The Griffith Project, Volume 8

Films Produced in 1914-15

Paolo Cherchi Usai

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781844570430
• eBook ISBN: 9781839020155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

No other silent film director has been as extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than five hundred films has been the subject of a systematic analysis, and the vast majority of his other works still await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from 'Professional Jealousy '(1907) to 'The' 'Struggle '(1931) - will be explored in this multivolume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field. Created as a companion to the ongoing retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, the Griffith Project is an indispensable guide to the work of a crucial figure in the arts of the nineteenth century. The latest volume assesses Griffith's work in 1914-15. It includes an extensive, multi-authored evaluation of 'The Birth of' 'a Nation.'

513

DAVID W. GRIFFITH CORP.; MAJESTIC MOTION PICTURE CO.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION

Alternate titles: The Clansman; The Birth of the Nation; or, The Clansman

Working title: The Clansman

Filming date: Summer–Fall 1914 [4 July to 30 October 1914, according to Seymour Stern, “Griffith I – The Birth of a Nation”, pp. 52–57]. (The payroll records in the Reliance-Majestic production ledgers begin on 16 May, ending on 27 June 1914.)

Location: Reliance-Majestic studio, 4500 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles; exteriors, California

locations: San Fernando Valley; Forest Lawn Cemetery, Hollywood Hills [site of battle scenes, according to Stern, pp. 53–54]; Imperial Valley; Big Bear Lake; Idyllwild; Calabasas; Orange; Cahuenga Peak

Presented by: D.W. Griffith

Producer: D.W. Griffith

Distribution: Epoch Producing Corp.; Triangle Film Corp. (1930 sound reissue) Riverside, California preview: 1 January 1915, Loring Opera House (as The Clansman)

Los Angeles roadshow premiere: 8 February 1915, Clune’s Auditorium (as The Clansman)

San Francisco roadshow premiere: 1 March 1915

New York roadshow premiere: 3 March 1915, Liberty Theatre

Release length: twelve reels

Copyright date: 8 February 1915, as The Birth of a Nation (LP6677); 13 February 1915, as The Birth of the Nation; or, The Clansman (LU4453)

Director: D.W. Griffith

Scenario: D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods

Source: The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the novel and stage-play by Thomas Dixon (1905); The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865–1900, his novel (1902)

Camera: G.W. Bitzer

Assistant camera: Karl Brown, F.B. Good

Chief assistant director: George Siegmann

Assistant directors: Thomas E. O’Brien, George (André) Beranger, Monte Blue, William Christy Cabanne, Elmer Clifton, Donald Crisp, Howard Gaye, Fred Hamer, Herbert Sutch, Tom Wilson, Baron von Winther?; Erich von Stroheim?; Raoul Walsh? Executive and production assistant: J.A. Barry

Construction: Frank “Huck” Wortman

Property master: Herbert Sutch

Costumes: Robert Goldstein

Film editors: James Smith, Rose Smith; James E. Woods? (according to a news item) Musical accompaniment composed and arranged by: Joseph Carl Breil; Carli Elinor (at Clune’s Auditorium premiere, Los Angeles)

Miniatures: (according to Classic Film Collector, no. 36, Fall 1972, p. 53) Art Smith

Color: Handschiegl process (for some prints released after 1916)

Special effects: Walter Hoffman, “Fireworks” Wilson

Technical director: Samuel De Vall Historical consultant: T.K. Peters (according to American Cinematographer, February 1974, p. 223)

