Transcriber’s Notes

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Cover image created by Transcriber, using an illustration from the original book, and placed into the Public Domain.

WHEN THE MOVIES
WERE YOUNG

Biograph’s studio, Eleven East Fourteenth Street, an old brownstone mansion of New York City, the home of movie romance.

(See [p. 1])

Frontispiece.

WHEN THE MOVIES
WERE YOUNG

BY
Mrs. D. W. GRIFFITH
(Linda Arvidson)

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue

Copyright, 1925,
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WHEN THE MOVIES
WERE YOUNG

WHEN THE MOVIES WERE YOUNG

CHAPTER I
ELEVEN EAST FOURTEENTH STREET

Just off Union Square, New York City, there is a stately old brownstone house on which future generations some day may place a tablet to commemorate the place where David W. Griffith and Mary Pickford were first associated with moving pictures.

Here has dwelt romance of many colors. A bird of brilliant plumage, so the story goes, first lived in this broad-spreading five-story old brownstone that still stands on Fourteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, vibrant with life and the ambitions and endeavors of its present occupants.

Although brownstone Manhattan had seen the end of peaceful Dutch ways and the beginning of the present scrambling in the great school of human activity, the first resident of 11 East Fourteenth Street paid no heed—went his independent way. No short-waisted, long and narrow-skirted black frock-coat for him, but a bright blue affair, gold braided and gold buttoned. He was said to be the last man in old Manhattan to put powder in his hair.

As he grew older, they say his style of dressing became more fantastic, further and further back he went in fashion’s page, until in his last days knickerbockers with fancy buckles adorned his shrinking limbs, and the powdered hair became a periwig. He became known as “The Last Leaf.”

A bachelor, he could indulge in what hobbies he liked. He got much out of life. He had a cool cellar built for the claret, and a sun room for the Madeira. In his impressive reception room he gathered his cronies, opened up his claret and Madeira, the while he matched his game-cocks, and the bets were high. Even when the master became very old and ill, and was alone in his mansion with his faithful old servant, Scipio, there were still the rooster fights. But now they were held upstairs in the master’s bedroom. Scipio was allowed to bet a quarter against the old man’s twenty-dollar note, and no matter how high the stakes piled, or who won, the pot in these last days always went to Scipio.

And so “The Last Leaf” lived and died.

Then in due time the old brownstone became the home of another picturesque character, Colonel Rush C. Hawkins of the Hawkins Zouaves of the Civil War.

Dignified days, when the family learned the world’s news from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Paper and the New York Tribune, and had Peter Goelet and Moses Taylor for millionaire neighbors. For their entertainment they went to Laura Keene’s New Theatre, saw Joe Jefferson, and Lotta; went to the Academy of Music, heard Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg; heard Emma Abbott in concert; and rode on horseback up Fifth Avenue to the Park.

Of an evening, in the spacious ballroom whose doors have since opened to Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Mack Sennett, the youths, maidens and young matrons in the soft, flickering light of the astral lamp and snowy candle, danced the modest cotillon and stately quadrille, the while the elders played whist. Bounteous supper—champagne, perhaps gin and tansy.

But keenly attuned ears, when they paused to listen, could already hear off in the distance the first faint roll of the drums in the march of progress. “Little Old New York” was growing up and getting to be a big city. And so the Knickerbockers and other aristocracy must leave their brownstone dwellings for quieter districts further uptown. Business was slowly encroaching on their life’s peaceful way.

* * * * *

Another day and another generation. Gone the green lawns, enclosed by iron fences where modest cows and showy peacocks mingled, friendly. Gone the harpsichord, the candle, the lamp, to give way to the piano and the gas-lamp. Close up against each other the buildings now nestle round Union Square and on into Fourteenth Street. The horse-drawn street car rattles back and forth where No. 11 stands with some remaining dignity of the old days. On the large glass window—for No. 11’s original charming exterior has already yielded to the changes necessitated by trade—is to be read “Steck Piano Company.”

In the lovely old ballroom where valiant gentlemen and languishing ladies once danced to soft and lilting strains of music, under the candles’ glow, and where “The Last Leaf” entertained his stalwart cronies with cock fighting, the Steck Piano Company now gives concerts and recitals.

The old house has “tenants.” And as tenants come and go, the Steck Piano Company tarries but a while, and then moves on.

A lease for the piano company’s quarters in No. 11 is drawn up for another firm for $5,000 per year. In place of the Steck Piano Company on the large window is to be read—“American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.”

However, the name of the new tenant signified nothing whatever to the real estate firm adjacent to No. 11 that had made the new lease. It was understood that Mutoscope pictures to be shown in Penny Arcades were being made, and there was no particular interest in the matter. The “Biograph” part of the name had little significance, if any, until in the passage of time a young actor from Louisville, called Griffith, came to labor where labor had been little known and to wonder about the queer new job he had somewhat reluctantly fallen heir to.

The gentlemen of the real estate firm did some wondering too. Up to this time, the peace of their quarters had been disturbed only by the occasional lady-like afternoon concert of the Steck Piano Company. The few preceding directors of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company had done their work quietly and unemotionally.

Now, whatever was going on in what was once “The Last Leaf’s” gay and elegant drawing-room, and why did such shocking language drift through to disturb the conservative transactions in real estate!

“Say, what’s the matter with you—you’re dying you know—you’ve been shot and you’re dying! Well, that’s better, something like it! You, here, you’ve done the shooting, you’re the murderer, naturally you’re a bit perturbed, you’ve lots to think about—yourself for one thing! You’re not surrendering at the nearest police station, no, you’re beating it, beating it, you understand. Now we’ll try it again—That’s better, something like it! Now we’ll take it. All right, everybody! Shoot!”

The neighborhood certainly was changing. The language! The people! Where once distinguished callers in ones and twos had come once and twice a week—now in mobs they were crossing the once sacred threshold every day.

It was in the spring of 1908 that David W. Griffith came to preside at 11 East Fourteenth. Here it was he took up the daily grind, struggled, dreamed, saw old ambitions die, suffered humiliation, achieved, and in four short years was well started on the road to become world famous as the greatest director of the motion picture.

For movies, yes, movies were being made where once “The Last Leaf” had entertained in the grand old manner. That was what the inscription, “American Mutoscope and Biograph Company,” had meant.

But movies did not desecrate the dignity of 11 East Fourteenth Street. The dignity of achievement had begun. The old beauty of the place was fast disappearing. The magnificent old chandelier had given place to banks of mercury vapor tubes. There were no soft carpets for the tired actors’ feet. The ex-drawing-room and ex-concert hall were now full and overflowing with actors, and life’s little comedies and tragedies were being play-acted where once they had been lived.

Fourteenth Street, New York, has been called “the nursery of genius.” Many artists struggled there in cheap little studios, began to feel their wings, could not stand success, moved to studio apartments uptown, and met defeat. But 11 East Fourteenth Street still harbors the artist; the building is full of them. Evelyn Longman, who was there when “old Biograph” was, is still there. On other doors are other names—Ruotolo, Oberhardt, John S. Gelert, sculptor; Lester, studio; The Waller Studios; Ye Studio of Frederic Ehrlich.

In the old projection room are now stacked books and plays of the Edgar S. Werner Company, and in the dear old studio, which is just the same to-day as the day we left it, except that the mercury tubes have been taken out, and a north window cut, presides a sculptor by the name of A. Stirling Calder, who has painted the old door blue and hung a huge brass knocker on it.

Now, when I made up my mind to write this record of those early days of the movies, I knew that I must go down once again to see the old workshop, where for four years David W. Griffith wielded the scepter, until swelled with success and new-gained wealth the Biograph Company pulled up stakes and flitted to its new large modern and expensive studio up in the Bronx at East 175th Street.

So down I went to beg Mr. Calder to let me look over the old place and take a picture of it.

My heart was going pit-a-pat out there in the old hallway while I awaited an answer to my knock. “Please,” I pleaded, “I want so much to take a photograph of the studio just as it is. I’m writing a little book about our pioneering days here; it won’t take a minute. May I, please?”

Emotion was quite overwhelming me as the memories of the years crowded on me, memories of young and happy days untouched with the sadness that years must inevitably bring even though they bring what is considered “success.” Twelve years had gone their way since I had passed through those studio doors and here I was again, all a-flutter with anticipation and choky with the half-dreamy memories of events long past.

“Lawrence” Griffith.

(See [p. 12])

Linda Arvidson (Mrs. David W. Griffith), as leading ingénue with Florence Roberts in stock in San Francisco.

(See [p. 15])

But don’t be tempted to announce your arrival if you have ever been connected with a moving picture, for Mr. Calder has scarcely heard of them and when I insisted he must have, he said, with much condescension, “Oh, yes, I remember, Mr. Griffith did a Chinese picture; it was rather good but too sentimental.” And he refused to let me take a picture of the studio for he “could not afford to lend his work and his studio to problematical publicity of which he had not the slightest proof.”

I felt sorry Mr. Calder had come to reside in our movie nursery at 11 East Fourteenth Street, for we were such good fellows, happy and interested in our work, cordial and pleasant to one another.

The change made me sad!

CHAPTER II
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

But now to go back to the beginning.

It was a night in the summer of 1904 in my dear and fascinating old San Francisco, before the life we all knew and loved had been broken in two, never to be mended, by the disaster of the great fire and earthquake. At the old Alcazar Theatre the now historic stock company was producing Mr. Hall Caine’s drama “The Christian.”

In the first act the fishermaidens made merry in the village square.

Unknown to family or friends, and with little pride in my humble beginning, I mingled as one of the fishergirls. Three dollars and fifty cents a week was the salary Fred Belasco (David’s brother) paid me for my bit of Hall Caine interpretation, so I, for one, had no need to be horrified some four years later when I was paid three dollars a day for playing the same fishermaiden in support of Mary Pickford, who, under Mr. Griffith’s direction, was making Glory Quayle into a screen heroine.

Here at the old Alcazar were wonderful people I could worship. There was Oza Waldrop, and John Craig, and Mary Young, Eleanor Gordon, Frances Starr, and Frank Bacon. Kindly, sweet Frank Bacon whose big success, years later, as Lightnin’ Bill Jones, in his own play “Lightnin’,” made not the slightest change in his simple, unpretentious soul. Mr. Bacon had written a play called “In the Hills of California.” It was to be produced for a week’s run at Ye Liberty Theatre, Oakland, California, and I was to play the ingénue.

One little experience added to another little experience fortified me with sufficient courage to call on managers of visiting Eastern road companies who traveled short of “maids,” “special guests at the ball,” and “spectators at the races.” New York was already beckoning, and without funds for a railroad ticket the only way to get there was to join a company traveling that way.

A summing up of previous experiences showed a recital at Sherman and Clay Hall and two weeks on tour in Richard Walton Tully’s University of California’s Junior farce “James Wobberts, Freshman.”

In the company were Mr. Tully and his then wife, Eleanor Gates, the author; Emil Kreuske, for some years now “Bill Nigh,” the motion picture director; Milton Schwartz, who took to law and now practices in Hollywood; Dick Tully and his wife Olive Vail. Elmer Harris of the original college company did not go. Elmer is now partner to Frank E. Woods along with Thompson Buchanan in Mr. Wood’s new producing company.

The recital at Sherman and Clay Hall on Sutter Street was a most ambitious effort. My job-hunting pal, Harriet Quimby, a girl I had met prowling about the theatres, concluded we were getting nowhere and time was fleeting. So we hit on a plan to give a recital in San Francisco’s Carnegie Hall, and invite the dramatic critics hoping they would come and give us good notices.

The Homer Henley Quartette which we engaged would charge twenty dollars. The rent of the hall was twenty. We should have had in hand forty dollars, and between us we didn’t own forty cents.

Harriet Quimby knew Arnold Genthe, and, appreciating her rare beauty, Mr. Genthe said he would make her photos for window display for nothing. Oscar Mauer did the same for me, gratis. Rugs and furniture we borrowed, and the costumes by advertising in the program, we rented cheaply.

We understood only this much of politics: Jimmy Phelan, our Mayor (afterwards Senator James H. Phelan) was a very wealthy man, charitably disposed, and one day we summoned up sufficient courage to tell him our trouble. Most attentively and respectfully he heard us, and without a moment’s hesitation gave us the twenty.

So we gave the recital. We sold enough tickets to pay the Homer Henleys, but not enough to pay the debt to Mr. Phelan. He’s never been paid these many years though I’ve thought of doing it often, and will do it some day.

However, the critics came and they gave us good notices, but the recital didn’t seem to put much of a dent in our careers. Harriet Quimby soon achieved New York via The Sunset Magazine. In New York she “caught on,” and became dramatic critic on Leslie’s Weekly.

The honor of being the first woman in America to receive an aviator’s license became hers, as also that of being the first woman to pilot a monoplane across the English Channel. That was in the spring of 1912, a few months before her death while flying over Boston Harbor.

* * * * *

Mission Street, near Third, was in that unique section called South-of-the-Slot. The character of the community was such, that to reside there, or even to admit of knowing residents there meant complete loss of social prestige. Mission Street, which was once the old road that led over blue and yellow lupin-covered hills out to the Mission Dolores of the Spanish Fathers, and was later the place where the elegantly costumed descendants of the forty-niners who had struck pay dirt (and kept it) strolled, held, at the time of which I speak, no reminder of its departed glory except the great romantic old Grand Opera House, which, amid second-hand stores, pawn-shops, cheap restaurants, and saloons, languished in lonely grandeur.

Once in my young life Richard Mansfield played there; Henry Irving and Ellen Terry gave a week of Shakespearean repertoire; Weber and Fields came from New York for the first time and gave their show, but failed. San Franciscans thought that Kolb and Dill, Barney Bernard, and Georgie O’Ramey, who held forth nightly at Fischer’s Music Hall, were just as good.

At the time of the earthquake a grand opera company headed by Caruso was singing there. Between traveling luminaries, lesser lights glimmered on the historic old stage. And for a long time, when the theatre was called Morosco’s Grand Opera House, ten, twenty, and thirty blood-and-thunder melodrama held the boards.

At this stage in its career, and hardly one year before the great disaster, a young actor who called himself Lawrence Griffith was heading toward the Coast in a show called “Miss Petticoats.” Katherine Osterman was the star. The company stranded in San Francisco.

