly for his salvation. Finally John stands and slowly and sheepishly approaches the Mourners’ Bench, while the choir sings “Jesus, Lover of My Soul, let me to thy bosom fly”. His mother comes with him and with the minister’s arm around him on one side and his mother pleading on the other, he acknowledges the evil of his ways and promises to walk the straight and narrow path forever more and to banish all thoughts of the wicked city. In her pew little Jennie with tears in her eyes fervently prays that God save him from the Devil – and New York. The minister congratulates John and the entire congregation join [sic] in singing “Rock of Ages”. After services one by one each member approaches and gives to the new brother the right hand of fellowship. At last it is all over and John and Jennie find themselves lagging behind the others on the moonlit road home. They come to a shallow stream and as he helps her over she whispers shyly – “You’ll never backslide none, will you?” With a tender gentleness he kisses one cheek and then another and answers – “I promise you by this I never will.” Arrived at her own gate he leaves her and happier than she has been for weeks, she skips up the walk. Mrs. Logan and John come to where the old man sits in the garden and the mother tells him – “Pa, he’s joined the church and is going to stay home and be a good boy.” The old man is inclined to be playful in his delight over this news and takes the big boy in his lap as if he were a child. He playfully spanks the lad and they go arm in arm into the house. Everyone is glad over John’s conversion excepting perhaps sour, disgruntled, old Vinegar Watkins, who continually must look on the dark side of things. To John’s father he expresses the opinion that he’ll be backsliding soon.

178

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Perhaps this taunt makes the father unduly harsh. At any rate he gives John a good round scolding for nothing more serious than a game of ball during working hours and sends him back to his plowing. Somehow everything goes wrong on this day and the plow hits a buried stump. John is thrown violently against the handle and the language he uses greatly shocks Jennie who has been coming along behind the fence toward him. She cries out to him “You’re backsliding as fast as you can!” But this has no effect on the angry John. He tells her that he is tired of all this – that he is going to New York to make money. Jennie’s father has a bad attack of neuralgia and she is a most faithful nurse. Before going to bed she ties a long cord to his wrist and the other end to her own and gives him instructions to jerk the cord and wake her up if it hurts any more. Then she goes to bed herself after carefully doing her hair up in curl papers and saying her prayers. Tonight, besides her usual “Now I lay me down to sleep” she adds a special petition – “Oh – Oh – don’t ever let him backslide!” One more look under the bed to be sure of no intruders and she settles herself for the night. In his darkened room John Logan packs his few belongings in an old bag and tiptoes down stairs. A pair of quarrelsome cats on the back fence annoy his father and when he turns back to his bedroom after putting a stop to their squabbles he meets his son face to face. Sunday clothes and packed bag and overcoat on his arm tell their own story. The old man flies into a rage and tells him that he couldn’t make a living in New York – that he would starve to death. But John has made up his mind and doggedly he replies – “Well, you won’t hear from me till I do – not a word! And when I come back, I’ll buy your old place!” With this as a parting shot he leaves. His mother has heard the hot words and climbs through a window onto the porch and when John comes down the walk she steps out from under a great tree to kiss him good-bye. Her gentleness almost makes him change his mind, but when he turns, he sees his father standing, club in hand, on the porch he turns his head away from home. His mother kisses him and gives him her blessing and he goes on into the night. He comes to say good-bye to Jennie. He walks nervously up and down outside her window before summoning courage to knock on the pane. Jennie hears and is frightened. She jerks the cord tied to her father’s wrist and tells him there are burglars outside the house. Paw gets down the old fashioned shotgun and when John finally gets up nerve enough to knock on the window he is met with the muzzle of a gun thrust into his face. He explains that it is only Johnny – on his way to New York. Jennie is genuinely alarmed. She hastily takes down her curl papers and slips on a calico dress over her night gown and slips out into the orchard to plead with the boy. At first she tells him if he is going to be so smart and run away, she will get married while he is gone. She couln’t [sic] think just whom she would marry. But in the end she tells John Logan Jr., she will wait for him, and he promises to be back in a year. The next night Jennie carefully writes 365 days on a slate and directly beneath 364, crossing out one day. At the Logan’s [sic] the mother finds comfort in her faith and reads aloud to her husband and Vinegar Watkins from her bible. “…and the greatest of these is Charity!” she finishes. The old man is almost softened by this text when Vinegar Watkins breaks in with a sarcastic laugh and the comment that Charity and Love are all rot – money’s the only thing that really counts in this world. Chuckling derisevly [sic] he goes on his way. Jennie finds the old familiar places lonely without John and comes sadly to the toll-gate. There Old Lady Smiles, always on the job, tells her to cheer up – that God smiles from the flowers and corn and all growning [sic] things and that she just must smile back. The homely philosophy brings a sad little smile to the girl but she is thinking always of the runaway John.

179

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

In the city it would of course be expected that John would be engaged in some magnificent occupation – but the facts of the case are that he is working for a toy manufacturing concern and his chief ambition is to invent a toy frog that will swim. We see him in his dingy little room with every mechanical magazine he can lay his hands on strewn about while he spends hours in a vain effort to make his frog swim. He is fast becoming utterly discouraged. Long ago he decided to write no more letters home – pride may have been the reason – or perhaps the millions who have left home can answer. A train from the city arriving in the little home town leaves a newcomer – ragged and furtive. This descendant of Judas Iscariot finds shelter in a deserted cave close to town. He immediately prepares to improve his appearance by a change of clothes and a shave. Jennie keeps good track of the days until John’s return and every night carefully marks off another day until a year is passed. On the day of his promised return she dresses herself in her very best and sits all day anxiously watching the clock and the roadway. Twilight comes and the night stage is her last hope. She hears the horses approaching and eagerly watches from her window the spot where the stage can first be seen as it rounds the curve in the road. First the horses, then the driver, appear, and then the back seats of the old carry-all – empty! With a terrible disappointment and a heart as heavy as lead, she rubs out her slate and once again writes 365 days. The crows have been disturbing old Mr. Logan’s corn patch and he uses some of John’s old clothes to make a scarecrow. Jennie comes down the road with her basket of groceries and sees the precious coat hanging there in the rain and sun. She goes home for one of her father’s old coats, takes John’s coat off the scarecrow, and rigs up crossed sticks of her own under the big trees and affectionately lays her face against the old coat trying to make real the presence of the errant John. Six months of the new year slip away and the sleepy little town has changed not at all. There is a new resident – the transformed Judas – not a typical city dandy. He begins to find his life dull although quite safe and thinks perhaps Jennie Timberlake would furnish some amusement. His politeness at the toll-gate first attracts her attention and she cannot refuse him the privilege of walking home with her. They loiter by the brook because his tales of New York demand attention from Jennie and when he asks her to meet him again that evening her desire to hear more of the dreadful place that has swallowed up John, leads her to promise to come back. On her way home she stops for a chat with her scarecrow. “You see”, she tells it, “You stayed away so long, I’m going out with another man.” Before evening, however, she changes her mind and she rushes out to the scarecrow with a ring and excitedly whispers – “Marry me quick! I’m backsliding!” – and goes through the marriage ceremony there alone with her idol. She comes late to her tryst with the Judas and explains that she cannot see him again – she is a married woman. He cannot understand her meaning but she is apparently so sincere that he is forced to let her back home. John has not lived through all these months in the city without temptation. He works night after night on the mechanical contraption that is to make his fortune but has no success. One summer’s evening a couple of the girls from the same boarding house and a boy friend come in to see him and invite him to go stepping. He assents eagerly and a vision of the happy crowds on the dance floor comes to him – but he changes his mind and tells them he cannot – he must wait until the frog swims before he can have any more good times. The three laugh at him for a slow old poke and go on to their pleasure. John goes back on his knees over his miniature pond and tries once again to make the frog swim – but it will not. And so eight years pass from the time of John’s going away. At home affairs have not progressed so smoothly. Adversity has come upon John Logan, Sr., and the caustic comments of Vinegar Watkins have not helped him to bear his burden bravely. They sit outside of the inn in the evening

180

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

and Watkins jeers and laughs until old Mr. Logan is nearly wild and goes inside to where his wife is placidly engaged in her usual tasks. She fondles a toy horse of her baby’s and hides it under her sewing when she hears her husband coming. He tells her that there is danger of losing their home – that a mortgage is due and he does not know where he can raise another cent. She refuses to be worried and only tells him the Lord will provide! However, things go on from bad to worse and their last week on the old place is upon them. In the boy’s room his mother carefully packs up all the homely little souvenirs of her boy’s babyhood and childhood that she has saved. It is truly pitiful to see the two broken old people choosing the few belongings they are allowed to take. Their old negro servant, with them since John’s departure, comes into the hall to the old man and tell him he quits if he does not receive the wages due him. This is the last straw that makes the old man desperate. He determines on a final effort to raise the money in a neighboring town. Jennie has kept faithful track of the days all these years. She has grown to womanhood and her kind heart and gentle ways have made her a comfort in many a sick room. Old Lady Smiles is very ill but has lost none of her cheer and she loves to have Jennie sit beside her and play oldfashioned tunes on her accordian [sic]. But Jennie is not happy. She comes home to her little room and takes out her dusty slate. She writes “7th year, 187 days” and then she crosses out the numbers and writes beneath the honest conclusion “Old Maid” and determines to stop figuring. The old colored servant of the Logans having failed in all his attempts to get money from the old man finally comes to Mrs. Logan with a request for his wages but she can only tell him that “The Lord will provide”. In the considerably more dingy room, John still struggles with his frog. And then, one night, he wound up the spring and put the frog in the toy lake and – it swam! The evening train arrives at the little station. Among the newcomers it brings to town are a young couple, evidently just married, and a couple of well[-]dressed young men. John Logan, Sr., comes to his friend in a neighboring town and dallys [sic] around trying to summon the courage to ask for the loan. A game of pool interests him for a while but finally he gets the courage to ask his friend for the money he wants. The answer is not wholly unexpected – “Sorry, but I can’t do a thing for you.” In the dining room the newly married couple are enjoying a most substantial meal and through the cashier’s window a little pickaninny stares with round, shinging [sic] eyes at the display of good things. At another table one of the young men who arrived with the honeymooners has just finished his dinner and drawing out a big wad of bills asks for change for a hundred dollar bill. The little darkey sees this wealth and his eyes almost pop out of his head. It is evident that the young man is not quite accustomed to his wealth and shows a pardonable inclination to “show off”. From the door outside old man Logan [sic] has watched all these proceedings and when the stranger flashes his roll and the darkey waiter exclaims “I suttinly bows low to that exposition!” the thought comes to him that just a little of that money is all that the old man needs to put him on his feet again. After liberal tips all around the stranger goes out of the dining room onto the porch and walks briskly off down the Pike. At a distance Old Man Logan follows him. The Judas of the story appears again in company with two other well-dressed crooks. With the aid of an acetylene torch they burn through the iron bars of the town’s bank and while two watch, Judas enters and secures the bank’s store of gold. They have all but gotten safely away when they are discovered and the cry of “Burglars!” is raised in the quiet street. The trio make their escape. The stranger comes to the inn of the Logans. He finds it shabby and overgrown with untrained vines. Coming up onto the ramshackle porch his knock is answered by the old Negro servant who tells him all the folks are out, they will be back in the morning. He tells the servant he wishes a

181

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

room and is shown upstairs as something of a curiosity. The negro’s [sic] reward is a royal tip. He decides that he need wait no longer for his wages – the tip will do – and tying his few belongings in a bandana handkerchief he leaves the Logan’s [sic] for good. The stranger takes off his coat and putting his money and other valuables under the pillow, throws himself on the bed for a nap. Old Mr. Logan sees the stranger enter his inn and secure a room. Then the evil thought in the back of the old man’s head begins to take active form. Creeping stealthily up the stairs he comes to the outside of the room and listens in the hallway. Not hearing any sound he softly opens the door and enters. In the dark he finds his way to the head of the bed and has his hand on the coveted money when the man on the bed suddenly comes to life. There is a scuffle in the dark that lasts for some moments and then the old man stands up horrified p [sic] – the man on the bed has fallen back, dead. In a panic the old man gathers up the body, and first being sure there is no one around, carries it down the stairs, out into the orchard and lays it in the tall grass under the trees. While he is out Mrs. Logan returns and sees there has been someone in the house. With a faint hope that has never left her in all the long years she goes up to John’s old room, lighting her way with an oil lamp. She finds the bed rumpled and a man’s coat hanging on the headboard. Under the pillow she finds a watch that she opens with trembling hands and inside she sees her own picture and the inscription “To my boy” – the same watch she had given her son years before on the day he received grace in the little country church. With a wild joy in her heart she hurries downstairs and meets her husband as he comes in from the orchard. As she had been quiet in trouble she is quiet now in her joy and says simply “Pa, John’s come home!” She tells him of the watch and tells him of the room upstairs. She innocently imagines the old man’s quick exclamation and his staggering actions are a result of joy and leads him up to the room to give him proof. At the door upstairs he stumbles and can scarcely stand. With hands wildly clutching his white hair he whispers hoarsely; [sic] “My own son – and I – I came up here to –” and can go no farther. Mrs. Logan opens the door and gently leads him in while in such agony of soul as no one can describe he follows her. When Mr. and Mrs. Logan enter the room a tall, well[-]dressed, good[-]looking man turns from the window and steps toward them. Mrs. Logan gives just one cry “My Boy!” and with incredulous joy comes to him – in a moment he is in her arms again – her lost baby! Mr. Logan stands stupidly staring – in horrible nightmare he finally summons strength to ask “Didn’t you come up here? Weren’t you in this room?” The young man laughs lightly and answers that he was, but had gone to the window and had seen a man running across the field, apparently wounded and two others in pursuit. The chase had interested him and he had rushed downstairs and out to see what it was all about. He met the pursuers who were the sheriff and his constable but they couldn’t find a trace of the fugitive – the man who had robbed the town’s bank and been shot when trying to escape. So John had returned to the room and was still puzzling over the mystery of the missing fugitive when his father and mother entered. Now the father sees the explanation of the man on the bed, the man that for a few mad moments he thought had been his own son. He understood now why the short tussle on the bed should have killed the man – he was the fugitive and so badly wounded that his struggle with the old Mr. Logan was a death grapple. Together mother, father and son go downstairs and at the foot of the steps meet the sheriff who explains that they had found their man all right but could not understand how he got that far, the way he was wounded.

182

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

John leaves his father and mother and goes off over a path that was once familiar and well worn but is now very much tangled. In her favorite seat by the window Jennie sorrowfully contemplates her slate, marked “Old Maid”. Outside she hears rapid footsteps and looks up startled. Then, framed in the open window stands one she would know always, but how changed! She hastily wipes off the slate and then with very few explanations she at last receives the reward of her unswerving faith when John’s arms close about her. Once again it is Sunday in the little Sanctificationist Church. But what a different Sunday! Today the Mourners’ bench has a new occupant – Mr. John Logan, sr. [sic], who confesses his terrible sin and receives forgiveness and comfort. On the way home they all come by Old Lady Smiles at her toll-gate and at last – Smiles win [sic]. By the brook where years before he had promised her that he would never backslide they stop again and once more she asks if he will ever backslide again. His answer is different today: “Oh, yes, often and often – and when I do, you’ll have to backslide with me.” Content with this she slips into his arms and peace and happiness at last. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, December 31, 1918, LP13262 [stamped with date January 14, 1919]

John L. Logan, Jr., lives in a hamlet in rural Kentucky, assisting his parents in their combined occupations of farming and running the local inn, the Happy Valley Cottage. Talking with the more widely travelled of the guests at the inn suggests to John Jr. that he go to New York to make his fortune. This ambition appals his parents and his sweetheart, Jennie Timberlake, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. His mother persuades the pastor of the local branch of the Sanctificationist Church to call on John Jr. to confess his sins and be reborn into the church. Finding all eyes in the congregation on him, John Jr. is unable to resist and renounces his New York plans, to his parents’ delight, and Jennie’s satisfaction, though she is afraid he will backslide. And so he does, after an encounter while ploughing with a stubborn tree stump. He packs a few things, including a pocket watch with his mother’s portrait inside it, and attempts to tiptoe out of the house at night, bound for New York. He is caught by John Sr., who treats him like a disobedient child. He swears not to come back until he is a wealthy man. Nearly persuaded to stay by a plea from his mother, the sight of his father threatening him with a stick confirms his resolve to go. He knocks on Jennie’s window, and when she is convinced he is not a burglar, she listens to his goodbye and promise to return in a year. After initially threatening to marry someone else, she swears she will wait for him. He leaves for New York, where he gets a job in a toy factory, and tries to earn prize money by designing a toy frog that will swim. Jennie marks off the days of his absence on a slate. A year passes, the frog will not swim, and Jennie awaits the stagecoach in vain. John Jr. stops writing home, while Jennie starts another 365 days on her slate. John Sr. uses his son’s old coat for a scarecrow; Jennie swaps that scarecrow for one from her own father’s fields, so she can commune with it as a representative of her absent sweetheart. A visiting stranger, a disguised criminal hiding out in the country, courts her, and to resist the temptation, she goes through a wedding ceremony with the scarecrow, then tells her wooer she cannot go out with him as she is a married woman. John Jr., meanwhile, resists the attentions of the fair sex in New York, devoting all his spare time to his invention. Eight years pass; the frog still won’t swim, and the Logan family falls on hard times; they will have to leave their home in a week if they cannot find the wherewithal to pay the interest on their mortgage. Jennie has written “Old Maid” on her slate and stopped marking off the days. When the man hired to replace John Jr. threatens to leave if he does not get his wages, John Sr. goes to the town with the nearest railroad 183

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

station to borrow from the proprietor of the town’s hotel, the Sunshine Inn, who is an old acquaintance. Meanwhile in New York, the frog swims at last. At the Sunshine Inn, after begging in vain for a loan, John Sr. sees a well-dressed guest just descended from the train carelessly tipping hotel staff with sums that would save his home. The stranger then sets off on foot through the fields, followed by John Sr. The man who had courted Jennie attempts to rob the bank at the railroad station town; he is spotted by the sheriff, pursued through the countryside, and shot and wounded by his pursuers. When the rich stranger reaches Happy Valley Cottage, he books a room from the hired man, giving him such a lavish tip he decides to leave there and then. The stranger, whom we now see is John Jr. himself, goes up to his room and lies on the bed, putting his watch under his pillow. John Sr. arrives back home and realises he is alone in the house with the rich stranger and his wife, who is resignedly singing hymns in the bedroom. He creeps up the stairs and silently enters the darkened room, where he can just see a man lying unconscious on the bed. He tries to reach across him for his wallet, but the bed’s occupant wakes and grabs him. There is a short struggle, the man falls back on the bed, and John Sr. discovers he is dead. He takes the body down the back stairs and dumps it in the fields outside. Mrs. Logan is suddenly convinced her son has returned; she goes up to the room and finds a bag marked J.L.L., and the watch with her own picture in it. When John Sr. comes back, she joyfully informs him who it is who has taken the room. John Sr. is thunderstruck, believing he has killed his own son. However, John Jr. suddenly appears from the back stairs, and explains that he heard shots, saw someone running outside, and went out to see what was going on, but found nothing. The sheriff follows a trail of blood to the Logans’ back stairs, and is about to interrogate them when a deputy finds the body in the weeds. John Sr. realises the fugitive must have come upstairs and collapsed on the bed, and that he died from his wounds, not from anything John Sr. did. John Jr. goes to Jennie’s house, and proposes. She accepts. Later, she asks if he will backslide again; he assures her he will, but asks her to accompany him when he does so.

