THE FIRST TWO-REELER
Though the licensed picture companies--The General Film Group--kept a
watchful eye on one another, each had pride in its own trademark and
was satisfied with the little company of actors bringing it recognition.
But the independent companies, now beginning to loom on the horizon,
were looking with envying eyes on the rich harvest the licensed
companies were reaping, and they figured that all they’d need, to do as
well, would be some of their well-trained actors, especially those of
Mr. Griffith’s quite famous little organization. Surely D. W. Griffith
had less to do with Mary Pickford’s success than Mary Pickford herself!
She it was the public came to see; so they were out, red-hot for Mary,
and offering publicity and more money. The little war was started.
Actors in the companies that comprised the General Film Company could
not be bargained for except by the Independents. For instance, if an
actor of the Biograph Company were discovered offering his services
to Lubin or Edison or any of the General Film, that company promptly
reported the matter to Biograph and the ambitious actor found himself
not only turned down by Edison or Lubin or any other but his nice
little Biograph job would be gone as well. That had happened to Harry
Salter and Florence Lawrence. An actor in one of the General Film
group would have to resign his job before he could open negotiations
with any other company in that group.
* * * * *
We did grind out the work this fall and early winter. The promise of
California again was a big incentive. We might stay longer and have a
new studio, a regular place.
While there was no more excitement pervading the studio than there had
been the year before, a more general willingness was noticed among the
leading people and more tears and anguish on the part of the beseeching
extras. Jeanie Macpherson sat on the steps leading to the basement of
the studio, and cried, until Mr. Griffith felt remorseful and took her.
But such conduct hadn’t availed pink-cheeked lanky “Beau,” the year
before, when he was the one property boy left behind. Then that unhappy
youth’s tearful parting shot, “All I ask, Mr. Griffith, is that some
day you take me to California,” kept intruding and spoiling the
complete satisfaction of our days. Another year Mr. Griffith harkened
to his pleading. For nearly ten years now “Beau” as William Beaudine
has been directing pictures in Los Angeles.
And so, while some of the old guard would not be with us, a goodly
number would.
To the “Imp” had gone Mary and Owen; and while Ma fussed terribly about
it, there was nothing for her and Lottie and Jack to do but follow suit.
David Miles and Anita Hendry, his wife, were already with “Imp”; and
they, with King Baggott and George Loane Tucker, Joe Smiley, Tom Ince,
Hayward Mack, and Isabel Rae, made a fair number of capable people.
But even so, Mary’s “Imp” pictures fell far short of her Biograph
pictures, and she wasn’t very happy and she didn’t stay so very long.
As a member of the “Imp” Company, the silence and mystery that had
surrounded her when with Biograph instantly vanished. She now received
whole pages of advertising, for that was how the “Imp” would put the
pictures over. One of her first Independent pictures was “The Dream”
of which a reviewer said: “The picture got over on account of Miss
Pickford. Our feelings were somewhat sentimental when we saw ‘Our Mary’
as a wife arrayed in evening gown and dining with swells. In other
words, we have always considered Mary a child. It never occurred to us
she might grow up and be a woman some day.”
Marion Leonard and Stanner E. V. Taylor had taken their departure.
I believe it was Reliance-ward they went, as did Mr. Walthall, Mr.
Kirkwood, and Arthur Johnson. Arthur had become not so dependable, and
Mr. Griffith being unable to stand the worry of uncertain appearances,
reluctantly parted with his most popular actor, and his first leading
man. He never found any one to take his place exactly. For even so long
ago, before he and Mr. Griffith parted, ’twas said of Arthur Johnson,
“His face is better known than John Drew’s.”
Mary gone, Mr. Griffith located Blanche Sweet somewhere on the road
and telegraphed an offer of forty dollars weekly to come with us to
California, which Miss Sweet accepted. He was willing to take a chance
on Blanche, being in need of a girl of her type. If she didn’t work out
right (he hardly expected her to set the world a-fire) the loss would
be small, as he was getting her so cheaply.
Wilfred Lucas also received a telegram; but his tenderly implored him
to come for one hundred and fifty dollars--a staggering offer--the
biggest to date. He also accepted.
Dell Henderson had been commissioned by Mr. Griffith to dispatch the
Lucas-one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar telegram, and the high salary made
him so sore that he promptly told it everywhere, causing jealous fits
to break out all over the studio.
We had also in our California cast, Claire MacDowell, Stephanie
Longfellow, Florence Barker, Florence LaBadie, Mabel Normand, Vivian
Prescott, and Dorothy West for the more important parts; Grace
Henderson, Kate Toncray, and Kate Bruce for the character parts; and
little Gladys Egan for important child rôles. And of men--as memory
serves me--there were Frank Powell, Edwin August, Dell Henderson,
Charlie Craig, Mack Sennett, Joe Graybill, Charlie West, Donald Crisp,
Guy Hedlund, Alfred Paget, Eddie and Jack Dillon, Spike Robinson, Frank
Grandin, Tony O’Sullivan and “Big” Evans, and George Nichols.
And some wives: Mrs. Frank Powell, Mrs. Dell Henderson, Mrs. George
Nichols, and Mrs. Billy Bitzer.
