Next day, as the lovely Shenandoah Valley spread out before me, I kept hearing those startling words, “Oh, with the photography we now have, I can make them all beautiful.”
“The Mended Lute” was perhaps the first picture produced with the inspiring background of Cuddebackville scenery. Florence Lawrence, Owen Moore, and Jim Kirkwood the leading actors. David wrote me to Louisville on his return to New York:
Dear Linda:
Well, I am back in New York. Got back at twelve o’clock last night.... I have accounts to make out for eight days, imagine that job, can you?
Haven’t had my talk with Mr. Kennedy as yet, as I have been away, but expect to on Tuesday or Wednesday as soon as I can see him. Lost six pounds up in the country, hard work, if you please....
And then I want to go back to that place again and take you this time because it’s very fine up there. I am saving a great automobile ride for you—if I stay....
“If I stay”—always that “if.” A year had now rolled by and in August Mr. Griffith would sign his second contract—if he stayed.
The hegira to Cuddebackville had been undertaken to show Biograph officials what could be done by just forgetting the old stamping grounds adjacent to Fort Lee. Contract-signing time approaching, Mr. Griffith wanted to splurge. A number of scripts had collected that called for wild mountainous country, among them “The Mended Lute.” Mr. Kennedy and our secretary, Mr. R. H. Hammer; Mr. Griffith and his photographer, Mr. Bitzer, sitting in conference had decided upon a place up in the Orange Mountains called Cuddebackville. It had scenic possibilities, housing facilities, and lacked summer boarders. Through an engineering job—the construction of a dam at one end of the old D. L. and W. Canal, on whose placid waters in days gone by the elder Vanderbilt had towed coal to New York—Mr. Kennedy had become acquainted with Cuddebackville.
Unsuspecting sleepy little village, with your one small inn, your general store, and your few stray farms! How famous on the map of movie locations you were to become! How famous in many lands your soft, green mountains, your gently purling streams, your fields of corn!
“The Mended Lute” would be Mr. Griffith’s catch-penny. The beauties he had crowded in the little one-reeler should suffice to bowl over any unsuspecting President. So this “Cuddebackville Special,” along with several others that had collected awaiting Mr. Kennedy’s pleasure, was projected for the authorities. And David signed up for another year at an increase in salary and a doubling of his percentage. And he could go to Cuddebackville whenever he so desired.