Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1916)

146 Photoplay Magazine The Story of David Wark Griffith (Continued from page 86) illuminati, he illuminated the other sort, on whom he drew for suhjects. He did use Paul Armstrong's "The Escape" for his own first and one of his most impressive pictures, and Armstrong made $2,500 in royalties from the picture, which is thought to be 'much more than he ever made from the play. It only had a brief run in Los Angeles, where it was produced first by Oliver Morosco',; Armstrong himself produced it in New York — with disaster. There was a tip-fjp theme for a play, but Armstrong did not quite hit the right angle. He tried too much for the curves. In this picture Griffith did hit the angles, all of them ; the film had much more "punch" than even the master of "punch," the hard-hitting Armstrong, had put into the play ; some of it was fascinatingly repulsive, so much so that people were irresistibly drawn to see it again and again. And it had the best fight ever put on the screen to that time ; one which William Farnum has hardly excelled in his numerous exhilarating examples of white-hope acting. Strange to say, Armstrong and Griffith had no quarrel. De mortuis nil nisi but forgetfulness of their regrettable traits. Armstrong, however, had such a prevailing insistence on quarreling with his friends that it is not indecent to recognize that fact, now that he is gone. "No, I had no difference at any time with Paul," says Griffith of this incident, "but I fancy that was because he had nothing to do with me, nor I with him, in the making of 'The Escape.' He wrote to me suggesting its being made into a picture and sent me the 'script ; I read it, and thought it would do, and did it. "He never saw it in the making, and, as 1 remember, he made something like $2,500 out of the venture. "He did have some differences later, of a passing kind, with some of our business men, but it was all satisfactorily arranged." "The Battle of the Sexes" followed quickly, and then came his center shot, "The Birth of a Nation." Probably one of the poorest plays ever put out was "The Clansman." Thomas Dixon's novel dramatized. The novel was a best seller, and a cause for controversv. The play was not a best seller ; one manager told me, some time ago, that he paid a dollar apiece to ten negroes in San Francisco to form an Afro-American League which was to institute legal proceedings to stop the performance of the play. If I recall correctly it was Sam Friedman, the ever alert youthful theatrical expert, who tried this big business trick. He paid for the filing of the injunction papers and hired lawyers to defend his side, meanwhile supplying the League with po'k chops and cigarette money. Friedman won his case against himself, and the League paraded in sorrow before the theater, where the intake that night was something less than $100. Not enough, anyway, Sam said, to pay for the meal tickets he had bought. Ask any theatrical man how much "The Birth of a Nation" has made, and he will immediately make a record elevation flight among the millions. Admitting that Mr. Dixon did a fairlv good piece of work in writing the story, you will have to admit that Griffith did a masterpiece in his treatment of the book. It is very like the comparing of the original, forgotten, Italian tale of Romeo and Juliet with what the Bard did with that. The story of the first showing of "The Birth of a Nation" in Los Angeles and of Griffith's surprise at what he had done, has been told. Clune's auditorium was packed to the fire limits that night, for much gossip had circulated ; the racial excitement had either been artificially or naturally aroused ; the city councilmen with a "close-up" of the negro vote before their imagination had at one time decided to stop the production, and a lot of lawyers had to be retained, and to some extent the word got about that the picture was an incendiary, dangerous affair. There were covevs. even flocks, of policemen on hand with riot sticks ; but the only riot was that of recognition of a great piece of work. A number of negroes filled portions of the house ; whether they liked the picture or not they said nothing, and very wisely kept their and everyone's peace. It was my fortune to see several scenes of that picture in the making. That one (Continued to page 148)