CHAPTER XXIIITHE FIRST TWO-REELER
Thoughthe licensed picture companies—The General Film Group—kept a watchful eye on one another, each had pride in its own trademark and was satisfied with the little company of actors bringing it recognition.
But the independent companies, now beginning to loom on the horizon, were looking with envying eyes on the rich harvest the licensed companies were reaping, and they figured that all they’d need, to do as well, would be some of their well-trained actors, especially those of Mr. Griffith’s quite famous little organization. Surely D. W. Griffith had less to do with Mary Pickford’s success than Mary Pickford herself! She it was the public came to see; so they were out, red-hot for Mary, and offering publicity and more money. The little war was started.
Actors in the companies that comprised the General Film Company could not be bargained for except by the Independents. For instance, if an actor of the Biograph Company were discovered offering his services to Lubin or Edison or any of the General Film, that company promptly reported the matter to Biograph and the ambitious actor found himself not only turned down by Edison or Lubin or any other but his nice little Biograph job would be gone as well. That had happened to Harry Salter and FlorenceLawrence. An actor in one of the General Film group would have to resign his job before he could open negotiations with any other company in that group.
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We did grind out the work this fall and early winter. The promise of California again was a big incentive. We might stay longer and have a new studio, a regular place.
While there was no more excitement pervading the studio than there had been the year before, a more general willingness was noticed among the leading people and more tears and anguish on the part of the beseeching extras. Jeanie Macpherson sat on the steps leading to the basement of the studio, and cried, until Mr. Griffith felt remorseful and took her.
But such conduct hadn’t availed pink-cheeked lanky “Beau,” the year before, when he was the one property boy left behind. Then that unhappy youth’s tearful parting shot, “All I ask, Mr. Griffith, is that some day you take me to California,” kept intruding and spoiling the complete satisfaction of our days. Another year Mr. Griffith harkened to his pleading. For nearly ten years now “Beau” as William Beaudine has been directing pictures in Los Angeles.
And so, while some of the old guard would not be with us, a goodly number would.
To the “Imp” had gone Mary and Owen; and while Ma fussed terribly about it, there was nothing for her and Lottie and Jack to do but follow suit.
David Miles and Anita Hendry, his wife, were already with “Imp”; and they, with King Baggott and George Loane Tucker, Joe Smiley, Tom Ince, Hayward Mack, and Isabel Rae, made a fair number of capable people. Buteven so, Mary’s “Imp” pictures fell far short of her Biograph pictures, and she wasn’t very happy and she didn’t stay so very long.
As a member of the “Imp” Company, the silence and mystery that had surrounded her when with Biograph instantly vanished. She now received whole pages of advertising, for that was how the “Imp” would put the pictures over. One of her first Independent pictures was “The Dream” of which a reviewer said: “The picture got over on account of Miss Pickford. Our feelings were somewhat sentimental when we saw ‘Our Mary’ as a wife arrayed in evening gown and dining with swells. In other words, we have always considered Mary a child. It never occurred to us she might grow up and be a woman some day.”
Marion Leonard and Stanner E. V. Taylor had taken their departure. I believe it was Reliance-ward they went, as did Mr. Walthall, Mr. Kirkwood, and Arthur Johnson. Arthur had become not so dependable, and Mr. Griffith being unable to stand the worry of uncertain appearances, reluctantly parted with his most popular actor, and his first leading man. He never found any one to take his place exactly. For even so long ago, before he and Mr. Griffith parted, ’twas said of Arthur Johnson, “His face is better known than John Drew’s.”
Mary gone, Mr. Griffith located Blanche Sweet somewhere on the road and telegraphed an offer of forty dollars weekly to come with us to California, which Miss Sweet accepted. He was willing to take a chance on Blanche, being in need of a girl of her type. If she didn’t work out right (he hardly expected her to set the world a-fire) the loss would be small, as he was getting her so cheaply.