Melbourne MacDowell, in the last remnants of the faded glory cast upon him by Fanny Davenport, was about to tread the sacred stage of the old Grand Opera House, putting on a repertoire of the Sudermann and Sardou dramas.

Frank Bacon, always my kind adviser, suggested I should try my luck with this aggregation. So I trotted merrily down, wandered through dark alleyways, terribly thrilled, for Henry Irving had come this same way and I was walking where once he had walked.

I was to appear as a boy servant in “Fedora.” I remember only one scene. It was in a sort of court room with a civil officer sitting high and mighty and calm and unperturbed on a high stool behind a high desk. I entered the room and timidly approached the desk. A deep stern voice that seemed to rise from some dark depths shouted at me, “At what hour did your master leave Blu Bla?”

I shivered and shook and finally stammered out the answer, and was mighty glad when the scene was over.

Heavens! Who was this person, anyhow?

His name, I soon learned, was Griffith—Lawrence Griffith—I never could abide that “Lawrence”! Though, as it turned out afterward, our married life might have been dull without that Christian name as a perpetual resource for argument.

Afterward, to my great joy, Mr. Griffith confided to me that he had taken the name “Lawrence” only for the stage. His real name was “David,” “David Wark,” but he was going to keep that name dark until he was a big success in the world, and famous. And as yet he didn’t know, although he seemed very lackadaisical about it, I thought, whether he’d be great as an actor, stage director, grand opera star, poet, playwright, or novelist.

I wasn’t the only one who thought he might have become a great singer. Once a New York critic reviewing a première of one of David Griffith’s motion pictures, said: “The most interesting feature of Mr. Griffith’s openings is to hear his wonderful voice.”

“Lawrence” condescended to a little conversation now and then. He was quite encouraging at times. Said I had wonderful eyes for the stage and if I ever went to New York and got in right, I’d get jobs “on my eyes.” (Sounded very funny—getting a job “on one’s eyes.”) Advised me never to get married if I expected to stay on the stage. Told me about the big New York actors: Leslie Carter, who had just been doing DuBarry; and David Belasco, and what a wonderful producer he was; and dainty Maude Adams; and brilliant Mrs. Fiske; and Charles Frohman; and Richard Mansfield in “Monsieur Beaucaire”; and Broadway; and Mrs. Fernandez’s wonderful agency; and how John Drew got his first wonderful job through her agency at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week!

I was eager to learn more of the big theatrical world three thousand miles away. I invited Mr. Griffith out home to lunch one day. A new world soon opened up for me—the South. The first Southerner I’d ever met was Mr. Griffith. I had known of the South only from my school history; but the one I had studied didn’t tell of Colonel Jacob Wark Griffith, David’s father, who fought under Stonewall Jackson in the Civil War, and was called “Thunder Jake” because of his roaring voice. He owned lots of negroes, gambled, and loved Shakespeare. There was big “Sister Mattie” who taught her little brother his lessons and who, out on the little front stoop, just before bedtime, did her best to answer all the questions the inquisitive boy would ask about the stars and other wonders.

This was all very different from being daughter to a Norseman who had settled out on San Francisco’s seven hills in the winds and fogs.

The South began to loom up as a land of romance.

CHAPTER III
CLIMACTERIC—AN EARTHQUAKE AND A MARRIAGE

When the Melbourne MacDowell repertory season closed, the stranded actors of the “Miss Petticoats” Company were again on the loose. While San Francisco supported two good stock companies, the Alcazar presenting high-class drama and the Central given over to melodrama, their rosters had been completed for the season and they offered rather lean pickings. But Lawrence Griffith worked them both to the best of his persuasive powers.

Early fall came with workless weeks, and finally, to conserve his shrinking treasury, our young actor who had been domiciled in the old Windsor Hotel, a most moderately priced place on Market and Fourth Streets, had to bunk in with Carlton, the stage carpenter of the MacDowell show, in a single-bedded single room. Mr. Carlton was on a social and mental plane with the actor, but his financial status was decidedly superior.

The doubling-up arrangement soon grew rather irksome. What with idle days, a flattened purse, and isolation from theatrical activities, gloom and discouragement enveloped young Griffith, although he never seemed to worry.

He had a trunk full of manuscripts—one-act plays, long plays, and short stories and poems! To my unsophisticated soul it was all very wonderful. What a cruel, unappreciative world, to permit works of genius to languish lonely amid stage wardrobe and wigs and greasy make-up!

On pleasant days when the winds were quiet and the fogs hung no nearer than Tamalpais across the Gate, we would hie ourselves to the Ocean Beach, where, fortified with note-book and pencil the actor-poet would dictate new poems and stories.

One day young Lawrence brought along a one-act play called “In Washington’s Time.” The act had been headlined over the Keith Circuit. It had never played in San Francisco. He wondered if he could do anything with it.

* * * * *

It was approaching the hop-picking season. The stranded young actor’s funds were reaching bottom. Something must be done.

In California, in those days, quite nice people picked hops. Mother and father, young folks, and the children, went. Being the dry season, they’d live in the open; pick hops by day, and at night dance and sing.

Lawrence Griffith decided it would be a healthful, a colorful, and a more remunerative experience than picking up theatrical odd jobs, to join the hop pickers up Ukiah way. So for a few weeks he picked hops and mingled with thrifty, plain people and operatic Italians who drank “dago red” and sang the sextette from “Lucia” while they picked their portion. Here he saved money and got atmosphere for a play. Sent me a box of sweet-smelling hops from the fields, too!

A brief engagement as leading ingénue with Florence Roberts had cheered me in the interval, even though Fred Belasco made me feel utterly unworthy of my thirty-five dollar salary. “My God,” said he when I presented my first week’s voucher, “they don’t give a damn what they do with my money.”

However, Mr. Griffith soon returned to San Francisco. He hoped to do something with his playlet. Martin Beck, the vaudeville magnate, who was then manager of the Orpheum Theatre and booked acts over the Orpheum Circuit, said to let him see a rehearsal.

Such excitement! I was to play a little Colonial girl and appear at our own Orpheum Theatre in an act that had played New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other awesome cities. Mr. Beck booked for the week and gave us a good salary, but could not offer enough consecutive bookings to make a road tour pay, so that was that.

In the meantime Oliver Morosco had opened his beautiful Majestic Theatre in upper Market Street, with “In the Palace of the King.” The New York company lacking a blind Inez, I got the part, and the dramatic critic, Ashton Stevens, gave me a great notice. In the next week’s bill, “Captain Barrington,” I played a scene which brought me a paragraph from Mr. Stevens captioned “An Actress with more than Looks.” On the strength of this notice Mr. Morosco sent me to play ingénues at his Burbank Theatre in Los Angeles, at twenty-five dollars per week.

Barney Bernard was stepping out just now. He wanted to see what he could do away from the musical skits of Kolb and Dill. So he found a play called “The Financier.” “Lawrence” Griffith had a little job in it. The hardest part of the job was to smoke a cigar in a scene—it nearly made him ill. But he had a good season, six weeks with salary paid.

That over, came a call to Los Angeles to portray the Indian, Alessandro, in a dramatization of Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel “Ramona.”

