"Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them."
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Gish Prize 2015
The 2015 Gish Prize goes to Suzan-Lori Parks. The announcement came this year on Lillian's birthday! Here is the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/10/14/arts/ap-us-gish-prize-suzan-lori-parks.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/10/14/arts/ap-us-gish-prize-suzan-lori-parks.html?_r=0
Thursday, October 8, 2015
October 14, 2015, Happy Birthday Lillian Gish!
A Prayer for Lillian Gish
Lord, look
upon thy
servant Lillian Gish.
See Thou how
she lives!
Her simplest
act is truly
sourced in Thee.
See now, how
she steps
into a room
And leaves
behind a
benediction!
See now how
she walks
upon a stage
And leaves
thereon her
golden gifts
Her winged
spirit
See Lord,
her most gracious
gift of self.
And seeing,
keep they graces
fast around her
Now and forever.
Amen.
On the occasion of October 14 the birthday of Lillian Gish.
Undated and unsigned prayer
Source likely clergy or congregation of St. Bartholomew’s
Episcopal Church, Park Avenue, New York.
Jim Patterson
www.LDGish.blogspot.com
Lillian Gish on "The Greatest Thing in Life."
In the Sunday NYT Magazine, Lillian Gish wrote of “The
Greatest Thing in Life”
“One of D. W. Griffith’s most interesting films and I can’t
find it. It was made as an answer to those who had been attacking “The Birth of
a Nation.” In it he deals with the colored man. Colored people raised Griffith:
he loved them and they loved him. I recall a very unusual scene at the movie’s
end. Two men are caught in a shell hole in World War I – one a dying colored
man, the other a white snob. The colored man, though he’s dying, gives all the
water he has to the white man and saves his life. Becoming delirious, the
colored man asks for his mammy to kiss him and the white snob leans over and
kisses him full on the lips. It was daring, very moving, and not funny, as it
may sound when I tell it. “The Greatest Thing in Life,” as Griffith saw it, was
love, love of your brother, your fellow man, whatever he is and of whatever
color.”
Miss Gish played the female lead in “The Greatest Thing in Life,”
and Robert Harron was the male lead. The film was released in 1918 and one of
three Griffith filmed while in the UK. Elmo Lincoln is credited as playing “The
American Soldier” in the film. Griffith cast a black man for the film rather
than casting a white actor in black face as in the most controversial scenes in
“The Birth of a Nation,” based on an early 20th century bestselling
book, “The Clansman,” written by Baptist minister Thomas Dixon. The book was so
popular stage plays based on the book toured the country.
By the time Griffith filmed “The Clansman,” he had a huge
and interested audience with a hot property and a new and inexpensive medium
for audiences to “enjoy” the film. Children, in 1915, got a reduced price to
see “The Birth of a Nation” in New York.
An interracial kiss between two men, for 1918, sounds astonishing
but I saw a photograph of it. I am not sure if Griffith had second thoughts and
destroyed it or if Griffith’s business partners wanted the film “lost.”
Descriptions of the film, like that of Miss Gish, cannot, of course, do justice
to the actual scene or seeing the scene acted.
A largely full print of the film exists. I thought the owner
would have released it in 2015 as that was the 100th anniversary of “The
Birth of a Nation.” It has not happened as of this writing. Another important
date is coming up and perhaps it will surface at that time.
In the same article, Mary Pickford wrote, briefly, on the “The
Birth of a Nation.”
Jim Patterson
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Lillian Gish: An Interpretation with Comment from Jim Patterson
Lillian Gish: An Interpretation, a chapbook published in 1927 by Edger Wagenknecht, can be found digitally. It is easily accessible at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Amazon and Abe Books sell copies for around $100 plus shipping. The intro and Miss Gish's image, from an early page, are below.
"Just what it is that makes a fine artist in the theater is a subject on which probably no final decision will ever be reached, but at least it is now clear that the popular impression of the great actor as a chameleon-like creature who wholly sinks his own individuality in the role that he plays, who nightly reduces himself to putty and then proceeds to construct a new and alien character from its foundations, is an excellent definition of what such an artist is not. Without great personality, great art simply cannot exist, for it is in personality that the highest expression, the ultimate manifestation of life comes. ..."
After a long literary introduction in which th author mentions several great artists Miss Gish is first mentioned on page 11.