Technical advisor (cavalry movements): Col. Rhys Price

Press representative: Henry I. McMahon

Cast: [as printed in the premiere program:] Henry Walthall (Colonel Ben Cameron [The Little Colonel]); Miriam Cooper (Margaret Cameron, the elder sister); Mae Marsh (Flora Cameron, the pet sister [Little Sister]); Josephine Crowell (Mrs. Cameron); Spottiswoode Aitken (Dr. Cameron); J.A. Beringer [George André Beranger] (Wade Cameron, the second son); Maxfield Stanley [John French, according to programs and reviews] (Duke Cameron, the youngest son); Jennie Lee (Mammy/Cyndy, their faithful old servant); Ralph Lewis (Hon. Austin Stoneman, Leader of the House); Lillian Gish (Elsie Stoneman, his daughter); Elmer Clifton (Phil Stoneman, his elder son); Robert Harron (Tod Stoneman, the younger son); Wallace Reed [Reid] (Jeff, the blacksmith); Mary Alden (Lydia Brown, Stoneman’s mulatto housekeeper); George Siegmann (Silas Lynch, mulatto Lieutenant-Governor); Walter Long (Gus, a renegade negro); Joseph Henabery (Abraham Lincoln and several other parts); Raoul Walsh (John Wilkes Booth); Donald Crisp (General U. S. Grant); Howard Gaye (General Robert E. Lee); William DeVaull (Nelse, an old-fashioned negro); William Freeman (Jake, a black man faithful unto death); Thomas Wilson (Stoneman’s servant); [from other sources:] Sam de Grasse (Charles Summer); Fred Burns; Allan Sears; Violet Wilkey (Flora Cameron as a child); Elmo Lincoln (White-arm Joe and other roles); Alberta Lee (Mrs. Lincoln); Olga Grey (Laura Keene); Eugene Pallette (Union soldier); Chief Dark Cloud (General in the Appomatox surrender); John Ford? (Klansman); Mme. Sul-te-Wan (A black woman, Dr. Cameron’s taunter); Gibson Gowland (Extra); Jack Pickford? (In blackface [according to Louise Brooks, probably reported by Jack Pickford]); Erich von Stroheim?, Jules White?, Ben White?, Ted Mulford? (Men falling from roof); Charles Eagle Eye (Extra); [according to modern sources:] Lenore Cooper (Elsie’s maid); Alma Rubens, Donna Montran (Belles of 1861); ? (Piedmont girl); Charles Stevens (Man who reports the Piedmont raid to the Confederates); William Freeman (Sentry at the hospital)

NOTE: Erich von Stroheim’s role in the production is disputed by Joseph Henabery (Before, In and After Hollywood, pp. 87–94) and by Arthur Lennig (Stroheim, pp. 25–28); see also Richard Koszarski, “‘So Long, Master…’: Stroheim, Griffith, and the Griffith Studio”, Griffithiana, 2001, pp. 45–81). “Fireworks” Wilson’s credit for special effects is questioned by Kevin Brownlow (letter to the Editor, October 24, 2002): “I’m beginning to wonder whether Karl Brown didn’t invent the name Fireworks Wilson because he couldn’t recall [Walter] Hoffman’s name”. Kevin Brownlow (October 26, 2002): “Biograph actors Charles Hill Mailes and Claire McDowell were in the cast of the stage version of ‘The Clansman’. The film was banned in Kansas until December 1923. Ted Mulford claimed to be the man who fell from a roof. But then I think he claimed to be Lincoln, too (Des Moines Register [Iowa], April 16, 1917); Ben White [is allegedly another] fellow who fell from [the] roof [Jack White et al., White Brothers, p. 172]. All cavalry companies of the California National Guard took part in the KKK ride (The Motion Picture News, January 2, 1915, p. 33)”. Kevin Brownlow to Editor, 6 November 2003: “Bessie Love was definitely not in The Birth of a Nation. Yes, there is a girl who looks like her. But she said her very first role was in Intolerance. She would certainly have remembered being in The Birth of a Nation. ‘Don’t forget when you talk to me’, she used to say, ‘you’re talking to the horse!’” According to Wagenknecht and Slide, The Films of D. W. Griffith, p. 46, “an unauthorized three-reel condensation, titled In the Clutches of the Ku Klux Klan, was released early in 1916, and a lawsuit followed”. Russell Merritt pointed out that Seymour Stern, in his 1965 essay for Film Culture (p. 53), writes in : “… finally for the Ride of the Klansmen – the hills of Calabasas and the Agoura Trading Post to the north (for group shots and shots from hilltops against the sky) and (for the main Ride) the back roads and farm country between Whittier, on the Los Angeles county-line, the town of Fullerton, and the site of the new born town of Orange, in Orange County.” In Eileen Bowser’s opinion, the the most detailed account of locations for The Birth of a Nation can be found in Karl Brown’s Adventures with D. W. Griffith (pp. 55–56).

