The New York herald., 1921-10-30
By WILLIS STEEL.


I.TF boy hungering for knowledge
back in the hills of Kentucky
twenty-five years ago had been
able to see for or 10 cents real ocean,
with real waves breaking on the strand
or scenes from the daily life OF great
city, or actual pictures of far distant
Cathay, how he would have thrilled to the
sight how much he would have learned,
how broad would have grown his vision!"
This is what David Wark Griffith, pro-
ducer of motion pictures, exclaimed about
that new form of expression" the cinema,
which has come, he said, to revolutionize
in simple and natural way world grown
somewhat indifferent to its ancient teach
ers He said it with no intention of de-
Tending the movies" which, he thinks,
need no defence, but to bring. to minds
filled to repletion and indifference with
reflections OF familiar scenes some notion
of what the cinema carries to the prairie
and the desert.
The boy to whom impersonally Mr.. Grif-
fifth referred was himself, so he spoke from
the heart, and sincerely, of what he. believes
the motion picture Is able to do for other
boys similarly situated. 1t was as far as
he cared to go in the path of personal
revelations while very informal conversa-
tion went on the other day in his studio
at Mamaroneck. And he seemed to be
quite as sincere when he added that people
wouldn't be keen to read any further
revelations.
The public, remembering ''The Birth OF
a Nation Intolerance" Hearts of the
World" "Way Down East'-to instance
but moiety of his product-believe that
they have in him a maker of pictures
whose chief if not sole, purpose is not to
grind out money from their pockets but
who aims to give them a degree of what
for lack of better name Is called litera-
ture.
The people in spite of Verlaine and
great grist of common producers of books,
plays, moving pictures; in spite OF the
vulgar enemies of every form of art ex-
preston who for lucre would keep them
still the people" love literature and in
some vague but honest way are moved by
it. So because Mr.. Griffith has become a
purveyor of this thing they love he is
personality worth writing about.
Resembles the Finest Type
Of the Educated Enghshman
The man from Kentucky looks, acts,
talks like anything but a man from Ken
lucky or what without drriere pensee one
imagines a Kentucky bred man should be.
Carefully dressed but in the latest incon-
spicuous fashion, retiring in manner but
forceful in expression, he makes one think
not of an American at all, but of the finest
type of Englishman. His voice is rich and
deep, recalling that of Forbes Robertson,
but he exhibits not even the few traits of
the stage characteristic of that famous
actor Although for brief couple of years
he wffs an actor it was not from any love
of the mimetic art but undertaken as "a
carefully thought out part of his own de-
velopmenN
His head, with a full cranial range, and
his face, blue eyed, long nosed and a long
upper Tipped mouth combining lines indica-
tive of decision and sentiment, recalls an
English type frequently seen at the great
English universities. This writer has met
several of the fellows of Oxford and Cam
bridge, delightful, sophisticated men, singu-
larly different from the accepted bulldog
Englishman of caricature, and he thought
of them while he was talking to his own
countryman. question brought out the
denial that Mr. Griffith had lived long in
England. In spite of birth and environ
ment this man has in fact developed along
racial lines.
For he comes from English ancestry on
both sides The Wark which is part of
his patronymic comes from Welsh fore
bears, the Griffith who started the family
going here left England in the beginning
of the nineteenth century and fought in
the war of 1872; his mothers family had
longer been >domiciled in Virginia She
was a Carter and among her ancestors
numbers the king Carter of legend,
friend of Fairfax and Washington, while
another married Lady Mary Montague and
brought that celebrated belle of her day to
Virginia as Henry Esmond had brought
his lovely but somewhat elderly bride. The
Shirley Carter homestead, built in 1919,
still stands beside the Potomac one of the
Oldest homesteads of America.
Fit Mentally and Physically
For Any SeIf-Made Task
David Wark Griffith looks like man in
the best of health, completely fit for any
exertion. physical or mental, he sets for
himself; full, indeed, of surplus energy,
hard muscled spare and enduring. He
doesn't play much, has no golf or bill
ards, no indoor games. He likes long
walks and shares the opinion of former
British Prime Minister that the outside
of horse is the best thing for the inside