Gallery of Lillian Gish Images

Publicity for Lillian's 100th film "A Wedding," where, according to one critic, she played a corpse. Background smiling is co-star Carol Burnett. 1978.

Lillian in Broadway play "Anya" in which she "sang" "Little Hands." 1965. You can hear Lillian from the cast album on YouTube.

Poor, poor Lillian as Carrie Watts in "The Trip to Bountiful" during its short Broadway run.1953

 Avec Letty "Le Vent" 1928. MoMA 2013.

 Print advertisement, maybe from NYT, for tickets to "The Trip to Bountiful." Some print ads called the play "Lillian Gish's Masterpiece." 1953

Publicity photograph of Lillian for Broadway production of Horton Foote's "The Trip to Bountiful." 1953

 Honoree Lillian Gish advising President Reagan on the arts. State Department.

 Lillian on the cover of a movie magazine circa 1920s

 One of Lillian's many letters to Oliver J. Dragon. 19502

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Dorothy and Lillian on Classic Magazine

Comic of Lillian circa 1970s Silent cinema was no place for sissies. Comic has her being chased by DW Griffith who is shooting a loaded revolver and mentions her swimming in icy waters and still going strong.

Jim Patterson, Editor

Amateurishly Written The Birth of a Nation Story

Lillian Gish mentioned this project in a Hedda Hopper column in the mid-1960's. The "book" is an over sized 96 page paperback amateurishly written and published. It is by Roy E. Aitken, who claimed to own control of the film at the time, as told to Al P. Nelson. It is a Denlinger Book, Middleburg, Virginia, 1965. It appears to be intended to spark interest in a re-make of the racist film.

Amateurishly written and published "book" in which Aitken tells the story of how the Birth of a Nation was made, how much money it made and an appeal to anyone to help him re-make it as a sound film in 1965!!!!!!!!


It contains 111 black-an-white photographs, 18 of them scenes from The Birth of a Nation. Photos include Lillian Gish, Charlie Chaplin, Hedda Hopper, Miriam Cooper, Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Wallace Reed, and a host of others from the silent era whether or not they were involved  with the production of The Birth of a Nation.

The Birth of a Nation Story's Foreword has some interesting commentary.

"The Civil War and Reconstruction period film with its stirring battle scenes and portrayal of the confused, tragic postwar years, has been seen by 100,000,000 Americans. The picture has been acclaimed for its stirring, panoramic sweep, its artistry and the introduction of many new movie techniques.

"Some persons and groups bemoan the continued exhibition of the picture due to the racial problems in the story, which is adapted from [Rev.] Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman. The co-authors of the Birth of a Nation story, especially Roy E. Aitken, who owns controlling interest in the Birth of a Nation film, have clung tenaciously to the facts in relating the dramatic events surrounding the producing of this American epic, and its exhibition over a period of almost fifty years.

"The record reveals that many minority groups have persistently and vigorously boycotted the showing of this motion picture. claiming that it creates racial problems. Perhaps it is the misfortune of the Negro race that certain members of it are shown to disadvantage in The Birth of a Nation film. History has shown that the minority of the liberated Negroes who were involved politically in  the turbulent Reconstruction period were usually spurred to action and dominated by unscrupulous white carpetbaggers.

"The white man, the red man, the yellow man, and the brown man have no monopoly on cruelty, hate greed, rape or any other human failing. This has often been demonstrated in newspaper and magazine articles, in plays, short stories and novels. When factual or fictional spotlight turns upon the Negro, as it does in some measure in The Birth of a Nation movie, he has no choice but to bear the scrutiny and the ignominy of it. In company with his white, red, yellow, and brown brothers, he can only hang his head in shame. From such universal shame, perhaps Man will identify and study his family racial problem and begin to try to solve it.

"This is said to be the age of inquiry and scientific approach. We ask readers of this book to regard this reportorial account of The Birth of a Nation story as an account of the impact of a great motion picture upon three generations of Americans. If the Birth of a nation movie has a little dust on its garments and mud on its feet, these have inevitably been gathered by following realistic characters who almost always have feet of clay.

"That The Birth of a Nation evidences much historical accuracy, and also dramatic truth, is attested by the many requests that come annually from colleges, universities, museums, private art and film groups, and others to show the picture. Recently, parts of this historic film were shown on the British
Broadcasting system and the National Broadcasting System.

"In a lengthy opinion on the Birth of a Nation in 1915 the National Board of Censorship said, in part, 'If the picture tends to aggravate serious social questions and should therefore be wholly forbidden, that is a matter for the action of those who act on similar tendencies when they are expressed in books, newspapers or on the stage/. On what basis of reasoning should a film play be repressed whose subject matter has already been allowed the freest circulation both in a novel and in a play?'"


Comment:
Wow! Talk about poorly written. Perhaps it is written this way to cover its real racist message.

First off, Rev. Dixon's novel was fiction not history.  Secondly, the release of this "book" in 1965 seems intended to benefit from white backlash at the Civil Rights struggle of the time and the struggle for voting rights for African Americans in the South. It seems intended to capitalize on racial violence as a solution to the "problem." Perhaps this is why the book is amateurish.

The argument that "white carpetbaggers" "dominated" and "spurred" Negroes to action is loaded language. Newly freed from slavery, Negroes could not depend on former slave owners to give them their rights as free and equal citizens. This did not happen during Reconstruction and for over 100 years more due to Jim Crow, white superiority, segregationist politicians like Orville Faubus in Arkansas, Ross Bartlett in Mississippi, and the dreaded George C. Wallace in Alabama.

Racist senators from all these states worked with the racist governors to delay civil rights legislation and maintain a segregationist South. They were an imposing block of senior lawmakers (Jim Eastland, John Stennis, John Sparkman, Lister Hill, Herman Talmidge, and other) who refused to go along with President Johnson's leadership on civil rights. Johnson put together a Congressional majority of non-South Democrats and Republicans to pass civil rights legislation that finally ended segregation and brought freedoms to the South.

Acknowledgments include: Actresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Hedda Hopper, Enid Markey, Mae Marsh, Anita Loos, Gloria Swanson, and many others.

The authors conveniently include President Woodrow Wilson's quote after seeing the film at the White House; "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."   Director D. W. Griffith did get a great quote from the president, but the book the film was based on was FICTION! The authors tell us Wilson wept over the film. Really!

In 1950 journalist Max Lerner (1902-1992) wrote in the New York Post

"If you want to see an elaborate excuse for racist hate, presented in the guise of a movie classic, you will find it in David Wark Griffith's Birth of a Nation.

"I saw it the other night for the first time. Once is more than enough. I could have lived out the rest of my days in perfect serenity and presented myself in due course before the Angel Gabriel with complete assurance that the gates would not be swung closed against me merely because I had failed to pay obeisance to a classic of racist passion, rape and lynch-law.

"Having seen it, I want to tell you about it so that you may save your time for something better, and spare yourselves the ordeal.

"The picture has been called an epic. It is just that--an epic of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, with a justification of its birth and violence. I suppose the movie historians are enamored of its handling of big crowds, and its battle and mob scenes, in the grandiose tradition which Cecil B. De Mille has dubiously carried on. But even on this score it has little that has not been done far better since in many Grade B Westerns ..."

The Birth of a Nation Story ends with the authors hoping against hope to re-make Birth of a Nation. It is testimony to a more civil society, it has not been re-made.  Griffith did get an honorary Academy Award in 1936, he was photographed with two stars from Birth of a Nation Donald Crisp and Henry B. Walthall, for his films but he could not get financing for a re-make of Birth of a Nation. It is amazing anyone seriously thought they could finance a re-make of this film in the mid-1960's. The authors must have been blind to the changing times.

