“Way Down East” is a melodrama, but one that at moments rises to considerable heights. Putting aside the spectacular features of the picture—the blizzard and the ice-drift, where melodrama is raised to the nth degree—the scene where the villain reveals to his victim that their marriage was a mockery, the scene where Anna Moore, about to be turned out into the storm, denounces her betrayer, and the baptismal scene, already mentioned, are drama, and, as Lillian Gish gave them, worthy. And, after all, what is, and is not, melodrama—and cheap. Cheap—because it is human. That is why we have invented for ourselves a hereafter—a place away from it all—of rest by green fields and running brooks. Very well, let us agree that the play was cheap, especially the comedy, which was low comedy and about the record in that direction. But if Lillian’s acting was cheap, and poor, then there is very little to be said for any acting, which, God knows, may be true enough, after all! XVIII SAD, UNPROFITABLE DAYS Lillian to Nell, June 30, 1920: Do you know that I am leaving Mr. Griffith? “Way Down East” that we are on, will be my last. I go with the Frohman Amusement Company, between the 1st and 15th of August. I am to make five pictures a year, for two years. If I make successful pictures, I shall make a lot of money. If I don’t, well, kismet—it’s all a gamble, anyway. It was more of a “gamble” than she knew. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as the “Frohman Amusement Company.” No Frohman—no _amusement_ Frohman—had anything to do with it. That was just a part of the gamble. Griffith, apparently, thought it all right, and so did his brother, for it was the latter who made the connection. Had Lillian made inquiries on her own account, her eyes might have been opened sooner, and less expensively. Griffith and Lillian parted on the friendliest terms. Griffith said to her: “You know the business as well as I do. You should be making more money than you can make with me.” He did not say: “Stay with me and share in the prosperity which you have brought, and will bring me. No one can be more successful than we two together.” To a simple-minded literary person, this would seem to have been the wisest course. Lillian thinks he had perhaps grown tired of seeing her around. She did not make five pictures for the Frohman company, or even one. She did begin one, “World’s Shadows,” by Madame de Grésac, who claims here a word of introduction: