D.W. Griffith at The Biograph Company

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An Arcadian Maid, 1910 Mary Pickford & Mack Sennett -click video excerpt-

She soon left her acting career behind her but remained in the business of motion pictures in a different capacity. Years later, she would write the screenplay for Cecil B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

New writers entered the moving picture scene at this time. One move made by Marvin and Kennedy to improve their story content was to hire STANNER E.V.TAYLOR, a scenario writer/reader. TAYLOR had given up a good job on a newspaper to play his own hunch concerning the emerging medium of the moving pictures.

A friendship quickly developed between Griffith and Taylor and they would talk for hours on end about the future possibilities of the "flickers". Each one provided a sounding board for the other's ideas. Their friendship and working collaboration would continue for several years at Biograph.

Mack Sennett -click video excerpt-

In time, Taylor would marry MARION LEONARD and both would leave by the end of the third show to accept an offer from the growing RELIANCE FILM CO. Years later, after Taylor's dismissal, he and Griffith would meet again to create new projects during the 1920's.

While he was at Biograph, Taylor shared an office with Biograph's man, LEE DOUGHERTY.

At that time, the sole means of advertising Biograph Films to the public was through illustrated bulletins that were single sheets six to ten inches in height carrying a two by three inch cut from the film and a body of descriptive matter that averaged about three hundred words.

Dougherty's daily routine was to produce sheets on each new production. His creative mind soon came up with full-sized color advertising posters for the Biograph films. Examples of these posters soon began decorating the walls in his office.

The office shared by Taylor and Dougherty was located next to that of Henry Marvin. Despite the proximity to the boss, the office was not really very large and both men frequently got on each other's nerves trying to work around the other's debris. The small space grew even smaller with the combined accumulation of Taylor's scripts and Dougherty's layouts.

Dougherty would soon become involved with a man from Erie, Pa., who was working for THE NEW YORK DRAMATIC MIRROR. His plan was to sell advertising space to moving picture companies and his name was FRANK WOODS. Woods tried to sell Biograph, but the company's first impression was that an ad in a newspaper didn't reach the people who saw their films.

Working with Dougherty, Woods' insistence finally paid off, and Biograph's ads began running in the newspaper. This precedent was enhanced by the secondary precedent of a review of a Biograph film appearing in the DRAMATIC MIRROR on June 8, 1908, The review appeared with a byline of Frank Woods and was of the Griffith film, THE SPECTATOR. Neither Griffith's name or the names of any players appeared in the review.