The authors of The Birth of a Nation Story make some amazing statements. From a chapter titled "Defense of the Picture," the authors tell us, "Anyone who has read Thomas Dixon's Clansman knows that Griffith's script treats the Negro much more sympathetically than did Dixon's novel."

Griffith did not have a formal written script for Birth of a Nation. I've read the two Dixon novels, The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots, on which Birth of a Nation is based and they are brutally racist novels.  In a 1937 article, Miss Gish  wrote D.W. sensationalized racism far beyond the books.

Baptist Minister Thomas Dixon feared cities would ban the film and he would lose revenue. He took a religious approach to defending screenings of Birth of a Nation. He penned a treatise entitled, "The Action of the Negro Inter-Marriage Society Against the Play." He argued anyone who wanted to ban screening of the film was a member/supporter of this society.

In 1930 Birth of a Nation was re-released with a soundtrack and an opening "conversation" between Griffith and actor Walter Houston. You can find it on YouTube. It is about 6 minutes. Griffith tells Houston the Birth of a Nation was true and the Klan was needed at that time, meaning Reconstruction.

A newspaper article included inside the book follows:


'Birth of a Nation' Stopped April 1978 Riverside UPI

Blacks should not be offended by D. W. Griffith's classic 1915 film "Birth of a Nation," which admittedly is a racist movie, but should view it in historical perspective for the strides blacks have made since the early part of the twentieth century, museum officials said Thursday.

Ron Pidot, curator of education for the Riverside Municipal Museum, thus reacted with disappointment to a vote of the City Council to cancel a showing of "Birth of a Nation," which was screened for the first time in Riverside Jan. 1, 1915

The council voted 4 to 1 to stop the showing scheduled for Thursday night after hearing complaints that the film was racist and offensive to blacks.

The movie is to be screened at the museum again April 20 and Pidot said the museum will try to convince blacks and city officials that the film should be seen because it is "singularly the greatest cinematic achievement in the history of the cinema."

"The movie is racist," said Pidot, "but you have to remember that Griffith was the son of a southern confederate officer who had strong feelings against blacks.

"If anything, it is important for the black community to view the movie in historical perspective to see where the stereotypes of blacks came from. To see the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the atrocities it committed is just totally unacceptable to today's awareness."

Historical note: Rioting stopped the film's screening in San Francisco.

Final Note: Obviously Miss Gish should not have helped publicize this trash book in Hopper's column. I found no direct quotes from her or any desire to be associated with a remake of the film. Neither Mary Pickford or Charlie Chaplin would finance a remake. No studio would finance.


Jim Patterson, Editor

TV Career of Lillian Gish (1949-88)

Lillian Gish appeared, mostly in above average TV projects dating from 1949 to the PBS documentary on her life in 1987.

As a guest Lillian appeared in:

"Philco TV Playhouse: The late Christopher Bean, NBC, 1949

"Ford Television Theater Hour: Outward Bound" CBS, 1949

"Celebrity Time," CBS, 1950

"Philco TV Playhouse: Birth of the Movies," NBC 1951

"Robert Montgomery Presents: Kadies in Retirement," NBC 1951

"Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town," CBS, 1951

"Celanese Theater: The Joyful Season," ABC, 1951

""Schlitz Playhouse of Stars: The Autobiography of Grandma Moses," CBS, 1952

"Goodyear TV Playhouse: A Trip to Bountiful," NBC, 1953 (Began friendship with Eva Marie Saint)

"Christmas Festival of Music," CBS, 1953

"Robert Montgomery Presents: The Quality of Mercy," NBC, 1954

"Campbell Soundstage: The Corner Drugstore," NBC, 1954

"Person to Person," CBS, 1954

""The Ed Sullivan Show," CBS, 1955 (Lillian and Robert Mitchum recreated a scene from "The Night of the Hunter."

""Kraft Television Theater: I, Mrs. Bibb," NBC, 1955

"Wide, wide World: Our heritage," NBC, 1955

"Playwrights '56: The Sound and the Fury," NBC, 1955

"Ford Star Jubilee: The day Lincoln Was Shot," CBS, 1956

""Alcoa Hour: Morning's at Seven," NBC, 1956

"Play of the Week: The Grass Harp," SYN, 1960 (Lillian began her friendship with Truman Capote.)

"Theater '62: The Spiral Staircase," NBC, 1962

"The du Pont Show: The Beauty of a Woman," NBC, 1962

"The Defenders: Grandma TNT," CBS, 1962

"Mr. Novak: Hello,Mrs. Phipps," NBC, 1963

""The Breaking Point: The Gnu, Now Almost Extinct," ABC, 1963

"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Body in the Barn," CBS, 1965

"The Defenders: Stowaway," CBS, 1964

"Arsenic and Old Lace," ABC, 1969

"The Joey Bishop Show," ABC, 1969

"The Merv Griffin Show," SYN, 1969 (Memories with Arthur Treacher.)

"The Mike Douglas Show," SYN, 1969

"The Dick Cavett Show," ABC, March 1970 with Salvador Dali, Satchel Paige. Dali put his anteater in Lillian's lap. She was NOT happy.

"The Dick Cavett Show, ABC, March 11, 1971 Lillian with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Julius Baker, Satchel Paige

"The Merv Griffin Show," SYN, 1970

"Dinah!," SYN, 1978

"The Mike Douglas Show," SYN, 1978

"Donahue," SYN, 1978 (Began friendship with Lauren Hutton)

"Festival of Lively Arts for Young People: The Seven Liveliest ... But Who's Counting?" CBS, 1979

"The Dick Cavett Show," PBS, January 25, 1979 Lillian with Malcolm  Cowley

"The Love Boat: Issac's Teacher/Seal of Approval/The Successor," ABC, 1981

"The Tonight Show," NBC, 1983 Host Joan Rivers

"Night of 100 Stars features Silent Screen Actresses," CBS, 1985

"CBS Morning Show," CBS, 1987 Interviewed by Mariette Hartley.,

TV Movies and Miniseries:

"Twin Detective," ABC, 1976 (Starring Hager Twins from TV show Hee Haw)

"Thin Ice," ABC, 1981 (With Kate Jackson)

"Hobson's Choice," CBS, 1983 (With Richard Thomas)

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," PBS, 1985 with Jim Dale New to DVD


Missing are Lillian's several appearances on PBS shows, Academy Awards Speech, and a few others.


TV appearances by Dorothy Gish 1949-1961 Though best known for her comedy parts in silent film, her TV roles were mostly dramatic parts.

"Philco TV Playhouse: The Story of Mary Surratt," NBC, 1949

""Ford Theater: Spring Again," CBS, 1951

"Prudential family Playhouse: The Bishop Misbehaves," CBS, 1951

""Starlight Theater: The Magnificent Faker," CBS, 1951

"Pulitzer Prize Playhouse Detour," ABC, 1951

"Ford Theater: One Day for Keeps," CBS, 1951

"Robert Montgomery Presents: The Post Road," NBC, 1952

"Philco TV Playhouse: The Oil Well," NBC, 1953

"Robert Montgomery Presents: Harvest," NBC, 1953

"U.S. Steel Hour: The Laphams of Boston," ABC, 1954

"Philco TV Playhouse: The Shadow of Willie Greer," NBC, 1954

"Elgin TV hour: Flood," ABC, 1954

"Lux Video Theater: Miss Susie Slagel's," NBC, 1955 (Lillian's film)

"Alcoa Hour: Morning's at Seven," NBC, 1956

"Play of the Week: Morning's at Seven," SYN, 1961

Performers, Television Credits, 1948-2000
David M. Inman, volume 2: G-M
McFarland & Co. 2001


Voice work:

Lillian Gish, My Religion
Lillian Gish, Broadway Cast Album, Anya


Jim Patterson, Editor

Readers: If you can document other credits for either sister, please leave a note. Thanks!

