Lillian Gish in Time/Life's The Roaring '20s

                                                     Time/Life's The Roaring '20s (Clara Bow, upper left, and Babe Ruth,                                                       upper right.)

                                                                   Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish

Gish’s deal with MGM was so lucrative that she asked for a cut to pay supporting actors more

Widely considered the finest actress of the silent era, Lillian Gish did more than any other performer to define the techniques that worked on film. Her trademark wistful gestures and contemplative looks offered viewers a portal into her characters’ souls. Fragile and vulnerable, Gish presented the perfect persona for the delicate damsels in distress she often played.

Like so many of the stars of the 1920s, Gish entered show business as a child. When she was 19, her lifelong friend and New York City neighbor Mary Pickford introduced her to director D. W. Griffith. Soon she was appearing in various Griffith productions, including feature-length films like the controversial Birth of a Nation in 1915.  

Gish left Griffith in 1925 for a deal with MGM that was so lucrative that she negotiated her contract down so her supporting actors and crew could get paid more. Gish shifted her focus to the theater in the 1930s and ‘40s, then returned to movies and the new medium of television in the 1950s. Her final film was the 1987 drama Whales of August, about two elderly and incompatible sisters played by Gish and another screen legend, Bette Davis.

Text from Time/Life's special on The Roaring '20s

Released January 2017.

Jim Patterson note: Lillian Gish’s last film with D. W. Griffith was Orphans of the Storm in 1922. She went abroad to film White Sister 1923 and Romola 1924 and Griffith had no role in either film. Her MGM career began in 1925.

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