BACK HOME AGAIN
Now we must pack up our troubles in our little black bag and go home.
They must be lonesome for us at 11 East Fourteenth, for the studio has
been dark and silent in our absence. Mr. Dougherty especially will be
glad to see us. And others--the jobless actors. For things were coming
along now so that Mr. Griffith didn’t have to dig so hard for new
talent.
Much talk there’ll be about the pictures we did--how the public is
receiving them--which ones are most popular--how worthwhile the trip
was--how economical we were--and how hard we worked.
When once again we had donned our working harness, how stuffy and
cramped the studio seemed! Four months in the open had ruined us; four
months with only a white sheet suspended above our heads when we did
“interiors” on our lot and the sun was too strong. We felt now like
toadstools in a dark cellar, with neither sun nor fresh air.
There was so much to keep Mr. Griffith busy--cutting and titling
of pictures, and conferences upstairs. But the blossoming pink and
white apple orchards must be heeded, so we deserted a few days, hied
ourselves to New Jersey’s old stone houses and fruit trees and friendly
hens, and did a picture “In the Season of Buds.”
Dorothy West played a leading part in “A Child of the Ghetto,” in which
was featured more Eastern atmosphere--the old oaken bucket.
For a time we stayed indoors. We acquired a new actor, Joseph Graybill,
and a few old ones returned, Vernon Clarges and Mrs. Grace Henderson,
Jim Kirkwood and Gertrude Robinson. They now played leading parts. The
public must not get fed up with the same old faces--Mr. Griffith always
saw to that--so it was “go easy” on the California actors for a while.
The feeling of the old actors towards the new ones, this spring, was
largely a jealous one. “Gee, Griff likes him all right, what are we
going to do about it?” said Charlie West and Arthur Johnson when Joe
Graybill was having his first rehearsals and the director was beaming
with satisfaction and so happy that he was singing lusty arias from
“Rigoletto.”
“We’ll fix him,” they decided.
So this day Charlie and Arthur returned from lunch with a small
brown bottle containing spiritous liquor, with which they would ply
Joe Graybill surreptitiously in the men’s dressing-room in the hope
that they might incapacitate him. But Joe drank up, rehearsed, and
Mr. Griffith’s smile only grew broader. Better than ever was the
rehearsal. So Charles went out for another little brown bottle and Joe
disposed of it, and rehearsed--better still. Another bottle, another
rehearsal--better than ever--until in a blaze of glory the scene was
taken and Joe Graybill stood upon the topmost rung of the ladder,
leaving Charles and Arthur gazing sadly upward.
There was another reason why Mr. Griffith welcomed new faces. He had a
way of not letting an actor get all worked up about himself. When that
seemed imminent, new talent would suddenly appear on the scene to play
“leads” for two or three weeks so that the importance of the regular
could simmer down a bit.
Now that they had developed an affection for their movie jobs, the
actors didn’t like this so well. They’d come down to the studio, sit
around and watch, get nervous, and after drawing three or four weeks’
salary without working (things had come along apace), they wouldn’t
know what to make of it. They’d carry on something awful. They’d moan:
“When am I going to work? I don’t like this loafing--I wonder if
Griffith doesn’t like me any more--I’d like to know if he wants me to
quit and this is his way of getting me to make the overture.” Finally,
Eddie August, after suffering three weeks of idleness, on pay, got very
brave and told Mr. Griffith he wished he’d fire him or else, for God’s
sake, use him. Mr. August was quite relieved to have Mr. Griffith’s
explanation that in his case he was merely trying out new people, and
didn’t want him to quit at all, would be very glad to have him stay.
When the Black-eyed Susans had reached full bloom, we went back to
Greenwich, Connecticut, and did a picture called “What the Daisy
Said,” with Mary Pickford and Gertrude Robinson. We visited Commodore
Benedict’s place again, and again he brought out boxes of his best
cigars. A good old sport he was.
