This article was written in 1916 by Linda A.
Griffith, the first wife of D.W. Griffith. She was
commissioned by the Film Magazine Film Fun to write a
series of articles about interesting incidents that occurred at
the old Biograph studios. Biograph, was where Griffith and
many of the most famous stars of the silent era got their
start. The film's that came out of this studio were the
first to receive worldwide attention.
In this article, Linda Griffith
recounts how D.W. Griffith came to direct his first movie.
WITH the daily papers reporting
as "news" the various offers of thousands per week
being made Mary Pickford for the coming season, it is rather
hard to turn one's thought back to the pioneer days of motion
pictures when Mary Pickford was eager to get a little job, and
try to realize the tremendous changes that have been wrought
during eight short years and less in the lives of so many of
the brightly twinkling motion picture stars of to-day.
In the fall of 1907 Mr. Griffith had a play produced by James
K. Hackett, called A Fool and a Girl. Incidentally
the star of this production and her leading man are now two of
Jesse Lasky's Famous Players-Fannie Ward and Jack Deane-and it
was in this play they first met. Mr. Hackett, very generous to
an unknown playwright, had given Mr. Griffith, as advance
royalty on accepting the play, a check for seven hundred
dollars. By the time the play was produced, that then enormous
sum of money had dwindled to little more than seven hundred
cents, so it was with anxious forebodings we watched the
premiere of that first little play. The writing on the wall
spelled "failure," and the seven hundred cents were
nearer to seventy cents some months later, when the rent was
coming due and we had not the wherewithal to pay it. We
happened to hear of a place called the American Biograph, at
11 East Fourteenth Street, where they bought little stories
for moving pictures for fifteen dollars and where one could
act in these pictures for three and five dollars a day.
Florence
Lawrence and Harry Salter in a scene from Ingomar, one
of the first Griffith productions.
Timidly we called there. The elder Mr. McCutcheon was putting
on a picture. What a funny little place the studio was! Stuffy
and hot, with greenish-blue banks of lights, scene painters,
carpenters, camera man, actors and director all in the one
room, the ballroom in what formerly was the residence of one
of New York City's aristocratic families. We were engaged for
a picture-a version of When Knighthood Was in Flower, directed by young Mr. Wallace McCutcheon.
No Monday night in stock or opening night en tour ever gave me
cold shivers and heart palpitation like my first day working
in a moving picture. The horribly ugly lights making us look
like dead people, the calm and indifferent way in which we
didn't rehearse, the chalk lines on the floor marking off the
acting space, and that camera trained on us like a gatling gun
ready to send us to eternity when it began to operate! I think
the intense nervousness was mostly caused, however, by the
realization that I knew I had to make good, for, oh, how we
needed the money! This would enable us to stay in New York,
and Mr. Griffith could devote his spare time to writing plays
- his one and only ambition. The movies were now to
provide the means thereto-the bridge that was to carry us over
to the enchanted land of the successful playwright.
We also did Mutuscopes in those days. They were sent out West,
and Mr. H. N. Marvin, the then president of the Biograph, on
occasion came in and directed them. In fact, in one short week
I had worked for Mr. McCutcheon, Mr. Marvin and Mr. Stanner
E.V. Taylor. We seemed to have a new director almost every
day. Mr. Taylor asked me one day if I could play a lead in a
melodrama. Melodrama wasn't exactly in my line, but I said
"yes." I felt in my heart that I could have played
anything, from Lady Macbeth to Little Eva. We
produced the picture. During the course of it, according to
the play, my husband beat me, I fainted dead away at the
climax of the courtroom scene, deserted my two babies on the
steps of a convent, and finally ended my sorrowful life by
jumping off the Palisades.
Enoch Arden was the
first two-reel picture ever produced. They showed the
first reel Monday night and the second on Thursday. In
this scene is Frank Granden, Linda Griffith, and Rufus Liscer.
The picture was never released, but it gave me the honor of
playing the leading part in the first picture Mr. Griffith was
afterwards to direct for the Biograph, the now historic Adventures of
Dolly. I was Dolly, and the late
Arthur Johnson was Dolly's young husband. How much money I
made! Twenty-eight dollars in two weeks, enough for a whole
spring outfit-suit. Blouse, hat, shoes and gloves. Then Mr.
Griffith wrote several scenarios-one of the first was a
version of the old poem, Over the Hills to the Poorhouse and one day they gave him a picture and asked
him to produce it. It was no easy story to produce for a first
picture, for it had a number of scenes in which a barrel
supposed to contain a baby had to float downstream over
waterfalls, etc. It was rumored about the studio that they had
handed Griffith a "lemon." Well, he accepted the
"lemon"!
Who was to play in this picture? There was no stock company of
actors to draw from, and no pictures were ever shown in New
York that Biograph had ever produced, so how was he to cast The Adventures of Dolly? In order to get some sort
of a line on things, in the little projection room upstairs
Mr. Marvin had the boy run off a few pictures, and one of
these was the melodrama done by Mr. Taylor and in which I had
played the lead. That night Mr. Griffith said to me:
"You'll play the lead in my first picture. Not because
you're my wife, but because you're a good actress. But where
shall I get a man who looks like a regular husband and like he
owned more than a cigarette?"
He walked Broadway, looking for his type, and he found him in
Arthur Johnson, whom he approached on the street and asked if
he would care to work in a moving picture. Mr. Johnson
replied:
"I am sure I don't know what they are, but I'm willing to
take a chance." It proved to be not much of a chance, but
to my mind no personality ever flickered on the screen that
had the sweetness, good humor and likeableness of dear,
departed Arthur Johnson.
How "Dolly" went out into the world and won - how she
broke the deadlock against Biograph pictures being shown in
New York-is now a matter of moving picture history, as is also
the fact that when the so-called "lemon" that had
been handed to Mr. Griffith was shown the Biograph heads, they
dismissed all preceding directors and gave the floor to Mr.
Griffith.