Chapter IX: Part TWO: I (1)

“MR. BIOGRAPH”

They brought Dorothy from Alderson to Baltimore, and visited their old friends, the Meixners. One day they dropped into a “movie.” The picture was “Lena and the Geese,” a Biograph film, and when Lena walked out on the screen, behold it was Gladys Smith! So Gladys had fallen. At first it was a shock, but later in the day they considered the idea of falling, too. Especially Dorothy. Gladys was probably getting well paid for her surrender.

They went to New York, presently, took rooms and set out to find a theatrical engagement. Their hearts were set on Belasco. They knew that William J. Dean—the same who, ten years earlier, had rehearsed little Dot so strenuously—was associated with Belasco. Dean was their white hope. They found him at the Belasco Theatre. He remembered them ... who wouldn’t?

He took them into Mr. Belasco’s private office—a weird place, full of statuary, all in white summer dress—introduced them, and left them there.

Lillian and Dorothy were distinctly frightened. Each tried to propel the other in the direction of the great man. Belasco himself used to tell how each in turn got behind, to push the other forward, until they had backed halfway across the room.

When the interview finally began, he told them he was putting on a fairy play, called “The Good Little Devil,” and that Mary Pickford and Ernest Truex were engaged for the leading rôles. Neither name was familiar to them. Gladys Smith had become “Mary Pickford” the winter before, but they had lost sight of all the Smith family. Belasco said further that he needed one more fairy, and that he would engage Lillian for the part. It was a small part, but the best he had.

Lillian was delighted, Dorothy disappointed but not discouraged. They visited other managers, and some agencies. They decided to look up Gladys Smith, to see what could be done in that direction. Sure enough, the telephone book had it: “Biograph Co., 11 E. 14th St.”

“Hello, hello! Is this the Biograph Company?”

“That’s right. What’s wanted?”

“We’d like to speak to one of your actresses, Gladys Smith.”

“Sorry—no such person here.”

“But we saw her in a picture of yours, in Baltimore.”

“What picture?”

“‘Lena and the Geese.’”

“Oh, that was Mary Pickford.”

“Oh—oh, all right—can she come to the telephone?”

So that was who she was—Gladys ... so much the better. Gladys, who was now Mary, came to the telephone, and after a brief period of wild greetings and inquiries, arranged to have them come to the studio.

* * * * *

Lillian and Dorothy, at the top of the outer step at 11 East 14th Street, found themselves in a wide hall, confronting a great circular heaven-climbing stairway that ascended to the unknown. A tall man with a large hooked nose was walking up and down, humming to himself. A boy took in their names, and presently Mary, brighter and prettier than ever under her new name, appeared and flung herself into their arms. The tall man continued walking up and down, and now added some words to the tune he was humming: “She’ll never bring them in—she’ll never bring them in,”—a suggestion to Mary, who declined to take any such hint.

“Mr. Griffith,” she said, “these are my friends, Lillian and Dorothy Gish. They were on the stage for years, in child parts, just as I was; I know you’ll have something for them, here.”

David Wark Griffith, director of the Biograph Company, stopped singing, shook hands and looked at them.

“Won’t you come in?” he said.

They found themselves in quite a large room, in a violet glare of Cooper-Hewitt lights—weird, ghastly lights, that made living persons look as if they were dead—had been dead for some time. At one end of the room a group of people had assembled.

“You can begin right away,” Mr. Griffith said, “as extras. We are arranging an ‘audience.’ You can be part of the audience.”

And so in that casual way, their motion picture career began.

They “sat in the audience,” and then sat in it again, and again and again, for it seemed that Mr. Biograph Griffith was not satisfied with just doing a thing once, and made you do it over and over until he was sure it could not be any better, even if he had to keep you at it most of the night.

Lillian and Dorothy got five dollars each, for that day, and felt very proud of it. Dorothy especially. She had a grown-up feeling. Five dollars a day—a real job. But, alas, early next morning Lillian took her to a department store, and when the saleslady appeared, said:

“Have you a suit that would fit this little girl?”

But of course Lillian _was_ a good deal taller, and then she was “going on sixteen.”

That day they had their first parts as regulars. At the studio, Griffith said he would rehearse them a little. He took them upstairs, and chased them here and there about a room, firing off a revolver. It seemed unusual, but did not alarm them. They had been through too much rehearsing, for that. Griffith wanted to see how they reacted under fire. “All right,” he said when they came down, “but they don’t know what it’s all about.” The picture he was making was “The Unseen Enemy.” At the climax, two sisters are trying to telephone for the police, while burglars in the next room are firing at them through a stove-pipe hole.

Lillian and Dorothy must have given a good account of themselves, for they were at the studio daily, after that, absorbing a new technique. They had no parts to learn. Mr. Griffith stood by the camera man and told them what to do. Just what to do. Every minute. That was altogether a novelty. On the stage you had to learn your part before you began. If you forgot your lines, a prompter helped you out, but he didn’t tell you what to do ... never shouted at you, like Mr. Griffith, who on the whole was kindly ... even amusing. He tied red and blue hair-ribbons on them, to tell them apart, though the resemblance was not striking ... a fleeting thing ... momentary. Lillian was “blue,” Dorothy “red,” because he said she was the spunky one ... would talk back. Anyway, it was easier to call out directions to “Blue” and “Red.” They got in three days on their first picture, and an extra night. Eighteen dollars apiece. That was riches. They lived in furnished rooms, at 424 Central Park, West.