It was pleasant for us to see each other. We went out to San Gabriel Mission together. Mr. Griffith afterwards used the Mission as the setting for a short story—a romantic satire which he called “From Morning Until Night.” His brief engagement over, “Lawrence” went back to San Francisco, and my Morosco season ending shortly afterward, I followed suit.

In San Francisco, Nance O’Neill was being billed. She was returning from her Australian triumphs in Ibsen, Sardou, and Sudermann. The company, with McKee Rankin as manager and leading man, included John Glendenning, father of Ernest; Clara T. Bracy, sister of Lydia Thompson of British Blonde Burlesque and Black Crook fame; Paul Scardon from the Australian Varieties and now husband of a famous cinema star, Betty Blythe; and Jane Marbury.

Mr. Griffith, hoping for a chance to return East with the company, applied for a job and was offered “bits” which he accepted. Then one day, Mr. Rankin being ill, Lawrence Griffith stepped into the part of the Father in “Magda.” Miss O’Neill thought so well of his performance and the notices he received that she offered him leading parts for the balance of the season.

When in the early spring of 1906, the company departed from San Francisco, it left me with my interest in life decidedly diminished—but Lawrence Griffith had promised to return, and when he came back things would be different.

So, while the O’Neill company was working close to Minneapolis, I was “resting.” I “rested” until eighteen minutes to five on the morning of April 18th, when something happened.

“Earthquake?”

“I don’t know, but I think we had better get up,” suggested my sister.

* * * * *

I sent Lawrence a long telegram about what had happened to us, but he received it by post. And then about a week later I received a letter from Milwaukee telling me that Miss O’Neill and the company were giving a benefit for desolate San Francisco, and that I had better come on and meet him in Boston where the company was booked for a six weeks’ engagement.

So to Fillmore Street I went to beg for a railroad ticket to Boston, gratis. There was a long line of people waiting. I took my place at the end of the line. In time I reached the man at the desk.

“Where to?”

“Boston.”

“What is your occupation?”

“Actress.”

I thought it unwise to confide my matrimonial objective. No further questions, however. I was given a yard of ticket and on May 9th I boarded a refugee train at the Oakland mole, all dressed up in Red Cross clothes that fitted me nowhere.

But I had a lovely lunch, put up by neighbors, some fried chicken, and two small bottles of California claret. In another box, their stems stuck in raw potatoes, some orange blossoms off a tree that stood close to our tent.

Ah, dear old town, good-bye!

Every night I cried myself to sleep.

Thus I went to meet my bridegroom.

* * * * *

Boston!

Everything a bustle! People, and people, and people! Laughing, happy, chattering people who didn’t seem to know and apparently didn’t care what had happened to us out there by the bleak Pacific. I was so annoyed at them. Their life was still normal. Though I knew they had helped bounteously, I was annoyed.

But here He comes! And we jumped into a cab—with a license, but no ring. In the unusual excitement that had been forgotten, so we had to turn back in the narrow street and find a jeweler. Then we drove to Old North Church, where Paul Revere had hung out his lantern on his famous ride (which Mr. Griffith has since filmed in “America”), and our names were soon written in the register.

* * * * *

The end of June, and New York! Just blowing up for a thunderstorm. I had never heard real thunder, nor seen lightning, nor been wet by a summer rain. What horrible weather! The wind blew a gale, driving papers and dust in thick swirling clouds. Of all the miserable introductions to the city of my dreams and ambitions, New York City could hardly have offered me a more miserable one!

We lived in style for a few days at the Hotel Navarre on Seventh Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, and then looked for a “sublet” for the summer. I’d never heard of a “sublet” before.

We ferreted around and found a ducky little place, so cheap—twenty-five dollars a month—on West Fifty-sixth Street, overlooking the athletic grounds of the Y. M. C. A., where I was tremendously amused watching the fat men all wrapped up in sweaters doing their ten times around without stopping—for reducing purposes.

But we had little time to waste in such observations. A job must be had for the fall. In a few weeks we signed with the Rev. Thomas Dixon (fresh from his successful “Clansman”); my husband as leading man and I as general understudy, in “The One Woman.” Rehearsals were to be called in about two months.

To honeymoon, or not to honeymoon—to work or not to work. Work it was, and David started on a play.

And he worked. He walked the floor while dictating and I took it down on the second-hand typewriter I had purchased somewhere on Amsterdam Avenue for twenty dollars. The only other investment of the summer had been at Filene’s in Boston where I left my Red Cross sartorial contributions and emerged in clothes that had a more personal relation to me.

They were happy days. The burdens were shared equally. My husband was a splendid cook; modestly said, so was I. He loved to cook, singing negro songs the while, and whatever he did, whether cooking or writing or washing the dishes, he did it with the same earnestness and cheerfulness. Felt his responsibilities too, and had a sort of mournful envy of those who had established themselves.

Harriet Quimby was now writing a weekly article for Leslie’s, and summering gratis at the old Oriental Hotel at Manhattan Beach as payment for publicizing the social activities of the place. Beach-bound one day, she called at our modest ménage, beautifully dressed, with wealthy guests in their expensive car. As the car drove off, Mr. Griffith gazing sadly below from our window five flights up, as sadly said “She’s a success.”

The play came along fine, owing much to our experiences in California. One act was located in the hop fields, and there were Mexican songs that Mr. Griffith had first heard rendered by native Mexicans who sang in “Ramona.” Another act was in a famous old café in San Francisco, The Poodle Dog. It was christened “A Fool and a Girl.” The fool was an innocent youth from Kentucky, but the girl, being from San Francisco, was more piquant.

We’d been signed for the fall, and we felt we’d done pretty well by the first summer. I’d learned to relish the funny little black raspberries and not to be afraid of thunderstorms—they were not so uncertain as earthquakes.

And now rehearsals are called for Mr. Dixon’s “The One Woman.” They lasted some weeks before we took to the road and opened in Norfolk, Virginia, where we drew our first salaries, seventy-five for him and thirty-five for her. Nice, it was, and we hoped it would be a long season.

CHAPTER IV
YOUNG AMBITIONS AND A FEW JOLTS

But it wasn’t.

After two months on the road we received our two weeks’ notice. For half Mr. Griffith’s salary, Mr. Dixon had engaged another leading man, who, he felt, would adequately serve the cause. So, sad at heart and not so wealthy, we returned to the merry little whirl of life in the theatrical metropolis of the U. S. A. We had one asset—the play. Good thing we had not frivoled away those precious summer weeks in seeking cooling breezes by Coney’s coral strand!

Late that fall my husband played a small part in a production of “Salome” at the Astor Theatre under Edward Ellsner’s direction. Mr. Ellsner was looking for a play for Pauline Frederick. Mr. Griffith suggested his play and Mr. Ellsner was sufficiently interested to arrange for a reading for Miss Frederick and her mother. They liked it; so did Mr. Ellsner; and so the play was sent on to Mr. James K. Hackett, Miss Frederick’s manager at that time.

* * * * *

Linda Arvidson (Mrs. Griffith), David W. Griffith and Harry Salter, in “When Knights were Bold,” Biograph’s version of “When Knighthood was in Flower.”

(See [p. 34])

Marion Davies, Forrest Stanley, Ruth Shepley and Ernest Glendenning, in Cosmopolitan’s production of “When Knighthood was in Flower.”

