Arvidson, Linda (1884–1949)

American actress. Name variations: Linda Griffith. Born in 1884; died in 1949; married D.W. Griffith (motion-picture director).

As the first wife of movie director David Wark Griffith, Linda Arvidson contributed a valuable look at her husband's early work with her 1925 autobiography When the Movies Were Young. Much of her information was gathered while playing leads in many of his early silents. For example, she was playing a customer when Mack Sennett made his comedic debut carrying a long pole through a crowded market (The Curtain Pole, 1909): "He succeeded very well," she wrote, "for before I had paid for my cabbage, something hit me and I was knocked not only flat but considerably out, and left genuinely unconscious in the center of the stage." In 1911, she also starred in her own screenplay of Enoch Arden.

Her other films include The Adventures of Dollie (1908), Balked at the Altar (1909), After Many Years (1909), An Awful Moment (1909), The Test of Friendship (1909), The Helping Hand (1909), The Cord of Life (1909), Edgar Allan Poe (1909), The Politician's Love Story (1909), A Drunkard's Reformation (1909), The Cricket on the Hearth (1909), The Mills of the Gods (1909), Lines of White on a Sullen Sea (1909), Pippa Passes (the first film reviewed by The New York Times, 1909), The Day After (1909), The Rocky Road (1910), The Converts (1910), The Unchanging Sea (1910), Fisher Folks (1911), The Scarlet Letter (1913), A Fair Rebel (1914), The Wife (1914), The Gambler of the West (1915), Charity (1916).

sources:

Lloyd, Ann, ed. Movies of the Silent Years. London: Orbis. 1984.