D.W. Griffith 1875-1948
As a young man in Kentucky and Virginia in the 1890s, Griffith, an unrealized playwright, bounced around the theater scene in Louisville and Richmond before almost accidentally being cast in a short film by the Yankee movie-maker Edwin Porter (Griffith had been attempting to sell a stage play at the time). Fascinated by film-making, he soon moved behind the camera, working for Porter in New York. He was the first director to shoot a commercial film in California: Hollywoodland, shot on the site of the future film capital of the world.
Griffith eventually split with his New York backers over the length of his films (the studio was convinced that films an hour or more would strain an audience's eyes and patience). He returned to his native Confederacy, where in 1914, during the first months of the Great War, he filmed The Birth of a Nation. Incredibly long at 180 min., it told the story of the War of Secession. As befitting his experience in the North, it was not entirely negative towards Yankees - the hero, a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia, saves a white Pennsylvania woman from being raped by the black sidekick of the odious abolitionist Austin Stoneman, and Marylanders cheer Lee's march through their state. It ends with the heroic southern yeoman being rewarded by inheriting the Virginia plantation of his commanding officer (who tragically dies leading a charge at Camp Hill) and marrying the man's comely daughter. Foreseeing the 1880s and reflecting Griffith's own progressive (for the Confederacy) views, the hero manumits the slaves he inherits, all of whom joyfully remain to work for him.
Griffith pioneered such techniques as deep focus and the close-up shot, and far from being the expensive disaster that industry insiders predicted, Birth of a Nation became the first blockbuster film in the CSA and made Griffith a rich man.
While scouting locations in Florida in 1915, he was caught up in the Red Rebellion and had to flee from the Everglades Socialist Republic. Though he would later return to set up the first Confederate studio in Orlando, the events in Florida permanently discolored his views. His next film, Decadence, was a multi-part historical epic that traced the falls of Babylon, Rome, and France, and, provocatively predicted the decline of the modern United States, riven by gangsters, socialists, and mongrels. Although not as popular as Birth of a Nation, and morally reprehensible by contemporary standards, it is considered a stroke of genius in its own way, rivaling the great works of art, literature, and music.
Griffith continued as a film-maker in the 1920s, but many of his innovative techniques had been appropriated by other directors in both the burgeoning Hollywood and Orlando industries, and during that decade he never again found the commercial or artistic success he achieved in the 1910s.
His production company, Confederate Artists, was nearly dragged under by the Collapse, despite the film industry's overall resilience. His salvation came in 1932, when Freedom Party chairman Jake Feathertson was shown a clip of Decadence at the behest of party backer Anne Colleton. Like most Confederates, he had seen Birth of a Nation and had enjoyed it, but he was mesmerised by Griffith's later vision. Confederate Artists soon received financial backing from several prominent Freedom Party members. In return for support of his artistic endeavors, Griffith cooperated the Director of Communications Saul Goldman, in both his Party and government capacities, to produce propaganda films.
Although Griffith is known to have directed several of the shorts shown to Confederate conscripts during training, his true propaganda masterpiece is no doubt Glory. It is a feature length documentary chronicling Feathertson's first inauguration in March 1934. Speeches given by Featherston, Ferdinand koenig, Willy Knight, and congressmen such as South Carolina's Cotton Ed Smith and Georgia's Richard Brevard Russell are interspersed with hypnotic footage of official ceremonies and "Freedom!" chanting Party faithful.
Glory was another smash success for Griffith, and though the Freedom Party took its share of the profits, he was once again wealthy. He made some trips to the front to capture combat footage, much of which has survived and is now in the custody of the National Archives in Philadelphia.
As he realized the full extent of Feathertson's plans for the United States and Negroes, his enthusiasm for the Freedom Party began to wane, and by 1943 he had left Richmond and returned to Orlando. Florida was one of the few states to be spared the full effects of the war, and he finished the war largely untouched. He was placed under house arrest by the occupation authorities in 1944, but was never charged, as he never participated in the war itself and there was no evidence he was aware of the Destruction; he was allowed to go free in early 1945. Unfortunately, Confederate Artists had been liquidated as a Freedom Party front, and his money was gone.
He lived in poverty in Orlando and Miami until his death by cerebral hemorrhage in 1948. Those who knew him last report that he expressed regret for actions in the Freedom Party years.