American cinematographer (Oct 1929)

Six American Cinematographer October, 1929 ^AviD JFark Griffith A Few Interesting Side Lights On the Movie’s Belasco By Paul Thompson AS LONG as motion pictures continue to exist—which will be /A until the end of time, judging by their constantly increasing popularity, the name of David Wark Griffith will live. One of the most notable of that courageous band of pioneers in the early days of the industry he is today still one of the outstanding Agues in the industry, art or what you will. “What is Griffith doing, or what is the old master planning?” This is the inevitable question asked wherever anyone associated with the films or fans foregather. Particularly after any un- wonted silence on his part. At present, as ev- eryone even slightly con- versant with movie sub- jects knows, he is in the throes of preparing for the screen his conception of the life of the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. There can be brought against him no charge of plagiarism be- cause he confesses he has never seen the picture which A1 and Ray Rock- ett brought to the screen or John Drinkwater’s striking stage present- ment of the same martyr. No. the Belasco of the movies, as he has been so properly named, will give a version unlike any ever presented on stage or screen. It will be as all his offerings have been char- acteristically and distinct- ly a David Wark Griffith Abraham Lincoln. Griffith's invasion of the then new and de- spised form of drama came through his dis- satisfaction with his own rendition of “Hamlet.” Like the melancholy and lean Dane whose role he essayed so unsuccessfully, though in many physical ways he suggests Shakes- peare’s character, he, too, condemns “too too solid flesh.” To Griffith it is most immortal. Through hereditary influences he has no fear for himself. There is no need of any eighteen-day diet because today he possesses the slenderness that must have been his on the spoken stage and in the early days of the cinema. Time has indeed treated him kindly. From acting on the so-called legitimate stage Griffith began writing scenarios of one reel and shorter lengths. For these he was paid the large sum of five dollars each. He didn’t care how bad they were if only they went over and were sold. That was the time when one could, if he had foresight, have purchased stock in the Biograph company, which bought and produced the Griffith one- reelers, at fifty cents a share. In two years that same stock had risen to $125 a share. In 1913 when the government sued for the dissolution of the patents group an investment would have netted the incredible profit of something like seventeen hundred per cent. Arthur Marden was the first Griffith cameraman. This was in 1909. He was with him for two or three years. The next man was Billy Bitzer, whose name will always be associated with David Wark’s because he shot the majority of the pictures which brought fame if not always money to the pioneer. The latter was with Griffith on and off for twelve years and even as late as 1929 shot part of the last important picture which Griffith did. Jack Lloyd's “The Drums of Love.” It is my impression that at one of the early stages of their two careers it was Griffith who worked for Billy for the handsome salary of five dollars a day. If that were true their positions soon were reversed and the employee became the boss. Had Griffith taken his cameraman’s advice he today would unquestionably be worth lots of the money which he has made for others. He was only getting from fifty to sixty dollars a week salary and only because of this diffidence in going in and demand- ing three times that amount—which Billy insisted they would gladly have paid him— continued working for the smaller sum. At one time all that Griffith needed to buy an interest in a picture which afterwards made a for- tune for practically every- one who had any inter- est in the same was $ 15 0 in cash. He had a cousin who had money but he would lend this to him only on the condition that he did not put it into the “crazy motion picture game.” He didn’t get the money and Grif- fith did not get the chance to make a gilt-edge in- vestment. That, how- ever, is only one of thou- sands of similar tales which would rival the history of Anne Nichols’ “Abie’s Irish Rose.” Even in those early days Mardon and Bitzer and others who worked for the master-mind thought him crazy. “I figure they still think the same thing today and I do not blame them in a way,” says Griffith. And yet, he tried to and in some instances did persuade his cameramen to experiment with things that today are her- alded as revolutionary. For example, almost twenty years ago Griffith got them to take close-ups, an unheard-of and thoroughly impractical idea, every- body agreed. They tried the idea out—successfully—first with Marden with 6-2 lenses then later with even more pronounced success with Billy Bitzer shooting with 5-9 lenses. So with the fade-out and fade-in. That was another revolu- tionary thing discovered and perfected with a cigar box. This was first used—to be copied immediately by all rivals—in “The Last of the Mohicans” with Owen Moore and Mary Pickford in the picture version of James Fenimore Cooper’s famous Indian story. A blacksmith pressed into service constructed a cigar box so that the picture would gradually fade off or on with just as much perfection as it is done today. The idea was really the thought of Jimmy Smith, today a cutter in the business. For one year he was Griffith’s boss. Just another of the topsy-turvy upsets that characterize the motion picture game. The close-up innovation came from a desire for parallel action. The Germans claim it is the most important discovery in the history of pictures. Up to that time pictures were continued action as in a stage play of today, all action being taken at approximately the same distance from the camera with a monotonous repetition of the same sized figures. (Continued on Page 38)