CHAPTER XVACQUIRING ACTORS AND STYLE
Throughconflicting emotions and varying decisions and an ever-increasing interest and faith in the new work, Biograph’s first movie actors stuck. With Mary Pickford pictures winning favor, David Griffith became ambitious for new talent, and as the right sort didn’t come seeking,hedecided to go seeking. He’d dash out of the studio while the carpenters were putting up a new set, jump into a taxi, call at the different dramatic agencies, and ask had they any actors who might like to work in moving pictures at ten dollars a day!
At one of these agencies—Paul Scott’s—he arrived just as a good-looking manly sort of chap was about to leave.
“That’s the type I want.”
Mr. Scott replied, “Well, I’ll introduce you.”
Mr. Griffith lost no time in telling the personable Frank Powell about the movies, and offering the new salary, secured his services.
With his fair bride, Eleanor Hicks, who had been playing “leads” with Ellen Terry, while he stage managed, Mr. Powell had just returned from England. But Miss Terry and London triumphs were now of the past, and Mr. Powell was glad enough to end the tiresome hunt for a job, and his temporary money worries by becoming the first actor to be engaged by Mr. Griffith at the fancy price of ten dollars a day. Mr. Powell was well worth the ten for he had good presence, clean-cut features, and wore goodclothes. He became our leading aristocrat, specializing in brokers, bankers, and doctors—the cultured professional man. David soon saw that he could take over little responsibilities and relieve him of many irksome details not concerned with the dramatic end. So he became the first assistant, and then a director of comedies—the first—under Mr. Griffith’s supervision.
In time he went with William Fox as director. He discovered the screen’s first famous vamp, Theda Bara. Against Mr. Fox’s protests—for Mr. Fox wanted a well-known movie player—Frank Powell selected the unknown Theda from among the extras to play Mr. Kipling’s famous lady in “A Fool There Was,” because she was a strange-looking person who wore queer earrings and dresses made of odd tapestry cloths. The picture made William Fox his first big money in the movies, and established his place in the motion picture world.
“His Duty” was Frank Powell’s first picture. In the cast were Owen Moore and Kate Bruce. “The Cardinal’s Conspiracy”—the name we gave to “Richelieu”—marked Mr. Powell’s first important screen characterization. It was taken at Greenwich, Connecticut, on Commodore Benedict’s magnificent estate,Indian Harbor. Soon came “The Broken Locket” which had a nice part for Kate Bruce.
Fortunate “Brucie,” as her confrères call her! She seems never to have had to hunt a job since that long ago day when D. W. Griffith picked her as a member of the old Biograph Stock Company. Little bits or big parts mattered nothing to “Brucie” as long as she was working with us.
David hunted movie recruits not only at the dramatic agencies, but also at the Lambs and Players Clubs of New York City. It was at the Lambs he found James Kirkwood,and determined right off to get him down to the studio. He had to be subtle. He never knew what mighty indignation might be hurled at him for simply suggesting “movie acting” to a legitimate actor. But Jim Kirkwood made good his promise to come, and no effort was spared to make the visit both pleasant and impressive.
I always thought we were a rather well-behaved lot—there was rather strict discipline maintained at all times. But on this occasion we old troupers were told to “sit pretty,” to be quiet and stay in the dressing-room if there were no scenes being taken in which we were working, and if we were called upon to work, to please just “work” and not be sociable. Our director seemed to be somewhat ashamed of his faithful old crew. So the studio remained hushed and awed—a solemn dignity pervaded it. In the dressing-room, those who didn’t know what was going on said, “Why are you all so quiet?”
“Oh, don’t you know?” we sang in unison. “There’s a Broadway actor out there, from theHenry Miller Company.”
“Oh, you don’t say so!”
The effect was funniest on Mack Sennett. He wore a satirical smile that spoke volumes. For he had divined that these “up-stage” new actors were to get more than five per day; besides, he was getting few enough parts as things were, now wherewouldhe be?
“Lord Jim” was certainly treated with great deference. He was shown several scenes “in the taking,” and then escorted upstairs to see some of Mary Pickford’s pictures. The Cook’s tour over, Mr. Kirkwood agreed to appear in the movies.
A slow, easy manner had Jim Kirkwood, which withunderlying strength made for good screen technique. Early June was the time of his first release, “The Message,” in which picture asDavid Williamshe portrayed the honest, big-hearted farmer. Mr. Kirkwood, the diamond-in-the-rough type, was honest and big-hearted through all his movie career. He was the heroic Indian, as in “Comata, the Sioux”; the brave fisherman as in “Lines of White on a Sullen Sea”—the latter one of Stanner E. V. Taylor’s early classic efforts which was taken in the little fishing village of Galilee in October, 1909.
