There was a frictional feeling in our return to prosaic studio life after the glorious freedom of the country. But the new “projections”—the pictures that had been printed and assembled in our absence—would take the edge off and cheer us up some; we were all a-thrill about seeing the first run of the pictures we had taken in the country; and we were eager about the picture we were to do next.

During our absence we would have missed seeing not only our own releases but those of the other companies, which, our day’s work finished, we used to try to catch up on. Mondays and Thursdays had come to be release days for Biograph pictures. Then at some theatres, came whole evenings devoted to them. On these occasions exhibitors would put a stand outside saying “Biograph Night.” After the first showing it was a difficult job to locate a picture. From Tenth Avenue to Avenue A, we’d roam, and no matter how hot, stuffy, or dirty the place might be, we’d make the grade in time.

“Pippa Passes,” which was to make or unmake us, was all this time hanging fire. Mr. Griffith was getting an all star cast intact. The newly recruited James Kirkwood and Henry Walthall gave us two good men who, with Owen Moore and Arthur Johnson, were all the actors needed. For the women, there were Marion Leonard, Gertrude Robinson, and myself. And little Mary Pickford whom our director had engaged with Pippa in mind (?). When the day came to shoot Browning for the first time, it was winsome Gertrude Robinson with black curls and dark blue eyes who was chosen for the rôle of the spiritual Pippa. David thought Mary had grown a bit plump; she no longer filled his mental image of the type.

When at last we started on “Pippa Passes,” things went off with a bang. Each of the four themes—Morn, Noon, Evening, Night—would be followed by a flash of Pippa singing her little song.

It was “Morn” that intrigued. To show “daybreak” in Pippa’s little room would mean trying out a new light effect. The only light effect so far experimented with had been the “fireside glow.” The opportunity to try a different kind so interested Mr. Griffith that before he began to “shoot” Pippa, he had a scheme all worked out.

He figured on cutting a little rectangular place in the back wall of Pippa’s room, about three feet by one, and arranging a sliding board to fit the aperture much like the cover of a box sliding in and out of grooves. The board was to be gradually lowered and beams of light from a powerful Kleig shining through would thus appear as the first rays of the rising sun striking the wall of the room. Other lights stationed outside Pippa’s window would give the effect of soft morning light. Then the lights full up, the mercury tubes a-sizzling, the room fully lighted, the back wall would have become a regular back wall again, with no little hole in it.

All this was explained to the camera men Billy Bitzer and Arthur Marvin, for the whole technical staff was in attendance on the production of this one thousand foot feature—one thousand feet being the length of our features at this time. Bitzer didn’t think much of the idea, but Arthur Marvin, who had seen his chief’s radical ideas worked out successfully before, was less inclined to skepticism. But response, on the whole, was rather snippy. While David would have preferred a heartier appreciation, he would not be deterred, and he spoke in rather plain words: “Well, come on, let’s do it anyhow; I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about it.”

Pippa is asleep in her little bed. The dawn is coming—a tense moment—for Pippa must wake, sit up in her little bed, rise, cross to the window, and greet the dawn in perfect harmony with the mechanical force operating the sliding board and the Kleigs. All was manipulated in perfect tempo.

The skeptical studio bunch remained stubborn until the first projection of the picture upstairs. At first the comments came in hushed and awed tones, and then when the showing was over, the little experiment in light effects was greeted with uncontrolled enthusiasm.

“Pippa Passes” was released on October 4, 1909, a day of great anxiety. We felt pretty sure it was good stuff, but we were wholly unprepared for what was to happen. On the morning of October 10th, while we were scanning the news items in the columns of the New York Times, the while we imbibed our breakfast coffee, our unbelieving eyes were greeted with a column headlined thus:

BROWNING NOW GIVEN IN MOVING PICTURES
“Pippa Passes” the Latest Play
Without Words to be Seen
In the Nickelodeons

THE CLASSICS DRAWN UPON
Even Biblical Stories Portrayed For
Critical Audiences—Improvement
Due to Board of Censors

It was all too much—much too much. The newspapers were writing about us. A conservative New York daily was taking us seriously. It seemed incredible, but there it was before our eyes. It looked wonderful! Oh, so wonderful we nearly wept. Suddenly everything was changed. Now we could begin to lift up our heads, and perhaps invite our lit’ry friends to our movies!