Lillian's You Can Have What You Want Guideposts 1949

Lillian Gish and her publicity photo for Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's Guideposts, July 1949.

You Can Have What You Want by Lillian Gish (c) Guideposts

"People won't take religion in movies." We heard that everywhere.

In the middle 1020's I wanted to make "The White Sister," but nobody would hear of it.

"Are you crazy? Who'd pay to see you ina nun's robes with your long blonde hair hidden?"

"Religion is a dangerous topic-believe me, you're flirting with poison."

My own early religious training may have given me faith in the success of "The White Sister." I was brought up an Episcopalian, baptized and confirmed by Bishop Leonard of Ohio who had performed the same service for all my family. My mother sent us to Sunday School, took us regularly to church and, when we were travelling, read to us from the Bible on the trains or boats at service hour.

Throughout my life-whatever might be the pressure of affairs-I have never failed to get spiritual refreshment from the Three Hours devotion on Good Friday. I believe firmly in saying: "Pray as if everything depended on God; act as if everything depended on yourself."

We made "The White Sister" independently, raising capital to d it. When we were refused a release, it occurred to me that perhaps Henry Ford wuld allow us to use his automobile showrooms throughout the country or, failing that, we could tour the nation with it as a tent show.

But when Nicholas Schenck saw the picture, he believed in its possibilities and decided he would release it on his own. Instead, however, he persuaded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to give us a release.

This religious picture made a fortune for all its investors. Why wouldn't people be interested in entertainment with strong spiritual import, since there are more churches than theaters in America?

Today, religious subjects are treated often and well; some rank high among the public's favorites. But to my mind, the field has not been tapped- there's a great well of thrilling sacred topics to gush forth with new, warming and enriching influence for a dry cold world.

When David Wark Griffith died, I was asked to write an appreciation of him. I sat at my desk trying to estimate what was perhaps one of the greatest men I ever knew, as well as a dear friend. Most of the world credits him with being the inventor of the motion picture-the originator of telling a dramatic story with films. It took a generation to recognize the Wright Brothers and bring the Kitty Hawk planes from England for our Smithsonian Institute. Some day, David Wark Griffith will be honored and ranked here as he deserves. (Ed Note: She writes as if he were still alive.)

I can call the man a genius without fear of exaggeration. Knowing the power of his invention, he treated it with deepest respect. He knew, as no one I've ever met, the tremendous influence of a story in pictures, and hence the double-barreled impact of motion pictures. In The Birth of a Nation, he presented a needed and moving story. He made it for $90,000 and it sold for over $60,000,000.

This monetary success immediately changed films from a new and struggling art form into the big business bracket. The great power of the motion picture was now established.

Motion pictures contain the greatest potentialities for propaganda that the world has ever known, and Europe recognized that as far back as 1917 when D. W. Griffith was sent for to produce propaganda films for the British and French governments. You can imagine what might be done if films fall into the wrong hands! I believe that films are so important that we should have a Cabinet representative to represent the film industry.

Perhaps Mr. Eric Johnston is working into this - I hope so

There has been much justified complaint about vulgarities, crime and general lowering of standards in pictures. But you-and you alone-can stop it. Producers and theaters owners are busy giving the public "what it wants." You needn't want what they turn out.

I do not believe in censorship in any form or any degree, and I would fight it to my last breath. But I do believe in any person's having the right of selection. I do believe an audience has the dignity of choice. Nobody need read a book, buy a painting, or attend a meeting of which he or she disapproves.

Remember, your dollars are wanted; your excited interest is all important. A whole industry has unlimited talent and machinery to give you what you want. All it needs to know is that you want intellectual and spiritual stimulation with your entertainment.

It is easy for you to change things. You have the power to hand on to you children a full measure of taste, judgment and discrimination in the form of fine motion pictures.

If you do not lend our support to plays, personalities, or movies of which you disapprove, that infallible barometer-the box office-will soon make it known, and they will fall from sight. Your enthusiasm is needed in order that the people behind the productions-the producer, the theater manager, the star, the director, will have the courage of their convictions and go on to better things. So send them word in some way of your approval.

As for the children, there should be films for different age groups. A wealth of stories for young people exists in our literature-exciting and satisfying enough and still worthy entertainment. Consider the problem yourself, how impossible it is to make a single film suitable both for a child of six and an adult of forty. When this is attempted, there is bound to be a failure for both.

Be selective. Don't take your children to the pictures you wish to see yourself if they have been designed exclusively for adults. You would not take a volume of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer from your library shelf and give it to your 10-year-old to read.

You are the one to determine the films of the future,!

(c) Guideposts

Bio note with article: "Lillian Gish is pictured here in 'The White Sister.'  Beloved the world over ever since her appearnce in 'The Birth of a Nation,' and saluted by all for her creative integrity, Miss Gish has enjoyed 35 years of theatrical stardom. Last year theatergoers witnessed her great portrayal in 'Crime and Punishment.' Her most recent film is 'Portrait of Jenny.'"

Ed Note: This is an interesting article that gives us insight into Lillian's faith and her conviction in her film "The White Sister." It was a great role for her. Her leading man was Ronald Coleman. They remained friends until his death.

Reportedly, her leading man was to have been Raymond Navarro. He regretted losing the part and pestered Lillian about it for years. The film might have been a success with him as the film was mostly Lillian's character. Navarro, a closeted gay, tried to sell Lillian on his amazing ability to write horoscopes and pestered her to buy them from him.

I found an article on Navarro a few days ago.


Jim Patterson, editor

Jim Patterson on 2014 Selections to the National Film Registry

Films Selected for the 2014 National Film Registry

• 13 Lakes (2004)
• Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913)
• The Big Lebowski (1998)
• Down Argentine Way (1940)
• The Dragon Painter (1919)
• Felicia (1965
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
• The Gang’s All Here (1943)
• House of Wax (1953)
• Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000)
• Little Big Man (1970)
• Luxo Jr. (1986)
• Moon Breath Beat (1980)
• Please Don’t Bury Me Alive! (1976)
• The Power and the Glory (1933)
• Rio Bravo (1959)
• Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
• Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
• Saving Private Ryan (1998)
• Shoes (1916)
• State Fair (1933)
• Unmasked (1917)
• V-E + 1 (1945)
• The Way of Peace (1947)
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Happy to see Grace Cunard honored. Into the Arms of Strangers is a wise choice for our times. Rio Bravo is a truly great western and I do not like westerns. John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, Ricky Nelson, Ward Bond, Angie Dickinson and John Russell were all great! 

V-E +1 is another timely choice and a remarkable film. State fair with Will Rogers is great as is Shoes. I never understood the popularity of Willy Wonka. Nice to see Charles Laughton and a fine cast honored with Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). Dragon Painter and  Please Don't Bury Me are two great choices.

My Washington office has already nominated Way Down East, An Unseen Enemy and The Whales of August for 2015. 

Jim Patterson, Editor

LDGish.blogspot.com

Forever New: A Poem for Lillian Gish

From among the thousands of poems people sent Lillian, here is one she shared. It's a nice holiday poem.

