Griffith’s arrival at the Biograph Company as a director coincided with a time of great change in the American film industry. The boom in nickelodeons and the move to changing films daily had created a demand for films that American producers were failing to meet: of the 1,200 motion pictures of one reel or less released in the United States in 1907, only around 400 were American-made.49 Film exchanges had emerged; these greatly increased the number of films available as films could now be bought from manufacturers and rented to many exhibitors. American film manufacturers were competing among themselves for preeminence. One in particular, the Edison Company, was engaged in the latest stage of a long-running battle to control film production on the basis of its legal ownership of patents for the motion picture camera and film. Edison had no desire to drive its competitors out of business: it preferred to license them to make films, in the process exacting considerable royalty payments for the use of its patents. The company intended, once it had acquired a stranglehold on film production, to use its near-monopoly position to regulate the exchanges (and reduce their profits). By 1908, the main obstacle to the attempt to rationalize film production launched by the Edison Manufacturing Company was the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, aided by a number of dissatisfied exchanges and importers of foreign films whom Edison was attempting to exclude from the market. Biograph, as it would come to be known, had two principal advantages that enabled it to survive the Edison campaign. Its camera did not infringe the Edison patents (indeed, it had been designed—by a former Edison employee—specifically not to do so). Moreover, it had Wall Street backing. Its main investor was the Empire Trust which, in the summer of 1907, engineered the appointment of one of its own men, businessmen Jeremiah J. Kennedy, as head of the Biograph Company.50
Kennedy rapidly proved himself an able leader in the battle with Edison. Under his leadership, Biograph began to acquire its own patents with which to threaten the Edison Combine. Each company filed numerous suits against the other. Meanwhile, to help beat Edison, Biograph expanded its film production, making two films a week to try to meet the demands of the exchanges. It was in the midst of this major attempt to boost production that the company found itself without a full-time director. According to Tom Gunning, it was “probably in near panic” when it offered Griffith the job.51 Over the next few weeks and months, Griffith showed that he could produce films of sufficient quality to compete with those of the Edison Combine. Richard Schickel suggests that the manner in which Griffith’s films were accepted “by exhibitors and public” was a factor in Edison’s decision to abandon his battle with Biograph in favor of collaboration. This is unlikely: the new Motion Picture Patents Company [MPPC], integrating together the two combines, was incorporated on September 9, less than three months after the release of The Adventures of Dollie. For most of 1908, while battling each other publicly and in the courts, Edison and Biograph had been quietly negotiating behind the scenes for an accommodation. When the existence of the MPPC was officially announced in December, although Frank Dyer of the Edison Company was president, his vice-president was Henry N. Marvin, general manager of Biograph, and his secretary Jeremiah Kennedy, who remained president of the Biograph Company.52
The advent of the MPPC established the broad context within which Griffith worked. Those production companies, including the Biograph, that were part of the new combine found their position far stronger in relation to exchanges and exhibitors. Exchanges were now licensed and required to return films to producers after a fixed period of exploitation, encouraging the production of new films. In a more stable and secure environment, producers could invest more money in their films: Marvin raised Griffith’s budget per film from $300 to $500.53 The MPPC, responding to growing criticism of the moral impact of the movies by middle-class “progressive” reformers, declared its intention to produce “Moral, Educational, and Cleanly Amusing” motion pictures. At the back of this lay a general strategy of repositioning the film industry as a “higher class” (and therefore more expensive) form of entertainment that would appeal to “respectable” audiences. The MPPC swiftly realized that the new Board of Censorship (soon to be called the National Board of Censorship) set up in New York in March 1909 could be a useful instrument toward achieving this objective. It provided the Board with financial support and a screening room, and announced that all films made by MPPC members would be submitted to it for approval. As Tom Gunning points out, the necessity of submitting his films to the Board “certainly encouraged Griffith’s use of moral discourse.” (One of the very first films approved by the new Board was his prohibitionist attack on the saloon, A Drunkard’s Reformation.) But things could sometimes go wrong: objecting to the sexual themes in the film and its excessive violence, the Board refused to approve Griffith’s The Heart of an Outlaw (1909) without extensive cuts. Biograph objected, and since the Board refused to give way, the film was never released.54
The contract Griffith signed with Biograph in the summer of 1908 committed him to work for the company for one year at a salary of $50 a week. He was also to receive a royalty of one-twentieth of a cent on each foot of film sold—an encouragement, if one was needed, to produce as many films as possible.55 Griffith settled into a schedule of producing two one-reeler movies each week. Many were shot in the Biograph studio inside an old brownstone house at 11 East Fourteenth Street, New York. Others were filmed wholly or partly on location at Fort Lee, New Jersey. Beginning in the summer of 1909, Griffith found another location site at Cuddebackville, a five-hour journey away in New York’s Orange Mountains. In January 1910, searching for better weather, the sunshine that would permit longer hours of shooting in the open air, and new background locations, Griffith made the first of what would become annual winter trips to California.
