The screen writer (Apr-Oct 1948)

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9370 Santa Monica Boulevard Beverly Hills, California BRadshaw 2-3211 ticity had been satisfied, but even more, the proportions of my face were balanced again. Just as there are certain qualities I shall always associate with D.W., so a certain sound will always recall him to mind — the jingle of silver dollars clinking against one another. He carried a pocketful of silver dollars with him always and had the habit of stacking them in his hand and then riffling the stack from one hand to another, constantly. The rare moments when that sound was not heard were those when his attention was completely absorbed. When an actor failed to hear the jingling of the silver dollars as he was doing a scene, he knew that he was doing a very special job indeed. The silence was his reward. It was the accolade. And I doubt that any of us ever heard that silence more than half a dozen times in all our careers with Griffith. D.W. was a man who thought in big and exciting sweeps of imagination— but worked through the drudg ery of detail to perfection. And just as Jimmy Walker was Mr. New York — the beloved symbol of cosmopolitanism— so D. W. Griffith will always be Mr. Hollywood, the symbol of perfect craftsmanship, and showmanship. And as a person, he was one of the few of whom one could truly say, "there was a great man." Seena Owen, who came to motion pictures as an actress, has long been a screen writer and a member of SWG Mary Pickford WHEN I first climbed the brownstone steps of the old Biograph studio at 1 1 East Fourteenth Street in New York to apply for a job as an actress, I did so only because of the extreme leanness of the Pickford purse. I had been on the stage since the age of five, and for the past two years had been appearing on Broadway under the management of the great David Belasco. But theatrical engagements were impossible to obtain during the long summer months. If Mother, Lottie, Jack and I were to survive it was up to me to seek work in the despised "flickers." At the desk of the Biograph studio, I asked to see the manager. The clerk was rude. Angrily I turned to go. In the room was a tall man with amazing eyes and sharp features. He stared at me and as I moved to leave he grasped my arm. I shook myself free, and with the know-it-all assurance of a fifteen year old, I started giving him a piece of my mind, clearly stating my opinion of the shabby movies and the uncouth people who worked for them. To my surprise, the man began answering my criticisms reasonably and gently. He explained that in the first plays, actors hadn't been ashamed of playing in barns, being jeered at by crowds as they tramped from town to town. From the humblest beginnings, the theater had grown up to hold its own with the other arts. The movies, he assured me, would blaze the same The Screen Writer, August, 194 19