To the Civil War again, in the same old New Jersey setting, with
Dorothy West playing the heroine in “The House with the Closed
Shutters.” In her coward brother’s clothes she takes his place on the
battlefield, breaks through the lines, delivers a message, and is shot
as she returns. And, forever after, inside the darkened rooms of the
House with the Closed Shutters the brother pays through bitter years
the price of his cowardice.
All our old stamping grounds we revisited this summer. At the Atlantic
Highlands we did two pictures: one, “A Salutary Lesson,” with Marion
Leonard; and the other, “The Sorrows of the Unfaithful,” with Mary
Pickford.
At Paterson, New Jersey, we found a feudal castle. It belonged to one
Mr. Lambert, a silk manufacturer. Here we did “The Call to Arms” where
little Mary donned tights for the first and only time, playing a page,
and looking picturesque on a medieval horse, but being a very unhappy
Mary for a reason that none of us knew.
How she fussed about those tights--nearly shed tears. She sat on the
lawn all wrapped up in the generous folds of her velvet cape, and
wouldn’t budge until she was called for her scene, and she talked so
strangely. For Owen was there, and all the other actors were to see her
in the tights, and Mary and Owen had a secret--a secret that made such
a situation quite unbearable. She had confided it only to “Doc,” but
the rest of us had been wondering.
What a miserable, hot, muggy day it was. Tolerable only sitting on the
grassy slopes of the Lambert estate, but how awful in the rooms of the
little frame hotel over by the railroad tracks where we had made up
and where some of the actors were still awaiting orders as to how they
should dress.
Dell Henderson, who was assisting Mr. Griffith on this picture, was
laboring back and forth from the castle to the hotel bringing orders to
the waiting actors as they were needed. Sennett was one of the waiting
ones, and he was all humped up in his pet grouch when Dell entered and
said, “Here, Sennett, the boss says for you to don this armor.”
“Armor, in this heat? Armor? I guess I won’t wear armor.” Then a short
pause, “Are you going to wear armor?”
“Yes, I’m no teacher’s pet,” said Dell, as he gathered to himself
the pieces of his suit of mail and began to climb into them. So the
doubting Mack Sennett could do naught but imitate him, for no matter
how balky his manner, one word from the boss and he became a good
little boy again.
In August we were once more back in Cuddebackville. The O. and W.’s
conductor was no longer skeptical of our visits. We brought so many
actors sometimes that we not only filled the little Inn but had to find
neighboring farmhouses in which to park the overflow.
We met all the old Cuddebacks again. We never realized what a tribe
they were until we had to do a scene in a cemetery, and every grave we
picked made trouble for us with some Cuddeback or other still living.
How to get away with it we didn’t know until we hit upon the idea of
simultaneously enacting a fake but intensely melodramatic scene down by
the General Store. That did the trick. All the villagers missed their
lunch that day and were unaware of the desecration of their dead.
“Wally” Walthall gave his famous fried chicken luncheon at the
minister’s house. Talent was versatile. We’d worked through our lunch
hour this day, so it was either go lunchless or beg the privilege of
slaughtering some of the minister’s wife’s tempting spring chickens and
cooking them in her kitchen. That’s how “Wally” had the opportunity to
prove his fried chicken the equal of any Ritz-Carlton’s.
We met up with old Pete again. Although nearly ninety, he was worrying
his faithful spouse into a deep and dark melancholia. Pete drove the
big bus, rigged up for our use out of one of his old farm wagons. It
was usually filled with “actresses”--wicked females from the city who
wore gay clothes and put paint on their faces. What a good time old
Pete did have once out on the highway! What a chatter, chatter, chatter
he did maintain! Never had he dreamed of such intimacy with ladies out
of a the-ayter!
But a wife was ever a wife. So no matter how old and decrepit Pete was,
to Mrs. Pete he still had charm, so why wouldn’t he be alluring to
these city girls? Every night Mrs. Pete was Johnny-on-the-spot, when
the bus unloaded its quota of fair femininity at the Inn, waiting to
lead her errant swain right straight home.