(See [p. 34])

Advertising Bulletin for “Balked at the Altar,” with Harry Salter, Mabel Stoughton, Mack Sennett, George Gebhardt and Linda Griffith. The release of all Biograph movies was similarly announced.

(See [p. 40])

It was Christmas eve—our first. Three thousand miles from home, lonesome, broke.

In the busy marts of dramatic commerce poor little “D” was dashing hither and yon with his first-born. Even on this day before Christmas he was on the job. The festive holiday meal I had prepared was quite ready. There were some things to be grateful for: each other, the comfortable two rooms, and the typewriter. The hamburger steak was all set, the gravy made, and the potatoes with their jackets on, à la California camp style, were a-steaming. The little five-cent baker’s pie was warming in the oven and the pint bottle of beer was cooling in the snow on the window ledge. And some one all mine was coming.

We sat down to dinner. Couldn’t put the plates on the table right side up these days, it seemed. Had no recollection of having turned my plate over. Turned it right side up again.

I wished people wouldn’t be silly. I supposed this was a verse about Christmas. But why the mystery? Wonderingly, I opened the folded slip of paper. Funny looking poetry. Funny look on D’s face. What was this anyhow? Looked like an old-fashioned rent receipt. But it didn’t say “Received from ——.” It said “Pay to ——,” “Pay to the order of David W. Griffith seven hundred dollars,” and it was signed “James K. Hackett.”

“Oh no, you haven’t sold the play!”

Yes, it was sold; the check represented a little advance royalty. And were the play a success we would receive a stipulated percentage of the weekly gross. (I’ve forgotten the scale.)

Oh, kind and generous Mr. Hackett!

Isn’t it funny how calm one can be in the big moments of life? But I couldn’t grasp it. Christmas eve and all! An honest-to-God check on an honest-to-God bank for seven hundred whole dollars. Was there that much money in the whole world?

Now came wonderful days—no financial worry and no job-hunting. True, we realized the seven hundred would not last indefinitely. But to accept a job and not be in New York when rehearsals for the play were called, was an idea not to be entertained. So, to feel right about the interim of inactivity, David wrote yards of poetry and several short stories. And John A. Sleicher of Leslie’s Weekly paid the princely sum of six dollars for a poem called “The Wild Duck.”

A bunch of stuff was sent off to McClure’s, which Mr. McClure said appealed to him very much—though not enough for publication. He’d like to see more of Mr. Griffith’s work.

And the Cosmopolitan, then under Perriton Maxwell’s editorship, bought “From Morning Until Night” for seventy-five dollars. Things were looking up.

* * * * *

In Norfolk, Va., a Centennial was to be held in celebration of the landing on Southern soil of the first of the F. F. V.’s, and a play commemorating the event had been written around Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. Mr. Griffith accepted a part in it. The six weeks’ engagement would help out until the rehearsals of his own play were called. But Pocahontas’s financial aid must have been somewhat stingy according to the letter my husband wrote me in New York. We had felt we couldn’t afford my railroad fare to Norfolk and my maintenance there. It was our first separation.

And this the letter:

Dear Linda,

I am sending you a little $3 for carfare. I would send more but I couldn’t get anything advanced, so I only send you this much. I’ll get my salary, or part of it, rather, Monday, so I’ll send you more then and also tell you what I think we should do. I would like to go to Miss —— if we could get it for $6 a week, or $25 a month but I don’t like to pay $7.50, that’s too strong if we can do cheaper. Of course, if we can’t we can’t and that’s all there is to it. Let me know as soon as you get this money as I am only sending it wrapped up as I don’t want you to have to cash so small a check as $3, so that’s why I am sending it this way.

I bet you I get some good things out of this world for her yet, just watch me and see....

Her husband,
David

Pocahontas flivvered out in three weeks. But as Shakespeare says, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” While Mr. Griffith was away, I found time to make myself a new dress. In a reckless moment I had paid a dollar deposit on some green silk dress material at Macy’s, which at a later and wealthier moment I had redeemed. So now I rented a sewing machine and sewed like mad to get the dress done, for I could afford only one dollar-and-a-half weekly rental on the old Wheeler and Wilson.

By the time “A Fool and A Girl” was to open in Washington, D. C., there was just enough cold cash left for railroad fare there. Klaw and Erlanger produced the play under Mr. Duane’s direction, and Mr. Hackett came on to rehearsals in Washington. Fannie Ward and Jack Deane played the leading parts. Here they met and their romance began, and according to latest accounts it is still thriving. Alison Skipworth of “The Torch Bearers” and other successes, was a member of the cast.

The notices were not the best nor the worst. They are interesting to-day, for they show how time has ambled apace since October, 1907. Said Hector Fuller, the critic:

It may be said that the dramatist wanted to show where his hero’s feet strayed; and where he found the girl he was afterwards to make his wife, but if one wants to tell the old, old and beautiful story of redemption of either man or woman through love, it is not necessary to portray the gutters from which they are redeemed....

One week in Washington and one in Baltimore saw on its jolly way to the storehouse the wicked Bull Pup Café and the Hop Fields, etc.

And so back to New York.

In the Sixth Avenue “L” with our little suitcases, we sat, a picture of woe and misery. In the Sixth Avenue “L,” for not even a dollar was to be wasted on a taxi. But when the door to our own two rooms was closed, and, alone together, we faced our wrecked hopes, it wasn’t so awful. Familiar objects seemed to try and comfort us. After all, it was a little home, and better than a park bench; and the Century Dictionary—of which some day we would be complete owners, maybe—and the Underwood, all our own—spoke to us reassuringly.

I do not recall that any job materialized that winter, but something must have happened to sustain us. Perhaps the belated receipt of those few hundred dollars of mine that were on deposit at the German Savings Bank at the time of the Disaster in San Francisco.

To offset what might have been a non-productive winter, Mr. Griffith wrote “War,” a pretentious affair of the American Revolution, which Henry Miller would have produced had it been less expensive. “War” had meant a lot of work. For weeks previous to the writing, we had repaired daily to the Astor Library where we copied soldiers’ diaries and letters and read histories of the period until sufficiently imbued with the spirit of 1776. “War” is still in the manuscript stage with the exception of the Valley Forge bits which came to life in Mr. Griffith’s film “America”; for Mr. Griffith turned to the spectacle very early in his career, though he little dreamed then of the medium in which he was to record the great drama of the American Revolution.

* * * * *

We met Perriton Maxwell again. Extended and accepted dinner invitations. Our dinner was a near-tragedy. Before the banquet had advanced to the salad stage, I had to take my little gold bracelet to a neighboring “Uncle.” The antique furniture necessitated placards which my husband posted conspicuously. For instance, on the sofa—“Do not sit here; the springs are weak.” On a decrepit gate-legged table—“Don’t lean; the legs are loose.”

At the Maxwells’ dinner our host gathered several young literati who he thought might become interested in Mr. Griffith and his literary efforts. Vivian M. Moses, then editor of Good Housekeeping and now Publicity Manager for The Fox Films, was one, as was Jules E. Goodman, the playwright. But a “litry” career for Mr. Griffith seemed foredoomed. A poem now and then, and an occasional story sold, was too fragile sustenance for permanency. Some sort of steady job would have to be found, and the “litry” come in as a side-line.

