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He Returns to Hollywood 199
in ten years," he said. "The things Billy and I invented are being proclaimed as new and revolutionary. It makes me sick at the stomach."
He began going to the theater alone. He would buy two seats, put his coat and hat on one, and sit through the whole performance without speaking to anyone. His presence would become known and people would come up, but he evaded them. The moment the curtain was down, he hastened out as if pressed by some great business matter.
His restless nature made it necessary for him to keep occupied. He had contributed his film and negatives to the Museum of Modern Art; the material had been catalogued. Billy Bitzer, when things were not going well for him, had worked on it and had saved many feet of precious negative. The work was done and was successful. But not to D. W. He insisted on going to the Museum and running the film backward and forward, as he had done with Jimmie Smith so many years ago. He would hold a strip of the ancient film before him, close one eye, and inspect the film. Then, picking up the scissors, he would snip out the part he didn't like. The Museum tried to get him not to make any changes, but their pleas meant nothing to him. Out would go another section of negative. He cut several hundred feet from Intolerance. "It's better now," he said when he finished.
Billy Bitzer sent word that he was ill, and would Mr. Griffith come to see him? Indeed, he would. Soon Griffith was at Billy's bedside in Saint Vincent's Hospital. Billy's hands were stained, as they always were— those amazing, square, blunt-fingered hands that had turned the crank on so many great pictures. And there were blue scars on them from powder burns made during the filming of The Birth of a Nation.