Our friends the Goddefroys still held open house for us. Dear old
Mr. Goddefroy told us of the disquieting notes that had crept into
Cuddebackville’s former tranquil life, due to our lavish expenditures
the first summer--told Mr. Griffith he was “knocking the place to hell.”
But they still loved us. In a smart little trap they’d jog over to
location bringing buckets of fresh milk and boxes of apples and pears.
Toward late afternoon of a warm summer day, when working close to their
elaborate “cottage,” the “Boss” would appear with bottles of Bass’s
Ale, and bottles of C-and-C Ginger Ale, both of which he’d pour over
great chunks of ice into a great shining milk bucket--shandygaff! Was
it good? For the simple moving picture age in which we were living we
seemed to get a good deal out of life.
We enjoyed the other social diversions of the year before--canoeing,
motoring, table-tipping. But one night, the night on which the
Macpherson magicians broke up Mr. Griffith’s beautiful sleep, nearly
saw the end of table-tipping.
Retiring early after a hard day David was awakened by noisy festivities
downstairs, and getting good and mad about it he rapped a shoe on the
floor. The group on occult demonstration bent, thinking how wonderfully
their spooks were working, instead of quieting down became hilarious.
The morning found them much less optimistic about spirit rapping.
We did an Irish story of the days when the harp rang through Tara’s
Hall--the famous “Wilful Peggy”--in which pretty Mary never looked
prettier nor acted more wilfully. But the something that had happened
to Mary since our first visits to Cuddebackville made her a different
Mary now.
One day we were idling over by the Canal bank when, with the most
wistful expression and in the most wistful tone, Mary spoke, “You know,
Mrs. Griffith, I used to think this canal was the most beautiful place
I’d ever seen, and now it just seems to me like a dirty, muddy stream.”
What had happened to her love’s young dream to so change the scenery
for her?
Early that fall we went to Mount Beacon to do an Indian picture. The
hotel on the mountain top had been closed, but we dug up the owner and
he reopened parts of the place. At night we slid down the mountainside
in the incline railway car to the village of Fishkill where we dined
and slept at a regular city hotel.
We nearly froze on that mountain top. Playing Indians, wrapped
up in warm Indian blankets, and thus draped picturesquely on the
mountainside, saved us. Mrs. Smith, not yet Pickford, did an Indian
squaw in this picture, which featured a picturesque character, one
Dark Cloud, for years model to the artist Remington. Dark Cloud was
sixty years old, but had the flexible, straight, slim figure of
nineteen. How beautifully he interpreted the Harvest Festival dance!
There were other actor-Indians on this Mount Beacon picture,
present-day celebrities who were thanking their stars they were being
Indians with woolly blankets to pose in. There were Henry Walthall and
Lily Cahill and Jeanie Macpherson and Jim Kirkwood and Donald Crisp,
among others.
Donald Crisp had crept quietly into the Biograph fold as Donald
Somebody Else. Occasionally, he authored poems in _The Smart
Set_--reason for being Donald Somebody Else in the movies. Of late, Mr.
Crisp has rather neglected poetry for the movies. He gave the screen
his greatest acting performance as _Battling Burrows_ in Mr. Griffith’s
artistic “Broken Blossoms.”
The night that “Way Down East” opened in New York in 1920 (September 3)
Donald was radiant among the audience saying his farewells, for on the
morrow he was to sail for England to take charge of the Famous Players
studio there, where he put on among other things “Beside the Bonnie
Brier Bush.”
Claire MacDowell and her husband, Charles Mailes, joined Biograph
this season. Stephanie Longfellow returned to play in more pictures;
Alfred Paget began to play small parts, as did Jeanie Macpherson;
also beautiful Florence LaBadie, who afterwards became a fan favorite
through Thannhouser’s startlingly successful serial “The Million Dollar
Mystery.” As one of the four principals, along with James Cruze of “The
Covered Wagon” fame, Sidney Bracy and Marguerite Snow, she attracted
much attention. A job as model to Howard Chandler Christie had
preceded her venture into the movies. Her tragic death, the result of a
motor accident, occurred in 1917.