During his years at Biograph, Griffith recruited a large and talented group of actors and actresses. The actors included Arthur Johnson, Owen Moore, Michael Sinnott (who would become better known as Mack Sennett), James Kirkwood, Henry Walthall, and Bobby Harron (a prop boy when Griffith arrived, Harron rapidly became Biograph’s leading juvenile actor). Griffith’s first actresses were Linda Arvidson (his wife), Marion Leonard, and Florence Lawrence. His later “discoveries” included Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, and the Gish sisters, Dorothy and Lillian. Griffith modeled the organization he created at Biograph on the theatrical stock companies he had known in his own acting career. He kept his actors up to speed by means of competition: everyone knew that a leading role in one production was likely to be followed by a supporting role only in the next. The repertory model, as well as being familiar to Griffith, had the great advantage of ensuring that he remained the sole focus of artistic power at the studio. At the same time, of course, it helped encourage the eventual defection of those with wider ambitions: Florence Lawrence, advertised as the “Biograph Girl,” left the company in 1909 for the higher wages and personal star billing offered by Carl Laemmle’s Independent Motion Picture Company.56
Griffith also either inherited or was able to recruit an accomplished group of technical and editorial assistants. Billy Bitzer, who had begun to work for the American Mutoscope Company (predecessor to Biograph) as a motion-picture cameraman at the end of 1895, shot almost all of Griffith’s pictures. Bitzer had managed to employ Abe Sholtz, “the most skilled lab man in the business,” as the developer for the films he made. It was the painstaking work of Sholtz, assisted by Joe Aller, a fellow Russian Jew, which helped turn Bitzer from an extremely good cameraman into a great one. James Edwards (“Jimmie”) Smith, also already at Biograph when Griffith arrived, was soon promoted from working in the shipping room to editing his films—a skilled and very difficult task since, as Richard Schickel comments, Griffith hardly ever worked according to a script.57 When Griffith first arrived at Biograph, the story department was headed by a former newspaperman, Lee “Doc” Dougherty, who had hired as chief scenarist Stanner E. V. Taylor, another sometime journalist and failed playwright. They were soon
joined by Frank E. Woods, who had begun his career as a journalist on a small newspaper in Erie, Pennsylvania. After his move to New York, Woods became a pioneering film critic for The Dramatic Mirror. While continuing to write his “Spectator” column, however, he also began to submit scenarios. Soon he and Taylor were providing Griffith with most of the stories for his films.58 A few years later, Woods would play a crucial role in the genesis of The Birth of a Nation.
At first, there was apparently little conflict between Griffith and the management of the Biograph Company. The president, Jeremiah J. Kennedy, was initially very much preoccupied with the battle against Edison and the formation of the MPPC. The vice-president and general manager, Henry Marvin, left Griffith much to his own devices. When Kennedy and Marvin occasionally visited the studio, they did so in such a discreet way as not to interfere with Griffith’s filmmaking.59 Although Griffith was worried during the negotiations for a new contract in the summer of 1909, the company eventually recognized his contribution by raising his salary and doubling his commission on each foot of film sold. His 1910 contract (on which he signed his real name instead of “Lawrence Griffith” for the first time) raised his commission once more, as did its successor of 1911.60 However, royalty increases and the semi-autonomy enjoyed by Griffith—more or less complete control over his company of actors, the choice of scenarios to film, and the production of the films themselves—could not permanently conceal the fact that the Biograph management and Griffith approached film in very different ways. Kennedy and Marvin were businessmen; like Henry Ford, they were intent on producing a single, standardized product for a mass market (they coincidentally hired Griffith as a director in the same year as the first Model T cars were manufactured). The more one-reel films produced for nickelodeon audiences, the greater the profits for Biograph (hence the strategy of paying Griffith a royalty for each foot of film). Any expression of difference or individuality was firmly discouraged. Biograph films were company products, and the company refused to give credits to individuals, whether actors/actresses or the director himself (leading players became known as the “Biograph Man” or “Biograph Girl,” with the films themselves simply referred to as “Biographs”). Having found a successful formula, moreover, the management of Biograph resisted change, especially when such innovations would threaten profits by increasing production costs. In the end, such conservatism would play a major role in Griffith’s departure from the company and the ultimate demise of the Biograph company itself.
