D. W. GRIFFITH DIRECTS HIS FIRST MOVIE
Considering the chaotic condition of things in the studio as a result
of Mr. McCutcheon’s illness, it was a propitious time to take heed and
get on to the tricks of this movie business. To David Griffith the
direction was insufferably careless, the acting the same, and in the
lingering bitterness over his play’s failure he gritted his teeth and
decided that if he ever got a chance he certainly could direct these
dinky movies.
The studio was so without a head these days that even Henry Norton
Marvin, our vice-president and general manager, occasionally helped out
in the directing. He had directed a mutoscope called “A Studio Party”
in which my husband and I had made a joint appearance.
With the place now “runnin’ wild,” Mr. Marvin wondered whom he’d better
take a chance on next.
He put the odds on Mr. Stanner E. V. Taylor.
In the studio, one day shortly after my initiation, Mr. Taylor
approached me and asked if I could play a lead in a melodrama he was to
direct. A lead in a melodrama--with a brief stage career that had been
confined to winsome ingénues! But I bravely said, “Oh, yes, yes, indeed
I can.”
What I suffered! I had a husband who beat and deserted me; I had to
appear against him in court, and I fainted and did a beautiful fall
on the court-room floor. After my acquittal I took my two babies and
deposited them on a wealthy doorstep; wandered off to the New Jersey
Palisades; took a flying leap and landed a mass of broken bones at the
bottom of the cliff.
Selected for the fall was a beautiful smooth boulder which had a sheer
drop on the side the camera did not get of possibly some fifteen feet
to a ledge about six feet wide, from which ledge, to the bottom of the
Palisades, was a precipitous descent of some hundred feet.
There were so many rehearsals of this scene of self-destruction that
the rock acquired a fine polish as “mother” slipped and slid about.
That the camera man’s assistant might try the stunt for at least the
initial attempts at getting the focus, never occurred to a soul. But a
suggestion was made that if “mother” removed her shoes she might not
slide off so easily. Which she did for the remaining rehearsals. Then
finally as the sun sank behind the Palisades, “mother” in her last
emotional moments, sank behind the boulder.
On that picture I made twenty-eight dollars; oh, what a lot of money!
The most to date. If pictures kept up like that! And the whole
twenty-eight was mine, all mine, and I invested it at Hackett, Carhart
on Broadway and Thirteenth in a spring outfit--suit, shoes, hat, oh,
everything.
The picture--the only one Mr. Taylor directed--lacked continuity.
Upstairs in his executive office, Mr. Henry Norton Marvin was walking
the floor and wondering what about it. Why couldn’t they get somewhere
with these movies? Another man fallen down on the job. Genial Arthur
Marvin, H. N.’s brother, and Billy Bitzer’s assistant at the camera,
was being catechized as to whether he had noticed any promising
material about the studio.
“Well,” drawled the genial Arthur, “I don’t know. They’re a funny lot,
these actors, but there’s one young man, there’s one actor seems to
have ideas. You might try him.”
“You think he might get by, eh?”
“Well, I don’t think you’d lose much by trying him.”
“What’s his name? I’ll send for him.”
“Griffith. Lawrence Griffith.”
* * * * *
Later that day a cadaverous-looking young man was closeted with the
vice-president in the vice-president’s dignified quarters.
“My brother tells me you appear to be rather interested in the
pictures, Mr. Griffith; how would you like to direct one?”
Mr. Griffith rose from his chair, took three steps to the window, and
gazed out into space.
“Think you’d like to try it, Mr. Griffith?”
No response--only more gazing into space.
“We’ll make it as easy as we can for you, Mr. Griffith, if you decide
you’d like to try.”
More gazing into space. And finally this: “I appreciate your
confidence in me, Mr. Marvin, but there is just this to it. I’ve had
rather rough sledding the last few years and you see I’m married; I
have responsibilities and I cannot afford to take chances; I think
they rather like me around here as an actor. Now if I take this
picture-directing over and fall down, then you see I’ll be out my
acting job, and you know I wouldn’t like that; I don’t want to lose my
job as an actor down here.”
“Otherwise you’d be willing to direct a picture for us?”
“Oh, yes, indeed I would.”
“Then if I promise that if you fall down as a director, you can have
your acting job back, you will put on a moving picture for us?”
“Yes, then I’d be willing.”
* * * * *
It was called “The Adventures of Dolly.”
Gossip around the studio had it that the story was a “lemon.” Preceding
directors at the studio had sidestepped it. _Dolly_, in the course of
the story, is nailed into a barrel by the gypsies who steal her; the
barrel secreted in the gypsy wagon; the horses start off at breakneck
speed; the barrel falls off the wagon, rolls into the stream, floats
over a waterfall, shoots the rapids, and finally emerges into a quiet
pool where some boys, fishing, haul it ashore, hear the child’s cries,
open the barrel, and rescue _Dolly_.
Not a very simple job for an amateur. But David Griffith wasn’t
worried. He could go back to acting were the picture no good. Mr.
Arthur Marvin was assigned as camera man. There were needed for the
cast: _Dolly_, her mother and father, the gypsy man, the gypsy man’s
wife, and two small boys.
Upstairs in the tiny projection room pictures were being run for Mr.