Forever New

Don't fear, my love, that when I've been with you

There's ever aught of luster lost to view;

That I should thirst the less for what you've giv'n

Were like an angel gro9wing tired of Heav'n;

There is no slaking thirst for such a mead,

Not all your bounty could o'erflow my need;

Could mind of man hold more than it conceive,

Then might my heart, at best, its joy believe;

Each time, I come to you with virgin thirst,

And leaving, know the next time will be first;

This, truth transcending fancy seems untrue

And keeps this ecstasy forever new.


Poet: Leonard W. Bidwell
Date Unknown




"But now I know that I

Can walk with Spring by walking at your side

On any path you tread,

For I have found 'tis Spring that follows you."


From the volumes of poetry dedicated to and inspired by the art of Lillian Gish.


Jim Patterson, Editor

Charles Champlin, Lillian Gish and Jim Patterson

My friend Charles Champlin, longtime film critic for the LA Times, died November 16. He was 88 and passed on Alzheimer's.

Following is his obituary for Lillian from March 1993

Lillian was Always One in a Million
An Appreciation  by Charles Champlin

Hollywood- During Jimmy Carter's presidency, Lillian Gish was invited to the White House for a reception marking the 10th anniversary of the American Film Institute. After the brief ceremony, Gish stood in the ornate Red Room talking with friends. She looked around and said, "I've been in this room before. Mr. Griffith and I came here to meet President Harding.

It was an astonishing remark, and another reminder of just how much of the whole life of the motion pictures Gish's career had spanned even then. She was not quite as old as the movies when she died on Sunday at the age of 99; the movies are a century old  more or less, depending on which event one uses as a start date.

But Gish had lived the whole development of the motion picture as an art form, from the crudest one reelers when her Mr. Griffith- David Wark Griffith- was first beginning to perfect the language of filmmaking, to "The Whales of August" in wide-screen color and stereophonic sound in 1987, when she was already past 90.

Longevity is its own kind of miracle with its particular brand of fascination. Thinking of Gish, it is impossible not to think as well of the commonplaces, from radio and television to the ball point pen, that came in her lifetime, let alone men on the moon and a space probe escaping the solar system and sailing on into interstellar space.

It is inconceivable that an actress of another generation will be able to know quite the life in art that Gish knew, born in a trunk, and trouping at 5, inventing (ina  sense) the art of screen acting even as her mentor Griffith was demonstrating all the things that could be done with the camera and in the cutting room.

No current actress would likely be asked to do - or be agreeable to doing - the life-endangering stunts Gish did herself, most unforgettably crossing the ice floe in "Way Down East," a sequence that is difficult, if thrilling, to watch even now.

Perhaps nothing was more notable about her long career than she survived and conquered not only the movies shift from silence to sound (which stopped many a career in its tracks) but prospered throughout  the advancing of her own years - an inevitable process that has ended many an acting career, for women more cruelly than for men.

Had she been only a film actress, maturity might have been a problem for her too. But she was an actress for all venues and when Hollywood - which for all practical purposes invented the cult of youth and perpetuates it still - looked askance, Gish went to the theater, where the quality of performance triumphs over all. In her 30s she could play a still youthful Ophelia to John Gielgud's Hamlet.

Sadly, too few of her silent films are easily accessible for viewing, so that Gish at the peak of her powers and originality has been for later generations a name and a legend more than a presence, and the later work in supporting roles, as in Robert Altman's "The Wedding" (1978) is admirable without being indelible. Longevity has its penalties as well as its rewards."

(C) LA TImes

END

Jim Notes:

As an East Coaster I occasionally saw some of Champlin's articles in other publications or clips from friends and relatives in California. It was the PBS series Film Odyssey that brought Champlin into my high school film world in 1972. It was a 26-week series on international film with some great, great examples of world cinema.

Champlin provided brief discussions of the film to be screened and did some interviews with cinema greats like Hitchcock, King Vidor, Roman Polanski, and Stanley Kaufman.

Films I saw for the first time included:  Jules et Jim, The Blue Angel, Grand Illusion, M, The Seven Samurai, Beauty and the Beast, The 39 Steps with Robert Donat, Potemkin, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Knife in the Water, The Overcoat, Our Daily Bread, Yojimbo, The Last Laugh,  Man of Aran, L'AVVENTURA, Two Daughters, Los Olividados, and Ballad of A Soldier (Russian).

I corresponded with Judith Crist about these films because she was the film critic for TV Guide and wrote brief reviews of each week's film. Years later I met her several times in New York. Late in her life, we discussed why PBS stopped screening foreign films. We took hope TCM would continue to screen some of them.

Also, here is a brief Gish obit from USA Today.

USA Today March 1, 1993, page 40.

Weak, waif-like, clinging to an ice floe as it sweeps toward a waterfall in Way Down East – an enduring image of Lillian Gish, who died Saturday at 99.

But such images belie the indomitable spirit of the actress, who refused a stand-in for Way Down East (1920) and ultimately made 100-plus films in 75 years.

Gish was a favorite of pioneering director D. W. Griffith, appearing in his silent classics The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916) and 38 others. Considered among her finest silent films was La Boheme (1926), in which she reportedly went without water for days to look convincing in her death scene.

Gish got her first stag role at age 5 and returned to the boards in the 1930s, appearing in Uncle Vanya, Camille, and Hamlet. Later she took character roles in such films as Duel in the Sun (1946), The Night of the Hunter (1955) and A Wedding (1978), in which the bulk of her role consisted of playing a corpse. Her last starring role was 1987’s The Whlaes of August with Bette Davis.

She received an honorary Oscar in 1971, a Kennedy Center Honor in 1982 and American Film Institute’s lifetime achievement award in 1984.

Gish never married, saying “marriage is a 24-hour-a-day job, and I have always been much too busy to make a good wife.

© USA Today

Jim Note: I corrected obvious errors in these published obits

Jim Patterson, Editor

LDGish.blogspot.com

Lillian Gish's Oscar Acceptance Speech

National Observer, April 26, 1971
The Oscars: How About Some Dignity
Comment by Clifford A. Ridley
Jim Note: A strongly critical comment on the changing film industry.

"[T]his year''s Academy Awards were really too much."

Deadly Plasticity

"No, the trouble wasn't with the awards themselves; nor was it even the deadly plasticity of the affair. The difficulty with the Academy Awards isn't that they're dull, but that they're so smug and 'chummy.' Desperately needing to be not only respected but loved, the Hollywood mentality proceeds to fantasize its ego-desires as fact, to assume that all of us share in the sleazy tradition of this spurious exercise."

Final two paragraphs:

"But no one is really asking Hollywood to walk in the footsteps of the masters: it would more than suffice for it to go its own way with a modicum of grace and dignity. The other night Lillian Gish, almost alone of the people on view, demonstrated that this is no elusive goal. In an acceptance speech in ironic contrast to the saccharine, overwritten piece of mush that Melvyn Douglas delivered about her, she said simply that movies are 'the heartbeat of our technical century.' She and her like, she said, strove to serve that heartbeat, and I hope we served it well.'

That woman has class. it's a wonder they let her in."

The YouTube of Lillian's acceptance speech is very brief and poignant. Her multiple drafts of her acceptance speech are long and, thrilling, with her mentioning see Earth from the Moon on TV. We'll share some of that in the future.
'

Jim Patterson, Editor
LDGish.blogspot.com

Gish Sisters Oxford History of World Cinema

Lillian Gish (1893-1993) Dorothy Gish (1898-1968)

Lillian and Dorothy Gish were born in Ohio, daughters of an actress and her absentee drifter husband. Stage juveniles being in constant demand, both girls were acting professionally before they were 5. They were enticed into movies by their friend Mary Pickford, who was already working for D. W. Griffith, and they made their screen debut together in his An Unseen Enemy (1912).

