While Noble did not deign to reply to Stern directly,124 his point of view was championed by E. L. Cranstone in the fall 1947 issue of Sight and Sound. Cranstone rejected Stern’s argument that the South after the Civil War had been “occupied territory” and that the Ku Klux Klan—“that vile body of terrorists”—had functioned as a “partisan movement.” He insisted that Stern’s (and Griffith’s) view of history was eccentric and recommended Howard Fast’s novel Freedom Road as offering an alternative view of the Reconstruction period. He demolished the argument that because Griffith had made a major contribution to cinematic art, his ideological view of the past was necessarily correct. Cranstone pointed out that Birth had incited riots, its exhibition had been banned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and that “tests carried out in American schools confirmed that it creates racial bias.” Finally, he defended Noble for criticizing Griffith’s “anti-racial bias” and his “obvious glorification” of the “loathsome” Klan, and he accused Stern of “red-baiting” through his mentioning that Noble had once acted in a play by communist writer Clifford Odets.125
Stern replied to Cranstone, supposedly on behalf of both Griffith and himself, in the spring 1948 issue of Sight and Sound. If, in his earlier article, he had at times been subtle in criticizing communist assaults on Birth of a Nation and attempting to link Noble with them, he now abandoned all restraint. As the Cold War worsened (there was a communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948), Stern’s own anti-communism became irrational and obsessive. Cranstone was accused of vilifying Griffith using “Communist smear tactics.” Stern denied that The Birth of a Nation exemplified the “‘wrong-doing’ which Communist fanatics and their partisans have imputed to it.” He rejected the idea that anything could be learned from Fast’s Freedom Road, which he dismissed as “an ‘account’ of the Reconstruction Period, based on isolated and obscure incidents, by … an American writer recently cited by Congress for concealing the records of a Communist-front group.” According to Stern, the riots against The Birth of a Nation had often been politically motivated (he cited an attempt by communists to provoke a riot during a recent revival of the film in New York). The refusal of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library to circulate the movie was easily explained by the fact that “almost everyone today knows where the political sympathies of the Film Library lie” and its attempts at political propaganda “are as well known to film students as they are to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Disingenuously, Stern refused to accept his “reference to Peter Noble as an actor in one of Clifford Odets’ rabble-rousing plays” as “Red-baiting.” He accused Cranstone of libeling him by insisting that he had a “hatred of anything savoring of the progressive.” Stern finished by outlining his own beliefs and his opposition to Stalinism, which he described as “loathsome to true democrats” in both the United States and the rest of the world. Clearly, especially by the end of his long letter, Stern was drifting away from the discussion of Griffith and his film toward simple red-baiting and a defense of his own acquired antipathy to communism. The editor of Sight and Sound must have thought so too; he followed Stern’s piece with a curt note that “This correspondence must now cease.”126
The war of words fought out between communists and anti-communists over The Birth of a Nation did not end there, however. Communist writer V. J. Jerome criticized Griffith’s depiction of African Americans again in The Negro in Hollywood Films (1950).127 Stern returned to his attack on communism as the major source of Griffith’s problems over Birth in articles in the American Mercury in 1949 and Films in Review in 1956. In the latter, he upped the ante by explaining not only why communists had sought to destroy Griffith but why, in more general terms, they were trying to dominate film scholarship. “Since the Communist movement is as much an ideological and cultural conspiracy as it is an economic, military and political one,” he argued, “it is not surprising that Communists the world over devote considerable time and energy to influencing, and controlling, film criticism and history.”128 It was not simply that communists identified The Birth of a Nation intellectually as a source of racial and class oppression. They continued to attack it physically, at least until the late 1970s, most especially when it was screened in association with the hated Ku Klux Klan.
