The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

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Julian Johnson (Continued from Page 4) what's coming to them and the good people achieve happiness, love and success. I have tried to keep away from that formula in Intolerace. I am not sure that I was right from a showmanship standpoint, but the picture represents something I have wanted to say for a long time . . . and I had to say it." Intolerance, if I remember correctly, won marvelous notices, but was never a great box-office smash, though I believe it did pay off, when all the returns were in. But, in my opinion, it has never been equalled for sweeping and magnificent imagination, or for subtle indictment of men down through history in their greatest failing of "not being able to put up with each other." Intolerance was far far ahead of its time. The cinema audience was not yet ready for an epic. But how prophetic were D. W.'s words ! Less and less have people been "putting up" with each other until today the whole world is at swords' points. The prophet is dead but his words live. Julian Johnson, former editor and screen <writer, is head of the story department at Twentieth Century-Fox. Mae Marsh MR. GRIFFITH was always solicitous about what we called The Birth of a Nation family; proud when many of us went on to individual successes ; sad when others were beset by misfortune. In the latter cases he preferred his help always to be anonymous. I recall that one of the women in the cast later was in financial straits. When D.W. heard of it he came to me and gave me a one hundred dollar bill to send to this player whose pride was high. "Why don't you send it to her?" I asked. "No," he replied, "just tell her you sold a screen story, the inspiration for which you got from her nobler quali ties, and that you consider the $100 as payment for the inspiration." In those days screen stories didn't bring what they do now. Imagine our surprise during The Birth of a Nation when Mr. Griffith called us in and said we were to report to Western Costume Company, then new, for fittings. Up to that time we had always made our own costumes at home. And it was at home that we did our hair and put on our make-up, too. It was after The Birth that D.W. feared he was going to become bald. He read somewhere that shaving the head would eventually bring in new hair, so he shaved his head. Mrs. Gish, Lillian and I were standing outside Clune's Auditorium with Mr. Griffith where The Clansman, as The Birth was first called, was playing. We were trying to catch the comments of those who had just seen it. This was about the time of the Herman Rosenthal murder in New York when "Gyp the Blood" and "Lefty Louie," New York gunmen, were much in newspaper pictures and headlines. The Los Angeles Times had just run a picture of "Gyp the Blood" who also wore his hair clipped. "Look!" said a movie-goer to his girl friend as he jerked his thumb toward D.W. "It's Gyp the Blood!" The next spring a great many of the directors in Hollywood were shaving their heads. I have been asked if, when Mr. Griffith was shooting The Birth, we knew it was to be epochal. Speaking for myself, I don't think so. I think most of us thought it was just a longer and more expensive picture and we were hoping for the best. What we did know was that Mr. Griffith was having extreme difficulties getting the money to keep shooting. He was very pessimistic about "those bankers" and said they were "driving him crazy!" Some years later I came to know former United States Senator and Mrs. Frank P. Flint very well. Mr. Flint had represented the interests that had loaned D.W. some of the money for The Birth. "That man Griffith," said the Senator reminiscently, "you know, he almost drove us crazy!" Griffith gave Mae Marsh her start in motion pictures in The Birth of a Nation and later presented her in The White Rose Seena Owen DW.'s reputation as an innovator and a complete perfectionist is well known. The close-up, the flashback, dozens of techniques and methods that are commonplace in film-making today were all developed under his sure touch. Even the false eye-lashes without which no actress would appear on the screen today was D.W.'s inspiration when we were making Intolerance — a lavish extravaganza laid in the Babylonian Court of Belshazzar. I was playing the king's favorite, the "Princess Beloved" ; and every detail of my costume had been checked and re-checked until it was a model of authenticity. Even the make-up had been devised so as to conform perfectly to the reference book's description of the Babylonian maid. In consequence, I had a large putty nose, a wig of heavy black curls and wide, well-defined cheekbones. Just before the first day's shooting, when I was all ready for the cameras, D.W. looked over my costume with a critical eye. Something wasn't quite right — but he couldn't decide what it was. Suddenly then, it came to him. "Your eyes — they're lost with that heavy hair and big nose. We've got to do something to bring them out. Long lashes would do it." And so the wig-maker was called over and the problem presented to him. Long false eyelashes that could be heavily mascared were needed. He nodded and set to work. He wove human hair through the warp of the thinnest kind of gauze in a strip two feet long. Then he cut off two tiny pieces from the ends and fastened them to my eyelids with spirit gum. Each day as I needed them, I would cut off two more small strips from the long piece of gauze. And those were the first false eyelashes. D.W. was pleased ; his passion for authen T h e Screen Writer, August, 1948