Over the next two years the sisters played numerous roles for Griffith's company, both together and separately. At first, Griffith had trouble telling them apart (tying colored ribbons in their hair, he addressed them as 'red' and 'blue') but their very different characters, and screen personae, soon emerged. Dorothy was effervescent, gregarious, a natural comedienne. Lillian was serious, intense, with a toughness belied by her delicate looks. "When Dorothy arrives the party begins," Lillian once remarke, adding wryly, "When I arrive it usually ends."

Dorothy, Griffith noted, "was more apt to getting the director's idea than Lillian, quicker to follow it, more easily satisfied with the result. Lillian conceived an ideal and patiently sought to realize it. Since this dedicated approach appealed more to Griffith's own workaholic temperament, Lillian generally got the better parts, and was awarded the led in his epoch-making Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). As Elsie Stoneman, daughter of a family split by the conflict, she transcended the hearts-and-flowers, virgin-in-jeopardy elements of the role with a performance of sustained emotional truth. The film made her a major star, as Griffith acknowledged in casting her as the iconic cradle -rocking Mother linking the four stories of his next epic, Intolerance (1916).

There seems to have been no rivalry between the sisters. Lillian suggested Dorothy as a rowdy French peasant girl in their first major film together, the First World War drama Hearts of the World (1918), and was amused when Dorothy stole the picture. Eve so, Dorothy, Dorothy continued  to work for other directors, while Griffith reserved Lillian ("She is the best actress I know. She has the most brains.") for his silent films.

Lillian's supreme performance for Griffith was as the abused child of Broken Blossoms (1919), terrorized by a brutal father and finding tenderness with a lonely young Chinaman in nineteenth-century Limehouse. It was pure Victorian melodrama, dripping with with sentiment, but transmuted by the subtlety of Gish's acting and the power-for all her ethereal looks-with which she could convey raw emotion. Way Down East  (1920), no less melodramatic, made equally good use of her blend of physical frailty and inner tenacity.

Dorothy continued to specialize in comedies, including one directed by Lillian, Remodeling her Husband (1920). It did well, but Lillian found directing "too complicated" and refused to try it again. Dorothy's range reached far beyond comedy, as shown by their finest film together, Orphans of the Storm (1921). They played sisters caught up in the French Revolution: Dorothy's performance as the blind sister, moving but not for a moment mawkish, isin no way overshadowed by Lillian's

It was their last film for Griffith, who could no longer afford Lillian's salary. They parted from him amicably and moved to the Inspiration Company, where they made Romola (1924) together-from George Eliot's novel. Lillian signed a contract with MGM. Dorothy went to London for four films for Herbert Wilcox, of which the most successful was Nell Gwynne (1926).

Lillian was now one of the highest paid (400,00 p.a.) actresses in Hollywood, able to approve her own scripts and directors. She chose Victor Sjostrom to direct  her in two of her greatest roles: a passionate, wayward Hester Prynne in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1926), and the gentle wife whipped into desperation by the elements in The Wind (1928), a performance of awesome physicality.

But fashions were changing. Garbo's star was in the ascendant, and Lillian was too identified with virginal virtues and the silent cinema. Irving Thalberg offered to fabricate a scandal for her; she coolly declined, and returned to the live stage. Dorothy did the same, her film career virtually over. Lillian, though, appeared in a dozen or so films after 1940, of which the finest was Charles Laughton's Gothic fable The Night of the Hunter (1955). In it she portrays, as Simon Callow (1987) comments, "the spirit of absolution and healing ... with a kind of secular sanctity which cannot be forged." Gish relished making the film: "I have to go back as far as D.. W. Griffith to find a set so imbued with purpose and harmony." Coming from her there could be no greater praise. (Many newspapers carried photographs of Lillian with Laughton, co-star Shelly Winters, Mary Pickford and columnist Hedda Hopper when Lillian making her return to Hollywood. She arrived by train.)

Lillian outlived her sister by a quarter-century, aging gracefully and still acting in her mid-nineties. Well before her death, she saw herself securely reinstated as the supreme actress of the silent cinema. Dorothy, a fine actress if not a great a one, still awaits a fair reassessment.

(c) Oxford History of World Cinema: The definitive history of cinema worldwide Oxford 1996 edition with Notes from my Gish lectures and academic appearances. 

See earlier posting on D. W. Griffith circa 2005.

Jim Patterson, Editor

www.LDGish.blogspot.com

Jim Patterson at the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize 2014 New York.

Washington diplomat Jim Patterson recently attended the annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Arts Prize in New York. The 2014 recipient was Maya Lin who designed the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Lin received $300,000 and the Gish medal.

Patterson began a friendship with Lillian Gish, who gained international stardom in D. W. Griffith's 1915 Civil War epic “The Birth of a Nation,” in the late 1960s after she starred in an ABC TV production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" with Helen Hayes.

An Academy Award-winner, Gish was inducted into the Alabama Arts Hall of Fame in Birmingham in April 1977 along with Zelda Fitzgerald and director D. W. Griffith. Miss Gish’s last film was 1987’s “The Whales of August,” filmed on Cliff Island, Maine, where Patterson visited the remote location. The Gish Prize is administered by JPMorgan/Chase. For more information on the Gish Prize, check the Internet.

Gish Prize recipient Maya Lin with colleagues. MoMA, November 12, 2014.

"I am deeply touched and grateful to become a part of this astonishing line of Prize winners, all of whom were selected because of the very simple but powerful goal set down by Lillian Gish: to bring recognition to the contributions that artists make to society, and to encourage others to follow on that path." _Maya Lin, from the Prize program distributed by Museum of Modern Art, November 12, 2014.

David Henry Hwang served as 2014 Selection Committee Chair and committee members were Ella Baff, Fairfax Dorn, Clive Gillinson and visual artist Carrie Mae Weems. 

Former May Michael Bloomberg, representing Bloomberg Philanthropies, praised Lin for her work on New York's magnificent 9/11 Memorial.


Note on Lillian's program bio note: The author used the disputed 1893 date of birth for Lillian. 

The program noted and and speaker Jacqueline Elias stated Dorothy, Lillian and mother made their screen debut in D. W. Griffith's An Unseen Enemy. For Dorothy and Lillian that is true. Mother Gish did not, according to my research, have a screen role in that film. The only other credited female role was a woman who was part of the robbery, described as a "slatternly maid," by some critics and historians. Mother Gish likely worked on the film crew in some capacity.

It is also true Mother Gish appeared in Lillian's last film, "The Whales of August." In the scene where Lillian is dusting a framed photograph on the wall, it is a photograph of Baby Lillian with Mother. Lillian says, "Hello, Mother," in the scene.
   
Jim Patterson, Editor

Lillian Gish on The Birth of an Era, Stage Magazine 1937

Lillian is sole author of this 1937 article, "The Birth of an Era," subtitled "The first twelve-reeler, the first two-hour feature, the first film to be seen in legitimate theaters at theater prices was The Birth of a Nation."

Page one of the article has a black-and-white still of Lillian standing next to the mustachioed Union Soldier from "The Birth of Nation." Caption: Lillian Gish, the unidentified extra, and the celebrated wistful glance. Although  the fans clamored for his name, the soldier in this famous still has always remained unknown."