Harriet Quimby, now established as a journalist, came down to visit. Thought it would be good fun to act in a scene, so she played a village fishermaiden and thus qualified as a picture actress for her other more thrilling performance two years later. I was with her that time, on the flying field at Dover, where Bleriot had landed on the very first Channel crossing, and where she was to “take off” for France. Gaumont took a five-hundred-foot picture of the flight, titling it “The English Channel Flown by aLady Aviatorfor the First Time.”
The day Harriet Quimby flew the English Channel brought sad news to the world, for that appalling disaster—the sinking of theTitanic—occurred. It also brought a personal sadness to the Biograph, for Mr. Marvin’s youngest son, who was returning from his honeymoon, was lost. Before the happy couple had sailed, a moving picture of the wedding had been taken in the studio.
It was not long after his initiation that Mr. Kirkwood brought a fellow Lamb, Mr. Walthall, to the studio. He had been one of the three “bad men” with Mr. Kirkwood in “The Great Divide,” which play had just finished its New York run.Mr. Griffith, an Italian costume picture on the ways, was snooping around for an actor who not only could look but also act an Italian troubadour. When he met Henry Walthall of the dark, curly hair, the brown eyes, the graceful carriage, he rested content. “The Sealed Room” was the name of the screened emotion that put Mr. Walthall over in the movies. Wally’s acting proved to be the most convincing of its type so far. He was very handsome in his silk and velvet, and gold trappings, with a bejeweled chain around his neck, and a most adorable little mustache.
It was foreordained that the Civil War should have a hearing very soon. There was Kentucky, David Griffith’s birth state, calling, and there in our midst was the ideal southerner, Henry Walthall. And so after a few weeks the first “Stirring Episode of the Civil War”—a little movie named “In Old Kentucky”—was rushed along. In the picture were Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, Kate Bruce, and many lesser lights. It was a long time back that Mr. Walthall started on his career of “Little Colonels.” He portrayed many before he climaxed them with his great “Little Colonel” in “The Birth of a Nation!”
A remarkable trio—Frank Powell, Jim Kirkwood, and Henry Walthall—such distinct types. Though they all owned well-tailored dress suits, Frank Powell’s was featured most often. Henry Walthall, suggestive of romance, had fewer opportunities; and rugged Jim Kirkwood only occasionally was permitted to don his own soup-and-fish and look distingué.
With the acquisition of the ten-dollar-a-day actor, we seemed to acquire a new dignity. No doubt about recruits fresh from Broadway lending tone—although the original five-per-day actors, who were still getting the same old five,looked with varying feelings of resentment and delight at their entrance. We old ones figured that for all our faithfulness and hard work, we might have been raised right off to ten dollars, too. But at least there was hope in that ten per—the proposition looked better now with salaries going up, and actors coming to stay, and willing to forego the dazzling footlights and the sweet applause of the audience.
Having reached ten-dollars-a-day, it didn’t take so long to climb to twenty—undreamed extravagance—but good advertising along the Rialto and at the Lambs Club. “Twenty dollars a day? It listens well—the movies must have financial standing, anyway,” the legitimate concluded.
Occasionally, Frank Craven, since famous as the author of many successful Broadway plays, came down and watched pictures being made. While he personally didn’t care about the movies, through him Jack Standing came down and jobbed at twenty per. Through friendship for Mr. and Mrs. Frank Powell, with whom he had acted in Ellen Terry’s company, David Powell entered the fold for twenty per. Even though money tempted, the high-class actor came more readily through friendship for some one already “in” than as a cold business proposition. Our movie money was talking just the same.
But hard as it was to get men, it was much harder to get women. They would not leave that “drammer” (how they loved it!) to work in a dingy studio with no footlights, no admiring audience to applaud them, and no pretty make-ups.
Only occasionally did I accompany my husband on a tour of the dramatic agencies, for our manner to each other was still a most unmarried one. I’d wait in the taxi whilehe went up to the different offices to see if he could entice some fair feminine. But, after each visit, back he’d plump into the taxi so distressed, “I can get men, but I cannot get women; they simply won’t come.”
Well, if he couldn’t lure ladies from the agencies, he’d grab them off the street. With Austin Webb, an actor friend who has since left the stage for promotion of oil and skyscrapers, he was strolling along Broadway one day when a little black-haired girl passed by accompanied by her mother.
“Now that’s the kind of girl I’m looking for,” said Mr. Griffith.
Mr. Webb answered: “Well, why not speak to her? She’s an actress, you can bet your hat on that.”
But the movie director having a certain position to maintain, and not wanting to be misunderstood, hesitated. Mr. Webb volunteered, stepped up to and asked the girl would she like to work in a moving picture. Prompt her reply, “Oh, I’d love to, I just love pictures.” The “girl” was Marion Sunshine of the then vaudeville team of Sunshine and Tempest. She was quite a famous personality to be in Biograph movies at this time.
Now Austin Webb, who during David Griffith’s movie acting days had loaned him his own grand wardrobe, was one who might have become a big movie star. David implored him to try it, but he was skeptical. It took sporting blood to plunge moviewards in the crude days of our beginnings. Who could tell which way the thing would flop?