I believe I first met David Mayer at the 1999 Domitor Conference held at the US Library of Congress. The paper/essay he co-wrote with Helen Day Mayer impressed me with its deep research and persuasive argument about the “lively quadrille” that allegedly interrupts the action in The Great Train Robbery. Audiences expected it, however, because, following American theatrical melodramatic practice, the script for Scott Marble’s 1893 play, on which the film was based, included just that kind of an entertainment at the end of Act 2. David’s extensive knowledge of the close links between late 19th-century theater and early 20th-century cinema marks all of his many publications, some in collaboration with colleagues, and perhaps most notably in Stagestruck Filmmaker: D.W. Griffith and the American Theatre (2009).
David was unusually generous in sharing resources and ideas with colleagues, especially younger cinema scholars, and in promoting research on the understudied and misunderstood links between theater and film at the turn of the last century. One sign of that was his editorship of the journal, Nineteenth-Century Theatre (2002-2008), during which he changed its title to Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film. Coming from such a gentle giant, of a man, his stories and wry humor always made him such an enjoyable presence in conversations. Whether at a Domitor conference, the Giornate del cinema muto (Pordenone), or the Cinema ritrovato (Bologna), I often tried to make sure there was time to share a lunch or dinner with him and Helen. Always a high point.
My late wife, Barbara Hodgdon, also knew David through their shared interest in performed Shakespeare, and she much regretted that illness prevented her from accepting his invitation, breaking restrictions against women, to join him for a lunch or drink at the Garrick Club in London.
—Richard Abel, University of Michigan