II

GRIFFITH’S GROUP OF PLAYERS

The “silent drama” had gone a good way by 1912, but had still a good way to go. There was not much yet in the way of “sets,” elaborate construction of scenic effects. Griffith had invented, or perfected, the “fade-out,” the “cut-back” and other devices still in common use, but he had built no castles or walled cities, no Bethulias or Babylons, had marshaled no battling armies. The Fourteenth Street studio was just a room, where one rigged up, as simply and inexpensively as possible, the hastily knocked together properties required at the moment. The costume wardrobe was notable for its scantiness—a collection to be picked over hopefully, and “made to do,” or supplemented from a costumer’s. Griffith had a curious old collector-man, always on the look-out for “good things,” which were not always convincing. Too often the players had the appearance of being “dressed up” in whatever they happened to have, which was precisely the fact. It did not matter. Neither the public nor the producers took the “movies” very seriously, as yet ... nor would they, for a year or so to come. They were still a cheap form of entertainment; something to be seen for ten or fifteen cents—even in the nickelodeons. The French were doing it better, then. Some of their films, their farces especially, were very good—light, chic—they were miles ahead of us in costume, scenario, settings, everything, until it became a question of money ... ah, there we had them. And then the War came.

But I digress—an ancient sin. This is not a history of the motion picture, but only the story of a little girl, who grew up in a kind of dream ... a land of make-believe ... who wandered at last into a still more shadowy realm, became a picture player ... by and by a _grande artiste_, with the world at her feet ... who one day, in the fabric of her life, found me waiting to tell about it, and said:

“Oh, very well, if you think it worth while”; and I did, and do, think it worth while, and will let it go at that.

* * * * *

Sometimes Griffith took them out “on location,” and those were joyous days, for it meant green fields and running brooks, and wooded hillsides, though sometimes the work was strenuous, even wet, when one had to fall into the cold water and be rescued, especially when it had to be repeated a dozen times or so, to get it just right. On the whole, those were good days—picnic days.

Griffith’s group of players was a notable one. Besides Mary, Lillian and Dorothy, he had Blanche Sweet, “the Biograph blonde,” a real star, melting, luscious; Miriam Cooper, Mary Alden, Robert Harron, Henry Walthall, Lionel Barrymore—most of them young twenty years ago—_had_ to be, to play anything like youthful parts, for all the indoor lightings were from overhead, the shadows were harsh and black—every line and wrinkle showed. There could be no retouching of the tiny film faces—the screen presented them not only as they were, but worse than they were, their defects magnified. Young girls like Mary and Lillian, even Dorothy, took grown-up parts:—the fairer and smoother their skin, the better the general result.

Slender youth had its disadvantages. Lillian was one day cast for the part of a vigorous young woman. The later, popular “boy form” was not yet appreciated. The public demanded a certain opulence in its heroines, especially in what was irreverently known as their “upper works.” Griffith regarded Lillian thoughtfully.

“I’m afraid you’re too young,” he commented; “not filled out quite enough.”

It was just luncheon time. The girls said nothing, but presently dashed out, and down Fourteenth Street, to a place where, in a show-window, they had noticed the desired contours for sale, substantial ones, firm and ample, of buckram.

A bite to eat, a trip to the dressing-room, and they were ready. Griffith, considering his cast, took another look at Lillian, rubbed his eyes, decided that after all she would do.

Thus was wrought the miracle of Fourteenth Street.

III

BELASCO DELIVERS A VERDICT

Nell wrote that she was to become a mother. Lillian, awe-struck, replied:

I can’t talk to anyone about it, not now. I want it all to myself
for just a little while....

I am with the Biograph, but none of my pictures have been released
as yet; will let you know the names of them. I have signed with
David Belasco for next season, and we open here in New York on
Christmas Eve at Belasco Theatre. Although it is a good company, I
have a very small part. I am going to do pictures on the side, so
that is some help.... Well, I must get supper.

But she could not carry the Biograph work with her rehearsing. In November she wrote:

I was worked to death my last days at the Biograph, and then I was
so excited when I started to rehearse in this new play that I
couldn’t even eat. The name of the play is “The Good Little
Devil.” It is a fairy play, and we open December 10, in Phila. and
Xmas night in N. Y. I play Morgane, a fairy....

Lillian enjoyed rehearsing when it did not last too long. There were some half-a-dozen of the fairies, and they flew—flew wonderfully, suspended on wires, pulled from somewhere below by eighteen strong Germans. She loved the flying sensation—so much that she would go before rehearsal-time and rehearse a little on her own account. She tried all the wires, and the big Germans delighted in sending her soaring into the air. In the play, she was the “Gold Fairy,” that flew highest. And there was one scene where she rested on a wall. Belasco, watching the rehearsals one day, was asked by a reporter what he thought of her looks. Belasco sent a glance at the slender figure on the wall, at the unearthly face surrounded by a tumbling mass of gold.

“Most beautiful blonde in the world,” he said, and next day that label found its way into print and general circulation.

Not long ago—a month or two before he died—Belasco qualified—a little: He had not then, he said, seen _all_ the beautiful blondes in the world. Perhaps he should have said: “_One_ of the most beautiful.” But as Belasco had seen a very great number of beautiful blondes—probably the pick of them—the verdict will be allowed to stand as reported, especially as it was never questioned. Lillian’s beauty was not then what it became later:—as revealed in “The White Sister,” for instance, in “Romola,” in “La Bohême,” and more recently in “Uncle Vanya.”