Page two of the article has a half-page black-and-white still of one of Griffith's battle scenes. Lillian said smoke pots were used to simulate smoke from guns and cannons. Caption: "One of the first panoramic battle scenes, and still one of the greatest."

The final page of the three-page article has one one black-and-white still of the battle scene where Henry B. Walthall, the Little Colonel, and men approach the Union battle line to shove the Confederate battle flag into the mouth of a Union cannon. Caption: More masterpieces from th camera of Mr. Griffith's Billy Bitzer. Above, hand to hand conflict between Union and Confederate forces." The second black and white still shows Klansmen charging on Negroes with the caption: "Right, Ku Kluxers charge on Negro forces."


Begin Lillian's text:

"As I look back upon the making of the picture, the chief difficulty seems to have been finding the money to go on with the ideas Mr. Griffifth had in his head-or perhaps I should say in his heart, as he was from Kentucky, the son of Roaring Jake Griffith, a coonel in the Confederate Army. He firmly believed that the truth of the Civil War had never been told, and he was quite willing to dip into his heart's blood to tell, through this new medium of the silent screen (in many ways his own invention), the story he believed in above all else in the world. I am sure it seemed more real to him than the World War, which was then taking place.

As nothing like a twelve-reel film had ever been attempted before, he naturally met with opposition on all sides. When the so-called business men of the picture industry, believing him to be an impractical dreamer, re fused him financial aid, he went begging to the merchants of Los Angeles for a thousand dollars here, five thousand there, another two thousand from someone else.

I remember my mother, having saved three hundred dollars, implored Mr. Griffith to use the money for the picture, but as it was all we had in the world he refused to take it. As we had been working without salaries for weeks, he couldn't say when pay checks would start coming in again. The picture actually took nine weeks to make, but there were many days during this time. when work stopped and Mr. Griffith would be out trying to raise the money to continue.

At first we were told that we were going to do a moving-picture version of the (highly popular) play and (bestselling) novel by (Baptist Minister) Thomas Dixon called The Clansman, but anyone who has ever read either of those and has seen the picture, The Birth of a Nation, will know how far afield from the originals we went.

As actors, our picture schooling had been similar to that which Mr. Stanislavsky so graphically describes in Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood's fine translation of An Actor Prepares. There was never anything written for us and no scenario (any more than there were designs for sets; Mr. Griffith would explain to the head carpenter what he wanted and he would build them.)

There was a standard call for rehearsal whenever there was rain or the sun disappeared, as at such times all cameras stopped since it was before the days of artificial lights. During the rainy season there would be weeks of rehearsals, with Mr. Griffith outlining stories to be filmed far into the future. Some of them, including Faust and Joan of Arc, never reached the screen. We were rarely assigned parts, and the younger members of the company always rehearsed for the older members when the story was being developed, and all the "writing" was done by Griffith as he moved groups of characters around a room.

When the story was ready to go before the camera, the older players who were to play the parts on the screen came forward and acted the parts they had been watching us rehearse for them. This method gave them the advantage of not being over-rehearsed, and lso of watching the story quietly unfold before their eyes, giving them ideas that might have escaped had they not been kept fresh for the actual creation. It also taught the more inexperienced members what eventually would be expected of them.

At first I was not cast to play in The Clansmen. My sister and I had been the last to join the company, and we naturally supposed, this being a big picture, that the main assignments would go to the older members. But one day while we were rehearsing the scene where the colored man picks up the northern girl gorilla-fashion, my hair, which was very blond, fell far below my waist, and Griffith, seeing the contrast in the two figures, assigned me to play Elsie Stoneman (who was to have been Mae Marsh). My sister, a child at the time, was to have played the girl of twelve, little sister to the Colonel.

Very often we would play episodes without knowing the complete story, or in which film Griffith was going to use them, as he shrouded his ideas in great secrecy for fear another studio would hear of them and get them on the screen first. Only Griffith knew the continuity of The Birth of a Nation in its final form. There was much anxiety, and many tears shed, over the assignment of parts, as we all wanted to prove our worth before it was too late, and with photography in its undeveloped state we knew we would be passe by the time we reached eighteen.

The cameraman for The Birth of a nation was Billy Bitzer, who, together with Mr. Griffith, was inventor of the various new devices employed in the photography of the picture-devices never used before, and innovations in the art of motion-picture photography. Among us actors he was famous for his accurate eye, and he left his mark on everything his lens faced by bringing to accurate vision on the screeen many things the eye itself could not discern. This was wonderful for battlefields but most trying on faces. We used to beg for our close-ups to be taken just after dawn or before sunset, as the soft yellow glow was much easier to work in than the hard, overhead sun of midday.

Henry B. Walthall, or Wally, as he was affectionately called, came  from Alabama, and was everything in life that his character of the Little Colonel was on the screen: patient, dear, and lovable, but with little idea of time. Consequently all during the filming of the picture there was  a man hired for the sole purpose of getting him into make-up and to work on time, which in those days was around seven in the morning (that meant getting up at five and working steadily, sometimes without lunch, until sundown.)

Sometimes, Griffith was making scenes we were not in, he would send us to practice walking, first with comedy, then with drama, with pathos, or with tragedy. When he was satisfied with that we would have to learn to run in these different manners. Then we would have to do it with subtlety, for when the amera would be close to us, then broader, for when the camera would be in the distance, then for such times as the camera would be far in the distance (which would necessitate acrobatics); all this with complete body control and balance, as t might have to be done on a sea wall or on a mountain top. You had to know howto dance and handle horses, or if you didn't, these had to be learned outside the studio hours.

It is very strange in those old pictures to watch the wind blowing through the rooms, when the property man had forgotten to tack down curtains, tablecloths, and such tell-tale properties.

In The Birth of a Nation  we used as many as six hundred people, and the complete cost of the picture was $91,000. It was the first motion picture to run for two hours, and to be shown in a legitimate theater twice a day at theater prices. Its first run in New York was forty-seven consecutive weeks at the Liberty Theater. When it was shown in Boston it caused race riots and the firemen had to be called out to assist the police in dispersing the mob.

Mr. Griffith had his reward, however, when President Woodrow Wilson saw it t the White House and said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that is is all so terribly true." When this news flashed through the country, and it was learned that a mere motion picture had the power to stir feeling so deeply, The Birth of a Nation's reputation was made, and motion pictures took their place as an important part o our daily life."

Notes:

I like this article for several reasons, The Birth of a Nation was still fresh in the mind of Miss Gish and the public in 1937.  In the early 1930's it was re-released with a talking introduction by Griffith and Walter Houston.

It is interesting Lillian said Mae Marsh was planned to play the part of Elsie Stoneman. In her autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, she wrote Griffith had selected Blanche Sweet, page 133, for the part. But Lillian was younger with a fairer complexion, blond hair, and she had the look of female innocence. All of these attributes were important for the near ending scene where the Mulatto, or mixed race man, forces himself and his affections on Lillian. She fights him off as best she could and in the end is saved by the KKK.

It is interesting also Lillian admits in this piece, which she wrote, "When it was shown in Boston it caused race riots and the firemen had to be called out to assist the police in dispersing the mob."

Many critics and historians state Miss Gish defended the film and Griffith from charges of racism her whole life. She didn't defend him in this piece which, I stress, she wrote at a time The Birth of a Nation was still doing big business in theaters. .Sound films made silent films worthless, comical and unpopular but not The Birth of a Nation.

Late in life Lillian said she was proudest of this picture because it set the standards by which all other films were made. She did not condone its violence and racism except as it being accurate history as far as Griffith and Rev. Thomas Dixon were concerned.

