Star maker : the story of D. W. Griffith (1959)

FOREWORD I AM PLEASED THAT I CAN PASS ALONG TO THE reading public the first story of the life of David Wark Griffith. He lived in a blaze of publicity for his stars and his stories, but he told little of himself, especially of his early life; nothing of his personal life. He had a secret marriage; he spoke not at all of this. In fact most people thought he was a bachelor. And, in one sense, he was. I met him only once. I spent an evening with him when he was just starting to make The Birth of a Nation. I was representing Leslie's Weekly; no wonder he gave me so much time, for it was for this magazine that he had written his one published poem-'The Wild Duck." He didn't mention the poem, but I expect during the evening he thought of it many times. Strangely enough, I cannot remember one important thing he said; and the piece I wrote is so inane that I hope no human eye ever falls on it again. I certainly did not realize that he would become a world figure, and that someday I would be attempting to tell his story. And I don't think he had the faintest idea then that he would become a world figure, especially in a medium that later he came to despise. I have had access to his autobiography which is still in manuscript form. It deals with his early days, for he never finished it. It does, however, give some vivid pictures of his life as a farm boy. The intimate material in this book has come from people who knew him. He was strangely uncommunicative about vii