The result of this conversation was that three reviews appeared in the New York Dramatic Mirror, June, 1908. On a rear end page captioned “The Spectator,” Frank E. Woods dissertated through some columns on the merits and demerits of the movies, and thus became their first real critic. We were very grateful for the few paragraphs. It meant recognition—the beginning. How gladly we parted with our ten cents weekly to see what “Spec” had to say about us.
But Mr. Woods didn’t get an ad from the Biograph. So he had another heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Dougherty, and Doc said: “Never mind, keep it up—but as I told you, the reviews aren’t going to influence us about ads.”
But in August the Company came across and bought a quarter-page ad for the Biograph movies.
The active mind of Frank Woods was not going to stop with critical comments on moving pictures. His new duties necessitated his seeing pictures; and, looking them over and analyzing them for his reviews, he said to himself; “Oh, they’re terrible—I could do better myself—such stories!” So he wrote three “suggestions”—that’s all they were—and that’s what they were then called. With great aplomb, he took them to Mr. Dougherty, and to his amazement Mr. Dougherty turned the whole three down. Sorry, but he didn’t think them up to scratch. But Mr. Woods would not be fazed by a turn-down like that. He wrote three more “suggestions.”
The studio had a sort of nominal supervisor, a Mr. Wake, whose job was to O. K. little expenditures in the studio and to pass on the purchase of scenarios. One day, not long after our A. B. affiliation, just as I was entering the main foyer, Mr. Griffith coming from the projection room seemed more than usually light-hearted. So I said, “You’re feeling good—picture nice?”
“Oh, yes, all right, but”—this in a whisper—“Wake’s been fired.”
I wondered how I could wait all that day, until evening, to hear what had happened. But I did, and learned that Mr. Wake with Biograph money had purchased silk stockings for Mutoscope girls, and then had given the girls the stockings for their own.
However, during a temporary absence from the studio before Mr. Wake’s dismissal, Frank Woods came down with three more suggestions which were shown to Mr. Griffith direct. He bought the whole bunch, three at fifteen dollars apiece, nine five-dollar bills, forty-five dollars.
Around the Dramatic Mirror offices Mr. Woods was already jocularly being called “M. P. Woods.” And this day that he disposed of his three “suggestions,” Moving Picture Woods with much bravado entered the Mirror’s office, went over to the desk, brushed aside some papers, cleared a place on the counter, and in a row laid his nine five-dollar bills.
In the office at the time were George Terwilliger (how many scenarios he afterwards wrote), Al Trahern (Al continued with his stock companies and featuring his wife Jessie Mae Hall), and Jake Gerhardt, now in the business end of the movies. The trio looked—and gasped—and looked—and in unison spoke: