One day his business manager told him exceedingly good news and in no time he was on the train. He had made many trips to Hollywood; this was to be the most satisfactory.
Los Angeles had changed since he had arrived for the first time and set up a studio. Central Park, where the Clansmen had ridden to herald The Birth of a Nation, was now Pershing Square. An office building stood where his actors had once braved the cameras.
He went out to see where Intolerance had been made- that was seven years ago. Here it was that the Pacific Electric Railway System of southern California had laid a track to the entrance of Babylon to carry extras and food supplies and to transport the elephants and Nubian lions. The track was gone, but as he walked here and there a sight-seeing bus came roaring up with a man with a megaphone shouting out Griffith's name and telling of the wonders of the great hall where the Feast of Belshazzar had been held.
Jerusalem had been torn down and the City of Paris, as it had been on St. Bartholomew's Eve, was in the grip of a real estate "subdividers cruel fate. He looked about him sadly. Was his life's work over? Or would he go still higher? What an inscrutable creature Fate was! Why, he was forty-seven! He had not accomplished nearly so much as he had hoped when he had been a young man in Kentucky. He had thought of himself then as a genius....
He walked along the great walls. Plaster elephants still stood on their hind legs, their forelegs in front of them, their trunks uplifted. Bird-beaked deities looked down with a single eye on the inconsequential humans; they themselves lived with the gods.
Pausing, he looked about him uncertainly. It must have been here that the great siege towers had stood- mighty affairs that held fifty warriors, the towers pushed forward by slaves on the ground. Here he had sent up a balloon, with a basket underneath, and in it had been Billy and himself; and here he had leaned over the side of the basket and with his megaphone had shouted orders to the extras below. Oh! those were glorious days. Don't we ever know, until it is too late, when we are in our glorious days? What a great, what a touching concept he'd had for his drama. How poorly the public had responded. But that was the way of mass entertainment. If he had put this concept into a stage play, the result would have been different. He'd get back to his playwriting. He'd do some serious creative work.
Finally he left, touched by what he had seen and felt. He came later to the business office- the same office, it seemed, with its garish decorations and its great unwieldy leather chairs. How many times he had sat with businessmen he couldn't understand, and who couldn't understand him- the eternal conflict between business and art.
There was talk; there were jokes- of a sort.
At last the big, the exciting, the wonderful moment had come.
"Gentlemen," said Griffith, "I am prepared to pay off the rest of the indebtedness on Intolerance. Not one investor has lost a penny."
It had taken seven years, but he had accomplished it.
The men were pleased. It was nice of him to take his responsibility so seriously.
He went to see Mack Sennett, who was big and hearty and glad to see his old friend. Mack spoke of The Curtain Pole with which- he had knocked 'em around so humorously. What was Wally doin' now? Good gracious, how quickly you got out of touch with people who once had been so important to you!
My! how much time had passed since the "early days." Mary Pickford had divorced Owen Moore and was now married to Douglas Fairbanks and was living in fabulous "Pickfair."
Mack asked cautiously after Griffith's new picture.
It was going to be great, Griffith said. It had a message. Mack rubbed his chin and chewed his tobacco.
"What you want a message for, D. W.? "
"I like to say something worth-while," said Griffith, a bit sensitive, now that he had been challenged.
"The public isn't interested in messages. They want to laugh."
"What," asked Griffith, "is the basis of comedy?"
The mighty Mack took another chew. "If it seems funny to me, it's comedy."
Griffith was puzzled. The answer made sense. After all, didn't he himself make pictures to suit himself? Wasn't Mack doing the same? Was a director at his best when he made pictures for himself? But, he had to admit to himself, the business office was having more and more to say about the kind of pictures he made.
"What are your stories usually about?" Griffith asked.
"I find the plots of my stories either in crime or sex. You're on safe grounds there."
At last Griffith had to go. The two men, so utterly dissimilar, shook hands heartily. Each had respect for the other, but not understanding.
Griffith went back to New York, happier and more content than he had been in years. He didn't owe a cent, except the money he had to pay Linda- 15 per cent of all he made.
