FIRST PUBLICITY AND EARLY SCENARIOS
In Biograph’s story, quite a few who stuck to the ship in these first
days are big names in the movies to-day.
In the town of Erie, Pa., in the early nineteen hundreds flourished
a little newspaper, on the staff of which was Frank Woods. Besides
reporting “news,” Frank Woods sold advertising. Erie, Pa., not long
satisfying his ambitions, Mr. Woods set out for the journalistic marts
of New York City, and shortly after found himself selling advertising
for the _New York Dramatic Mirror_. The idea of getting ads from the
picture people came to him when he noticed that pictures were not
mentioned in the _Dramatic Mirror_. Writers on the paper were told that
any reference to the movies would be promptly blue-penciled.
Mr. Woods figured that if he could interest the movie people he might
get ads from them and the _Dramatic Mirror_ wouldn’t mind that. But the
picture people turned deaf ears. Why pay money for an ad in a paper
that was all too ready to crush them? Besides, the _Mirror_ didn’t
circulate among the exhibitors and those interested in the movies. The
movie people would stick to the more friendly _Billboard_--thank you
kindly--it could have their ads.
Another idea came to Frank Woods. How about pictures being reviewed? He
put the plan before Lee Dougherty, for Lee was always genial and had
time to listen. Lee said: “Fine, give us real serious reviews--tell us
where we are wrong--but don’t expect an ad for your effort.”
The result of this conversation was that three reviews appeared in the
_New York Dramatic Mirror_, June, 1908. On a rear end page captioned
“The Spectator,” Frank E. Woods dissertated through some columns on
the merits and demerits of the movies, and thus became their first
real critic. We were very grateful for the few paragraphs. It meant
recognition--the beginning. How gladly we parted with our ten cents
weekly to see what “Spec” had to say about us.
But Mr. Woods didn’t get an ad from the Biograph. So he had another
heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Dougherty, and Doc said: “Never mind, keep
it up--but as I told you, the reviews aren’t going to influence us
about ads.”
But in August the Company came across and bought a quarter-page ad for
the Biograph movies.
The active mind of Frank Woods was not going to stop with critical
comments on moving pictures. His new duties necessitated his seeing
pictures; and, looking them over and analyzing them for his reviews, he
said to himself; “Oh, they’re terrible--I could do better myself--such
stories!” So he wrote three “suggestions”--that’s all they were--and
that’s what they were then called. With great aplomb, he took them to
Mr. Dougherty, and to his amazement Mr. Dougherty turned the whole
three down. Sorry, but he didn’t think them up to scratch. But Mr.
Woods would not be fazed by a turn-down like that. He wrote three more
“suggestions.”
The studio had a sort of nominal supervisor, a Mr. Wake, whose job was
to O. K. little expenditures in the studio and to pass on the purchase
of scenarios. One day, not long after our A. B. affiliation, just as
I was entering the main foyer, Mr. Griffith coming from the projection
room seemed more than usually light-hearted. So I said, “You’re feeling
good--picture nice?”
“Oh, yes, all right, but”--this in a whisper--“Wake’s been fired.”
I wondered how I could wait all that day, until evening, to hear what
had happened. But I did, and learned that Mr. Wake with Biograph money
had purchased silk stockings for Mutoscope girls, and then had given
the girls the stockings for their own.
However, during a temporary absence from the studio before Mr. Wake’s
dismissal, Frank Woods came down with three more suggestions which
were shown to Mr. Griffith direct. He bought the whole bunch, three at
fifteen dollars apiece, _nine five-dollar bills, forty-five dollars_.
Around the _Dramatic Mirror_ offices Mr. Woods was already jocularly
being called “M. P. Woods.” And this day that he disposed of his three
“suggestions,” Moving Picture Woods with much bravado entered the
_Mirror’s_ office, went over to the desk, brushed aside some papers,
cleared a place on the counter, and in a row laid his nine five-dollar
bills.
In the office at the time were George Terwilliger (how many scenarios
he afterwards wrote), Al Trahern (Al continued with his stock companies
and featuring his wife Jessie Mae Hall), and Jake Gerhardt, now in
the business end of the movies. The trio looked--and gasped--and
looked--and in unison spoke:
“_Where_ did you get all that?”
