DARK LADY OF THE SILENTS

With the canonization of Griffith and the ongoing nostalgia for the Parade's Gone By you may not be as surprised as Miriam Cooper was to know that people were still interested in her -- she was once the graceful ""Dark Lady"" of Griffith's Birth of a Nation and now at 78 she's a very lively little old lady. She appears first as the ingratiating ingenue she was, one of the Griffith girls with Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh and as dedicated to him as they all seemed to have been. She left him though to marry another director -- Raoul Walsh (his big one was What Price Glory?) -- Walsh who liked the horses as well as other women. Miriam becomes more knowing as she goes along, not only about his indiscretions but also about Hollywood in general -- the Hollywood of Barrymore (""to me the Great Profile was just another lecherous drunk"") and Chaplin and Norms Talmadge and Fatty Arbuckle, etc. In short, a candid -- unloosed and unretouched.