_Mr. Griffith and some of his methods of direction--_
_What everyone associated with the screen_
_owes to him--About patience._
I have planned all along to dedicate this chapter to Mr. David Wark
Griffith, and now that I have arrived at it, I find that my pen is
unequal to the task. No mere chapter, nor book, could undertake to tell
Mr. Griffith’s importance to motion pictures. The things that he has
accomplished in the past ten years, invariably in the face of great
odds, almost pass belief.
For Mr. Griffith I have the strong and mixed feeling that the child has
for its benefactor, or the student for a beloved preceptor. At an age
now where I can more appreciate the many trials that he endured I look
back fondly to those days when Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Lillian
and Dorothy Gish, Robert Harron, and myself were beginning our careers
and at the same time founding what has come to be known as the Griffith
school.
Nor were we all. If the list of actresses, actors and directors who
spent the formulative days of their screen careers with Mr. Griffith
were compiled I believe it would be found to include many of those who
have reached the heights. Mr. George Loane Tucker, Mr. Thomas Ince, Mr.
Marshall Neilan and Mr. Raoul Walsh, to name but four, were directors
that he started on the road to success.
Those were the days of the old Biograph. I am sure they were of the
happiest that any of us ever have spent. We made two-reelers then. But
we made good two-reelers. And the guiding genius of the organization
was Mr. Griffith, tireless in his quest for something new, something
big, something that would expand and elevate this new art to which he
had pledged his very soul.
His energy in those days, just as it is now, was astounding. Traveling
from New York to Los Angeles not long ago, I happened to meet aboard
the train Mr. Griffith’s private secretary.
“He seems never so unhappy,” she said, “as when he is taking a day off.
He mopes around the studio, hands in his pockets, with an air almost
comical. It is as though he were silently resenting such foolishness as
days off.”
With this energy I remember those early days best for Mr. Griffith’s
infinite patience. I can truly say that he had the patience to make us
succeed. He never despaired no matter how backward we might be. He
kept at us constantly to bring out the best that was in us. And even on
those extraordinary occasions when he seemed to lose patience--usually
when we had worn his nerves to a frazzle--we always had that wonderful
feeling that he was intensely loyal to all of us.
Those were the days when in addition to schooling us to pictures Mr.
Griffith was constantly experimenting with such things as close-ups,
fade-outs, etc., that were to revolutionize the entire picture drama
and lift it above the atmosphere of the nickelodeon.
For he did lift it. And he is still lifting it.
Not only those privileged few of us who consider ourselves of the
Griffith school are indebted to his genius. Every actress, or actor, or
director, on the screen today, who has a weekly salary that runs into
three figures, can thank Mr. Griffith for making motion pictures big
and prosperous enough to so recompense them.
It is not the money that Mr. Griffith has made possible, but the
dignity that he put into this new art for which we are most beholden
to him. Motion pictures were lightly held until “The Birth of a
Nation” shook an entire continent and showed the deep significance and
possibilities of the screen art.
It took the courage of the born fighter and worlds of confidence to
put on such a picture as “The Birth of a Nation.” For here at one
step he was doing the unheard of thing, the thing almost everyone in
the profession said was impossible. But it wasn’t impossible to Mr.
Griffith. He did it.
He has continued to do things just as fine. And if there is one fault
to which the most of us are addicted it is that we have come to expect
more than is humanly possible of this patient, humble genius.
In my correspondence I am often asked many questions regarding Mr.
Griffith’s manner of directing. Wherein is it different from other
directors? Wherein does it excel? How is it possible to become
associated with him? Can he make anyone a star? And so on.
These questions are, in a way, difficult to answer. So far as I know
Mr. Griffith possesses no magic lamp by which he makes a star out
of anyone. It is not any one quality--unless it be patience--but a
combination of many that make him the foremost of our directors.
Mr. Griffith is extremely human. There is no unnecessary flourish,
or blowing of trumpets, about his manner of direction. That has the
simplicity of true greatness. He never lords it over his players
as I have seen some directors do. He is kindly, sympathetic and
understanding.
[Illustration: _Mr. Griffith, at the left, directing a scene in
“Intolerance.”_]
Perhaps we are about to do a very vital scene. Mr. Griffith tilts back
in his chair--he has a manner of directing while seated--and may say to
the actress:
“You understand this situation. Now let us see what you would do with
it.”
Here is a direct challenge. The actress is put upon her metal. After
giving the matter careful consideration she plays the scene after her
own idea. If she does it well no one is quicker in his praise than Mr.
Griffith. If otherwise, no one is more kindly in pointing out the flaws.
In other words, Mr. Griffith gives the actress a chance. How different
from other directors I have seen. They might say under the same
circumstances:
“You understand this situation. Now here is the way to do it. Follow me
closely.”
With that the director will proceed to act out a scene according to his
notion of how a woman would conduct herself under given circumstances.
The flaw in this is obviously that a man and woman have a way of acting
differently in the same situation and Mr. Griffith, by letting the
actress show what she would do, is shrewd enough to profit by Nature.
Our self-sufficient director, on the other hand, wants us to act only
as a man would think a woman _ought_ to act in a given situation.
In this way Mr. Griffith draws out the best that is in his players,
and, by seeming to depend upon them to stand upon their own feet,
maintains an enthusiasm among his players--a sort of big family
spirit--that I never have seen equalled in any other studio.
I hope no one understands me to say that the actress, under Mr.
Griffith, has the say of how she shall act. Quite the contrary! No one
has a way of bringing a player more abruptly to his or her senses when
he or she is unqualifiedly in the wrong.
And no matter how well we think we have outlined a scene Mr. Griffith
may entirely change it. When he does change it we know it is for a
reason other than a fondness for showing authority. In other words, he
has built up among his artists a great and abiding faith in his ability
to do the right thing at the right time, or, as importantly, have it
done.
For another thing, Mr. Griffith is big enough not to be small about
receiving suggestions. His people know that, with the result that they
are always thinking up something to put into a scene that has not been
written there. He listens attentively to these suggestions, even though
he knows in advance that he probably cannot use one in a hundred of
them. Yet that one may be important enough to balance the patience
expended in listening to the other ninety-nine.
To illustrate:
In “The Birth of a Nation,” when the Cameron house was being mobbed by
frenzied negroes and the family had barricaded itself in the cellar it
was a matter of some moment how the little sister, which part I was
fortunate enough to play, would be affected.
I can hear your average director:
“Roll your eyes,” he would say. “Cry! Drop to your knees in terror.”
In other words, it would be the same old stuff. It is this same old
stuff that makes so many pictures positively deadly. The least that can
be said about this conventional style of doing things is that, if it
cannot be criticized, neither can it be applauded.
Mr. Griffith, when we came to the cellar scene, asked me if there had
ever been a time in my life when I had been filled with terror.
“Yes,” I said.
“What did you do?” he inquired.
“I laughed,” I answered.
He saw the point immediately.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s try it.”
It was the hysterical laugh of the little girl in the cellar, with the
drunken mob raging above, that was, I am sure, far more effective than
rolling the eyes or weeping would have been.
Mr. Griffith is quick to appreciate the involuntary action of one
of his actresses while a scene is being played or rehearsed. As for
instance, in the court room scene in “Intolerance” (“The Mother and the
Law”) when I began unconsciously to wring my handkerchief and press it
to my face.
“Good,” he said, “keep it up!”
We are gratified when Mr. Griffith accepts any suggestion for business,
etc., for we know he has a fine sense of distinction and, for every
idea we give him, he returns a hundred.
This system of suggestion extends beyond the players to the mechanical
department with the result that camera men and assistants, as well as
assistant directors, are always on the alert for something new. They
know their suggestion will be given due consideration. And for that
reason to Mr. Griffith and his staff we owe credit for most of the new
inventions of telling a story by pictures. This director is as expert
in the mechanics of his art as he is bold in story conception.
We are familiar with that smoky, hazy, beautiful close-up that Mr.
“Billy” Bitzer invented by using gauze or placing the camera slightly
out of focus. In some recent pictures bearing the “D. G.” stamp I have
seen some beautiful blue values that I have not elsewhere observed.
I find the space allotted to this chapter beginning to dwindle with a
sense of having left unsaid so many important and interesting things
about this wonderful director and his methods. But someday someone will
set down the true estimate of the man who has done so much for the
picture drama. And Time will write it even larger.
Many of us are deeply indebted to Mr. Griffith and none of us owe that
which can be repaid. For he gave us of his genius and personality and
for these there is no return coin.
Other directors I have had of many experiences and varied training.
Sometimes we have succeeded and sometimes we have failed, and success
is made only the more sweet by taste of failure. But whether we failed
or succeeded we know, all of us, that we did our level best. That is
something.
* * * * *
In the matter of public acknowledgement the stage has never been so
kind to its directors as the screen. We think of Belasco, Hopkins,
Cohan, not forgetting Mr. Oliver Morosco, and are almost done.
But on the screen, to name a few of many, there are the De Milles, with
their uncanniness in seeming to make the screen talk; Tucker, with his
painstaking thoroughness and ability to limn the separate values of
a story; Neilan, with his quality of gay, unexpectedness; Tourneur,
with his grand manner of picturization; Dwan, with his workman-like
comprehension; Fitzmaurice, with his ability to make every scene
beautiful as a painting; Walsh, with his all-around cleverness--all
these are famous, and there are more.
No medium has equalled the screen in its kindness to those who do
creditable work. Witness, for instance, our camera aristocracy.
* * * * *
While I have ridden faster than seventy miles an hour in an
automobile, have been “ducked” in lakes, rivers, and oceans--two of
them--have braved the wintry blasts of New England until I thought I
was frozen, and done scenes with tigers, bears and lions, I have never
feared greatly for my personal safety nor need the beginner.
In really dangerous scenes “doubles”--acrobats, trick jumpers, bareback
riders, animal trainers, etc.--dress in feminine garb to resemble the
star, assume the role being played and risk death or danger for so many
dollars a day. The star’s services are too valuable to the producer for
him to allow her to take any unnecessary chances.