It is said that, some time in the 1940s, Iris Barry was offered a print of A Romance of Happy Valley for the Museum of Modern Art’s film collection, but she refused it as a minor D.W. Griffith film, not worthy of preservation. In the 1970s, the Museum had to reconstruct a print of the film, using as a basis the copy preserved in Gosfilmofond in Moscow (see Anthony Slide, Nitrate Won’t Wait, p. 21). This raises two issues: the status of the material I viewed, one of the Museum’s 16mm Circulating Film Library prints, deriving from that reconstruction; and the place of A Romance of Happy Valley in the Griffith canon. To take the first point first, in addition to the Gosfilmofond material, the reconstruction is based on a very detailed synopsis and title list dated 19 November 1918, submitted to the Copyright Office with two prints of the film on 27 November, copies of which are in The D.W. Griffith Papers (Reel 3 of the microfilm edition); the synopsis is reprinted above. (The 14 January 1919 date stamped on the Copyright Office’s copy suggests the application may only have been processed at that date, but the copyright is backdated to the end of the previous year – the 27 November cover letter indicated that the film was not to be released until some time in January. Incidentally, the fact noted by The American Film Institute Catalog that the film was copyrighted as The Romance of Happy Valley seems to have been due to a clerical error at the Copyright Office; all the studio correspondence, the synopsis and title list, and contemporary advertisements use the indefinite article.) All the titles on the title list appear in the print, in the order they appear in the list, and with the lengths marked on the list; the images fit the synopsis and titles seamlessly. The 35mm equivalent of the length of the print viewed is 5,152 feet, as opposed to the 5,905 feet cited for the original release in 184

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The American Film Institute Catalog (and confirmed in The D.W. Griffith Papers by figures for footage used for prints). Nevertheless, only a few things described in the synopsis seem to be missing. One (also described in several contemporary reviews, e.g., The Moving Picture World, February 8, 1919, p. 804; Wid’s, February 2, 1919, p. 23; and The New York Times, January 27, 1919, p. 11) is a shot that showed Jennie writing “old maid” on her slate (a shot which would probably have been cut or replaced by a title in a Russian-language print). Another is a second sequence showing a service in the church, after John Jr.’s return, in which the penitent is his father; the final conversation between John Jr. and Jennie at the stile, in which he asks her to accompany him in his inevitable backsliding, would then more closely parallel the conversation in the same location after the first service, in which John Jr. swears by the kiss he gives Jennie that he will not backslide. The synopsis is so detailed that, so long as most or all of the original scenes were there in the Russian print, it would have been possible to restore them to an order conforming to it, however much they might have been transposed in the source material. Although this reconstruction method is historically responsible, relying as it does on very authoritative contemporary documents as well as the surviving film material, one should be cautious in assuming that it precisely represents the original American release state of the film. Although A Romance of Happy Valley was a programme picture, not a roadshowed special like Hearts of the World, I doubt Griffith here completely resisted his usual urge to fine-tune films up to and after their release, which in this case was two months after the copyright submission. A series of discrepancies in published synopses and reviews of the film in its first release suggest there may even have been variant prints in circulation. Thus, although The D.W. Griffith Papers synopsis and title list (and hence the reconstructed print) are unequivocal that the film is set in Kentucky, and trade-press publicity for the film emphasised the significance of this given Griffith’s own Kentucky origins (“Mr. Griffith ... has laid his story in the land of his boyhood”, Paramount-Artcraft advertisement, The Moving Picture World, February 8, 1919, p. 701), at least two early accounts (The Moving Picture World, January 25, 1919, p. 542, and Exhibitor’s Trade Review, February 1, 1919, p. 715) say it is set in Ohio; and the American Film Institute Catalog entry indicates that alternative names are given by different sources for many of the characters. The film was the second begun but third released of the six programme pictures that, in the Spring of 1917, Griffith contracted with Adolph Zukor to make for release by Artcraft Pictures once he had returned from a trip to Europe for the London premiere of Intolerance and completed the independently produced Hearts of the World. It was made at the old Reliance-Majestic-Fine Arts studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard, part of which Griffith had rented from Triangle, which still held the lease, and occupied from October 1917 to September 1919, when he moved his company to Mamaroneck in New York State. In a telegram to Albert Banzhaf on 21 April 1918, Griffith suggested that the “second Artcraft is easy and can be done in five or six weeks”. Account books in The D.W. Griffith Papers indicate that $24,917.61 direct production expenses were incurred on the film in June, $38,589.88 in July; by 3 August, a further $5,818.77 had been spent; thereafter, only $6,820.84 more is recorded up to the time of the film’s release on 26 January 1919 (Reel 20, Volume 15: Accounts Ledger, November 1917 to December 1918, microfilm pp. 196–97). Thus the bulk of the shooting must have been in June and July of 1918, so Griffith’s April estimate was not far out. (The eventual total production cost booked to A Romance of Happy Valley was $111,732.87. By the end of 1919, the film had earned $172,073.54, $96,000 of which was the sum advanced by Zukor in 1918 to cover its production costs. See Reel 20, Volume 18, microfilm p. 1294.) A release date of 4 November was proposed (Griffith to Banzhaf, October 1, 1918), then postponed to 12 November (Griffith to Sol Lesser, October 11, 1918), but the worldwide 185

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

influenza epidemic of 1918–19 intervened. On 11 October, Banzhaf informed Griffith that most of the major producer-distributors, including Famous Players-Lasky, had decided to release no new pictures for four weeks from 15 October, because most theatres were closed due to fears of infection, and therefore independent producers, too, should stop production. Banzhaf suggested, however, that Griffith use the excuse that he was working on a Warrelated film as grounds for an exemption from this moratorium. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps also because, after 11 November, it was felt to be urgent to get War pictures into circulation before a reaction to the subject set in, it was decided to release the third Artcraft, The Greatest Thing in Life (which does, of course, have a War-related theme), before A Romance of Happy Valley, and this was done, on 8 December. Presumably because of shortage of cash, Griffith then overrode an objection from Zukor that there should be an interval of at least two months between Griffith Artcraft pictures (Griffith to Banzhaf, January 6, 1919), and released A Romance of Happy Valley on 26 January 1919. Until the first Artcraft films, the last “small” picture to which Griffith’s name had been directly linked was The Avenging Conscience in 1914. The first two Artcrafts released, while small by comparison with Hearts of the World, were dignified by the importance and topicality of their War-related themes. A Romance of Happy Valley thus represented a new departure, and it is clear from the advertising campaign that accompanied the release that neither Griffith’s organisation nor Artcraft were sure how to present it. The main selling point agreed on was the Griffith name (which was, of course, required by Griffith’s contract with Zukor); but thereafter two rather contradictory (but perhaps complementary, insofar as they take in two different prospective audiences) strategies are proposed in the trade press and the posters designed for marquee display. One emphasised the novelty (even paradox) of a small “oldfashioned” film from the master’s hand: “‘A friendly little story of Kentucky folk’, that’s what D.W. Griffith calls his newest Artcraft Picture. Just like calling the Woolworth Building ‘a tidy little shack’ ... With his genius he shows the bigness and narrowness of the cross roads folk” (The Moving Picture World, February 8, 1919, p. 701). The other played up the thrilling suspense of the ending: “Run an advertisement in your house program – before the showing – asking all persons who come to see A Romance of Happy Valley to keep the details of the big scene a secret from their friends”; “Sure, the boy’s sweet on her. So is a bad, bad man! True love certainly runs up against it hard in A Romance of Happy Valley – but the kids win out and the Bad Man gets his!” (Exhibitor’s Trade Review, February 1, 1919, pp. 704–705). In the reviews it is the first image of the film that prevails, and there is no hint of a complaint that this is just a Biograph short blown up to six reels such as producer and distributor may well have feared; rather, the film is seen as having all the virtues of a Biograph enhanced by the progress made in film art since Griffith left that company. Wid Gunning is worth quoting at length: The war is over. Griffith has demobilized his soldiers, converted his trenches into corn fields and stacked his guns in an armory. He is back again among simple, peaceful folk whose problems and struggles are in their own hearts. He is doing more superbly than ever, what he has done so surpassingly well in the past. Recall Griffith’s early Biographs: then consider the great advance made in photoplay technique since those days, also the development in the screen impressiveness of such players as Lillian Gish and Bobby Harron; take into account the improvement in the art of the master director, imagine a de luxe [sic] version of one of his little masterpieces, and you will have an idea of the type of picture issued under the title of A Romance of Happy Valley. (Wid’s, February 2, 1919, p. 23)

Edward Weltzel in The Moving Picture World (February 8, 1919, p. 804) went so far as to 186

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

condemn the admixture of melodrama into the idyll (though recognizing that the condemnation would not be universal): The first half of the story is a study in character that delights by its quaintness and truth. Then comes a change in the mood of the picture that is as unexpected as a snow storm in June. And to many spectators it will be as unwelcome. From a well-balanced and consistent tale it suddenly turns into a highly colored melodrama with a convenient bank robbery, the mortgage-on-the-farm motive and an attempt on the part of the elder Logan to murder and rob a stranger who turns out to be his own son. The way this situation is juggled and the wounded bank robber made to change places with the native son, who ran away seven years before to make his fortune in the city, will be accepted by a portion of moving picture patrons, but not by all.

Only Variety’s “Jolo” (January 31, 1919, p. 52) approved – or at any rate, raised no objection to – the combination: “A Romance of Happy Valley is a simple story of bucolic life…. It progresses sweetly until the last reel, when it takes a morbid, tragic twist, the curse of which is taken off by a surprise climax.” “Jolo”, incidentally, suggests “an old Russian tale” as the source for this tragic twist; Robert Henderson (D.W. Griffith: His Life and Work, p. 194), points to Guy de Maupassant; perhaps the aura of such respectable origins allowed these authors to condone the stereotypicality that offended Weltzel. To add my two cents worth, in this “melodramatic” finale, Griffith uses a trick pioneered by Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend, to offer readers (respectively, viewers), a fairly transparent enigma, the better to keep them in the dark about a second mystery. This double concealment has additional interest, because it forces on the filmmakers stylistic choices that are very uncharacteristic of Griffith at any point in his career. The transparent enigma, analogous to the problem of who John Rokesmith is in Dickens’ novel, is that of the identity of the rich stranger envied by John Logan Sr. as he throws cash around in the railroad town hotel. The obscure one, the equivalent of Mr. Boffin’s apparent corruption by wealth, is John Jr.’s seeming death at his father’s hands. The first is set up in the sequence at the Sunshine Inn. The opening of the description of this sequence in the copyright synopsis, with its series of unconnected sentences, conveys how the mystery is established: “In the considerably more dingy room, John still struggles with his frog. And then, one night, he wound up the spring and put the frog in the toy lake and – it swam! The evening train arrives at the little station. Among the newcomers it brings to town are a young couple, evidently just married, and a couple of well dressed young men. John Logan Sr. comes to his friend in a neighboring town and dallies around trying to summon the courage to ask for the loan.” Griffith is here using a technique that is even more important for the second enigma, what might be called “diversionary alternation”. The uncertainty inherent in an alternating sequence, both about the precise spatial and temporal relations between the different strands, and their relative importance, draws attention away from the identity of the rich stranger (the newlyweds, for example, get a lot of footage, including an intertitle, but have no significance for the story). More important, however, is the way everything is arranged to keep the stranger’s face hidden. This leads to staging the action in the two rooms in the Sunshine Inn in depth, with the hotel bar and restaurant further back on the basic camera axis from the recreation room containing the pool table, rather than the side-by-side arrangement so familiar from the Biographs whenever the relation between characters and actions in two adjoining rooms is at stake. John Sr. makes his appeal for a loan to the hotel proprietor in the pool room; meanwhile, the stranger enters the restaurant and orders and eats a meal, visible to us through the curtained arch between the two rooms. He pays for his meal with a hundred-dollar bill, requir187

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

ing the waiter to come back to the pool room to find change from the proprietor, and thus alerting John Sr. to his existence. John Sr. then watches through a serving hatch between the two rooms as the stranger tips the waiter and the page. The front-to-rear arrangement keeps the spectator’s view of the stranger close to John Sr.’s, and neither John Sr. nor the spectator sees his face, as his back is always toward them, this being fairly transparently motivated by, for example, his turning back to talk to the porter carrying his bags as he enters the restaurant door. The fact that the action of the scene is a matter of vision is emphasised by the byplay with the black page: we see him on the porch bending to look through a clear semicircle at the bottom of the frosted-glass door panel (presumably what the synopsis means by a “cashier’s window”); then through the door from the inside with his nose flattened against the glass; finally a shot of a groaning table, presumably the newlyweds’, whom we have just seen order dinner, shows what he sees – a true point-of-view shot, itself a rarity in a Griffith film. (The unfamiliar mise-en-scène seems to have upset the filmmakers’ continuity recording; despite the inside-outside connection established in this point-of-view sequence, when the waiter later comes to the pool room to change the hundred-dollar bill, the shot of his return to the restaurant shows it from the same side as before, and the waiter enters with the change from the opposite direction and through what had seemed to be the outside door – it has a semi-circular spyhole, like the door on the porch – and when it is opened we see a dark hallway beyond.) This point-of-view sequence is then echoed with shots of John Sr. at the serving hatch, and shots of the serving hatch alone, while the tipping going on in the next room can be seen through it. Apart from one fairly long shot of the hotel porch as the stranger starts for Happy Valley Cottage, his journey there is filmed from behind, so we do not see his face. This is withheld until he has booked a room at the Cottage; then a track-in (the first I can remember in a Griffith film not in a spectacular context like the famous “crane shots” in the Belshazzar’s feast episode in Intolerance, or motivated by a moving vehicle) follows him to the foot of the stairs; he pauses and looks around at the scenes of his youth, and we see it is John Jr., though still somewhat disguised by his city clothes and a moustache and sideburns (“Jolo” complained that Harron “spoils his appearance at the finish by once more affecting a palpably false moustache and the short ‘sideburns’ worn by theatrical valets”). This identity is confirmed in the room, particularly when he winds and puts under his pillow the watch we saw him take with him when he left home. Thus, the film sets up a mysterious stranger, emphasises the mystery by deploying pointof-view staging and editing to stress spying on the stranger, but nevertheless withholds clear images of his face, until he has reached his destination, the bedroom at the Happy Valley Cottage. However, few spectators would not have guessed well before this who this stranger is, and even they will now be sure of his identity. The second mystery is more subtly handled. There is an alternation between John Jr. settling down for a nap on the bed upstairs; the sheriff and his men pursuing and injuring the bank robber, concluding as the fugitive reaches the bottom of the exterior back stairs to the Cottage; John Sr. arriving at the Cottage, waiting in the kitchen and then the hall, with a title (“THE TEMPTATION”) indicating his intentions; Mrs. Logan’s arrival back from visiting a sick friend, greeting her husband in the hall, and going into the downstairs bedroom she shares with her husband, where she sings hymns to herself. Then John Sr. creeps upstairs, enters the darkened room (a single arc off left, motivated as light through the window, illuminates only the foot of the bed), feels for the wallet in the duster hanging by the bedhead, then, not finding it, reaches across the sleeper to clothes on the bed to his right. The bed’s occupant sits up (his face blocked by John Sr.) and the two men struggle until the man falls back on the pillow. John Sr. feels him, realises he is dead, then retreats to the corner, where 188

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

close-ups show his terrified reaction. He picks up the body (the face hangs down away from the camera; the man’s clothes, while not actually very like John Jr.’s, are sufficiently so not to alert the spectator to the difference) and exits through a door left. Mrs. Logan gets up in her bedroom, comes upstairs and examines the bag and the watch (there is much more front fill on the scene now); a big close-up shows her picture in the watch. John Sr. suddenly reenters from the left. She tells him the news; at first he assumes she is dreaming, but the bag and watch convince him, and he collapses on a chair at the foot of the bed. His wife asks what’s wrong, but then the left-hand door opens and John Jr. enters, unharmed. When John Sr. asks if he was not earlier in the bed, he explains (via a flashback) that he heard something, looked out of the window, went out to investigate, but found no one. After the discovery of the body and the conversation with the sheriff, a second flashback shows what John Sr. now realises, how the mortally wounded fugitive had come up the stairs and collapsed on the bed. Thus, although the spectator is given a key piece of information, the shot of the fugitive arriving at the foot of the stairs (which have been established earlier in the film as part of the Cottage building, but not as leading to the room taken by John Jr.), the usual vagueness of the alternation makes it unlikely that he or she will guess that the man on the bed when John Sr. enters is not John Jr., but the bank robber. And whereas the devices of concealment in the Sunshine Inn sequence are flaunted (and very uncharacteristic of Griffith’s usual filmmaking style), those here are indistinguishable from the alternations that usually lead to the climax of a Griffith film. Of course, success in mystifying the audience is not necessarily success for the film as a whole. Dickens’ trick obviously underlies a whole literary genre, the detective story, but this genre (especially the detective story as puzzle) has not had the legs in film it has had in books. Viewers cannot stop to reconsider the evidence they have received so far in the light of the latest revelations of the text, as readers can. The danger is that viewers will not be mystified and then satisfactorily demystified, but simply remain confused. Wid Gunning expressed (but then dismissed) a concern that the end of A Romance of Happy Valley might have this effect: The complications of the wind-up are swift and a bit illusive [sic – does he mean “allusive”?], demanding the closest attention on the part of an audience, if they are to be correctly interpreted. At this point, Griffith trusts to suggestion and a quick mental reaction to what transpires on the screen. Whether or not the ending is artistically justifiable in a production of this stamp is debatable, but there can be no question about the excellent quality of the film in its entirety. (Wid’s, February 2, 1919, p. 23)

