The Theatrical Heritage

“Despite the stylized pantomimic gestures employed by Linda [Arvidson] and Arthur Johnson, ... some small transcendence of types and situations was achieved.”¹ Richard Schickel, the author of one of the more recent additions to the rapidly growing Griffith bibliography, thus assesses Griffith’s first film, The Adventures of Dollie. Schickel might find Dollie laudable in all other respects, but to him the acting is on an equal—that is to say equally bad—footing with that of any other 1908 one-reeler. A few pages later, Shickel discusses the results of the Biograph Company’s 1909-1910 sojourn in Los Angeles: “There was still,