The Battle of the Sexes (1914, fragment)

D. W. Griffith: The Battle of the Sexes (1914). Only a two minute fragment survives from this original straight drama version. In 1928 Griffith directed a comedy remake.

THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES (Majestic Motion Picture Corp., US 1914)
    Dir.: D. W. Griffith; cast: Donald Crisp, Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Mary Alden, Owen Moore, Fay Tincher, W. E. Lawrence; 35 mm, frammento / fragment: 131 ft., 2’ (16 fps), George Eastman House.
    English intertitles.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 10 Oct 2004
   

Paul Spehr [DWG Project # 503] GCM: "No complete copy of the film is known to exist, but a fragment survives. It is the scene in a dance hall where Mrs. Andrews (Mary Alden), daughter Jane (Lillian Gish), and son John (Robert Harron) discover that Mr. Andrews (Donald Crisp) is having an affair with their neighbor Cleo (Fay Tincher). The sequence is introduced by a text written by an unidentified commentator (probably in the 1940s or 1950s) that explains, incorrectly, that this is “Mr. Griffith’s first pioneer feature”. It credits Harry E. Aitken (Mutual’s former president) as the source for the material. Although short, this is quite a complicated sequence. There are four different camera set-ups, edited into almost a dozen separate cuts. There are two titles (with a DG logo that appears original). It opens with Gish, Harron, and Mary Alden (the mother) settling into a box; their father and Cleo arrive and enter the next box (on the right). Gish and Harron are shocked to see him, but he does not see them because he is entranced with Cleo. Gish restrains Harron from confronting his father, and they decide to take their mother out. She has been talking to someone off-screen and hasn’t seen her husband. As they leave, the father and Cleo come onto the dance floor and the mother sees them. Gish, Harron, and Alden make a quick exit as the scene ends."

"Based on a story by Daniel Carson Goodman, a writer who had joined the Reliance Company’s scenario staff, The Battle of the Sexes was the second multi-reel feature that Griffith started for Mutual, and the first one that he completed. Like The Escape, which was begun earlier, it was an exploration of sex and morality, but unlike its still unfinished counterpart, in The Battle of the Sexes the bad genes, brutality, and venereal disease that plagued the tenements did not play an important role. This was about middle class life, so prurient members of the audience had to content themselves with seduction, adultery, and attempted murder."

"Billy Bitzer, the cameraman on the film, called The Battle of the Sexes a “quickie”. He said it was rushed into production because of a delay in completing The Escape caused by Blanche Sweet’s slow recovery from scarlet fever. The recently expanded and refinanced Mutual conglomerate needed a Griffith-made film. Since November 1913, when it was announced that Griffith was joining the company, Mutual’s publicists Phil Mindil and Hopp Hadley had touted the company’s alliance with the previously anonymous director. They had little trouble arousing interest because the motion picture trade press was already proclaiming that Griffith was the greatest director in the world and that he was responsible for converting movies from entertainment to art. But, with all this fine publicity, Mutual as yet had no “big stuff” to lure audiences into the theatres. To fill the gap, Goodman’s story was rushed into production, with the working title The Single Standard."

"The film was shot sometime in January 1914 at Reliance’s makeshift studio near Union Square in New York City. Camerawork was completed before 27 January, because that was when Griffith and a crew of writers, directors, and players departed New York for warmer and sunnier Los Angeles. Lillian Gish said that The Battle of the Sexes was shot in five days – at least her scenes were finished that quickly. Her story that Bitzer could not shoot a close-up of her because her eyes were so bloodshot is often told to illustrate the “quickie” nature of this film. This occurred, she said, because the hours were long and she had so little sleep. By her account, shooting was completed that same day, after she had a rest. Although the camerawork was done in New York, the final editing may have been finished at the former Kinemacolor studio that Mutual had bought as the Los Angeles base for their Reliance and Majestic companies."

