Home, Sweet Home (1914)
released 4th May 1914
Cast:
Henry B. Walthall
Josephine Crowell
Lillian Gish
Dorothy Gish
Fay Tincher
Mae Marsh
Home, Sweet Home (1914)
Drama
55m
Majestic-Reliance Motion Picture Co.
Director:
D. W. Griffith
Writer:
D. W. Griffith, Harry E. Aitken
"D. W. Griffith's all star R&M production...thypifying the life, work and death of John Howard Payne, author of the song that reaches every human heart."
Between leaving Biograph and making films for the Aitken brothers’ Majestic Film Company, D. W. Griffith persuaded most members of his stock company to defect with him. Only Dell Henderson stayed on at Biograph, while Lionel Barrymore opted to return to the stage. Director Christy Cabanne and lab technician Joseph Aller also bailed. Billy Bitzer, Griffith’s faithful veteran cameraman, followed after some indecision.
Lillian Gish recalled, “Even before the rumors began, we all had an unhappy feeling that Mr. Griffith would eventually be forced to break with Biograph. The front office was putting altogether too much pressure on him. None of us felt that we were working for Biograph. Our ties were with Mr. Griffith. As I remember, none of us had a contract with him; we simply worked for him. He would say to a player, “I’ll give you...” and name a sum. He always kept his word. In those days, we were continually being offered jobs by other companies, but Biograph was the top – thanks to Mr. Griffith – and one didn’t descend from the peak just for money...” She went on: “Mr. Griffith took many of the Biograph directors with him. Though Dorothy and I had been offered contracts to remain with Biograph without Mr. Griffith, we never even considered the offers. Nor did others of his company, even though this loyalty meant going without work. Everyone wanted to stay with him – everyone except Billy Bitzer, who, incredibly, refused at first to go with Mr. Griffith.”
In his defence, Bitzer told Griffith biographer Iris Barry, “When Mr. Griffith decided to leave Biograph, I refused to join him, although he offered to treble my salary. I didn’t think the independent outfit he was going with [the Aitkens] could possibly stand the gaff of Mr. Griffith’s spending of both film and money.”
Now earning $300 a week and having received four hundred shares in the Aitkens’ company, Griffith assembled his loyal band of actors in California. His base for the next few years would be the former Kinemacolor studio at 4500 Sunset Boulevard (his ex-wife, Linda Arvidsen Griffith, had briefly worked there after their separation in 1911).
Ironically, having left Biograph to make longer pictures, Griffith chose for one of his first Mutual films a movie made up of three short stories. The studio could have released Home, Sweet Home as three shorts. In fact, Mutual even released the ‘Apple Pie Mary’ vignette featuring Robert Harron and Mae Marsh with a different ending a week before Home, Sweet Home. Lillian Gish told a small group at the Museum of Modern Art, “Griffith filmed it that way in case the total product wasn’t satisfactory. He would still be able to salvage something and possibly use it as a one-reeler.” The move may have reflected Mutual’s dire financial straits. To pay the company’s fare to California, Harry Aitken had mortgaged Christy Cabanne’s The Great Leap. In her autobiography, Gish also suggested Aitken encouraged Griffith to assemble an ‘all-star’ cast of mostly ex-Biograph players to appear in the film.
Griffith framed the three short stories with a biopic of John Howard Payne, the man who wrote the lyrics for the famous old standard ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ He refrains from crediting Henry Bishop for providing the music, giving the impression that Payne created the piece alone – quite an omission considering it is the tune that influences the characters in the stories. Griffith also suggests Payne died young because of his dissolute lifestyle, when in fact he was the American consul in Tunis when he passed away at 60.
D. W. Griffith
Robert Harron and Mae Marsh in D. W. Griffith's Home, Sweet Home (1914)
Henry B. Walthall plays Payne opposite Lillian Gish as his betrothed. As was so often the case, Gish delivers a performance of serene confidence, ably communicating the depth of her character’s despair with the mere lift of an eyebrow or tightening of the corner of her mouth. Everything you need to know about her character’s enduring love for her wastrel beau is evident in the simple way she reaches out to caress his cheek when he has fallen into a drunken slumber.
As with all anthology movies, the vignettes are of varying quality, and – perhaps less commonly – in different genres. In the first, Harron is an Eastern tenderfoot who travels to a mining town to make his fortune and loses his heart to uneducated cook Mae Marsh. When Harron returns to the town with friends after briefly going home, her uncultured manner momentarily dismays him, and he hurriedly catches the stage out of town. Only hearing a rendition of Payne’s song returns him to his senses.
It’s a sweet but slight tale that is elevated by Harron and Marsh’s scenes together and their touching portrayal of awkward first love. The scenario (by Griffith and Aitken) also underlines the poignant affection shared by these inexperienced lovers. Having no photograph to give him to remember her by when he is called home, the girl sees him off with the gift of a Christmas card because the figure on it “looks like me.” In return, he leaves her his spectacles, which she is wearing when he returns. Such small touches add immeasurably to the story’s characters.
The second, much darker tale relates the antagonistic relationship between two backwoods brothers, James Kirkwood and Donald Crisp. When Crisp comes into some money, which he refuses to share, Kirkwood’s thoughts turn to murder. This is a far more workmanlike offering. The brothers are nothing more than pencil sketches. The story gives no reason for their enmity towards one another or why their rift is deep enough to lead to thoughts of murder. The part Payne’s tune plays feels tacked on here, as if added to a story already written. It does, however, feature a trademark race against time which, by this stage of his career, Griffith could make look effortless.
The last episode stars Blanche Sweet and Courtenay Foote as a married couple who have lost sight of their love for one another. He spends too much time at his club, and she is tempted by the attentions of a smooth playboy-type, played by Owen Moore. Only when Sweet, on the verge of surrendering to Moore’s advances, hears a neighbouring violinist playing the strains of Home, Sweet Home does she come to her senses and dismiss her would-be lover. The slight, understated tale provides a formulaic happy ending without investigating the underlying issues that threatened their marriage. And considering how badly the pair age in ten years, one can’t help wondering whether breaking up might have been the healthier option!
A curious epilogue wraps up the movie. Payne, suffering in a hell comprising “rocks and smoke pots in Chatsworth Park” according to Gish, is rescued by her character in the form of an angel. It’s not a convincing coda, and Gish’s recollection of filming the scene in her autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me renders it even less so. They filmed the scene in which she carries him to heaven in the studio. Both actors were suspended by wires, but Griffith was unhappy with the footage captured because the camera’s perspective made Walthall’s feet look huge. “There was a long discussion while Walthall and I, encased in leather harness, hung on the guide wires,” Gish wrote. “Wally, a true Southern gentleman, didn’t raise his voice, didn’t complain; he simply fainted and hung there limply.” In the end, Griffith had to pull the camera away while Gish and Walthall glided off in the opposite direction.
Some historians have noted a similar structure between Home, Sweet Home and Intolerance (1916). Any resemblance between the two is probably coincidental. While both contain three stories constructed around a recurring motif, this film’s tales are self-contained with no connection, whereas Intolerance’s tales are inextricably linked.