did. Biograph pictures came to mean something just a little different

from what had been. There was a sure artistic touch to them; the fine shadings were there that mark the line between talent and genius.

David Griffith had found his place; found it long before he knew it. In ways, it was a congenial berth. Mr. Marvin, once he saw how the wind blew, seldom came into the studio. He was willing to let the new producer work things out his own way. An occasional conference there was, necessarily--a friendly chat as to how things were coming along.

Mr. Marvin was tall and dark, quite a handsome man--so approachable. The actors felt quite at ease with him. Had he not been one of us? Had he not directed even Mr. Griffith in a penny-in-the-slot movie? Years later I recalled the incident to Mr. Marvin. He had forgotten it completely, but with a hearty laugh said: “No did I really? Well, God forgive me.”

“God forgive us all,” I answered.

Liking Mr. Marvin as we did, we did not quite understand or approve the sudden, unexpected intrusion of Mr. J. J. Kennedy, one day.

“Oh, our _president_? Why, do you suppose,” the anxious actors queried, “he’s become suddenly so interested?” What could poor movie actors be expected to know of politics and high finance? Everything had been so pleasant, we couldn’t understand it. We were rather awed by Mr. Kennedy at first. Red-headed, pugnacious Irish Jeremiah--why, he never gave an actor a smile or the faintest recognition, and feeling ourselves such poor worms, as a result, we became nothing less than Sphinxes whenever his rare but awe-inspiring presence graced the studio.

But we soon learned that “fighting J. J.” was of some importance in this movie business. And other things about him we learned: that he was a big man in the world of engineering--a millionaire who lived in a lovely brownstone in Brooklyn. We soon discovered he was human, too.

It seemed Mr. Kennedy had had his affairs all settled to retire from the world of business activities, when, in the critical days resulting from the 1907 panic, he stepped into the breach and saved from impending disaster the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.

The little A. M. and B. Co. would have been terribly surprised had she been told that she was to become the organization that would develop some of the greatest of motion picture directors and stars--the Augustin Daly stock company of the movies. For while there is never the grind of its preposterous old camera to be heard in the length of the land to-day, while for years (at the time of writing this, nearly ten) all its wheels of activity have been silent, “The Old Biograph” remains as the most romantic memory, the most vital force in the early history of the American motion picture.

The association with these two scholarly gentlemen Messrs. Kennedy and Marvin, unusual then as to-day in the picture business, helped to soften the crudities of the work, and tone down the apparent rough edges of our job. So considerate of our tender feelings were both Mr. Marvin and Mr. Kennedy, that when either desired to visit or bring interested friends into the studio, they would ask Mr. Griffith for a propitious moment, and then stand off in the background as though apologizing for the intrusion.

Mr. Griffith, but not by way of retaliation, had reason to make intrusions on his bosses. He went pleading the cause of better screen stories. For that was the ticklish point--to raise our artistic standard--not to depart too rapidly from the accepted--and to keep our product commercial.

David Griffith began feeling his wings. He dared to consider a production of Browning’s “Pippa Passes.” If just once he could do something radical to make the indifferent legitimate actors, critics, writers, and a better class of public take cognizance of us! So there resulted long discussions with the Biograph executives as to the advisability of Browning in moving pictures, and after much persuasion consent was eventually granted.

There was no question in our minds as to whether “Pippa Passes” would be an artistic success. Had this classic writer fashioned his famous poem directly for the movies he couldn’t have turned out a better screen subject. But might not the bare idea of the high-brow Robert scare away the moving picture public?

In those days there were several kinds of motion picture publics. In sections of New York City, there was the dirty, dark little store, a sheet at one end and the projection machine at the other. It took courage to sit through a show in such a place, for one seldom escaped without some weary soul finding a shoulder the while he indulged in forty winks. Besides this there were the better-known Keith and Proctor Theatres on Fourteenth Street, Twenty-third, and 125th Street, the Fourteenth Street Theatre, and the old Academy of Music.

In the smaller American cities, the motion picture public was of middle-class homey folks who washed their own supper dishes in a hurry so as to see the new movie, and to meet their neighbors who, like themselves, dashed hatless to the nickelodeon, dragging along with them the children and the dog.

Things like this happened, when dinner hour was approaching, and mother was anxiously awaiting her child: the neighborhood policeman would casually saunter over to the picture house, poke his head in at the door, spy the wanted child, tap her little shoulder, gently reproving: “Jennie, your mother wants you”--whereupon Jennie would reluctantly tear herself away so that the family could all sit down together to their pot-roast and noodles.

Yes, Browning would need courage.

“Pippa Passes” being ever in Mr. Griffith’s mind these days, he scanned each new face in the studio as he mulled over the needed characters. The cast would be the best possible one he could get together.