"Terry Ramsaye and others have reported that The Battle of the Sexes was rushed through in order to provide funds for a cash-strapped parent company, but if so, it was a while before the cash began to flow. Although The Battle of the Sexes was finished and in the can as early as February 1914, it was not exhibited until early April 1914, when it opened at Weber’s Theatre, at 29th St. and Broadway in New York City, on a program of Mutual films which included a Sennett comedy and another feature by one of Mutual’s other production companies. Later that month it was among a number of multi-reel Mutual features advertised as available from Continental Feature Film Corp. and “all Mutual Exchanges”. Included in this package were several other titles that Griffith supervised: The Great Leap, Gangsters, The Floor Above, The Dishonored Medal, and The Mountain Rat. The last four were made after The Battle of the Sexes. In addition to Griffith’s films, Continental also offered features produced by Ince, Sennett, Thanhouser, and the American Film Company. The ad for this package in Mutual’s house organ, Reel Life magazine (25 April 1914), singled out The Battle of the Sexes, or The Single Standard as “staged by that Genius of the Photodrama, Mr. D. W. Griffith”. Later ads proclaimed that it was the “greatest domestic heart-interest drama ever produced”, and that it was released in five reels even though “the vital material would have made eight, but that isn’t Griffith’s way”."

"There was no explanation for the delay in releasing this and several other multi-reel films produced by Griffith. In the case of The Battle of the Sexes, it may have been because Griffith was not satisfied with the results. It is also possible that the company was leery of launching their new director with subject matter that might offend some of the potential audience. But these are only suppositions. A more plausible explanation is that Mutual was searching for a way to reach the appropriate mass market in a consistently profitable way. The company had a network of regional exchanges that contracted with exhibitors to take a program of one- and two-reel films made by the several production companies that made up the Mutual organization. This was similar to the distribution pattern established by the Motion Picture Patents Company and also adopted by Universal Pictures. The parent company set a schedule for releasing the films made by the production members and fed them to the exhibitors on a schedule. The exhibitor knew that on Monday there would be single-reel productions made by Reliance, Keystone, and American; Tuesday by Majestic, Beauty, and Thanhouser; and so on. It was a system that ensured a stream of fresh new productions for exhibitors,  and guaranteed exhibitions (and rental fees) for producers."

"The multi-reel films that Griffith wanted to make, as well as those being made by Ince, Thanhouser, and American Film Co., did not fit this programming package. They were too long to program in the small theatres that showed the one- and two-reel films, and because they cost more to make they had to be shown in theatres that had more seats, and where audiences would pay more than five or ten cents. Although larger theatres wanted to show longer films, there was no system to distribute them, so films were booked title-by-title as they became available. As Griffith completed new features, Mutual searched for a way to control the distribution in order to ensure a steady income for their new product. As a step in this direction, Mutual set up two new distributing organizations, Continental Feature Film Corporation, headquartered at 29 Union Square, and Western Import Co., 71 West 23rd St., New York. Continental handled sales in the United States; Western Import was actually an export company designed to distribute Mutual films in Europe and other foreign locations. The films were also available through Mutual Exchanges. To stimulate business, Mutual contracted with Weber’s Theatre in New York to exhibit their longer productions, and began building a network of urban theatres that would show their multi-reel films on a regular basis."

"The Battle of the Sexes was the first feature film that Lillian Gish and Owen Moore made at Mutual, but it was not their first multi-reel feature. In 1913 Owen Moore appeared in Caprice with his then-wife, Mary Pickford. Gish had a small role in Judith of Bethulia, and was featured in at least two of the multi-reel films that Biograph was producing for Klaw and Erlanger, although they had not been released yet. In a review published in Mutual’s Reel Life (25 April 1914), Ada Patterson characterized Gish’s role as that of a “child woman” and found the “dawning comprehension of her father’s weakness” gripping. The part of Cleo, the femme fatale, was Fay Tincher’s first work for Griffith, and even though the part was very serious her comic ability impressed Griffith, and most of the rest of her career was as a comedienne."

"Just before release the title was changed from The Single Standard to The Battle of the Sexes – a move from the relatively bland to the slightly racier, indicating that Griffith or Mutual was aware that audiences were more interested in sex than standards. Even though this production was a “quickie”, it seems to have stuck in Griffith’s mind, because he remade it in 1928." – Paul Spehr [DWG Project # 503] GCM