Original 1938 typescript Griffith's autobiography, "D. W. Griffith Looks Back on Hollywood" dictated to Jim Hart, with many holograph corrections and additions, together with the posthumously published The Man Who Invented Hollywood, the Autobiography of D. W. Griffith
Louisville KY: Touchstone Publishing, 1972. First printing. Approximately 150 pp of typescript, mostly carbons but also original typed pages, with many corrections in pen and pencil as well as several notes in shorthand on the versos of some of the sheets, in Jim Hart's hand. Provenance: estate of Samuel Marx (1902-1992), a producer & screenwriter at MGM and the author of several books on Hollywood history. As Hart notes in the published edition of this book, this typescript sat gathering dust for over forty years before getting published in 1972, although Hart did use a portion for a 1939 article in Liberty Magazine. Griffith grudgingly agreed to dictate his reminiscences to Hart in several interviews that took place in the lobby of the old Brown Hotel in Louisville; by then, Hollywood had largely forgotten him but for an occasional remembrance at the Oscars. When WWII intervened, Hart moved on to other more pressing projects and didn't revisit it till more than forty years later. (D. W. Griffth died in 1948.) This typescript has corrections that were incorporated into the published version, which reproduces two facsimile pages of a typescript draft that clearly came after ours. Hart and his brother Lorenz (of the Rodgers & Hart partnership) were extremely close with Samuel Marx, who at the time was head of story development at MGM, so it makes sense that a first or early draft would find lodging among Marx's papers: Nolan's 1994 biography of Lorenz Hart acknowledges his deep indebtedness to Samuel Marx's files. Although Griffith's politics and biases were out of step with modern America, his pioneering cinematography and other modernizing contributions to cinematic arts, as both director and story-teller, put him in the pantheon of all time greats as far as the avant-garde was concerned; he was the subject of an exhibition and revival at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940. Some wear to cover sheet, and missing a few pages at the end (it goes to p. 93 of the published version, which ends at p. 97). Very Good. Item #H15742
Price: $1,250.00