Sam de Grasse Movies

Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s splendid physique was seen in all its pristine glory in the 1916 western The Half-Breed. In what might have been a movie first, the title character is sympathetically portrayed, despite the "onus" of having Indian blood. Living as an outcast, young Lo Dorman (Fairbanks) is welcomed back into society by pretty preacher's daughter Nellie (Jewel Carmen), who cares not a whit about his mixed parentage. But Dorman's presence in town proves uncomfortable for Sheriff Dunne (Sam DeGrasse) -- who, unbeknownst to anyone himself, is Lo's father. The sheriff does his worst to discredit Lo in the eyes of the townsfolk, whereupon our hero joins a travelling medicine show, finding true happiness with another "outcast," dance-hall girl Teresa (Alma Rubens). In an interview with Kevin Brownlow, director Allan Dwan revealed that The Half-Breed almost didn't get made, thanks to the interference of Fairbank's then wife, who didn't want her husband to appear as an "unwashed" half-breed. To circumvent this, Dwan inserted a scene showing a nearly nude Fairbanks taking a "bath" in a river, then thoroughly scrubbing himself and his clothes with sand. "He was a washed Indian, not a dirty Indian," Dwan explained. "I only put the scene in to satisfy Mrs. Fairbanks." Unfortunately, only the first two reels of The Half-Breed are known to exist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives of a poor but happily married couple are disrupted by the misguided interference of a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances culminates in the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. In the wake of the protests attending the racist content of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. The Mother and the Law filled the bill to some extent, but it just wasn't "big" enough to suit his purposes. Thus, using The Mother and the Law as merely the base of the film, Griffith added three more plotlines and expanded his cinematic thesis to epic proportions. The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked by Lillian Gish as the Woman Who Rocks the Cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter"). The "Modern Story" is essentially The Mother and the Law; the "French Story" details the persecution of the Huguenots by Catherine de Medici (Josephine Crowell); the "Biblical Story" relates the last days of Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye); and the "Babylonian Story" concerns the defeat of King Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) by the hordes of Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann).

Rather than being related chronologically, the four stories are told in parallel fashion, slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity. The action in the film's final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as "the only film fugue," Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 -- and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV. On a pure entertainment level, the Babylonian sequences are the most effective, played out against one of the largest, most elaborate exterior sets ever built for a single film. The most memorable character in this sequence is "The Mountain Girl," played by star on the rise Constance Talmadge; when the Babylonian scenes were re-released as a separate feature in 1919, Talmadge's tragic death scene was altered to accommodate a happily-ever-after denouement. Other superb performances are delivered by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron in the Modern Story, and by Eugene Pallette and Margery Wilson in the French Story. Remarkably sophisticated in some scenes, appallingly naïve in others, Intolerance is a mixed bag dramatically, but one cannot deny that it is also a work of cinematic genius. The film did poorly upon its first release, not so much because its continuity was difficult to follow as because it preached a gospel of tolerance and pacifism to a nation preparing to enter World War I. Currently available prints of Intolerance run anywhere from 178 to 208 minutes; while it may be rough sledding at times, it remains essential viewing for any serious student of film technique. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Good Bad Man is at once a straight western and a gentle spoof of the genre. Douglas Fairbanks plays a fellow who calls himself "Passin' Through." Orphaned at birth, Our Hero grows up to be a Robin-Hood-like bandit, robbing the rich so that he can finance a home for unwanted children. In this guise, he meets Bud Fraser (Sam DeGrasse), the man who killed his father. Bessie Love plays the obligatory heroine, who frankly hasn't much to do in the proceedings. The Good Bad Man was directed by frequent Fairbanks collaborator Allan Dwan; it was photographed by Victor Fleming, who later became an excellent director in his own right (one of his 1930s films was a little something called Gone with the Wind). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the North, the Camerons from the South. When war breaks out, the Stonemans cast their lot with the Union, while the Camerons are loyal to Dixie. After the war, Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall), distressed that his beloved south is now under the rule of blacks and carpetbaggers, organizes several like-minded Southerners into a secret vigilante group called the Ku Klux Klan. When Cameron's beloved younger sister Flora (Mae Marsh) leaps to her death rather than surrender to the lustful advances of renegade slave Gus (Walter Long), the Klan wages war on the new Northern-inspired government and ultimately restores "order" to the South. In the original prints, Griffith suggested that the black population be shipped to Liberia, citing Abraham Lincoln as the inspiration for this ethnic cleansing. Showings of Birth of a Nation were picketed and boycotted from the start, and as recently as 1995, Turner Classic Movies cancelled a showing of a restored print in the wake of the racial tensions around the O.J. Simpson trial verdict. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While busy with The Birth of a Nation, director D.W. Griffith began a small-scale contemporary drama called The Mother and the Law. The film was designed as an indictment against professional do-gooders who take it upon themselves to "reform" the poor. One victim of this misguided treatment is played by Mae Marsh, whose baby is claimed by the moral uplifters when her husband (Bobby Harron) proves unable to provide for his family. The film's dramatic highpoints include a violent capital vs. labor clash, and a climactic race for life as the husband is slated for execution for a crime he did not commit. If this all sounds familiar, it is because an abbreviated version of The Mother and the Law was incorporated into Griffith's four-part spectacular Intolerance; it was later released as a separate feature, with newly shot scenes added. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide