DOROTHY WEST has always been a mysterious figure in the Griffith world. Billy Bitzer pointed her out as "the first to endanger" Griffith's marriage to Linda Arvidson. Arvidson herself mentions her several times in her book, "When the Movies Were Young," but never in a good light. "'Is Dorothy West playing the princess? Aren't you taking a chance?'" Linda asks Griffith, adding, "for it was a sincere, impersonal interest in the matter that I felt." Griffith assured her that he knew what he was doing. Bitzer says Dorothy West left Biograph in fear of her life at Linda Arvidson's hands, but she made over 120 films for Griffith between 1908 and 1911, so that claim is probably exaggerated.

Linda Arvidson inadvertently provided a clue to Dorothy's background when she said that Dorothy often spent the night at Kate Bruce's apartment rather than going all the way home to Staten Island. In the 1910 census, Dorothy West, "Theater Actress" according to her occupation, was living with an widowed aunt and several cousins in Richmond County, Staten Island. She was born around 1891 in Alabama, with her father born in England and her mother born in Georgia.

Dorothy's first film ever was for Griffith, "The Girl and the Outlaw," in a small part. By her next film she was already playing leads. She alternated, much like the other players, between leads and background roles for the next three years, maids and partygoers one day and a queen the next. Some of her more memorable roles were "A Child of the Ghetto" and "Rose O'Salem Town."

After Dorothy left Biograph in 1911 (coincidentally, the same time Linda Arvidson did), her trail goes cool until 1916, when she made two films: "The Habit of Happiness" with Douglas Fairbanks and "The Eternal Grind" with Mary Pickford. Her name however was used in Biograph advertising for the reissues of the Griffith shorts around this time.

She may have done some theater between those times; a Dorothy West appears in the cast list for "Scandal" in 1915. This becomes a common problem in searching for the real Dorothy West -- there are more than one in show business at this time. Dorothy West Rogers played on Broadway at the turn of the century. In 1910, The New York Times announced the wedding of Hippodrome dancer Dorothy West to Joseph Hanrahan. In the Los Angeles area, a player named Dorothy West worked the local theater circuit in the 1920s and 1930s. And in 1957 an actress known as Dorothy West Blum was murdered in her New York apartment.

None of these appear to be the Biograph Dorothy West. In 1920, Alabama-born Dorothy was still in New York working as a "actress in plays," and in 1930, she was still in New York, this time as a "radio actress." There are several Broadway credits for Dorothy West around this time, and these certainly could be her.

Sources:
1910 Richmond County, New York Census
1920 Manhattan, New York Census
1930 Manhattan, New York Census
Bitzer, G.W. , "Billy Bitzer His Story," 1973, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Griffith, Mrs. D.W., "When the Movies Were Young," 1925, E.P. Dutton & Company.