Scott Lord Silent Film: 1776 or The Hessian Renegades

D.W. Griffith directed the Revolutionary War film "1776 or the Hessian Renedgades" during 1909. Director D.W. Griffith appears on screen in the film with wife, Linda Arvidson, Kate Bruce, Florence Lawrence, Marion Keonard, Lottie Pickford and Mary Pickford. The film was photographed by cinematographers G.W. Bitzer and Arthur Marvin. America directed by D.W. Griffith

Scott Lord Silent Film: The Deerslayer Wellin, 1920)

Bela Lugosi starred as Chingaachgook in the film originally titled Leatherstocking, The Deerstalker and Chingachgook, directed by Arthur Wellin and also starring Helen Heden and Heddy Sven.

Boris Karloff, incidentally, had had an uncredired role in "The Last of the Mohicans" (Clarence Brown, 1920). During 1914, director Otis Turner brought a four reel adaptation of James Fenmore Cooper's novel "The Spy" to the screen staring actress Edna Maison. The film is considered a Lost Silent Film. Silent Film

Scott Lord Silent Film: Carol Dempster in America (D.W. Griffith, 1924)

Directed by D. W. Griffith the photographer of the film "America" (fifteen reels) was Hendrik Sartov. The film stars Carol Dempster and Neil Hamilton. Author Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, deemed "America" to be "the last film of importance" from director D.W. Griffith and noted the film for its "remarkable war scene". Although the storyline of the film, set during the American Revolution and The Old North Church, is presented as needing to be driven by Sam Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere, author Edward Wagenkneckt, in The Films of D.W. Griffith, writes, "'America' has no unbroken line of personal interest, and all the characters stand in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by history. Griffith moves them about from place to place like pieces on a checkerboard as the exingencies of the war or the story seem to require." The story begins by following a minute man, one of the Sons of Liberty at the outbreak of the war at the Battlesof Lexington and Concord. Author Edward Wagerneckt concluded on "the last of Giffith's top rank films", "Photographically America was an unqualified trumph. Scene after scene of breathtaking beauty crossed the screen."

A photocaption placed in Motion Picture Magazine during 1924 read,"THe Battle of Bunker Hill is one of the most thrilling episodes of the picture...excelled only by the inspiring and breathtaking ride of Paul Revere." Photoplay Magazine durng 1924 described the film as "one of the greatest thrill pictures ever made...Mr. Hamilton is pushed into stardom and Miss Dempster does the best work of her carreer."

The periodical Picture Play Magazine during 1924 relflected upon D.W. Griffith's striving for historical accuracy in his images of the American Revolution and his visiting important locations and his searching for "every available historic spot" which may have been preserved, in the article Mr. Griffith's Next Production, "At this writing, Mr Griffith is doing interiors at his Mamoroneck studio...And a little later, when snow has fallen, he will set out to do scenes at Valley Forge".
During 1924, D.W Griffith also directed Carol Dempster and Neil Hamilton in the film “Isn’t Life Wonderful?” (nine reels).

It is not without interest that Tom Gunning, in his volume on D.W. Griffith and The Biograph Film Company, chronicles that before his having entered filmmaking, Griffith had written an unproduced play entitled "War" that, staged within the context of the American Revolution, had also centered around the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Silent Film

D.W. Griffith D. W. Griffith