“Moving Pictures!”
“Moving Pictures? For heaven’s sake, tell us about it.”
“How did you do it?” queried George Terwilliger. “Forty-five dollars
for three stories, good Lord, and they gave you the money right off,
like that.”
So Mr. Woods told his little story, and as the conversation ended,
George Terwilliger reached for paper and pencil, for five-dollar bills
were beckoning from every direction. Maybe he could put it over, too.
He did--he sold lots and lots of “suggestions.” Frank Woods wrote
thirty movies for Biograph.
Frank Woods now set about to criticise the pictures with the same
seriousness with which he would have criticised the theatre. He bought
books about Indians and let the producers know there was a difference
between the Hopi and the Apache and the Navajo. With a critical eye,
he picked out errors and wrote of them frankly, and his influence in
the betterment of the movies has been a bigger one than is generally
known outside the movie world. Mr. Woods is really responsible for
research. And Mr. Dougherty gives him credit for turning in the
first “continuity.” The picture that has that honor is a version of
Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden,” called “After Many Years.”
Scenarios that reached the Biograph offices, due to lack of
organization, were sometimes weeks in reaching the proper department,
but Mr. Griffith got first chance at “After Many Years.” Both he and
Mr. Dougherty thought it pretty good stuff, but the obvious emotional
acting that had prevailed somewhere in every picture so far, was here
entirely lacking. Quiet suppressed emotion only, this one had. But Doc
said he’d eat the positive if it wouldn’t make a good picture. So it
was purchased.
But “After Many Years,” although it had no “action,” and some of us sat
in the projection room at its first showing with heavy hearts, proved
to write more history than any picture ever filmed and it brought an
entirely new technique to the making of films.
It was the first movie without a chase. That was something, for those
days, a movie without a chase was not a movie. How could a movie
be made without a chase? How could there be suspense? How action?
“After Many Years” was also the first picture to have a _dramatic_
close-up--the first picture to have a cut-back. When Mr. Griffith
suggested a scene showing Annie Lee waiting for her husband’s return to
be followed by a scene of Enoch cast away on a desert island, it was
altogether too distracting. “How can you tell a story jumping about
like that? The people won’t know what it’s about.”
“Well,” said Mr. Griffith, “doesn’t Dickens write that way?”
“Yes, but that’s Dickens; that’s novel writing; that’s different.”
“Oh, not so much, these are picture stories: not so different.”
So he went his lonely way and did it; did “After Many Years” contrary
to all the old established rules of the game. The Biograph Company was
very much worried--the picture was so unusual--how could it succeed?
It was the first picture to be recognized by foreign markets. When one
recalls the high class of moving pictures that Pathé and Gaumont were
then putting out, such as “The Assassination of the Duc de Guise,” this
foreign recognition meant something.
“After Many Years” made a change in the studio. All “suggestions” now
came directly to Mr. Dougherty’s office. He selected the doubtful ones
and the sure bets and with Mr. Griffith read them over the second
time. They threshed out their differences in friendly argument. So Lee
Dougherty became the first scenario editor.
And of the sad letters and grateful ones his editing jobs brought him,
this letter from a newspaper man on a Dayton, Ohio, paper, now dead, he
prizes most highly:
L. E. DOUGHERTY, EDITOR,
KINEMACOLOR COMPANY,
LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
DEAR SIR:
Excuse me, but I can’t help it. When I cashed the $25 check for
“Too Much Susette,” the scenario of mine which you accepted, I took
$5 of the money and put it on “Just Red” who won at Louisville at
the juicy price of 30 to 1. I hope the film will bring your company
as much luck as the script has brought me.
Yours very truly,
GEORGE GROEBER.
“Doc” was Mr. Griffith’s friendly appellation for “the man in the
front office,” Lee Dougherty. It was going some for Mr. Griffith to
give any one a nickname. He never was a “hail fellow well met.” It
was Mr. So-and-so from Mr. Griffith and to Mr. Griffith with very
few exceptions. Never once during all the Biograph years did he ever
publicly call even his own wife by any other name than “Miss Arvidson.”