* * * * *

“The Good Little Devil” did not follow any of the announced dates. It opened successfully in Washington, or Philadelphia, and was in Baltimore for Christmas. They gave two performances that day, during the second of which there was an accident—serious enough, though it might have been worse.

In the act where she landed on the wall, she left it with a step-down of six feet. The wire, of course, lifted her down, but in this performance something was wrong, and she literally stepped into space. The sickening, helpless feeling of expecting support and finding none! The fall made her quite ill; her understudy had to finish the play.

“I cried all night,” she wrote Nell, “I was so lonely and broken-hearted.”

She was apparently not injured, but terribly shaken; and then, the audience had laughed. Mr. Belasco hurried to her dressing-room to comfort her. The audience was not laughing at her, he said, but at the incident. She must not mind that; everything was going to be all right. It was, but the shock had weakened her.

Back in New York, with another hard siege of rehearsing, before the opening there. Griffith, as was his custom each winter, had taken his company to Los Angeles, Dorothy with them. Lillian, to save money, lived in a tiny room at the Marlton Hotel, in 8th Street, and with a Sterno lamp, cooked her food, which consisted of tinned things and tea. Weakened as she undoubtedly was by her fall, this was but poor nourishment on which to meet Belasco’s strenuous rehearsals. January 8 (1913), she wrote:

It is now 3:30 in the morning of Wednesday, and I have just
returned from a dress rehearsal. We open tonight, and everything
has to be just so; we rehearsed until 4:30 yesterday morning.

Nell, I don’t know how to thank you for what you have offered me.
You both can’t know how wonderful it is to have someone offer me a
home, and how I would love to follow the desire of my heart and
come to you. But I can’t. I can’t, because I have to make my way
in this world from now on. Mother has worked all her life; surely,
it’s my turn, now....

The picture you painted for me in your letter made me cry, because
I was reading it in my dressing-room, and I happened to glance up
at a mirror, and there I sat, all false, with paint and cosmetics
covering my face, and it came to me what a distance it was from my
life to yours.

Mary was getting a good salary, and had bought her mother a car. Lillian said to her, one day: “How happy you must be, Mary, to be able to give your mother so much.” Her own weekly twenty-five dollars went such a little way. The room—one had to have a decent address—took so much of it ... and clothes—one must make a decent appearance—and the extras! A new coat ... a mistake ... it looked well, but was not warm enough.

She was far from well, and knew it. Mrs. Pickford and Mary insisted on her seeing a doctor, who told them that she was threatened with pernicious anemia, and would die if she did not change her mode of living. They spoke about it to Belasco, who offered to send her to Florida at his own expense. When he learned that Griffith had offered her work on the coast, at double her present salary, he at once agreed to pay her fare to Los Angeles.

She hung on until the end of January—postponed until she was warned that unless she went at once, it would be too late. They did not tell her, but they were by no means certain that it was not too late already. So she surrendered. Belasco bought her ticket to Los Angeles; her mother was already on the way out there. Dorothy wrote of glorious California sunshine. It made her better to think of it.

And then, at the end, a tragedy: The eighteen strong Germans who pulled the wires, and adored her, went to the train with their own little brass band, to say good-bye. Ah, me, she had somehow told them the wrong station ... a heartbreak ... one that could not be mended.

She traveled by the Los Angeles Limited, and for the first time in her life, knew the full luxury of a Pullman. On the way, she wrote:

I am going on and on, with miles upon miles separating us, it
seems, but it is not so, dear, as we are just as near to one
another now as we were in the old days, when we used to take “John
Halifax” and go to your room, and read. Can you ever forget those
days, and will they ever come back again?

... I am going to work hard out there, and next summer or fall, I
am going back to Mr. Belasco.

But she would never go back—either to Nell, or Belasco. Four days later, she was in Los Angeles, earning a salary of fifty dollars weekly. The hard days were over.

IV

A STUDIO ON PICO STREET

California sunshine, California Zinfandel—doctor’s orders, fifty cents a gallon—open air and exercise—worked their miracle. The pictures were made out-of-doors—even the interior sets were on an outside stage, with daylight illumination—and there were many “Westerns,” with riding.

In no time, Lillian, like Dorothy and the others, went racing over the hills behind Los Angeles—an Indian, a cowboy, a settler, a pursued heroine—sometimes all of those things in one day; for there was no star aristocracy in Griffith’s troupe. One might be a star one hour, and an extra the next, and nobody cared, and everybody was happy, and Lillian grew well, and physically hardened to the demands of picture making—by no means light.

Her riding practice with the Indian girl at Shawnee came in handy now. A horse, even a wild one, had no terrors for her. In one of the early pictures, Lillian, with two men, Raoul Walsh and George Siegman, were chosen for some special riding. The horses were range ponies—one of them looked dangerous. The men regarded him doubtfully. Lillian said, “I’ll take him.” He seemed to her no worse than those she had ridden in Oklahoma.

They swept by the camera beautifully, but they were supposed to turn and do it again. The others turned, but Lillian’s horse went on. His nose was toward the ranch. There were some trees and bushes, and he tore through them, to get her off his back.

