Jim Patterson Remembers Lillian Gish in I Never Sang for My Father

I Never Sang Got My Father rand for 124 performances at the Longacre Theater on Broadway. January 1968 to May 1968. I was in elementary school and did not see. This Playbill comes from my aunt and uncle who saw the play in late March 1968.

"A soap opera is a soap opera whichever way you slice the soap." Clive Barnes began his review for the New York Times. "Lillian Gish's delicately fluttery mother, warm and attractive, is another performance worthy of a more productive cause," he wrote. "The writing," he said, "was overheated."

Hal Holbrooke, then 43, opens and ends the play with, "Death ends a life but not a relationship." It was a line Lillian, then 70 if one accepts 1898 as her birth, loved and repeated many times after the death of sister Dorothy Gish in 1968. Lillian's character, Margaret Garrison, dies during the play.

The Playbill is fascinating for several reasons. The bio paragraph for Lillian is largely consistent with her autobiography and interviews. Her most recent film at that time was The Comedians and it includes some silent and recent sound films as well as her favorite stage roles. It ends with this, "Miss Gish, who loaned her artistry to television in that medium's earliest hours, will be next seen in the telecast of Arsenic and Old Lace with Helen Hayes and Boris Karloff as her costars."

Sadly Karloff died and his part went to Fred Gwynne in the ABC Movie of the Week version of Arsenic and Old Lace. After I was that telecast, I became fascinated with Miss Gish and began reading and then correspondence to her through the Museum of Modern Art.

Another fascinating thing about this production of I Never Sang for My Father was silent star Lois Wilson, also a New Yorker, was Lillian's standby. Wilson was a Pennsylvanian whose parents moved to Alabama when she was a child. Wilson graduated Alabama Normal College, now the University of West Alabama. She went Hollywood to be in films where she won a beauty contest in 1915. Lois Wilson is considered the first Miss Alabama, She starred in many silents, perhaps the most notable was 1923's The Covered Wagon.

When I Never Sang for My Father was filmed in 1970 it starred Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman. Dorothy Stickney played the part Lillian originated on stage. Stickney originated Berthe in the original Broadway run of Pippin in 1976/7 with Ben Vereen and Irene Ryan. Stickney lived to be 101. The film received far better reviews than the play.

This Playbill contained cigarette commercials for Kent, Lark, Marlboro, and Pall Mall. Bianca, a breath drop, was also advertised.




Extra: Variety, April 9, 1969


Arsenic and Old lace
(Wednesday Night Movie)
With Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Robert Crane, Fred Gwynne, Sue Lyon, Billy De Wolfe, Bob Dishy, David Wayne, Jack Gilford, others.

Exec Producer: Hubble Robertson

Producer/Adapter: Luther Davis
Director: Robert Scheerer
120 minutes, Wed., 9 p.m.
Participating ABC TV (Tape)

ABC's TV revival of "Arsenic and Old Lace" was still almost as good as  it was 28 years ago  when Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse first brought it to the Fulton Theater back in 1941.

Changes in the original script were limited to the necessary updating of a few topical gags to jive with the times plus turning the lead (Bob Crane) into a television critic and his finance (Sue Lyon) into a TV actress.

Acting was good and professional. But you'd expect that , from a cast of pros headed up by Helen Hayes and Lillian Gish as the  murderous but well-meaning little old Brewster sisters. Crane, of course, is chief hero of "Hogan's Heroes" and supporting thesps Fred Gwynne, Jack Gilford, David Wayne, Bob Dishy and Billy De Wolfe were almost as familiar to TV addicts.

Producer Luther Davis tried a couple of innovations to take the curse of TV's inherent disadvantages vis-à-vis the stage. The annoyance of the inevitable commercial interruptions was relieved somewhat by closing each pre-blurb scene with a slightly exaggerated expression of amusement, terror, or utter disbelief.

Also unusual were a couple of brief attempts to maintain elements of the original theater atmosphere, with the camera panning the crowd both pre-curtain and at curtain call. The first time, before action got underway, it seemed artificial and strained. But somehow, by the final curtain, the  panning back and forth between applauding audience and thesps on stage came off well. Especially so during the surprise twist at the very end when 11 of the 13 bodies, referred to but never seen during the action, came to life, emerged from their cellar graves to take their bows with the live ones.

The play ends with Crane relived to learn he is not related to the Brewster sisters. "I'm a bastard," he shouts.
Jim Patterson
JamesPatterson705@gmail.com