Only in general conversation about the movies, and in his absence, was
he familiarly referred to as “Griff,” or “D. W.,” or the “Governor.”
Mr. Dougherty was the one man at 11 East Fourteenth Street before
the Griffith régime who had more than a speaking acquaintance with
the movies. In the summer of 1896 as stage manager of the old Boston
Museum, he installed there the first projection machine of American
manufacture, the Eidoloscope. When the season at the Boston Museum was
over, Mr. Dougherty, who had become quite fascinated with this new idea
in entertainment, went to New York City. The Biograph Company along
about 1897 had just finished a moving picture of Pope Leo XIII taken
at the Vatican. Pictures of the late Pope Benedict XV were announced
as the first pictures made of a Pope, “approved by His Holiness.”
While they may be the first approved ones, Captain Varges of the
International News Reel, who claims the honor, brought the third motion
picture camera into the Vatican grounds. The second film--Pope Pius X
in the Vatican, and gardens, and the Eucharistic Congress, was released
in 1912.
Well, anyhow, Mr. Dougherty took a set of Biograph’s Pope Leo XIII
pictures to exhibit in the towns and cities of New Jersey and
Pennsylvania on the old Biograph projection machine--one vastly
superior to the Eidoloscope. The company exhibiting the picture
consisted of an operator on the machine and Mr. Dougherty who lectured.
And when he began his little talk (there was no titling or printed
matter in the picture), the small boys in the gallery would yell
“spit it out, we want to see the picture.” Numbers of motion picture
directors to-day might well heed the sentiments of those small boys.
From exhibiting Pope Leo XIII’s picture, Mr. Dougherty became stage
director of One Minute Comedies for the Biograph which at this time
had a stage on the roof of a building at 841 Broadway. And sometimes
in the midst of a scene the weather would pick up scenery and props
and deposit them in Broadway. So came about experiments with
electric lights, satisfactory results first being obtained with the
Jeffries-Sharkey prize fight.
The One Minute Comedies finally were given up, but the Mutoscopes,
being Biograph’s biggest source of revenue, were continued. The
Mutoscopes were brief film playlets that were viewed in the
penny-in-the-slot machines.
One day, before Mutoscopes ended, my husband asked me to run over
to Wanamaker’s with him and help choose some pretty undies for the
Mutoscope girls--photographically effective stuff--so we selected some
very elegant heavy black silk embroidered stockings and embroidered
pink Italian silk vests and knickers--last-word lingeries for that time.
I felt rather ill about it. “Oh dear,” I thought, “this is _some_
business, but I’ll be brave, I will, even though I die.” Well, the
parcel being wrapped, David took it and then handed it to me, and I
thought, “Why should I carry the bundle?” So we reached Fourteenth
Street. David started to the left without his parcel; I was continuing
up Broadway, so handed it to him. But the lingerie wasn’t for
Mutoscopes at all--but for me--just a little surprise. So then with
a light and happy heart, I took my way home to admire my beautiful
present.
After the Biograph had engaged David, Mr. Dougherty did not want them
to make any more Mutoscopes. Mr. Griffith directed possibly six. In
order to influence Biograph to cut out the Mutoscopes, Doc got very
cocky, and he said to Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Marvin, “You wait, you’ll
see pictures on Broadway some day, like you do plays.” But they gave
him the laugh. “Yes,” Doc added, “and they will accord them the same
dignified attention that John Drew receives.” They laughed some more
at this, and said, “Pictures will always be a mountebank form of
amusement.”
[Illustration: From “Edgar Allan Poe,” with Barry O’Moore (Herbert
Yost) and Linda Griffith.
(_See p. 90_)
]
[Illustration: Herbert Pryor, Linda Griffith, Violet Mersereau and Owen
Moore in “The Cricket on the Hearth.”
(_See p. 92_)
]
But Doc’s prophesy came true.
And David did no more Mutoscopes.
[Illustration: “Little Mary,” portraying the type of heroine that won
her a legion of admirers.
(_See p. 104_)
]
[Illustration: Register of Caudebec Inn at Cuddebackville.
(_See p. 119_)
]