Now, it happened that an Indian, a real Indian, named “Eagle Eye” lay asleep among the bushes, and the pounding hoofs awakened him. A real Indian knows what to do under such circumstances. He leaped straight from his nap, caught the mad pony’s bridle, and the heroine was saved.

In another picture, she had to jump from a buckboard, behind a runaway team, to a cowboy’s arms. Christy Cabanné was the director, and Bobby Burns, of the Burns Brothers who did most of the dangerous riding, was the cowboy rescuer. Lillian had no fear of the jump—her faith in Bobby was perfect—but the pony he was riding sank beneath the suddenly added weight, and nearly went down. “Closest and most dangerous thing I ever did,” Bobby said when it was over.

Lillian loved California, and why not? It had given her a new freedom, and with it, her health. News came of the arrival of Nell’s baby. Incredible to think of Nell with a baby! “Oh, Nell, does it really belong to you?” And a few lines further along, “This is a wonderful country! How I wish you could be here; it would do you so much good. It is just like summer, and they have wonderful mocking-birds and beautiful nights.”

* * * * *

I do not know the name of Lillian’s first California picture, nor the sequence of those that followed. Nobody today seems to remember these things, and they are not very important. There was a good deal of sameness about the Westerns, and most of them were that. “A Misunderstood Boy” was among the titles, “Just Gold,” and “The Lady and the Mouse”; but as Griffith was turning out pictures at the rate of one, or two and even three, a week—short films, in those days—these titles suggest no more than brief stages of preparation for the day a year or two later when he would begin to write the Greater Picture story across the screens of the world.

But they did something for Lillian and Dorothy: They taught them the technique and mechanics of film photography, in and out of doors, and their alert minds absorbed it as by instinct. It was only a little while until Griffith discussed his pictures with them, asked their suggestions. And something more: The public recognized their faces from the pictures of the previous summer, and began to inquire who they were.

One day Lillian was interviewed. Surely this was “coming on.” The reporter had heard of Belasco’s verdict; it had run ahead of her, and was known and repeated in California almost as soon as she arrived. The reporter wrote about Belasco, and then on his own account called her “Lillian, the adorable.”

It was pleasant, of course, to be written of like that, but she wished he had said more about her pictures. She led the next reporter around to them, explaining that her work was the important thing. He asked her what one must do to be a screen actress, and quoted her as saying:

“To play for the pictures is mostly a matter of the face, and the inside. You have to learn to think, inside.”

Being a young reporter, he was willing to believe that it was a matter of the face—_her_ face: “A tea rose” he called it, “reflected in a moonlit mirror.” Also he spoke of ivory, and pale jade, and of other things not closely related to acting.

There was no Hollywood in that halcyon day, no picture Hollywood. That “particularly irrational” corner of the universe had as yet neither name nor fame. The Biograph studio was in Los Angeles, on Pico Street, a building thought to be rather large, being one hundred or one-hundred-and-fifty feet long—a narrow shack, used chiefly as a carpentry shop, and for dressing-rooms—one each, for men and women.

As before mentioned, the photography was done on a stage set up outside, by daylight. There were sliding curtains above, like those in a photograph gallery, which is about all it was. The curtains controlled the sun, but the wind blew in and candles flickered, tablecloths waved ghostily, and occasionally something blew off the shelf, even in a “perfectly still” room. When it rained, they went into the carpentry shop and rehearsed. Often, the younger ones rehearsed while the older ones watched them. Always they rehearsed on rainy days. They spoke whatever words came into their heads, except during “silent rehearsals,” when they were supposed to convey the meaning in pantomime.

Griffith wrote most of his own plays—scenarios—a good many more than he needed. He could not afford to have them tried out by expensive people, so he used helpers—extras, stage-hands, anybody—for preliminary rehearsals. Sometimes it happened that a very humble servitor put astonishing life and conviction into what he, or she, was doing, and Griffith was just the person to recognize it. Bobby Harron, a property boy, had been like that. And there would be many others, including Constance Talmadge, Wallace Reid, and Valentino. It was Dorothy who suggested giving a part to Valentino. Griffith demurred, on the ground that he didn’t believe he would be popular with women—too “foreign-looking.” Amazing conclusion! But “Rudy” was cruder, then. Perhaps Mencken’s “catnip to women” would not have been so neat a turn.

They were a busy crowd in the Pico Street studio. Griffith had a vacant lot out back, and those not in the scenes were sent there to limber up—to practice running and walking, arm movements, a variety of gymnastic work, all in the direction of a better expression of emotions.

Long hours. For many of the pictures, they had to get up in the dark, to be “on location” by sunrise. Hard days in the field, home late, hot, hungry and ready for bed. And always, those not in action were rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, or prancing up and down that deadly lot, making muscle for the next job.

They ate how and when they could. Something was taken along by those who went to the field. The others grabbed a sandwich or a plate of soup, or pie and milk, from the White Kitchen, a tiny nearby shack. Abbreviated luncheons were sometimes brought to the set—“studio food”—that is, something not messy, nor especially appetizing. Experimental luncheon-places were tried in the studio, but not very successfully.

