From the Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1944, 9. Copyright © 1944, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted with Permission.
“Winston Churchill and the late Gabriel D’Annunzio are the smartest scenario writers I ever met,” said David Wark Griffith, producer of [The] Birth of a Nation and other cinema classics in an interview yesterday at the Roosevelt Hollywood [Hotel], at which he and Mrs. Griffith are guests.
“Unfortunately, I could not produce either the story outlined to me by Mr. Churchill in 1917, nor the one offered by the Italian poet,” said Mr. Griffith. “Their production would have cost more money than I had at the time. Besides, Churchill’s story contained too much thought, while D’Annunzio, then in his sixties, wanted to act the hero in his play.”
Looking almost as young as he did when he was producing his spectacular silent dramas here thirty years ago, Mr. Griffith, who, incidentally, produced the first sound film ever made in New York, has come to Los Angeles to live “the next half century of my life.”
Mr. Griffith has not lived in Los Angeles for the past “ten or twelve years, although I visited here four years ago,” he said. “I haven’t had any permanent home during that time but have been traveling around the country. You see,” he added, “I like to travel.”
“How old are you now, Mr. Griffith?”
“Same age as Douglas MacArthur,” he replied. “One of my aunts lived to be 112, and an uncle topped a hundred years, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t stick around another fifty years. Poor old uncle! An irreconcilable Southern gentleman! He has never written to me since I produced Abraham Lincoln …”
“To what do you attribute your health, Mr. Griffith?”
“‘The good die young, while those whose hearts are dry as summer’s dust burn in the socket,’” quoted the dean of producers. “Seriously, one secret is maintaining an interest in life, developing the capacity to live in the past, the present, and the future. My main object just now is to finish a novel I began when I was eighteen. On the side I hope to write a few plays.”
“What about motion pictures of tomorrow?”
“They’ll continue to be bad,” he answered laughing. “Oh, perhaps, they’ll make a few good ones,”
“What is a good picture?”
“One that makes the public forget its troubles,” he replied. “Also, a good picture tends to make folks think a little, without letting them suspect that they are being inspired to think. In one respect, nearly all pictures are good in that they show the triumph of good over evil.”
“How about war— when will it end?” asked the interviewer.
“If I were the Almighty I might be able to tell you— but probably wouldn’t,” said Mr. Griffith. “Of course this war will end, but wars never will cease until human beings change their dispositions.”
“And when will that be?”
“Perhaps within the next twenty thousand years,” he said. “Don’t be impatient. Humanity has only been civilized or half civilized for about five thousand years. We’re still infants, morally and spiritually. Give the poor human race a little time.”