From the prologue for the sound reissue of The Birth of a Nation, filmed spring 1930.1
Walter Huston: Is it generally known that you’re a Southerner?
D. W. Griffith (laughs): I should think it should be. It’s been advertised enough. Yes, my father was a colonel in the Confederacy.
Walter Huston: Now I want to ask you a question.
D. W. Griffith: Go ahead.
Walter Huston: When you made The Birth of a Nation, did you tell your father’s story?
D. W. Griffith: No, no, I don’t think so. Well, after you mention it, perhaps I did.
Walter Huston: How long did it take you?
D. W. Griffith: How long does it take to make anything. I suppose, oh I suppose, it began when I was a child. I used to get under the table and listen to my father and his friends talk about the battles they’d been through and their struggles. Those things impress you deeply. And I suppose that got into The Birth.
Walter Huston: Do you feel as though it were true?
D. W. Griffith: Yes I feel so. True as that blade [of a Confederate sword that Huston presents to Griffith]. That’s natural enough, you know. When you’ve heard your father tell about fighting, day after day, night after night. And having nothing to eat but parched corn. And about your mother staying up night after night, sewing robes for the Klan. The Klan at that time was needed. It served a purpose. Yes, I think it’s true. (sighs) But as Pontius Pilate said, “Truth? What is the truth?”
Walter Huston: Well, it has stood the test of time, still considered to be the best picture that was ever made. Does it make you feel proud?
D. W. Griffith: Thank you very much for that. If I thought you really thought it was the best picture ever made, I would be tempted to be a little proud. But I don’t know. You never get into those things, you know. You never get into those things, the things that you expect to get, the things you ought to get.
Walter Huston: It has a fury of life in it. I mean, it made your blood tingle.
D. W. Griffith: Well, maybe there was something in it. But I don’t think I deserve the credit. It was about something. You can tell easily a story about something. It was about a tremendous struggle. A story of people that were fighting desperately against great odds, great sacrifices. Suffering. Death. It was a great struggle, a great story. A story where young girls used to wear cotton for ermine, and where the boys imagined. Did you read about Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg? Pitiful thing. There were boys, like in many a battle. When the fathers dropped the guns, these nothing but children picked them up and went on fighting, and they fought to the bitter end. It’s easy enough to tell that kind of a story. All you have to do is … Anybody can do that. It’s a story in itself … that tells itself.
1. It is still in doubt as to whether this prologue was ever actually screened with The Birth of a Nation. The sequence begins with three children, Byron Sage, Betty Heisler, and Dawn O’Day (later known as Anne Shirley) creeping up on Griffith and Huston as they talk. Huston presents Griffith with a confederate cavalry sword, and, because it is a “sharp” gift, the director gives him a quarter as payment. As far as can be ascertained, the prologue was actually directed by D. W. Griffith. In a piece titled “The Re-Birth of a Nation” by Campbell MacCulloch, published in Motion Picture Magazine, October 1930, Griffith is quoted (page 98) after seeing the new version, “Those were great days … That was a great cast. Four of them are passed on to larger things— Bobby Harron, Jennie Lee, George Siegmann, and Wally Reid have gone. And it was a great story. If I could only find such another story and such another cast! But I must not see this picture often— perhaps never but once more. It awakens too many memories.”