Indeed, many big names have appeared in movies called “When Knighthood Was in Flower,” but David Griffith’s is not the biggest, nor was it the first, for before the end of the year 1902, in Marienbad, Germany, a film thirty-one feet long was produced and given the title “When Knighthood Was in Flower.” The descriptive line in the Biograph catalogue of 1902 (for it was a Biograph production) reads:
Emperor William of Germany and noblemen of the Order of St. John. The Emperor is the last in the procession.
So you see the Ex-Kaiser beat them all to it, even D. W. Griffith and W. R. Hearst, though I’ll say that Mr. Hearst’s is the best of the “Flowering Knighthoods” to date, and will probably continue so. The story has now been done often enough to be allowed a rest.
But it was Mr. Griffith’s big dream, very early in his movie career, along in 1911, to screen some day a great and wonderful movie of the Charles Major play that launched Julia Marlowe on her brilliant career. And in this play which he had decided could be produced nowhere but in England, no less a person than E. H. Sothern was to appear as Charles Brandon, and she who is writing this was to be Mary Tudor.
Dreams and dreams we had long ago, but this was one of the best dreams that did not come true.
CHAPTER VI
MOVIE ACTING DAYS—AND AN “IF”
We called him “Old Man McCutcheon,” the genial, generous person who at this time directed the movies at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Why “Old Man” I do not know, unless it was because he was slightly portly and the father of about eight children, the oldest being Wallace—“Wally” to his intimates. Wally was quite “some pumpkins” around the studio—father’s right-hand-man—and then, too, he was a Broadway actor.
It was then the general idea of movie directors to use their families in the pictures. As money was the only thing to be had out of the movies those days, why not get as much as possible while the getting was good? The McCutcheon kids had just finished working in a Christmas picture, receiving, besides pay checks, the tree and the toys when the picture was finished. So the first bit of gossip wafted about was that the McCutcheons had a pretty good thing of it altogether.
In February, 1908, Wallace McCutcheon was closing an engagement in Augustus Thomas’s play, “The Ranger.” Appearing in “The Ranger” with young Mr. McCutcheon, were Robert Vignola, John Adolfi, Eddie Dillon, and Florence Auer.
A school picture called “The Snow-man” was to be made which called for eight children—another job for the little McCutcheons. Grown-up Wally, and mother, were to work too, mother to see that the youngsters were properly dressed and made up.