2016 Highlights in The Year of Lillian Gish

                   "It's Not Only Long - It's Read!" Lillian brushing her hair. She never cut it. circa late                              1940s.

2016 – Highlights of The Year in Gish

December 30, 1925 The 90th anniversary of “Ben-Hur” with Ramon Navarro. The film was released December 30 1925 and many fans did not see it until 1926. Lillian is among the many MGM stars who saw and thus appeared in the crowd during the chariot scene.

February 46th anniversary of Lillian Gish's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (For film work).

March 2016 100th birthday of playwright Albert Horton Foote, Jr. (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) perhaps best known for his screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television, including The Trip to Bountiful starring Lillian Gish as Carrie Watts. (Lillian Gish also played this role in the first Broadway production of "The Trip to Bountiful.") He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta and two Academy Awards, one for an original screenplay, Tender Mercies, and one for adapted screenplay, To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1995, In describing his three-play work, The Orphans' Home Cycle, the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal said: "Foote, who died last March, left behind a masterpiece, one that will rank high among the signal achievements of American theater in the 20th century." In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

May 8, 1947 The 70^th anniversary of premiere of “Duel in the Sun” Lillian received an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actress

August 9, 1926 The 90^th anniversary of “The Scarlett Letter” starring Lillian Gish and Lars Hansen

September 5 100^th anniversary of “Intolerance,” premiered September 5, 1916. Two of the most famous images in silent cinema are from “Intolerance.” (1) The Babylon Gate and (2) Lillian Gish rocking the cradle of time.

October 14 Lillian Gish’s birthday!

December 1, 1966 the 50^th anniversary of “Follow Me Boys” a Walt Disney production with Lillian in a supporting role.

The fourth Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize recipient Bob Dylan (1997) awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He did not attend the awards ceremony.  

November 2016 The 23^rd Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize to Elizabeth LeCompte. Ceremony at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Manhattan.  

October 2016 25th anniversary of Lillian Gish's induction into the Theater Hall of Fame in New York!

August/October 1986 30^th anniversary of filming “The Whales of August” on Cliff Island, Maine. 

The film premiere was August 19, 1987. This was Lillian’s last film.

December 2016 “Whales of August” playwright David Barry dies.

December 2016 Death of Fritz Weaver, 90, Lillian’s Broadway costar in Eugene O‘Neill’s “The Family Reunion.” (1958)

November 2016 Death of Tammy Grimes, 82, Lillian’s Broadway costar in “A Musical Jubilee” (November 13, 1975-February 1, 1976)

December 16, 2016 Library of Congress, National Film Registry, selects “The Musketeers of Pig Alley,” cinema’s first gangster film, starring Robert Harron and Lillian Gish and directed by D. W. Griffith in 1912. The film premiered October 31, 1912

2017 Events:

30^th anniversary of Lillian’s book “An Actor’s Life for Me!”

30^th anniversary of “The Whales of August” released August 1987.

October 14 Lillian’s birthday!

30^th anniversary of The D. W. Griffith Prize to Lillian Gish.

24^th Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize 

Critical Response to D. W. Griffith's 1912 "Musketeers of Pig Alley" a 2016 selection of the National Film Registry

Crticial response (1912-1915) to D. W. Griffith's "Musketeers of Pig Alley" placed on the National Film Registry, 2016

A fan card designed for Lillian Gish circa late 1960s or eaerly 1970s. 

In The Chicago Daily Tribune of October 28, 1915, Flickerings from Filmland columnist Kitty Kelley, wrote,” Couldn't Get By. The following cutouts were ordered to films inspected by the municipal censor board at the city hall yesterday:  THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (Biograph).   Thugs assaulting man and subsequent scene of robbery; doping wine.”

Apparently, Griffith’s film, one of eleven films in that edition of the newspaper to have censored scenes, was too realistic for Chicago audiences. So said city hall film censors. The “doping wine” is a scene where a gangster places a power in Miss Gish’s drink. Spoiler alert: She is saved from drinking it. These censored scenes survive in the copy of the film preserved by the Library of Congress on the National Film Registry.

In the Amusements column of The Rome (New York) Daily Sentinel of December 21, 1912 had the following summary of “Musketeers of Pig Alley”:

“At the Casino (Theater) tonight the program is very well selected having a variety that cannot   help   but strike the pleasing point with all.  The Biograph picture, The Musketeers of Pig Alley, is an underworld story which will remind   many who see it of some recent happenings in New York City. There are gangs and gang feuds.    The whole production is handled with much care, and is a strong release. Much is printed from   time to time in the newspapers of the workings of gangsters, but the public gains but a vague   idea of the actual facts. Much has been done and is  still   being   done,  to  wipe  out  this   evil      which has  long   been   a   menace  to  the  respectable  citizen  and  this   picture   shows   the   situation   as   it  is,  and  the  extreme   necessity  for  radical   action  on  the  part  of  the authorities. While the theme of the story is  decidedly interesting  and exciting,  it  also   serves  as  a  consistent  vehicle  to  present  the  facts.”

Note: “Musketeers of Pug Alley” put images of gangster life before 1912 audiences thus making “this evil” more gripping and startling to viewers. It helped in policing and in public awareness and participation with law enforcement. It also allowed audiences to see the important role law enforcement officers have and the dangers they face. The film shows gunfights and brawls between police and gangsters.  

An advertisement for “Musketeers of Pig Alley” in the same paper for December 21, 1912, read: “’MUSKETEERS    OF   PIG ALLEY" A depiction of gangster evil. This Biograph picture is especially good even for them. It’s very exciting and a typical New York story. Note: As Miss Gish said whenever I congratulated her on having one of her films placed on the National Film Registry: “It [the film] has stood the test of time.”

Admission to “Musketeers of Pig Alley,” on a double bill with “The Supreme Test,” described as an Essanay film, was 5 cents.

In 1970 Miss Gish appeared in Schenectady, New York, with her one-woman program, “Lillian Gish and the Movies,” at the Proctor Theater sponsored by the American Theater League. The ATL used a mixed photograph of Lillian that featured a scene from “The Musketeers of Pig Alley.”

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Jim Patterson, Editor

LDGish.blogspot.com