The Medicine Bottle (1909)

Interesting facts

The Medicine Bottle is a 1909 American silent thriller film written and directed by D. W. Griffith, produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City, and starring Florence Lawrence, Adele DeGarde, and Marion Leonard. At its release in March 1909, the short was distributed to theaters on a "split reel", which was a single projection reel that accommodated more than one film. This drama shared its reel with another Biograph short directed by Griffith, the comedy Jones and His New Neighbors.

Production

The screenplay for this short is credited to D. W. Griffith, who also directed the picture at Biograph's main studio, which in 1909 was located inside a large renovated brownstone mansion in New York City, in Manhattan, at 11 East 14th Street. The drama was filmed there on interior sets in four days—on February 3, 4, 10, and 16, 1909—by Biograph cinematographer G. W. "Billy" Bitzer.

Set composition, lighting, and filming The Medicine Bottle were collaborative efforts between Griffith and Bitzer, who used three interior sets or "units" at Biograph's Manhattan facility in making this production: a home interior where the bottle of poison and the bottle of medicine for the sick grandmother are accidentally switched; the parlor where the Mrs.

Jesionowski's observations regarding Griffith's increased attention to camera setups and editing may explain why a short like The Medicine Bottle, which required no location shooting and had a final print length of only seven minutes—a runtime even quite modest by 1909 production standards—required four days to shoot.

Identifying cast members in early Biograph releases such as The Medicine Bottle is made more difficult by the fact that the studio, as a matter of company policy, did not begin publicly crediting its performers on screen, in trade publications, or in newspaper advertisements until years after this short's release.

Linda Arvidson, who portrays one of the telephone operators in this production, was actually the wife of D. W. Griffith in 1909. If fact, the couple had married three years earlier. Biograph's policy of not identifying cast or crew extended as well to both Arvidson and Griffith, neither of whom received a screen credit, any specific recognition in advertisements for the film, nor was mentioned in any other publicity for The Medicine Bottle.

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