Edwin August came, to look handsome in costume, playing his first part
with Lucy Cotton (recently married to E. R. Thomas) in “The Fugitive,”
taken on Mount Beacon. Mabel Normand, who had peeked in on us the year
before, returned after a winter spent with Vitagraph.
Mabel, as every one knows, had been responsible for the lovely magazine
covers by James Montgomery Flagg, and had also been model to Charles
Dana Gibson, before she came to pictures, which had happened through
friendship for Alice Joyce, who had also been a model, but was now
leading lady at the Kalem Company. It was at Kalem, playing extras,
that Mabel Normand began her rather startling movie career. Dorothy
Bernard made a screen début, as did the other Dorothy who afterward
became the wife of Wallace Reid.
I recall Dorothy Davenport at the Delaware Water Gap where we took some
pictures that fall. She was a modish little person; she wore brown
pin-check ginghams and a huge brown taffeta bow on the end of a braid
of luxurious brown hair that fluttered down her back. She looked as
though she came direct from Miss Prim’s boarding school for children of
the élite--and so was distinctive for the movies.
Fair Lily Cahill of the tailored blue serge, plain straw “dude,” and
lady-like veil worked intermittently that summer; she was always
immaculately bloused in “sun-kissed linen.” Not long after the days
of the Water Gap and Mount Beacon Indian pictures, Miss Cahill became
a Broadway leading woman in support of that long-time matinée idol,
Brandon Tynon, and somewhere along in this period she married him.
Henry Lehrman, alias Pathé, hung about. How he loved being a
near-actor! How he adored getting fixed up for a picture! He was
satisfied by now that his make-ups were works of art. From the
dressing-room he would emerge patting his swollen chest, with the
laconic remark, “Some make-up!”
Eddie Dillon returned, to smile his way through more studio days. He
often engaged me in long converse. Eddie was quite flabbergasted when
he learned my matrimonial status. He need not have been. For in Los
Angeles on Mr. Griffith’s busy evenings he often suggested my taking in
a movie with Eddie. But Eddie never knew about that.
And there was Lloyd Carlton, who went all around the mulberry bush
before he landed in the movies. He first heard of them in far-off
Australia in 1908, when as stage manager for “Peter Pan” he met a Mr.
West, who was “doing” Australia and the Far East with a “show” that
consisted of ten-and fifteen-foot moving pictures, toting the films and
projection machine and the whole works along with him. Back on home
soil, Mr. Carlton bobbed up at Biograph where instead of Mr. Frohman’s
one hundred and fifty dollars weekly he cheerfully pocketed five
dollars per day for doing character bits. Followed Thannhouser, Lubin,
and Mr. Fox.
[Illustration: Mary Pickford’s first picture, “The Violin Maker of
Cremona,” June 7, 1909. David Miles as the cripple Felippo.
(_See p. 100_)
]
[Illustration: Mary Pickford’s second picture. Mary Pickford, Marion
Leonard and Adele De Garde, in “The Lonely Villa.”
(_See p. 100_)
]
Mr. Carlton says he directed the first five-reel picture ever
released--“Through Fire to Fortune”--written by Clay Greene and
released March 2, 1914, by the General Film Company. Mr. Carlton
also says his picture contained the first night scene. Through crude
lighting manipulations Mr. Carlton secured it in the quarry at Betzwood
where rocks were painted black and properties arranged to represent
the interior of a mine.
* * * * *
And so from near and far, and from diverging avenues of endeavor, came
the new recruits to Biograph; but in the late fall Mary and Owen, and
the Smith family sailed for Cuba one fine day to produce some “Imp”
pictures there. When safe aboard the steamer, Mary and Owen decided to
brave mother’s tears and anguish. They told her of the secret marriage.
[Illustration: Mary Pickford and Mack Sennett in “An Arcadian Maid,”
Aug. 1, 1910.
(_See p. 78_)
]
[Illustration: Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Joe Graybill and Marion
Sunshine, in “The Italian Barber,” which established Joe Graybill.
(_See p. 174_)
]