# When the Movies Were Young/Chapter 1

JUST off Union Square, New York City, there is a stately old brownstone house on which future generations some day may place a tablet to commemorate the place where David W. Griffith and Mary Pickford were first associated with moving pictures.
Here has dwelt romance of many colors. A bird of brilliant plumage, so the story goes, first lived in this broad-spreading five-story old brownstone that still stands on Fourteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, vibrant with life and the ambitions and endeavors of its present occupants.
Although brownstone Manhattan had seen the end of peaceful Dutch ways and the beginning of the present scrambling in the great school of human activity, the first resident of 11 East Fourteenth Street paid no heed—went his independent way. No short-waisted, long and narrow-skirted black frock-coat for him, but a bright blue affair, gold braided and gold buttoned. He was said to be the last man in old Manhattan to put powder in his hair.
As he grew older, they say his style of dressing became more fantastic, further and further back he went in ​fashion's page, until in his last days knickerbockers with fancy buckles adorned his shrinking limbs, and the powdered hair became a periwig. He became known as "The Last Leaf."
A bachelor, he could indulge in what hobbies he liked. He got much out of life. He had a cool cellar built for the claret, and a sun room for the Madeira. In his impressive reception room he gathered his cronies, opened up his claret and Madeira, the while he matched his game-cocks, and the bets were high. Even when the master became very old and ill, and was alone in his mansion with his faithful old servant, Scipio, there were still the rooster fights. But now they were held upstairs in the master's bedroom. Scipio was allowed to bet a quarter against the old man's twenty-dollar note, and no matter how high the stakes piled, or who won, the pot in these last days always went to Scipio.
And so "The Last Leaf" lived and died.
Then in due time the old brownstone became the home of another picturesque character, Colonel Rush C. Hawkins of the Hawkins Zouaves of the Civil War.
Dignified days, when the family learned the world's news from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper and the New York Tribune, and had Peter Goelet and Moses Taylor for millionaire neighbors. For their entertainment they went to Laura Keene's New Theatre, saw Joe Jefferson, and Lotta; went to the Academy of Music, heard Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg; heard Emma Abbott in concert; and rode on horseback up Fifth Avenue to the Park.
Of an evening, in the spacious ballroom whose doors have since opened to Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Mack Sennett, the youths, maidens and young matrons in the soft, flickering light of the astral lamp and snowy candle, danced the modest cotillon and stately quadrille, the ​while the elders played whist. Bounteous supper—champagne, perhaps gin and tansy.
But keenly attuned ears, when they paused to listen, could already hear off in the distance the first faint roll of the drums in the march of progress. "Little Old New York" was growing up and getting to be a big city. And so the Knickerbockers and other aristocracy must leave their brownstone dwellings for quieter districts further uptown. Business was slowly encroaching on their life's peaceful way.
Another day and another generation. Gone the green lawns, enclosed by iron fences where modest cows and showy peacocks mingled, friendly. Gone the harpsichord, the candle, the lamp, to give way to the piano and the gas-lamp. Close up against each other the buildings now nestle round Union Square and on into Fourteenth Street. The horse-drawn street car rattles back and forth where No. 11 stands with some remaining dignity of the old days. On the large glass window—for No. 11's original charming exterior has already yielded to the changes necessitated by trade—is to be read "Steck Piano Company."
In the lovely old ballroom where valiant gentlemen and languishing ladies once danced to soft and lilting strains of music, under the candles' glow, and where "The Last Leaf" entertained his stalwart cronies with cock fighting, the Steck Piano Company now gives concerts and recitals.
The old house has "tenants." And as tenants come and go, the Steck Piano Company tarries but a while, and then moves on.
A lease for the piano company's quarters in No. 11 is drawn up for another firm for $5,000 per year. In place ​of the Steck Piano Company on the large window is to be read—"American Mutoscope and Biograph Company."
However, the name of the new tenant signified nothing whatever to the real estate firm adjacent to No. 11 that had made the new lease. It was understood that Mutoscope pictures to be shown in Penny Arcades were being made, and there was no particular interest in the matter. The "Biograph" part of the name had little significance, if any, until in the passage of time a young actor from Louisville, called Griffith, came to labor where labor had been little known and to wonder about the queer new job he had somewhat reluctantly fallen heir to.
