Griffith had far greater battles in his mind. In January he severed regular connection with the Reliance-Majestic, but arranged, under their auspices, to produce a Civil War picture, based on Thomas Dixon’s book, “The Clansman.” Then, early in February, he took his entire group of players to the Coast, and began, not that picture, but pictures that would earn money for the undertaking. No one, not even Griffith himself, guessed the size of that undertaking, but better than the others, Griffith knew that it would require an overhead which would cause, among his backers, an outbreak of apoplexy, if they got even a hint of it.

Griffith had a bent for melodrama. Also, he knew there was money in it, and money was very necessary just now, in view of the big project ahead. It occurred to him that John Howard Payne’s “Home, Sweet Home” had a more universal appeal than any similar composition in the nation’s history. A story of the author’s life, followed by a set of scenes using that old heart-throb as a call to the erring wanderer or comfort to the heavy-laden, would be irresistible. Walthall would be cast as Payne, Lillian as his sweetheart; at the end, a spiritual transition, as in “Uncle Tom.”

At the Reliance-Majestic, or Fine Arts studio, on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, the work was pushed forward rapidly, to have the picture ready for Spring release. In a full-page announcement of the big, new feature, we read:

“Twenty-five famous screen stars will participate in the play, which will be a very ‘portentous’ one.”

Whether the printer meant to set “pretentious” or “portentous,” is of small consequence. It was both. Griffith meant to make it the former. Payne, had he been consulted, would have voted for the latter, for in the picture, he dies and goes to Hell. That a poet, author of an immortal song, could have been sent to Hell, even temporarily, as late as the Spring of 1914, shows how far we have traveled since then. A newspaper symposium had abolished Hell a good while before that time, but perhaps Griffith hadn’t heard of it yet. Griffith made Payne abandon his sweetheart, so doubtless it was proper that he should have a taste of Hell, even in 1914.

Then follow the “episodes”: A young Easterner is about to forsake Mae Marsh (“Apple-pie Mary”), when the strains of “Home, Sweet Home” on an accordion, win him back to her “calico-covered arms.” A business man’s wife is about to “step out,” when a “great musician” in the flat below strikes up “Home, Sweet Home,” and a wife’s honor is safe. The fact that great musicians so seldom play “Home, Sweet Home” as a pastime, did not trouble Griffith. His did.

The picture ended in a manner no longer to be taken seriously. Payne (Walthall), dying in sin, goes promptly to an impressive Hell, a chasm in the mountains, where, arrayed in an astonishing costume, considering the climate, he is given a disagreeable time by certain devils wearing the falsest of false faces. His sweetheart (Lillian), dying a saint, had gone straight to Heaven—a sort of grown-up Little Eva. Must Payne remain in Hell? Not above a week, at the longest. “Little Eva,” suspended on wires, as when she had been the Gold Fairy of Belasco, descends in a white robe, and her poor renegade lover, seizing the folds of that immaculate garment, is borne upward and outward to Paradise, backing away from the audience, so that their faces may never be lost. Probably only the beauty of Walthall and Lillian saved such a scene, even in that remote time, from the shouts of joy which would surely greet it today.

Seventeen years later, in the little projection room on Seventh Avenue, I watched, with Lillian, an unreeling of this ancient film. It seemed to me, as, I think, to her, pretty crude:—in places, childish. The costumes had been selected from an assortment something more limited than the old Biograph wardrobe, and were either amusing or pathetic, as you happened to think. The acting was not much better. I don’t quite know what was the matter with it, but it conveyed the impression of being amateurish, though all the actors were, in effect, stars. Lillian’s half-hysterical “Wasn’t I terrible?” expressed one’s general feeling as to all of them. Mae Marsh in a comedy part, was the best of the lot. The photography was on a par with the rest of it. Yet it followed “Judith of Bethulia” by several months. What was the matter?

And since we have been speaking of “Little Eva,” perhaps this is as good a place as any to state that Lillian had never, at any time, played that part. She might have done so, had there been any “Uncle Tom” combinations when she was a child trouper. “Uncle Tom” had died permanently, by that time. Interviewers, however, when they looked at her, could not believe, when she told them that she had played “Little Willie” in “East Lynne,” that she was not saying “Little Eva in ‘Uncle Tom,’” and they so often printed this statement that in time she almost believed it herself. I am making a special paragraph of this denial to set the matter straight—for all of us.

Busy days, these. Under one director and another, Griffith kept Lillian and Dorothy going, usually in different pictures, though sometimes, as in “The Sisters,” together. They made an attractive pair, but Griffith could not afford to waste them on small pictures—“program” pictures—besides, it was not easy to get stories—picture stories—to fit.

Dorothy became a star on her own account, with Walthall in “The Mountain Rat,” a Western; and in “The Mysterious Shot,” with Jack Pickford, who had joined the movie forces. Jack, apparently, had conquered his old infatuation, for we hear nothing further of it. “The Rat” was Dorothy’s first star part, and a very good one of its kind, being that of a red-light girl, considered then rather a daring portrayal for a girl of sixteen. All these were pot-boilers, while preparations for the great Civil War spectacle went forward.

They also kept the names and faces of Griffith’s stars before the public—an important matter, for the field was getting full of producers—stars were being created almost overnight. Nor did Griffith let them get into a rut by working always under one director. Lillian, alternately under Christy CabannÉ and Jack O’Brien, was receiving liberal training.

“Which would you rather work under?” a reporter asked.

“Both. Their methods are entirely different; I learn a great deal from each.”

Interviews were very frequent, now, the reporters kind. They referred to Lillian and Dorothy as the “darlings of the screen,” and they rarely failed to remember Belasco’s verdict, which found its way even to Massillon. “MASSILLON GIRL CALLED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BLONDE IN THE WORLD” made a three-column headline, with a picture of Lillian to prove it; as if everybody in Massillon hadn’t known that, long ago.