From the Archives: Death Takes Screen Legend Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish, whose portrayals of fragile innocence graced the golden age of silent films, extending into an eight-decade testament to dramatic perpetuity, is dead.
Her longtime personal manager, James Frasher said Sunday that the internationally recognized star died in her sleep Saturday night in her stylish apartment on Manhattanâs Sutton Place. She was 99.
âShe often said she wished if at all possible that she be allowed to die in her own bed and the Lord granted her request,â Frasher said.
Her final film was âThe Whales of Augustâ in 1987. Mike Kaplan, a producer of that tribute to sisterly patience, recalled: âShe said afterward: âI will never top this.â â
A performer raised in the dawn of filmmaking, Miss Gish portrayed forever-menaced heroines in D. W. Griffith silent movies. A wistful âchild-womanâ with big eyes and a rosebud mouth, she was one of Hollywoodâs first stars to become famous in other countries.
Between 1912 and 1987, she appeared in 105 films, from a one-reel movie made for Griffith, âThe Unseen Enemy,â to âWhales.â
One of the last and best-known survivors of the early days of film, Miss Gish over the last several years gave scores of lectures, was host of a television series and wrote two books about her experiences between 1912 and 1922, when she made âThe Birth of a Nation,â âBroken Blossoms,â âWay Down East,â âOrphans of the Stormâ and other films for Griffith.
Miss Gish was, according to many historians, the silent screenâs greatest dramatic actress, and starred in more Griffith films than any other performer. Her work for him produced some of the silent eraâs most famous moments: the closet scene from âBroken Blossoms,â in which she played a 12-year-old reacting in abject terror to a brutal fatherâs pounding on the other side of the door; or the âsmileâ from the same film, in which, to form the only smile her anguished character could manage, she pushed upward the corners of her mouth with her fingers.
In addition to lecture tours during the past decade, in which she showed films from her private collection, Miss Gish continued to act on television. She appeared in a 1980 âLove Boatâ episode and in a 1981 television movie, âThin Ice,â starring Kate Jackson.
In 1971, Miss Gish received an honorary Oscar âfor superlative artistry and distinguished contributionâ to the motion picture industry. In 1984 she was presented the American Film Instituteâs life achievement award.
In 1986, while on location on Maineâs rugged coast for âThe Whales of August,â a reporter seemed incredulous that she would put herself through such a rigorous schedule at age 93.
âI started working so young (at age 5) that I donât know how to play,â she said.
âWork was always the most important thing in my life,â she said during a 1982 Los Angeles Times interview in her apartment. She never felt a sense of destiny, she added, only the childhood poverty making work a necessity, work that seemed to become an end in itself.
When reporters came to visit in later years they would findâover tea served on bone chinaâthe ever-ladylike Miss Gish perched in an elegant French chair, amid her peach-toned apartment with its Aubusson carpets, antiques and old photographs. In old age, her hair turned a pale rose blonde, and she wore little makeup around her clear blue eyes.
Recalling her past, she would clasp her hands in front of her, as if punctuating her words with a sense of wonder. Fifty years after her last silent film, much was still reminiscent of that ephemeral celluloid figure of long ago.
Invariably her memories turned to the hardships she faced in her early years, hardships she shared with her adored mother and her sister Dorothy (who died in 1968), and her time with Griffith.
But perhaps the most revealing statement she ever made was years earlierâthe inscription in her first book âLillian Gish: The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me,â published in 1969:
âTo my mother who gave me love,â it read, âTo my sister who taught me to love; to my father who gave me insecurity; to D. W. Griffith who taught me it was more fun to work than to play.â
Lillian Diana Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio, on Oct. 14, 1893. Her ancestors included colonial settlers and President Zachary Taylor.
Her father was an unsuccessful candy merchant who left the family after moving them to New York City. Her mother rented out her bedroom to two actresses, and slept on a mattress in her daughtersâ room. After briefly working as a department store demonstrator, Mrs. Gish took a job acting with a stock company.
Because roles for small children were available with other companies, Lillian, age 5, and Dorothy, two years younger, were soon traveling and performing themselves. Because their only free time was during the summer, when the weather was too hot for theaters to stay open, Miss Gish had only a minimal formal education and was largely self-educated. She remained a voracious reader all her life.