The gentlemen of the real estate firm did some wondering too. Up to this time, the peace of their quarters had been disturbed only by the occasional lady-like afternoon concert of the Steck Piano Company. The few preceding directors of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company had done their work quietly and unemotionally.
Now, whatever was going on in what was once "The Last Leaf's" gay and elegant drawing-room, and why did such shocking language drift through to disturb the conservative transactions in real estate!
"Say, what's the matter with you—you're dying you know—you've been shot and you're dying! Well, that's better, something like it! You, here, you've done the shooting, you're the murderer, naturally you're a bit perturbed, you've lots to think about—yourself for one thing! You're not surrendering at the nearest police station, no, you're beating it, beating it, you understand. Now we'll try it again—That's better, something like it! Now we'll take it. All right, everybody! Shoot!"
The neighborhood certainly was changing. The language! ​The people! Where once distinguished callers in ones and twos had come once and twice a week—now in mobs they were crossing the once sacred threshold every day.
It was in the spring of 1908 that David W. Griffith came to preside at 11 East Fourteenth. Here it was he took up the daily grind, struggled, dreamed, saw old ambitions die, suffered humiliation, achieved, and in four short years was well started on the road to become world famous as the greatest director of the motion picture.
For movies, yes, movies were being made where once "The Last Leaf" had entertained in the grand old manner. That was what the inscription, "American Mutoscope and Biograph Company," had meant.
But movies did not desecrate the dignity of 11 East Fourteenth Street. The dignity of achievement had begun. The old beauty of the place was fast disappearing. The magnificent old chandelier had given place to banks of mercury vapor tubes. There were no soft carpets for the tired actors' feet. The ex-drawing-room and ex-concert hall were now full and overflowing with actors, and life's little comedies and tragedies were being play-acted where once they had been lived.
Fourteenth Street, New York, has been called "the nursery of genius." Many artists struggled there in cheap little studios, began to feel their wings, could not stand success, moved to studio apartments uptown, and met defeat. But 11 East Fourteenth Street still harbors the artist; the building is full of them. Evelyn Longman, who was there when "old Biograph" was, is still there. On other doors are other names—Ruotolo, Oberhardt, John S. Gelert, sculptor; Lester, studio; The Waller Studios; Ye Studio of Frederic Ehrlich.
​In the old projection room are now stacked books and plays of the Edgar S. Werner Company, and in the dear old studio, which is just the same to-day as the day we left it, except that the mercury tubes have been taken out, and a north window cut, presides a sculptor by the name of A. Stirling Calder, who has painted the old door blue and hung a huge brass knocker on it.
Now, when I made up my mind to write this record of those early days of the movies, I knew that I must go down once again to see the old workshop, where for four years David W. Griffith wielded the scepter, until swelled with success and new-gained wealth the Biograph Company pulled up stakes and fitted to its new large modern and expensive studio up in the Bronx at East 175th Street.
So down I went to beg Mr. Calder to let me look over the old place and take a picture of it.
My heart was going pit-a-pat out there in the old hallway while I awaited an answer to my knock. "Please," I pleaded, "I want so much to take a photograph of the studio just as it is. I'm writing a little book about our pioneering days here; it won't take a minute. May I, please?"
Emotion was quite overwhelming me as the memories of the years crowded on me, memories of young and happy days untouched with the sadness that years must inevitably bring even though they bring what is considered "success." Twelve years had gone their way since I had passed through those studio doors and here I was again, all a-flutter with anticipation and choky with the half-dreamy memories of events long past.
But don't be tempted to announce your arrival if you
"Lawrence" Griffith.
(See p. 12)
Linda Arvidson (Mrs. David W. Griffith), as leading ingénue with Florence Roberts in stock in San Francisco.
(See p. 15)
​have ever been connected with a moving picture, for Mr. Calder has scarcely heard of them and when I insisted he must have, he said, with much condescension, "Oh, yes, I remember, Mr. Griffith did a Chinese picture; it was rather good but too sentimental." And he refused to let me take a picture of the studio for he "could not afford to lend his work and his studio to problematical publicity of which he had not the slightest proof."
I felt sorry Mr. Calder had come to reside in our movie nursery at 11 East Fourteenth Street, for we were such good fellows, happy and interested in our work, cordial and pleasant to one another.
The change made me sad!