D.W. Griffith at The Biograph Company

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The Unseen Enemy, 1912
Dorothy & Lillian Gish

Griffith's use of subterfuge to obtain the desired end was a standard part of his technique as a director.

To enliven a particularly wooden performance, he might invent a fictional story that would arouse the actor with his cameramen standing by to record the action. Afterwards, putting his arm around them, he'd confess the truth.

He once went as far as to station a person with a double-barreled shotgun behind the set and when the right moment had arrived and Mae Marsh was to show the proper emotion, he cued the gun and got the shocked surprise he was seeking.

Since he never used a script, his performers never knew what the story was or what Griffith was thinking or planning.

More rehearsal time began and with it the predictable rise in costs.

Wanting to refine the over-exaggerated gestures, he succeeded in establishing a new and far more contemporary mode of acting in his productions.

He related to his actors like his camera. Their eyes are the windows of their souls. Their souls must have this window to see from. His camera soon moved closer.

This led to more battles with Biograph as each new setup with the camera meant an increase in production costs.

During the second show, a heat wave hits during the summer months of Griffith's second year as a Biograph director.

He felt that the hot, muggy weather was not conducive to proper working conditions and decides that he should take his company of actors to a country location.

The Biograph office, seeing that the work load and product content was being hurt, allowed Griffith to talk them into a location out of the city.

J.J. Kennedy went as far as to recommend a location in CUDDEBACKVILLE, NEW YORK, which was located in the Orange Mountains of New York State, just a few miles north of Port Jervis, on the New York-New Jersey border.

After a ten cent ferry ride to Weehawken, New Jersey, the company took the train ride on the New York, Ontario & Western to Summitville, just beyond Middletown, N.Y.

It was a half-day ride that ran through Port Jervis and then Cuddebackville. That evening, his stock company reached a small railroad station about a half-mile from the CUDDEBACK INN.

Those who went along with Griffith were Billy Bitzer and his wife, Florence Lawrence, Harry Salter, James Kirkwood, Henry Walthall, Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, Johnny Muhr, Bobby Harron, Arthur Johnson, Mack Sennett and Stanner E.V. Taylor. Griffith's wife was visiting his family in Kentucky.

The geology and physical setting of Cuddebackville dictated, to some extent, the type of stories Griffith would film there.