1. Crofts, "Authorship and Hollywood," p. 17.

2. Ibid.

3. Griffith, "Pictures vs. One-Night Stands," p. 447.

4. Letter from Marshall Neilan to Barnett Braverman, April 19, 1944, in the Barnett Braverman Research Collection of the David W. Griffith Papers at the Museum of Modern Art (henceforth, Braverman-DWG Papers). Braverman was a journalist who devoted many years of his life to researching a never-completed biography of Griffith. His notes, deposited in the Griffith collection at the Museum of Modern Art, contain many letters from and interviews with those associated with Griffith during the Biograph years. The notes are disorganized, making accurate attribution of quotes diffi- soft

cult. In addition, it is hard to be sure whether Braverman is quoting verbatim or paraphrasing, and whether the quotations are from interview notes or written correspondence. I have nonetheless relied heavily on Braverman's notes, since they constitute much of the surviving evidence about Griffith at Biograph.

5. Merritt, "Rescued from a Perilous Nest," pp. 2-30. George Pratt contributed to a chronology of Griffith's career, which appears as an appendix.

6. Ibid., p. 3.

7. Boston Transcript , May 8, 1906, in the Nance O'Neil Clipping File, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (henceforth, O'Neil-NYPLPA).

8. Boston Transcript , 1904, O'Neil-NYPLPA.

9. Review of Magda , an English translation of the German playwright Hermann Suderman's Heimat. Evening Sun , May 23, 1904, in O'Neil-NYPLPA.

10. San Francisco Bulletin , September 20, 1898, in O'Neil-NYPLPA.

11. Goddard, "Some Players I Have Known," p. 238.

12. Boston Transcript , May 8, 1906, in O'Neil-NYPLPA.

13. David W. Griffith, "A Fool and a Girl," playscript in DWG Papers.

14. Publicity stills from "A Fool and a Girl," NYPLPA.

15. Griffith may not, however, have employed precisely the same style in film as he did on the stage, especially since he always seems to have made a clear distinction between the two media.

16. Graham, et al., D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company , pp. 13-20.

17. Interview with Eddie Dillon, Braverman-DWG Papers.

18. Billy Bitzer, unpublished memoirs, in the DWG papers (henceforth, Bitzer-DWG Papers). A condensed version was eventually published as Billy Bitzer: His Story . Higgins, et al., list no film in which Griffith appeared as a bartender, providing us with another salutary warning about the accuracy of memoirs written decades after the event.

19. Bitzer, His Story , p. 69.

20. Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema , pp. 116-21.

21. Gunning, "D. W. Griffith and the Narrator System," pp. 93, 95.

22. Graham, et al., D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company , pp. 1-2.

23. Charles Musser, "Early Cinema and Its Modes of Production," paper presented at conference of the Society for Cinema Studies, Iowa City, Iowa, 1989, p. 3.

24. Ibid., p. 7.

25. Ibid., p. 8.

26. Ibid., pp. 10-11.

27. Lawrence, "Growing Up with the Movies," p. 96.

28. Henderson, David W. Griffith: The Years at Biograph , p. 34.

29. Linda Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young , pp. 108-9.

30. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , pp. 35-37.

31. Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young , pp. 66-67.

32. Interview with Stanner E. V. Taylor, Braverman-DWG Papers.

33. Frederick Jones Smith, "The Evolution of the Motion Picture: From the Stand- soft

point of the Scenario Editor," The New York Dramatic Mirror (henceforth, NYDM ), January 4, 1913, p. 25.

34. Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young , p. 218. Griffith married Linda Arvidson, an actress, before he began working at Biograph; she joined the Biograph troupe shortly after he did, before he had become a director. Reportedly, Griffith initially told her not to reveal their marriage, and she continued to use her birth name for professional purposes. They separated in 1911 and were formally divorced in 1936.

35. Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow , p. 119.

36. Stanner E. V. Taylor interview, Braverman-DWG papers.

37. Patrick Loughney, untitled presentation, University Interdisciplinary Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation in Columbia University, The Museum of Modern Art, May 12, 1982.

38. Patrick G. Loughney, "In The Beginning Was the Word: Six Pre-Griffith Motion Picture Scenarios," Iris 2:1 (1984), p. 18.

39. Gunning, "D. W. Griffith and the Narrator System," p. 631.

40. Tom Gunning agrees with this analysis and indicates that Jay Leyda had reached the same conclusion. Gunning, private communication.

41. Frank J. Marion and Wallace McCutcheon, The Nihilists (shot February 28, 1905), photocopy in possession of Patrick Loughney.

42. Edward W. Townsend, "Picture Plays," The Outlook , November 27, 1909, p. 706.

43. J. Sidney McSween, "Players of the Film Drama," The Theatre , October 1912, p. 113.

44. Townsend, "Picture Plays," p. 706.

45. Epes Winthrop Sergent, "The Technique of the Photoplay," The Moving Picture World , July 22, 1911, p. 108.

46. Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young , p. 31.

47. Ibid., pp. 92-93.

48. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 85.

49. Interview with Edwin August, Braverman-DWG Papers.

50. Interview with Lionel Barrymore, Braverman-DWG Papers.

51. In Bitzer-DWG Papers.

52. In a private communication, James Naremore has pointed out that Griffith's rehearsal methods bear a resemblance to Stanislavski's. But because Stanislavski, according to Naremore, was "not conscientiously studied in America until the late twenties" (Naremore, Acting in the Cinema , p. 52), there is no question of direct influence. Speculation about such parallel but unrelated developments, which requires greater knowledge of the Russian theatre than I possess, would be a fascinating research project for someone familiar with both Griffith and Stanislavski.