He would do a few more pictures, then he would have enough money put by to do something worth-while. But he didn't put it by; he became one of the big spenders on Broadway. Down-and-out actors came with outstretched hands. He'd been one once himself. Hadn't he picked hops in California? And worked in a steel mill in Tonawanda, New York? And with a pick and shovel in the subway in New York? And, when a show had closed, hadn't he hoboed his way from Minneapolis to Louisville?
Such incredible energy had he that he was able to work at night. In his bathrobe he would write into the morning. He sent stories out; they came back. He worked on his plays. "The Treadmill" was giving him trouble. But he would solve it, he told himself. Great plays were not written at a sitting. Strangely enough, he did not show his plays to any of the actors who came to him applying for work. He would write the play alone and by himself. The play was getting better all the time.
One evening the telephone rang. A voice said, "Is dot Mr. Greeffith? "
"Where are you, Billy?" said Griffith, delighted.
"Down in der lobby."
"Come a-runnin', Billy.'
This was strange, Griffith thought as he put away his writing things. In all the years he'd known Billy, Billy had never come to the hotel and he himself had never been to Billy's home.
There he was in a few moments- thick of chest, square of shoulder- that great genius of the camera. On his head, this time, a hat. He came in, ill at ease, which he tried to cover by looking around with a pretense of being humorous. "What is eet, no Indian cloobs? I hear you were always schwinging Indian cloobs."
"I still schwing them, but not as much as I used to."
Billy sat down; his hand went into his pocket and out came German pipe. He began to tamp in the tobacco with a stained finger. How well Griffith knew those wonderful hands, those hands which were always discolored by chemicals and developing fluids.
"I see you've got the same discolored hands," said Griffith lightly.
"It is zo. You see the bluish specks?"
"Yes."
"You put dem dere, Mr. Greeffith. When we make The Birth a bomb for de battle come so close it bum my handt."
They talked of the "old days." "I wish I could made Rescue from an Eagle's Nest," said Billy humorously. "Maybe I could have make de eagle look bigger! "
"How long is it we have been together, Billy? " Griffith asked as they talked.
"Dot is what I wish to speak of. I have count it oop andt it is sixteen year."
"Is it possible! Well, say, we've put some over home plate, haven't we?"
"It is zo. But mebbe it is no more."
"What do you mean, Billy? " asked Griffith, catching the serious note in Billy's voice.
So choked was Billy it was a moment before he could answer. "I am leaving you, Mr. Greeffith. I am to go where more money is."
"Listen, Billy," said Griffith, immensely concerned. "You wouldn't leave me. I can't get along without you."
Billy was touched. "It is the money. My family it is growing. I promise mine wife."
"Maybe I can arrange for you to get more money, Billy."
"I have promise."
"I'm going to Germany to make Isn't Life Wonderful. I want you to go along with me, Billy. You could jabber that language right back at them. Do you remember the trouble we had getting you into France to make Hearts of the World?"
"I laugh now, but I didn't den."
"Will you go with me, Billy?"
"I am sorry. I have promise."
They continued to talk, both sad that the old days were over. The two would have to go their different ways. How would each fare?
After Billy left, Griffith sat for some moments, reflecting on life, then turned back to his writing.
His dewy-eyed, golden-haired heroine was giving way to a quite different creature- the kind represented by Clara Bow, Mae West, Theda Bara. The simple cottage that his heroine, in his stories, had always inhabited was giving way to Malibu mansions. Worst of all the business office was calling for "commercial" pictures- pictures that would fit neatly into the weekly change of program and wouldn't cost too much. Griffith had no heart to make them. But whether he liked it or not, he must keep turning them out. How long would the demand last?
Griffith left July 4, 1924, for Germany with his two new stars, Carol Dempster and Neil Hamilton.
Isn't Life Wonderful was released in December of that year. The story dealt with displaced people in Europe trying to find new homes and to live.
The public had had enough of war and wanted no more of it. The picture was an artistic success, a financial failure.
Mutterings were coming from the exhibitors. They were booking the pictures because of his fabulous name, but his pictures were not filling the theaters. Had Griffith lost his touch?
