July 10, 2013

In Eve Golden's new book "John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars," University of Kentucky Press, she has plenty to say about Lillian Gish and her performance with Gilbert in MGM's La Boheme (1926). She also has a very nice b&w photo of Lillian and Gilbert from a scene in the film.


Excerpt from page 112:

"Gish was determined to keep herself sexless both onscreen and off. Despite rumors of her involvement with D.W. Griffith, drama critic and magazine editor George Jean Nathan, her business manager Charles Holland Duell, and her lifelong friend photographer Nell Dorr, Lillian  Gish never married and was never seriously linked to anyone romantically. She extended this to her screen persona: Gish was lovely, in a Watteau watercolor kind of way. She never bobbed her hair, and although she dressed in chic modern fashions in private life, during her youth she played only untouchable icons (her one slip was 1916's Diane of the Follies). Through the 1910s she was the Edwardian good girl (even when wronged by cads); in the 1920s she played historical figures on -in her great The Wind- a gingham-gowned farm girl. Not till middle age had safely "desexed" her did Gish take on strong, modern characters."

"John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars" is an impressive book and I will have more to say about it later.The author does not explain why she calls Gilbert the last of the silent film stars. I'll have to reach out to her.

Happy Reading!

See my review of this title on Google at Ebar.com.


James Patterson
Adviser, Gish Theater BGSU
Co-chair Development
415 516 3493
JamesPatterson705@gmail.com