53. In Bitzer-DWG Papers.

54. Lawrence, "Growing Up with the Movies," p. 107.

55. Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow , pp. 114-15.

56. Frank Woods, "Spectator's Comments," NYDM , June 4, 1910, p. 12.

57. Interview with Mary Pickford, "Daily Talks," Philadelphia Telegraph , June 6, 1912, in Mary Pickford Clipping Files-NYPLPA.

58. Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young , p. 92.

59. Ibid.

60. Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow , pp. 143-44.

61. Edwin August interview, in Braverman-DWG Papers.

62. Karl Brown, Adventures with David W. Griffith , pp. 27-28.

63. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 85.

64. Letter from Mary Pickford to Barnett Braverman, June 18, 1943, Braverman-DWG Papers.

65. Marsh, Screen Acting , p. 115.

66. Interview with Claire McDowell, Braverman-DWG Papers.

67. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , pp. 95-96.

68. Interview with Blanche Sweet, in Rosenberg and Silverstein, eds., The Real Tinsel , p. 195.

69. Ibid.

70. Letter from Dorothy Bernard Van Buren to Barnett Braverman, October 10, 1944, in Braverman-DWG Papers.

71. Barrymore interview, in Braverman-DWG Papers.

72. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 85.

73. Bitzer, His Story , p. 75.

74. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 37.

75. Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young , p. 217.

76. McDowell interview, in Braverman-DWG Papers.

77. Loos, A Girl Like I , p. 80. I must remark that, having had the pleasure of seeing Blanche Sweet both on film and in person, I find it hard to imagine her being anyone's "passive instrument," even at the age of sixteen.

78. Interview with Christy Cabanne, Braverman-DWG Papers.

79. Mary Pickford to Samuel Goldwyn, Pictorial Review , March 1923, p. 7, quoted in Braverman-DWG papers.

80. Interview with Mae Marsh, in Rosenberg and Silverstein, The Real Tinsel , p. 211.

81. Colgate Baker, "David W. Griffith."

82. McDowell interview in Braverman-DWG Papers.

83. Henderson, David W. Griffith , pp. 73-74.

84. Interview with Lillian Gish, Reel I (Winter 1971), p. 10.

85. Marsh, Screen Acting , p. 117.

86. Brown, Adventures with Griffith , p. 15.

87. Gish interview, Reel I , p. 10.

88. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 87.

89. Blanche Sweet, personal conversation, April 12, 1983.

90. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 97.

91. Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow , pp. 124-25.

92. Interview with Raoul Walsh, Braverman-DWG Papers.

93. Linda Arvidson claims that the film was called The Dispatch Bearer ( When the Movies Were Young , pp. 58-59). The Vitagraph filmography in The Vitagraph Company of America: Il Cinema prima di Hollywood (Pordenone, Italy: Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1987) lists no film of that name made in 1908.

94. Lawrence, "Growing Up with the Movies," p. 99.

95. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , pp. 100-101.

96. Colgate Baker, "David W. Griffith."

97. Griffith, "What I Demand of Movie Stars," p. 40.

98. Ibid.

99. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 87.

100. Interview with Mae Marsh, in Braverman-DWG Papers.

101. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 97.

102. Edward Martin Woolley, "The Story of David W. Griffith: The $100,000 Salary Man of the Movies," McClure's , September 1914, DWG Clipping Files--NYPLPA.

103. Marsh, Screen Acting , p. 108.

104. Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me , p. 97.

105. Brown, Adventures with Griffith , pp. 115-20.

106. Griffith, "Movie Stars," p. 40.

107. Griffith, "What I Demand of Photoplay Stars," p. 6.

108. Welsh, "David W. Griffith Speaks," p. 49.

109. Bitzer here is simply repeating a widespread, yet unfounded, myth that Richard deCordova disputes: "Almost all of the early actors came from provincial stock companies, not Broadway. Few had much of a reputation to lose" (deCordova, "The Emergence of the Star System in America: An Examination of the Institutional and Ideological Function of the Star" [diss.], p. 155). Certainly Biograph boasted no major theatrical actors among its company when Griffith arrived, and, unlike Edison and Vitagraph, it never did employ stage stars during Griffith's tenure.

110. Bitzer-DWG Papers.

111. Bitzer, His Story , p. 70.

112. J. Stuart Blackton, "Hollywood With Its Hair Down or Hollywood Memories: Forty Years of Movies," manuscript in the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, p. 112. The nine-foot line did not at all approximate the modern close-up, framing the actors instead from the ankles to the top of the head.

113. Russell Merritt offers a more psycho-sexual analysis of Griffith's rejection of the theatre. See his "Rescued from a Perilous Nest."

114. Welsh, "Griffith Speaks," p. 49.

115. "A Poet Who Writes on Motion Picture Films," The Theatre , June 1914, p. 312.

116. Baker, "David W. Griffith."

117. Welsh, "Griffith Speaks," p. 49.

118. Biograph's financial records for this period have not survived, but Charles Musser argues that "Biograph had been in a period of protracted crisis when Griffith took over. Although not all historians might agree, I believe that his accomplished output in 1908 did much to rescue Biograph from commercial disaster." "Early Cinema and Its Modes of Production," paper presented at conference of the Society for Cinema Studies, Iowa City, Iowa, 1989, p. 10.