There was nothing resembling dissipation among the Biograph group. On the contrary, there was an atmosphere of earnest study and thought. Stimulated by Griffith, himself a voluminous and inclusive reader, the young women, especially, rather put on airs in their devotion to research and philosophy: Nietzsche, Strindberg, Schopenhauer, Spinoza—these were their favorites. What time they found to read them, it is difficult to see, now—nights and Sundays, perhaps. At all events, they did read them, or read at them, and discussed them feverishly during any spare moments. Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, Lillian and Dorothy, Miriam Cooper, Anita Loos—these chiefly were the students. Anita Loos was in the scenario department, and very keen, one of the best-posted. Anita discussed so much, and so capably, that Griffith called her “Madame Spinoza.”

When it happened that they made a picture that touched upon anything historic or geographic, they tried to “read up” for color, costume, background. Lillian reveled in such research; swiftly, eagerly, she added to her knowledge of the past, of life in general. The others were like that, too, more or less.

“Did those girls have sweethearts?” I asked Griffith, a little while ago.

“I don’t know; I don’t remember any. I don’t see where they would have found time for them. Today, stars and others make one big production, and have long waits between. We had nothing like that. We were producing every day. The demand was good, and not many companies. It was a different world.”

Such a little while ago ... less than twenty years ... just yesterday! But thinking of it now, and of all that has come, and gone, since then, it seems, somehow, a Golden Age.

* * * * *

I like to think of Lillian in that truly lovely environment, that “garden between dawn and sunrise,” among those wholesome, beautiful girls and those strong, handsome young men, all busy at a work which, however crude and inconsequential it may seem today, brought cheer and comfort to the millions, then. I like to think of her and Dorothy dashing along the hillsides, on range ponies, as painted Indians, or whooping cowboys; I like to think of them with their mother, in their apartment at the Brentwood, digging into the books which now for the first time they could afford to buy—making up, as far as might be, for the insufficient years.

How starved they were for books! They would drop into a book shop for one, and come out with an armful. Before they knew it, they were acquiring a library. Life was becoming worth while. Lillian to Nell: “The world unfolds itself to me more and more every day, and sometimes it seems so bright; then it changes ...”

For the most part she thought herself very well off—in a world where no one is more than passably happy—and increasingly devoted herself to her work.

She began to train her facial muscles to obey her, to reflect her thoughts. “You must think inside,” she had told the reporter, by which she meant, I suppose, that one must do one’s own thinking, rather than merely reflect the thought of the director, must persuade one’s muscles—all of one’s muscles and members—unconsciously to obey the inward thought. “Think inside and your trained body will take care of itself,” might have been her creed. Not all players could adopt it. Some could hardly be said to think at all. Thought, the director’s thought, filtered through them. Griffith found her always willing—eager—to listen—but not pliable.... More and more he left her alone. Lately he said—to the writer:

“Dorothy was more apt at getting the director’s idea than Lillian, quicker to follow it, more easily satisfied with the result. Lillian conceived an ideal, and patiently sought to realize it. Genius is like that: the ideal becomes real to it.”

From his lofty hotel window, David Wark Griffith looked out across the tops of Babylon. Reflectively, he added:

“She is the best actress in New York—the best I know. She has the most brains. Joseph Medill Patterson once said to me: ‘Lillian Gish has the best mind of any woman I ever met.’ But I knew that, already.”

V

THE PATH TO STARDOM

Lillian to Nell:

I want you to see “A Mothering Heart” ... I cried and lost so much
sleep over that picture, that I am sure you would like it.

When the picture was an important one, she rehearsed the whole night, sometimes, alone in her room, going over the scenes again and again. She never required “glycerine tears”—she lived the part too vividly. A good many years later, she wrote:

“The first important picture in which I appeared was ‘The Mothering Heart.’ This was noteworthy, not only because it was in two reels, but because the vast sum of eighteen hundred dollars had been spent in the making.”

“A Mothering Heart” received gratifying notices: “Her best picture, thus far”; “Her lack of so-called acting is the secret of her success”; “Mr. Belasco said very little when he called her ‘the most beautiful blonde in the world’”; “The hit of her career.” All of which would indicate that those nights and days of rehearsal had not been wasted; also, that a picture “career” bore no very close relation to elapsed time.

There was some reason in this: fame of a sort had come to her with astonishing suddenness—the fame that comes to a striking face and personality, interestingly presented in a thousand towns and cities. It was like magic. She had really done nothing of importance, yet she had a “career”—her name and face were widely familiar.

There began to be a sifting-in of “fan” letters—rather a new thing in the picture world. Admirers did not always know where to write. And there was something remote, something baffling, in the idea of writing to a picture; something suggestive of the bibulous young man, waiting at the back door of a movie-house “to take Mary Pickford home.”

Then, more and more, the notices and the magazines gave addresses; the name of the producing company appeared on the title flash of the film itself, though it generally vanished and was forgotten before one had a chance to fall in love with the star. Still, the letters came, and the sift became a drift that in time would become an avalanche. Some were from children.

* * * * *

Lillian to Nell:

Tomorrow we start on our last picture out here, “Judith and
Holofernes,” from the Bible story, a wonderful theme.

“Judith of Bethulia,” as they finally called it, was Griffith’s most pretentious undertaking up to “The Birth of a Nation,” of which it was the forerunner. He took his players up to Chatsworth Park, a desert place in the hills, and set up an ancient walled city, engaged an army of extras, men, women, children, even babies. Also, expert riders and trained horses, and went into strenuous daily rehearsal. The “Park” was a place of sand and rock and cactus, a good way from Los Angeles. They went by street car, then train, finishing the trip by hay-wagon. They got up at four or five o’clock, in order to be on the ground, dressed and made-up when the sun rose. Bottles of snake-bite antidote were issued to the players, for rattlers were very common there. An actress saw a coil of rubber tubing on a stump, and started to get it. It behaved curiously, and she lost interest—lost it at the rate of several miles an hour, until she was safely with the others.

