Seymour Stern: American Film Critic, Guardian and Prophet

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Griffith: Master of Cinema was to remain the centerpiece of his life as the years passed.

In this regard, he was yielded an unobstructed path by other film scholars and historians who felt that a work on Griffith rightly was within his domain, given his storehouse of information and obvious zeal for the subject.

Concurrently with his Griffith research Stern continued to publish articles and developed new as well as intensified older personal and professional relationships with many of the leading film scholars and historians of the era including such luminaries as Terry Ramsaye, Lewis Jacobs, Kirk Bond, Herman G. Weinberg, Alexander Baksny, Harry Potamkin, Theodore Huff and Gilbert Seldes.

Stern's ability to be an irritant, evident from his earliest writings, was to become an occasional by-product of all his professional relationships as he attacked the theories and criticisms, when he felt justified, of even those with whom he had a close relationship.

Stern's colleagues assessed him as being a very explosive personality, seemingly on the perpetual lookout for a battle to be fought. Stern's attacks on the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, caused the dismissal of one of the Museum's key personnel.

It has been said that the omission of Stern's name from certain records was a direct outgrowth of the antagonism that existed between Stern and many other historians of substance and repute.³⁷

Seymour Stern at Griffith's funeral, 1948

In many ways, he was a "fallen" genius who had many chances to showcase his capabilities but seldom did so. It was this darker side of the Stern genius that remains so unfathomable.

While he was able to offer constructive criticism to the legendary giants, when it came to showing what he could do on his own, he would lock himself in his room and cry, unleashing a wild frenzy of physical and emotional turbulence.

This side of Stern was characterized by one of his closest associates, Lewis Jacobs, himself a major figure in film criticism: ". . .he should have been a great director but, as with his long time work on the Griffith biography, Stern was afraid of the reality of its completion . . .Stern ate, slept and dreamed Griffith, at times he walked like Griffith and eventually became obsessed with being protective of the Griffith legacy. . ."³⁸

As the end neared, Stern continued to fire off an article here and a "letter-to-the-editor" there, protecting the legacy and correcting the misstatements of others.

D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln 1930

The protectiveness was paralled by Stern's increasing reclusiveness. The dynamo that had begun as a Greenwich Village columnist became a correspondent from his Chelsea bastion of privacy.

The genius remained but there were few who were now aware of its vast dimensions.

Tragically, when Stern died, his family didn't even know who to notify. There was no funeral, there would be no grave.

His last words were to his wife who asked what she should do with his lifetime accumulation of papers, articles and letters. They were: "Just don't give them to my enemies. "

Seymour Stern died on D.W. Griffith's birthday