The Remake Illusion
The Birth of a Nation was so successful in financial terms that inevitably over time many people would be drawn to the idea of a remake. Roy Aitken recalled that sometime in the late 1920s, he and his brother, Harry, met Griffith by accident in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel in New York. The conversation, on the part of Harry Aitken and Griffith, quickly turned to the possibility of a remake. The careers of both men by this point were in sharp decline and, reluctantly, they finally agreed on the impossibility of raising the million dollars Griffith estimated would be necessary.129 In early 1933, the New York Times printed a statement by Thomas Dixon that he was trying to have a “talking picture version” of Birth made. In response to an anxious letter from the NAACP, Carl E. Milliken of the MPPDA reported that so far as he was aware, none of the companies involved in the association had shown any interest in such a film. When similar anxieties had emerged over the synchronized sound version, Milliken pointedly added, the NAACP had “wisely refrained from agitation that might have directed public attention to the picture, with the result that it proved unsuccessful and received very limited distribution.”130
Dixon was back in the news four years later with a report in the News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, that he was planning a sequel to The Clansman. The new book, Dixon asserted, would “bring the romance of the South from Reconstruction days down to 1937.” He also added, ominously, “that various incidents of interracial import since 1900 would be incorporated into the plot.” The title of the new novel, The Flaming Sword, was taken from W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1935 book on Reconstruction, which savaged the “Tragic Era” legend in which Dixon believed. (A major theme of Dixon’s book, it was claimed, would be “the development of communism” among blacks as a consequence of Du Bois’s leadership.) Dixon touted the idea that the new story would be made into a film and the report finished with the vague remark that “some effort has been made to reproduce ‘The Birth of a Nation’ as a sound picture.” The NAACP’s first reaction to the news was to think of making a formal protest to Will Hays over any attempt to film a story by Dixon, but it also contacted Jonathan Daniels, editor of the News and Observer, for more information. Daniels explained that Dixon was desperate to raise money, as he had lost a good deal in real estate speculations, and hinted that the story probably originated with his new agent, Virginia Nowell of Raleigh, whom he described as “a promoter somewhat extraordinary.” Thus reassured, the NAACP decided not to take any action.131 In reality, the final sentence in the News and Observer’s report had been more accurate than either Daniels or the NAACP realized. In the fall of 1937, Dixon, Griffith, and the Aitkens had begun seriously to discuss remaking The Birth of a Nation as a sound picture. Dixon asked for $10,000, plus royalties, for writing a new screenplay. Griffith and Harry Aitken agreed that Griffith would direct the remake and have responsibility for hiring the actors; Aitken’s job would be to raise enough money for filming to begin. After several weeks of “intensive selling,” however, Harry had promises of only $100,000. With Griffith believing that the minimum necessary to begin work was $400,000, or about half the estimated final cost, the project had to be abandoned for the time being.132
Rumors of a remake continued. In January 1938, Louella Parsons reported that Griffith would direct a new version “financed by Eastern capital” with Wally Ford as the “Little Colonel.” A few weeks later, Cecil B. DeMille announced over the radio that he proposed to produce his own revised Birth of a Nation for Paramount. In July, as part of his court case against the Stone Film Library, Dixon said he was preparing a new talking version “to be produced by an independent company.”133 In 1940, the original producers seem to have made another attempt to get
a remake under way. The principal catalyst—as Harry Aitken admitted on his way to see Dixon in North Carolina—was the enormous popularity of David O. Selznick’s movie production of Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling novel, Gone With the Wind. Aitken obviously hoped that the success of Gone With the Wind would create interest in the remake; he even suggested that Birth was “in effect” a sequel to Selznick’s film, dealing in more detail “with the Carpetbag era that was only briefly touched on in ‘Gone With the Wind.’” But his announcement of the planned remake “in technicolor and sound” provoked a fierce reaction from the NAACP. Walter White wrote to Will Hays on March 21 urging him to “use the full power of your office as President of the Motion Picture Producers-Distributors of America to prevent the remaking of this film.” Over the next few weeks, the MPPDA was deluged with letters of protest from a large number of organizations, including the American Jewish Congress, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the Catholic Interracial Council, the Methodist Federation of Social Service, the Society of Friends’ Committee on Race Relations, the National Council of Women, and the Descendants of the American Revolution.134
Critics of the proposed remake attacked both the idea itself and its timing. “The power of the silent version to arouse bitterness against … the Negro has been amply demonstrated,” declared one writer. “The sound version would multiply that power many times.” The fact that the Second World War had begun just over six months earlier was also very much in the minds of protestors. One wrote of being “unspeakably shocked and horrified by the brutalities of national and racial intolerance conspicuous of late in certain countries.” The threat to democracy, both abroad and at home, suggested that “national unity” and “good will”—not a new version of a racist, socially divisive film—were what the times required.135
MPPDA officials replied to such protests by emphasizing that no proposal for a remake of The Birth of a Nation had been made by any member of their Association and that any such movie would have to conform to the Production Code of 1930 and consequently be approved by the Production Code Administration set up in 1934. Carl Milliken, now going much further than he had in response to the sound version of 1930, also assured the National Council of Women that although Birth had been “acclaimed a masterpiece in its day” it “could not at the present time be approved” by the PCA “without very far-reaching changes.” Without such a seal of PCA approval, no film could be shown in a theater owned by any member of the MPPDA, effectively excluding it from most of the best “first-run” movie theaters in the United States. While MPPDA spokesmen qualified their comments by explaining that they had no control over the actions of nonmembers of the association, the assurances they had given were convincing enough for Walter White a few weeks later to claim that the protests of the NAACP and its allies had effectively “scotched” the idea of a remake.136