And one baby: Frank Baden Powell.
At Georgia and Girard Streets, Los Angeles, a ten-minute ride from the
center of the city, on a two-and-a-quarter-acre plot adjoining some
car barns, the carpenters were building our grand studio. An open air
studio--no artificial lighting--we could get all the light effects we
desired from the sun--and could begin to work as early as 8:30 and
continue until late in the afternoon. We had not yet reached the stage
where we felt that Mr. Electric Lamp could compete with the sun.
How joyful we were when we first beheld the new studio! The stage was
of nice smooth boards and seemed almost big enough for two companies
to work at the same time. The muslin light diffusers were operated on
an overhead trolley system. There was even a telephone on the stage.
The studio was then indeed the last word in modern equipment.
An elongated one-story building contained the office, projection room,
rehearsal room, for nights and rainy days, and two large dressing-rooms
for the men. In order to save wear and tear on the women’s clothes,
they were given the two dressing-rooms in the rear of the building
which opened directly onto the stage.
To tell the world how secure our position--how prosperous
financially--at the street entrance to our studio there now waited
through the day one, and often two big, black seven-passenger touring
cars--rented by the month, at six hundred dollars per. Now between sets
in the studio we could dash out in the car and grab an exterior.
In our dressing-rooms we had make-up tables, mirrors, lockers, and
running water. And oil stoves to keep us warm. For in the early
mornings, before the sun had reached our room, it was a shivery place.
Our cold cream and grease paints would be quite as stiff as our fingers.
So now, with the new studio, a larger company, and our knowledge of the
surrounding country, there was nothing to it but that we must get right
on the job and do better and bigger pictures.
* * * * *
With the one exception already noted we had neglected the sea the year
before, and as yet we had attempted nothing important that had to do
with “Ol’ davil Sea,” as Eugene O’Neil calls it. The sea was trickier
than the mountains, and more expensive if one needed boats and things.
But this year we would go to it right, with a massive production of
Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden”--a second production of the poem that had
written history for us in our screen beginnings.
The first time we had taken most of it in the studio, with only one
or two simple shots of the sea. Now we would do something g-r-a-n-d.
“Enoch Arden” was such good movie stuff, and Mr. Griffith was wondering
how he could get it all into one thousand feet of film.
An exhibitor in those days would accept eleven hundred feet of film,
but that was the limit. The programs were arranged only for the
thousand-foot picture; a thousand-foot Biograph being shown Mondays
and Thursdays. How could two thousand feet be shown on Monday and none
on Thursday? Even could the exhibitor have so arranged it, would the
people sit through two thousand feet without a break?
Well, now, we could do this: we could take the picture in two reels,
each of a thousand feet, show one reel Monday, the second Thursday, and
take a chance on the people becoming sufficiently interested in the
first reel to come back for the second--the only logical way of working
out the problem. Mr. Griffith fully realized his responsibility. Again
he would chance it.
Santa Monica would be the ideal place for this big production; so every
day for a week--for a whole week was given to exteriors alone--we
motored out to Santa Monica in the cold early morning.
The place had changed little in the year that had passed. The row of
tiny shacks was now occupied by Japs and Norwegians who caught and
dried fish and fought with each other at all other times.
One friendly Norwegian loaned his shack as a dressing-room for the
women. We “shot” the same shack for Annie’s bridal home. The men made
up in a stranded horse car of bygone vintage that had been anchored in
the sand. We sent out an S. O. S. for a sailing vessel of Enoch’s day,
and we heard of one, and had it towed up from San Pedro. What would we
do next?
We did “Enoch Arden” in two reels. Wilfred Lucas played Enoch; Frank
Grandin, Philip; and I played Annie Lee. Well, Jeanie Macpherson said I
had “sea eyes,” whatever that meant.
Mrs. Grace Henderson kept the Inn to which Enoch returns; Annie’s and
Enoch’s babies grew up to be Florence LaBadie and Bobbie Harron (one
of Bobbie’s first parts), and Jeanie Macpherson powdered her hair and
played nurse to the little baby that later came to Philip and Annie.
George Nichols departed via the Owl for San Francisco to get the
costumes from Goldstein & Company. There was so little to be had
in costumes in Los Angeles. Mr. Nichols had also journeyed to San
Francisco for costumes for “Ramona” the year before.
The exhibitors said they would accept “Enoch Arden” in the two reels,
show the first on Monday, and the second reel Thursday. And so it
was first shown. And those who saw the first reel came back in all
eagerness to see the second half. And that was that.
The picture was so great a success, however, that it was soon being
shown as a unit in picture houses; also in high schools and clubs,
accompanied by a lecturer. And so “Enoch Arden” wrote another chapter
of screen history.
Sustained by its success Mr. Griffith listened to the call of the
desert. With two thousand feet of celluloid to record a story, he
felt he now could do something with prairie schooners, pioneers, and
redskins, and so he answered the desert call with a big epic of pioneer
romance, “The Last Drop of Water.”
