An exhibitor in those days would accept eleven hundred feet of film,
but that was the limit. The programs were arranged only for the
thousand-foot picture; a thousand-foot Biograph being shown Mondays
and Thursdays. How could two thousand feet be shown on Monday and none
on Thursday? Even could the exhibitor have so arranged it, would the
people sit through two thousand feet without a break?
Well, now, we could do this: we could take the picture in two reels,
each of a thousand feet, show one reel Monday, the second Thursday, and
take a chance on the people becoming sufficiently interested in the
first reel to come back for the second--the only logical way of working
out the problem. Mr. Griffith fully realized his responsibility. Again
he would chance it.
Santa Monica would be the ideal place for this big production; so every
day for a week--for a whole week was given to exteriors alone--we
motored out to Santa Monica in the cold early morning.
The place had changed little in the year that had passed. The row of
tiny shacks was now occupied by Japs and Norwegians who caught and
dried fish and fought with each other at all other times.
One friendly Norwegian loaned his shack as a dressing-room for the
women. We “shot” the same shack for Annie’s bridal home. The men made
up in a stranded horse car of bygone vintage that had been anchored in
the sand. We sent out an S. O. S. for a sailing vessel of Enoch’s day,
and we heard of one, and had it towed up from San Pedro. What would we
do next?
We did “Enoch Arden” in two reels. Wilfred Lucas played Enoch; Frank
Grandin, Philip; and I played Annie Lee. Well, Jeanie Macpherson said I
had “sea eyes,” whatever that meant.
Mrs. Grace Henderson kept the Inn to which Enoch returns; Annie’s and
Enoch’s babies grew up to be Florence LaBadie and Bobbie Harron (one
of Bobbie’s first parts), and Jeanie Macpherson powdered her hair and
played nurse to the little baby that later came to Philip and Annie.
George Nichols departed via the Owl for San Francisco to get the
costumes from Goldstein & Company. There was so little to be had
in costumes in Los Angeles. Mr. Nichols had also journeyed to San
Francisco for costumes for “Ramona” the year before.
The exhibitors said they would accept “Enoch Arden” in the two reels,
show the first on Monday, and the second reel Thursday. And so it
was first shown. And those who saw the first reel came back in all
eagerness to see the second half. And that was that.
The picture was so great a success, however, that it was soon being
shown as a unit in picture houses; also in high schools and clubs,
accompanied by a lecturer. And so “Enoch Arden” wrote another chapter
of screen history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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