Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

28 What Will Griffith Do Now? ''Broken Blossoms' ' raised Richard Barthelmess from the ranks of conventional leading men to a real stardom. full hearts of some Germans in "Isn't Life Wonderful?" with the beauty and pride of an artist who was speaking his impressions rather than the dividend-bitten formula: "Bust and leg and silken gown ; palatial sets, somewhere a clown; a naughty scheme, a lover's cheat ; a knock-out scene, an ending sweet." The big bull elephant was far from the log rolling that time ; and he certainly skewered his kosher with the exhibitors. Courage and imagination he has, and his industry is as plain as a pig's knuckle. What will he do with them now? Report is he will make first "The Sorrows of Satan," Marie Corelli's opulent highway of emotionalism along which to crank a camera.* To estimate the things Griffith will do, one must first know the things that are Griffith. To the clan that bagpipes through the highlands of picturedom, Griffith is a spiral mystery, up which they gaze with wonder or disdain to behold ever new turnings. A man of mystery, they call him! Yet where is there another man, in boots or under ♦Griffith's "Sally of the Sawdust." reviewed elsewhere in this issue, though made at the Famous Players' studio, is not to be counted as beginning the new phase of his career. Since he had given up his own studio it was made at the Famous Players' studio by special arrangement, in order to facilitate Mr. Griffith in concluding his contractual arrangements with United Artists, who will release this production, the last of his independent series. tomb, about whom it is so easy to be informed accurately ? Around every celebrity, much is written, largely inaccurate perhaps, as succeeding generations of commentators cynically expose. In this regard, Napoleon has been most liberally attended. But greater than all the books on Napoleon, than the massed volumes discussing Shakespeare; greater even than the page-piled heights discussing Lincoln, is the library about the man Griffith — and one incorrigibly accurate. In it there are no myths, anecdotes, hearsay, questioned .records or chance letters. It is one vast and true revelation of the man's innermost tide of life stroke-. Here the man's soul unpockets its whims, beliefs, ambitions, and experiences, its joys, its strengths and itagonies. It is the truest confession ever read; and read by hundreds of millions. This library is composed of the motion-picture films published under the design "D. W. G.," numbering in all more than a thousand. The successful productive author may average perhaps thirty novels — a little grove compared to Griffith's forest of expression. A poet may publish one hundred poems, mostly short, and generally rivered along one narrow channel. A painter may hang one hundred canvases, often a single character study in portrait, or a landscape, or a scene to high-light some definite phase of humanity. Griffith has told his opinions, his understandings and sympathies regarding thousands of characters. Over and over again he has twined the hearts of lovers, from the shy tremors of first love to the flood throws of passion. He has swaggered with the bold and the ambitious ; jested with the lofty and sneered with the degenerate; schemed with the connivers and skulked with assassins ; bowed in prayer with the humble ; grieved with the unfortunate; sung with the happy ; wept with the sorrowful ; and died with heroes and cowards. Again and again, he has told it all. To the world he has flown aloft the strange banner of a human soul — a soul literally photographed. And all as part of a hard day's work. All of Griffith is in his pictures. And the films that are of Griffith, are directed by a barefooted boy of LaGrange, Kentucky. Who is he, this lad who has seized an empire in the world of shadows? His father was a bold, life-spending Confederate cavalryman, forever hot upon the hazards ; always ready for a toss, whatever the risk. He roused to war's pageant, enjoyed its honors, and suffered its penalties. The material rewards were some fiftv-four wounds For several years Carol Dempster has represented the Griffith heroine.