We set up camp in the San Fernando desert--two huge tents, one for
mess, with a cook and assistants who served chow to the cowboys and
extra men. Two rows of tables, planks set on wooden horses, ran the
length of the tent--there must have been at least fifty cowboys and
riders to be fed hearty meals three times a day. The other tent
contained trunks and wardrobe baskets, and here the boys slept and made
up.
The hotel in the village of San Fernando, three miles or so from the
camp, accommodated the regular members of the company and all the extra
women, to whom the director, as he dashed off for his camp in the
morning, gave this parting advice, “Girls, stay together when you’re
not busy, for you’re likely to hear some pretty rough stuff if you
don’t.”
Prairie schooners to the number of eight made up our desert caravan,
and there were the horses for the covered wagons, the United States
soldiers, and the Indians; dogs, chickens, and a cow; for this restless
element from a Mississippi town, making the trek across the land of
the buffalo and the Indian to gather gold nuggets in the hills of
California, brought with them as many familiar touches from their
deserted homes as they reckoned would survive the trip.
Of course, conflicts with Indians, and the elements, resulted in a
gradual elimination of the home touches and disintegration of the
caravan, but there was a final triumphant arrival at their destination
for the few survivors.
The picture was expensive, but quite worth it; we were at least headed
the right way, in those crude days of our beginnings. We were dealing
in things vital in our American life, and not one bit interested in
close-ups of empty-headed little ingénues with adenoids, bedroom
windows, manhandling of young girls, fast sets, perfumed bathrooms, or
nude youths heaving their muscles. Sex, as portrayed in the commercial
film of to-day, was noticeable by its absence. But if, to-day, the
production of clean and artistic pictures does not induce the dear
public to part with the necessary spondulics so that the producer can
pay his rent, buy an occasional meal and a new lining for the old
winter overcoat, then even Mr. Griffith must give the dear public
what it wants. And for the past year or two it has apparently wanted
picturizations daring as near as possible the most intimate intimacy of
the bedroom.
The season closed with another “Covered Wagon” masterpiece called
“Crossing the American Prairies in the Early Fifties.” The picture
was taken at Topango Canyon. There were hundreds of men and women and
cowboys and a hundred horses from ranches near by, as well as eleven
prairie schooners.
[Illustration: Linda Griffith and Mr. MacKay in “Mission Bells,” a
Kinemacolor picture play taken at San Juan Capistrano.
(_See p. 162_)
]
In the picture, guards had been posted at night, but being tired, they
fell asleep, so the Indians pounced upon the emigrants, slaughtering
some and taking some prisoners, to be burned at the stake. The few
survivors who escaped left numbers of dead pioneers behind. The
shifting desert sands would soon cover the bodies and remove all trace
of the massacre. The dead bodies were represented by the living bodies
of members of the company who had to be buried deep in the alkali
waste; and the getting covered up was going to be a dirty job for
the living corpses. So those scenes had to be taken last.
[Illustration: A rain effect of early days at Kinemacolor’s Los Angeles
studio, known a year later as the Fine Arts Studio, where “The Birth
of a Nation” and “Intolerance” were filmed. From “The House That Jack
Built,” with Jack Brammall and Linda Griffith.
(_See p. 245_)
]
Little grains of sand gently falling upon one from out the property
boys’ cornucopias, while unpleasant, could be silently endured; but
when the property boys got the storm really started and the sand was
being poured upon one thick and heavy, getting into hair and ears and
eyes, no matter how protective the position one had assumed, there were
heard smothered oaths from the dead people that no wild cowboy had ever
excelled.
Dell Henderson, dying with little old Christie Miller, was all humped
up and writhing in the desert sands. And while Dell was just about to
be featured as the far-famed gambler of the West in a line of showy
parts, and while he felt that Mr. Griffith had a friendly feeling for
him, his ardor for his movie job was beginning to cool. And when, after
being extricated from his earthy grave, he found the boss, he lost all
restraint.
“Old man,” said Dell to David, “this is too much, I quit pictures, I’m
through.” But the next day when all bathed and barbered up, he felt
differently about it.
But Dell hadn’t had it as rough as the atmospheric members of the
company. Even the wives had been called upon for atmosphere, and were
to make up and dress as men. They didn’t like the old trousers and the
greasy felt hats that were passed out to them, and they weren’t keen on
being recognized on the screen, in the unflattering costumes.
So Mr. Griffith compromised: “All right, I’ll put you in the background
and you can sit down.” At that the women became more amiable and agreed
to help out the perspective. And in the last few hundred feet of the
second reel, they joined the dead emigrants and were covered up in the
whirlwind.
The final scenes were reserved for the days immediately preceding our
departure for the East. As soon as they were taken, the company would
be dismissed to make the necessary preparations prior to leave-taking.
So to their pet establishment the women beat it to have their hair
beautifully and expensively washed and lemon-rinsed, and were all in
readiness for the California Limited, when a re-take was announced.
Static in the film!
To their burial places once more they were rushed, and again the boys
stood by and again poured the cornucopias of sand over them, ruining
completely the crop of nice clean heads. Few got a chance at another
fashionable shampoo. The majority had to be contented with just a home
wash--or to take the sand along with them.