King Vidor directed such film masterpieces as "The Big Parade" and "The Crowd." In 1926 he directed "La Boheme" with Lillian Gish as Mimi and John Gilbert as Rudolph.
From Vidor's 1953 memoir "A Tree is a Tree" we have his impressions about Miss Gish.
Chapter XII Lillian Gish in "La Boheme," pages 130-133.
"Miss Gish had a definite conception of her own regarding the love scenes between Mimi and Rudolph, and she set about to convince Jack and me of its value and effectiveness. She believed that the two lovers should never be shown in actual physical contact. She argued that, if we photographed their lips coming together in a kiss, a great amount of suppressed emotion would be dissipated. She was convinced that, if we avoided this moment, a surge of suppressed romance would be built up and serve to heighten the final impact of the tragedy when Mimi dies.
"She suggested love scenes in which the two lovers were always separated by space: Mimi in a window above, Rudolph in the street below. Another idea of hers was to have them kiss with the cold barrier of a windowpane between them. Her arguments carried a reasonable amount of conviction, but Jack and I kept asking ourselves whether this would make a convincing love story. Jack, of course, had been exploited as the "Great Lover." How was he to live up to this reputation? We found ourselves in a quandary, torn between the logical arguments of Lillian on one side, and what the studio and the public expected on the other.
"Lillian sensed this confusion and set into motion a subtle plan to expound her thesis with a convincing finality. Whether this came about unconsciously or deliberately, I shall never know. When I would sometimes take her hand while talking about the part, she would slowly but deliberately withdraw it from my grasp. If Jack, in rehearsing or walking across the studio lawn, would lightly put his arm over her shoulders, she would easily twist away. At the end of work each day one of us would offer to drop her off at her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When she rode with me she would sit in the far corner of the car and converse in the most circumspect manner. When we would arrive at the dark side street of the hotel, she would quickly step to the sidewalk, thank me graciously, and move quietly into the engulfing darkness.
"It was obvious that jack was getting the same treatment. Lillian was playing the part of the delicate flower, the unapproachable virgin, and the impact on two Hollywood characters, Gilbert and Vidor, was tremendous. There is no doubt but that the unattainable glows with a tremendous radiance. As the making of the film got under way,, we found ourselves subjected to Lillian's will. Throughout the entire action Mimi and Rudolph never entered into physical embrace; each aggressive advance on Rudolph's part was intercepted and turned into meanings more ethereal and poetic.
"When the picture was finally ready for preview the praise was high for the beauty, the atmosphere, the poetry, the tragedy-but there was something missing. Where were the love scenes?
"Next morning I found myself in the presence of Mayer, Thalberg, and other MGM executives trying to explain the absence of contact between my two stars. I had a difficult time of it. The outcome was a retake of most of the important love scenes and all the obstacles, such a windowpanes, were removed. The result was that Gilbert retained his amorous crown. Miss Gish's theories of romance would have to wait some other dramatic vehicle.
"Miss Gish was an artist who spared herself in no way. She threw herself wholeheartedly into everything she did, even dying. She wanted to know days ahead when we would film her death scene. She wanted to get in the mood and stay in it. This gave me some alarm. Perhaps as a precautionary measure, I decided I had better schedule it on the last day of shooting. She asked for three days' notice, and Jack Gilbert and I watched Lillian grow paler and paler, thinner and thinner.
"when we arrived on the set that fateful day, we saw her sunken eyes, her hollow cheeks, and we noticed that her lips had curled outward and were parched with dryness. What on earth had she done to herself? I ventured to ask about her lips and she said in syllables hardly audible that she had succeeded in removing all saliva from her mouth by not drinking any liquids for three days, and by keeping cotton pads between her teeth and gums in her sleep.
"A pall began to settle over the entire company. People moved about the stage on tiptoe and spoke only in whispers. Finally came the scene where Rudolph carried the exhausted Mimi to her little bed and her Bohemian friends gathered around while Mimi breathed her last. I let the camera continue on her lifeless form and the tragic faces around her and decided to all "cut" only when I saw that Miss Gish ws forced to inhale after holding her breath to simulate death. But the familiar movement of the chest didn't come. She neither inhaled nor exhaled. I began to fear she had played her part too well, and I could see that the other members of the cast and crew had the same fears as I. Too frightened to speak the one word that would halt the movement of the camera, I wondered how to bridge this fantastic moment back to the coldness of reality. The thought flashed through my mind, 'What will the headlines say/' After what seemed many, many minutes, I waved my hand before the camera as a signal to stop. Still there was no movement from Lillian.
"John Gilbert bent close, and softly whispered her name. Her eyes slowly opened. She permitted herself her first deep breath since the scene had started; for the past days she had trained herself, somehow or other, to get along without visible breathing. It was necessary to wet her lips before she could speak. By this time there was no one on the set whose eyes were dry.
The movies have never known a more dedicated artist than Lillian Gish."
(c) Harcourt, Brace and Company 1953
The book originally sold for $3.95
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