The Struggle (United Artists) (1931)

SURE-FIRE CURRENT STORIES for YOUR NEWSPAPERS Intense Drama in Silent Scenes in “The Struggle” Zita Johann, who is making her first screen appearance as leading woman in D. W. Griffith’s picture, “The Struggle,” which comes to the Sat Seventecees theatre Onis ccsascteawests has several scenes in this picture which are played in utter silence. Miss Johann, who has won high honors for her dramatic work in notable stage successes, makes these silent scenes eloquent. One such scene is that in which the actress, depicting the wife of a young American workman who has gone down and out, sits sewing on some “piece work” which she has brought home to her miserable quarters, in an attempt to eke out an income. She is alone. Not a sound is to be heard but the snipsnip of her scissors as they bite into the garment. But into this sound somehow the clever actress has managed to put a world of meaning, the tragedy of despair, the dramatic intensity of her waiting, almost without hope for the return of the absent husband. It is a bit of work which makes one realize that there is something in acting beside good looks and beautiful costumes. Zita Johann shares the leading roles with Hal Skelly in “The Struggle,” a United Artists picture. a scene from D:W-Griffiths The Struggle 3—Two Col. Scene (Mat 10c; Cut 50c) Authenticity in “The Struggle” is Due to Griffith’s Own Experiences VARIED CAREER OF PRODUCER DURING HIS YOUTH NOW PLAYS BIG PART IN OBTAINING REALISTIC PORTRAYALS Not the least of the secrets of D. W. Griffith’s success in injecting authenticity into a wide diversity of screen characterizations is the surprising grasp of numerous trades and professions which the director has picked up at first hand through the years. From the first, screen portrayals under Griffith’s direction have had a way of ringing true. They ring so true, as a matter of fact, that one is aware on sight that they are based upon something more tangible than a mere working knowledge. And a survey of the producer’s life bears this out. For example, in “The Struggle,” the United Artists picture, which comes to the theatre On seca eveesteewds es daa : Hal Skelly, the leading man, portrays the role of a foreman of a gang of puddlers in a steel foundry. One would expect, naturally, that when Griffith planned to* picture these steel mill scenes he would call in a specialist, one who had worked at puddling. But he did nothing of the sort. And then it developed that he used to be a puddler himself. It has been so from the first. From experience he has_ pictured newspapermen, dramatists, poets, actors, singers, elevator operators, book salesmen, store clerks, scenario writers, ore shovellers, cartoonists, ditch diggers and several other kinds of tradesmen and professional men. All because at various times in his eventful life he has worked at those lines of businesses. Was Mail Boy on Newspaper Pee eeerererseressroreresenesensseseresnsee This experience started when, as a boy, young Griffith worked in the mailing room of his brother’s newspaper in a Kentucky town and later as a reporter on “Marse Henry” Watterson’s Louisville | CourierJournal. In his reportorial work he did some dramatic reviewing, and after he had seen Julia Marlowe in “Romola” he decided to become an actor himself. His first step came in a charity performance with the Meffert Stock Company in the Masonic Temple at Louisville. The novice took the name of Lawrence Griffith and his first role was that of a dunce. He spoke one line: “The breeze from the lake blows chilly tonight.” Of course, it wasn’t night at all; it was a matinee. Griffith remained with the company for the season, ekeing out his salary by running an elevator in a dry goods store and later as a clerk in a stationery store. Between times he sold books for the Baptist Weekly and the Encyclopedia Britannica. His next step was with the John Griffith Strolling Players, and here, in order to avoid confusion, he took the name of David Brayington. His first job with this company was singing first bass in an off-stage quartette. And it didn’t take long for the first bass to strike out. Came other roles on the stage, and finally he worked into big company. He played with Helen Ware, Barney Bernard, Walker Whiteside, J. E. Dodson and finally with Nance O’Neill. Became a Poet Suddenly he became a poet, and once he was paid $35 by Leslie’s Weekly for a piece called “The Wild Duck.” Playwriting followed, and James K. Hackett did one of his dramatic pieces in Washington. It was called “A Fool and a Girl.” Other odd jobs came _ along, among them ore shovelling and steel puddling in Tonawanda, N. Y. In 1907, in Chicago, Griffith saw his first motion picture show. He thought the affair stupid, but the long lines waiting for admission were impressive. He wrote a screen version of “La Tosca,” and, going to New York, he tried to sell it to Edwin S. Porter at the old Edison Studio, the same in which “The Struggle” has just been completed. He didn’t sell his scenario, but he got a job as an actor, and this started a career of acting and scenario writing for more than a year. He became an assistant director for Biograph, and his first picture was booked as “one of the most remarkable cases of child stealing” showing “the thwarting by a kind Providence of the attempt to kidnap for revenge a pretty little girl by a gypsy.” Became Outstanding Director From that very modest beginning, Griffith soon developed into the greatest director in the business. He developed the “flash-back,” “close-up,” “mist-photography,” “the fade-out” and a host of other revolutionary ideas. He also was the first director to make a picture longer