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The Man Who Invented Hollywood (The Autobiography Of D. W. Griffith)

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This book is the result of an effort by a local Kentucky newspaperman to complete David Wark Griffith's unfinished autobiography.

Griffith had played out the string in Hollywood and retreated to his boyhood hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, where he lived for a few years. In local circles, he was still something of a minor celebrity. Despite his past success as a director, he was considered passe after 1930. His methods of staging harkened back to the proscenium arched stages of the Nineteenth Century. The film industry had no further use for him after the close of the Silent Era (Griffith made only two talkies) and his final directorial credit, "The Struggle," a study of alcoholism, was poorly received and scarcely exhibited at all. Griffith agreed to write his memoirs solely for the money. He eventually abandoned the long delayed project without completing too much material.

Griffith imagined the story might be entitled "David and the Wolf." Throughout his life, the proverbial wolf seemed to be at the door as he faced imminent poverty. Given his proclivities towards embellishing the truth, many of the charming and fanciful episodes that Griffith described must be seriously discounted. Almost all of the text relates to Griffith's early life and his beginnings in the theater. There is precious little material from the feature film period of his directorial career in Hollywood. As such, the title is a misnomer.

Apart from Griffith's incomplete manuscript, the remainder of the book is a definite patch job. Numerous captioned still photographs round out the the volume. Taken as a whole, the book is eminently forgettable. If you want to learn more about D. W. Griffith, you need to look elsewhere.