Known for:	D.W. Griffith / Granville Warwick / Captain Victor Marier
Birth name:	David Llewelyn Wark Griffith
Birthday:	22 January 1875, LaGrange, Kentucky, USA
Height:	5' 10" (1.78 m)

He has been called "the father of film technique", "the man who invented Hollywood" and "the Shakespeare of the screen". In 1920, he established United Artists with Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford. Interred at Mount Tabor Methodist Church Graveyard, Crestwood, Kentucky, USA. In 1975, the U.S. Postal Service honored Griffith with a postage stamp. 15 December 1999: Declaring that Griffith "helped foster intolerable racial stereotypes," The Directors Guild of America's National Board - without membership consultation - announced it would rename the D.W. Griffith Award, the Guild's highest honor. First given in 1953, its recipients included Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, John Huston, Woody Allen, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock and Griffith's friend Cecil B. DeMille. He produced and directed the first movie ever made in Hollywood, In Old California which was rediscovered and shown on the 6th of May 2004 at the 2004 Beverly Hills Film Festival attended by Mikhail Vartanov. On the same day, a monument was erected near the site where the film was made (Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street) but was stolen a year later. His first sound film was D.W. Griffith's 'Abraham Lincoln'. He was said to be a imperious, humorless man. Was voted the 15th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 415-427. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987. He tried to sell a story to The Edison Company. They hired him as an actor instead. He went from being a bit player to being the industry's leading director in a period of only five years. The film America is regarded as a major turning point in his career. Its failure ended his tenure as the industry's preeminent director. Same date of death, 21st of July, as the legendary Sergei Parajanov After The Birth of a Nation was released and criticized as being racist, Griffith was very hurt. He decided to make Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages as a follow-up, to show how damaging and dangerous people's intolerance can be. On May 26, 1918, he was elected president of the Motion Picture War Service Association, an organization charged with boosting war bond sales. Was named an Honorary Life Member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1938. The DGA award for best lifetime achievement was named for Griffith in 1953. The DGA National Board, without consulting its membership, decided in 1999 to rename the award due to the "intolerable racism" showcased in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. The outcry against political correctness led the DGA in 2002 to announce that it would not rename the award, although it would keep a lifetime achievement going in its arsenal of kudos. Awarded for "distinguished achievement in motion picture direction," the directors honored include Cecil B. DeMille (the first recipient), John Ford, King Vidor, William Wyler, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Elia Kazan, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Was the first person, after Charles Chaplin's special award at the first Academy Awards (Chaplin had had his nominations rescinded and placed out of competition), to win an honorary Academy Award. Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences President Frank Capra thought it would be good publicity for the Academy, which was then structured as a company union, as the Academy was being boycotted by the trade union guilds and turnout at the 1936 Oscar ceremony was predicted to be low. The citation read: "For his distinguished creative achievements as director and producer and his invaluable initiative and lasting contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts." In his declining years, Griffith lived off the income from an annuity that he had invested in when he had been on top in Hollywood. Was first hired as a director, when the Biograph Company's chief director fell ill. Began his career as a playwright, then moved to acting and finally (and famously) to directing. The Adventures of Dollie, a Biograph Company release, was his directorial debut in 1908. After viewing The Birth of a Nation in the White House (it was the first film shown in the White House itself), President Woodrow Wilson remarked that it was "like writing history with lightning." Ironically, the release of The Birth of a Nation inspired many African-Americans to start making their own films in an attempt to counter the film's depiction of them and to offer positive alternative images and stories of the African-American people. The NAACP attempted to have The Birth of a Nation banned. After that effort failed, they then attempted to have some of the film's more extreme scenes censored. Charles Chaplin called him "the teacher of us all" Was an ardent Jeffersonian. Pioneered the technique of parallel editing, which he used extensively after 1909. Lillian Gish called him "the father of film" (although Griffith considered her a close friend, she had so much respect for him that she never referred to him as other than "Mr. Griffith", even long after Griffith died). Although Griffith was thought by many to be a bigot and racist, he detested the manner in which whites and the "white man's government" treated and oppressed Native Americans. This was a theme that he explored in several of his early short films, most notably in The Red Man's View and Ramona, which are very strong denouncements of the oppression of Native Americans by whites. Several filming innovations belong solely to Griffith (some of which he invented during his collaboration with G. W. "Billy" Bitzer at 'Biograph' Company . They include the flashback, the iris shot, the mask, the systematic use of the soft focus shot and the split screen. He directed more than 450 films for the 'Biograph Company' . Amazingly, 440 of them still survive, accounting for a large portion the 'Biograph Company' shorts that survive. By 1909 he was turning out 2 to 3 films per week. After the 1915 release of The Birth of a Nation, riots broke out in several black neighborhoods across the country. His movie The Birth of a Nation is generally considered as the birth of modern American cinema. Started to write an autobiography, but never finished it. [1926] Very first person to use a close-up in a movie. Is portrayed by Charles Dance in Good Morning, Babylon and by Colm Feore in And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

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