In a July 11, 1961 Birmingham Post-Herald article, "Actress Defends Classic, Pro-Southern Movie," Miss Gish doesn't go quite that far. The article is written by Travis Wolfe, identified as a Post-Herald staff writer, The lede is "After 46 years, Lillian Gish still is defending David Wark Griffith's classic movie "The Birth of a Nation."

"Miss Gish, who starred in the very pro-Southern film of 1915 and who until last week appeared in "All the Way Home: at the Belasco Theater, said, "Birth of  Nation" was unjustly criticized."

"When the picture was shown in New York 46 years ago, it caused riots. Some persons objected to depicting Ku Klux Klansmen as heroes.

"Recently, a Montgomery, Ala., group had difficulty obtaining a copy of the silent film from New York for a private showing because of its controversial subject matter. The classic was banned in Atlanta last year even though it played there when it was originally released.

"Griffith was a great artist," said Miss Gish. "He put his life into that picture. He was marked with his personality and craftsmanship. He told the Civil War story as he knew it, and it was told to him since childhood. If it had not been sympathetic to the South, 'Birth of a Nation' wouldn't have been a Griffith film because Griffith was a Southerner."

The remainder of the article concerns Miss Gish's role on "All the Way Home." She spoke of her next project.

"It will be a live television show," said the 65-year-old Miss Gish. "Television had vitality during the early years.  When it was originating live from New York, this vitality was in the atmosphere, as in the early film days. There was only one chance, and you had to do it right. Television had the excitement, the challenge. People were dedicated and worked hard, and it showed in the finished product. I'd like to see more of that in television today."

Lillian admitted frustration with her role in "All the Way Home." "It's the modern lighting. I think lighting in the modern theater is wrong. It puts actors in the dark."

"It is not what is known as a commercial play," Miss Gish said. "A commercial play nowadays usually is a musical comedy. 'All the Way Home' is simply a great play."

"The play will remain open even though Miss Gish left the cast. She was replaced by another actress."  Lillian noted she was going to Europe "for a little rest."


Jim Patterson, Editor
LDGish.blogspot.com

Lillian Gish, My Religion, Helen Keller, and Jim Patterson

Lillian in the recording booth reading Helen Keller's "My Religion" to vinyl recording for distribution to libraries for the blind. The recording is available today on CD. Rights have not been granted for YouTube distribution. (Special photo courtesy of Talking Books Studios and Swedenborg Foundation.)

Photo Caption: Lillian Gish, silent screen star of the 1920's, recently recorded My Religion, a personal account of Helen Keller's faith, for talking books. Miss Gish did the recording at the request of the Swedenborg Foundation, Inc. and because of her personal friendship with Miss Keller. The book was Miss Keller's tribute to Emmanuel Swedenborg, an 18th century Swedish scientist and theologian. (American Federation of the Blind Newsletter, vol 9, No 3, October 1974.)


In a typed note by Marguerite L. Levine dated July 9, 1974,

Subject: Meeting with Miss Lillian Gish at AFB Talking Book Studios.

Miss Gish came today to the talking Book studios escorted by Mr. Darrell Ruhl, Editor of the Newsletter of the Swedenborg Foundation, in order to record "My Religion," one of Miss Keller's works.

Miss Gish met Helen Keller first in Hollywood in 1918 when Miss Keller was making the film "Deliverance." The Gish sisters, Lillian and Dorothy, were invited to join Helen Keller and her party on a horseback riding excursion. Dorothy refused as she expected it to be a dreadful experience, but Lillian went along and remembers it as one of the gayest times she ever had. Helen was obviously having great fun and shared her pleasure with her companions.

Another memorable occasion for Miss Gish was the premiere of "Helen Keller in Her Story" at which she sat next to Poly Thomson who interpreted for Miss Keller who seemd to follow the film with the greatest interest and ease.

There was never any correspondence between Miss Keller and Miss Gish but they met frequently through their respective lives.

Miss Gish will return July 11 to continue her reading of "My Religion," At that time we will visit the Helen Keller Room together and take pictures for the AFB Newsletter and the Swedenborg Newsletter.


From Box 35 of Lillian's Papers:

Box 35

Letter from Darrell Ruhl, Swedenborg Foundation, March 5, 1974,

Background: "Helen Keller her wonderful life of service which inspired countless numbers of people the world over. Helen Keller was a reader of Swedenborg In 1927 Helen Keller wrote a tribute to Swedenborg an eloquent little book entitled "My Religion" in which she credited the Swedish author with her spiritual development. The book has inspired thousands over the years and has been reprinted 13 times. It was made into a “talking book” for the disabled many years ago but Swedenborg lost the recording.

"We want to re-record it and make it available free of charge to libraries for the blind and offer it at cost to anyone else. The last time this book was recorded it was read by a man, but this time we feel it should be read with the feeling that Miss Keller herself were talking. It would have so much more impact than an impersonal voice.”

“We feel you would be an ideal actress for this project and would be most interested to learn your feelings regarding the undertaking of recording this book. We are aware that your time is valuable and your stature is such that your professional services might well be prohibitive, but unless we approach you, we’ll never know. 

“If you can find the time to read "My Religion," I think you will find it as poetic and inspiring as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale did as you will note in his introduction to the book. “ 

Darrell Ruhl, Assistant to the Manager, March 5, 1974.”

March 12, 1974 letter from Darrell Ruhl to Miss Gish:

"Thank you for telephoning yesterday.  I was most pleasantly surprised and certainly pleased to hear from you. 

“We are thrilled that your reaction to Helen Keller’s book was so favorable. It has long been a goal of mine to have this book recorded again and preferably by an actress who could make the book live. You have the necessary qualities. As a matter of fact, I wrote to you first thinking I would start at the top and go from there.

“As I listened to your voice I could clearly visualize how the recording would sound. I feel that given the eloquence of the writing and the inspirational message of My Religion, your reading will be just exactly the right ingredient to make a recording which will be of so much help to the blind and shut-ins – and to anyone else for that matter.

Letter of July 26, 1974, to Miss Gish from T H Spiers Executive Secretary of Swedenborg Foundation: 

“I would like to express our sincere gratitude for sharing your time and talent with us in recording 'My Religion.'

“We are confident your dramatization of this book will provide inspiration for both those deprived of vision and those nearly blind.  It will be a rare privilege for those ordering this “talking book” to have the eloquent words of Helen Keller read by one of our greatest actresses. 

“Your reading of the book was in perfect harmony with the tone of "My Religion" and even enhanced the meaning. He further stated that you were extremely diligent in seeking to make Swedenborg’s concepts as clear as possible in view of the fact that his 18^th century language is often difficult to read.” For this work, Miss Gish received a check for $200 and a leather bound copy of "My Religion."

                                                                                                                       

Historical note: In August 1974 The Library of Congress, Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Mona M. Werner and John Kozar, ordered 900 copies of My Religion by Helen Keller and read by Lillian Gish for its readers. 

The 900 copies were distributed to Libraries for the Blind throughout the country. I am positive it is the grand combination of Helen Keller and Lillian Gish that aroused their interest to such an extent. The service you have provided will be of tremendous value to countless numbers of handicapped people for years to come. Signed: Darrell Ruhl. "PS Thank you for the beautiful letter I received at home.”

In 2014 Helen Keller International and Jim Patterson nominated My Religion to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. Winners will be announced in April 2015. Send your supporting cards and letters to Dr. James Billington, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

All the Way Home with Lillian Gish and Jim Patterson

Playbill for Lillian's All the Way Home directed by Arthur Penn from March 1961. This comes from my aunt and uncle who saw the production. The original cover photo is blurred and it appears so here. No cover photos of the main players and no interior photos.

