Jim Patterson note: The text is as it appears in the 1935 publication. I thank Ursuline's librarians for proving this extremely useful contribution. Lillian detailed very little of her Ursuline experience in her book, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me with Anne Pinchott in 1969. Reviewers criticized Lillian for not detailing much of her own life in the book. She mostly detailed the making of her films, D. W. Griffith, her work after Griffith, and the film industry's lack of praise for the Father of Film. She did often thank her father, who deserted his family, for giving her the gift and love of work. Some of the details come from "Life and Lillian Gish" by famed author Albert Bigelow Paine in 1932. Here are discussed Lillian's fondness of the early laxative Castoria, her love of ice cream, and her love of baked beans. These are simply not details Lillian later mentioned in writing, lectures, or in published interviews. She managed a slender waist her entire life. You might also find a few other surprises in this student article. JP
The following pages are from Oak Leaves December 1935, published by Students of Ursuline Academy, Oakland, Missouri. Pages 15-17 contains this submission by Peggy Williams, Junior:
Childhood of a Famous Actress
"Everyone has heard of Lillian Gish, both in connection with
her work on the legitimate stage, and in connection with her later work in the
movies. Her pictures “Romola,” “Way Down East,” and “The White Sister,” are
still remembered for their perfect technique and the spiritual quality of their
character portrayals. She is a unique artist.
Lillian Gish is a very famous star, and as such, she is
naturally of great interest to us. In addition, she has an appealing
personality that exerts its charm even over the radio, and her beauty is
apparent even in newspaper pictures. But she has a stronger appeal than all
this to us Ursuline girls, because she was at one time an Ursuline pupil,
having been at school about one time with our sisters when the academy was on
Twelfth and Russell Boulevard in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Lillian Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1896. A year
later her family removed to Dayton, Ohio, where her almost equally famous
sister Dorothy was born. The father was an amiable, good-natured man but
intemperate, and while the girls were still quite young, Mrs. Gish was forced
to separate the two little girls. This necessity on her part led to the
formation of one of America’s leading actresses, for the children soon became
members of a traveling troupe of actors and actresses.
Lillian’s life for several years was a very hard one, and
necessarily so, for the company she was with was decidedly a second rate one.
Life on the road is so hard that it wears down even old and hardened troopers.
Lillian Gish was only a little over six when she joined her first company and
frail in physique, but she was never heard to complain of the hardships she had
to endure.
Poor and insufficient food, disturbed sleep when traveling,
snatched lying on a hard seat in a day coach, miserable hotels in the small
towns where the troupe played – all these make it seem incredible that the
child, who later in her career was so often called “airy, fairy Lillian,” could
find the life even endurable. Yet she was to write later she saw something
beautiful in the hardships of her childhood, and that was due to the love and
care which the troupers lavished on such a child.
It was perhaps her unmurmuring acceptance of the hardships
in her life that won for her the following tribute: “Lillian Gish has ever held
high the torch of beauty during her entire career as stage and screen star, and
with undeviating purpose has been the representative of the finest and best
traditions of the theater.” She had been in the theater from early childhood,
had borne the stress and strain of the actresses’ life, and had risen above its
difficulties. Her reward was the world’s respect and admiration.
Even as a child, Lillian Gish was lovely. She was very fair
of complexion with beautiful blonde hair that fell around her face in natural
waves and ringlets. Her face was wistful and delicate with a trace of lurking
sadness. Thus, she gave observers the impression of a tiny angel, a little sad
at having to leave her heavenly home for an existence on this wicked earth.
With all her spirituelle
air, she was quite a human little girl with quite a human appetite for certain
kinds of food. Ice cream, for instance, she doted on, and her idea of perfect
luxury was to be able to indulge in an ice cream cone, or a five-cent dish of
pink ice cream. The latter she and her impish sister Dorothy used to make into
“mashed potatoes” and spread on cookies or lady fingers, if they were fortunate
enough to have either.