Wilfred Lucas also received a telegram; but his tenderlyimplored him to come for one hundred and fifty dollars—a staggering offer—the biggest to date. He also accepted.
Dell Henderson had been commissioned by Mr. Griffith to dispatch the Lucas-one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar telegram, and the high salary made him so sore that he promptly told it everywhere, causing jealous fits to break out all over the studio.
We had also in our California cast, Claire MacDowell, Stephanie Longfellow, Florence Barker, Florence LaBadie, Mabel Normand, Vivian Prescott, and Dorothy West for the more important parts; Grace Henderson, Kate Toncray, and Kate Bruce for the character parts; and little Gladys Egan for important child rôles. And of men—as memory serves me—there were Frank Powell, Edwin August, Dell Henderson, Charlie Craig, Mack Sennett, Joe Graybill, Charlie West, Donald Crisp, Guy Hedlund, Alfred Paget, Eddie and Jack Dillon, Spike Robinson, Frank Grandin, Tony O’Sullivan and “Big” Evans, and George Nichols.
And some wives: Mrs. Frank Powell, Mrs. Dell Henderson, Mrs. George Nichols, and Mrs. Billy Bitzer.
And one baby: Frank Baden Powell.
At Georgia and Girard Streets, Los Angeles, a ten-minute ride from the center of the city, on a two-and-a-quarter-acre plot adjoining some car barns, the carpenters were building our grand studio. An open air studio—no artificial lighting—we could get all the light effects we desired from the sun—and could begin to work as early as 8:30 and continue until late in the afternoon. We had not yet reached the stage where we felt that Mr. Electric Lamp could compete with the sun.
How joyful we were when we first beheld the new studio! The stage was of nice smooth boards and seemedalmost big enough for two companies to work at the same time. The muslin light diffusers were operated on an overhead trolley system. There was even a telephone on the stage. The studio was then indeed the last word in modern equipment.
An elongated one-story building contained the office, projection room, rehearsal room, for nights and rainy days, and two large dressing-rooms for the men. In order to save wear and tear on the women’s clothes, they were given the two dressing-rooms in the rear of the building which opened directly onto the stage.
To tell the world how secure our position—how prosperous financially—at the street entrance to our studio there now waited through the day one, and often two big, black seven-passenger touring cars—rented by the month, at six hundred dollars per. Now between sets in the studio we could dash out in the car and grab an exterior.
In our dressing-rooms we had make-up tables, mirrors, lockers, and running water. And oil stoves to keep us warm. For in the early mornings, before the sun had reached our room, it was a shivery place. Our cold cream and grease paints would be quite as stiff as our fingers.
So now, with the new studio, a larger company, and our knowledge of the surrounding country, there was nothing to it but that we must get right on the job and do better and bigger pictures.
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With the one exception already noted we had neglected the sea the year before, and as yet we had attempted nothing important that had to do with “Ol’ davil Sea,” as Eugene O’Neil calls it. The sea was trickier than the mountains, and more expensive if one needed boats and things. Butthis year we would go to it right, with a massive production of Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden”—a second production of the poem that had written history for us in our screen beginnings.
The first time we had taken most of it in the studio, with only one or two simple shots of the sea. Now we would do something g-r-a-n-d. “Enoch Arden” was such good movie stuff, and Mr. Griffith was wondering how he could get it all into one thousand feet of film.
An exhibitor in those days would accept eleven hundred feet of film, but that was the limit. The programs were arranged only for the thousand-foot picture; a thousand-foot Biograph being shown Mondays and Thursdays. How could two thousand feet be shown on Monday and none on Thursday? Even could the exhibitor have so arranged it, would the people sit through two thousand feet without a break?
Well, now, we could do this: we could take the picture in two reels, each of a thousand feet, show one reel Monday, the second Thursday, and take a chance on the people becoming sufficiently interested in the first reel to come back for the second—the only logical way of working out the problem. Mr. Griffith fully realized his responsibility. Again he would chance it.