David Griffith was ready for any line of activity that would bring in money, so that he could write plays. He always had some idea in his inventive mind, such as non-puncturable tires, or harnessing the ocean waves. In the mornings, on waking, he would lie in bed and work out plots for dramas, scene bits, or even mechanical ideas. After an hour of apparent semi-consciousness, his head motionless on the pillow, he would greet the day with “I hate to see her die in the third act”; or, “I wonder if that meat dish could be canned!” meaning, could a dish he had invented and cooked—a triumph of culinary art—be made a commercial proposition as a tinned food, like Armour’s or Van Camp’s beans and corned beef.

Pretty good field of activity, canned eats, and might have made David W. Griffith more money than canned drama!

CHAPTER V
THE MOVIES TEMPT

Winter passed. Spring came.

On the Rialto’s hard pavements, day in and day out, Mr. Griffith, his ear to the ground, was wearing out good shoe leather. But nothing like a job materialized, until, meeting up with an old acquaintance, Max Davidson, he heard about moving pictures. Since youthful days in a Louisville stock company these two had not met. And the simple confidences they exchanged this day brought results that were most significant, not only to David Griffith, but to millions of unsuspecting people the world over.

Mr. Davidson had been going down to a place on 11 East Fourteenth Street and doing some kind of weird acting before a camera—little plays, he explained, of which a camera took pictures.

“You’ve heard of moving pictures, haven’t you?”

“Why, I don’t know; suppose I have, but I’ve never seen one. Why?”

“I work in them during the summer; make five dollars some days when I play a leading part, but usually it’s three. Keeps you going, and you get time to call on managers too. Now you could write the little stories for the pictures. They pay fifteen dollars sometimes for good ones. Don’t feel offended at the suggestion. It’s not half bad, really. We spend lots of days working out in the country. Lately we’ve been doing pictures where they use horses, and it’s just like getting paid for enjoying a nice horseback ride. Anybody can ride well enough for the pictures. Just manage to stay on the horse, that’s all.”

“Ye gods,” said the tempted one, “some of my friends might see me. Then I would be done for. Where do they show these pictures? I’ll go see one first.”

“Oh, nobody’ll ever see you—don’t worry about that.”

“Well, that does make it different. I’ll think it over. Where’s the place, you said?”

“Eleven East Fourteenth Street.”

“Thanks awfully. I’ll look in—so long.”

* * * * *

The elder Mr. McCutcheon was the director when David applied for a job at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company and got it.

There were no preliminaries. He was told to go “below” and put on a little make-up. So he went “below”—to the dressing-room, but he didn’t put on a “little make-up.” He took a great deal of trouble with it although it was largely experimental, being very different from the conventional stage make-up. The only instruction he was given was to leave off the “red” which would photograph black, thus putting hollows in his cheeks. And he didn’t need hollows in his cheeks.

When he came up to the studio floor—his dressing and make-up finished—the director, and the actors especially, looked at him as though he were not quite in his right mind. “Poor boob,” they thought, to take such trouble with a “make-up” for a moving picture, a moving picture that no one who counted for anything would ever see.

After a short rehearsal, an explanation of “foreground” and instructions about keeping “inside the lines” and “outside the lines,” the camera opened up, ground away for about twenty feet, and the ordeal was over.

When work was finished for the day, Mr. McCutcheon paid his new actor five dollars and told him to call on the morrow. So the next morning there was an early start to the studio. They were to work outside, and there were to be horses!

I shall never forget the sadly amused expression my husband brought home with him, the evening of that second day. Nor his comments: “It’s not so bad, you know, five dollars for simply riding a horse in the wilds of Fort Lee on a cool spring day. I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to go down and see what you can do. Don’t tell them who you are, I mean, don’t tell them you’re my wife. I think it is better business not to.”

So a few days later, I dolled up for a visit to the studio. After I had waited an hour or so, Mr. McCutcheon turned to me and said, “All right, just put a little make-up on; this isn’t very important.” There was no coaching for the acting; only one thing mattered, and that was, not to appear as though hunting frantically for the lines on the floor that marked your stage, while the scenes were being taken.

Mr. Griffith and I “listened in” on all the stories and experiences the actors at the studio had to tell. We would have all the information we could get on the subject of moving pictures, those tawdry and cheap moving pictures, the existence of which we had hitherto been aware of only through the lurid posters in front of the motion picture places—those terrible moving picture places where we wouldn’t be caught dead. But we could find use for as many of those little “fives” as might come our way.

Humiliating as the work was, no one took the interest in it that David Griffith did, or worked as hard. This Mr. McCutcheon must have divined right off, for he used him quite regularly and bought whatever stories he wrote.

Only a few days were needed to get a line on the place. It was a conglomerate mess of people that hung about the studio. Among the flotsam and jetsam appeared occasionally a few real actors and actresses. They would work a few days and disappear. They had found a job on the stage again. The better they were, the quicker they got out. A motion picture surely was something not to be taken seriously.

Those running the place were not a bit annoyed by this attitude. The thing to do was to drop in at about nine in the morning, hang around a while, see if there was anything for you, and if not, to beat it up town quick, to the agents. If you were engaged for a part in a picture and had to see a theatrical agent at eleven and told Mr. McCutcheon so, he would genially say, “That’s O. K. I’ll fix it so you can get off.” You were much more desirable if you made such requests. It meant theatrical agents were seeking you for the legitimate drama, so you must be good!

Would it be better to affiliate with only one studio or take them all in? There was Edison, way out in the Bronx; Vitagraph in the wilds of Flatbush; Kalem, like Biograph, was conveniently in town; Lubin was in Philadelphia, and Essanay in Chicago. Melies was out West. It would be much nicer, of course, if one could get in “right” at the Biograph.

Some of the actors did the rounds. Ambitious Florence Auer did and so became identified with a different line of parts at each studio. At Biograph, character comedy; at Vitagraph, Shakespeare—for “King Lear” and “Richard the Third” with Thomas H. Ince in attendance, were screened as long ago as this; at Edison, religious drama. There she rode the biblical jackass.

The Kalem studio was in the loft of a building on West Twenty-third Street. You took the elevator to where it didn’t run any further and then you climbed a ladder up to a place where furniture and household goods were stored.

Bob Vignola could be seen here dusting off a clear place for the camera and another place where the actors could be seated the while they waited until Sidney Olcott, the director, got on the day’s job.

Sidney Olcott was an experienced man in the movies even in those early days, for had he not played a star part in the old Biograph in the spring of 1904? As the Village Cut-up in the movie of the same name we read this about him in the old Biograph bulletin:

Every country cross-corners has its “Cut-up,” the real devilish young man who has been to the “city” at some stage of his career, and having spent thirty cents looking at the Mutoscope, or a dollar on the Bowery at Coney, thinks he is the real thing. The most common evidence of his mental unbalance is the playing of practical jokes, which are usually very disagreeable to the victim....

In a few years Mr. Olcott had evolved from the “village cut-up” at Biograph to director at Kalem.