The Sunshine Inn sequence is not the only one that exhibits uncharacteristic staging and editing for a Griffith film at any time in his career. In one early scene, Jennie takes her broken hoe to John Jr. in the fields for him to help her mend it. The scene begins and ends with a long shot as Jennie approaches, then leaves John. The rest consists of one cutaway to Jennie’s father in the Timberlakes’ yard, five dialogue titles, sixteen medium two-shots, and two big close-ups of the couple’s hands clasped on the handle of Jennie’s hoe. The medium two-shots are taken from three angles: an orthogonal one, showing both in strict profile (five shots), and two oblique ones, showing John (four shots) or Jennie (seven shots), respectively, in three-quarter view, while only the back of the other is visible. These oblique shots are not true over-the-shoulder shots (an “early example” of which Kristin Thompson, in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, p. 210, cites in Maurice Tourneur’s Victory, released 1 December 1919), as they show both characters fairly completely, only privileging one by concealing the other’s face, but the sequence does represent a version of the “classical” shot/reverse-shot-with-reverse-angles method of staging and 189

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

editing a conversation scene. I do not know of any other example of Griffith’s using this form of scene construction, in this film or any other he made; clearly, it could not have been an afterthought in the editing stage, requiring as it does the shooting of the scene from three set-ups. However, here, too, the novel device seems to have disrupted the filmmakers’ continuity routines (though I suppose it is possible that sub-standard takes were used for the European negative, and the error would not have been seen in the original American release prints). The couple are standing with Jennie’s hoe held blade-up between them as John rather desultorily fixes the blade onto the shaft while discussing with Jennie his wish to go to New York; his own hoe, meanwhile, is leaning, blade down, on his left shoulder (he is on the right in all the shots). At any rate, this is the case in the orthogonal shots; in the oblique ones, John’s hoe is not to be seen, though the shoulder is plainly in view, and the hoe is long enough to protrude over the shoulder in the rear views. As well as the “melodramatic” ending and novel devices, the film deviates from a simple bucolic tale in one further way: its use of personifications to give allegorical force to the moral issues at stake. The film also, of course, uses the more subtle symbolism typical of the Griffith Biographs – notably the way shots of Mrs. Logan fondling a toy horse (presumably one of her son’s childhood toys) are intercut with shots of John Jr. in New York struggling to make the toy frog swim, and a repeated gesture, John Sr. opening and closing a pocket knife, first as his fortunes are beginning to crumble and in response to a jibe from Vinegar Watkins, a second time when he waits in the kitchen, listening to the sounds of the rich stranger upstairs preparing for bed. But it also has more portentous and more naked symbolism in the figures of the aforementioned Vinegar Watkins and Old Lady Smiles, who are realistically motivated as local characters in Happy Valley (Vinegar Watkins’ occupation in life is unclear, at least in this print and the synopsis, whereas Old Lady Smiles is placed as the keeper of the turnpike gate), but have no other part in the story than as allegories of pessimism and optimism, respectively (as one of the titles puts it, “THE BATTLE OF FROWNS AND SMILES”). Similarly, the bank robber, who is needed to substitute for John Jr. in the surprise ending, is also the tempter who tries to lead Jennie to go back on her promise to remain faithful to John, and the credits in the title list and on the print (where the character is simply called “Judas”, though the credit list in The Moving Picture World [January 25, 1919, p. 542] calls him “The City Man”) and the title that introduces him (“A DESCENDANT OF JUDAS ISCARIOT VISITS THE NEIGHBORHOOD”) accord him much more significance than necessary for a perfectly respectful wooer and minor criminal. This kind of portentousness is not uncharacteristic of Griffith, but in this film (unlike the later Dream Street [1921]), he does not succeed in carrying the symbolism through to structure the narrative as a whole, with the result that these figures seem to belong to another film except at the few points they are needed for straightforward proairetic contributions. Many of the features I have singled out could be seen as attempts to add weight to what might otherwise have been seen as a “mere” Biograph one-reeler stretched to feature length. It may be that the trade-press response, praising the simple bucolic tale while condemning, or expressing ambivalence about, the melodramatic trappings, encouraged Griffith to opt entirely for the simple tale in the sixth Artcraft, True Heart Susie, released later in 1919, which returns to the omniscient narration with attendant ironies of relative knowledge found, for example, in the 1910 Gold Is Not All (see Ben Brewster, “A Scene at the ‘Movies’”, pp. 10–12). However, A Romance of Happy Valley is not the last of Griffith’s experiments with narration; as well as in Dream Street, they return in the last film he made before moving to Mamaroneck, the first First National release, The Greatest Question (1919). Another feature of A Romance of Happy Valley that may have inspired, or at least inflected, True Heart Susie is Gish’s performance. In his Moving Picture World review, Weltzel noted 190

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

it as an innovation: “Lillian Gish plays Jennie and once more [is this a reference to her performance in The Greatest Thing in Life?] departs from her old line of work to create a character part that is a combination of wistful awkwardness and inward grace. Some of her business approaches dangerously near to farce, but it is funny and most persons will forgive its introduction.” John Jr. is clearly the protagonist of A Romance of Happy Valley, and the ending hardly involves Jennie until the final reconciliation, but through the central stretches of the movie, she is much more prominent, and her part is much more varied. Gish’s success in creating this passive, comic yet touching heroine may well have suggested to Griffith a film in which the heroine would, without openly seizing the initiative, be the real protagonist, her partner essentially a foil. The very existence of The Griffith Project, implying as it does that every film directed by Griffith is of interest, precludes the archival attitude that there are Griffith films so minor that they need not be preserved. Indeed, film archivists now think of their work much more as librarians in deposit libraries do, to preserve every published work. Although A Romance of Happy Valley is a “small” film, and as such may not be as successful as some of his other small films, perhaps most particularly True Heart Susie, precisely as an adumbration of certain aspects of that film, it highlights an interest in narrative experimentation in Griffith that has largely been ignored. Ben Brewster

191

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

571 THE NEW ART FILM CO.

BATTLING JANE Filming date: Summer 1918 Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Producer: D.W. Griffith (according to Paramount studio records) Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; Paramount Pictures Pre-release screening, Venice, California: week prior to 21 September 1918 New York premiere: week prior to 30 September 1918, Rivoli Theatre Release date: 6 October 1918 Release length: five reels, 4,458 feet (“running time, about 65 minutes”, according to Exhibitor’s Trade Review, October 12, 1918, p. 1617) Copyright date: 20 September 1918 (LP12919) Director: Elmer Clifton Author: Arnold Bennett (Arnold Bernot; listed as Arthur Bernot in The Motion Picture News, October 19, 1918, p. 2603) Story: Arnold Bennett (Arnold Bernot) Camera: Karl Brown Music: cue sheets prepared by the Film Music Company (according to The Moving Picture World, October 12, 1918, p. 226) Cast: Dorothy Gish (Jane); George Nicho[l]ls (Dr. Sheldon); May Hall (Mrs. Sheldon); Katherine MacDonald (Pollett’s daughter); Ernest Marion (Baby Sheldon); Bertram Grassby (The crook); Adolphe Lestina (Mrs. Pollett [according to The American Film Institute Catalog]); Kate Toncray (Charwoman); [according to Exhibitor’s Trade Review, September 21, 1918, p. 1406:] “Caruso, Dorothy Gish, Bryant Washburn and ‘Private Peat’ appear”. Archival sources: none known There is a Thrift Stamp drive on at Hillsdale, Maine, and the patriotic residents of that village are more than anxious to put the town “over the top”. The excitement is at fever heat during the day when Jane, a wanderer, astride of a bicycle, rides wonderingly into the town. A tire is punctured and being her own mechanician [sic], she repairs the damage to her wheel while a crowd of loungers watches her. At this juncture, Dr. Sheldon and his wife appear on the scene. They quarrel with the result that Sheldon packs up his belongings and suitcase in hand, leaves her. Mrs. Sheldon is about to faint when Jane assists her into the house. Jane discovers a small baby, the infant child of the Sheldons’ and she is caring for it when the grief stricken mother after leaving her child in Jane’s care, dies. To meet this new responsibility, Jane is obliged to go to work and she obtains a position as waitress in the only hotel in the town. Her soul, romantic and yearning, is roused to action when a theatrical troupe arrives in town and is quartered at the hotel. Jane meets Wilbur, the first man who ever smiled upon her and whom she finds most pleasing. A baby show is a feature of the Thrift Stamp drive and Jane enters her tiny ward as a contender for the first prize. The babe attracts much attention and that night, while she is serving potatoes at table, she receives information that the child has won the first prize of $500. She is overjoyed at her good fortune and receives the congratulations of her friends.

192

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Meanwhile, Dr. Sheldon finds a newspaper announcing that his infant has won the first prize and he returns to Hillsdale to get the money. He demands that Jane turn the money over to him, but she declines to do this. He thereupon becomes threatening and Jane drives him away at the point of a revolver. Dr. Sheldon returns with the Sheriff, and they are nearing the hotel when Jane discovers them. She flees with the babe through a rear entrance and finds shelter in a shack while Sheldon and the Sheriff search for her. The child becomes ill, and Jane seeks in vain for medical aid. She recalls suddenly that the child’s father is a physician and gun in hand, she encounters him and orders him to minister to the infant. He again seeks to wrest the money from her and a fierce struggle ensues. An alarm is sounded and Sheldon arrested by detectives. Jane resolves to invest the $500 in Thrift Stamps for the benefit of her tiny ward. The residents of Hillsdale are suffering an attack of the blues for a big investment is needed to put the town “over the top”, and it is not in evidence until Jane appears and purchases $500 worth of stamps. This puts Hillsdale “over the top” and there is general jubilation during which Jane and her ward are the central figures. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, September 20, 1918, LP12919 Battling Jane Jones, armed with pistol and parasol, bicycles into Hornetsville, just as “Doc” Heine Sheldon decides to abandon the woman he married for her money, and return to his old haunts in the city. The shock of her husband’s desertion proves fatal to Mrs. Sheldon, and Jane impetuously adopts the woman’s baby. An involuntary resident of Hornetsville, she goes to work as a kitchen maid and waitress in Pollett’s hotel, where a diversion is created by the arrival of a barnstorming troupe. One of its members, an old pal of “Doc”’s, is a fugitive from justice, but his metropolitan style is more than enough to swamp both Jane and the hotel-keeper’s daughter. The crook decides that the way to her father’s safe is through the girl’s affections, and woes [sic] her to that end. Meantime in the village baby contest Baby Sheldon, thanks to Jane’s care, wins the $500 prize, the news of which brings the impecunious “Doc” back to the village to claim child and money. But Jane is too much for him. With a pistol she backs him off, and later, at the point of the same pistol, forces him to prescribe for the sick infant. While she has him locked up in his own shack, his pal, the crook, arrives with the contents of the hotel safe and Miss Pollett hot on his heels. Once again Jane interferes, returns the loot, locks the crook up with his partner, and falls asleep, to be awakened by the detective who is looking for them both. Jane marries her bashful village suitor, helps Hornetsville to go over the top in the Red Cross drive, and leads the first parade of drafted men down the village street, her husband walking beside her in uniform. Exhibitor’s Trade Review, October 12, 1918, p. 1617 Dorothy Gish has responded delightfully when given opportunity in the story of a pure American type, “Battling Jane”, by Arnold Bernot [sic], the visualization directed by Elmer Clifton. She is not the ”weepy” heroine so much affected by those authors who know more about past generations than they do about the present one. The “weepy” heroine is a dead one so far as young America is concerned. The young girls of today, those genuinely American, have too much sense of humor to take themselves seriously, to say nothing of tearfully. They have the old fighting spirit of the country in their blood, but they have a more independent viewpoint than the girls of yesterday, are better able to take care of themselves in an emergency. This is of the type portrayed by dauntless Dorothy, the most comically adventurous soul at the outset ever shown on the screen. The story of “Battling Jane”, though by turns pure comedy and pure melodrama, is logically and consistently told, the bright picture of a brave young heart, cheerfully adaptable to circumstances, as foolish as the rest of us in love affairs, but keen enough to see the comical side of it

193

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

all, herself included. Her sense of humor is so powerful that it breaks out in the midst of her tragic adventures, and she is continually adventuring. A spirited little waif from nowhere in particular, with no objective in view, Jane battles for her living and to save the fine baby of a dying woman as well. She fights for her own rights and those of the child through some stormy melodramatic episodes; she battles for the baby in courtship, and the baby unconsciously battles for her in the end, bringing her triumph over older and weaker minds and an assured future. We could even stand more of her adventures, though it might not be wise to play on this one note too long. Dorothy has “arrived”, an A-1 comedienne, pleasing a large audience at the Rivoli. Louis Reeves Harrison, The Moving Picture World, October 12, 1918, p. 275 “No New Pictures for a Month” Is Decision of Principal Manufacturers – Serials and News Weeklies Not Affected – Epidemic’s Spread Cripples Over a Dozen Exchange Territories … According to a statement made by Adolph Zukor at Thursday’s meeting the epidemic has already closed seventy-five per cent of the theatres of the country. “Influenza Brings Industry to a Halt”, The Motion Picture News, October 19, 1918, p. 2515 To begin with, this offering is fairly above the average. There is hardly any body to its story, however. It is chiefly an aggregation of situations placed together in an admittedly intelligent way. Barring the first half and the last one and a half reels, the plot is almost stationary. The entertaining values in that part of the picture depend entirely on comedy, while [sic] is derived wholly from the acting of the star, assisted occasionally by a cleverly constructed subtitle. The central figure in the story, besides the star, is a baby. The presence of an infant on the screen never fails to bring forth murmurs of approval from an audience. The situation where the heroine attempts to milk the cow, the latter’s swinging tail hitting the star on the face is very comical. It will cause a great many laughs. The picture is clean and, where the attendance is good, will give excellent satisfaction. P.S. Harrison, The Motion Picture News, October 19, 1918, p. 2603

No copy of this film is known to exist at the time of this writing. Jane came out of nowhere. She rode into Hornetsville, Maine, on a dilapidated bicycle with a gun and a parasol. She disrupted the peace and quiet of the New England village and soon found herself caring for an abandoned baby. She defended herself against poverty, local prejudice, a crook and the return of the child’s uncaring and delinquent father. She also survived a deaf storekeeper and a rainstorm and finally earned respect from the community by contributing most of the prize money from a baby contest to the Liberty Loan campaign. All this homespun activity was carefully fabricated to the talents of the film’s star, Dorothy Gish. Although the story was unlikely, it amused audiences and critics alike. The anonymous reviewer of The New York Times dubbed her “Delightful Dorothy Gish” adding that “the adjective just seems to stick to her name” (September 30, 1918). The Moving Picture World’s Louis Reeves Harrison, a loyal fan of the Gishes, called Jane “the most comically adventurous soul at the outset ever shown on the screen” (October 12, 1918). Battling Jane was the first release by Dorothy Gish’s own company, The New Art Film Company, a comedy company set-up within Famous Players-Lasky. Dorothy earned the distinction of having her own production company after attracting outstanding reviews for her work in Hearts of the World and The Hun Within. The productions were nominally supervised by D.W. Griffith, made at the Griffith (Fine Arts) studio in Hollywood, and released on the Paramount program. It was a promising beginning! Battling Jane set the stage for eleven more films that were 194

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

produced and released over the next two years. The New York Times’ reviewer called the announcement that Dorothy Gish had her own company “good news to many. Miss Gish has unusual pantomimic ability. She can make a part comprehensible and real without the aid of interrupting lines”. Louis Reeves Harrison, reviewing Battling Jane for The Moving Picture World, proclaimed: “Dorothy has ‘arrived’, an A-1 comedienne”. He became rhapsodic about the part Gish played, calling it a shining example of the spirit of modern American women (he called them girls, of course). Battling Jane was directed by Elmer Clifton, a Griffith-trained specialist in comedy. Clifton directed most of the subsequent comedies Dorothy made for Fine Arts. The story was written by Arnold Bernot (called Arnold Bennett in the Paramount records, but probably the same person). A group of Griffith veterans were in the supporting cast, among them George Nicholls, Bertram Grassby, Adolphe Lestina and Kate Toncray. There is no indication that Griffith was involved in any way except as producer, although elements such as the feisty young girl and the indifferent, hostile small-town people can be found in a number of Griffith’s films. Paul Spehr

195

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

572 D.W. GRIFFITH

THE GREATEST THING IN LIFE Working title: Cradle of Souls Filming date: August–October 1918 Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; additional war footage (shot during World War I) representing the Battle of the Marne (Marne River, Château Thierry, France? or Salisbury Plain, United Kingdom? or footage bought by D.W. Griffith from Franz Kleinschmidt?) Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; A Paramount-Artcraft Special Chicago and Philadelphia premieres: 1 December 1918 Los Angeles premiere: 16 December 1918, Clune’s Auditorium New York premiere: 22 December 1918, Strand Theatre (in seven reels) Release date: 8 December 1918 Release length: five to seven reels, 6,062 feet Copyright date: 15 November 1918 (LP 13064) Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: Captain Victor Maurier (pseudonym of D.W. Griffith and Stanner E.V. Taylor) Story: Captain Victor Maurier Camera: G.W. Bitzer Additional photography: Hendrick [Hendrik] Sartov Film editor: James Smith Music: “My Castle in the Air”, by Jerome Kern; excerpts from Victor Herbert’s score for The Fall of a Nation (1916), George M. Cohan, Richard Wagner; “Don’t You Cry My Honey” (Traditional) Cast: Lillian Gish (Jeanette Peret); Robert Harron (Edward Livingston); Adolphe Lestina (Leo Peret); David Butler (Monsieur Le Bebe [Bébé]); Elmo Lincoln [in blackface] (American soldier); Edward Peil (German officer); Kate Bruce (Jeanette’s aunt); Peaches Jackson (Mlle. Peaches); Ernest Butterworth NOTE: Los Angeles program for Clune’s Auditorium, Los Angeles, December 16, 1918: “[Film] in two parts with an original Prologue, produced personally by D.W. Griffith, entitled ‘VOICES’. Street singer: Sheldon Balinger. Modern dancers: Claire [Clarine] Seymour, Rodolfo di Valentina [Rudolph Valentino]. Ultra-modern jazz dancers: Rhea Haines, Norman McNeill; Couple: Frances Parks, Walter Boner. Dancers from the Land of Shadows led by Carol Dempster. Unseen assistants: George Fawcett, Adolphe Lestina”. Music [for the Prologue] arranged by Louis F. Gottschalk; “Call Me Thine Own”, the ballad song by street singer, is used as love scene throughout the shadows. (courtesy of Russell Merritt) Archival sources: none known Edward Livingston is one of those unfortunate men who think themselves so far above the common clay that they cannot find fit associates. And to crown this he falls in love with Jeanette Peret, who sells cigars. Seeking to make her realize the magnitude of his condescension, he so angers

196

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

her that she will have nothing to do with him. Secretly he befriends her father and enables him to return to France to seek to regain his health. Jeanette knows nothing of his action. In France she falls in love with Le Bebe, a grocer, who is far from her ideal of a romantic lover, but who has his good points. Livingston follows, but again his consciousness of superiority repels the girl and she becomes engaged to Le Bebe. Then comes the war. Livingston joins the American forces and finds that there are real men in all walks of life. Even Le Bebe proves himself a man and meets a glorious death defending Jeanette from a brutal Prussian as the American dash [sic] to the rescue, and in the end Livingston proves himself worthy of the girl he once thought unworthy of himself. The Moving Picture World, December 28, 1918, p. 1558

Jeanette Peret works for her father, a French ex-patriate chronically nostalgic for the old country, in a Greenwich Village cigar store. Wealthy, snobbish Edward Livingston is secretly attracted to her, but his arrogance antagonizes the playful young woman and keeps them at arm’s distance. When Jeanette’s father is told he must return to France for health reasons, Livingston secretly pays the cost and the three of them move to a village outside Paris. But Jeanette, still put off by Livingston’s haughtiness, agrees to marry the kind-hearted but oafish Frenchman, M. Le Bébé. War comes and both Livingston and Le Bébé enlist, the military stimulating Livingston’s great awakening. In the democracy of the trenches, the rich man’s bigotry gives way to respect for common soldiers. Le Bébé is killed during a German attack against Jeanette’s village, while in a foxhole Livingston kisses a dying black American soldier who imagines he is in the arms of his mother. The war ends with Jeanette agreeing to marry Edward, and the Kaiser abdicating his throne.

