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Chinese Theatre one night when someone's footprints were being recorded in the cement, and of seeing D. W. Griffith, swaying a little, looking bewildered and lost, hovering on the edge of the crowd. His footprints were never asked for, yet no one has ever filled his shoes.
I also talked to the executives of the Motion Picture Relief Fund Country Home. "Give him a job," I begged. "Let him go over the lists of applicants— he will give understanding to people who, like himself, have grown old in this business and are now on the shelf. Make the money nominal— fifty dollars a week— D.W. doesn't want or need charity; but give him back his sense of belonging."
Well, thev didn't quite see how it could be done.
One of D.W.'s daily visitors to his hotel room was his one-time director Mickey Neilan, the Irishman who engraved so much gaiety on the early years of our business. Mickey and D.W. had a little something in common: they'd both been forgotten.
Finally, on July 23, 1948, Griffith died. Could it be because he no longer had the will to live, and just loosed his grasp; opened his hand and let life fall away from him?
It was a fine funeral. The flowers were abundant. Why not, when the studio comptrollers could okay the bills as necessary business expense! I made it my business to arrive early for the services, and took a front seat where I could see everyone and they could all see me. All the Big Brass was there. I had a little list and checked them off as they walked past. Then I stared at them until they were forced to look me in the eye. A more sheepish-looking gang I never expect to see in Hollvwood.
Charles Brackett, president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who never knew Griffith personally, read the eulogy. Among other things, he said: "There was no solution for Griffith but a kind of frenzied beating on the barred doors of one day after another. Fortunately, such miseries do not endure indefinitely. When all the honors a man can have are past honors, past honors take on their just proportion. The laurels are fresh again and the applause loud. He lies here, the embittered years forgotten, David Wark Griffith, the Great."
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