Lillian's name appeared on the second cast line by herself. She played the part of Catherine Lynch and her understudy was Shirley Gale. Her bio note, on page 24, is largely accurate, absent dates, but puts her in film at 12. Assuming a birth date of 1898, she would have been 14 when she made her screen debut in An Unseen Enemy directed by Griffith.

Bio note reads, "One of the most beloved actresses of stage and screen, Lillian Gish began her theatrical career as a tot (Baby Lillian) of five in In Convict's Stripes. Not too many years later (she was twelve)  she became one of the brightest stars of a brad new art form, the motion picture. Alone with her sister, Dorothy, she starred in a number of great silent films including D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms, and Way Down East, and for eighteen years she busied herself in Hollywood before returning to the stage. Since then, she has divided her time between stage and screen. Among her foot light appearances have been Uncle Vanya, Camille, The Star Wagon, Hamlet-in which she played Ophelia to John Gielgud's unforgettable Dane-The Trip to Bountiful, The Chalk Garden and Family Reunion. Among Miss Gish's recent films we find Duel in the Sun, Portrait of Jenny, The Night of the Hunter, Orders to Kill and The Unforgiven."


In his New York Times review, December 27, 1960, Brooks Atkinson headlined "Lillian Gish Shines in 'All the Way Home,' as She and Sister Have in Many Things." He continued, "WHEN the curtain goes up on the second act of "All the Way Home" at the Belasco Theatre, Lillian Gish is discovered sitting primly on a sofa, as the deaf and daft mother of a grown family, the audience applauds before she speaks a word."


Interesting features of this production:

Lillian made her Broadway debut at the Belasco Theater.

The production ran for 333 performances from November 1960 to September 1961.

Jeff Conaway, from Grease and the TV show Taxi, has a small part as one of four young boys. Conaway would have been 11 at the time. He died in 2011.

According to Playbill, "The action takes place in and around Knoxville, Tennessee, in May of 1915." Of course, that was the year Birth of a Nation was released and Lillian became an internationally famous "movie star." The production also gave her the opportunity to use her Southern accent.

Famous child actor John Megna is in the play. He died of AIDS in the mid 1990s.

All the Way Home was made into a film in 1963 with Jean Simmons and Robert Preston. Many of the Broadway cast members found parts in the film. Lillian was not in it.

Only one cast member of this production is living as of this writing. I have an interview with that cast member in a few weeks.

Jim Patterson
www.LDGish.blogspot.com

Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize 2014

From mayalin.com

Maya Lin is currently working on what is her final memorial, What is Missing? which focuses on bringing awareness to the current crisis surrounding biodiversity and habitat loss. 

Maya Lin has maintained a careful balance between art and architecture throughout her career, creating a remarkable body of work that includes large-scale site-specific installations, intimate studio artworks, architectural works and memorials.

Landscape is the context and the source of inspiration for Ms. Lin's art. She peers curiously at the landscape through a twenty-first century lens, merging rational and technological order with notions of beauty and the transcendental. Utilizing technological methods to study and visualize the natural world, Ms. Lin takes micro and macro views of the earth, sonar resonance scans, aerial and satellite mapping devices and translates that information into sculptures, drawings and environmental installations. Her works address how we relate and respond to the environment, and presents new ways of looking at the world around us. 

From recent environmental works such as Storm King Wavefield, Where the Land Meets the Sea and Eleven Minute Line to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where she cut open the land and polished its edges to create a history embedded in the earth, Ms. Lin has consistently explored how we experience the landscape. She has made works that merge completely with the terrain, blurring the boundaries between two- and three-dimensional space and set up a systematic ordering of the land tied to history, language, and time.

Her studio artwork has been shown in solo and group museum exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. Ms. Lin's current exhibition Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes originated at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle and is the first to translate the scale and immersive capacity of her outdoor installations to the interior space of a museum. Maya Lin: Three Ways of Looking at the Earth, Selections from Systematic Landscapes was shown most recently at The Pace Gallery (formerly PaceWildenstein) in September 2009.

Ms. Lin is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York City.

Her architectural works have included institutional and private commissions, from a chapel and library for the Children's Defense Fund to the Sculpture Center's space in Long Island City to Aveda's headquarters in downtown Manhattan to private residences throughout the Country. Ms. Lin completed the design for the Museum of Chinese in America's new space in Manhattan's Chinatown, which opened in the spring of 2009.

Maya Lin has been drawn to the critical social and historical issues of our time and addressed them in her memorials, including the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington DC, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL, the Women's Table at Yale University. Currently she is working on the Confluence Project, a multi-sited installation spanning the Columbia River system in the Pacific Northwest that intertwines the history of Lewis and Clark with the history of the Native American tribes who inhabit those regions. With a critical eye toward the environmental changes that have rapidly occurred, Ms. Lin's Confluence Project has brought significant ecological restoration to six state and national parks along the Columbia River Basin. It is an ongoing project with three of the six sites completed. For more information visit www.confluenceproject.com.

Ms. Lin is currently working on what will be her last memorial, entitled What is Missing? which will focus on bringing awareness to the current crisis surrounding biodiversity and habitat loss. Once again reinventing what a monument can be, What is Missing? will be a multi-sited work existing in select scientific institutions, online as a website, and as a book. It debuted at the California Academy of Sciences in September 2009 with a sound and media sculpture installation located at the Academy's East Terrace. 

A committed environmentalist, Lin has consistently focused on environmental concerns, promoting sustainable building design in her architectural works, while making the environment the subject of her artworks. She is deeply committed to focusing attention back to the environment and to ask us to pay closer attention to the natural world. 

Maya Lin received her Master of Architecture from Yale University in 1986, and has maintained a professional studio in New York City since then.  She serves on the boards of the Bloomberg Foundation, Museum of Chinese in America and What is Missing? Foundation. She is an honorary board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former member of the Yale Corporation and the Energy Foundation. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Presidential Design Award, the Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture, a National Endowment for the Arts artist' award, the William A. Bernoudy Resident in Architecture fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an AIA Honor Award, the Finn Juhl Prize, and honorary doctorates from Yale, Harvard, Williams, and Smith College among others. 

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2005 was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She has been profiled in magazines such as Time Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. In 1996 a documentary about her work, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Her book Boundaries, about her work and creative processes, is in its fifth printing with Simon & Schuster. Her architecture and artworks have consistently elicited praise and received awards from magazines and periodicals ranging from Time and Newsweek to Art in America and Architectural Record and The New York Times.

Nominations open March 2015 for the next Gish Prize. Most years the Prize committee has interpreted the guidelines established by Ms. Gish and her intent behind the prize as an award to recognize an artist who has already made significant artistic contributions and continues to at high place in their creative output (i.e. the prize bears a significant cash award and public recognition, and should therefore support an artist who will use the acknowledgement and funds to further their artistic ambitions, rather than a lifetime achievement award for someone who is retired). 

The Prize committee does not equate this with age, and they receive nominations for octogenarian and nonagenarians each year who are still at the height of their creative work. Regarding the silent cinema connection, I will note that Ms. Gish explicitly did not create a prize for film, and was very clear and extensive in her writing that artists across every possible discipline be considered (she listed about 20 different disciplines from poetry to architecture) so while a connection between Ms. Gish and a nominee is very special, it would not be a serious factor in the selection process.


Jim Patterson, Editor
www.LDGish.blogspot.com