It was June—the weather was blazing hot. They worked all day in the sun and dust, sweltering in Oriental garments, through the longest days of the year. When they got back to Los Angeles, it was dark, and they were hardly in bed before they had to get up again. As soon as the desert scenes were finished, Griffith packed up his players and set out for New York to finish the studio scenes there. In this picture, Blanche Sweet had the part of Judith, Henry Walthall was Holofernes. Lillian had a small part, a little Mother in Israel.

Only a little while ago, with Lillian, in a small New York projection-room, I saw “Judith and Holofernes” on the screen. I was amazed, and I think she was, at how good it was. The photography was excellent, would pass as such today: soft, brown in tone, with little of the jerkiness that came of the slow camera. Furthermore, the story was beautifully conveyed.

It was terribly dry, hot and dusty there, which took nothing away from the realism. The clouds of dust that rose from a battle scene gave a magnificence and mystery to the effect—a reality that was stirring, even today. It is easy to believe that an audience which had not yet seen “The Birth of a Nation,” was awed by the spectacle.

There was a great deal of fine horsemanship. Horses trained to fall, their riders flung far and wide, were not then so common. Blanche Sweet made a perfect Judith. Lillian’s part, though small, was quite lovely. She was a little mother, running about, seeking water for the baby held always close to her breast. There were other babies in the picture. Babies were easy to get, then. There was no enforced law about it, and one could pick them up by the dozen, in Los Angeles, or anywhere—Mexican babies—with a little girl to look after them when not in use.

* * * * *

The studio scenes of “Judith” were not made in the old Fourteenth Street place. During the winter, the Biograph Company had built a vast, new studio uptown, at 175th Street, great floor space, and dressing-rooms for all. They had thought their crowded dressing-rooms in California inconvenient—just one for women and another for men, rather scrambly and messy ... long tables, with mirrors back to back, in the center ... one side for the regulars, the other for the extras. Everybody thought the new place was going to be fine, but it wasn’t. All the fun, the cozy, intimate comradeship, was gone.

* * * * *

Griffith was restless. Primarily, he wanted to get out of picture making, and write. He had written his way into pictures, now he dreamed of writing his way out of them. He was a poet at heart. He had a poem and a play to his credit, besides dozens of scenarios. All the time he wanted to settle down to writing.

It was no use. He couldn’t settle down, even if they would let him, and they wouldn’t let him. He was too good a director for that—the best—much the best in the field. Settle down! Preposterous! But he quit the Biograph Company. They were niggardly about expenses; sometimes (often, in fact), he used his own money—and they had an economy complex in the matter of salaries. The Reliance-Majestic, a more recent organization, offered him a free hand. He went to them in October. With him went the Biograph players, almost in a body. A few were tied by contract, but the others went, Lillian and Dorothy among them.

Those young people had faith in Griffith, and loved him. Loved him when he raised their wages, loved him and were still faithful even when the day came, as presently it did come, when he was wading so deeply in the tide of battle and Reconstruction that attended “The Birth of a Nation,” that he could not find enough to go around. They knew he would pay to the last penny when it was possible, and he always did. With or without wages, they would stand by.

The Reliance-Majestic Company had a studio on the Clara Morris estate, Yonkers; another at Sixteenth Street and Union Square, West. It is said that in less than an hour after Griffith had closed the Biograph door behind him, he was directing on Union Square a scene for a new five-reel picture, which he made in six days and nights, working constantly—all day and night. Perhaps he wanted to make a showing to the new company. Perhaps there was a need of quick money—usually there was.

In this new picture, “The Battle of the Sexes,” Lillian was cast for the leading part: a daughter who suffers, and brings an erring father to repentance. In the beginning, it was called “The Single Standard,” and in that pre-war moment, was thought to be rather risqué. Today, it would be a Sunday-school picture, dramatically and morally suited to Third Avenue, New York’s remaining stronghold of respectability.

The cast included, besides Lillian, Mary Alden, Donald Crisp, Bobby Harron, Fay Tincher, and Owen Moore. In one scene, the climax, Lillian has a sixshooter ready for Fay Tincher, the vamp who has broken up the family. Her finger, however, refuses to pull the trigger. Her father, entering, finding her in this dubious association, asks: “You, my daughter, what are you doing here?” And the devastating reply: “You, my father, what are _you_ doing here?” gives him something to think about. A notice says: “The sets were lavish, but above all, they were true to the higher social sphere.” Third Avenue would adore it. “The Battle of the Sexes” was Griffith’s first release for the Reliance-Majestic. There was a prologue and four reels; longer than “Judith of Bethulia.”

VI

“HOME, SWEET HOME”

Griffith had far greater battles in his mind. In January he severed regular connection with the Reliance-Majestic, but arranged, under their auspices, to produce a Civil War picture, based on Thomas Dixon’s book, “The Clansman.” Then, early in February, he took his entire group of players to the Coast, and began, not that picture, but pictures that would earn money for the undertaking. No one, not even Griffith himself, guessed the size of that undertaking, but better than the others, Griffith knew that it would require an overhead which would cause, among his backers, an outbreak of apoplexy, if they got even a hint of it.