Baked beans, surprisingly enough, were one of Lillian’s
favorite foods, and, fragile though she looked, she had quite a capacity for disposing
of her pet edible. Before her mother had separated from the intemperate Papa
Gish, Lillian occasionally used to accompany him on his trips to the corner
saloon, the attraction being the baked beans served at the free lunch counter.
Once, her grandfather, who had been looking for her somewhat anxiously, found
her in her father’s favorite haunt, seated on a high stool at the lunch
counter, where the “airy, fairly Lillian” was polishing off quite a good-sized
platter of baked beans!
Lillian was also extremely fond of Castoria, and drank it
whenever she could get it. Her Aunt Emily, whom the girls visited each summer,
kept a bottle of the medicine on the bottom pantry shelf. Lillian dosed herself
with it every day until Aunt Emily filled the bottle with cod liver oil. Poor
Lillian, suspecting nothing, took her usual big swallow; she did not get over
the shock for some time, and naturally she was off Castoria forever.
On the stage, Lillian
played in several of the good old melodramas. Her roles were always pathetic
ones, suited to her haunting, appealing personality. She was always the poor
child whose life was ruined by the villain; or the wistful darling who reformed
the bad, bad villain just in the pink of time; or the angel child who brought
everyone on the stage in the end to rejoice over a happy marriage. Her wistful
face often helped to put some such show over, and probably saved more than one
show from ruination.
When Lillian was almost fifteen, she was sent to Massillon,
Ohio, for a long visit. She had a very hard year, and was on the verge of a
nervous break-down. After a few weeks in Massillon, she learned that her mother
had opened a little confectionery in Saint Louis. Lillian insisted on joining
her mother, so that she might help her. Her mother, however, soon decided that
it would be better all around if Lillian did not help in the confectionery, and
that she should be in school. Poor Lillian had had only fragmentary experience
of schools so far.
And thus, it came about that Lillian Gish became a border in
the Ursuline Academy at Saint Louis. Here she found herself in surroundings
altogether novel. At first, she was unwilling to have either nuns or fellow
boarders know that she had been on the stage. In fact, she was under the
impression that the sisters would consider an actress, even a fifteen-year-old
one, a very undesirable boarder and she had had all the labels removed from her
trunks before coming to the convent.
Lillian was not long in coming to love the convent and all
it stood for. She reveled in the solitude, the shut-in-ness of the place. She
became utterly devoted to the nuns, and was heard to say more than once that
they were the most truly refined women she had ever met. Naturally spiritual,
she was attracted by the convent routine, and more than once was heard to say
she would like to be a nun. Her teachers say she was always gracious and
pleasant to her companions, but her natural reserve kept her from being “a good
mixer.” She once asked her favorite sister to point out any faults she might be
guilty of, saying: “I want to eradicate any fault in me that might be an
annoyance to others.” The sister declares that, after watching Lillian
carefully for weeks, she was unable to find any fault in her. She was a perfect
boarder.
Years later, when Lillian Gish played “The White Sister,” it
was remarked by the critics that she must at some time have been intimately
connected with nuns to be able to depict a religious [person] so perfectly. She was very
desirous of dedicating this play to her old teachers, but the management
objected.
Lillian Gish stepped from the convent into young womanhood.
When the end of the term came she returned to her mother, and it was not long
after she returned to her career as an actress on the screen, where her beauty
has been written about, talked about and almost wept over. Albert Bigelow Paine
compares her beauty to a strain of Debussy music; to the beauty of Keats’ “Eve
of St. Agnes.” In his biography of her he says: “To say that her beauty is
spiritual only partly tells the story. It is that, but it is something more. It
has a haunting, eerie quality that has to do with Elfland (sic), and lonely
moors—the face that seen by homing lad at evening leaves him forever undone.
Scores of men, and women too, have tried to write about it lightly, but
underneath you feel the magic working. They have glimpsed ‘Diana’s silver horn’
and are forever changed.'”
Peggy
Williams, Junior
Ursuline Academy, December 1935
-30-
Jim Patterson
JEPWriter@gmail.com
Posted March 24, 2017
