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Lillian Gish - A Century of Dreams
The First Lady of The Silent Screen
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1969 Press and candid photos - Stage actress Lillian Gish at Tacoma Town Hall Lecture Series
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Robert Harron and Lillian Gish - promotional photograph for ''Hearts of the World'' (Griffith 1918)
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A very rare photograph of Lillian Gish Lillian 1915's
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Lillian Gish - Picture Show Film Magazine 7th July 1923 - center fold poster - photo by Alfred Cheney Johnston
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Lillian Gish - Viaduct Dedication ceremony 1951 Massillon Ohio (with Irene Beamer and Mayor Weirich)
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LILLIAN GISH had her first dramatic try-out, made her first triumphant entrance upon any stage, at the age of 3 in Baltimore on the shoulder of Nat Goodwin. He was serving as Santa Claus for a big Christmas tree on the stage of Ford’s Theatre, and needing a particularly angelic-looking child to perch on his shoulder and distribute the gifts, little Lillian Gish was chosen. Three years later she bad become, under stress of economic necessity, a little trouper playing in a barnstorming company which was presenting melodrama in one-night stands.
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LILLIAN GISH 1920s - Nordisk Konst Stockholm Postcard 968
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Lillian was 40 when the director Guthrie McClintic suggested to Sir John that she should play Ophelia to his Hamlet.
”Gielgud’s reply got back to me,” she said. ” ‘She’s lovely, but is she young enough?’ He was appearing on Broadway – it was 1936 – and undaunted I presented myself in his dressing room and asked him point-blank – ‘Well, am I young enough?’ ”
He apparently said yes, for Miss Gish recalled, ”We had a long run at the Empire Theater, with Judith Anderson as Queen Gertrude.”
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Lillian Gish post stamp By Wentz NY 1914
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Lillian Gish and Donald O'Connor - Behind the scenes - Top Man - 1943
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(Advance for use with Bob Thomas Column in PMS of Wednesday, April 13)
(LA1 - April 12) Hollywood, April 13 - No Idle Life for Lillian Gish - Actress Lillian Gish, right, who made her movie debut in 1912, goes over the wardrobe plans with fashion designer Edith Head at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, where Miss Gish will star with David Janssen in "Warning Shot." She flew to Hollywood from an Italian vacation to appear in the picture. During her Hollywood stay, Miss Gish plans to visit some friends and co-workers, and if there's any time left over, she may do some work on the memoir she is writing about D.W. Griffith. (APWire Photo)(mw30300stu) 1966
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Memories of Lillian Gish
As told to Myrtle Gebhart
Motion Picture Classic (Brewster Publications - 1922)
Mary Pickford reminisces about the early days when she first knew the screen’s greatest actress.
“Lillian’s main qualities are her sincerity and loyalty.”
Mary Pickford, sitting there in the golden afternoon beside placid Lake Chatsworth, was opening the book of the past, that I might read the pages of one of most beautiful friendships on record. Years ago Mary and Lillian Gish met, when Mary was six and Lillian a year or two younger, children who labored before their time, knowing poverty, knowing failure. Today they stand, both successful, both women who have won the love and respect of the world. And they are still friends. They have never had a quarrel.
“Yes, I know Lillian is very fond of me, and I treasure her affection.”
“When we were small, Dorothy Lottie and I used to play together with Lillian acting as a sort of Little Lady Mother to us scatter-brained youngsters. She was always correct, always just so. We used to stand and watch her, fearful any moment that she would fly to heaven – for her mother had said she was too angelic to live!”
“Dorothy and I were pals then, but now Lillian and I have more in common. Though, to be sure, Dorothy is much more serious and has a keener brain than she is given credit for – this frivolity of hers I think is a surface coating that hides the real Dorothy.”
“Our first meeting was a casual one, in Detroit, when I was playing ‘The Little Red Schoolhouse,’ a play written by Hal Reid, Wallace Reid’s father. Mother had insisted that I couldn’t go with the show alone, so they had given parts to her and to Lottie. Jack, of course, was a baby. Later, at Toronto, Lillian took my place, playing the role I had created. But it was when we were all in New York that we really became friends. I had been called there to replace Lillian in ‘The Child Wife,’ as she had been offered a better part in another play. My mother had received a lucrative offer to go on the road, one that she couldn’t afford to refuse, so Mrs. Gish offered to take care of us children. Imagine having the three of us to look after, in addition to her own two! She was very patient and lovely to us, making our clothes and washing our ears! One of my happiest memories is of those months at Mrs. Gish’s house in New York. It was my first experience in the big city, and I envied Lillian her aplomb – with Mrs. Gish at one end and Lillian at the other, we would cross the crowded streets: all six of us holding hands for fear one of us would get lost!”
“Yes, Lillian is very remote. Even I who have known her since childhood I admit I am baffled at times. She is very elusive. Often I have an intangible feeling that I haven’t quite grasped her. She is remarkably subtle and fine in sensitiveness of thought.”
“She is so frail to have endured those years of hardships,” I suggested, alternating with Mary in petting Zorro her time-clock dog who howls regularly at quitting time, twelve-thirty and four-thirty every day. “So ethereal. That is the impression she gives every one.”
“And it isn’t so!” Mary exclaimed, a gleam in her hazel eyes. “Lillian is very slim but has an amazing endurance. Mr. Griffith works his people very hard, exacts every particle of self that they have to give to their work. Had Lillian been as frail as she seems, she could never have lived through these nine years of constant, nerve-racking work. In making the ice scenes for ‘Way Down East,’ she had to remain on that cake of ice near the rapids until actually numb.”
For a moment Mary was silent except for the tremulous quivering of her chin-a little way she has when excited. Always tranquil, having schooled herself through the years to absolute control, you can always gauge Mary’s emotions now by that little, almost invisible, quiver of her chin.
“Do you call this hot?” indicating that the sun melting in long, gleaming slants into the blue lake shimmering under its golden haze, the glare washing back from the sides of the high hills in the lap of which the lake is splashed, the perspiring actors resting under the trees. “I remember, in the old days, down in Arizona. We were making a picture for Mr. Griffith. They had to follow us about with umbrellas. It was 110 in the shade and no shade around. We could have fried eggs on the rocks. There were times when I thought I couldn’t endure another moment – until I looked at Lillian, so white and composed and tranquil. And I grew ashamed. She has a way of encouraging people, forcing them to greater effort.”
“Frail looking, yes. Her skin is milk-white, almost translucent, that finely veined kind, delicate as a petal.”
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Dorothy Gish photographed by Witzel from LA in 1919 (autographed photo)
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Photo from 1919 session by Motion Picture Classic, photographed by Carpenter (Dorothy and Lillian Gish)
Before and After Taking
Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)
“You see, Miss Gish, the magazine editor wants us to tell him what you and your sister do when you are not working.” Thus spoke the hireling in the press department to the “Little Disturber.”
“That’s easy for you,” said Miss Dorothy, “just tell him we go to bed and try to rest up for the next day.”
“But he wouldn’t believe that; he’d think we were giving him press stuff. You know the public thinks you only work about one day a month.”
“Well, I love that. I work just as hard as any other girl who makes her own living, and when Saturday noon comes around I’m right there at the window for my little pay check and I don’t get time and a half for overtime, either.”
“But dont you do something at home—cooking, or feeding the chickens, or something like that?”
“Not for a minute. I’ve all I want to do without trying to cook. Besides that, I’m a poor cook. We have a hired girl, or I mean a maid, who does the cooking, and we can’t keep chickens. Come again.”
“But you know how to do those things, don’t you ?”
“You just bet I do. I’ve done them.”
“Well, that’s good enough. We’ll write the story and take some pictures and send ’em out anyway, and show the people who don’t believe you do anything that you are pretty busy.” “But how’ll you get the pictures?”
“Like all the rest of ’em get the pictures. You’ll put on the dust cap and apron and do some housework. If the maid gets mad about it we’ll tell her it’s for publicity, and she knows that’s the last word.”
So we went out to the Gishes and telephoned for the photographer-man, who is surprisingly
on the job every time any one is doing something that would look well in print. The day was Sunday. “The Hope Chest” had been finished the afternoon before. Miss Lillian didn’t have to go to work until 2.30, so everything started off right.