Archival sources: FILM – George Eastman House, 35mm nitrate positive (one reel); Gosfilmofond of Russia, 35mm acetate negative; Library of Congress, a) 35mm nitrate camera negative (8,437 ft., no intertitles), AFI/Killiam Collection; b) 35mm nitrate negative (incomplete, 5,950 ft.), AFI/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection; c) 35mm acetate negative (10,605 ft.), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; d) 35mm acetate negative (13,089 ft.; reissue sound version, picture only), AFI/Lawrence R. Landry and Family; e) 35mm acetate negative (10,764 ft.; reissue sound version, picture only), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; f) 35mm nitrate positive (10,200 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Raymond Rohauer Collection; g) 35mm nitrate positive (7,650 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection; h) 35mm acetate positive (11,000 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), Library of Congress Collection; i) 35mm acetate positive (9,561 ft.; reissue sound version, picture only), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; j) 35mm nitrate positive (10,200 ft; reissue sound version, soundtrack only), AFI/Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection; k) 35mm nitrate positive (19,556 ft.; reissue with soundtrack, tinted), AFI/Paul Killiam Collection; l) 35mm nitrate positive (10,200 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Lawrence R. Landry and Family; m) 16mm acetate positive (5,700 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), Copyright Collection; n) 16mm acetate positive (4,200 ft.; reissue with soundtrack), AFI/Jonathan Sonneborn Collection; o) 16mm acetate positive (3,800 ft.; with soundtrack), AFI/Richard Mertz Collection; p) 50 individual rolls of varying footage from miscellaneous sources (Library of Congress print inventory compiled by Linda Shah, under the supervision of Pat Loughney and Mike Mashon. NOTE: some footage measurements of archival elements are approximate); The Museum of Modern Art, a) 35mm nitrate positive (11,238 ft., received 1977 from the American Film Institute; printed on 1921–23 on Agfa stock; b) 35mm nitrate fine grain master (11,375 ft., printed in the 1940s from a nitrate [ca. 1925] intermediate negative. The intermediate negative was obtained from a 1924 nitrate positive, struck from the original negative); c) 35mm nitrate negative (fragment). MUSIC – University of Minnesota (Arthur Kleiner Collection, Austrian Institute), original score (unspecified parts); Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), Brussels, original score (unspecified parts), 151 pages; George Eastman House, conductor’s (piano) score, two copies with different layouts; 1st violin, three copies (with two different layouts); flute; clarinet; cornets; trombone; drums; cello; bass; Themes from the Incidential Music to The Birth of a Nation (Chappell Edition 1916), piano score; Library of Congress (The Museum of Modern Art Collection), a) parts (0,1,2,1; 2,2,2, tuba; drums; harp; 1st violin, 1st violin-second desk, 2nd violin, viola). NOTE: cover of oboe part is stamped “LARGE ORCHESTRA: SET F”; clarinet “LARGE ORCHESTRA: SET A”; and viola “MEDIUM ORCHESTRA: SET NO. 1”; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 5; b) parts (1,0,1,0; 0,1,1; drums; strings). NOTE: all parts headed on first page “Music score of The Birth of a Nation”; microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 6; c) small orchestra: parts (1,0,1,0; 0,1,1; drums and tympani; 1st violin, cello, bass); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 7; d) piano conductor, 151 pages. NOTE: carbon typescript with contents attached (3 pages); microfilm edition: Library of Congress, Music 3236, Item 8. NOTE: A recording of the original music was performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; Clyde Allen, conductor (Label “X” / Fifth Continent Music Corp., 1985, vinyl LP LXLP 701; compact disc LXCD 701)

The first seed of disunion is planted by the African being brought to America in New England ships and sold by the traders to the South, pious Puritans blessing the traffic. Having profited by the trade and having no use for slaves themselves, the traders of the seventeenth century became the abolitionists of the nineteenth.