Here he engaged Miss Auer for society parts and adventuresses. Stopped her on the Rialto one day. “I know you are an actress,” said Mr. Olcott, “and that beautiful gray silk dress you have on would photograph so wonderfully, I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll wear it in a scene—it’s a society part.” For a dress that was gray, and silk too, was a most valuable property and a rare specimen of wardrobe in the movies in those days.

It came as pleasant news that a tabloid version of “When Knighthood Was in Flower” to be called “When Knights Were Bold” was to be screened at Biograph. There were four, or perhaps five, persons in the cast of this première “Knighthood” picture. My husband was one; so was I. The picture commemorates our only joint movie appearance.

I recall only one scene in this movie, a back-drop picturing landscape, with a prop tree, a wooden bench, and a few mangy grass mats, but there was one other set representing an inn. I never saw the picture and couldn’t tell much about it from the few scenes in which I played.

A one-reeler, of course—nine hundred and five feet. Now whether the cost of Biograph pictures was then being figured at a dollar a foot, I do not know. But that was the dizzy average a very short time later. Anyhow, our “Flowering Knighthood” was cheap enough compared with what Mr. Hearst spent thirteen years later on his Cosmopolitan production, which cost him $1,221,491.20, and was completed in the remarkably short time of one hundred sixty working days.

Mr. Hearst’s “Knighthood” had a remarkable cast of eighteen principal characters representing the biggest names in the theatrical and motion picture world, and the supporting company counted three thousand extra persons and thirty-three horses.

Miss Marion Davies as Princess Mary Tudor was assisted by Lyn Harding, the English actor-manager; Pedro De Cordoba, Arthur Forrest (the original Petronius of “Quo Vadis”), Theresa Maxwell Conover, Ernest Glendenning, (of “Little Old New York”), Ruth Shepley (star of “Adam and Eva”), Johnny Dooley, (celebrated eccentric dancer), George Nash, Gustav von Seyfertitz (for years director and star of the old Irving Place Theatre), Macy Harlam, Arthur Donaldson, Mortimer Snow, William Morris (of “Maytime” fame).

A few other names of world-famous people must be mentioned in connection with this picture, for Joseph Urban was the man of the “sets”; Gidding & Company made the gowns; Sir Joseph Duveen and P. W. French & Company supplied Gothic draperies; and Cartier, antique jewelry.

There were only two old movie pioneers connected with the production: Flora Finch, who back in old Vitagraph days co-starred with John Bunny and after his death held her place alone as an eccentric comedienne; and the director, Robert G. Vignola, who back in the days of our “Knighthood” was the young chap who dusted off the benches and furniture in the old Kalem loft.

But Robert Vignola, who came of humble Italian parentage, had a brain in his young head, and was ambitious. Realizing the limitations of Albany, his home town, he had set out for New York and landed a job in a motion picture studio. Young Vignola represented at the Kalem organization, in the early days, what Bobbie Harron did at Biograph. But the Biograph, from ranking the last in quality of picture production, grew to occupy first place, while Kalem continued on a rather more even way. But Bob Vignola didn’t, as the years have shown.

Indeed, many big names have appeared in movies called “When Knighthood Was in Flower,” but David Griffith’s is not the biggest, nor was it the first, for before the end of the year 1902, in Marienbad, Germany, a film thirty-one feet long was produced and given the title “When Knighthood Was in Flower.” The descriptive line in the Biograph catalogue of 1902 (for it was a Biograph production) reads:

Emperor William of Germany and noblemen of the Order of St. John. The Emperor is the last in the procession.

So you see the Ex-Kaiser beat them all to it, even D. W. Griffith and W. R. Hearst, though I’ll say that Mr. Hearst’s is the best of the “Flowering Knighthoods” to date, and will probably continue so. The story has now been done often enough to be allowed a rest.

But it was Mr. Griffith’s big dream, very early in his movie career, along in 1911, to screen some day a great and wonderful movie of the Charles Major play that launched Julia Marlowe on her brilliant career. And in this play which he had decided could be produced nowhere but in England, no less a person than E. H. Sothern was to appear as Charles Brandon, and she who is writing this was to be Mary Tudor.

Dreams and dreams we had long ago, but this was one of the best dreams that did not come true.

CHAPTER VI
MOVIE ACTING DAYS—AND AN “IF”

We called him “Old Man McCutcheon,” the genial, generous person who at this time directed the movies at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Why “Old Man” I do not know, unless it was because he was slightly portly and the father of about eight children, the oldest being Wallace—“Wally” to his intimates. Wally was quite “some pumpkins” around the studio—father’s right-hand-man—and then, too, he was a Broadway actor.

It was then the general idea of movie directors to use their families in the pictures. As money was the only thing to be had out of the movies those days, why not get as much as possible while the getting was good? The McCutcheon kids had just finished working in a Christmas picture, receiving, besides pay checks, the tree and the toys when the picture was finished. So the first bit of gossip wafted about was that the McCutcheons had a pretty good thing of it altogether.

In February, 1908, Wallace McCutcheon was closing an engagement in Augustus Thomas’s play, “The Ranger.” Appearing in “The Ranger” with young Mr. McCutcheon, were Robert Vignola, John Adolfi, Eddie Dillon, and Florence Auer.

A school picture called “The Snow-man” was to be made which called for eight children—another job for the little McCutcheons. Grown-up Wally, and mother, were to work too, mother to see that the youngsters were properly dressed and made up.

A tall, slight young woman was needed for the schoolmistress and Eddie Dillon, whom Wally had inveigled to the studio, suggested Florence Auer.

The story takes place outside the schoolhouse and a “furious blizzard” is raging, although I would say there was nothing prophetic of the blizzard that raged in D. W. Griffith’s famous movie “Way Down East,” even though events were so shaping themselves that had Mr. McCutcheon held off a few weeks with his snow story, Mr. Griffith would have arrived in time to offer suggestions. And he would have had something to say, had he been so privileged, for “The Snow-man’s” raging “blizzard” was made up of generous quantities of sawdust!

The legs, arms, torso, and head of the Snow-man were fashioned of fluffy, white cotton, each a separate part, and were hidden under the drifts of sawdust, to be found later by the children who came to romp in the snow and make a snow-man. The places where the Snow-man’s fragments were buried were marked so that the children could easily find them. One youngster pretends to mold of sawdust an imaginary leg, but in reality is hunting the buried finished one, on locating which, she surreptitiously pulls it from beneath the sawdust. In this way, finally, all the parts of the Snow-man are dug out of the sawdust snow, and put together, revealing a beautiful Snow-man.

Biograph Mutoscope of the murder of Stanford White by Harry Thaw on Madison Square Garden roof, made shortly after the tragedy.

(See [p. 69])

The first Biograph Girl, Florence Lawrence, in “The Barbarian,” otherwise known as “Ingomar, the Barbarian.” Filmed at the home of Ernest Thompson Seton at Cos Cob, Conn.

(See [p. 59])

From “The Politician’s Love Story.” Left to right: Linda A. Griffith, Arthur Johnson, Mack Sennett. A beautiful sleet had covered the trees and foliage of Central Park and this scenario was hurriedly gotten up so as to photograph a wonderful winter fairyland.