“First we’ll take you cooking,” said the P. A. “What do I cook?” asked the girls.
“Potatoes and roast beef, something to make you work harder.”
And so we have a perfectly good photograph of Lillian basting the roast (all reports to the contrary, she knows how to baste them, too), and Dorothy peeling the potatoes. The maid had already peeled enough for dinner, so Dorothy decided that she’d Hooverize and just scrape
the skin off the one she is holding. But here is proof positive that the Sisters Gish, who dwell within the star deeps, are earthly human beings who know the kitchen mechanism just like other girls.
“Is that enough?” they asked, when the camera-man had said “still” for the last time.
“For a start. What else do you have for dinner?”
“Why,” said Dorothy, “I don’t know what we’ll have. That’s up to mother and the girl.”
“Let’s look in the ice-box,” said Lillian. And the camera-man caught ’em again in a pose that
looks just as if they were going to do the cooking themselves.
“Where do we go from here?” asks Dorothy.
“I’ve only ten more minutes,’’ remarks Lillian.
The afternoon was progressing wonderfully. It was time to take Dorothy doing some sweeping.
Lillian said, “I must go now. Is the car outside?” It was not outside. Lillian sat down on the step and called out, “Oh, mother, I’m hungry. I want something before I go to the studio.”
“What do you want?” Dorothy settled the question by immediately announcing:
“Bread and jam.”
And without even realizing that they were doing so, the Sisters Gish had given the photo-man the chance he was looking for.
“Here’s where we get the real home atmosphere,” came a murmur from under the focusing cloth.
“Oh, gee !” cried Dorothy ; “you’re not going to take this, are you ?”
“Oh, there’s the car!” cried Lillian. “I’ll be late if I dont go now.”
So Lillian sped back to work, and 'Dorothy finished her bread and jam in silence.
“What next?” she said.
“Well, you can sweep out the diningroom. That will tell the world that you are industrious. Where’s the broom?”
“We dont use a broom in the diningroom. Some salesman was here last month, and now mamma has a brand new vacuum-cleaner.”
“Can you use it?”
“Yes, but I dont like to. I tried it for an hour just for fun, but it’s really work.”
“Fine ; let’s go !” And here’s Dorothy with the V. C. — and an awfully tired expression. She says the expression is not muscular, but purely mental. But it looks real, anyway.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, thank you.”
And Dorothy started upstairs to take off her towel dust-cap that she had used for costume. Just half-way up the stairs, however, she stopped to wipe new blown dust from the bannister, and,
without her knowing it, the shutter opened and closed again. And thus did the younger Gish sister close her day of housework.
“Good-by !” she called, from the head of the stairs.
“Good-by !” we answered.
“Oh—and be sure to tell them that we ‘love the great outdoors.’ ”
By E. M. ROBBINS
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Lillian Gish in a scene from Noël Coward's 'The Marquise.' at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Mass. 1947
Lillian signed an engagement to play in stock house. Touring with her was Mary MacArthur, the teenaged daughter of actress Helen Hayes. The vehicle was Noel Coward’s The Marquise (La Marquise), which was set in eighteenth century France and offered good roles for an older woman and a young girl.
The play had but two productions on record: the original London production starring Marie Tempest (for whom the play was written), and an American production the following year.
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Lillian Gish made her first appearance on the stage in 1901 at the age of five—as Baby Lillian—acted in her first film in 1912. Lillian made 11 films in 1912 and 20 movies in 1913. Her first film was, D. W. Griffith's "Unseen Enemy" (1912).
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Lillian Gish began her career at 4, never went to school (except for Ursuline Academy St. Louis est 1848), was a D.W. Griffith star in such famous silents as “Birth of a Nation,” “Broken Blossoms.” and "Way Down East". Lillian lived in Hollywood nine years when she was with D.W. Griffith’s company, and never had a contract.
In June 1963 she completed a Broadway run with an all-star company in G.B. Shaw’s “Too True to be Good.”
"Glynis Johns had a yelling part and almost lost her voice; we used to hold our breath on Saturday night before that first shout, we were so worried, wondering if she’d have voice enough left to make the whole show." - Lillian Gish
Photo: Glynis Johns and Lillian Gish in the stage production Too True to Be Good 1963
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