than one reel, and he helped to develop such picture personages as Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Richard Barthelmess, Mae Marsh, Owen Moore, Henry B. Walthall, Alice Joyce, Lionel Barrymore, Jack and Lottie Pickford, Mabel Normand, James Kirkwood, Harry Carey, Mack Sennett, Robert MHarron, Mary Alden and Constance Talmadge. Zita Johann featured Player in DW Griffiths The Struggle 6—One Col. Feature Player (Mat 05c; Cut 30c) Still the Pioneer D. W. Griffith, producer of “The Struggle,’ a United Artists: pietire, =.1sever. the pioneer, as: was_ evidenced anew on the occasion of a recent television broadcast. A new television apparatus was about to be launched in New York, and those in charge fell upon the bright idea of having Griffith be the first honor guest. An enthusiastic young salesman thereupon called upon the veteran director and said: “Mr. Gritfith, how would you like to be the first movie director to ‘be televised?” “Why,” was the reply, “I’d like it fine, but it already has been done.” And then it developed that more than two years ago the director was the subject of a television broadcast made by General Electric at Schenectady, -N.¥ D. W. GRIFFITH HONORED BY STAGE EMPLOYEES UNION IN NEW YORK Director Received Gold Card and Life Membership While Making “The Struggle” During the filming of “The Struggle,” which will be shown at Sees cae tia aes theatre, beginning on Beshaekte psoas ,» D. W. Griffith, the director and producer of this picture of contemporary American life was the recipient of a high honor from the ranks of organized labor. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, commonly referred to as the “stage hands’ union,” embraces most of the artisans employed in and around the motion picture studios. It is a nation-wide organization with branches throughout the United States and Canada. Some years ago in Los Angeles, before the national organization was perfected, D. W. Griffith was signally honored by becoming the recipient of a diamond studded gold card which conferred honorary life membership upon him and which was presented by the Stage Hands of Los Angeles, Local No. 33. The honor was also conferred as recognition of the well-known fact that D. W. Griffith was the pioneer of all motion picture directors and led the way to the art of the modern photoplay. Last July this honor was duplicated and in a way repeated by a New York branch of the now thoroughly established national organization which conferred honorary life membership on Mr. Griffith. The ceremony took place on the stage of the Audio-Cinema Studio in the Bronx, New York City, where scenes for “The Struggle,” a United Artists picture, were being photographed. The _ organization which conferred the gold card on the director is known as Local No. 52 and embraces the motion picture studio mechanics of New York. The life membership had been voted to Mr. Griffith nearly a year ago, but it was not until he settled down to production work on “The Struggle,” that the representatives of the union were able to catch up with him. Leading Players in D. W. Griffith’s “The Struggle” Got Start on Stage Hal Skelly and Zita Johann Received First Big Opportunity on Stage by Arthur Hopkins, Broadway Producer By one of those odd coincidences which sometimes occur in the theatre, it happens that each of the featured players in D. W. Griffith’s ” latest picture, “The Struggle, which comes to the Cee e meee nese seen sscenessessesssssosesssseen® CHOAIIS OF hod as Sk , received the opportunity which led to the greatest triumph of his or her career from the same person — that person being Arthur Hopkins, the stage producer. Hal Skelly and Zita Johann are the two players who thus benefitted by the astute judgment of this acknowledged leader in theatre productions of the better class. It was in 1917, at a time when Skelly was appearing in musical comedy on Broadway, that Hopkin’s discerning eye singled him out for what was to prove the greatest role ot his career, thus far. George Manker Watters, then the manager of the Central Theatre at Broadway and Forty-seventh Street, New York, had hastily constructed a play which he called “Burlesque,” and had interested Hopkins in it. Skelly, who before he became a popular Broadway comedian in one musical hit after another, had done a little of everything in the way of acting, including several years as a “hoofer” in shows of the old Columbia Burlesque Wheel, became Hopkins’ choice for the title role in the Watters play. The actor was offered the part and accepted it, but it was ten years before the play saw its New York premiere. In September, 1927, it opened at the Plymouth Theatre, and was an instantaneous hit—one which achieved a two-year run. And Skelly, hitherto merely a moderately successful actor was lifted to new heights of popularity by his portrayal of the pivotal role of Skid, the hoofer. The actor, like the character which he impersonated, became the toast of Broadway, he was “made”—thanks to the opportunity which Arthur Hopkins had brought him. Johann Gets Opportunity With Zita Johann the story is quite different. She was a comparatively unknown player when Hopkins selected her to play the part of the young woman in his much discussed production of “Machinal,” the play which dramatized, in a measure, the main elements of the sensational Snyder murder case. For professional experience she had behind her several years of roadtouring in Theatre Guild and Civic Repertory road companies, and a few appearances in unsuccessful plays, most of which died during the periods of try-out, and so nevei reached Broadway. It was while she was playing in one of these doomed-to-fail