If it were possible to resurrect a single lost Griffith feature, this is the one I would choose. True, That Royle Girl (1925) boasts a lost W.C. Fields performance, and it would be a treat to see The Great Love, a big-budget war picture about the Easter Rebellion that Artcraft used as a series pilot. But The Greatest Thing in Life is the second part of a Gish-Harron Artcraft pastoral trilogy that by all accounts featured a major Gish performance, an intriguing foxhole scene where Bobby Harron kisses a dying black soldier (actually Elmo Lincoln in blackface), and Sartov portrait camerawork that drew unanimous raves. There is no evidence of a lost masterpiece, but – sandwiched between A Romance of Happy Valley and Broken Blossoms, and made a few months before True Heart Susie (1919) – The Greatest Thing in Life has the earmarks of an unpretentious picture that Griffith made when his creative powers were at their peak and his feel for pastoral most intensely personal. Gish’s performance as Jeanette Peret, a dreamy but calculating shop clerk, drew particularly strong notices. Julian Johnson’s critique in Photoplay referred to “a new, astounding Lillian Gish – the greatest thing in the picture”, describing a performance more playful, sexualized, and energetic than any he had seen her give before. Heretofore, this half of the Gish juvenility has been all to the Little Eva; an old-fashioned bit of sampler embroidery. Behold now, without any particular change of make-up, a roguish-eyed, luscious-lipped lithe-limbed damsel of vintage adolescence. Behold her tearing about the house like a female Fairbanks, vaulting a counter and at length turning a most beautiful cart-wheel! Sakes alive! You’d as life think of the Kaiser becoming a resident of Indianapolis. (February 1919, p. 67)

197

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Coming directly after A Romance of Happy Valley (filmed in June 1918, but because of the Spanish Flu epidemic, not released until a month after The Greatest Thing in Life), Griffith’s latest film evidently builds on the idea of Gish as the winsome schemer – like Jennie Timberlake and True Heart Susie, a quiet, dutiful daughter with a fiery romantic imagination, who has chosen the man she will marry and now goes about making him worthy of her. The semi in-joke here is that her romantic fantasies derive from her infatuation with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks movies. Then, as the action takes her from her Greenwich Village shop to wartime France, she cuts off her Pickford curls and sheds her plaid rustic smock for an up-to-date bob and stylish dresses while she and the battlefield teach Bobby Harron to lose his snobbishness and bigotry. Eight stills from the film that show Gish’s change of appearance are printed in The Films of D.W. Griffith (Wagenknecht and Slide, pp. 107–109). Griffith had been turning bookish daydreamers into comic heroines since his 1909 Biograph Pickford-Quirk comedy, A Midnight Adventure. The Greatest Thing in Life, in fact, appears something of a pastiche, mixing motifs that Griffith had been polishing since Hearts of the World: the farcical French lover; the effete snob straightened out by exposure to foxhole chums; battlefront scenes that combine footage taken in France (presumably during the Hearts of the World 1917 shoot) with studio reconstructions; lovers in peril when the Germans capture a French village; and even a tacked-on ending showing the Kaiser abdicating. In tone, The Greatest Thing in Life adopts the affectionate, gently comic authorial voice that Griffith had created in A Romance of Happy Valley. Folksy, droll opening titles are meant to put the viewer in the mood for a fireside tale. Jeanette, we are told, is “an idealist who, we are afraid, expects too much of her heroes”; later the narrator turns mock-serious, chiding Jeanette’s father when he tells a white lie; preparing us for the limitations of Bobby Harron’s foxtrot technique; and intervening in a quarrel between the heroine and a French admirer when they quarrel over the meaning of the rooster in Edmond Rostand’s satiric play The Chanticleer. The requirements of the war narrative prevent the film from following through in the genial, meandering narrative style of A Romance of Happy Valley and True Heart Susie. Judging from the summaries, reviews, and title list, The Greatest Thing In Life reworks the Hearts of the World formula. Characters get caught up in perilous front line actions; a battle charge forms a last-minute rescue; and Harron’s character goes through a step-by-step transformation from selfish snob to humanitarian good Joe. The surviving evidence suggests that Griffith is still combining the expository principles of the pastoral that convey the illusion of near plotlessness with the propulsive cause-and-effect action of war melodrama. The music that Artcraft sent out to accompany the film holds several minor surprises. An early Jerome Kern ballad, “My Castle in the Air”, interpolated into the musical comedy Miss Springtime in 1916, is used as the main love theme, mixed together with bits and pieces from Victor Herbert’s Fall of a Nation, George M. Cohan, and Richard Wagner. But the true curiosity is an obscure black lullaby, “Don’t You Cry My Honey”, that accompanies the death of the blackface soldier who is lulled by Harron, pretending to be the soldier’s mother. The tune, which can still be heard today as a much speeded-up stomp recorded by the Skillet Lickers in the early 1930s, was considered important enough that it was sung as part of the live prologues that accompanied the film when it opened in Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. In San Francisco, it was sung by “The Street Singer” who emerges from the “Land of Shadows” to comfort a “dispossessed widow”. In certain major markets – although by no means all – Griffith and Artcraft were still controlling the theatrical environment in which even the programmers were being screened. But of special interest is the singular way in which a song, introduced on stage to comfort a grieving widow, is then used to comfort a dying son on film. 198

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Griffith and Artcraft produced only a few live prologues to accompany their program pictures – The Fall of Babylon, released immediately after The Greatest Thing In Life, was the final, most flamboyant one. But Carol Dempster, who was rapidly assuming a more important role in Griffith’s life, was a regular performer in them. Here she leads “dancers from the Land of Shadows”, part of the live introductory act at Clune’s Auditorium that accompanied the film for five weeks, starting 16 December 1918. Among the “modern dancers” in Prologue, another newcomer, still recovering from the Spanish Flu: Rodolfo di Valentina [Rudolph Valentino]. He was still an adagio dancer, little more than a year from being cast in Metro’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram, 1921). Russell Merritt

199

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

573 THE NEW ART FILM CO.

THE HOPE CHEST Filming date: August–October 1918 Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles Presented by: The New Art Film Co. Distribution: Famous Players-Lasky Corp.; Paramount Pictures New York premiere: week prior to 5 January 1919, Rialto Theatre Release date: 29 December 1918 Release length: five reels, 4,686 feet (“running time, about 1 hour”, according to Exhibitor’s Trade Review, January 11, 1919, p. 515). Copyright date: 19 November 1918 (LP 13063) Supervision: D.W. Griffith Director: Elmer Clifton Scenario: M.M. Stearns (William M. Stearns, according to Exhibitor’s Trade Review, January 11, 1919, p. 515) Adaptation: M.M. Stearns Source: The Hope Chest, the novel (1918) by Mark Lee Luther, published as a serial in The Woman’s Home Companion (according to Variety, January 10, 1919, and Exhibitor’s Trade Review, January 11, 1919) Camera: John W. Leezer, Lee Garmes Music arrangements: cue sheets prepared by Film Music Co. Cast: Dorothy Gish (Sheila Moore); George Fawcett (Lew Moore, her father); Richard Barthelmess (Tom Ballantyne, Jr.); Sam De Grasse (Ballantyne, Sr.); Kate V. Toncray (Mrs. Ballantyne); Carol Dempster (Ethel Hoyt); Bertram Grassby (Stoughton Lounsbury) Archival sources: none known Sheila Moore returned to the ninth floor flat she occupied with her vaudeville actor father to find that the treasury was depleted, the cupboard bare and the only thing left for supper was dry bread and fish. The rings and the watch were with that well known firm that has its tickets in all homes where pay night arrived a few days later than the end of last week’s salary. There was but one thing left, and that was the hope chest Sheila’s mother had left when she kissed her daughter and husband goodbye and passed into the land of eternal rest. Sheila’s father turned toward it now, and drew from it a shawl that was tenderly made and as tenderly kept for the day when Sheila should become a bride. The daughter gazed and shook her head. The shawl was returned to the chest, and the supper consisted of dry bread and fish. Momus and Fate conspired within the next few hours, and the aspirations of a young girl were given the treatment that many others have received. Sheila confident that she was to become one of the stage’s most shining lights, was told by the manager that her work was the poorest he had seen for years. Thus, with nothing to eat and no job, there came a time for decision, and this latter was prompted largely through the attractiveness of the costumes in a certain chocolate shop owned by Tom Ballantyne Sr. At any rate, Sheila became one of the young ladies who ask you what you want and wonder which one of you shall she give the check to, or if you want them separate. And there is where the love story begins.

200

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Tom Ballantyne, Jr. left college with the idea that he knew enough, [sic] One of the things he knew best was women. And as he walked through the aisle of his father’s finest confectionery he saw a certain young woman who was, at least to him, attractive, [sic] So with the value of past experiences a guide he opened an acquaintance. But it was sort of a one sided affair because Sheila told him to go about his business or she would introduce him to the latest form of face sleeping [sic]. And Tom Ballantyne Jr. was surprised. The things we want are the things we are told we cannot have, so it is not to be wondered at that the attempted flirtation finally resulted in a violent love affair. And without realizing that she was marrying a boy whose parents did not think him old enough to be taken seriously, Sheila Moore became the bride of the son of the biggest candy dealer in the state. Lew Moore, Sheila’s father, better known in the 10-20-30 houses as Lew Pam, took the announcement as a staggering blow, and realizing that the move was one which would benefit his daughter more than anything he might be able to do for her told her never to mention his name and not to let her new family know that she had ever had any connection with the stage. The newly built house of cards came crashing down when Sheila and her new husband went to the husband’s home to tell the family. The family shrieked and hid their heads. For there was a mother with high aspirations for her son, and there was a ward with high aspirations for herself, and the father – well the father had heard of such things before, and he settled the matter by sending Tom to work. The ward played her cards with a merciless accuracy, the father looked on with an air of half tolerance, and the friend of Tom Ballantyne, Jr. knowing nothing of the marriage, fell in love with the girl he thought was a ward of his friend’s father. Homeless and among strangers, Sheila’s first thought was of her father and of her promise to him. Hearing of his being in a neighboring town she ran away at night and visited him, only to be caught by the mistress of the school and reported to the Ballantyne family. To further complications, Stoughton Lounsbury, the friend of Tom Jr., in a fit of youthful ardor clasped her in his arms and kissed her, only to be discovered by Tom, who decided that his wife was not what he had judged her to be. The day ended with Sheila telling the Ballantyne family what she thought of them jointly and separately and by her exist [sic] in a high dudgeon, never, she informed them, to return. Tom’s chase of his vanished bride, the reconstruction of ideas on the part of some of the family and the repentance of certain sinners form the conclusion of the story, which can best be told on the motion picture screen. Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, November 19, 1918, LP 13063 [stamped with date November 26, 1918] Sheila is one of the waitresses in the fashionable chocolate shop of Ballantyne. She is just crazy for dancing and while practising [sic] a few steps is confronted by Ballantyne’s young son. He asks her to go stepping, but she indignantly refuses. Later she is properly introduced to the young man and it is not long before their friendship ripens into love. They get married. Sheila’s father, a vaudeville actor, returns from the road and when his daughter tells him of the marriage he makes the girl promise that the Ballantyne’s [sic] be told at once. The couple go to break the news and the society ambitious Ballantyne’s [sic] are dumfounded. Sheila has such an uncomfortable time that she finally runs away. Tom eventually realizes that he has really lost something and gives chase to his vanished bride. The family finally come round to the right way of thinking and things turn out nicely for all concerned. Exhibitor’s Trade Review, January 11, 1919, p. 515

201

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

No copy of this film is known to be extant at the time of this writing. The Moving Picture World called The Hope Chest “[a] rather thin chested story which Dorothy Gish manages by sheer force of charming personality to make acceptable” (anonymous reviewer, January 11 1919). Indeed, the plot may have seemed somewhat shopworn and unexciting. It’s the one about the shop girl who marries the son of the store owner and struggles to find acceptance from his family. However, as movie enthusiasts know, it’s a version of the Cinderella story that keeps cropping up – and works well, if handled well. It (Clarence Badger, 1927) and My Best Girl (Sam Taylor, 1927) come to mind. While Dorothy Gish never had the reputation of Clara Bow and Mary Pickford, if the reviewers can be believed, she made the story work very well in this version. The unidentified reviewer for Exhibitor’s Trade Review called this the best picture she had made for Paramount, and other trade press critics applauded Dorothy’s characterization. Famous Players-Lasky had problems scheduling the release of The Hope Chest. It was put into production at the end of August 1918 and seems to have been completed by the end of October. It was copyrighted in November, but not released until 29 December. The first showing in New York came a week after that. The delay was caused by the epidemic of Spanish Flu, which swept the country during the Fall and Winter of 1918–19. The film business was severely affected by the epidemic. Community after community ordered theaters and other places of public gathering to close. By mid-October – when Battling Jane was ready for release – more than seventy-five percent of the theaters in the United States had been closed. In response, the industry suspended the release of films for a month – and then extended the moratorium. Production studios were also hard hit. Staff at the Griffith (former Fine Arts) studio in Hollywood were ordered to wear masks, and a large number of workers became ill. Lillian and Dorothy Gish and Dorothy’s director, Elmer Clifton, came down with the flu in late November – probably after The Hope Chest was completed. All three recovered with no ill effects. This was the second release by Griffith’s New Art Film Company, the sub-production organization within Famous Players-Lasky that made comedies featuring Dorothy Gish. Lillian Gish said that Dorothy, who had a good eye for talent, recommended hiring Richard Barthelmess to be her new leading man. She had seen him in War Brides (Herbert Brenon, 1916) and persuaded Griffith to hire him. He appeared opposite Dorothy in three more of her New Art comedies before being teamed with Lillian in Way Down East and Broken Blossoms. The Hope Chest also features former Denishawn dancer Carol Dempster, who also found a niche in future Griffith productions. Paul Spehr

202

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

574 D.W. GRIFFITH

THE FALL OF BABYLON Alternate title: The Fall of Babylon. A Purple Romance of An Ancient Day Filming date: January–April 1916; additional footage shot in late Summer 1916 (?); February 1917 (with Elmer Clifton and Constance Talmadge); September 1917 (Babylonian harem scene) Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; additional footage (Babylonian harem scene) shot by Joseph Henabery?, possibly at the Famous PlayersLasky Studio, New York Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: D.W. Griffith Service Los Angeles premiere: 19 January 1919, Tally’s Kinema New York premiere: 21 July 1919 Release date: 21 July 1919 Release length: seven reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: D.W. Griffith Story: D.W. Griffith Camera: G.W. Bitzer Second cameraman: Karl Brown Assistants to the director: see entry on Intolerance (DWG Project, #543) Executive and production assistant: J.A. Barry Set design: Walter L. Hall, Frank “Huck” Wortman (according to modern sources) Set design assistant: R. Ellis Wales Construction: Frank “Huck” Wortman Carpenter: Shorty English (according to modern sources) Assistant carpenter: Jim Newman (according to modern sources) Makeup assistant: Robert Anderson Film editor: D.W. Griffith Assistant film editors: James Smith, Rose Smith (according to modern sources) Special effects: Hal Sullivan (according to modern sources) Technical direction assistant: Robert Anderson Property master: Ralph DeLacy (according to modern sources) Assistant property: Hal Sullivan (according to modern sources) Research assistants: Joseph Henabery, Lillian Gish (according to modern sources) Production assistant (unspecified capacity): Erich von Stroheim Costumes: Western Costume Co. Costumes assistant: R. Ellis Wales Choreography: Ruth St. Denis Musical accompaniment compiled and arranged by: Louis F. Gottschalk Titles: D.W. Griffith, Anita Loos; Frank E. Woods (according to modern sources) Cast: Constance Talmadge (The Mountain Girl); Elmer Clifton (The Rhapsode); Alfred Paget (The Prince Belshazzar); Seena Owen (Attarea, favorite of Belshazzar); Carl Stockdale 203