"[T]he outstanding serious artist of the screen, the authentic, incomparable interpreter of the dreams of the shadows." p. 11
"She has played only sensitive young women, most of them about the same age, (Ed.note: Up to that time.) many of them facing not wholly dissimilar problems." page 12.
"The girl's work seems 'poetic' because she is a poet, that is because she is a creator." page 13
"She is completely a being of lyric loveliness, even to her very name." page 15
"She is essentially the Puritan in art." Page 18
The author stated Miss Gish would have an "eternal significance." page 20
"[H]er screen images will not be so much characterizations as projections, pictures, embodiments ... (sic) of the varied aspects of the spiritual life." page 24.
"She is not easy to fit with roles that shall be at once adaptable to the scree and suited for her genius; for the mere clash of earthly passion--the quality most frequently and most picturesquely exploited in the theater--is simply not for her." page 25
"What difference does it make what Lillian plays, so long as she is Lillian?" page 26
"Whatever she does she will always be Beauty - emotionalized Beauty, through which one catches sudden, radiant glimpses of the wonder of life." Page 26.
Note: Lillian liked this artistic appraisal of her work and acting style. Lillian Gish: An Interpretation is call to Hollywood, circa the late 1920s, for the type of films, the classics, Miss Gish wanted to star in. She strongly felt the classics, literature and stage, were best suited for silent film and she was convinced her audiences wanted her in these roles. Audiences were more sophisticated before the Depression of 1929. Afterward, audiences wanted escape, singing, dancing, comedy, and actors and actresses with bolder sex appeal. Lillian never bought into that. In the 1960s/70s she crusaded against TV programs that insulted the intelligence of audiences. She had good reason. TV programs got dumb and dumber. In an early episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett (Buddy Epsen), recalls silent films and his mention of "Lillian Gish" brings the canned laughter. Disgraceful!
###
"Just what it is that makes a fine artist in the theater is a subject on which probably no final decision will ever be reached, but at least it is now clear that the popular impression of the great actor as a chameleon-like creature who wholly sinks his own individuality in the role that he plays, who nightly reduces himself to putty and then proceeds to construct a new and alien character from its foundations, is an excellent definition of what such an artist is not. Without great personality, great art simply cannot exist, for it is in personality that the highest expression, the ultimate manifestation of life comes. ..."
After a long literary introduction in which th author mentions several great artists Miss Gish is first mentioned on page 11.
"[T]he outstanding serious artist of the screen, the authentic, incomparable interpreter of the dreams of the shadows." p. 11
"She has played only sensitive young women, most of them about the same age, (Ed.note: Up to that time.) many of them facing not wholly dissimilar problems." page 12.
"The girl's work seems 'poetic' because she is a poet, that is because she is a creator." page 13
"She is completely a being of lyric loveliness, even to her very name." page 15
"She is essentially the Puritan in art." Page 18
The author stated Miss Gish would have an "eternal significance." page 20
"[H]er screen images will not be so much characterizations as projections, pictures, embodiments ... (sic) of the varied aspects of the spiritual life." page 24.
"She is not easy to fit with roles that shall be at once adaptable to the scree and suited for her genius; for the mere clash of earthly passion--the quality most frequently and most picturesquely exploited in the theater--is simply not for her." page 25
"What difference does it make what Lillian plays, so long as she is Lillian?" page 26
"Whatever she does she will always be Beauty - emotionalized Beauty, through which one catches sudden, radiant glimpses of the wonder of life." Page 26.
Note: Lillian liked this artistic appraisal of her work and acting style. Lillian Gish: An Interpretation is call to Hollywood, circa the late 1920s, for the type of films, the classics, Miss Gish wanted to star in. She strongly felt the classics, literature and stage, were best suited for silent film and she was convinced her audiences wanted her in these roles. Audiences were more sophisticated before the Depression of 1929. Afterward, audiences wanted escape, singing, dancing, comedy, and actors and actresses with bolder sex appeal. Lillian never bought into that. In the 1960s/70s she crusaded against TV programs that insulted the intelligence of audiences. She had good reason. TV programs got dumb and dumber. In an early episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett (Buddy Epsen), recalls silent films and his mention of "Lillian Gish" brings the canned laughter. Disgraceful!
###
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Jim Patterson Keepers and Mention of Lillian Gish
Keepers: The Greatest Films-and Personal Favorites-of a Moviegoing Lifetime by Richard Schickel (Knopf) 2015.
"D.W.Griffith struggled financially and artistically, trying to support a studio of his own and his habit of making historical spectacles that were awkward and seemed old-fashioned to a public that wanted something jazzier.