Griffith’s enlightenment. He was seeing what Biograph movies looked
like. Saw some of old man McCutcheon’s, and some of Wally McCutcheon’s,
and Stanner E. V. Taylor’s one and only.
That evening he said to me: “You’ll play the lead in my first
picture--not because you’re my wife--but because you’re a good actress.”
“Oh, did you see Mr. Taylor’s picture?”
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
“Not bad, but it don’t hang together. Good acting; you’re good, quite
surprised me. No one I can use for a husband though. I must have some
one who _looks_ like a ‘husband’--who looks as though he owned more
than a cigarette. I heard around the studio that they were going to
hand me a bunch of lemons for actors.”
So, dashing madly here and there for a father for little _Dolly_,
Mr. Griffith saw coming down Broadway a young man of smiling
countenance--just the man--his very ideal. Of course, he must be an
actor. There was no time for hesitation.
“Pardon me, but would you care to act in a moving picture? I am going
to direct a moving picture, and I have a part that suits you exactly.”
“Moving pictures, did you say? Picture acting? I am sure I don’t know
what you are talking about. I don’t know anything about picture acting.”
“You don’t need to know--just meet me at the Grand Central Depot at
nine o’clock to-morrow morning.”
And so Arthur Johnson became a movie actor.
To my mind no personality has since flickered upon the screen with
quite the charm, lovableness, and magnetic humor that were his. He
never acquired affectations, which made him a rare person indeed,
considering the tremendous popularity that became his and the world of
affectation in which he lived.
For the gypsy man Mr. Griffith selected Charles Inslee, an excellent
actor whom he had known on the Coast. Mr. Inslee was a temperamental
sort, but Mr. Griffith knew how to handle him. So with Mrs. Gebhardt
for the gypsy wife, Mr. Griffith completed his cast without using a
single one of the “lemons” that were to have been wished upon him; and
as there were only outdoor sets in “The Adventures” he did not have any
of the “lemons” around to make comments.
Even the business of the barrel proved to be no insurmountable
difficulty. Yards and yards of piano-wire were attached, which,
manipulated from the shore, kept the barrel somewhat in focus. The one
perturbed person was our camera man, who even though middle-aged and
heavy, time and time again had to jump about, in and out of the stream,
grabbing tripod and clumsy camera, trying to keep up with the floating
barrel.
We went to Sound Beach, Connecticut, to take “The Adventures.”
It was a lovely place, I thought. The Black-eyed Susans were all
a-bloom, and everywhere was green grass although it was nearly
midsummer. We spent almost a week working on “The Adventures,” for the
mechanical scenes took time, and--joy!--between us we were making ten
dollars a day as long as the picture lasted.
And then who could tell!
* * * * *
“If the photography is there, the picture will be all right; if it
looks as good on the negative as it looked while we were taking it, it
ought to get by,” opined the director.
From out of the secrecy of the dark room came Arthur Marvin,
nonchalantly swinging a short strip of film.
“How is it?”
“Looks pretty good, nice and sharp.”
“Think it’s all right?”
“Yeh, think it is.”
Hopeful hours interspersed with anxious moments crowded the succeeding
days. By the time the picture was developed, printed, and titled, we
were well-nigh emotionally exhausted. What would they say upstairs?
What _would_ they say?
* * * * *
In the darkened little projection room they sat.
On the screen was being shown “The Adventures of Dolly.”
No sound but the buzz and whir of the projection machine. The seven
hundred and thirteen feet of the “Adventures” were reeled off. Silence.
Then Mr. Marvin spoke:
“That’s it--that’s something like it--at last!”
Afterwards, upstairs in the executive offices, Mr. Marvin and Mr.
Dougherty talked it over, and they concluded that if the next picture
were half as good, Lawrence Griffith was the man they wanted.
The next picture really turned out better.
The world’s première of “The Adventures of Dolly” was held at Keith and
Proctor’s Theatre, Union Square, July 14, 1908.
What a day it was at the studio! However did we work, thinking of what
the night held. But as the longest day ends, so did this one. No time
to get home and pretty-up for the party. With what meager facilities
the porcelain basin and make-up shelf in the dressing-room offered, we
managed; rubbed off the grease paint and slapped on some powder; gave
the hair a pat and a twist; at Silsbee’s on Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth
Street, we picked up nourishment; and then we beat it to Union Square.
A world’s première indeed--a tremendously important night to so many
people who didn’t know it. No taxis--not one private car drew up at
the curb. The house filled up from passers-by--frequenters of Union
Square--lured by a ten-cent entertainment. These were the people to
be pleased--they who had paid out their little nickels and dimes. So
when they sat through Dolly’s seven hundred feet, interested, and not a
snore was to be heard, we concluded we’d had a successful opening night.
The contract was drawn for one year. It called for forty-five dollars
per week with a royalty of a mill a foot on all film sold. Mr. Marvin
thought it rather foolish to accept so small a salary and assured my
husband the percentage would amount to nothing whatever right off. But
David was willing--rather more than willing--to gamble on himself.
And he gambled rather well this time. For, the first year his royalty
check went from practically nothing to four and five hundred dollars a
month--before the end of the year.
Wonderful it was--too good to be true. Although, had he known then that
for evermore, through weeks and months and years, it was to be movies,
movies, nothing but movies, David Griffith would probably then and
there have chucked the job, or, keeping it, would have wept bitter,
bitter tears.