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

(Nabonidus, King of Babylonia); Tully Marshall (The High Priest of Bel); George Siegmann (Cyrus the Persian); Elmo Lincoln (The Mighty Man of Valor); Grace Wilson (First dancer of Tammuz); Lotta Clifton (Second dancer of Tammuz); George Beranger (Second Priest of Bel); Ah Singh (First Priest of Nergel); Ranji Singh (Second Priest of Nergel); Robert Lawler/ Lawrence Lawlor [or George Fawcett?] (Babylonian Judge); Kate Bruce (Babylonian Mother/Old Woman); Loyola O’Connor (Attarea’s slave); James Curley (Charioteer of Cyrus); Ed Burns (Charioteer of the Priest of Bel); James Burns (Charioteer of the Second Priest of Bel); Howard Scott (Babylonian Dandy); Martin Landry (Auctioneer); Arthur Meyer (Brother of the Mountain Girl); Charles Eagle Eye (Barbarian Chieftain); William Dark Cloud (Ethiopian Chieftain); Charles van Cortland (Gobryas, Lieutenant of Cyrus); Jack Cosgrove (Chief Eunuch); Alma Rubens, Ruth Darling, Margaret Mooney (Girls of the marriage market); Winifred Westover (Favorite of Egibi); Ethel Terry [not to be confused with Ethel Grey Terry, also in cast] or Ellen Terry [not to be confused with British stage actress Ellen Terry] (Slave girl/Egyptian slave girl); Mildred Harris, Pauline Starke, Daisy Robinson? (Favorites of the harem); (according to modern sources) Ethel Grey Terry, Carmel Myers, Jewel Carmen, Eve Southern, Natalie Talmadge, Carol Dempster, Anna Mae Walthall (Favorites of the harem); Wallace Reid (A Boy killed in the fighting); Ted Duncan (Captain of the gate); Ruth St. Denis? (Solo dancer) [actual participation was denied by her in an interview]; The Denishawn Dancers (Dancers); Gino Corrado (The Runner); Felix Modjeska (Bodyguard to the princess); Mme. Sul-Te-Wan (Girl of the marriage market); Owen Moore, Wilfred Lucas, Douglas Fairbanks, Frank Campeau, Nigel de Brulier, Donald Crisp, Tammany Young (Extras) NOTE: Footage of a construction crew demolishing the Babylonian set was included by D.W. Griffith at some point in the film. The footage (ca. 65 ft.) surviving in a Screen Snapshots newsreel at the National Film and Television Archive makes use of several intertitles originally written for The Fall of Babylon. Archival sources: Library of Congress, 35mm nitrate positive (AFI/James L. Berry Collection); 35mm nitrate negative (AFI/James L. Berry Collection), fragments; 35mm nitrate positive (Raymond Rohauer Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate positive, incomplete? (from D.W. Griffith, 1938); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive (excerpts in Screen Snapshots, 1920; see above below). MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), unspecified parts (possibly compiled after the film’s initial release) “The Fall of Babylon” is that of a brilliant people who were dust when the Gentle Carpenter was born; who hungered for food and love and happiness – even as you and I. They built a marvelous city, Babylon the Mighty, with massive walls and stately palaces that only treachery could reduce. When the story begins (Babylon, 539 B.C.) two religious factions are fighting each other. The great High Priest of Bel – he of the cold, stern religion, intolerant and hard and bitter – is jealous of the worship by the Babylonians of Ishtar, Goddess of Love. Prince Belshazzar and his father, King Nabonidus, reign upon the throne of Babylon. They have songs and prayers of rejoicing for Ishtar. The High Priest of Bel looks upon the revelry with hatred and bitterness. He has great power. He puts his guards in control of the gates and bribes several of the king’s guards to join his forces. He plots to send a messenger to Cyrus, King of the Persians, and have him bring his mighty army to Babylon and destroy the city, and so avenge himself on Belshazzar and Ishtar. A trusted young man is sent, Cyrus agrees, and chariots and horses are made ready for the siege.

204

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

But a young mountain girl comes to the city to buy a dress. After she has traded her apples and other fruits for the coveted garment, she sets about to view the city of Babylon. She is seen by a young poet, the Rhapsode. Her country ways and her wild nature appeal to him and he whispers love into her ears and sings little songs of youth and happiness. In playful romp the little mountain girl ventures afar. She is seen by a merchant of the Marriage Market, captured and placed among the maidens to be sold in the open mart. Prince Belshazzar in all his glory, accompanied by attendants of the court, happens by the Marriage Market in time to see the predicament of the short-curled, beautiful, warm-eyed girl from the country. He is angered at her captivity. She is immediately released and Belshazzar places upon her upturned hand the seal of freedom. In the one fleeting glance the grateful girl receives from the Prince a spark of love is kindled in her heart. She forgets about her poet-lover and seeks to know more about Belshazzar. The Feast of Belshazzar is in progress. The mountain girl, standing afar off, adventurous, hoydenish, strong in love and hate, approaches the great gate and beholds her Prince. She adores him; she worships him. Her thoughts are interrupted by the voice of the messenger who is to carry the plans of the invasion to Cyrus. By a clever ruse she lures the carrier of the High Priest of Bel into an inn and beguiles him until, boastingly, he tells her everything. She spies upon the army of Cyrus as it leaves on its night journey of destruction, and seizing a chariot and horses she gallops ahead to warn Belshazzar, arriving in Babylon while the greatest banquet in all history still is in its height. But amid the feasting and wine and revelry the message of the mountain girl is not believed; her warning is not taken. With the onrush of the army of Cyrus, the huge gates give way, the mighty forts are brushed down, the palaces are set afire – and Babylon falls. To avoid being taken by the enemy, Belshazzar dies by his own hand, with no one near him in his last hour but the little mountain girl who loved him and tried to save him. She holds his hands and kisses the dying lips, while the last blare from the trumpets of Cyrus falls upon her ears. The little mountain girl wanders into the desert, alone and forsaken, her wild spirit crushed by the death of the Prince. Then love comes to her gently, softly, as the boy who sang songs to her slips his hand in hers and leads her back to her country home. There solace and happiness are found in the love of the Rhapsode. Souvenir program, 1919

In ancient Babylon a Mountain Girl is attracted by the songs of a young warrior, the Rhapsode. She prepares for the marriage market, but is given the option not to marry by Prince Belshazzar, who thus wins her admiring devotion. A high priest, jealous of the introduction into Babylon of love-deity Ishtar, conspires to help Cyrus of Persia. Cyrus’ first attack on the city is repelled, but the Mountain Girl learns of plans for a second attack following the celebratory feast. She races from Cyrus’ camp but her warnings are ignored in Babylon. The city is defeated, Prince Belshazzar and his Princess Beloved kill themselves before they can be captured, and the Mountain Girl fights on to the end. She is spared execution by the Persian conquerors but banished forever from Babylon.

Late in 1918, Griffith carved out of Intolerance two conventionally structured full-length features, The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law. For both, he filmed some new footage, restored unused shots from the original epic, and partially revised the intertitles and editing. Of the two features, The Fall of Babylon was the least altered from its source. A new opening intertitle attempts to balance the spectacle of Babylon with the personal drama of the 205

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Mountain Girl: “THE STORY OF A CITY – AND OF THOSE WHO LOVE THAT CITY – AND OF A YOUNG GIRL WHO COMES DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO GET A NEW DRESS – AND INCIDENTALLY BECOMES PART OF ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST ADVENTURES.” Most of the sequences and

shots newly seen, however, bring forward the personal drama. The Mountain Girl (Constance Talmadge) now learns to “like kisses” with the Rhapsode and masters “the latest walk” via observation of city women. The re-emphasis led Variety to comment that “as the picture now stands one is fully able to appreciate the wonderful work that Constance Talmadge did in the original picture. In Intolerance she was buried in a mass of story that was hard to follow. In this version she is always on the job and one learns to look for her and to like her” (July 25, 1919, p. 49). Cyrus (George Siegmann) also gets slightly more characterization, as in the amusing sequence where he asks a “sacred white horse” about the advisability of attacking Babylon. (The horse nods yes.) If most of The Fall of Babylon is not significantly altered from Intolerance, for audiences of 1919 seeing it was an entirely different experience. The new feature was integrated into an elaborate stage spectacle, as if Griffith was unwilling to allow his Babylon to be confined within an ordinary movie. The presentation, revised from city to city for different performers, began with a live prologue narrated by an actor costumed as a Babylonian priest and included musical numbers and dances intermixed with the film. The first version opened in Los Angeles in January 1919 and the most widely reported production played in New York that July, by which time the presentation was split, Variety reported, “50-50 between the stage and the screen, opening with a tableau that is part stage and part screen, a special small screen to show New York, the modern Babylon, which, after a dissolve, brings the large screen and the opening scenes of the feature.” During Belshazzar’s first feast, the action shifted back to a risqué performance by a dancer named Kyra (“if it had been presented at the Olympic or the Columbia the cops would have been right on the job … Kyra shows about all that she can and keep ‘within the law’”, according to Variety). Among other interpolations were performers playing the Mountain Girl and the Rhapsode on stage and singing a duet. (“This could just as well have been discarded before the opening”, said Variety, “The tenor seemed so stricken with stage fright that he could not use his voice.”) Returning to the stage just before Cyrus’ final attack on Babylon was Kyra, “a most unusual person of apparently flexible bones”, in The New York Times’ words, whose second dance “bewitched, or perhaps bewildered, the spectators” (July 22, 1919, sect. 10, p. 2). That The Fall of Babylon could accommodate such interpolations reinforces how much the film remains more spectacle than narrative, even in this 1919 revision. In the major alteration from Intolerance’s storyline, The Fall of Babylon ends in less than complete tragedy. Selective use of Intolerance’s shots of the Mountain Girl’s death eliminate the arrow into her chest and cause her to look just deeply defeated. She is brought before a panel of the conquering Persians as an oddity – a girl found fighting with the Babylonian men. Their offhand verdict is “RUN HER THROUGH THE BODY AND CAST HER ON THE DUNGHILLS”, but the Rhapsode, acting as something of a defense attorney, contends that she “IS NO TRAITORESS”, only a patriot. The revised “JUDGMENT IS THAT SHE BE BANISHED FROM BABYLON FOREVER”. We see her collapsed forlornly outside, but the Rhapsode helps her to her feet and they walk into the distance to begin to make a “new world” together. Ishtar, “Goddess of Eternal Love”, has answered “the boy’s prayers” after all. The new scenes of the Mountain Girl’s romance at the start of the film and this new conclusion certainly allow for a lighter touch and a happier ending, if at the price of losing Intolerance’s characterization of the fighting young woman who dies heroically, freed joyfully of marriage. Scott Simmon 206

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

575 D.W. GRIFFITH

THE MOTHER AND THE LAW Filming date: late October–December 1914 and August–September 1915; additional footage shot in late 1918 Location: Fine Arts studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; exteriors: California Presented by: D.W. Griffith Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: D.W. Griffith Service Los Angeles premiere: 19 January 1919, Tally’s Kinema New York premiere: 21 July (according to Russell Merritt) or 18 August 1919, George M. Cohan Theatre (according to The Moving Picture World, August 30, 1919, p. 1371) Release date: August 1919 Release length: seven reels Copyright date: not copyrighted Director: D.W. Griffith Scenario: D.W. Griffith Story: D.W. Griffith Camera: G.W. Bitzer Assistant cameramen: see entry on Intolerance (DWG Project, #543) Assistant director: see entry on Intolerance (DWG Project, #543) Film editor: D.W. Griffith (according to modern sources) Musical accompaniment compiled and arranged by: Louis F. Gottschalk, Joseph Carl Breil Titles: Anita Loos, D.W. Griffith, (according to modern sources) Frank E. Woods Cast: [as credited on print] Mae Marsh (The Little Dear One); Robert Harron (The Boy); Miriam Cooper (The Friendless One); Vera Lewis (Miss Mary T. Jenkins); Sam De Grasse (Arthur Jenkins); Fred Turner (The Dear One’s Father); Walter Long (The Musketeer); Tom Wilson (The Kindly Heart); Ralph Lewis (The Governor); J.C. [A.W.?] McClure (The Priest); Lloyd Ingraham (The Judge); Kate Bruce (The City Mother); Eleanor Washington, Lucille Brown, Mary Alden, Pearl Elmore, Mrs. Arthur Mackley (The self-styled “Uplifters”); [other cast:] Luray Huntley (Self-styled “Uplifter”); Clyde Hopkins (Arthur Jenkins’ secretary); Edward Dillon (Chief Detective); William [A.] Brown (Warden); Max Davidson (The Kindly Neighbor); Alberta Lee (Wife of the Kindly Neighbor); Frank Brownlee [Brownlie] (Brother of the Girl); Barney Bernard (Attorney for the Boy); Margaret Marsh (Guest at ball); Tod Browning (Owner of the racing car); Tully Marshall (A friend of the Musketeer); [according to modern sources:] Monte Blue (Strike leader); Billy Quirk (Bartender); J.P. McCarthy (Prison guard) Archival sources: FILM – Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate negative; two 16mm acetate negatives (generation undetermined for all elements); George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive (William K. Everson/New York University Collection); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm diacetate positive, 6740 ft. (printed 1944 from 35mm nitrate negative received from D.W. Griffith in 1938, no longer extant). MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), original score (unspecified parts); Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), Brussels, original score (unspecified parts), 52 pages; Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), a) piano conductor (by Louis F. Gottschalk), 52 pages; microfilm edition: 207

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 60; b) orchestral parts (composed and adapted by Louis F. Gottschalk, arranged by Joseph Carl Breil) “extracted from the super-picture Intolerance” (1,1,2,0; 2,2,1,0; drums; strings); printed by Felix Violé, Los Angeles, April 1919; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 61 The girl’s father, the boy and the boy’s father are all working in the mill owned by Arthur Jenkins … Mary Jenkins, sister of the mill-owner, heads a movement to improve the condition of the poor of the community, and at the same time her brother refuses to grant his men a raise in wages. There is a strike, and the boy’s father is killed when force is used to drive the strikers away from the mill. The young chap goes to another city, and unable to obtain work, becomes a member of a band of crooks controlled by a leader known as “The Musketeer”. A young girl, called “The Friendless One”, who knew the boy in his home town, falls into the hands of the leader and is installed as his mistress. The girl and her father come to the same city. After the death of her father, the girl and the boy meet and fall in love. The boy determines to reform but the gang leader tries to hold him. There is a fight and the boy wins. The couple marry and the boy tries to earn a honest living for his wife. The gang leader is attracted by his former companion’s wife and tries to lure her away. His mistress finds it out and becomes very bitter against him. A put-up job planned by the gang leader convicts the boy of robbery and he is sent to prison. While he is serving his sentence his wife becomes a mother. Later on the child is taken from her, under the pretext that she is not a fit person to raise it. The child dies. When the boy gets out of jail, he goes back to his wife. In trying to protect her against the gang leader, the boy gets into another fight with the musketeer, during which the crook is shot and killed by his mistress. The boy is convicted of the murder. On the day he is to be hanged, the real murderer confesses her guilt, but almost too late to save the boy. The Governor has taken a train and left the city. A high power car is secured and a mad dash is made to overtake the train. This is accomplished[,] the pardon is signed and the boy’s wife reaches the prison just in time to stop the execution and save her husband. The Moving Picture World, August 30, 1919, pp. 1371–1372

In a mill town the prosperous owner, Jenkins, funds his unmarried sister’s charities and cuts his workers’ wages. A strike leaves the Boy’s father dead and the Dear One’s father without a job. They and another young woman, the Friendless One, all move separately to a rough district of a nearby city. The Boy falls into criminal life under the Musketeer, who also makes the Friendless One his kept woman. On the city streets the Boy and the Dear One meet and, after the death of her father, marry. The Boy reforms but is framed by the Musketeer and sent to prison. The Dear One is declared an unfit mother and her infant taken by the intrusive Jenkins social workers. After the Boy’s release, the Musketeer attempts to seduce the Dear One with promises to recover her child. While tussling with her, he is shot by the Friendless One and the Boy is wrongly convicted of the murder. The child dies while still in institutional custody. Returning to the scene of the crime, the Friendless One is caught and confesses. The governor’s pardon arrives instants before the Boy’s scheduled execution.

When this second full-length feature that Griffith created from Intolerance opened in New York in August 1919, memory of the theatrical spectacle surrounding screenings of The Fall of Babylon was fresh. The Moving Picture World needed to note that “‘The Mother and the 208

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Law’ was a straight moving picture entertainment without any sort of tableau introduction or other stage effects” (August 30, 1919, p. 1371). This film could stand on its own. The many changes from Intolerance generally deepen and improve its Modern story as retold in The Mother and the Law, although the complicated print history of both titles make it difficult to specify too precisely what audiences saw – or read in the intertitles – in any given year. Considered on its own, The Mother and the Law had a long gestation, incorporating shots from 1914 for an unreleased film of the same title, additions made for the 1916 Intolerance, and footage newly taken in 1918. In this it resembles most those European epics whose shooting was interrupted by World War I, such as Albert Capellani’s 1793 (released in 1921). The cumulative coherent power of The Mother and the Law is all the more remarkable given its extended production history. Right from the first reviews of Intolerance, Griffith’s cutting portrait of progressive-era female “uplifters” sparked an angry response. The New York Evening Sun’s review of the opening night reported that “the discussion of the modern story began in the audience between the acts and is likely to rouse as much difference of opinion as did the race issue in Griffith’s earlier piece, The Birth of a Nation. In this modern story he frankly attacks the great philanthropic ‘foundations’ and even gets a side slap at one of the institutions of city government, the Children’s Court, which he charges with parting a loving mother, who had done no wrong of any kind, from her child” (quoted in The Moving Picture World, September 23, 1916, p. 1951). In revisions for The Mother and the Law, Griffith both intensified this critical portrait (especially by clarifying the tragic fate of the child) and counterbalanced it, especially by adding one entirely new sequence, shot in 1918. This disconnected new look into “[r]eal charities founded on love” follows immediately after the harsh look into the unintended consequences – secret bootlegging and open prostitution – arising from the sweep of organized vice overseen by the Jenkins charity (a sequence that is itself moved to earlier in the film and which still includes the infamous intertitle “WHEN WOMEN CEASE TO ATTRACT MEN THEY OFTEN TURN TO REFORM AS A SECOND CHOICE”). In the new sequence, doors of the Salvation Army open to provide “A REFUGE FOR UNFORTUNATE WOMEN”, with mothering comfort from a character played by regular Griffith mother Kate Bruce. The film now also opens with a disclaimer and a defense: “THIS STORY DOES NOT REFER TO ESTABLISHED CHARITIES, COURTS AND REFORMS – THE WORK OF SYMPATHETIC HUMANITY TO HELP THE UNFORTUNATE – BUT RATHER TO THOSE WHO USE CHARITY AS A CLOAK FOR SELF-GLORIFICATION, OR, AS IN SEVERAL CASES CERTIFIED BY GOVERNMENTAL INVESTIGATION, FOR AUTOCRATIC PURPOSE OF USING THEIR POWER, SECURED THROUGH VARIOUS FOUNDATIONS, TO MAKE LAWS TO SUIT THEIR OWN WILL.”

A subtler revision helps to fix a problem that may have bothered Griffith or viewers, although it wasn’t mentioned in New York reviews of Intolerance. The motivation for the “Friendless One” (Miriam Cooper) to murder the “Musketeer” (Walter Long) looks slim in original film – beyond the single-word title “JEALOUSY” that introduces her spying on the Musketeer as he puts the moves on the young wife (or the “Little Dear One”, as Mae Marsh’s character is first dubbed) under the ploy that he can help recover her baby. Two additional motivations for the murder are suggested: an intertitle back in the mill town now identifies the Friendless One as the Boy’s “first sweetheart”; and an additional scene placed shortly before the killing shows a slap-and-kiss sexuality, shocking for its era, between the Friendless One and the Musketeer, ending with his beating her to the floor. The most intense moments of The Mother and the Law arise from the more explicit fate of the baby after it is placed in the foster-care ward. A stark, disturbing image introduces a new scene through unexplained preparations of a tiny wooden coffin, which leads to the bureaucratic explanation given to the mother in the next room by the charity workers: “OWING 209

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

TO YOUR LACK OF CARE OF THE BABY BEFORE WE TOOK IT, IT HAS DIED.” In a brilliant piece of narratively disconnected foreboding (also missing from Intolerance), the Boy had earlier paused with the prison work crew to stare down into a lingering shot of an open grave. The baby’s death and this prison memento mori also combine to leave audiences more in doubt about the ultimate outcome. A hanging of the Boy would not be out of place in the film’s world up to that point. There is a subtle evolution in the philosophy behind the revised film. In several new titles the role of “fate” is now balanced by a social explanation, usually with addition of the word “environment”, as in the justification for the Boy’s first theft of a drunk’s wallet in the city: “THE BOY CAUGHT IN THE MESHES OF AN ENVIRONMENT TOO STRONG TO ESCAPE.” One doesn’t miss those verb-form neologisms of “intolerance” that had peppered the epic, as in its explanation that “STOLEN GOODS, PLANTED ON THE BOY, AND HIS BAD REPUTATION INTOLERATE HIM AWAY FOR A TERM”. In The Mother and the Law a different title comes before the Boy’s first incarceration: “OUR PEOPLE, FORCED BY THESE BITTER MISTAKES INTO AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE THEY FOUNDER HELPLESSLY IN THE NETS OF FATE.” Mae Marsh’s performance, as overly busy as it sometimes is, represents a spirited fight against those nets. Especially in sequences unseen in Intolerance, her acting is amazingly complex. For that very reason those scenes must have been too much for Intolerance, because they tend to complicate characterization in place of the simpler narrative drive needed to keep the epic’s four stories moving. In particular her two visits to the Boy while he’s in prison for the “frame-up” are models of elaborate restraint, mixing joy at seeing him, feigned toughness, bits of gentle mockery at their situation, and serious conversation (including informing him of her pregnancy during the second visit). More darkly subtle are Marsh’s series of reactions at her child’s coffin. As with Lillian Gish at her infant’s death in The Mothering Heart (1913), Griffith directs young actresses to underplay this deepest of losses. Also adding to both the story’s poignancy and its social logic is a court appearance to determine the disposition of the baby after it is removed from its mother’s home by the three women, who after all represent only a private charity. The girl’s spitfire anger and physical rage at the larger women in court is presented as obvious evidence of her emotional unfitness. Among other major scenes new to The Mother and the Law is a second early street incident when the girl “PERSISTS IN HER NEW WALK TO WIN ADMIRERS”. The Boy ends up having to fight a masher attracted also by her inviting style, which she has copied from a woman on the streets. The scene serves to introduce the neighborhood cop (Tom Wilson) who in Intolerance appears at the end more abruptly interested in helping our couple get at the truth behind the murder. Whether or not the cop is fooled in this scene when the girl sits on a barrel to hide the beaten masher, his interest in the couple has been established early, as has the girl’s “FIERCE VIRGINITY” (an intertitle phrase hard to imagine from any filmmaker but Griffith). Although other new scenes sometimes disrupt continuity, they add greatly to the film’s charm. The sequence of our couple at a dockside lumberyard (seen in a single lovely backlit shot in Intolerance) is broken in two – divided by the marriage proposal at her apartment doorway – so that the second part of the lumberyard sequence can serve as their post-wedding walk (“NOT A SHOWY PLACE FOR A HONEYMOON – BUT AFTER ALL – –” ). The newlywed husband now claims, amusingly, not at all to care for the sexy walk that first attracted him. Current prints of The Mother and the Law end as does the Modern story in Intolerance, just after the Boy is freed from the hangman’s gallows, the hood pulled from his head, his wife rousing him from his daze with a passionate tousling of his hair. The Museum of Modern Art’s intertitle records suggest that at some point the 1919 film may have ended with a coda set two years later: our reunited couple will have a new baby.

210

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

The Mother and the Law will always stand as a footnote to Intolerance. But on its own it is easier to appreciate Griffith’s “modern story”: the struggle of powerless people caught up in a harsh “environment”, in unfeeling institutions and deadly labor strikes, but also freed by the new opportunities of the city, including the simple amusements of “a Coney Island day”. The title The Mother and the Law reduces to its essence the imbalance of gender and political power that is at the core of the melodrama form. This 1919 film (which runs almost 7,000 feet) is also literally more than the Modern story of Intolerance (which adds up to about 4,500 feet). Perhaps if Griffith had never made that epic, it would be easier to recognize this biting urban melodrama as one of his great works. Scott Simmon

211

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

576 D.W. GRIFFITH

BROKEN BLOSSOMS Title on print: Broken Blossoms, or The Yellow Man and the Girl Working title: The Chink and the Child Filming date: December 1918 (18 days of shooting, according to Russell Merritt) Location: Griffith studio, 4500 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles; Chinatown, Los Angeles Producer: D.W. Griffith Distribution: United Artists Corp. New York premiere: 13 May 1919, George M. Cohan Theatre Release date: 20 October 1919 Release length: six reels Copyright date: 31 March 1919 (LP 13755) Director: D.W. Griffith Author: D.W. Griffith (according to copyright records) Scenario: D.W. Griffith Source: “The Chink and the Child”, the short story (1917) by Thomas Burke in Limehouse Nights Camera: G.W. Bitzer Additional photography: Karl Brown (one scene, according to modern sources) Art director: Charles E. Baker Film editor: James Smith (according to modern sources) Musical accompaniment including original compositions by: D.W. Griffith Musical accompaniment: Louis F. Gottschalk Music arranged by: Louis F. Gottschalk Color: Handschiegl process (in some prints, according to modern sources) Special effects: Hendrick [Hendrik] Sartov Technical advisor: Moon Kwan (according to modern sources) Additional crew member (unspecified capacity): Wilbur Higby Cast: Lillian Gish (Lucy, the girl); Donald Crisp (“Battling” Burrows); Arthur Howard (His manager); Richard Barthelmess [“courtesy of the Dorothy Gish Company”] (Cheng Huan, The Yellow Man); Edward Peil (Evil Eye); Norman Selby (A prize fighter); George Beranger (The Spying One); Ernest Butterworth Archival sources: Academy Film Archive, 16mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); Cineteca Nazionale, Rome, 35mm acetate positive, English intertitles (received in 1969 from Filmoteka Narodowa, Warsaw, generation undetermined); 16mm acetate positive, English intertitles (generation undetermined; records indicate nitrate base); Det Danske Filmmuseum, 35mm acetate positive (acquired in 1957 from Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Belgrade); George Eastman House, 16mm acetate positive, reissue print with magnetic soundtrack (Martin Scorsese Collection); Gosfilmofond of Russia, 35mm acetate negative; Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Belgrade, 35mm acetate positive (generation undetermined); Library of Congress, 16mm acetate positive, tinted (Killiam reissue); The Museum of Modern Art, 35mm nitrate positive (5,974 ft., received 1938 from D.W. Griffith); National Film and Television Archive, 35mm nitrate positive (# 2,000,450 I); 35mm nitrate positive (# 2,000,451 I); 35mm acetate negative (# TA6344-163 C), printing source undetermined; 35mm acetate positive (# 42,193 D), 212

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

acquired in 1979, source not listed; UCLA Film and Television Archive, 35mm acetate positive (fragment); two 16mm acetate positives (generation undetermined). MUSIC University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), original score (unspecified parts); Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), piano conductor (1,1,2,1; 2,2,1,0; drums [Prologue 1 missing]; harp [Prologue 1 only], strings), 13, 55 pages. NOTE: Prologue 1 bound separately; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 10 The episodes of “Broken Blossoms” involve three persons – Battling Burrows, a bully of the London slums; a young Chinese poet named Cheng Huan, who has come out of the Far East to spread to other peoples the doctrines of brotherly love,[sic] and Lucy, a girl of fifteen who, when but a mere babe, was thrust into the arms of Battling Burrows – a bundle of white rags – the gift of one of Battler’s girls. These scenes are carried from China into the crooked alleys of London’s Limehouse district. When he is drunk or out of temper, the Battler, a prize fighter, visits his rage upon this piteous child. Her starved, bruised little body creeps sorrowfully around the crooked alleys. Concerned with its own sins, Limehouse has no time to bother about Lucy or her sorrows. But there is one who does care. As Lucy creeps down through the shadowy alleys there is one who looks after her with a sort of holy adoration. This pitying one is the young Chinaman. His highest hopes beaten down, all that remains to him of beauty and of light is his wistful, almost sacred love for this helpless child who passes by his store. One day the Battler beats Lucy with rather more cruelty than usual, and her fainting, broken little figure staggers weakly down the road and falls in through the Chinaman’s doorway. Tenderly he gathers the little one in his arms and bears her upstairs to his lonely room. There he bathes her wounds. With a quaint fancy he dresses her in wonderful old silken robes and tends her with the sweet, pure veneration that a subject might bestow upon a wounded princess. But there comes a day when the prize fighter bursts into the apartment and wrecks it with murderous paws. Through the cloaking mist of a London fog, you can see the cringing little figure being dragged back to her doom. Some terrible instinct tells the child that this beating will be the last. She tries to escape into a closet, but a ruthless hatchet beats down the barrier. The Chinaman comes too late to the scene; he finds only a still, broken little figure, her last lonely wistful smile still on her dear lips. With a deadly calm, as one who performs an act of holy sacrifice, the young poet gathers the pitiful figure in his arms and carries it back through the misty fog to his room, where the girl knew her few brief hours of happiness. With a flower placed tenderly in her grubby little hands, he bids her farewell, says his last prayer to a little figure of Buddha and slips out of the world of shattered dreams with a dagger in his heart. And what of the end of Battling Burrows? He was found in the morning with five bullet holes in his body, Cheng Huan’s love-gift before he took the broken little girl to her last earthly abode. Exhibitors Campaign Sheet, United Artists Corp., October 1919

Cheng Huan, a high-born Chinese idealist, sails to London to preach peace, but succumbs to the dissipations of Limehouse. In his curio shop he provides sanctuary for Lucy, the battered, illegitimate daughter of a small-time East End prize fighter named Battling Burrows. Cheng Huan grows infatuated with Lucy, showering her with presents and converting his upstairs bedroom into a shrine where she may recover. When the Battler learns of his daughter’s whereabouts, he drags her home and beats her to death. Cheng, arriving too late, shoots Burrows, and then kills himself.

213

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

Broken Blossoms is Griffith’s most intricate film; in fact, it is probably the most intricately designed American silent ever made. Formal complexity in itself is not a virtue, of course. But the formal perfections of Broken Blossoms are ideally suited to the requirements of Griffith’s narrative. Roger Shattuck, commenting on modern painting, described one pleasure of viewing abstract painting as projecting our personal associations onto the non-representational lines. The pleasures we take from Broken Blossoms are of the opposite kind: in it, we may disrobe Griffith’s depiction of a natural world to find an underlying beauty of form. We can respond, too, to the risks Griffith took with his new story. I do not have in mind the box-office dangers – although charging $3.00 in 1919 for a low-budget six-reeler takes a certain kind of outrageousness. But it is Griffith’s willingness to force himself into uncharted, psychologically threatening terrain that remains remarkable. In Broken Blossoms he lowers his guard. Activities obviously taboo or excoriated in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance – miscegenation, auto-eroticism, voyeurism, opium eating, and revenge killing – are transformed into sensually satisfying activities that resonate in dangerously non-conformist ways. The few references to post-war 1919 American culture in the film, far from catering to the nation’s rampant xenophobia and mood of self-congratulation, hint at the dark side of American provincialism. For once in Griffith’s work, racial bigotry is a target for bitter reproach. The glancing allusions to munitions workers, American sailors, and the First World War are no less remarkable. In contrast to Griffith’s customary utopianism, they indicate a bleak, selfdestructive society driven by violence and ignorance. Griffith based his film on “The Chink and the Child”, a short story written by Thomas Burke, a British journalist who enjoyed a brief vogue during the First World War, especially among the British intelligentsia. Burke’s tale, originally published in the avant-garde art monthly Colour, and then recycled in The English Review, was later anthologized for Burke’s best-selling collection of short stories, Limehouse Nights, published in 1917. As a chronicler of London slums, Burke combined the sensationalism of Sax Rohmer with the ironic detachment of Ambrose Bierce. In retrospect, his stories read like the work of a Grub Street hack, steeped in purple prose and built on predictable plot formulas with O. Henry-style twist endings. But at the time Griffith bought Burke’s story, Burke was widely discussed as a kind of updated Baudelaire, a connoisseur of the sordid who, through his art, transformed the sinful lives of degenerate slum dwellers into sepulchral poetry. In Limehouse Nights as in his earlier travelogue, Nights in Town (1915), his pose is that of the outsider, eternally fascinated by the phantasmagorical images he encounters in Limehouse, intriguing his readers with “life in the raw, stripped of its silken wrappings”. Mary Pickford, who reportedly introduced Griffith to Burke’s “The Chink and the Child”, later considered hiring Burke to adapt Sparrows, hoping he could inject “the intense poetic feeling you brought to Limehouse Nights where you caught the poetry and mystery and terror of London’s streets by night” (Letter typescript, Mary Pickford to Thomas Burke, February 24, 1925; Mary Pickford Collection, Hollywood, California). Burke, in short, had a reputation unlike that of any author Griffith had worked with before. Ever the Anglophile, Griffith saw in Burke a level of sophistication and modernity that set him apart from the journalists who usually provided Griffith his stories. Yet curiously, this little film, which was shot in eighteen days on a modest budget of $92,000, was first regarded as a routine programmer. When Griffith sought to have it distributed as a special, Adolph Zukor turned him down. “You bring me a picture like this and want money for it?” he is supposed to have said. “Everybody in it dies!” Finally, at the urging of his own top advisors, Griffith bought his film back and toured it on the Klaw & Erlanger 214

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

theater circuit as an elegant roadshow attraction. It became a sensational hit. Then he sent it around to regular movie houses as his first release for the newly formed United Artists Corporation. Riding the wave of Griffith’s lavish publicity campaign, Broken Blossoms became one of United Artists’ first three major moneymakers. Today, Broken Blossoms’ critical stock continues to soar; in the past ten years, it has probably attracted more fresh analysis than even Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation. Provocative investigations of the narrative, Griffith’s unorthodox marketing and exhibition strategies, the film’s relationship to contemporaneous anti-Asian stereotypes, its promotion as an art film, and its rendering of class structure have yielded unusually interesting results. But it is also of interest as a narrative. Unlike its overwhelming and diffuse predecessors, The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, Broken Blossoms is marked by a deceptively simple, apparently straightforward style. Perhaps for this reason, the internal organization of its narrative has generally gone overlooked. Yet, this apparent artlessness, in fact, reveals a mastery of the medium that in subtlety and nuance seems to me no less exciting than the more blatant experimentation of Intolerance. Above all, Broken Blossoms is a film marked by terrific compression. The concentration of time and space give characters, objects, and decor a sustained metaphorical power that is never dissipated. Griffith uses conventional elements traditionally employed to show the seamy life of Limehouse: an opium den, a gambling house, a curio shop, Burrows’ hovel. But, curiously, he strips these locales of their prosaic and sordid details. The stark street Cheng Huan lives on is clean and pristine; the harbor outside Lucy’s apartment, motionless and near-empty. The contrast between homeland and faraway slum falls along the line of vitality versus lifelessness rather than Burke’s hackneyed notions of physical cleanliness versus grime (Burke is forever reminding his reader of “mephitic smells”, “grimey paws”, and “slime-ridden slums” in Limehouse). The opium den is seen literally through a romantic haze (Hendrik Sartov’s soft-focus lens at work), the exotic details (musicians, instruments, a female opium eater lying on the couch) picked out in sharp focus. Although, predictably, Griffith features the intermingling of races as an illustration of sordidness, the cut-ins lend the den an air of classical order and serenity that fights against ideas of degeneration. The Hogarthian slum streets in films like Charlie Chaplin’s Easy Street (1917) and Frank Borzage’s Humoresque (1920) give way to vacant, quiescent Hopper-like cityscapes. The parallels Griffith draws between Lucy and the Yellow Man are substantial, but in the end the differences are more important than the similarities. Lucy neither appreciates nor comprehends the love Cheng Huan offers. The pleasures Lucy takes from the Yellow Man are those of a battered, immature creature overwhelmed by the simple appeal of material objects. The Yellow Man’s apartment becomes for her a magic wigwam that fuses with her mother’s gifts as a representation of beauty, with no associations beyond its exotic splendor. Lucy, who has an aversion to being touched (unsurprising in view of her father’s way with a whip), only lets the Yellow Man put his hand on her when she is preoccupied with the beautiful things he gives her (like the robe and Oriental hair-braid that replaces the ribbons). The doll, both literally and figuratively, becomes the source of that expression – Lucy’s attention deflected from Cheng Huan onto his gift. The possibility of a satisfactory resolution to the relationship is constantly brought up, only to be deflected. The expressions of wonder on her face as she looks in the mirror, touches her lips, and smiles up at him, suggests that she is discovering herself, and that there may be some possibility of contact between them. But her next move is to stroke his cheek as if he were a cat and say, “‘WHAT MAKES YOU SO GOOD TO ME, CHINKY’”. The Yellow Man reacts to her ignorant question with a smile, but the barriers Griffith 215

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

creates by contrasting Lucy’s lower-class ignorance and prejudice with the Yellow Man’s highcaste idealism only enlarge upon the gulf created by their contrasting dreams and images of each other. Battling Burrows’ intervention, in other words, is not really what destroys the relationship. The love affair itself is built on illusions that make it impossible for either lover to see the other straight on; there is no way the affair can grow. From our perspective, what is remarkable is that both the potential and limitations of the relationship are so intimately associated with readings of props and decor. It is a love affair built on multiple associations given to dolls, flowers, ribbons, incense, and beautiful clothes; on lovers each locked into perceptions of objects, built on previous dreams and aspirations, that the other frequently cannot share. By paring down the repertoire of elements within the mise-en-scène and constantly recycling them, Griffith creates a clever mystification by which details and gestures are made to appear significant by the sheer fact of their repetition rather than by any demonstrable meaning. They hint at secret affinities, secret correspondences. But they generate only booby-trap comparisons that lead nowhere. This severe compression also helps Griffith arrest – or check – narrative progression. The constant leapfrog back and forth among such scattered details buried practically everywhere within the narrative encourages us to read the film as a mosaic – taking us back and forth as we link new details with old ones even as the narrative pulls us forward. Within this context, the repetition of Cheng Huan’s advance on Lucy belongs to the plenitude of comparisons that link all three characters and their three settings, but which may have no further significance than enforcing a certain formal tidiness. If, at any rate, the scene momentarily calls into question Cheng Huan’s heroism, the end of the film both restores and redefines it. When Lucy is stolen from him, the Yellow Man knows what he has to do. After his initial hysterical collapse (where his crouched position at the side of the bed, clutching the torn robe to his cheek, echoes Lucy’s position as she clutched her doll in bed), he rises and finds his pistol. He has lost both his idealized beloved and his pacifisms, and takes violence as the only alternative. At last he confronts Battling Burrows, in a scene marked with subtle ironies and final reverses. The assignment of weapons confounds all conventional associations of Asian and white. In Burke’s story, Cheng Huan leaves a snake as the fatal “love gift” for the prize fighter. In Griffith’s film, however, the snake imagery is associated with Battling Burrows’ whip, used to torment and beat the helpless Lucy. The hatchet Burrows reaches for has even more direct Oriental associations, as a traditional Chinese execution weapon. Cheng Huan’s six-shooter, on the other hand, is not only an emblem of Western violent justice, it is the one weapon entirely free from those all-pervading Fu Manchu-hatchet man Oriental connotations. The end recalls the beginning, with the “rightness” of the Yellow Man’s decision seen in Western terms. He exterminates Battling Burrows in an act of revenge, the Buddha’s “message of peace” discarded in favor of the Old Testament “Vengeance is mine”. After the cascading series of losses, reversals, and separations, the only solution possible is self-annihilation. Having sunk to the level of Western-style revenge-killer, Cheng expiates with an act of Asian-style hara-kiri. Confusing Chinese with Japanese custom, Griffith ends with a final interweaving of poetic suffering and Asian mysticism. The one final reference toward Western convention – this one closest to Griffith’s heart – is reversed and then dismissed as irrelevant: the melodramatic last-minute rescue. The local police, informed of Burrows’ murder, race to arrest Cheng Huan at his shop. Griffith starts to crosscut between the police and the Yellow Man preparing for suicide, as if to set up another race for life. But, concentrating on Cheng’s ritual activities, Griffith loses all interest in the policemen’s progress, and in building Cheng’s suicide scene around prayer bells, incense, candles, flowers, and doll216

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

like icons, he turns the scene into a reprise of Cheng’s frustrated dreams and doomed love affair. The “rescuers” are turned into uninitiated outsiders, and all notions of “rescue”, like concomitant notions of police arrest, are made to appear naïve and boorish. The authorities arrive too late, of course, and even their role as uncomprehending onlookers is minimized. When they come to Cheng Huan’s shop, as Edward Wagenknecht writes, “we see them enter but we do not go in with them” (Wagenknecht and Slide, The Films of D.W. Griffith, p. 132). For once in his career, Griffith skips over the climactic shot of the would-be rescuers confronting their target. To the very end, Griffith reins in the forward propulsive force of a linear narrative in order to round off his symmetrical designs. As the authorities enter Cheng’s shop, instead of showing us what they see, Griffith ends his movie as he began it: a Buddhist monk strikes the temple gong and a ship passes out of Shanghai harbor. Russell Merritt

217

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AFFRON, Charles. Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life (New York: Scribner’s, 2001) AITKEN, Harry E. and Roy. Aitken Papers of the Wisconsin Historical Society ALLEN, Michael. Family Secrets: The Feature Films of D.W. Griffith (London: BFI Publishing, 1999) The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. Volume F1: Feature Films, 1911–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) ANDERSON, Gillian. “‘No Music Until Cue’: The Reconstruction of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance”, Griffithiana 38/39, October 1990, pp. 165–68 BARRY, Iris. D.W. Griffith, American Film Master (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1940; reprint, New York: The Museum of Modern Art/Doubleday, 1965) BOGDANOVICH, Peter. Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer (New York: Praeger, 1971) BORDWELL, David, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) BORDWELL, David. On the History of Film Style (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997) BREWSTER, Ben and Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) BROWN, Karl. Adventures with D.W. Griffith (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1976) BROWNLOW, Kevin. The Parade’s Gone By… (London: Secker & Warburg; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968) BROWNLOW, Kevin. The War, the West and the Wilderness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979; London: Secker & Warburg, 1979) BROWNLOW, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) CAMPBELL, Craig W. Reel America and World War I: A Comprehensive Filmography and History of Motion Pictures, 1914–1920 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1985) CERAM, C.E. Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology (New York: Vintage, 1986 [2nd revised edition])

CHERCHI USAI, Paolo (ed.). The Griffith Project: Volumes 1–8 (London: BFI Publishing/Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 1999–2004) CONNELLY, Robert (ed.). The Motion Picture Guide. Volume 10: Silent Film, 1910–1936 (Chicago: Cinebooks, 1986) The D.W. Griffith Papers, 1897–1954 (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982) [originals held at the Museum of Modern Art] DeMILLE, Cecil B. (Donald Hayne, ed.) The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959) DILS, Ann and Ann Cooper Albright (eds.). Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001) EISENSTEIN, Sergei. “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today” (1944), in Jay Leyda (ed. and trans.), Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1949); reprinted in Jay Leyda (ed. and trans.), Film Form and The Film Sense (New York: Meridian Books, 1957) FEAVER, Willian. The Art of John Martin (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1975) GISH, Lillian (with Ann Pinchot). The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969; London: Columbus Books, 1969) GISH, Lillian (James E. Frasher, ed.). Dorothy and Lillian Gish (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1973) GUNNING, Tom. D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Films: The Early Years at Biograph (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991) HANSEN, Miriam. “Griffith’s Real Intolerance”, Film Comment, September–October 1989, pp. 28–29 HANSEN, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) HANSON, Bernard. “D.W. Griffith: Some Sources”, The Art Bulletin, Volume 54, no. 4, December 1972, pp. 498–515 HENABERY, Joseph. Before, In and After Hollywood: The Autobiography of Joseph E. Henabery (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997) HENDERSON, Robert. D.W. Griffith: His Life and Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972)

218

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

HUFF, Theodore. Intolerance, the Film by David Wark Griffith: Shot-by-Shot Analysis (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1966) JACOBS, Lewis. The Rise of the American Film [1939] (reprint, New York: Teachers College Press, 1968) JOHNSON, Julian. “The Shadow Stage”, Photoplay, vol. 11, no. 1, December 1916, pp. 77–81. Reprinted in George C. Pratt (ed.), Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973), pp. 220–24. KAEL, Pauline. “A Great Folly and a Small One” [February 24, 1968], in Going Steady (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), pp. 51–52 KENDALL, Elizabeth. Where She Danced (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979) LENNIG, Arthur. Stroheim (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000) LEONDOPOULOS, Jordon. Still the Moving World: “Intolerance”, Modernism and “Heart of Darkness” (New York: Peter Lang, 1991) LINDSAY, Vachel. The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Macmillan, 1915; reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1922; reprint, New York: Modern Library, 2000) LOOS, Anita. Kiss Hollywood Good-By (New York: The Viking Press, 1974) LOOS, Anita. A Girl Like I (New York: The Viking Press, 1966) MARKS, Martin M. Music and the Silent Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) MERRITT, Russell. “On First Looking into Griffith’s Babylon: A Reading of a Publicity Still”, Wide Angle, vol. 3, no. 1, 1979, pp. 12–21. MERRITT, Russell. “D.W. Griffith Directs the Great War: The Making of Hearts of the World”, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Winter 1981, pp. 45–65 MERRITT, Russell. “The Griffith Third: D.W. Griffith at Triangle” in Paolo Cherchi Usai and Lorenzo Codelli (eds.), Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–1920 (Pordenone: Edizioni Biblioteca dell’Immagine, 1988), pp. 242–269 MERRITT, Russell. “D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Reconstructing an Unattainable Text”, Film History, vol 4, no. 4, Winter 1990, pp. 337–375 METZ, Christian. Language and Cinema (The Hague: Mouton, 1974) ODERMAN, Stuart. Lillian Gish: A Life on Stage and Screen (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2000) PRATT, George C. Spellbound in Darkness (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973)

RAMSAYE, Terry. A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926) REEVES, Nicholas. Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War (London: Croom Helm, 1986) SCHICKEL, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984; London: Pavilion Books, 1984) SHERMAN, Jane. Denishawn: The Enduring Influence (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1983) SLIDE, Anthony. The Kindergarten of the Movies: A History of the Fine Arts Company (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980) SLIDE, Anthony. Nitrate Won’t Wait: Film Preservation in the United States (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992) SMITH, Frederick James. “Intolerance in Review”, The New York Dramatic Mirror, vol. 76, (September 16, 1916), p. 22. Reprinted in George C. Pratt (ed.), Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1973), pp. 212–16. VOLKOV, Solomon. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1995) WAGENKNECHT, Edward and Anthony Slide. The Films of D.W. Griffith (New York: Crown Publishers, 1975) WAGENKNECHT, Edward. Movies in the Age of Innocence [1962] (reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1971) WHITMAN, Walt (James E. Miller, Jr., ed.). Complete Poetry and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman (Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959)

219

INDEX OF TITLES: 1916–18 Note: Release dates are given after each title. Numbers refer to program sequence.

AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

HOPE CHEST, THE

(29 December 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . .573

(12 November 1916) . . . . . . . . . . .558 AMERICANO, THE

HUN WITHIN, THE

(8 September 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . .566

(28 January 1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .561 BATTLING JANE

INNOCENT MAGDALENE, AN

(18 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .546

(6 October 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .571 BETTY OF GREYSTONE

INTOLERANCE

(5 September 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .543

(20 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .535 BROKEN BLOSSOMS

(20 October 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . .576

LILLIAN GISH IN A LIBERTY LOAN APPEAL

(September–October 1918) . . . . . .569

DAY WITH GOVERNOR WHITMAN, A

(distr. 1916 – no official release) . .559

LITTLE MEENA’S ROMANCE

(9 April 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .536

DEVIL’S NEEDLE, THE

(13 August 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .552

LITTLE SCHOOL MA’AM, THE

(16 July 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .549

DIANE OF THE FOLLIES

(24 September 1916) . . . . . . . . . . .555

MACBETH

(4 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .542

FALL OF BABYLON, THE

(21 July 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .574

MANHATTAN MADNESS

(1 October 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .556

FIFTY FIFTY

(22 October 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .554

MARRIAGE OF MOLLY-O, THE

(6 August 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .551

[FILM POUR LES AMÉRICAINS, I, II, III]

(1917 – not released) . . . . . . . . . . .562

MATRIMANIAC, THE

(16 December 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . .560

FLIRTING WITH FATE

(9 July 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .548

MOTHER AND THE LAW, THE

(August 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .575

GAUMONT NEWS, VOL. XVI, NO. 2-L

(1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .567

MYSTERY OF THE LEAPING FISH, THE

(11 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .545

GOOD BAD MAN, THE

(7 May 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .540

OLD FOLKS AT HOME, THE

(15 October 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .557

GREAT LOVE, THE

(12 August 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .568

REGGIE MIXES IN

(11 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .544

GREATEST THING IN LIFE, THE

(8 December 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . .572

ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY, A

(29 January 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .570

GRIFFITH AT THE FRONT

(1917 – not released) . . . . . . . . . . .563

SOCIAL SECRETARY, THE

(17 September 1916) . . . . . . . . . . .553

[GRIFFITH MEETS SOCIETY LADIES]

(shooting date in 1917) . . . . . . . . . .564

SOLD FOR MARRIAGE

(16 April 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .537

HABIT OF HAPPINESS, THE

(12 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .538

SUNSHINE DAD

(23 April 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .539

HALF-BREED, THE

(30 July 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .550

SUSAN ROCKS THE BOAT

(14 May 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .541

HEARTS OF THE WORLD

(April 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .565

WILD GIRL OF THE SIERRAS, THE

(25 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .547

HOODOO ANN

(26 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .534 220

CUMULATIVE INDEX OF TITLES: 1907–18 Note: Release dates are given after each title. Numbers refer to program sequence: 1–90: Vol. 1, 1907–1908. 91–168: Vol. 2, January–June 1909. 169–233: Vol. 3, July–December 1909. 234–319: Vol. 4, 1910. 320–392: Vol. 5, 1911. 393–457: Vol. 6, 1912. 458–501: Vol. 7, 1913. 502– 533: Vol. 8, 1914–1915. 534–576: Vol.9, 1916–1918.

“1776” or, THE HESSIAN RENEGADES

BABY AND THE STORK, THE

(1 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .382

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

BABY’S SHOE, A

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

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

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

BALKED AT THE ALTAR

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

(4 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

ADVENTURES OF BILLY, THE

(19 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .368

BANKER’S DAUGHTERS, THE

(20 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .293

ADVENTURES OF DOLLIE, THE

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

BARBARIAN, INGOMAR, THE

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

AFTER MANY YEARS

(3 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

BATTLE, THE

(6 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .370

AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

(12 November 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . 558

BATTLE AT ELDERBUSH GULCH, THE

(28 March 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .483

AMERICANO, THE

(28 January 1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561 “AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM”

BATTLE OF THE SEXES, THE

(by 25 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .503 BATTLING JANE

(6 October 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

(22 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 ARCADIAN MAID, AN

BEAST AT BAY, A

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

(1 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275 AS IN A LOOKING GLASS

BEHIND THE SCENES

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

(18 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .378 AS IT IS IN LIFE

BETRAYED BY A HANDPRINT

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

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

BETTER WAY, THE

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

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

BETTY OF GREYSTONE

(20 February 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . 535

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

BILLY’S STRATAGEM

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

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

BIRTH OF A NATION, THE

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

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

BLACK VIPER, THE

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

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

BLIND PRINCESS AND THE POET, THE

(17 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .348

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

BLOT IN THE ‘SCUTCHEON, A

(29 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .387

(18 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

221

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

BOBBY, THE COWARD

CHILD’S IMPULSE, A

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

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

CHILD’S REMORSE, A

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

(4 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 BROKEN BLOSSOMS

CHILD’S STRATAGEM, A

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

(20 October 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 BROKEN CROSS, THE

CHILDREN’S FRIEND, THE

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

(6 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328 BROKEN DOLL, THE

CHOOSING A HUSBAND

(30 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .222

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

CHRISTMAS BURGLARS, THE

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

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

CLASSMATES

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

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

CLASSMATES

(14 February 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .494

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

CLOISTER’S TOUCH, THE

(31 January 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

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

CLUBMAN AND THE TRAMP, THE

(27 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

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

COMATA, THE SIOUX

(9 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

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

COMING OF ANGELO, THE

(26 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

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

CONCEALING A BURGLAR

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

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

CONFIDENCE

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

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

CONSCIENCE

(9 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

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

CONVERTS, THE

(14 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

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

CONVICT’S SACRIFICE, A

(26 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163

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

CORD OF LIFE, THE

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

(21 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 CHANCE DECEPTION, A

CORNER IN WHEAT, A

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

(24 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . .451 CHANGE OF HEART, A

COUNTRY CUPID, A

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

(14 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .194 CHANGE OF SPIRIT, A

COUNTRY DOCTOR, THE

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

(22 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425 CHIEF’S DAUGHTER, THE

CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, THE

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

(10 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .329 CHILD OF THE GHETTO, A

CRIMINAL HYPNOTIST, THE

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

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

CROOKED ROAD, THE

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

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

222

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

CROSS CURRENTS

DUKE’S PLAN, THE

(10 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .232

(2 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .525 CRY FOR HELP, A

EAVESDROPPER, THE

(3 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123

(23 December 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . .444 CUPID’S PRANKS

EDGAR ALLEN POE

(8 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86

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

ELOPING WITH AUNTY

(24 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139

(15 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 DAN, THE DANDY

ENEMY’S BABY, THE

(10 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .484

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

ENGLISHMAN AND THE GIRL, THE

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

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

ENOCH ARDEN

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

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

ENOCH ARDEN – PART ONE

(12 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .336

(30 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .220 DAY WITH GOVERNOR WHITMAN, A

ENOCH ARDEN – PART TWO

(15 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .337

(distr. 1916 – no official release) . . 559 DEATH DISC, THE

ERADICATING AUNTY

(31 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143

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

ESCAPE, THE

(June 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .505

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

ETERNAL MOTHER, THE

(11 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .362

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

EXAMINATION DAY AT SCHOOL

(29 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .290

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

EXPIATION, THE

(21 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .197

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

FACE AT THE WINDOW, THE

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

(2 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 DEVIL’S NEEDLE, THE

FADED LILLIES, THE

(17 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151

(13 August 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552 DIAMOND STAR, THE

FAILURE, THE

(7 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .376

(20 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .315 DIANE OF THE FOLLIES

FAIR EXCHANGE, A

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

(24 September 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . 555 DISHONORED MEDAL, THE

FAIR REBEL, A

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

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

FAITHFUL

(21 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .243

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

FALL OF BABYLON, THE

(21 July 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574

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

FALSELY ACCUSED!

