Some ten years ago, in the good old days when Bronco Billy represented the acme of Western heroism, when Mary Pickford was Little Mary of the Biograph Company and Mae Marsh and the Gish sisters were mere children receiving an emotional education under the inspiring tutelage of D. W. Griffith, and when, incidentally, ten cents was considered an ample admission charge for attending a movie, with illustrated songs for embellishment, I was engaged to write photoplay sub-titles.
All day and every day I had nothing to do but look at motion pictures and punctuate the scenes with appropriate comments. That was the period of the "that night" and "the following day" school of title writing. It did not look very difficult, and as a matter of fact it was not. I recall the astonishment of a friend on learning that I was being paid all of $35 a week for such a trifling task. With some difficulty I urged the artistic dignity of my profession when forced to admit that almost any one could write "a few hours later" and cause it to be inserted between two scenes. And almost everybody did, with monotonous regularity.
George Ade was the exception. His "Fables in Slang," produced by the old Essanay Company, brought the first genuine comedy titles to the screen, but the Fables were not especially popular. "Above the heads of the audience," I believe was the verdict. At that time the heads of audiences were rated about as high as German marks are today. Once in a while, however, we tried to be different, just to see what would happen. And generally nothing happened, except silence.
The titling of the first series of animated cartoon drawings fell to me. The drawings impressed the office staff as being genuinely amusing, as well as novel, therefore I determined to be a bit novel myself. But how? Perhaps verse would do -- something bright and topical to give continuity to the action in the drawings. I wrote some doggerel, and all of us, including the creator of the cartoons, agreed that it ought to go big.
Verses Fail.
The old Herald Square Theatre, then located at Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street, was a first-run house for new pictures. On the night my verses had their premi�re I was among those standing three rows deep in the rear of the crowded orchestra floor. Surely a fine audience on which to test the novelty. My emotions must have been akin to a playwright about to see the curtain rise on his new play. I was prepared to experience a real kick when the audience laughed. But it didn't laugh -- at least not at my verses. They flopped with such convincing finality that I never again departed from the straight and narrow path of prose in writing titles.
A few months ago I re-edited and titled some of the early Griffith pictures, made about 1911. If you are an old-timer perhaps you recall "The Battle of Elderbrush Gulch" and "The Massacre," both famous in their day. Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh and the Gish sisters were in them. In studying these subjects nothing was more evident than the elementary character of the titling. Many of Griffith's Indian battle scenes might be lifted intact and run in a modern photoplay, but the titles, never. They served only one function in a rather trite and clumsy manner -- that of making the story intelligible as to time and place. Since then it has been learned that the printed word may materially intensify the mood and illuminate the characterization in a picture.
A striking instance of this feeling for character and situation was evidenced a few days ago at a private showing of the film version of Gertrude Atherton's novel, "Black Oxen." Here is a story in which the role of a fascinating impetuous flapper is subordinated to the two central characters -- Countess Zatiany, played by Corinne Griffith, and Clavering, played by Conway Tearle. The flapper impersonated by a young actress, Clara Bow, is developed into effective comedy characterization with the assistance of the title writer. This character had five speaking titles, and every one of them was so entirely in accord with the character and the mood of the scene that it drew a laugh from what, in film circles, is termed a "hard-boiled" audience. Work of this kind is creative in contrast to what used to be merely an explanatory adjunct to another's creation.
Titles Are Rewritten.
The saying that "plays are not written, but rewritten" is equally applicable to the reading matter in pictures. Gradually, the hack writer ($35 a week and two sets of titles a day) has given place to the literary specialist, who is summoned at the last moment and paid $1,000 or $1,500 for giving just the right verbal flavor to a production.
It is still the fashion for critics to ridicule the banalities of photoplay inserts, and some of them most assuredly are banal. Hokum and bunk remain on the payroll. But their popularity with the boss is lessening. Many an able writer has taken a fling at title writing and has been sorely grieved at finding his cleverness unappreciated by a director or producer unversed in literary craftsmanship. The natural retort of the producer is that the writer knows nothing about picture craftsmanship, and both may be correct. Generally speaking, the smart author has an eye on sophisticated Broadway, whereas the producer wants to play safe in the "sticks" as well. He is frightfully afraid of being misunderstood.
A few years ago in the course of titling a picture starring Virginia Pearson, I wrote a title introducing one of the principal characters as "a prominent member of the English bar," to which the director made strenuous objection on the ground that the mention of a bar (those were pre-prohibition days) would get an unwanted laugh.
Frances Marion and Harry O. Hoyt did a notably fine piece of work in the titling of "Flaming Youth," shown at the Strand last week, and there are many others helping to free titles from rubber stamp conventionality.
But the point is -- and it is a point worth noting -- they have learned how pictures are made before attempting to make them better.