Scott Lord on Silent Film

Monday, November 27, 2023

Scott Lord Silent Film: True Heart Susie (D. W. Griffith, 1919)





Directed D W Griffith during 1919 for ArtcraftPictures Corporation, "True Heart Susie" (six reels) was photographed by G.W. Bitzer and paired Lillian Gish in the titular role with Robert Harron with actresses Kate Bruce and Carol Dempster. In their volume The Films of D.W. Griffith, authors Edward Wagenkneckt and Anthony Slide, divide Griffith's films into two genres, much like author Vachel Lindsay would - the epic and the lyric, the latter being "less ambitious, more intimate" the "stylistic directness" of "True Heart Susie" falling into the latter.

Author Anthony Slide perpiscaciously introduces D. W. Griffith actress Seymour by noting that both Seymour and actor Robert Harron, who had appeared together in both "The Girl Who Stayed Home" and "True Heart Susie" during 1919, had died early during 1920.

After directing “True Heart Susie” in 1919, to end the year, D.W. Griffith directed Lillian Gish in the film “The Greatest Question” (six reels), photographed by G.W. Bitzer.

The films "A Romance of Happy Valley", starring Lillian Gish, and "Scarlet Days", both directed by D.W. Griffith, were thought to be lost and donated to the Modern Museum of Art by Russia when rediscovered. Silent Film D.W. Griffith

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