As a film director, Griffith was ambitious both for himself and his medium. Over the years, his aspirations came increasingly into conflict with what the Biograph management regarded as sound commercial practice. As Griffith refined his technique, shooting more and more film, the costs of filming rose.61 He became frustrated, moreover, with Biograph’s insistence that the maximum length of a film should be one 1,000-foot reel. Griffith was almost certainly aware that the Vitagraph Company, another member of the MPPC, had produced four longer films during 1909: The Life of Napoleon and The Life of George Washington (both two-reelers), Les Misérables (four reels), and The Life of Moses (five reels). In accordance with the policy of the Trust, these films were released one reel at a time, each to be shown separately. Yet by 1910, they were being shown together as multireel features in some places.62 In November 1910, Griffith shot his own 2,000 foot film, His Trust. Instead of agreeing that it should be cut down to one-reel size, Griffith fought for his film and, as a compromise, it was finally released in two parts.63 His second two-reeler, Enoch Arden, was released in June 1911. Again, Biograph insisted that it be issued as a serial, but when public demand compelled exhibitors to show the parts on consecutive days, the company finally gave in and allowed both reels to be shown on the same program.64 During the next twenty-one months, almost all of the films Griffith produced were of the one reel or one half-reel length preferred by the company. Of the three exceptions, A Temporary Truce (released in June 1912) did not make up two reels and could consequently be shown as an ordinary part of a Biograph program. The company also accepted Brutality, a two-reel film exhibited for the first time in December 1912. But it drew the line at The Massacre, a 2,097-foot Western completed by Griffith in May 1912. Although The Massacre was released in Europe, which was largely untroubled by restraints on the length of films, the Biograph management refused to show it to American audiences. It was not released until February 1914 in the United States, and by that time Griffith had left the company.65
During 1912 and 1913 Griffith’s relations with Biograph deteriorated over a number of matters. The company’s management, at least at first, seemed to be offering movement on two issues: the attribution of credit and the length of films. In 1912, they finally agreed to identify Griffith and his leading actors by name, though only in publicity material and not credits on the films themselves. Before he left for California in December 1912, moreover, Griffith was also told that he might make a small number of two-reel films, though only after approval by the company’s management in New York.
In reality, Kennedy and Marvin had probably already decided to move toward the production of longer films but not in a way Griffith would approve. Biograph had earlier assisted with the exhibition and promotion of the four-reel French import Queen Elizabeth, a filmed stage-play starring Sarah Bernhardt. To some shrewd observers, films of this kind represented the next step in the evolution of the motion picture industry. Adolph Zukor, who had also been involved in the distribution of Queen Elizabeth, had the idea of organizing “Famous Players in Famous Plays” as a direct consequence. In the spring of 1913, without the knowledge of Griffith, who was still in California, the Biograph company signed an agreement with theatrical producers Klaw and Erlanger to film some of their plays as five-reel motion pictures and show them in legitimate theaters.66
Griffith himself saw Queen Elizabeth as a step backward in cinematographic terms. Robert M. Henderson notes that it had only twelve shots on all four reels, compared to sixty-eight in Griffith’s one-reeler The Sands of Dee (1912), and no close or medium shots.67 A more accurate indication of the direction in which cinema was going was the very successful run of Quo Vadis, an eight-reel Italian spectacle, in New York. Although Griffith was unable to see it until his return from California, he almost certainly read reviews of Quo Vadis in the trade press and may have been encouraged to try to emulate it.68 Of the thirty-two films Griffith is believed to have directed in California in 1913,69 seven were of more than one reel. Some of these, including The Little Tease, were stretched versions of what started out as one-reelers; others, such as The Yaqui Cur, were approved as two-reelers in advance by the Biograph management. Two, however, must have disturbed Marvin and Kennedy considerably. For the shooting of The Battle at Elderbush Gulch, Griffith (without bothering to explain why to the company) had a mock-up of an entire Western town built in the San Fernando Valley. His plans for Judith of Bethulia, based on the play he had originally been introduced to while acting for Nance O’Neill’s company, involved the construction of even more elaborate sets. Judith was clearly seen by Griffith as his answer to films such as Quo Vadis.70 Released eventually in both four- and six-reel versions, it represented a major step forward in Griffith’s artistry, bringing together all the skills—including the contrast between the personal and the spectacular—he had honed in his shorter films. Because of Griffith’s insistence on large sets and expensive rehearsals, however, Judith cost twice as much as the $18,000 budgeted for it and seems to have been the final straw for the Biograph front office.71 The company’s management was appalled by the film’s cost, its length, and some of its scenes, including the gruesome beheading of Holofernes by Judith.72
In July 1913, when Griffith returned from California, it was no longer to his old workplace on 11 East 14th Street but to a new and expensive studio at 175th Street in the Bronx that was a symbol of the prosperity of the Biograph company. Griffith could, with some justice, have seen himself as the principal architect of that
prosperity. In the summer of 1912, he had asked J. J. Kennedy for stock in the Biograph Company or for 10 percent of the company’s profits. There is no evidence that his demands were ever taken seriously. Kennedy simply regarded Griffith as “a small cog in the big wheel” that was Biograph. Moreover, a year later, he moved to clip the wings of his over-mighty director. At a meeting with Kennedy and Marvin, Griffith was informed that he must give up his control over budgets and expenditure. He was promised that additional directors would be hired and that he would be able to supervise their work. So far as Judith was concerned, he would finish shooting the final, interior scenes and edit it down to usable size (preferably as a serial with four episodes) but would not straightaway be assigned a new film to direct. At a subsequent meeting, Kennedy finally informed him that, though the company was about to embark on the production of longer films, as a result of the deal with Klaw and Erlanger, Griffith would have no part to play in directing them. If he remained with the company, he would be confined to directing traditional one-reelers. Once Griffith declined this humiliating proposition, his career with Biograph came abruptly to an end.73
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