A cold wind blew across him. A person he had watched with great interest was William S. Hart, who had the curious middle name of Surrey, and who was five years older than Griffith. Hart was born in Newburgh, New York, of parents almost as poverty-stricken as Griffith's. The Hart family had gone West, to Dakota Territory, and there young Hart had grown up. Later the family had to come back to Newburgh where Hart's father was the janitor of an apartment house. When young Hart was old enough to know what he wanted to do, he had become a Shakespearean actor. In 1914 he had gone into films, first as a "straight" actor, then as a Western. His success was amazing. No one could look down a pistol barrel with the steely eyes he could; in addition, he had a vertical crease between his eyes. When he tightened the crease, villains died in their tracks and innocent girls got safely back to the ranch house.
He knew enough about the West to insist that his pictures be true to life. One instance was that of swimming oxen across a river. For years directors had swum the oxen with their neck yokes on. Hart said this was utterly impossible and that the oxen would drown before they were halfway across. He was such a great star that he had his way: no neck yoke.
Other Western actors were coming along who did not try to be faithful to fact, but who played in the kind of romantic, glamorous, never-never-land pictures that the public liked.
Hart established the Good Bad Man- the man who was bad because he hadn't been treated right by society; or who was going to avenge the killing of his brother. The number of men roaming the West trying to find the skunk who had killed their brother was almost overwhelming.
Little by little Hart failed to be "box office." The crease was not bringing them in.
He began going down in 1920. He tried a comeback in 1922 and allowed himself to get mixed up in some bizarre publicity attempts. But his day was over. He made his last picture in 1925- Tumbleweeds. So desperately eager was he for public attention that in 1927 he had a bronze statue of himself and his horse made by the sculptor C.C. Cristadora; it was called the "Range Rider of the Yellowstone." He himself paid for it and gave it to the city of Billings, Montana, where on a hill William S. Hart stands today looking out across the West he could not conquer.
His career had lasted eleven years.
Hart had been the greatest Western actor ever known. But now he was forgotten. What would happen to himself, Griffith asked? He would not be forgotten, he assured himself. A director was different.
A person he had little respect for was Tom Mix, who was born Thomas Edwin Mix, at Mix Run, Clearfield County, in the coal-mining section of western Pennsylvania. His father was the hostler to the rich man of the town; Tom, in reality, was born in the rich man's stable. He had run away from home, gone into the Spanish-American War where he had served with distinction. After a series of ups and downs he had gone to Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he was a bartender. Finally he had got into moving pictures and now, this year- the year William S. Hart was fading out, 1925- was making $17,000 a week. He had an elaborate home in Beverly Hills, a swimming pool, and an English butler.
Griffith studied this, too. What would happen to himself?
The stars he had made began joining other companies and working under other directors. New directors were coming in. The Germans were especially able; they employed devices he had invented and to them added their own. Among the new directors were Lubitsch, Seastrom, Von Stroheim- the latter had worked for him as an actor in The Birth of a Nation.
Griffith was growing desperate. He was living on the returns from The Birth of a Nation. The exhibitors were losing faith in him. He must do something. And then the idea came to him. He would make another spectacle like The Birth of a Nation; only this would be bigger. He would tell the story of the making of America- the birth of a whole nation, not just that of a section. His brain was on fire, as it had been when he had conceived other great pictures, and he set to work writing the story. He had long been interested in American history, and so, inspired, he began to write the story of America. One of the sequences would tell of Paul Revere's ride. When the time came for filming that part of the story, Griffith could not find a horse near Boston that suited him, so he got one in New York and had it brought to Boston in a van behind a car.
He engaged Carol Dempster and Neil Hamilton to play the love story that would hold history together. Finally he started the picture; again he was commanding great mobs of people-
giving directions, telling them what to do.
Finally the picture- America- was completed and offered to the public in March 1924. It was a failure. In some places there were touches of greatness, but for the most part it was just plain dull. People didn't care whether Paul Revere got there or not.
Griffith was shocked. Why! he had a bigger and more important idea than he'd had in The Birth of a Nation, yet it was failing.
