Actress/author Lillian Gish speaking on Lillian Gish and the Movies at the Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, October 20, 1969 [Photo courtesy Library of Congress.]
Library of Congress Information Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 40,
October 2, 1969
Events in the Offing
Lillian Gish will present a lecture entitled “Lillian
Gish and the Movies,” illustrated with three reels of motion picture film, at
7:30 p.m. on Monday, October 20, in the Coolidge Auditorium, under the joint
sponsorship of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and the
Motion Picture Section of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of
Congress.
Attendance at this program will be by invitation only.
A child actress, billed as Baby Lillian, Miss Gish made her
stage debut at age six in Rising Sun, Ohio, with a professional touring company
playing “In Convict Stripes.” For years after, she traveled and appeared on the
stage in child parts; then at age 15, she began her film career under the
direction of D. W. Griffith. Some of her early motion pictures include “The Birth
of a Nation” (1915) in which she appeared as the heroine, Elsie Stoneman;
“Broken Blossoms” (1919); “Way Down East” (1920); and “Orphans of the Storm”
(1922), a film screened at the White House while Miss Gish was the guest of
President Harding. Others of her early films include “The White Sister” (1923);
“the Scarlet Letter” (1926); and “The Wind” (1928), an MGM production and one
of the last of the outstanding silent films. In May 1930, at the Rivoli
Theater, New York City, Miss Gish played her first talking role in the film
“One Romantic Night.” In hat same year, she returned to the theater with
her Broadway performance in Chekov’s play “Uncle Vanya,” directed by Jed Harris.
Other of her plays in the years that followed include Guthrie McClintic’s
production of “Hamlet” (1936) with John Gielgud; “Life with Father” (1941); and
Robert Anderson’s “I Never Sang for My Father” (1967). Also in 1967, she appeared
in “The Comedians,” an MGM motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and,
Richard Burton, and Alec Guinness, in 1968 with Helen Hayes in the ABC-TV
production, “Arsenic and Old Lace;” and in the stage production “All the Way
Home,” a drama by Ted Mosel, based on James Agee’s A Death in the Family,
which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award
in 1961.
Within the last few years, Mount Holyoke College, South
Hadley, Mass., and Rollins College, Winter Park, Fla., have awarded Miss Gish
honorary degrees. This year, her autobiography Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr.
Griffith and Me, by Lillian Gish and Ann Pinchot, was published by
Prentice-Hall, Inc. In addition, she has recently given performances of “Lillian
Gish and the Movies” in Moscow, Paris, London, and the Edinburgh Festival.
Miss Gish’s narrated program, to be presented at the
Library, October 20, traces the history of silent movies. It was created and
produced by Nathan Kroll. [Miss Gish was being managed by the Kroll Agency at
that time.] Ed. Note: No images accompanied this announcement.
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Miss Gish and the Movies by Gary Arnold, Washington Post
October 21, 1969
Lillian Gish, perhaps the greatest actress ever to grace the
American screen, brought her nostalgic one-woman show, “Lillian Gish and the
Movies,” to the Library of Congress last evening. An invited audience in [the]
Coolidge Auditorium responded enthusiastically to the performer and her
material – a discursive illustrated lecture, combining film clips with ardent
personal memories and humorous anecdotes.
Miss Gish looked trim and radiant in a long white evening
gown, and although she had been supplied with a microphone, her voice seemed to
ring through the hall in such a confident, professionally trained way that she
didn’t need the amplification.
At one point Miss Gish described an argument with D. W.
Griffith, the famed director, over the fade-out sequence of “Way Down East.”
The heroine has just been dragged in from the snow after narrowly and quite
literally escaping death; when Griffith insisted that she comb her hair and
paint her lips for the final clinch, Miss Gish protested. “Do you think I
should look like that after everything I’ve been through?”
Griffith, so much a realist in some things, proved to be an
opportunist on this point. “Comb your hair! We want to make money in this
picture, and that’s what the audience wants.”