In 1860 a great parliamentary leader, whom we call Austin [S]toneman, is rising to p[o]wer in the House of Representatives. We find him with his young daughter, Elsie, in her apartments in Washington. Her brothers are planning a visit to Piedmont, S.C., where [l]ive the Camerons, old friends – the family consisting of Bennie, his two sisters, mother, father and two brothers. True to their [p]romise the Stoneman boys visit Piedmont, where the elder brother [f]alls in love with the elder Cameron girl, while Bennie Cameron falls [i]n love with a picture of Elsie Stone-man, whom he has never met.

They are all interested in the possibility of [s]ecession [i]n case the North carries the election. Soon the Stoneman boys [ret]urn North.

The President signs the proclamation and his first call [f]or volunteers comes. In Stoneman’s home his mulatto housekeeper [d]reams ambitiously of her future and the future power of her master – [S]toneman, over whom she is gaining ascendancy.

The Stoneman boys leave for the front, as do the Cameron [b]oys. On the battlefield, the chums – the younger Cameron and [S]toneman sons – meet once again and die in each other’s arms.

In [P]iedmont, war has scarred the village. The Camerons [s]ell their last and dearest possessions to aid the failing cause of the South.

In the North, Elsie Stoneman goes as a nurse to the military hospital at Washington. Later, Atlanta is bombarded and the last days before Petersburg are come. The North is finally victorious and Bennie Cameron lies near death in the military hospital at Washington, and is nursed by Elsie.Cameron is to be hanged upon his recovery, as a guerilla, but Elsie and his mother secure his pardon by Lincoln. Cameron returns home and the South goes to work to rebuild its failed fortunes, under Lincoln’s fostering hand. Then comes Lincoln’s assassination and Stoneman finds himself in supreme power and starts to make his dreams of negro equality come true. His protege, Silas Lynch, a mulatto, he chooses as the leader of the blacks, and sends him South to organize and wield the power of the black vote. Lynch makes Piedmont his headquarters, where [he in]duces the negro[es] to quit work and where he soon clashes with the Aryan race, represented by Bennie Cameron and his friends.

Stoneman, ill, comes to Piedmont with E[l]sie. Her brother seeks reunion with the Cameron girl, but the poor bruised heart of the South cannot forget war’s trials, and he is dismissed. Elsie’s love battles with her pride for Bennie Cameron, but she will not answer him definitely.

The whites are disfranchised and the Camerons confer with their fe[l]low victims as to what shall be done. Lynch is elected Lieut. Governor and now his love looks high and he aspires to the hand of Elsie Stoneman in marriage.

In agony of soul over the degradation of his people by the blacks, now supreme in power, Ben Cameron goes to the mountain top to be alone and there sees a couple of white children scare some pickaninnies [sic] by hiding beneath a white sheet. Cameron thus gets and inspiration for a plan whereby he can use the negro superstitions as a club to defeat their insolent power. The result is the forming of the Ku Klux Klan. When Elsie Stoneman learns of Cameron’s connection with the Ku Klux Klan, in loyalty to her father she breaks off her engagement with Bennie.

Bennie’s little sister, against her brother’s warning against venturing out alone on account of the negro lawlessness, ventures out alone to the spring and is pursued by Gus, a renegade negro soldier. To escape with honor intact, she leaps to her death from a high cliff. The townsmen, led by Ben Cameron, capture Gus, kill him after a trial by the Klan, and throw his body on the steps of the Lieut. Governor’s. Lynch fills the streets with negro militia during Stoneman’s temporary departure from Piedmont. The Klan meets to disarm the negroes, while Lynch arrests the elder Cameron for harboring the Klansman. Elsie goes to Lynch, in the absence of her father, to seek Cameron’s release. In the mean[wh]ile Cameron and Elsie’s brother, who has aided the Camerons, have escaped to seek refuge in a hut near the woods outside of town.

