From Photoplay, June 1916, 35–37, 162–65. This interview is adapted from part one of Gordon’s six-part series, “The Story of David Wark Griffith.” Part six of the series appeared under the title “The Real Story of Intolerance.” The page numbers given above relate to this adaptation; the full citation reads pp. 28–37, 162–65.
His personal story consists of fragmentary bits; a few facts noted during a few moments’ talk; a few more another time; his horror of egotism is extreme; he cannot believe that the world is interested in himself or his past, nor what may be intimate information about his personality, and he has learned to be cautious; he hasn’t written poetry since he was eighteen.
He has but one trait of the prima donna nature; he does not tell his age; some publications of a Who’s Who order put his birth [incorrectly] in 1880; this may or may not be correct.
“About myself?” he replied when asked for details. “The public can not care about that topic; you cannot improve on what was written about a real man of note once: ‘He was born, he grew a little, he slept a little, he ate a little, he worked a little, he loved a little— and then he died.’
“My family? I do come of good stock; my mother was a Shirley-Carter, my father was Colonel Jacob Wark Griffith of the Confederacy; old comrades of his in the war have told me he was known in the army as ‘Thunder Jake,’ because he never went into a charge but what his voice could be heard above the din of guns and combat, urging on his men.
“About the first thing I remember was my father’s sword; he would put it on to amuse me. The first time I saw that sword was when my father played a joke on an old negro, once his slave but who with the heads of four other negro families refused to leave the plantation; those four families were four important factors in keeping the Griffith family poor.
“Down South the men usually wore their hair rather long; this negro, who in our better days had been the plantation barber, had been taken to Louisville, ten or twelve miles from our home at Bairdstown, and had seen the Northern men with their close-cropped hair; when he came back he got hold of my brother and cut his hair close, Northern style.
“When father saw this he pretended to be enraged; he went into the house, donned his old uniform, buckled on his sword and pistols, and had the negro summoned.
“Then, drawing the sword, he went through the technical cuts and thrusts and slashes, threatening the darkey all the time with being cut into mince meat.
“The old Uncle was scared pale, and I took it seriously myself until a wink and a smile from father enlightened me.
“So that sword remains the first memory I have of existence.
“We were all somewhat studious; father was a highly educated man, and an elder sister, Mattie, was a brilliantly cultured woman; she it was who gave the children their basic education; my parents always directed our studies and our thoughts towards the noble; the great in literature.
“Mattie found in her father an intellect that met her requirements and a character that she adored; she never married, and would say, either jokingly or seriously, I was never certain which, but suspect the latter, that she never had found a man equal to her father, and that none of less quality would every satisfy her as a husband.
“Personally, I have not bothered about an ancestry; it is likely though that I was impressed in my childhood with certain family traditions which had come down through the mist of former generations; one was that ap Griffith, a Welsh Prince of Wales, was the founder of one side of the house, and that a Lord Brayington who revolted with Monmouth and later emigrated under duress to Virginia, was a founder of the other side of the American Griffiths.
“I used to be told of a great-grandfather in Virginia, a stormy, fierce old man who refused to allow the word England to be spoken in his presence and who, as far as he could, barred the door to anything English.
“My grandfather was a Captain David Griffith, who fought in 1812.
“It happens I do know a lot about my father, from what I have been told by Southern soldiers. Colonel Polk Johnson told me of his regiment never having surrendered, and of his having been brevetted Brigadier General.
“After I left home I walked through Kentucky and Tennessee once when I had a job as traveling correspondent and canvasser for the Baptist Weekly, and I met a man named, I think, Holly, who had served with father; I sat up all night with him listening to his stories about Colonel Griffith, whom he pronounced to be the bravest man he had ever seen in action.
“‘There was a Yankee supply train,’ said Holly, ‘that Colonel Jo Wheeler had tried to capture with the regiment of another Colonel, who had been driven off by the escort of the train; but the wagons were still within striking distance and Jo Wheeler very much wanted the bacon and ammunition they contained.
“‘An orderly called your father, and Jo said to him, “Colonel, can you capture that Yankee wagon train?”
“‘Your father saluted and turned to go.
“‘“Why don’t you answer me, Colonel Griffith?” said General Jo.
“‘“I’ll answer you in five minutes,” said your father, and in that time he had the train on its way into our camp.’
“This incident I have found verified in Jefferson Davis’s Rise and Fall of the Confederacy.
“My first and last ambition, until Fate turned me into a picture man, was to be a writer. I determined on that when I was six years old. My father’s sword and its early effect on my mind, his noble career, his wounds, for he was shot all to pieces, did impart a martial trend to my character, but there was no war, and the scholarly atmosphere of my home, I suppose, was responsible for my inclination to become a great literary man.
“As soon as I was big enough I began my own personally conducted tour of Life; I went to Louisville and got a job as a reporter on the Courier-Journal. I did not meet Marse Henry [pen name of editor and politician Henry Watterson] then. I wish I could have done something to make him notice me, but I did not; in some way I was put to work writing notes about theatrical matters. With my night police assignment and a general hunt for items, I determined to become a dramatist.
“I received emphasis for that inspiration on seeing my first theatrical performance; in it was Peter Baker, who sang “America’s National Game.” Then I saw Julia Marlowe and Robert Taber in Romola.
