1875-1948
Movie Director

Motion Picture Pioneer.

One of the first movie directors to explore the creative possibilities of the medium of film, D. W. Griffith made a major impact on the development of the art and techniques of moviemaking. Background. David Wark Griffith was born on a Kentucky farm on 22 January 1875, the youngest child of a former Confederate officer whose regiment had failed to keep William Tecumseh Sherman from burning Atlanta. In 1889, four years after his father's death, the family moved to Louisville, where David Griffith went to work in a dry-goods store, quitting in 1893 to take a job in a bookstore. While volunteering as an usher and stagehand in various Louisville theaters, he saw stars such as John Drew, Lillian Russell, and Julia Marlowe. In 1896 he got his first acting job, embarking on a career that took him all over the country during the...