He'd make another picture; this time he'd win. But when he went to the bank, they refused to lend him money. Was it possible that the Great Griffith couldn't borrow enough to make a picture? It was possible, indeed.
He would have to give up his studio at Mamaroneck. A studio could not survive that made only one picture a year. A studio was like a factory: it had to be kept going at full capacity. So he gave up working for himself and got a job directing for Paramount.
Jazz was all the go. He would direct Jazz. That was a long way from white rabbits, but he plunged into it. His jazz picture was a failure. The try showed that a person had to do the kind of picture that was deep in him, something he believed in, and which was not a faint copy of someone else. He still believed in a girl with dewy lips and starlit eyes, but there was no demand for that kind of girl.
A new star was in the sky- W.C. Fields. Griffith was given a story called Sally of the Sawdust with Fields, Carol Dempster, and Alfred Lunt. When the picture was previewed, Carol Dempster, so Broadway said, talked Griffith into cutting down Fields' role and building hers up. The company reshot several scenes; indeed, it spent $25,000, according to brother Albert, for that very purpose. When the picture was again assembled and released, August 1925, the reviewers looked on Carol with cold and aloof interest, but for Fields they got out their adjectives, saying, "Why isn't there more of Fields?" But Griffith, with his uncertain judgment of comedy, couldn't see this; he could see only the charming and delightful Carol.
So great was her hold on him, that he starred her in another picture- That Royle Girl- released in January 1926.
I asked Edwin Balmer if he had any memories of That Royle Girl and Griffith. He said:
"Griffith always liked to have a theme and the one in my book appealed to him. This is the theme: the idea that, out of the welter and strife of life in our big cities and from among people with little of the traditional good birth and breeding, there is arising as stanch and trustworthy an American as any descended from a passenger on the Mayflower.
"My best personal memory is not of Carol Dempster, but of W.C. Fields. It was his second appearance on the screen. He played the part of 'Dads' so well that his is the one characterization that stands out today in my mind. Oh yes! one other point. The advertisement in the Chicago papers said that the story had mystery, jazz, comedy, thrills, romance, drama, and a cyclone. I was stumped by the last named. There hadn't been a cyclone in my story. I rushed to the theater and there, in the story, was a wonderful cyclone. It had nothing to do with the story, but it was a rip-roaring cyclone. I felt proud of it."
The same thing happened. There was too much Fields, Carol Dempster said, and too little of herself. Griffith himself trimmed Fields down until he was as fleeting and shadowy as Tinker Bell. And again the critics looked at Carol and cheered for Fields. Still Griffith remained her champion.
Out of a clear sky came exceedingly good news.
William Randolph Hearst wanted to see him. The meeting was arranged by Walter Howey, then Hearst's favorite editor. Griffith met Howey, and after a little of this and a little of that, Griffith was ushered into the Presence. There they stood, the two men a bit alike in build and feature- Hearst with his hawklike expression and Griffith with his great beak of a nose. In backgrounds and tradition the two were wholly unlike. Hearst was the son of Harvard; Griffith hadn't gotten into high school. But here, for this moment, the two were equals.
The situation soon developed. Hearst had bought the motion-picture rights to the Barrie play "Quality Street" and wanted to star Marion Davies.
"I want you to direct it, Mr. Griffith, and I'm prepared to pay you ten thousand dollars a week and give you fifty-one per cent interest in the film.
Griffith could hardly believe his cars. Ten thousand dollars a week! Of course Linda would get 15 per cent, but a tidy sum would still be left. On top of the salary there was the division of profits.
It was a great, an exciting moment, but-
"I'm afraid I can't, Mr. Hearst. I have another commitment."
The other "commitment" was his word to Carol Dempster; he had promised her she would be the star in his next picture, and he would live up to his promise.
Finally the interview was over, and Griffith left.
The picture was directed by Sidney Franklin and was rated a success.
One day Carol Dempster approached Griffith as he was sitting in his director's chair filming a scene. Immediately he was all attention; he was puzzled why she had come, yet delighted to see her. She was always, he thought, doing the unexpected.
They talked a few moments, then she bent toward him and lowered her voice. "D. W., I have something to tell you. I hope you will take it right. I'm going to be married."