This is what the New York Times man had to say:

There certainly was a decided change in the general attitude toward us after this wonderful publicity. Directly we had ’phone calls from friends saying they would like to go to the movies with us; and they would just love to come down to the studio and watch a picture being made. Even our one erudite friend, a Greek scholar, inquired where he could see “Pippa Passes.” As the picture was shown for only one night, we thought it might be rather nice to invite the dead-language person and his wife to the studio. They came and found it intensely interesting: met Mary Pickford and thought her “sweet.”

Besides the Greek professor, another friend, one of the big men of the Old Guard—an old newspaper man, and president and editor of Leslie’s Weekly and Judge at this time—began making inquiries.

The night the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City opened, David thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to splurge a bit and invite Mr. Sleicher to dinner, he being the editor who had paid him six dollars for his poem, “The Wild Duck.” He’d surely think we had come a long pace ahead in the movies, dining at the Ritz, and doing it so casual-like.

Talk there was at the dinner about newspapers and magazines, and then we got around to the movies, and the money they were making. Mr. Sleicher said: “Well, there’s more money in them than in my business, but I like my business better. Now in my game, twenty-four hours or even less, after a thing happens you can see a picture of it and read about it in the paper, and you can’t do that in your movies.” (I understand that even before the time of this dinner, events of special interest occasionally found their way to the screen on the day they happened. In London, in 1906, the Urbanora people showed the boat race between Cambridge and Harvard Universities on the evening of the day they were held, but we did not know about that.)

Mr. Griffith was not going to be outdone; so, with much bravado, for he was quite convinced of its truth, he said: “Well, we are not doing it now, but the time will come when the day’s news events will be regularly pictured on the screen with the same speed the ambitious young reporter gets his scoop on the front page of his newspaper. We’ll have all the daily news told in moving pictures the same as it is told in words on the printed page. Now, I’m willing to bet you.”

But John Sleicher was skeptical. Had he not been, he would then and there have invested some of his pennies in the movies. He regretted the opportunity many times afterward, for while the prediction has not been fulfilled exactly, the News Reel of to-day gives promise that it will be. However, Mr. Sleicher lived to enjoy the News Reel quite as much as he did his newspaper, and that meant a great deal for him.

These little happenings were encouraging. Intelligent persons on the outside were taking interest. So again we’d buck up and go at the movie job with renewed vigor.

For a time we lived in the clouds—our habitat a mountain peak. But that couldn’t last. No kind of mountain peak existence could. We should have known. Even after all the encouragement, down off our peak we’d slip into the deep dark valley again.

We tried to keep an unswerving faith, but who could have visioned the great things that were to come? Doubts still persisted. Yes, even after the Browning triumph, longings came over us to return to former ambitions. They had not been buried so deeply after all. We’d see a fine play and get the blue devils. In this mood my husband would do the rounds of the movie houses and chancing upon a lot of bad pictures, come back utterly discouraged.

“They can’t last. I give them a few years. Where’s my play? Since I went into these movies I haven’t had a minute to look at a thing I ever wrote. And I went into them because I thought surely I’d get time to write or do something with what I had.” (Monetary needs so soon forgotten!) “Well, anyhow, nobody’s going to know I ever did this sort of thing when I’m a famous playwright. Nobody’s ever going to know that David W. Griffith, the playwright, was once the Lawrence Griffith of the movies.”

So “Lawrence” continued on the next Biograph contract. The two names would get all balled up sometimes and I’d get peeved and say: “Why don’t you use your right name? I think you’re so silly.”

But David remained obdurate until he signed his third Biograph contract.