âI was getting $10 a week, and saving $6 or $7 for summer,â Miss Gish once said. âWe were very poor, and neednât have been. My grandfather would have supported us, but mother had too much pride. She said: âItâs my bed, Iâll lie in it.â â
In contrast to the respect and admiration she was later to enjoy, Miss Gish was taught in those years that acting was shameful. Her mother changed her own name when performing and insisted that the girls do the same. âWe were billed as âBaby Alice,â baby something or just âherself,â like a dog or cat,â Miss Gish said, âjust so we could keep the name from being used and not disgrace the family.â
When they summered with their family in Ohio, the sisters were forbidden to say what they did the rest of the year. Away from the family, Miss Gish added, she routinely saw signs reading âNo dogs or actors allowedâ outside second- or third-rate hotels in towns where she performed.
In later years she never idealized those early experiences. âWe always had to say our prayers at night, kneel by the bed. Some nights I remember I said: âPlease, God, donât let us wake up in the morning.â â
Moneyânot art or enjoymentâwas always the object, she continued. âThe only acting lessons we ever had were: âSpeak loud or theyâll get another little girl.â â
The âdisgraceâ of acting was never mitigated, as far as their mother was concerned, by later success or the money earned by the Gish sisters. Once they were established in films, their mother never went to the studio, scoffed at their excitement over their rising fame, and cried angrily when crowds gathered around them, Miss Gish said.
In the 1982 interview, Miss Gish pointed to a large, dramatic portrait of her sister hanging in the living room. She had discovered it hidden away in storage, she said, about 30 years after their motherâs death in the 1940s.
âMother didnât like pictures of us that looked like actresses,â Miss Gish said, and although the painting was stunning, it had never been hung âbecause Dorothy looks like an actress.â
The road to financial security, and stardom, began in 1912 when Lillian and Dorothy found jobs with David Wark Griffith. The girls visited his Manhattan studio after an old friend and child trouper, Gladys Smith, worked there. The friend, who had changed her name to Mary Pickford, introduced them to Griffith, who hired them as extras.
Using them first in the one-reeler, âAn Unseen Enemy,â he gave Lillian a blue hair ribbon to tell her apart from Dorothy, who wore a red one. Griffith directed them by barking out orders for âRedâ or âBlue.â
The next year when Griffith took his troupe to Hollywood, where he spent part of every year, Lillian stayed behind to appear in a Broadway play. It was to be her last stage appearance for 17 years.
She soon decided to go to California to rejoin Griffith, who paid her $50 a week.
âHollywood had a big white hotel with a porch with rocking chairs and old maids rocking in them,â she recalled. âNo theaters, only churches and orange trees and the perfume of orange blossoms wherever you went.â
Over the next several years she appeared in about 60 Griffith films. âWe never had a script,â she later said. âHe (Griffith) had nothing written. You were in a room, he called out the plot, and you ran through it over and over and over until you found the character. He said: âI canât be bothered with the character; you find it.â He didnât want to discuss it with you.â
She was left to do her own costumes, her own hair, her own makeup; and as there were no doubles, her own stunts. In âWay Down Eastâ (1920), playing an unwed mother driven by her father into a blizzard, she lay on a slab of ice 20 times a day for three weeks. âIt was below zero and all I wore was a thin dress,â she said. She did not become ill, but several members of the crew contracted pneumonia.
Miss Gish did not become recognized as a starâa word not even coined when she began her careerâuntil âThe Birth of a Nationâ appeared in 1915. Up until then, Blanche Sweet was Griffithâs principal female player. But after playing the part of Elsie Stoneman, a Northern belle in the Civil War epic that was later a source of controversy because of its stereotypical portrayal of blacks, her popularity soared.
Miss Gish had what critics referred to as an âethereal auraâ that projected purity, frailty and vulnerability. In contrast to her screen image, she was strong-minded, opinionated and independent. âThat virginal character hadnât anything to do with me,â she once said.
She did not hesitate to say what she thought. âHe didnât direct me,â she said of Griffith. âHe said: âIt doesnât matter. Sheâll do what she pleases anyway.â â
Scenarist Frances Marion, who worked with Miss Gish on âThe Scarlet Letter,â a 1926 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, once commented: âShe was as fragile as a steel rod.â
Miss Gish always referred publicly to Griffith as âMr. Griffithâ and never acknowledged a rumored romance with him. She once told Life magazine: âPeople used to say he and I had a Svengali-Trilby relationship. But if you ask me, I was the Svengali.â
Griffith employed several directors, and Miss Gish later estimated that she worked only three of her nine years with him personally. Meanwhile, she became an avid student of the craft, spending as much time watching film being developed, printed and cut as she did before the camera.
Griffith allowed her to direct several screen testsâshe did Mary Astorâsâand in 1920 let her direct a five-reeler called âRemodeling Her Husbandâ starring sister Dorothy.
Not only did she direct, she said, âbut I wrote the story, designed the sets, rented all the furniture. I made it in 28 days, and it made money.â The movie cost $58,000 and netted $160,000.