(See [p. 80])

Then the Good Fairy of the Snows who all this time has been dreaming in the silver crescent of the moon, looking for all the world like the charming lady of the Cascarets ads, is given a tip that the children have finished their Snow-man. So it is time for her to wake up and come out of the moon. From her stellar heights, by means of a clumsy iron apparatus, she is lowered to earth. Sadly crude it all was, but it thrilled the fans of the day, nevertheless. With her magic wand the Good Fairy touches the Snow-man and he comes to life. Predatory Pete now comes along, sees Mr. Snow-man, and feeling rather jolly from the consumption of bottled goods, he puts his pipe in the Snow-man’s mouth, and when he sees the Snow-man calmly puff it, in great fright he rushes off the scene, dropping his bottle, the contents of which the Snow-man drains. In the resultant intoxication the Snow-man finds his way into the schoolhouse. Finding the schoolhouse too warm, he throws the stove out of the window. Then he throws himself out of the window and lies down in the snow to “sleep it off.”

When the children return the following morning, the Snow-man, who is still sleeping, frightens them almost into convulsions. Then the picture really got started—the “chase” began. Sufficiently primitive it was, to have been the first “chase”; but it wasn’t—for almost at the movie’s inception the chase was a part of them. This Snow-man chase takes place in front of a stationary back-drop, that pictures a snowdrift. The actors standing off-stage ready for the excitement, come on through the sawdust snow, kicking it up in clouds, eating it, choking on it, hair, eyes, and throat getting full of it. Back and forth against this one “drop,” the actors chase. On one run across, a prop tree would be set up. Then as the actors were supposed to have run some hundred yards at least, on the next time across, the prop tree would be taken away and a big papier maché rock put in its place. That scene being photographed, the rock would give way to a telegraph pole, and so on until half a dozen chases had been staged before the one “drop.”

* * * * *

Thus far advanced, artistically and otherwise, was the motion picture this spring of 1908 when “Lawrence” Griffith found himself astride a horse, taking the air in the wide stretches of Coytesville, New Jersey, and getting five dollars to boot. Also found himself so exhilarated, mentally and otherwise, that in the evening he turned author, not of poorly paid poems, but of the more profitable movies. Wrote a number which he sold for fifteen dollars each, a very decent price considering that this sort of authorship meant a spot-cash transaction.

The first little cinema drama of which he was the author and which was immediately put into the works was “Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker.” Very bitter in feeling against the Amalgamated Association of Charities was this story of a kind-hearted Hebraic money-lender.

On May 6th, with “Lawrence” Griffith the star, was released “The Music Master,” but not David Belasco’s. Then came “Ostler Joe” of Mrs. James Brown Potter fame, scenario-ized by Mr. Griffith. He also played the part of the priest in the scene where the child dies. In early July came “At The Crossroads of Life” and “The Stage Rustler.”

Biograph’s sole advertising campaign at this time consisted of illustrated bulletins—single sheets six to ten inches, carrying a two by three inch “cut” from the film and descriptive matter averaging about three hundred and fifty words. They were gotten up in florid style by a doughty Irishman by the name of Lee Dougherty who was the “man in the front office.” He was what is now known as “advertising manager,” but the publicity part of his job not taking all his time, he also gave scripts the “once over” and still had moments for a friendly chat with the waiting actor.

Although every day was not a busy day at the Biograph for David Griffith, he felt the best policy would be to keep in close touch with whatever was going on there. So he did that, but he also looked in at other studios during any lull in activities. Looked in up at Edison and was engaged for a leading part in quite a thriller, “The Eagle’s Nest.” Lovely studio, the Edison, but not so much chance to get in right, David felt—it was too well organized. Looked in at Kalem too, but Frank J. Marion, who was the presiding chief there, could not be bothered. Entirely too many of these down-on-their-luck actors taking up his time.

There were whispers about that Lubin in Philadelphia needed a director. So David wrote them a letter telling of all his varied experiences, which brought an answer with an offer of sixty dollars a week for directing and a request that he run over to Philadelphia for an interview.

Now one had to look like something when on that sort of errand bent. I had to get our little man all dressed up. Could afford only a new shirt and tie. This, with polished boots and suit freshly pressed, would have to do. But, even so, he looked quite radiant as he set forth for the Pennsylvania Station to catch his Every-hour-on-the-hour.

But nothing came of it. Lubin decided not to put on another director or make a change—whichever it was. The husband of Mrs. Mary Carr, the Mrs. Carr of William Fox’s “Over the Hill” fame, continued there, directing the movies which he himself wrote. After dinner each night he would roll back the table-cloth, reach for pad and pencil, and work out a story for his next movie.

Back to the dingy “A. B.” for us. Strange, even from the beginning we felt a sort of at-home feeling there. The casualness of the place made a strong appeal. What would happen if some one really got on the job down there some day?

And so it came about shortly after “The Snow-man” that the elder Mr. McCutcheon fell ill, and his son Wallace took over his job. He directed “When Knights Were Bold”; directed Mr. Griffith in several pictures. But Wally was not ambitious to make the movies his life job. He soon made a successful début in musical comedy. Some years later he married Pearl White, the popular movie star.

It began to look as though there soon might be a new director about the place. And there was. There were several.

No offer of theatrical jobs came to disrupt the even tenor of the first two months at Biograph. It was too late for winter productions and too early for summer stock, so there was nothing to worry about, until with the first hint of summer in the air, my husband received an offer to go to Peake’s Island, Maine, and play villains in a summer stock company there.

Forty per, the salary would be, sometimes more and sometimes less than our combined earnings at the studio. To go or not to go? Summer stock might last the summer and might not. Three months was the most to expect. The Biograph might do as much for us.

How trivial it all sounds now! Ah, but believe me, it was nothing to be taken lightly then. For a decision that affects one’s very bread and butter, when bread and butter has been so uncertain, one doesn’t make without heart searchings and long councils of war.

So we argued, in a friendly way. Said he: “If I turn this job down, and appear to be so busy, they soon won’t send for me at all. Of course, if this movie thing is going to last and amount to anything, if anybody could tell you anything about it, we could afford to take chances. In one way it is very nice. You can stay in New York, and if I can find time to write too—fine! But you know you can’t go on forever and not tell your friends and relatives how you are earning your living.”

Then said she: “How long is Peake’s Island going to last? What’s sure about summer stock? What does Peake’s Island mean to David Belasco or Charles Frohman? We’ve got this little flat here, with our very own twenty dollars’ worth of second-hand furniture, and the rent’s so low—twenty. You don’t know what’s going to happen down at the Biograph, you might get to direct some day. Let’s stick the summer out anyhow, and when fall comes and productions open up again, we’ll see, huh?”

So we put Peake’s Island behind us.

Now it is as sure as shooting, if “Lawrence” Griffith had accepted the offer to play stock that summer he never would have become the David W. Griffith of the movies. Had he stepped out then, some one else surely would have stepped in and filled his little place; and the chances are he would never have gone back to those queer movies.

Of course, now we know that even in so short a time this movie business had gotten under his skin. David Griffith had tasted blood—cinema blood. And the call to stay, that was heard and obeyed when Peake’s Island threatened to disrupt the scheme of things, was the same sort of call that made those other pioneers trek across the plains with their prairie schooners in the days of forty-nine. With Peake’s Island settled, we hoped there would be no more theatrical temptations, for we wanted to take further chances with the movies.

CHAPTER VII
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.”