NY Post on "Birth of a Nation" (1915)(LONG); Asked you to jump (1928)

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NY POST ON "BIRTH OF A NATION"

I walked to the New York Public Library. It's open on Sunday. But, of course, it was closed. There was not even a sign on the door.

So I splurged $2 on a subway to NYU. I don't see the quotation here...Way back, about 20 years ago, I wrote a play about the Ku Klux Klan and Plessy V. Ferguson called A FOOL'S ERRAND, based on the work of Albion Tourgee. It was about as successful as my etymology career.


NEW YORK POST, March 4, 1915, pg. 9, col. 3:

_"Birth of a Nation."_

An appeal to race prejudice as subtle and malicious as any that has been made in New York, a thrilling historic spectacle of the battles and life of the days of the Civil War, and an explanation of Southern feeling in the reconstruction days in defence of the Ku Klux Klan which terrorized negroes during that period--these were the things presented to the spectators who filled the Liberty Theatre last evening for the first presentation of the motion-picture drama, "The Birth of a Nation." As an achievement in motion-picture photography upon a tremendous scale, surprisingly effective in artistic realization, the film is as remarkable as it is audacious in its characterization of the negro as a primitive brute, either vicious or childlike, only to be controlled by violence.

People were moved to cheers, hisses, laughter, and tears, apparently unconscious, and subdued, by tense interest in the play; they clapped when the masked riders took vengeance on negroes, and they clapped when the hero refused to shake the hand of a mulatto who has risen by political intrigue to become lieutenant-governor. This remark, made by a typical New Yorker leaving the theatre, characterizes the sentiment which was expressed to much of the comment: "THat show certainly does make you hate those blacks. And if it gets that effect on me, when I don't care anything about it, imagine what it would be in the South, with a man whose family was mixed up in it. It makes you feel as if you'd do the same thing."

That is the element which mars one of the most ambitious and successful picture (Col. 4--ed.) dramas which has yet been attempted; and it is an element which does not seem necessary to the effectiveness of the film. To show the fact that there were individual outrages which roused the Southern whites of the 60's to organized violence, it does not appear necessary to characterize a race as either so vicious or so simple-minded that extermination or feudal control were the only methods of managing them; and this is the conclusion of "The Birth of a Nation." The blame for much of the trouble is shown to have lain upon the unscrupulous or misguided white political leaders of the North, who went to excess in their power to institute radical measures for negro freedom and equality of right. Stoneman, known really under another name, the Congressional leader, who held the reins of influence after the assassination of Lincoln, is represented as the cause of reconstruction turbulence.

The war scenes in the first half of the play have been photographed with striking realism. Troops charging, artillery trains galloping, flags waving, shells bursting over barricades, the flow of battle over a field miles in length, are shown in full detail, and immediately after the excitement of the charge there is the sight of trenches full of torn and tangled bodies. The truth of the horror of war is not forgotten in presenting its fascination.

The assassination of Linsoln has also been well reproduced. THe scene in the theatre, with the play, "Our American COusin," going forward in the stage, is shown in careful accordance with the historical accounts of it. How lincoln's guard left his post to get a view of the play; how Booth, waiting in the rear of another box, slipped through the door in the interval and fired at the President as he watched the play, are all seen. Booth's leap to the stage and his escape in the sudden excitement are faithfully portrayed, amid an equal excitement on the part of the spectators of to-day reviewing the scene.

The second part of the play, in which attempted outrages by a renegade negro and the mulatto protege of Stoneman upon the white girls, and the election injustices (Col. 5--ed.) in which whites were refused the vote and in which negroes gained control of legislative power, with the resulting intense hatred and friction between the races, are shown, is the part which roused the emotion of the audience. A long chase of a white girl by a negro, ending with the girl's suicide by throwing herself over a cliff, called forth many excited whispered comments, and from them on to the end of the film there was ready applause for anything derogatory to negroes and for the activity of the Ku Klux Klan.

Thomas Dixon, author of "The Clansman," upon which the picture-drama is based, was called, before the curtain last evening and made a short speech. In introducing D. W. Griffith, the producer of the pictures, he declared that none but the son of a Confederate soldier could have represented the spirit of his book.

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IF FRED SHAPIRO ASKED YOU TO JUMP OFF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE, YOU'D DO THAT, TOO?

This was popular in the 1960s. I remember Saturday Night Live's Jane Curtin playing a mother and saying this, about 1978.


(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)
Film Actor Leads Band and Likes It
Los Angeles Times (1886-Current File). Los Angeles, Calif.: Sep 9, 1928. p. C13 (2 pages):
Pg. 31:
"Those were glorious days," he recalled. "Never was there a more considerate director, a finer man than Frank Boggs. If he had lived, he would have been another D. W. Griffith. When Frank asked you to jump off a cliff, you did it. If Frank said it was all right, it had to be."


(NEWSPAPERARCHIVE) ("asked you to jump")
   Syracuse Herald  Wednesday, September 17, 1930 Syracuse, New York
...YOU do a uskcd mo If Holnnlo ASKED YOU TO JUMP oil roof 1 .suppose YOU'd do.....loo Now I'd like TO know v.ho la TO p.iy for UK- damage YOU Have done TO..

   Chronicle Telegram  Tuesday, July 14, 1936 Elyria, Ohio
...DJS face reddpr.ing. voice anger ASKED YOU TO JUMP in cab. rniste n.....sw that man demanded briiUy. Eeyut ASKED Careive shook his head. WHERE did..

   Appleton Post Crescent  Thursday, September 18, 1930 Appleton, Wisconsin
...a "Hennie ASKED me TO." "And if Hennie ASKED YOU TO JUMP off the roof I suppose.....Now I'd like TO know who is going TO pay for the damage YOU have done TO..

   Dixon Evening Telegraph  Thursday, February 05, 1953 Dixon, Illinois
...rAr-V WE TOOK WELL-SAY A TACK- oimjRe ASKED YOU TO JUMP KEAL SWEET ID FACEStR.....we Contempt of court doesn't mean much TO a piece of TOwn Qnd City Answer TO..

   Syracuse Herald Journal  Thursday, February 05, 1953 Syracuse, New York
...WINDS UP OJ THIS N'OTE- YOUR ANOTHER ASKED YOU TO JUMP N TWE LAKE IT-SHEfe.....has been subjected TO no one ever has ASKED him whether or not he was named TO..

   Chronicle Telegram  Tuesday, July 14, 1936 Elyria, Ohio
...aud children.. Ill MrrlM 411 DlckfTOi ASKED YOU TO JUMP m What's YOUr name.....than ni pi SIMPLE TO SEW Railroad Bids ASKED 12 No Buyers Vlnn -Xo ore could..