Of course, now we know that even in so short a time this movie business had gotten under his skin. David Griffith had tasted blood--cinema blood. And the call to stay, that was heard and obeyed when Peake’s Island threatened to disrupt the scheme of things, was the same sort of call that made those other pioneers trek across the plains with their prairie schooners in the days of forty-nine. With Peake’s Island settled, we hoped there would be no more theatrical temptations, for we wanted to take further chances with the movies. CHAPTER VII D. W. GRIFFITH DIRECTS HIS FIRST MOVIE Considering the chaotic condition of things in the studio as a result of Mr. McCutcheon’s illness, it was a propitious time to take heed and get on to the tricks of this movie business. To David Griffith the direction was insufferably careless, the acting the same, and in the lingering bitterness over his play’s failure he gritted his teeth and decided that if he ever got a chance he certainly could direct these dinky movies. The studio was so without a head these days that even Henry Norton Marvin, our vice-president and general manager, occasionally helped out in the directing. He had directed a mutoscope called “A Studio Party” in which my husband and I had made a joint appearance. With the place now “runnin’ wild,” Mr. Marvin wondered whom he’d better take a chance on next. He put the odds on Mr. Stanner E. V. Taylor. In the studio, one day shortly after my initiation, Mr. Taylor approached me and asked if I could play a lead in a melodrama he was to direct. A lead in a melodrama--with a brief stage career that had been confined to winsome ingénues! But I bravely said, “Oh, yes, yes, indeed I can.” What I suffered! I had a husband who beat and deserted me; I had to appear against him in court, and I fainted and did a beautiful fall on the court-room floor. After my acquittal I took my two babies and deposited them on a wealthy doorstep; wandered off to the New Jersey Palisades; took a flying leap and landed a mass of broken bones at the bottom of the cliff. Selected for the fall was a beautiful smooth boulder which had a sheer drop on the side the camera did not get of possibly some fifteen feet to a ledge about six feet wide, from which ledge, to the bottom of the Palisades, was a precipitous descent of some hundred feet. There were so many rehearsals of this scene of self-destruction that the rock acquired a fine polish as “mother” slipped and slid about. That the camera man’s assistant might try the stunt for at least the initial attempts at getting the focus, never occurred to a soul. But a suggestion was made that if “mother” removed her shoes she might not slide off so easily. Which she did for the remaining rehearsals. Then finally as the sun sank behind the Palisades, “mother” in her last emotional moments, sank behind the boulder.