What really seems to have happened in 1940 is that Harry Aitken was floating a trial balloon. After the failed attempt at a remake in 1937, he had concluded that the only way such a remake might now happen would be for him to persuade some independent producer to finance it. The popularity of Gone With the Wind had already stimulated interest in the Civil War era and Aitken obviously hoped that his own announcement would create sufficient public controversy (and hence publicity) to suggest to such a producer that the project, while risky, was potentially very profitable. The behind-the-scenes tactics of the NAACP and its allies frustrated this hope. The closest the remake issue came to becoming a public controversy occurred with the publication on May 20 of a Walter Winchell gossip column. Winchell claimed that “communists are behind the artificial flood of protests sent directly or indirectly to the Hays Office. They object to the reissuing of ‘The Birth of a Nation’ film. The real squawk is that it is ‘too patriotic.’” Denying that any of the protestors were “communists,” Walter White summarized NAACP strategy by informing Winchell that
We have given no publicity to the protests against the remaking of the picture because we have learned that the mysterious forces who are trying to get the film remade want just the kind of publicity that you have given them in your column today in order to build up a “demand” for the film by Kluxers, Nazis and potential anti-Semites, anti-Catholics and anti-Negroes.137
The kind of independent producer Harry Aitken was looking for would have had to be strong enough—and brave enough—to stand up to both the MPPDA and the PCA. One of the few who might have done so was David O. Selznick. Completely unknown to the Aitken brothers, a few months before buying the film rights for Gone With the Wind, Selznick had apparently considered remaking Birth. He abandoned the idea in the end because he became convinced it “would be difficult, if not impossible, to clarify for audiences the difference between the old Klan and the Klan of our times.” Both as a Jew and as someone with no desire to produce an anti-black film, Selznick balked at key elements of Birth’s narrative.138 He would insist, during the filming of Gone With the Wind, on asking the NAACP for advice to avoid exactly the kind of controversy associated with Griffith’s earlier film. Yet as late as October 1941, he commented to story editor Katherine Brown that remaking The Birth of a Nation “isn’t a bad idea!”139
Although Dixon died in 1946 and Griffith in 1948, the Aitken brothers lived out their retirement in Waukesha, Wisconsin, still dreaming of the day when Birth would be remade. In 1954, they were approached by Phil A. Ryan acting on behalf of a syndicate of banks and movie executives put together by financier Ted Thal to see if they would sell their rights to the picture. The Aitkens appear to have believed that they were about to be offered anything up to a million dollars. They agreed (for a nominal price) to an option on their rights to the silent version of the movie. The syndicate then approached Dixon’s widow in an attempt to negotiate an option on her rights. Nothing happened for several months. Then, on December 2, 1954, Film Daily announced the planned remake: it was to be widescreen, in color, with a cast of 15,000. The new film, it was estimated, would cost $8,000,000 and the screenplay would be written by Dudley Nichols, whose writing credits included The Informer (1935), for which he received an Academy Award; Stagecoach (1939); and Pinky (1949). The Aitkens were worried that the story claimed (wrongly) that the rights to Birth had already been acquired from them and Dixon’s widow for $750,000. They were even more dismayed by the “avalanche of publicity,” much of it unfavorable, that followed. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP fired off a telegram claiming that the remake was “an effort … to encourage the 1876 rather than the 1955 view of Negroes as American citizens.” Walter Winchell had obviously changed his mind since 1940: he “deplored” the planned remake of a film that had “exploited bigotry” and “deserves to be buried.” Trade sources emphasized the difficulties of the project: to make a film about the Klan (which was now “thoroughly discredited”) would alienate large elements of the moviegoing audience—Jews and Catholics as well as African Americans. It would have problems both getting a Production Code seal and passing state censorship boards. In any event, Dudley Nichols could not be persuaded to try his hand at producing a workable screenplay, and facing a storm of adverse publicity and with no major studio or director lined up, the Thal deal fell apart.140
The failure of the 1954 project was a major disappointment for the Aitken brothers. They continued to promote the original Birth of a Nation as actively as they could, hoping that someday someone would buy their rights and remake the picture. In 1956, at the age of seventy-eight, while discussing a showing of the film with a theater manager in Chicago, Harry had a fatal heart attack. In 1959, another Hollywood syndicate approached Roy with an offer for his rights in the film, but he thought the offer derisive and rejected it.141 Five years later, Raymond Rohauer, who had made a specialty of acquiring the rights to old movies, persuaded Dixon’s second wife and widow to permit him to approach Roy Aitken on her behalf to demand an accounting of the revenues from The Birth of a Nation.142 Essentially, by threatening Roy with legal action, Rohauer managed
to blackmail him into selling Epoch to Jay Ward Enterprises, a company hitherto known mainly for its cartoon series (“Rocky,” “Bullwinkle”). At this point, the formal involvement of the Aitken family with Birth—an involvement that had lasted half a century—finally came to an end.143
For Rohauer, it was by no means the end of the story. He now sued Paul Killiam, who had bought the claims to the Griffith estate at an auction in 1959, and the Museum of Modern Art for infringing Epoch’s copyright in Birth of a Nation.144 The suit, heard in 1975 in New York’s Foley Square courthouse, essentially revolved around the issue of who owned the rights to the film. (Birth had been copyrighted twice, once by Griffith and later by Epoch.) The defense attempted to prove that Griffith had been the author of the film and consequently “the only one with a legal right to copyright and renew that copyright.” They called as witnesses Lillian Gish (Elsie Stoneman), Joseph Henabery (Abraham Lincoln), and film critic Andrew Sarris, then a leading exponent of the so-called “auteur theory” of film production. The jury, unimpressed, decided that Epoch owned the rights to the film. Rohauer’s triumph, however, was very brief: two months later, in August 1975, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the verdict and decided that Griffith was both the creator and legal “author” of his film. Epoch had no right to the copyright; its renewal of the copyright was consequently invalid; and because Griffith had failed to renew his copyright, the film was now in the public domain. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the decision of the lower court.145
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