When the movies were young (1925)

218 When the Movies were Young Again, against great opposition David had put it over, not only on his studio associates, but on the entire motion picture world. Besides "Man's Genesis," our most talked of picture of the winter — our biggest spectacle — was "The Massacre." It was taken at San Fernando. There were engaged for it several hundred cavalry men and twice as many Indians. A city of tents, as well as the two large ones, similar to the ones of the year before, was built outside the borders of the town. There was so much preparation, due to the magnitude of the production, that the secrecy usually attending a Biograph picture did not hold in this case, and the village of San Fernando, two miles away from the place of the picture, declared a holiday. The townspeople having found out just when the raid on the Indian village and the slaughter of the men and women of the tribe was to take place, closed up shop and school, and swarmed out to within a safe distance of the riding and shooting incidental to Custer's Last Fight, and spent the day in the enjoyment of new thrills. There was a two weeks' fight over a sub-title in "The Massacre" — the scrappers Mr. Griffith and Mr. Dougherty. David never used a script, and a sub-title never was written until he was convinced that one was necessary to elucidate a situation. A picture finished, at its first running we would watch for places where the meaning seemed not sufficiently clear; where we doubted if the audience would "get" it. And in such a place in the film, a title would be inserted. So "The Massacre" finished, and being projected, this scene was reached: