CHAPTER XIIIAT THE STUDIO
Thisstory must now take itself indoors. We are terribly excited over Tolstoy’s “Resurrection.” So even though it be May, we must to the studio where the carpenters and scene painters are fixing us a Siberia.
As the days went by we produced many works of literary masters—Dickens, Scott, Shakespeare, Bret Harte, O. Henry, and Frank Norris. We never bothered about “rights” for the little one-reel versions of five-act plays and eight hundred page novels. Authors and publishers were quite unaware of our existence.
Arthur Johnson, Owen Moore, and Florence Lawrence played the leading parts in our “free adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Powerful Novel.” And it so happened that just as Prince Demetri was ready to don his fur robes, and the poor exiles their woolen slips, for the trudge over the snow-clad steppes, a nice hot spell came our way, and we must have been the hottest Russians that ever endured Siberia.
Owen Moore got so querulous with the heat—he was playing one of those handsome, cruel officers who poke bayonets at the innocent and well-behaved exiles—that he nearly killed us throwing tables and heavy furniture at us. I objected to the realism. We were all a bit peevish, what with the unseasonable heat and the last moment discovery that the costumer had sent our wrapper-like dresses in sizes miles too large.
The scene being set and rehearsals finished, there were left just the few moments while the property man added the finishing touches to the salt and flour snow (we had graduated from sawdust), to make the costumes wearable. So another girl and I grabbed the lot and rushed into a little Polish tailor shop in the basement next door and borrowed the Polish tailor’s sewing machines so that we could put in the necessary hems and pleats. Zip went the sewing machines—there was no time to lose—for we could not afford two days of Russian exiles at three dollars per day.
Nine o’clock was the morning hour of bustle and busyness at 11 East Fourteenth Street. But the actors in their eagerness to work were on the job long before nine sometimes. They straggled along from all directions. They even came by the horse-drawn surface car whose obliging and curious conductors stopped directly in front of No. 11.
And so curious became one conductor that he was not able to stand the strain, and he quit his job of jerking Bessie’s reins, and got himself a job as “extra.” Although the conductor’s identity was never fully established, we had strong suspicions that it was Henry Lehrman, an extra who had managed in a very short time to get himself called Pathé, which was good for an Austrian.
“Actors”—graduates from various trades and professions of uncertain standing, and actors without acting jobs, lounged all over the place, from the street steps where they basked on mild, sunny days, into the shady hall where they kept cool on hot days; and had they made acquaintance with studio life, they could be found in the privacy of the men’s one dressing-room shooting craps—the pastime during the waiting hours.
An especially busy hour 9A.M.when we were to start on a new picture. What kind of a picture was it to be? The air was full of expectancy. Who would be cast for the leads? How keen we were to work! How we hoped for a good part—then for any kind of a part—then for only a chance to rehearse a part. In their eagerness to get a good part in a movie, the actors behaved like hungry chickens being fed nice, yellow corn, knocking and trampling each other in their mad scramble for the best bits.
This Mr. Griffith did enjoy. He would draw his chair up center, and leisurely, and in a rather teasing way, look the company over. And when you were being looked at you thought, “Ah, it’s going to be me.” But in a few minutes some one else would be looked at. “No, it was going to be he.” A long look at Owen, a long look at Charlie, a long look at Arthur, and then the director would speak: “Arthur, I’ll try you first.” One by one, in the same way the company would be picked. There would be a few rough rehearsals; some one wouldn’t suit; the chief would decide the part was more in Owen’s line. Such nervousness until we got all set!
Indeed, we put forth our best efforts. There was too much competition and no one had a cinch on a line of good parts. When we did “The Cricket on the Hearth,” Mr. Griffith rehearsed all his women in the part ofDot, Marion Leonard, Florence Lawrence, Violet Merserau, and then he was nice to me. Miss Merserau, however, portrayedMay Plummer—making her movie début. Herbert Pryor playedJohn Perrybingle, and Owen Moore,Edward Plummer.