productions, in a Long Island town, that Arthur Hopkins saw her and fixed her in his mind for “Machinal.” Miss Johann tells, with great merriment, how she was “fired” on the night Hopkins was out front because the management wanted her to give her role a melodramatic and bombastic portrayal. Zita Johann, on the night in question, ignored these instructions, and played with a quiet restraint that won the approval of the noted producer in the audience. Electrified First-Nighters Some months later the brilliant first-night audience which gathered to witness the premiere of a new Hopkins’ production was electrified by the performance of the slight young actress who played the role of the unfortunate woman caught in a web of circumstantial evidence and doomed to the chair. Here was a new genius of -tragedy—who was she? They turned feverishly to their programs and discovered the name of Zita Johann. Few had ever heard of her before. She was an Arthur Hopkins discovery. And soon, from one end of the country to the other, readers were learning through the columns of the New York dramatic correspondents of the brilliant playing of Zita Johann in “Machinal.”” Both Skelly and Johann have again been favored by their selection by a famous producer for roles which offer them new opportunities for depth and beauty of artistic expression. In “The Struggle,” a United Artists picture personally directed by D. W. Griffith. which COMES: (Ow ehes i ados-s. aie theatre RS ATA ais scsi ees hive eae ee ; Skelly plays the role of a young workman who has quickly risen to be a foreman in a steel mill, and Zita Johann portrays the young girl who becomes his wife, and whose marriage vow to cherish him “for better or for worse” is put to the severest test in the course of the tense drama in D. W. Griffith’s picture. PREPARED REVIEWS (Review Number One) The moving story of man’s weakness and woman’s enduring love was revealed at the ..:......cccccsccseses theatre yesterday when D. W. Griffith’s latest United Artists picture, “The Struggle” was screened for the first time in this city. In this, his first film since “Abraham Lincoln,” Griffith has given us a recital of the fortunes ot a middle-class American family living in a great city today. The picture contains what is perhaps one of the strongest dramatic sequences yet to reach our screen. The story itself is commonplace enough, but is lifted to great heights by the unfailing genius of the director which, as always, expresses itself in countless humanizing touches and also by the superb portrayals of its chief roles. Zita Johann, a gifted recruit from the stage, breathes life and spirit into the part ot Florrie,; a young wiie and mother; while Hal Skelly, hitherto highly acclaimed for his immortal creation of the chief role in the play, “Burlesque,” on both stage and screen, reaches new heights and displays unsuspected dramatic power in a living, breathing, incredibly realistic creation of the role of Jimmie, a young American workman with an inherent weakness. Our story tells of how Florrie entrusts her love to Jimmie’s keeping in the belief that this love alone will be sufficient to hold Jimmie to the paths of a temperate and ordered life. And so it seems to be until under the strain of a great crisis Jimmie’s will power crumples and the old weakness shows itself. To reveal the details of the story would be to rob our readers of the pleasure which must come from its unfolding on the screen. It is enough to say that in “The Struggle” Griffith has given us one of the most moving and _ exciting photodramas the ‘art of the screen has yet produced. The story of “The Struggle” was written by Anita Loos and John Emerson. The mechanics of the picture are well-nigh perfect and the quality of its sound, both as to dialogue and as to the background or incidental sound, is far superior to that of pictures which have preceded “The Struggle.” . (Review Number Two) Hearts beat fast and furiously and eyes were bright with tears at PRG: sia cnc festane theatre yesterday before the final sequences of D. W. Griffith’s latest United Artists picture flashed across the screen. For in “The Struggle” the “old master” has drawn upon the homely ingredients of everyday life to fashion a drama that alternately amuses, moves to pity and finally tremendously excites the onlooker. No more human character has come to our screen in many moons than the Jimmie Wilson who is the central figure in this marvelously sympathetic study of a man’s weakness and a woman’s devotion; and no such sequence of sustained suspense has before been depicted by the camera, in the memory of this reviewer, unless it may have been in one of Griffith’s own earlier masterpieces. There are moments of jollity and moments of despair, the comedy and tragedy of realistic life being finely interlaced into the groundwork of the dramatic structures. At length a deeply tragic note is ‘predominant — and with ever-increasing momentum the story rushes on irresistibly to a dramatic climax which fairly freezes the spectator in ehorror before its final jcrash and downward plunge. And then—like a clear flute-call after the clash of cymbals—comes the whimsical ending. Griffith has been particularly fortunate in the selection of his players. Hal Skelly’s portrayal of Jimmie Wilson is a masterly study of an easy-going young American workman, clean-minded and intelligent—optimistic, fun-loving and irresponsible. Co-featured with him is Zita Johann, skilled actress of the speaking stage, whom Griffith has drafted for this, her first screen appearance. This is a picture which all classes and types of playgoers will understand and enjoy. It has the universal appeal of humanity.