* * * * *

Griffith had a bent for melodrama. Also, he knew there was money in it, and money was very necessary just now, in view of the big project ahead. It occurred to him that John Howard Payne’s “Home, Sweet Home” had a more universal appeal than any similar composition in the nation’s history. A story of the author’s life, followed by a set of scenes using that old heart-throb as a call to the erring wanderer or comfort to the heavy-laden, would be irresistible. Walthall would be cast as Payne, Lillian as his sweetheart; at the end, a spiritual transition, as in “Uncle Tom.”

At the Reliance-Majestic, or Fine Arts studio, on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, the work was pushed forward rapidly, to have the picture ready for Spring release. In a full-page announcement of the big, new feature, we read:

“Twenty-five famous screen stars will participate in the play, which will be a very ‘portentous’ one.”

Whether the printer meant to set “pretentious” or “portentous,” is of small consequence. It was both. Griffith meant to make it the former. Payne, had he been consulted, would have voted for the latter, for in the picture, he dies and goes to Hell. That a poet, author of an immortal song, could have been sent to Hell, even temporarily, as late as the Spring of 1914, shows how far we have traveled since then. A newspaper symposium had abolished Hell a good while before that time, but perhaps Griffith hadn’t heard of it yet. Griffith made Payne abandon his sweetheart, so doubtless it was proper that he should have a taste of Hell, even in 1914.

Then follow the “episodes”: A young Easterner is about to forsake Mae Marsh (“Apple-pie Mary”), when the strains of “Home, Sweet Home” on an accordion, win him back to her “calico-covered arms.” A business man’s wife is about to “step out,” when a “great musician” in the flat below strikes up “Home, Sweet Home,” and a wife’s honor is safe. The fact that great musicians so seldom play “Home, Sweet Home” as a pastime, did not trouble Griffith. His did.

The picture ended in a manner no longer to be taken seriously. Payne (Walthall), dying in sin, goes promptly to an impressive Hell, a chasm in the mountains, where, arrayed in an astonishing costume, considering the climate, he is given a disagreeable time by certain devils wearing the falsest of false faces. His sweetheart (Lillian), dying a saint, had gone straight to Heaven—a sort of grown-up Little Eva. Must Payne remain in Hell? Not above a week, at the longest. “Little Eva,” suspended on wires, as when she had been the Gold Fairy of Belasco, descends in a white robe, and her poor renegade lover, seizing the folds of that immaculate garment, is borne upward and outward to Paradise, backing away from the audience, so that their faces may never be lost. Probably only the beauty of Walthall and Lillian saved such a scene, even in that remote time, from the shouts of joy which would surely greet it today.

Seventeen years later, in the little projection room on Seventh Avenue, I watched, with Lillian, an unreeling of this ancient film. It seemed to me, as, I think, to her, pretty crude:—in places, childish. The costumes had been selected from an assortment something more limited than the old Biograph wardrobe, and were either amusing or pathetic, as you happened to think. The acting was not much better. I don’t quite know what was the matter with it, but it conveyed the impression of being amateurish, though all the actors were, in effect, stars. Lillian’s half-hysterical “Wasn’t I terrible?” expressed one’s general feeling as to all of them. Mae Marsh in a comedy part, was the best of the lot. The photography was on a par with the rest of it. Yet it followed “Judith of Bethulia” by several months. What _was_ the matter?

And since we have been speaking of “Little Eva,” perhaps this is as good a place as any to state that Lillian had never, at any time, played that part. She might have done so, had there been any “Uncle Tom” combinations when she was a child trouper. “Uncle Tom” had died permanently, by that time. Interviewers, however, when they looked at her, could not believe, when she told them that she had played “Little Willie” in “East Lynne,” that she was not saying “Little Eva in ‘Uncle Tom,’” and they so often printed this statement that in time she almost believed it herself. I am making a special paragraph of this denial to set the matter straight—for all of us.

* * * * *

Busy days, these. Under one director and another, Griffith kept Lillian and Dorothy going, usually in different pictures, though sometimes, as in “The Sisters,” together. They made an attractive pair, but Griffith could not afford to waste them on small pictures—“program” pictures—besides, it was not easy to get stories—picture stories—to fit.

Dorothy became a star on her own account, with Walthall in “The Mountain Rat,” a Western; and in “The Mysterious Shot,” with Jack Pickford, who had joined the movie forces. Jack, apparently, had conquered his old infatuation, for we hear nothing further of it. “The Rat” was Dorothy’s first star part, and a very good one of its kind, being that of a red-light girl, considered then rather a daring portrayal for a girl of sixteen. All these were pot-boilers, while preparations for the great Civil War spectacle went forward.

They also kept the names and faces of Griffith’s stars before the public—an important matter, for the field was getting full of producers—stars were being created almost overnight. Nor did Griffith let them get into a rut by working always under one director. Lillian, alternately under Christy Cabanné and Jack O’Brien, was receiving liberal training.

“Which would you rather work under?” a reporter asked.

“Both. Their methods are entirely different; I learn a great deal from each.”

Interviews were very frequent, now, the reporters kind. They referred to Lillian and Dorothy as the “darlings of the screen,” and they rarely failed to remember Belasco’s verdict, which found its way even to Massillon. “MASSILLON GIRL CALLED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BLONDE IN THE WORLD” made a three-column headline, with a picture of Lillian to prove it; as if everybody in Massillon hadn’t known that, long ago.

VII

“THE BIRTH OF A NATION”

David Wark Griffith was the son of a soldier, and had been brought up on war tales. He believed the time had come when the talk that had been so vivid to his childhood, should be given form and motion—that the bitter struggle of four years, with its rankling sequences, should be presented on the screen.

From Thomas Dixon’s “The Leopard’s Spots” and “The Clansman,” he outlined his scenario, and began work. The latter title was to be the name of the picture. The new, and far greater, title, “The Birth of a Nation,” was not used until the film had been actually finished and shown. The story of this achievement—the first, and still, in many respects, the greatest, of war pictures—has many times been told. One or two paragraphs, however, from Robert Edgar Long’s biography of Griffith, may not be out of place:

Six weeks of constant rehearsals preceded the taking of the first
scene, and throughout the next six months required to complete the
spectacle, so many things happened it would require an entire
volume to enumerate them.

Among the most notable scenes in the finished production were the
battle of Petersburg, fought by eighteen thousand men on a field
five miles across; the march of Sherman to the sea, culminating in
the burning of Atlanta; the assassination of President Lincoln in
the crowded Ford’s Theatre in Washington; the wild rides of the Ku
Klux Klan, and the session of the South Carolina Legislature under
the negro carpet-bagger régime.

Had Griffith guessed that the World War was coming, he would hardly have had the courage to begin. He had to assemble a vast horde of extras, horses, thousands of uniforms and Ku Klux gowns; arms; he had to construct breastworks, trenches—all the front of war; he had to do all this when a real war was sweeping Europe, and all prices, especially of the things he needed, soaring to the sky. Horses were the hardest. I do not yet see where he got them, when European agents were everywhere in search of just the horses he wanted.

And then the money: The treasurer of the Reliance-Majestic company must have believed that Griffith thought him the treasurer of the United States, the way he drew on him. Of course, there was an end to that: Griffith had to go outside for money and credit. One may imagine him buying all the white cotton in Los Angeles to make those Ku Klux gowns, most of it on credit. Long says:

It became a battle for dollars, and it is told that the determined
Griffith himself actually went begging among the merchants of Los
Angeles to get the final one thousand dollars with which to
complete his work.

Most of Griffith’s players went into the cast, as the rôles seemed to fit them. Of the female parts, Mae Marsh was supposed to have the best. Blanche Sweet was still held to be Griffith’s chief star and as the part of Elsie Stoneman, the Northern girl who becomes the sweetheart of the Southern Colonel (Walthall), did not seem quite big enough for her, Griffith gave it to Lillian. At least, that is the way it is remembered, now. I think there were other reasons: In the first place, Walthall was of small stature, which accounts for his being dubbed the “little Colonel” in the play. Blanche was of ample proportions; the two were not a good match. For another thing, Griffith knew that Lillian’s frail loveliness set against the big mulatto features of the villain of the piece, the man bound to possess her, would move the audience as would the face of no other member of his company. It is also just possible that Griffith, in the beginning, did not realize how big the part of Elsie Stoneman was to be. He had a fashion of making his play as he went along. Fifteen years later, he only said:

“When I gave Lillian a part in ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ I merely thought she could play it, without considering how well, or at least without thinking she would make anything special out of it, though of course, by that time, I knew she would do it in her own way.”

The field work of the “Birth” was done at the Universal Ranch, a place of diversified scenery outside Los Angeles. The play itself was made at the Fine Arts studio, which consisted of an exterior stage like that on Pico Street—only, instead of a large building, a lot of little shacks served as temporary, very temporary, dressing-rooms. Any player so inclined could build one for his or her own use, and trim it and decorate it according to fancy. The roof was merely a piece of canvas, held in place—also according to fancy. It rarely rained.

At one side of the lot, was constructed the “street” on which fronted the Cameron Southern home, about which most of the play centered. There was not much in the way of scenic designing. A stage carpenter, Huck Wortman, one of the old-fashioned kind who chewed tobacco and cocked up his eye, was equal to most things. If Griffith wanted a village street, with a vine-covered cottage; or a Southern mansion; or a hospital; Huck cocked an eye, shifted his quid, and said, “Aw right,” and it was so.

* * * * *

As a Civil War spectacle, “The Birth of a Nation” will probably never be outdone. The battle-field, with its miles of hand-to-hand fighting; the assembling of the Klan—hundreds of them in white robes, mounted;—Lincoln’s assassination—these things were more impressive than even the reality could have been, for no one of them was ever viewed in its entirety, or with deliberation, and it seems impossible that they should ever have been more real. Stirring, appropriate music, fitted by Griffith to the scenes, added a final thrill.

The negro aspects of the picture were not entirely fortunate ... within the facts, but hardly within the proprieties. It attached no blame to the negro for the abuses of Reconstruction, but presented him in an unfavorable light. Negro political domination in the South was an evil growing out of the war—a war and an evil for which the negro was the last person to be held responsible, the last person to be reminded of them.

“The Clansman,” as if was first called, was shown publicly at Clune’s Auditorium, Los Angeles, on the evening of February 8, 1915, all the film colony of Los Angeles being present. Reports had been spread that there would be negro rioting, and the police were out in force. There was no trouble. The theatre was jammed. Here and there in the audience were negroes.