Sometimes after rehearsing a story all day our director would chuck it as “no good” and begin on another. Henever used a script and he rehearsed in sequence the scenes of every story until each scene dovetailed smoothly, and the acting was O. K. He worked out his story using his actors as chessmen. He knew what he wanted and the camera never began to grind until every little detail satisfied him.
There was some incentive for an actor to do his best. More was asked of us than to be just a “type,” and the women couldn’t get by with just “pretty looks.” We worked hard, but we liked it. With equal grace we all played leads one day and decorated the back drop the next. On a day when there would be no work whatever for you, you’d reluctantly depart. Sometimes Mr. Griffith almost had to drive the non-working actors out of the studio. The place was small and he needed room.
Sometimes when rehearsing a picture he liked a lot, it would be as late as 3P.M.before a fainting, lunchless lot of actors would hear those welcome words, “All right, everybody, get your lunches and make up.” Then Bobbie Harron would circulate the Childs’ menu card and the thirty-cent allotment would be checked off. Roast beef or a ham-and-egg sandwich, pie, tea, coffee, or milk usually nourished us. And it was a funny thing, that no matter how rich one was, or how one might have longed for something different, even might have been ill and needed something special, none of us ever dreamed of spending a nickel of his own.
While the actors ate and made up, and the carpenters were getting the set ready, Mr. Griffith, accompanied by three or four or five or six actors not on the working list that afternoon, would depart for a restaurant near by. But no woman was ever invited to these parties. This social arrangement obtained only on days when a new picture wasto be got under way. David Griffith was a generous host, but he always got a good return on his investment. For while being strengthened on luscious steak, steins of Pilsener, and fluffy German pancakes all done up in gobs of melted butter, lemon juice, and powdered sugar, ideas would sprout, and comments and suggestions come freely from the Knights of Lüchow’s Round Table, and when the party was over they returned to the studio all happy, and the director ready for a big day’s work.
But the other actors, now made up and costumed but fed only on sandwiches, were wearing expressions of envy and reproach which made the returning jolly dogs feel a trifle uncomfortable.
“Well, let’s get busy around here—wasting a hell of a lot of time—six o’clock already—have to work all night now—now come on, we’ll run through it—show me what you can do—Bitzer, where do you want them? Come in and watch this, Doc.” Mr. Griffith was back on the job all right.
One such rehearsal usually sufficed. Then Johnny Mahr with his five-foot board would get the focus and mark little chalk crosses on the floor, usually four, two for the foreground and two for the background. Then Johnny would hammer a nail into each cross and with his ball of twine, tying it from nail to nail, enclose the set. Now a rehearsal for “lines.” And when Bitzer would say it was O. K. and Doc beamed his round Irish smile, we would take the picture, and God help the actor who looked at the camera or at the director when he was shouting instructions while the scene was being photographed.
The old ways of doing were being revolutionized day by day with the introduction of the close-up, switchback,light effects, and screen acting that could be recognized as a portrayal of human conduct. Exhibitors soon began clamoring for A. B. pictures, not only for the U. S. A. but for foreign countries as well; and as Mr. Griffith had a commission on every foot of film sold, it was an easy matter for us to judge our ever-increasing popularity.
The Biograph Company readily acknowledged its young director’s achievements, and the other companies soon took cognizance of a new and keen competitor. The first metropolitan showings began a rivalry with the other companies. Once in the race, we were there to win—and we did. Biograph pictures came to mean something just a little different from what had been. There was a sure artistic touch to them; the fine shadings were there that mark the line between talent and genius.
David Griffith had found his place; found it long before he knew it. In ways, it was a congenial berth. Mr. Marvin, once he saw how the wind blew, seldom came into the studio. He was willing to let the new producer work things out his own way. An occasional conference there was, necessarily—a friendly chat as to how things were coming along.
Mr. Marvin was tall and dark, quite a handsome man—so approachable. The actors felt quite at ease with him. Had he not been one of us? Had he not directed even Mr. Griffith in a penny-in-the-slot movie? Years later I recalled the incident to Mr. Marvin. He had forgotten it completely, but with a hearty laugh said: “No did I really? Well, God forgive me.”
