D. W. Griffith success; Biograph co-founder Harry Marvin gave Griffith the position, and he made the short "The Adventures of Dollie". He directed a total of 48 shorts for the company that year. His short "In Old California" (1910) was the first film shot in Hollywood, California. Four years later, he produced and directed his first feature film "Judith of Bethulia" (1914), one of the earliest to be produced in the US. Biograph believed that longer features were not viable at that point. According to Lillian Gish, the company thought that "a movie that long would hurt [the audience's] eyes". Griffith left Biograph
D. W. Griffith of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and among the most important figures in the history of film. He popularized the use of the close-up shot. Griffith was born on a farm in Oldham County, Kentucky, the son of Mary Perkins ("née" Oglesby) and Jacob Wark "Roaring Jake" Griffith a Confederate Army colonel in the American Civil War who was elected as a Kentucky state legislator. Griffith was raised a Methodist, and he attended a one-room schoolhouse where he was taught by his older sister Mattie. His father died when he was ten, and the