Miss Gish later came to believe he was right, commercially
speaking, but she apparently capitulated believing he was dead wrong. As far as
a viewer can tell, her playing of the scene is quite straightforward –she
slowly regains consciousness, sees the hero (Richard Barthelmess), and they
embrace. But while we were watching this scene, Miss Gish said, “You can see
how mad I am,” and suddenly those tightly closed lips did begin to suggest an
emotion somewhat stronger than unconsciousness. Not that it matters, of
course—this is just one piece of stylistic equipment of the repertoire of a
consummate actress.
The excerpts began with a 1901 nickelodeon item in which
motion itself is a novelty—the “action” consists of a smiling girl in a
swirling dress. From there Miss Gish took us to Melies (“A Trip to the Moon”)
and “Baron Munchausen’s Dream”) Edwin S. Porter (“Rescued from an Eagle’s
Nest,” the little melodrama that introduced a young actor named David Wark
Griffith to the screen) and the triumphant experiments of Griffith the director
(“A Girl and Her Trust,” “The Musketeers of Pig Alley,” “The Birth of a
Nation”).
Interwoven with Griffith’s work were examples of the other
major innovators and personalities of the period-Mack Sennett, [Charlie]
Chaplin, [Buster] Keaton, [Douglas] Fairbanks, [Rudolph] Valentino (a very
amusing clip from “Blood and sand” in which Valentino, looking surprisingly
like Elvis Presley, succumbs with some effort to the allure of Nita Naldi). The
program closed with excerpts from later Gish-Griffith collaborations (the
rescue scenes from “Orphans of the Storm,” and “Way Down East,” as well as Miss
Gish’s startling “mad” scene in the latter, when she learns of the death of her
child) and three films from her MGM
period—“La Boheme” with John Gilbert, “The White Sister” with Ronald Colman,
and “The Wind,” with Lars Hanson.
The lecture was presented here under the auspices of the
Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and the Motion Picture
Department of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. Miss Gish plans a
national tour.
Miss Gish was introduced by Librarian of Congress Quincy
Mumford. A champagne reception in the Great Hall followed the lecture.
© Washington Post
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LC Information Bulletin, Vol 28, No. 44, October 30, 1969
Lillian Gish presented “Lillian Gish and the Movies” to an
invited audience in the Coolidge Auditorium on Monday, October 20. The program
sponsored by the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, was
designed by Miss Gish and her producer, Nathan Kroll, to show her career and
the history of the silent films. Miss Gish became an international star when
she was very young and this art form was in its infancy, but some of the films
shown antedated even her debut. Many of the film makers whose work she chose
are also represented in the Library of Congress Film Archive.
The film program revealed the development of camera, acting,
and editing, techniques in this medium, envisioned by David Wark Griffith as a
universal art form, capable of transcending all boundaries. Miss Gish’s
commentary was in large part a tribute to Griffith, about whom she wrote in her
book, Lillian Gish: The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, and she asked her
audience, “Shouldn’t this man have a postage stamp?”
It also included, however, her reminiscences of Mary
Pickford, Ronald Colman, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, and other stars of
the silent era, as well as glimpses of studio and on location conditions in
early days, and an explanation of her own interpretation of her roles.
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“A Trip to the Moon” can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5x_M_vcNVY
“Baron Munchausen’s Dream” is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hN83ykX644
Edwin S. Porter’s “Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehFrT2cE5JI
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Jim Patterson enjoyed a long friendship with actress Lillian Gish. He is a Life Member of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Fremont, California, a long-time member of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and a long serving Board member of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Theater, Bowling Green State University. He has published more than 200 articles on the Silent era and his work has appeared in Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Classic Images, Auburn Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, (Raliegh, North Carolina) News and Observer, Fremont Bulletin, and many others. For speaking availability, contact JEPWriter@gmail.com
February 18 in Film History
1929 First Academy Awards Presented
Best Film: Wings Best Actress Janet Gaynor Best Actor Emil
Jannings
All Results https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1929
·
Monte Blue worked as a stuntman for Griffith and an extra in The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was his first film.