(18 January 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

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

FAMOUS ESCAPE, A

(7 April 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

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

FASCINATING MRS. FRANCIS, THE

(21 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93

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

223

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

FATAL HOUR, THE

FRENCH DUEL, THE

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

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

FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, THE

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

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

FRIENDS

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

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

FUGITIVE, THE

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

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

GANGSTERS, THE

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

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

GAUMONT NEWS, VOL. XVI, NO. 2-L

(1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

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

GETTING EVEN

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

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

GHOSTS

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

(8 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 FEUD IN THE KENTUCKY HILLS, A

GIBSON GODDESS, THE

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

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

GIRL AND HER TRUST, THE

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

(22 October 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554 FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, THE

GIRL AND THE OUTLAW, THE

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

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

GIRL’S STRATAGEM, A

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

(29 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .349 [FILM POUR LES AMÉRICAINS, I, II, III]

GIRLS AND DADDY, THE

(1 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

(1917 – not released) . . . . . . . . . . . 562 FINAL SETTLEMENT, THE

GOD WITHIN, THE

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

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

GODDESS OF SAGEBRUSH GULCH,

THE (25 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397

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

(18 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .272

GOLD AND GLITTER

(11 November 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .436

FLIRTING WITH FATE

(9 July 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

GOLD IS NOT ALL

(28 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .246

FLOOR ABOVE, THE

(by 18 April 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . .506

GOLDEN LOUIS, THE

(22 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .102

FLYING TORPEDO, THE

(12 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .533

GOLDEN SUPPER, THE

(12 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .304

FOOL’S REVENGE, A

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

GOLD-SEEKERS, THE

(2 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

FOOLS OF FATE

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

GOOD BAD MAN, THE

(7 May 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540

FOR A WIFE’S HONOR

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

GREASER’S GAUNTLET, THE

(11 August 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

FOR HIS SON

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

GREAT LEAP, THE

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

FOR LOVE OF GOLD

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

GREAT LOVE, THE

(12 August 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 224

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

GREATEST THING IN LIFE, THE

HIS DUTY

(31 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

(8 December 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . 572 GRIFFITH AT THE FRONT

HIS LAST BURGLARY

(21 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .235

(1917 – not released) . . . . . . . . . . . 563 [GRIFFITH MEETS SOCIETY LADIES]

HIS LESSON

(16 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .407

(shooting date in 1917) . . . . . . . . . 564 GUERRILLA, THE

HIS LOST LOVE

(18 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .196

(13 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .64 HABIT OF HAPPINESS, THE

HIS MOTHER’S SCARF

(24 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .332

(12 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 HALF-BREED, THE

HIS MOTHER’S SON

(31 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .475

(30 July 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 HEART BEATS OF LONG AGO

HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS

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

(6 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318 HEART OF A SAVAGE, THE

HIS SISTER-IN-LAW

(15 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .302

(2 March 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .322 HEART OF AN OUTLAW, THE

HIS TRUST

(16 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .310

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

HIS TRUST FULFILLED

(19 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311

(18 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .45 HEARTS OF THE WORLD

HIS WARD’S LOVE

(15 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .103

(April 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565 HEAVEN AVENGES

HIS WIFE’S MOTHER

(1 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101

(18 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .417 HELPING HAND, THE

HIS WIFE’S VISITOR

(19 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174

(29 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 HER AWAKENING

HOME FOLKS

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

(28 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .366 HER FATHER’S PRIDE

HOME, SWEET HOME

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

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

HONOR OF HIS FAMILY, THE

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

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

HONOR OF THIEVES, THE

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

(17 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 HER MOTHER’S OATH

HOODOO ANN

(26 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534

(28 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .481 HER SACRIFICE

HOPE CHEST, THE

(29 December 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . 573

(26 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .346 HER TERRIBLE ORDEAL

HOUSE OF DARKNESS, THE

(10 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .472

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

HOUSE WITH CLOSED SHUTTERS,

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

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

(3 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .464

HOW SHE TRIUMPHED

(27 April 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333

HINDOO DAGGER, THE

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

HULDA’S LOVERS

(22 April 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

HIS DAUGHTER

(23 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .321

HUN WITHIN, THE

(8 September 1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . 566 225

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

I DID IT, MAMMA

IOLA’S PROMISE

(14 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .396

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

ITALIAN BARBER, THE

(9 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309

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

ITALIAN BLOOD

(9 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363

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

JEALOUS HUSBAND, THE

(10 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .344

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

JEALOUSY AND THE MAN

(22 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

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

JILT, THE

(17 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137

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

JONES AND HIS NEW NEIGHBORS

(29 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116

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

JONES AND THE LADY BOOK AGENT

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

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

JONES’ BURGLAR

(9 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169

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

(14 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .431

JONESES HAVE AMATEUR THEATRICALS, THE

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

IN THE BORDER STATES

(13 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262

JORDAN IS A HARD ROAD

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

IN THE DAYS OF ’49

(8 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .335

JUDITH OF BETHULIA

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

IN THE SEASON OF BUDS

(2 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259

[JUDITH OF BETHULIA

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

IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT

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

JUST GOLD

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

IN THE WINDOW RECESS

(29 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .211

JUST LIKE A WOMAN

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

INDIAN BROTHERS, THE

(17 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .345 INDIAN RUNNER’S ROMANCE, THE (23 September 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .171

KENTUCKIAN, THE

(7 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 KING OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

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

INDIAN SUMMER, AN

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

KING’S MESSENGER, THE

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

INFORMER, THE

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

KNIGHT OF THE ROAD, A

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

INGRATE, THE

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

LADY AND THE MOUSE, THE

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

INNER CIRCLE, THE

(12 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .424

LADY HELEN’S ESCAPADE

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

INNOCENT MAGDALENE, AN

(18 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546

LAMB, THE

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

INTOLERANCE

(5 September 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . 543

LAST DEAL, THE

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

INVISIBLE FLUID, THE

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

226

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

LAST DROP OF WATER, THE

LORD CHUMLEY

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

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

LOVE AMONG THE ROSES

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

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

LOVE FINDS A WAY

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

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

LOVE IN AN APARTMENT HOTEL

(27 February 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . .458

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

LOVE IN THE HILLS

(30 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .371

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

LUCKY JIM

(26 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128

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

LURE OF THE GOWN, THE

(15 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112

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

MACBETH

(4 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542

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

MADAME REX

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

(11 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .203 LILLIAN GISH IN A LIBERTY LOAN APPEAL

(September–October 1918) . . . . . 569

MAKING OF A MAN, THE

(5 October 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .365 MAN AND THE WOMAN, THE

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

LILY AND THE ROSE, THE

(12 December 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .521

MAN IN THE BOX, THE

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

LILY OF THE TENEMENTS, THE

(27 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .319 LINES OF WHITE ON A SULLEN SEA (28 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .199

MAN, THE

(12 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241 MAN’S ENEMY

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

LITTLE ANGELS OF LUCK

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

MANHATTAN MADNESS

(1 October 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

LITTLE DARLING, THE

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

MANIAC COOK, THE

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

LITTLE MEENA’S ROMANCE

(9 April 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

MAN’S GENESIS

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

LITTLE SCHOOL MA’AM, THE

(16 July 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

MAN’S LUST FOR GOLD

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

LITTLE TEACHER, THE

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

MARKED TIME-TABLE, THE

(23 June 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .264

LITTLE TEASE, THE

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

MARRIAGE OF MOLLY-O, THE

(6 August 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

LODGING FOR THE NIGHT, A

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

MARTHA’S VINDICATION

(19 March 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .531

LONEDALE OPERATOR, THE

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

MARTYRS OF THE ALAMO, THE

(24? October 1915) . . . . . . . . . . . .517

LONELY VILLA, THE

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

[MARY PICKFORD AND DAVID

BELASCO ON THE SET OF A GOOD LITTLE DEVIL] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .487

LONG ROAD, THE

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

227

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

MASSACRE, THE

(7 November 1912, Europe; 26 February 1914, US) . . . . . . . . . .418

MOTHERING HEART, THE

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

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

MATRIMANIAC, THE

(16 December 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . 560

MOUNTAIN RAT, THE

(May? 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .508

MEDICINE BOTTLE, THE

(29 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110

MR. JONES AT THE BALL

(25 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .56

MEN AND WOMEN

(? August 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .497

MR. JONES HAS A CARD PARTY

(21 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87

MENDED LUTE, THE

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

MRS. JONES ENTERTAINS

(7 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67

MENDER OF NETS, THE

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

MRS. JONES’ LOVER; OR,

“I WANT MY HAT” (19 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165

MESSAGE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

(24 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .294 MESSAGE, THE

MUGGSY’S FIRST SWEETHEART

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

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

MUSIC MASTER, THE

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

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

MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY, THE

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

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

MY BABY

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

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

MY HERO

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

(30 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176 MISAPPROPRIATED TURKEY, A

MYSTERY OF THE LEAPING FISH, THE

(11 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545

(27 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .454 MISER’S HEART, THE

NARROW ROAD, THE

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

(20 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .375 MISSING LINKS, THE

NEAR TO EARTH

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

(16 January 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . .527 MISTAKE, THE

NECKLACE, THE

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

(12 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .485 MISUNDERSTOOD BOY, A

NEW DRESS, THE

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

(19 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .466 MIXED BABIES

NEW TRICK, A

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

(12 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 MODERN PRODIGAL, THE

NEW YORK HAT, THE

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

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

NEWLYWEDS, THE

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

(12 September 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .285 MONDAY MORNING IN A CONEY

ISLAND POLICE COURT (4 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .42

NOTE IN THE SHOE, THE

(6 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 NURSING A VIPER

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

MONEY MAD

(4 December 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

OATH AND THE MAN, THE

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

MOTHER AND THE LAW, THE

(August 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

“OH, UNCLE”

(26 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177 228

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

OIL AND WATER

PIPPA PASSES or,

THE SONG OF CONSCIENCE (4 October 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189

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

(6 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .405

PIRATE’S GOLD, THE

(6 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . .63

OLD BOOKKEEPER, THE

(18 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .385

PLAIN SONG, A

(28 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .301

OLD CONFECTIONER’S MISTAKE, THE

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

PLANTER’S WIFE, THE

(20 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

OLD FOLKS AT HOME, THE

(15 October 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

POLITICIAN’S LOVE STORY

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

OLD HEIDELBERG

(October?–mid-November? 1915) . .519

PRANKS

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

OLD ISAACS, THE PAWNBROKER

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

PRIMAL CALL, THE

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

ON THE REEF

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

PRINCESS IN THE VASE, THE

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

ONE BUSY HOUR

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

[PRODUCTION FOOTAGE OF THE

BIRTH OF A NATION] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .512

ONE IS BUSINESS; THE OTHER CRIME

(25 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .403 ONE NIGHT, AND THEN–

PROFESSIONAL JEALOUSY

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

(14 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .233 ONE SHE LOVED, THE

PRUSSIAN SPY, THE

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

(21 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .432 ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

PUEBLO LEGEND, A

(29 August 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .421

(1 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 OPEN GATE, THE

PUNISHMENT, THE

(4 April 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399

(22 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .207 ’OSTLER JOE

PURGATION, THE

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

(9 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 OUT FROM THE SHADOW

RAMONA

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

(3 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .353 OUTLAW, THE

RANCHERO’S REVENGE, THE

(2 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .480

(23 June 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 OVER SILENT PATHS

RECKONING, THE

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

(16 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257 PAINTED LADY, THE

RED GIRL, THE

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

(24 October 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .433 PAINTED LADY, THE

REDMAN AND THE CHILD, THE

(28 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

(19 July 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .511 PEACHBASKET HAT, THE

REDMAN’S VIEW, THE

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

(24 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 PENITENTES, THE

REFORMERS, THE

(9 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490

(25 or 26 December 1915) . . . . . .524 PERFIDY OF MARY, THE

REGGIE MIXES IN

(11 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

(5 April 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .465 PILLARS OF SOCIETY

RENUNCIATION, THE

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

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

229

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE’S NEST

SCHNEIDER’S ANTINOISE CRUSADE

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

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

SCHOOL TEACHER AND THE WAIF,

THE (27 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .414

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

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

SCULPTOR’S NIGHTMARE, THE

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

REVENUE MAN AND THE GIRL, THE

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

SEALED ROOM, THE

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

RICH REVENGE, A

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

SERIOUS SIXTEEN

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

ROAD TO THE HEART, THE

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

SEVENTH DAY, THE

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

ROCKY ROAD, THE

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

SHERIFF’S BABY, THE

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

ROMANCE OF A JEWESS

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

SIMPLE CHARITY

(10 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .297

ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY, A

(29 January 1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570 ROMANCE OF THE WESTERN HILLS, A (11 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249

SIREN OF IMPULSE, A

ROMANY TRAGEDY, A

SLAVE, THE

(4 March 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .395 SISTER’S LOVE, A

(8 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .386 (29 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168

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

SMILE OF A CHILD, A

(5 June 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342

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

SMOKED HUSBAND, A

(25 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .48

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

SO NEAR, YET SO FAR

(30 September 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .429

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

SOCIAL SECRETARY, THE

(17 September 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . 553

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

SOLD FOR MARRIAGE

(16 April 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537

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

SON’S RETURN, THE

(14 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147

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

SONG OF THE SHIRT, THE

(17 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .65

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

(29 November 1915) . . . . . . . . . . .520

SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTE, THE

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

SACRIFICE, THE

(14 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84

SORROWFUL EXAMPLE, THE

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

SALUTARY LESSON, A

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

SORROWFUL SHORE, THE

(5 July 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .482

SALVATION ARMY LASS, THE

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

SORROWS OF THE UNFAITHFUL, THE

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

SANDS OF DEE, THE

(22 July 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .420

SOUND SLEEPER, A

(12 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129

SAVED FROM HIMSELF

(11 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .379 230

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

SPANISH GYPSY, THE

TEACHING DAD TO LIKE HER

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

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

TELEPHONE GIRL AND THE LADY,

THE (6 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447

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

(14 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .360

TEMPORARY TRUCE, A

(10 June 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .411

STAGE RUSTLER, THE

(10 July 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

TENDER HEARTED BOY, THE

(23 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .450

STOLEN JEWELS, THE

(29 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .55

TENDER HEARTS

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

STOLEN LOAF, THE

(15 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .473

TERRIBLE DISCOVERY, A

(21 December 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .380

STRANGE MEETING, A

(2 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .164

TEST, THE

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

STRING OF PEARLS, A

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

TEST OF FRIENDSHIP, THE

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

STRONGHEART

(9 March 1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .495 STUFF HEROES ARE MADE OF, THE (4 September 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .357

THAT CHINK AT GOLDEN GULCH

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

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

SUICIDE CLUB, THE

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

THIEF AND THE GIRL, THE

(6 July 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .347

SUMMER IDYL, A

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

THOSE AWFUL HATS

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

SUNBEAM, THE

(26 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . .391

THOSE BOYS!

(18 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92

SUNSHINE DAD

(23 April 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539

THOU SHALT NOT

(18 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .250

SUNSHINE SUE

(14 November 1910) . . . . . . . . . . .299

THREAD OF DESTINY, THE

(7 March 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239

SUNSHINE THROUGH THE DARK

(27 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .377

THREE FRIENDS

(2 January 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .446

SUSAN ROCKS THE BOAT

(14 May 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

THREE SISTERS

(2 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313

SWEET AND TWENTY

(22 July 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167

THROUGH DARKENED VALES

(16 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .373

SWEET REVENGE

(18 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .208

THROUGH THE BREAKERS

(6 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . .213

SWORDS AND HEARTS

(28 August 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358

TIMELY INTERCEPTION, A

(7 June 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .476

TALE OF THE WILDERNESS, A

(8 January 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381

’TIS AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO

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

TAMING A HUSBAND

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

TO SAVE HER SOUL

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

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

TRAGIC LOVE

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

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

231

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

TRAIL OF BOOKS, THE

VAQUERO’S VOW, THE

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

(9 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . .372 TRANSFORMATION OF MIKE, THE

VICTIM OF JEALOUSY, A

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

(1 February 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .389 TRAP FOR SANTA CLAUS, A

VIOLIN MAKER OF CREMONA, THE

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

(20 December 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .218 TRICK THAT FAILED, THE

VOICE OF THE CHILD, THE

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

(29 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . .210 TROUBLESOME SATCHEL, A

VOICE OF THE VIOLIN, THE

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

(19 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 TRYING TO GET ARRESTED

WAITER NO. 5

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

(5 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 TWIN BROTHERS

WANDERER, THE

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

(26 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 TWISTED TRAIL, THE

WANTED, A CHILD

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

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

WAS HE A COWARD?

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

(12 May 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256 TWO DAUGHTERS OF EVE

WAS JUSTICE SERVED?

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

(19 September 1912) . . . . . . . . . . .427 TWO LITTLE WAIFS

WAY OF MAN, THE

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

(31 October 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . .295 TWO MEMORIES

WAY OF THE WORLD, THE

(25 April 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251

(24 May 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 TWO MEN OF THE DESERT

WELCOME BURGLAR, THE

(25 January 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89

(23 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .489 TWO PATHS, THE

WELCOME INTRUDER, A

(24 March 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .462

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

WHAT DRINK DID

(3 June 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144

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

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD

(13 February 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . .316

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

WHAT THE DAISY SAID

(11 July 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269

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

WHAT’S YOUR HURRY?

(1 November 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . .201

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

WHEN A MAN LOVES

(5 January 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305

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

WHEN KINGS WERE THE LAW

(20 May 1912) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .408

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

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD

(20 May 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

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

WHEN LOVE FORGIVES

(2 August 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .457

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

WHERE THE BREAKERS ROAR

(22 September 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .47

(15 August 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .280 VALET’S WIFE, THE

WHITE ROSE OF THE WILDS, THE

(25 May 1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339

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

232

THE GRIFFITH PROJECT: VOLUME 9

WIFE, THE

WOMAN’S WAY, A

(24 November 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . .60

(no official release) . . . . . . . . . . . . .501 WILD GIRL OF THE SIERRAS, THE

WOODEN LEG, THE

(8 March 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113

(25 June 1916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 WILFUL PEGGY

WOOD NYMPH, THE

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

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

WREATH IN TIME, A

(8 February 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80

(26 December 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . .307 WINNING COAT, THE

WREATH OF ORANGE BLOSSOMS, A

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

(12 April 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 WITH HER CARD

YAQUI CUR, THE

(17 May 1913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .479

(16 August 1909) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 WOMAN FROM MELLON’S, THE

YELLOW PERIL, THE

(7 March 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

(3 February 1910) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231 WOMAN SCORNED, A

ZULU’S HEART, THE

(6 October 1908) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

(30 November 1911) . . . . . . . . . . .374

233