Jim Patterson a Peek into Lillian's Eastside Apartment circa 1979

One of the more intimate portraits of Lillian appeared in Architectural Digest in April 1979. The Architectural Digest Visits: Lillian Gish added details to the star's life. Readers wanted such details from her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me.

Instead, Lillian used her book to focus on early cinema history for several reasons. She was an important figure in early cinema history and, she felt, the 1960s film industry, including producers who could cast her in new films, needed a reminder from one of its first stars.

Lillian wanted current audiences to see her early films and those of others and learn how they influenced later films and film stars. In this way, she helped audiences of the 1960s and 1970s re-discover silent film.

This fit in with her other plans to take her lecture Lillian Gish and the Movies to audiences across the US and Europe. This also helped her become a valued speaker at film festivals as she had firsthand knowledge of the films and other film stars. It was also the reminder to foreign producers she might have availability for new films.

To say The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me was a promotion tool for Lillian and her other projects maybe overstating the case. But she was well aware of how much money others had made off her and she had Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin as business models, From the period 1969 to 1979 Lillian had few worthwhile film or TV projects, "Twin Detectives" quickly comes to mind.

By 1979 she was ready, at 81 based on 1898, to let the sophisticated readers of Architectural Digest, which included many of her friends, into her Eastside apartment. The six-page article began with a beautiful photograph of Lillian, below, credited to Edward Rager.
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Caption: In repose, the indomitable Lillian Gish projects the same fragile grace that has distinguished her career fro more than sixty-five years. Her Manhattan apartment, which the actress had redesigned in the late 1940s, is similarly timeless.

Lillian's entry by Peter Carlsen, "Suddenly, as if in a frame of movie film, there is a glimpse of an extraordinary ageless figure, wearing a white cap, from which long hair of an extremely fine sahe of gold falls to her waist, For a moment, the decades peel away, and the exquisite child-woman of Broken Blossoms and Oprhans of the Storm moves into the room. It is not a celluloid apparition, but the real person. It is Lillian Gish. She still possesses the trusting gaze of a Victorian maiden, and she comports herself with the incomparable grace that was one of the hallmarks of her film era."

"I've always lived in New York, she recalls. 'Many years ago D.W. Griffith said to my sister and me: 'My dears, you must never stay in California for more than six months at a time. It is good for the body, but not for the mind or soul.'

"I remember the first time I went to the West Coast, how lovely it was. We opened the windows of the train and smelled orange blossoms and roses. That has all changed. But New York never does: It is always noisy, and dangerous and exciting."

Lillian spoke of her first New York house in the twenties: "Mother and I lived on Fifty-first Street, right by the river, in the days before the highway, so there was no traffic. But in the thirties we decided we needed a quieter location. First a penthouse, and then this smaller apartment."

Lillian did not initially live with her mother, preferring hotel living. "I must have lived in all of them, eventually," she recalled. "I was a nomad."

When Mother Gish died in 1948, Lillian "settled permanently in the tranquil apartment with its pleasing air of suspended time."

The writer noted, "There is nothing theatrical about her apartment. It is not crammed with memorabilia, nor filled with photographs of past triumphs. And every object that is to be seen has the air of clearly and logically fulfilling a function. Even the photographs trace, with the utmost economy and elegance, a rich life and a celebrated one. A small table contains portraits of her mother, herself and her sister, Dorothy, at all ages of their lives, while one living room wall is covered with photographs of other people who have been important to her."

Of Lillian's famous book collection: "But without a doubt, the possessions that mean the most of Miss Gish are her books. Their glowing ranks enrich the living room, and a random glance at any title page will often disclose the signature of the author. For this is another of the actress's talents: the ability to make lifelong and devoted freinds."

"Of course, in a sense, this aprtment is only a base. I travel all over the country, lecturing on films,; I'm still a nomad at heart. And as for decor, I've always said that I'm much too busy myself to be surrounded by anything complicated or overdone. I don't need pictures of myself either, because I have mirrors. What I do like is to entertain."

"At my mother's teas, we used to have everybody. Mary Pickford, Kit Cornell, people who knew that if they dropped by on Sunday, Mother would serve them tea and jsut sit and listen while the conversation went on all around her. And what wonderful conversation it was - people were witty and polished in those days. If you were to ask me what is most importnat in a home, I would say memories. The people who have sat in your chair! So many, over the yeras, and still I make new friends. Robert Altman sat there a while ago, and told me about A wedding, and persuaded me to be in it."

Carlsen wrote, "It is this lively dialogue with the past and future that makes a visit with Lillian Gish both engrossing and moving." She told him, "We haven't changed as much as we think we have, you know. I went to a college town in North Dakota recently, and they showed a print of Way Down East. Even in 1920 I had thought the story was a bit old-fashioned; but there the audience was, enthralled, enjoying the melodrama and the comedy.."

Carlsen concluded, "What Lillian Gish omitted o say was that her young audience, watching that young girl of long ago transcend the limitations of an infant medium with luminous grace, was also responding to a quality the actress has possessed all her life-the ability to make of the most unlikely situation something truthful and real. The same can be said of the space she lives in. It is neither more nor less than the remarkable personality it contains."

Lillian's Eastside apartment images:

Caption: The large oval portraits depict the young Gish sisters; movie pioneer D. W. Griffith ss the male figure at center. Flanking the triptych of the two sisters is Sir John Gielgud as hamlet, and a formal portrait of kilted Sir Ian Malcolm - "the handsomest man I ever saw."

 Caption: Miss Gish's bedroom is fittingly feminine, with pastel-toned Scalamandre upholstery and Stroheim and Romann drapery fabrics.

Caption: In the Dining Room, sconces illuminate a Cabuela Moreno portrait, off camera to the right, of Miss Gish and her sister, Dorothy. The other painting depicts their ancestor President Zachary Taylor, off camera to the left.  

Caption:  Caption: Small-scale traditional furnishings are arranged in delicate balance; a fir warms the scented air. The two paitings by Grandma Moses, an American primitive artist, were gifts, one of them from the artist and the other from actress Helen Hayes. Soft-toned fabrics are from Scalamandre, Greeff and Stroheim and Romann.

Caption: Lillian's famous book collection, some of it. Back-to-back chairs create a two-way axis for seating, and shelves contain many autographed books. Chinese rug is from Patterson, Flynn and Martin.

This issue contained two other historically interesting articles with Gish connections: A beautiful six-age photo essay on Old Battersea House owned by Malcolm and Christopher Forbes in London.

And, a photo essay on House of Legend: Updating John Barrymore's Former Residence Bella Vista. The house was built by Gish director King Vidor when he married Eleanor Boardman, a stat of the 1920s, it was subsequently sold to John Barrymore, "Prince John, America's Greatest Actor," upon his arrival in Hollywood in 1926. The house was long neglected and restored by designed Leonard Stanley.

Jim Patterson, Editor
www.LDGish.blogspot.com