Download rare photos, data and Streaming video movies of some of the leading pioneering actresses of the Silent Film era, who were trained by the father of American film.

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D.W. Griffith rehearsing with actress Lillian Gish on the set of Way Down East, 1920

D.W. Griffith was the first cinema Svengali, to the men and women who were becoming part of his stock company of performers.

They wanted to learn the ways of this new form of celluloid performing and story telling that he was now perfecting.

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What made a Griffith girl so special? Physically, they're young in appearance, small, slim and innocent. You find that all of the Griffith girls were usually teenagers, except for some of the character performers.

When Lillian Gish and her sister Dorothy walked into The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, they were not yet 16 years of age; Blanch Sweet was 13; Mary Pickford was 12; and Carol Dempster was 18, as so was Miriam Cooper.

The Lonely Villa, 1909 Mary Pickford, Marion Leonard and Adele De Garde -click video excerpt-

Youth was also important because of the slow film stock, and harsh lighting of the time, and they all photographed a lot older on screen. If you look closely at the early Biograph films.

You can see the outline of the thick yellow based make-up that they had to use to bring out their facial highlights in this still-primitive B&W medium.

The Unseen Enemy, 1912 Dorothy & Lillian Gish -click video excerpt-

Griffith looked for performers with what he would call "soul". To Griffith that meant entering your work with all the ardor there is in you, people who know and feel their parts, and who express every single feeling, across the entire spectrum of emotions, with their muscles.

In the Mended Lute, 1910 James Kirwood & Florence Lawrence -click video excerpt-

Griffith would teach his actors that it isn't just what you do with your face or your hands, it's the light within. If you have that light, it doesn't matter just what you do before the camera--you'll have a successful film.

Oil & Water, 1912 Blanche Sweet & Lionel Barrymore -click video excerpt-

The average length of a film at that time was 5 to 10 minutes, and Griffith between 1908-1913 would make over 450 of them. He never used a script, and would direct three to four simultaneously in a week.

So it was up to the performers to keep their costuming correct from one shot to another, often hours or days apart in the shooting--there was no such thing as a script supervisor matching clothing or props.

One day you're starring in a scene, and the next your a bit player. Actresses were biting for his favor. They were so glad to be picked by Griffith that they would work carrying props, just to be on the set the day he was directing. If they couldn't act that day, they could at least learn.

The Mothering Heart, 1913 Lillian Gish confronts the adulterous glances of husband Walter Miller at Peggy Pearce -click video excerpts-

Resurrection, novel by Tolstoy, 1909 Arthur Johnson & Florence Lawrence -click video excerpt-

The storylines reflected the era the women were living in, and at times were based on events taken from the newspapers during the last decade of the Victorian era.

In the morning an actress might find herself dressed for a contemporary love triangle, or changing for a costume adventure movie in the afternoon.

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

At the same time when it came to westerns, Civil War and outdoor adventure films, his so-called virginal women had to be strong willed, to ride horses or covered wagons, paddle canoes, shoot guns, jump off mountains into rivers, or vamp her way at the beach.

Enoch Arden, 1911 poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson Wilfred Lucas & Linda Arvidson -click video excerpt-

Griffith started reworking the stories of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Tolstoy, and planning days when there would be just time put aside to rehearse. He taught his talent to read, and to learn from the classics.