“That settled everything; I was to be a great dramatist. First it was necessary to secure some advice, so I called on the stage manager of the company at the Louisville theater and told him of my scheme of life.
“He approved it thoroughly and solemnly; but he explained to me that no man could ever write a good play who was not an actor; he cited Shakespeare and Moliere, and Dion Boucicault and Gus Thomas and as he was an authority I accepted his advice, thereby breaking a universal, time-honored rule, and becoming an actor. I played in stock in Louisville, and after many ups and downs, I had some good engagements.
“My first part was the Clergyman in Trilby. I wasn’t twenty then and I was paid eight dollars a week; then, later, I joined Walker Whiteside on tour through Iowa. I never have since then been in sympathy with Iowa ideas. After that I had a wide experience in characters, heavies and leads.
“It wasn’t all so long ago, yet I played one season with Helen Ware before she was discovered, and then with J. E. Dodson as de Maupret to his Richelieu, and was given a good notice by Alan Dale, which confirmed my suspicion that I was quite a good actor. It secured me as well an increase in salary. Then came a season with Nance O’Neil in Shakespeare and Ibsen in Boston; the reviewers gave me corking good notices there— but of course Shakespeare and Ibsen couldn’t be roasted in Boston.
“And reviewers are not always over perceptive; there was a time when I was with Nance O’Neil and McKee Rankin right here in Los Angeles at the Mason Theatre, when Rankin was ill one night; I had been playing Magda’s preacher lover, but when Rankin did not appear I was thrown into his part of the father. I stuffed out my clothes and went through the part with no change of name on the programme. The next morning’s papers had most eulogistic notices of Mr. Rankin’s thoroughly artistic acting, and the world looked very brilliant to me that day.
“All the time my determination to be a dramatist was unshaken. I had, before getting deep in the theater, written two poems and a story; one of the poems I had sent to John Sleicher, editor of Leslie’s weekly, and he bought it; he paid me thirty-five dollars!
“Ah! When Leslie’s came out with my poem in it— that was the one day of all life. It was called ‘To a Wild Duck.’ It was a serious poem and not written on that subject because I was hungry. I bought a copy of the magazine and entered a subway train; I read the verses carelessly, registering indifference, and rolled the paper up and put it in my coat pocket; but— I couldn’t stand it; it seemed as if everyone in the car would know I had written that poem, but I had to read it again; I pulled the paper out of my pocket, scanned the advertisements, and then as if by accident turned over to the poem and savored Victory again.
“Can I remember it? Huh! Let me see. The first line ran, ‘See how beautifully— ’ ‘See how beautifully— ’ No, it’s all gone; I’m not even sure of the first line! And that was the happiest moment of my life— with what caused it forgotten. There might be something of a theme for a poem in that situation.
“Naturally I wrote another poem, and sent it to McClure’s. It came back; but you must pardon me, for a poet has to be proud, while a picture man may be very modest; it came back, but with a personal letter from Colonel McClure saying the committee of five editors who passed on contributions had voted three to two against accepting the verses, but would I be good enough to send in some more.
“I did not; but I sold a story that same month, and I began to write Sunday ‘Sup’ [Supplement] stuff; I couldn’t sell these specials myself, but I became acquainted with a very popular newspaper woman who was paid a high space rate; I would give her my stories and specials, and she would put her ‘byline’ on them, sell them, and give me half the money.
“And then I wrote my first play, the play.
“It was called A Fool and a Girl.
“I decided when it was finished that it was a good play, and I took it to James K. Hackett, who read it. ‘My boy,’ he said in his vigorous way, ‘this is one of the best plays I have ever read; I’ll produce it.’
“That day of the first poem appearing was as nothing; I must have been unbearably happy— until I met Mr. Hackett’s stage director.
“He read the play; he turned to me when he had finished reading and said, ‘Your play’s rotten. It will never go; the governor’s blowing himself in by giving you a production. Why, man alive! You make your characters talk and behave like real people. Rotten!’
“Then he censored the play; he improved it; he deprived it of the sin of picturing real men and women on the stage and changed them into people of the theatrical mind.
“But even at that it flivvered.
“I was sure it was because the stage director had changed it, but— I knew Wilfred Lucas then, who is with me now, and I asked him to read the play; he did so, but he has always refrained from telling me what he thought of it.
“Come to think it over, there was something of a coincidence about that play and The Clansman; the play had an important character who was a white man with a strain of negro blood.
“It was good training while that play was put on; I lost twenty pounds of flesh a week, and my temper.
“I learned how to suffer, a knowledge that often has come in useful to me in the picture business.
“If you’ve ever had any disagreeable portion of your life, you understand the times of stress, the episodes where you licked or were licked, we look back upon— having passed them— with keen joy.
“That is why Béranger’s song about being happy at twenty in a garret always has been, and always will be, beloved by all men.”
“Yes, but your ordeals as an actor cannot equal what the stories of your life as a book agent, as an iron puddler, your brakebeam tours, your comradeship study of tramps, taught you; tell me of those times; to be a rich success is considerable; to have been a brave vagabond of Fortune is to have been much more. Tell me of those episodes,” I asked.
He smiled whimsically. “This is a curious world we are in,” he replied; “while we are in it, we must be careful what we say lest others say about us what is not careful, after we are gone.
“I will think it over for your next visit.”