“God forgive us all,” I answered.
Liking Mr. Marvin as we did, we did not quite understand or approve the sudden, unexpected intrusion of Mr. J. J. Kennedy, one day.
“Oh, ourpresident? Why, do you suppose,” the anxious actors queried, “he’s become suddenly so interested?” What could poor movie actors be expected to know of politics and high finance? Everything had been so pleasant, we couldn’t understand it. We were rather awed by Mr. Kennedy at first. Red-headed, pugnacious Irish Jeremiah—why, he never gave an actor a smile or the faintest recognition, and feeling ourselves such poor worms, as a result, we became nothing less than Sphinxes whenever his rare but awe-inspiring presence graced the studio.
But we soon learned that “fighting J. J.” was of some importance in this movie business. And other things about him we learned: that he was a big man in the world of engineering—a millionaire who lived in a lovely brownstone in Brooklyn. We soon discovered he was human, too.
It seemed Mr. Kennedy had had his affairs all settled to retire from the world of business activities, when, in the critical days resulting from the 1907 panic, he stepped into the breach and saved from impending disaster the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
The little A. M. and B. Co. would have been terribly surprised had she been told that she was to become the organization that would develop some of the greatest of motion picture directors and stars—the Augustin Daly stock company of the movies. For while there is never the grind of its preposterous old camera to be heard in the length of the land to-day, while for years (at the time of writing this, nearly ten) all its wheels of activity have been silent, “The Old Biograph” remains as the most romantic memory, the most vital force in the early history of the American motion picture.
The association with these two scholarly gentlemenMessrs. Kennedy and Marvin, unusual then as to-day in the picture business, helped to soften the crudities of the work, and tone down the apparent rough edges of our job. So considerate of our tender feelings were both Mr. Marvin and Mr. Kennedy, that when either desired to visit or bring interested friends into the studio, they would ask Mr. Griffith for a propitious moment, and then stand off in the background as though apologizing for the intrusion.
Mr. Griffith, but not by way of retaliation, had reason to make intrusions on his bosses. He went pleading the cause of better screen stories. For that was the ticklish point—to raise our artistic standard—not to depart too rapidly from the accepted—and to keep our product commercial.
David Griffith began feeling his wings. He dared to consider a production of Browning’s “Pippa Passes.” If just once he could do something radical to make the indifferent legitimate actors, critics, writers, and a better class of public take cognizance of us! So there resulted long discussions with the Biograph executives as to the advisability of Browning in moving pictures, and after much persuasion consent was eventually granted.
There was no question in our minds as to whether “Pippa Passes” would be an artistic success. Had this classic writer fashioned his famous poem directly for the movies he couldn’t have turned out a better screen subject. But might not the bare idea of the high-brow Robert scare away the moving picture public?
In those days there were several kinds of motion picture publics. In sections of New York City, there was the dirty, dark little store, a sheet at one end and the projection machine at the other. It took courage to sit through ashow in such a place, for one seldom escaped without some weary soul finding a shoulder the while he indulged in forty winks. Besides this there were the better-known Keith and Proctor Theatres on Fourteenth Street, Twenty-third, and 125th Street, the Fourteenth Street Theatre, and the old Academy of Music.
In the smaller American cities, the motion picture public was of middle-class homey folks who washed their own supper dishes in a hurry so as to see the new movie, and to meet their neighbors who, like themselves, dashed hatless to the nickelodeon, dragging along with them the children and the dog.
Things like this happened, when dinner hour was approaching, and mother was anxiously awaiting her child: the neighborhood policeman would casually saunter over to the picture house, poke his head in at the door, spy the wanted child, tap her little shoulder, gently reproving: “Jennie, your mother wants you”—whereupon Jennie would reluctantly tear herself away so that the family could all sit down together to their pot-roast and noodles.
Yes, Browning would need courage.
“Pippa Passes” being ever in Mr. Griffith’s mind these days, he scanned each new face in the studio as he mulled over the needed characters. The cast would be the best possible one he could get together.