D.W. Griffith Studio (Mamaroneck, New York)

 film/video production studio/facility, historical layer / disappeared object

From the New York Times, Dec. 29, 1996:

WHEN GRIFFITH FILMED IN MAMARONECK

ROBERTA HERSHENSON

In his day, the spit of land upon which D. W. Griffith built his studio here was called Satan's Toe. The coastal setting is still fitting for a great movie pioneer, but the studio has been long gone. Private houses, clustered along a road guarded by a gatekeeper, now occupy the site.

Griffith came to Mamaroneck in 1919, the success of ''Birth of a Nation'' and ''Intolerance'' already behind him. He bought the 28-acre Flagler estate on Orienta Point and, working with a company of actors that included Lillian and Dorothy Gish, filmed several of his most important movies.

Among those were ''Way Down East,'' a melodrama about a jilted unwed mother, played by Lillian Gish, and ''Orphans of the Storm,'' an epic story set during the French Revolution. To film ''Orphans,'' an elaborate costume drama starring the Gish sisters, Griffith re-created 18th-century Paris on Satan's Toe and used hundreds of residents as extras.

Still photographs from Griffith's five years of movie making here are part of the collection of the Westchester County Historical Society, which, together with the county's Offices of Cultural Affairs, Tourism and Film is sponsoring the exhibition ''Hollywood East: D. W. Griffith in Westchester.'' The show of 58 black-and-white photographs can be seen at the Bridge Gallery on the second floor of the County Office Building in White Plains through Jan. 13. The gallery hours are 8:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Mondays through Fridays.

Griffith, who lived from 1875 to 1948, was ''the single most important figure in the history of American film,'' said Paul Mareth, a former teacher of film at Temple University in Philadelphia and the University of Pittsburgh. ''He transformed a curiosity -- and that's all the movies were when he started -- into what quickly became the most influential art form of the century.''

Early on, Griffith showed ''a remarkable instinctive understanding of the creative potential of the medium,'' Mr. Mareth said. Techniques like the close-up and cross cutting, or rhythmic editing to tell a story, became his signature. ''For the first time, the audience began to differentiate between film makers and specific films, and he was in demand.''

Although he made hundreds of films, and the commercial success of ''Birth of a Nation'' was unparalleled until ''Jaws'' in 1975, Griffith's own story ended unhappily. Plagued by a large overhead on the Mamaroneck studio and trailing debt from the earlier ''Intolerance,'' into which he had sunk much of his own money, Griffith was forced to sell the studio here.

''His career went into a nose dive,'' Mr. Mareth said. ''He became a contract director and started drinking heavily. It was a very sad life, with two failed marriages. He wound up living in hotel rooms.''

In the end, his ''grandiosity, melodrama and Victorian sentimentality got the better of him,'' Mr. Mareth said. His last movie, ''The Struggle,'' made in 1931 -- his only film with sound -- was laughed off the screen.

**Small correction to the article. "The Struggle" was not Griffith's only sound film. His other was "Abraham Lincoln" starring the acclaimed actor Walter Huston. It, too, was laughed off the screen.