In 1946, Iris Barry (1895 – 1969) of the Museum of Modern Art Film Department decided to exhibit only the most famous films of D.W. Griffith for the retrospective that was being launched to celebrate the famed director. This enormous omission inspired film critic Herb Sterne (1906 – 1995) to think again about the large body of work that the director created and, putting pen to paper, he wrote:
“Because of the museum’s lack of judgment, the Griffith collection it has chosen to circulate is woefully incomplete, thereby giving contemporary students of the motion picture a distorted and erroneous impression of the scope of the man’s achievements.”
The Griffith films Sterne examined in this article are
Hearts of the West,
The Greatest Thing in Life, and
The Romance of Happy Valley.
Click here to read more primary source articles about D.W. Griffith.
To read a 1924 article regarding Hollywood film executive Irving Thalberg, click here.
