From the New York Times, September 3, 1939, X4. Copyright © 1939 Herb Sterne. Reprinted with permission of Anthony Slide, executor of estate of Herb Sterne.
Frantically manufacturing new gods for public worship, Hollywood soon forgets the names of the haloed ones of yesterday. Several weeks ago a terse item, relegated to the subsequent pages of the daily press, announced that “D. W. Griffith, director of silent films, has been signed as supervisor by Hal Roach.” No adjectives. No fanfare. Ignored was the fact that the motion picture, as we know it today, was founded and developed by Griffith. Overlooked were the technical devices— the close-up, the flash-back, the moving camera shot, narrative story-telling on the screen— which he introduced. Of no seeming interest to any one was his gift for star-making or the fact that among the players he developed were Mary Pickford, the Gish girls, Robert Harron, Blanche Sweet, Henry [B.] Walthall, Douglas Fairbanks, Mae Marsh, Rudolph Valentino.
Almost completely slighted by columnists employed in recording film news were Griffith’s great classics, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Way Down East, and Broken Blossoms, pictures that pleased millions and made millions. Drama lurks behind the return of Griffith to Allied Artists, an organization which he helped found in the days when his name was a synonym for directorial greatness.
Back in 1920 he started the company with Pickford, Chaplin, and Fairbanks. They were known as “The Big Four.” Success at first with such hits as Orphans of the Storm, Way Down East, and Hearts of the World; then financial reverses, and Griffith was forced to sell out his interest. Quick and complete oblivion followed. Now after eight years of retirement, the master is attempting a comeback with the same organization, but this time as a humble employee.
There was no difficulty getting past the gate of the Roach studios, but once inside, there was difficulty in locating Mr. Griffith. His name was unlisted on the board dedicated to studio employees of importance. “Griffith?” People on the lot couldn’t place the name. However, the publicity office found him readily enough, on the top floor of the same building.
In a single, one-room office, the old master sat hunched in a swivel chair. His official age is 59, which he looks. He twiddled the same type of Panama hat made familiar by photographs taken during the years of his great success, but his hair has grayed, grown sparse. On seeing me enter he tilted back in his chair, placed his feet, encased in high brown shoes with brass eyelets, on the desk. The sole of the right shoe frankly gaped.
Griffith talks in a tired voice that still retains a trace of the blue grass of Kentucky, his native state. There is more than a hint of weary philosophy in his words. He is still consumingly interested in motion pictures: the man who started working in them at the old Biograph studios in 1908 still considers the filming of a super-colossal [production] the most important thing in the world.
Since his retirement, Griffith has been writing. An autobiography is just about complete. He has also written a number of stage plays, as yet unproduced. “Maybe,” he comments, “not the best plays in the world, but there have been bad ones before.” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“A number of people think it strange that I should write plays. I started as a stage actor. I also was the first to use dialogue in a feature film. That was in Dream Street, released in 1921. The recording was on discs, like the early Vitaphone. Dream Street opened at the Town Hall in New York replete with passages of talk and even a theme song recorded by the Kellum process.1 We had to ‘dub in’ the vocalizing, for [leading man] Ralph Graves couldn’t sing. I tried to sell the idea of talking pictures to Adolph Zukor as I didn’t have enough money to finance the project myself. Zukor told me I was crazy.”
Of the two all-talking films Griffith made he only cares to mention Abraham Lincoln, starring Walter Huston. In that he feels he did a good job of balancing speech and action. As a matter of fact, it was the first audible film that managed to capture the fluid quality of the silent medium. The Struggle Griffith would as soon forget. Never generally released, it was taken off after a two-day run on Broadway and shelved. “No use,” he commented, “in going in for alibis. If a picture hasn’t the stuff no amount of explanation will help.”
Griffith’s biggest hit was the unforgettable The Birth of a Nation, which was shot in a little over two months and cost $110,000. To date it has grossed $16 million, and although made in 1914 is still being shown. His pet picture of them all, however, is Intolerance, an expensive venture, an artistic success, but a staggering financial flop. It was the first sociological picture to be produced in America. Griffith, despite its lack of public approval, followed it with other humanitarian sagas, including the story of postwar Germany, Isn’t Life Wonderful. Today he is no disciple of the “message” on the screen. Only casually interested in the worth of such subject-matter as Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath as fodder for celluloid, he contends that though most of his pictures were harangues, he believes, primarily, in entertainment. “A good story is a good story, no matter what it’s about.”
“Producers complain of low picture grosses today. Films have had such cycles before. I honestly don’t believe that the radio and the motor car have robbed us of the public’s attention. In the old days the bicycle, vaudeville, and the stage were still competition. When a picture comes along that is good enough to arouse comment people will rush to see it, depression or no depression. Pictures need more actual backgrounds, less process work which lends an air of unreality. The audience must believe what it is seeing. And the picture business needs more young blood, youngsters with a sense of adventure and the spirit of experiment.”
The telephone rang. Griffith answered. “It’s the projection room. They’re going to run Topper Takes a Trip for me. Guess they’d like me to take a look at what present-day screen magic is like.” We walked down the stairs together; shook hands.
Griffith continued to the projection room. His head was bent forward, his shoulders were bowed, the spring gone from his step. The studios of today are vastly different from those of the ’teens and twenties. The come-back trail is a difficult road to ascend. Particularly when one has been a god.
1. Developed by Orlando E. Kellum in 1913; Griffith’s introduction to Dream Street is preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.