"There was another side to Griffith, which he chose not to exploit, yoked as he was to spectacle and 'importance'. He was rarely entirely comfortable with the broad canvasses of works like Way Down East or Orphans of the Storm,. though he occasionally had some success with them. He was best at films like True Heart Susie and A Romance of Happy Valley, smaller pictures that referenced his early Biograph days and his own boyhood days in rural Kentucky. They have an ease and charm (and Lillian Gish, not trying too hard) that is sweet and funny and ages better than his more expensive and portentous efforts.
"Griffith made, and released in 1024, what I think is one of his best pictures, Isn't Life Wonderful, a story of a German family plagued by famine and inflation. It summoned not over blown history, but the austere pleasures oh what was his best vein: simple people struggling with simple, yet deadly, issues of survival. As a Griffith biographer, knowing much too much about him, I stand in a more ambiguous relationship to his life and career than most. He was a bit of a humbug and something of a poseur, and--never forget--the author of he noisome The Birth of a Nation. He ha a lot to answer for. But in his early days he had a taste for simple stories about ordinary people that were gently sentimental, faintly comical and very appealing. Isn't Life Wonderful represents a reversion to that vein, and the truest indicator of his feelings.
"It is perhaps the least well-known of his feature films--not that any of them are well known anymore--and it did nothing to halt his slide first into irrelevancy and then into silence. Yet itis a beautifully felt and realized work, and though he made many other films with much lager impacts on the public and on film history, I believe Isn't Lfe Wonderful deserves a place in this book.
"If you study movie history at all, you learn this, if nothing else: It is all irony. Griffith, for instance, flopped back to bombast and empty spectacle immediately after Isn't Life Wonderful and never recovered his former pace or significance. ANd that says nothing of the larger irony of all: the fact that silent movies reached their highest level of sophistication and achievement (certainly in America) just as thy were rendered irrelevant by the coming of sound."
pages 25-26
Page 30:
During a discussion of King Vidor: "Vidor made two other pictures, of course, notably La Boheme, during the filming of which he actually thought Lillian Gish had died, so still did she become in one of her swoons."
"D.W.Griffith struggled financially and artistically, trying to support a studio of his own and his habit of making historical spectacles that were awkward and seemed old-fashioned to a public that wanted something jazzier.
"There was another side to Griffith, which he chose not to exploit, yoked as he was to spectacle and 'importance'. He was rarely entirely comfortable with the broad canvasses of works like Way Down East or Orphans of the Storm,. though he occasionally had some success with them. He was best at films like True Heart Susie and A Romance of Happy Valley, smaller pictures that referenced his early Biograph days and his own boyhood days in rural Kentucky. They have an ease and charm (and Lillian Gish, not trying too hard) that is sweet and funny and ages better than his more expensive and portentous efforts.
"Griffith made, and released in 1024, what I think is one of his best pictures, Isn't Life Wonderful, a story of a German family plagued by famine and inflation. It summoned not over blown history, but the austere pleasures oh what was his best vein: simple people struggling with simple, yet deadly, issues of survival. As a Griffith biographer, knowing much too much about him, I stand in a more ambiguous relationship to his life and career than most. He was a bit of a humbug and something of a poseur, and--never forget--the author of he noisome The Birth of a Nation. He ha a lot to answer for. But in his early days he had a taste for simple stories about ordinary people that were gently sentimental, faintly comical and very appealing. Isn't Life Wonderful represents a reversion to that vein, and the truest indicator of his feelings.
"It is perhaps the least well-known of his feature films--not that any of them are well known anymore--and it did nothing to halt his slide first into irrelevancy and then into silence. Yet itis a beautifully felt and realized work, and though he made many other films with much lager impacts on the public and on film history, I believe Isn't Lfe Wonderful deserves a place in this book.
"If you study movie history at all, you learn this, if nothing else: It is all irony. Griffith, for instance, flopped back to bombast and empty spectacle immediately after Isn't Life Wonderful and never recovered his former pace or significance. ANd that says nothing of the larger irony of all: the fact that silent movies reached their highest level of sophistication and achievement (certainly in America) just as thy were rendered irrelevant by the coming of sound."
pages 25-26
Page 30:
During a discussion of King Vidor: "Vidor made two other pictures, of course, notably La Boheme, during the filming of which he actually thought Lillian Gish had died, so still did she become in one of her swoons."
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