Griffith took him in and made him an assistant on his classic epic Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916), where he earned another small
part. Gradually moving to support roles for both Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Blue earned his breakthrough
role as "Danton" in Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (1921) with sisters Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. He rose to stardom as a rugged
romantic lead opposite Hollywood's top silent stars, among them Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow and Norma Shearer. He made a relatively easy
transition into talkies as he had a fine, cultivated voice, but, at the same
time, lost most of his investments when the stock market crashed in 1929. By
the 1930s the aging star had moved back into small, often unbilled parts,
continuously employed, however, by his old friend DeMille and Warner Bros. At
the end of his life he was working as an advance man for the Hamid-Morton
Circus in Milwaukee. He died of a coronary attack complicated by influenza in
1963.
·
Joseph E. Henabery, veteran motion picture director and
silent‐film actor, who played the role of Abraham Lincoln in D. W. Griffith's “The
Birth of a Nation.” died Wednesday at the Motion Picture Country House in
Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 88 years old and lived in Tarzana, Calif.
During his 43‐year film career, Mr. Henabery directed such
stars as Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Roscoe (Fattyl Arbuckle and Jack
Holt. He learned his craft under the tutelage of Mr. Griffith and was his
assistant during the making of the epic “Intolarance.”
Born in Omaha, Mr. Henabery grew up in Los Angeles. after a
career in railroading, he entered the burgeoning movie industry in 1913 and
within two years became a director of feature‐length films.
After first playing bit parts for Universal Studios, he went
to work for Mr. Griffith at the Reliance Majestic Company in East Hollywood.
Later with Mr. Griffith and the Fine Arts Company, he did
the research for “Intolerance” and played one of the three Pharisees in the Babylonian
sequence and the role of Admiral Coligny in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
sequence. He also served as Mr. Griffith's production assistant and directed
the two Babylonian orgy scenes that appeared in the film after its premiere
showing.
Mr. Griffith then gave Mr. Henabery his first directing
assignment in "The Children of the Fend.” which starred Dorothy Gish. Mr.
Henabery next joined Famous Players‐Lasky and directed Douglas Fairbanks in
several pictures.
After a short stint in the Coast Artillery in World War I.
Mr. Henahery in 1919 made his, last picture with Mr. Fairbanks, “His Majesty
the American,” for the new United Artists Corporation.
Later he directed for First National Pictures and Ince
Studios, and then returned to Famous Players‐Lasky. There he made pictures with
Arbuckle, Mary Miles Minter and Jack Holt.
In 1924, Mr. Henahery made one of the earliest all‐star
pictures, “The Stranger,” adapted from John Galsworthy's “The First and Last,”
starring Betty Compson, Richard Dix and Lewis Stone, among others. He then
directed Rudolph Valentino's last film for Famous Players, “A Sainted Devil,”
released in 1924, and “Tongues of Flame,” with Thomas Meighan.
After a long illness, Mr. Henabery resumed his career in
1926 and as a freelance made more than 15 major pictures for various studios.
Among the stars he directed were Joseph Schildkraut, Glenn Hunter, Constance
Bennett, Noah Beery, Ben Lyon, Mary Astor, Lloyd Hughes and Lionel Barrymore.
In the early 1930's Mr. Henabery moved East and joined
Vitaphone Studios in Brooklyn. directing Judy Canova and Jack Haley Sr., the
Easy Aces comedy shorts and the S. S. Van Dine murder mysteries.
Before, during and after World War II, he worked for the
Army Signal Corps, making training films and documentaries, including “Shades
of Gray,” about emotional problems of battle‐fatigue. He retired in 1957.
Surviving are his wife, Lilian; a son, Robert of New York; a
daughter, Mary Figueroa of Tarzana; three grandchildren, and four great‐grandchildren.
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Jim Patterson enjoyed a long friendship with actress Lillian Gish. He is a Life Member of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Fremont, California, a long-time member of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and a long serving Board member of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Theater, Bowling Green State University. He has published more than 200 articles on the Silent era and his work has appeared in Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Classic Images, Auburn Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, (Raleigh, North Carolina) News and Observer, Fremont Bulletin, and many others. For speaking availability, contact JEPWriter@gmail.com