Santa Monica would be the ideal place for this big production; so every day for a week—for a whole week was given to exteriors alone—we motored out to Santa Monica in the cold early morning.
The place had changed little in the year that had passed. The row of tiny shacks was now occupied by Japs and Norwegians who caught and dried fish and fought with each other at all other times.
One friendly Norwegian loaned his shack as a dressing-room for the women. We “shot” the same shack for Annie’s bridal home. The men made up in a stranded horse car of bygone vintage that had been anchored in the sand. We sent out an S. O. S. for a sailing vessel of Enoch’s day, and we heard of one, and had it towed up from San Pedro. What would we do next?
We did “Enoch Arden” in two reels. Wilfred Lucas played Enoch; Frank Grandin, Philip; and I played Annie Lee. Well, Jeanie Macpherson said I had “sea eyes,” whatever that meant.
Mrs. Grace Henderson kept the Inn to which Enoch returns; Annie’s and Enoch’s babies grew up to be Florence LaBadie and Bobbie Harron (one of Bobbie’s first parts), and Jeanie Macpherson powdered her hair and played nurse to the little baby that later came to Philip and Annie.
George Nichols departed via the Owl for San Francisco to get the costumes from Goldstein & Company. There was so little to be had in costumes in Los Angeles. Mr. Nichols had also journeyed to San Francisco for costumes for “Ramona” the year before.
The exhibitors said they would accept “Enoch Arden” in the two reels, show the first on Monday, and the second reel Thursday. And so it was first shown. And those who saw the first reel came back in all eagerness to see the second half. And that was that.
The picture was so great a success, however, that it was soon being shown as a unit in picture houses; also in high schools and clubs, accompanied by a lecturer. And so “Enoch Arden” wrote another chapter of screen history.
Sustained by its success Mr. Griffith listened to the call of the desert. With two thousand feet of celluloid to recorda story, he felt he now could do something with prairie schooners, pioneers, and redskins, and so he answered the desert call with a big epic of pioneer romance, “The Last Drop of Water.”
We set up camp in the San Fernando desert—two huge tents, one for mess, with a cook and assistants who served chow to the cowboys and extra men. Two rows of tables, planks set on wooden horses, ran the length of the tent—there must have been at least fifty cowboys and riders to be fed hearty meals three times a day. The other tent contained trunks and wardrobe baskets, and here the boys slept and made up.
The hotel in the village of San Fernando, three miles or so from the camp, accommodated the regular members of the company and all the extra women, to whom the director, as he dashed off for his camp in the morning, gave this parting advice, “Girls, stay together when you’re not busy, for you’re likely to hear some pretty rough stuff if you don’t.”
Prairie schooners to the number of eight made up our desert caravan, and there were the horses for the covered wagons, the United States soldiers, and the Indians; dogs, chickens, and a cow; for this restless element from a Mississippi town, making the trek across the land of the buffalo and the Indian to gather gold nuggets in the hills of California, brought with them as many familiar touches from their deserted homes as they reckoned would survive the trip.
Of course, conflicts with Indians, and the elements, resulted in a gradual elimination of the home touches and disintegration of the caravan, but there was a final triumphant arrival at their destination for the few survivors.
The picture was expensive, but quite worth it; we were at least headed the right way, in those crude days of our beginnings. We were dealing in things vital in our American life, and not one bit interested in close-ups of empty-headed little ingénues with adenoids, bedroom windows, manhandling of young girls, fast sets, perfumed bathrooms, or nude youths heaving their muscles. Sex, as portrayed in the commercial film of to-day, was noticeable by its absence. But if, to-day, the production of clean and artistic pictures does not induce the dear public to part with the necessary spondulics so that the producer can pay his rent, buy an occasional meal and a new lining for the old winter overcoat, then even Mr. Griffith must give the dear public what it wants. And for the past year or two it has apparently wanted picturizations daring as near as possible the most intimate intimacy of the bedroom.