He tried not to show he was shocked, but a little of life seemed squeezed out of him.
She was, she continued, going to marry a broker.
She left almost as suddenly as she had come. He began again to direct the scene.
In all, he had her in twelve pictures. Variety said that he and the companies that financed these pictures spent $2,500,000 to make her a star.
At about this time a girl from Bellaire, a small town on Long Island, went with her mother to a charity bazaar at the Astor Hotel. It was a stuffy affair. People who had never seen each other before and hoped they would never see each other again talked energetically, as if enjoying every wonderful moment. The guest of honor was D. W. Griffith, the great director, the man everybody was talking about.
The girl was Evelyn Marjorie Baldwin.
As she was sitting there, Griffith walked across the floor, all eyes upon him. He had on a high collar, a long-tailed afternoon coat, and an Ascot tie, the very pink of male perfection. The women gathered around him, as bees around a honey jar.
In spite of the buzzing around him, Griffith's eyes fell on Evelyn and they lighted up, and well they might, for she was exceedingly nice-looking.
He stalked by her, looking intently at her as he did so, then turned and stalked back, his eyes again upon her, as a person, who has long been in prison, might gaze upon a sunset.
Turning, he came up and stood towering above her.
"You're Little Nell," he said, then turned and again took up his pacing.
At the far side of the room, he paused and his eyes again beheld the sunset. Coming back, he said, "You're Little Nell," then walked on again.
At last, by a miracle such as can happen only in a crowded bazaar, he managed to get a seat next to her.
He tried to talk to her, but earnest ladies came up and interrupted. Finally he said, "I guess you think this is a bit odd, and, for that matter, it is. I'm going to make Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop and I think you could play Little Nell."
"I'm not an actress," the astonished girl managed to say.
"That's a good sign. You haven't any preconceived ideas. I've taken a hundred who've never acted before and turned them into actresses."
He said, as they talked, that picture making was always on his mind, even in the throes of a public function.
When time came for the bazaar to break up, Griffith returned to the girl and her mother, and asked if he might call.
The girl, rather overwhelmed, said he could.
What a puzzling world he was moving in, Griffith thought. Once he had been sure of himself; had looked on himself as a genius. Now...
He was not so arrogant. Instead of wanting to attract attention, he began to evade it. He no longer strutted through the lobby of the Hotel Astor. His attitude was "he would show them," and he worked harder than ever at his writing. He sent a play to a manager; even his great name did nothing for it. Back it came. But he did not give up; some way or other he would yet be the American Ibsen.
He was more contemptuous than ever of motion pictures. Motion-picture theaters were still opiate palaces. Sometimes he would go to an opening; there he would sit, his cane in front of him, his hands clasped over its head, glaring at the screen. Sometimes, halfway through the picture, he would get up and walk out.
He tried again with Drums of Love, starring Lionel Barrymore and Mary Philbin, released in February 1928. It attracted little or no attention. He signed up two new stars and made The Battle of the Sexes, released in October that same year. It was a failure. He was growing desperate. Everything he turned his hand to failed.
From time to time he went to the movie theaters. They hadn't improved in ten years; more and more they were appealing to the simplest minds, he said. He'd make one more film, then get out of the miserable business. But he was still what was called a "big spender." He had an Italian car and a driver, and liked to sit in the back seat and drive down Broadway and through Times Square so people could see him and ask who he was.
Hollywood and picture making had undergone a radical change. At first a man could get a cast around him, rent space from a studio, get a small amount of money, and make a picture which would be released on a percentage basis. But all that had changed. Pictures had become "big business." It took a big studio to encompass a picture and it took a big organization to sell it; and mostly a picture was sold to the exhibitors before it was made. The small, so-called "independent" producer was being squeezed out. Pictures were becoming standardized. But Griffith was not one to make a run-of-the-mill product. He thought of the art rather than of how much the picture was going to cost, or how it was going to be sold. The business office said he was not "cooperative."
Homer Croy, Star Maker: The Story of D.W. Griffith, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959, pages 159-174.
© 1997, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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