Lynch proposes marriage to Elsie and proposes that she shall be his queen of the black empire he is to found in the South. Upon her refusal, he plans arrangements for a forced marriage, and in the meanwhile the Klan, being assembled in full strength, ride off on their missions. They rescue the Cameron party and are told of Elsie’s danger. In the meantime, Stoneman returns and Lynch tells him he is to marry Elsie. Stoneman now realizes the Frankenstein he has himself created, but is helpless until the Klan arrives, disarms all the negroes and rescues Elsie.

At the next election, the negroes dare not vote and the threat of a black empire is dissoluted [sic]. Bennie Cameron and Elsie and [sic] married, and the Stoneman boy marries Bennie’s sister. In the end is seen the Prince of Peace in struggle with bestial war, represented by a nude man

beast astride a horse, trampling across a sea of dead bodies, while on either side are those bereft by cruel war. The Prince of Peace causes the banishment of the war figu[re] from each […] all is brotherly love in the City of Peace.

Synopsis from Copyright Material submitted to the Library of Congress, February 13, 1915 (as The Birth of the Nation; or, The Clansman), LU4453

Though they live in different regions of the United States, sons of the Cameron and Stone-man families have established a friendship while attending boarding school together. During a visit to the Cameron household in the South, Phil Stoneman, the elder of the Stoneman sons, falls in love with the elder Cameron daughter, Margaret, while Ben, the oldest of the Cameron boys, becomes enamoured of a photograph of Phil’s sister Elsie. Soon after the visit, war breaks out between the North and South, and the sons enlist. The younger boys of both households die in battle, while Ben is injured and captured by Union troops during the Battle of Petersburg. While convalescing in a Northern hospital, Ben is attended to by Elsie Stoneman, who helps his mother to plea for his life when he is condemned to death for alleged guerilla activities. Pardoned by Lincoln, Ben returns home to a war-scarred South. Back in Washington, Phil and Elsie view a theatrical performance also attended by Lincoln. During the play, Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

Following the assassination, the Stoneman patriarch, the leader of the House of Representatives, assumes an especially powerful position within the government. He appoints a mulatto, Silas Lynch, to oversee the extension of voting rights to black men in the South. Both he and Lynch travel to Piedmont, where the Camerons live, accompanied by Elsie and Phil. Reunited, Elsie and Ben become romantically involved, but memories of the war prevent Margaret from responding to Phil’s entreaties. Lynch is elected Lieutenant Governor and blacks take control of the legislature. Ben begins to note increased affronts to whites by blacks, and closer to home, Gus, a black officer, takes an interest in Ben’s younger sister, Flora. Determined to take control, Ben and other...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Notes on Contributors
• Note on Layout
• 502. The Great Leap; or, Until Death Do Us Part
• 503. The Battle of the Sexes
• 504. The Gangsters
• 505. The Escape
• 506. The Floor Above
• 507. The Dishonored Medal
• 508. The Mountain Rat
• 509. Home, Sweet Home
• 510. The Avenging Conscience
• 511. The Painted Lady
• 512. [Production footage of 1907–1915 The Birth of a Nation]
• 513. The Birth of a Nation
• 514. Enoch Arden
• 515. Ghosts
• 516. Pillars of Society
• 517. The Martyrs of the Alamo
• 518. The Lamb
• 519. Old Heidelberg
• 520. The Sable Lorcha
• 521. The Lily and the Rose
• 522. Double Trouble
• 523. Jordan Is a Hard Road
• 524. The Penitentes
• 525. Cross Currents
• 526. Let Katie Do It
• 527. The Missing Links
• 528. Don Quixote
• 529. The Wood Nymph
• 530. His Picture in the Papers
• 531. Martha’s Vindication
• 532. Daphne and the Pirate
• 533. The Flying Torpedo
• Bibliography
• Index of Titles: 1914–1915
• Cumulative Index of Titles:
• eCopyright