The season closed with another “Covered Wagon” masterpiece called “Crossing the American Prairies in the Early Fifties.” The picture was taken at Topango Canyon. There were hundreds of men and women and cowboys and a hundred horses from ranches near by, as well as eleven prairie schooners.
Linda Griffith and Mr. MacKay in “Mission Bells,” a Kinemacolor picture play taken at San Juan Capistrano.(Seep. 162)
Linda Griffith and Mr. MacKay in “Mission Bells,” a Kinemacolor picture play taken at San Juan Capistrano.(Seep. 162)
Linda Griffith and Mr. MacKay in “Mission Bells,” a Kinemacolor picture play taken at San Juan Capistrano.
(Seep. 162)
In the picture, guards had been posted at night, but being tired, they fell asleep, so the Indians pounced upon the emigrants, slaughtering some and taking some prisoners, to be burned at the stake. The few survivors who escaped left numbers of dead pioneers behind. The shifting desert sands would soon cover the bodies and remove all trace of the massacre. The dead bodies were represented by the living bodies of members of the company who had to be buried deep in the alkali waste; and the getting covered up was going to be a dirty job for the living corpses. So those scenes had to be taken last.
A rain effect of early days at Kinemacolor’s Los Angeles studio, known a year later as the Fine Arts Studio, where “The Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance” were filmed. From “The House That Jack Built,” with Jack Brammall and Linda Griffith.(Seep. 245)
A rain effect of early days at Kinemacolor’s Los Angeles studio, known a year later as the Fine Arts Studio, where “The Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance” were filmed. From “The House That Jack Built,” with Jack Brammall and Linda Griffith.(Seep. 245)
A rain effect of early days at Kinemacolor’s Los Angeles studio, known a year later as the Fine Arts Studio, where “The Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance” were filmed. From “The House That Jack Built,” with Jack Brammall and Linda Griffith.
(Seep. 245)
Little grains of sand gently falling upon one from out the property boys’ cornucopias, while unpleasant, could be silently endured; but when the property boys got the storm really started and the sand was being poured upon one thick and heavy, getting into hair and ears and eyes, no matter how protective the position one had assumed, there were heard smothered oaths from the dead people that no wild cowboy had ever excelled.
Dell Henderson, dying with little old Christie Miller, was all humped up and writhing in the desert sands. And while Dell was just about to be featured as the far-famed gambler of the West in a line of showy parts, and while he felt that Mr. Griffith had a friendly feeling for him, his ardor for his movie job was beginning to cool. And when, after being extricated from his earthy grave, he found the boss, he lost all restraint.
“Old man,” said Dell to David, “this is too much, I quit pictures, I’m through.” But the next day when all bathed and barbered up, he felt differently about it.
But Dell hadn’t had it as rough as the atmospheric members of the company. Even the wives had been called upon for atmosphere, and were to make up and dress as men. They didn’t like the old trousers and the greasy felt hats that were passed out to them, and they weren’t keen on being recognized on the screen, in the unflattering costumes.
So Mr. Griffith compromised: “All right, I’ll put you in the background and you can sit down.” At that the women became more amiable and agreed to help out theperspective. And in the last few hundred feet of the second reel, they joined the dead emigrants and were covered up in the whirlwind.
The final scenes were reserved for the days immediately preceding our departure for the East. As soon as they were taken, the company would be dismissed to make the necessary preparations prior to leave-taking. So to their pet establishment the women beat it to have their hair beautifully and expensively washed and lemon-rinsed, and were all in readiness for the California Limited, when a re-take was announced. Static in the film!
To their burial places once more they were rushed, and again the boys stood by and again poured the cornucopias of sand over them, ruining completely the crop of nice clean heads. Few got a chance at another fashionable shampoo. The majority had to be contented with just a home wash—or to take the sand along with them.