After D. W. Griffith broke with the American Biograph Company over his wish to release Judith of Bethulia as a feature-length film, his output was divided between large-scale epics and more unassuming productions that show him in a different and in many ways more appealing light (although Griffith's greatest films, such as The Birth of a Nation, succeed as intimate dramas as well as epics). Of these deceptively modest films, True Heart Susie (1919) and the more famous Broken Blossoms, made in the same year, are the most charming, the most assured, and the most lovable. True Heart Susie is also one of Griffith's most prophetic meditations on the medium of film.

Susie (Lillian Gish) grows up in the small town of Pine Grove. (The film calls this Indiana, but who could doubt that Griffith is thinking of his native Kentucky?) She has been raised by her “Aunty” (Loyola O'Connor, whom Griffith loved to cast as a matronly woman bearing on her shoulders all the suffering of the ages), always expecting to marry William (Robert Harron) when the time comes. But when will he understand that she is the love of his life and claim her with a kiss?

Not wishing to stand in the way of William's making a name for himself, Susie sells her beloved cow and anonymously gives William the money that enables him to go to college (although Susie, who wins the school spelling bee, is obviously the better student of the two).