Years later while filming âThe Whales of Augustâ in Maine, she stunned her far younger crew with the way, after appearing to have difficulty moving or remembering lines, she seemed to âswitch onâ once the cameras rolled.
The crew also noted her deft handling of imperious co-star Davis, who according to a report in People magazine, rarely spoke to Miss Gish and treated her like âa piece of talking furniture.â
When Davis spoke her lines during filming, the crew found that Miss Gish would play deaf, claiming: âI just canât hear what sheâs saying.â This didnât happen, though, with her other co-stars. âWhile Bette sat seething,â the magazine said, the director would repeat Davisâ line, whereupon Miss Gish would âinstantly pick up her cue and continue.â
Once, even though shivering from the cold at the end of one grueling day, Miss Gish stopped short when she noticed the camera set at an angle that she believed was incorrect. âIâm looking up, not down, or else my eyes will look half closed,â she said, and instructed: âLook through the camera.â The crew, at first skeptical, made the change.
Davis was only the latest to encounter the true Gish behind her fragile facade. As early as 1922, after making âOrphans of the Storm,â she left the fabled Griffithâas Pickford and others had beforeâbecause, she said, he could not pay the salary her stardom commanded.
Miss Gish joined Inspiration Pictures and played a nun in âThe White Sisterâ (1923), reportedly earning 15% of the $1.3-million gross profits. But she never got the money she wanted in later negotiations with Inspiration, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or United Artists.
âI learned about money in films,â she said decades later, still apparently frustrated about the subject. âUnited Artists offered me three films, $50,000 for me per film and half the profits. But net. I donât want net. You never see net. I wanted a little bit of the gross. I couldnât get that from anybody.â
After making one more film, âRomolaâ (1924) for Inspiration, she left over a contract dispute and signed with MGM for $800,000. There she made âLa Bohemeâ (1926), âThe Scarlet Letterâ (1926) and âThe Windâ (1928), involving herself intensely as she had under Griffith with several aspects of production, from the scriptwriting to choice of co-stars and costumes.
However, Miss Gish did not remain the huge box office draw she had been. Times had changedâit was now the flapper era of the Roaring â20s and the rise of such ânon-innocentâ heroines as Clara Bow and Pola Negri.
Miss Gish did not change to suit the times, not even to bob her waist-long hair. She did not drink or smoke, and never took part in the legendary party life of Hollywood. She was busy working, she explained.
âI worked 12 hours a day,â she said. âIâd come home so tired mother wouldnât even speak to me; sheâd just help me to bed.â
Because of work, she said, she never married: âWhat kind of wife would I have been? I was the man of the family, you see. Mother was ill. I had to take care of the family. I couldnât think of marrying anybody.â
Until her motherâs death in 1948, the sisters and their mother were so close they slept in the same bed whenever they could. âI slept in the middle,â Gish said in a 1987 interview, âbecause I had nightmares that trees were chasing me.â
She did maintain a close friendship with New York theater critic George Jean Nathan for more than nine years. But in the end, she said, âmother and Dorothy were quite enough for me.â
Through Nathan and despite her educational shortcomings, she was included in gatherings of such famous writers of the times as H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They liked her because, as she once put it, âI was a good listener. I wanted to learn.â
In 1930, Miss Gish made her first âtalkie,â âOne Romantic Night.â The reviews were mediocre, and some accounts at the time said the sound was poorly recorded. But Miss Gishâs later recollection was that the movie, and the sound, were successful.
âThey came to me and said: âOh, youâre so lucky, your voice photographs. Now youâve got a whole new career. Weâre going to redo all your successful pictures with talk.ââ She sighed, adding: âWell, could anything be worse than to redo what youâve already done as best you knew how?â
With the public leaning to such types as the earthy directness of Carole Lombard, or the sultry sexiness of Greta Garbo and disdaining its former silent stars, Miss Gish returned to the New York stage, starring in Anton Chekhovâs âUncle Vanya.â More than 40 stage roles followed, such as âCamille,â âHamletââplaying Ophelia opposite John Gielgudâand âLife With Father.â
Late in life, when asked which role was her favorite, she bypassed all the films and replied: âOphelia.â
She retained, however, a strong sense of her contribution to the film medium, pride in herself and love for the craft.
âI think the things that are nice in my profession are taste, talent and tenacity,â she once said, adding wistfully: âI think I have had a little of all three.â
In 1984, when she stood up to receive the American Film Instituteâs award for work that âhas stood the test of time,â the little lady who looked vastly younger than her then 90 years, clasped her small trophy and smiled at the overflow Los Angeles crowd.
âThank you for my life,â she said.
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