- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLillian Diana Gish
- Nickname
- The First Lady of American Cinema
- Height5′ 5½″ (1.66 m)
- Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused, was rarely at home, and left the family to, more or less, fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish, and their mother, Mary Gish, a.k.a. Mary Robinson McConnell, tried their hand at acting in local productions. Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared before stage audiences with great success. Had she not made her way into films, Lillian quite possibly could have been one of the great stage actresses of all time; however, she found her way onto the big screen when, in 1912, she met famed director D.W. Griffith. Impressed with what he saw, he immediately cast her in her first film, An Unseen Enemy (1912), followed by The One She Loved (1912) and My Baby (1912). She would make 12 films for Griffith in 1912. With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart".
In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (1915). She was not making the large number of films that she had been in the beginning because she was successful and popular enough to be able to pick and choose the right films to appear in. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance (1916). By the early 1920s, her career was on its way down. As with anything else, be it sports or politics, new faces appeared on the scene to replace the "old", and Lillian was no different. In fact, she did not appear at all on the screen in 1922, 1925 or 1929. However, 1926 was her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the decade wound to a close, "talkies" were replacing silent films. However, Lillian was not idle during her time away from the screen. She appeared in stage productions, to the acclaim of the public and critics alike. In 1933, she filmed His Double Life (1933), but did not make another film for nine years.
When she returned in 1943, she appeared in two big-budget pictures, Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946), but lost to Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge (1946).
One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955), also notable as the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton. In 1969, she published her autobiography, "The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me". In 1987, she made what was to be her last motion picture, The Whales of August (1987), a box-office success that exposed her to a new generation of fans. Her 75-year career is almost unbeatable in any field, let alone the film industry. On February 27, 1993, at age 99, Lillian Gish died peacefully in her sleep at her Manhattan apartment in New York City. She never married.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson - Lillian and Dorothy Gish were born into a broken family. Her restless father, James Lee Gish, was frequently absent. Her mother, Mary Robinson McConnell, a.k.a. Mary Gish, had entered into acting to make money to support the family. As soon as Lillian and her younger sister were old enough, they became part of the act. To supplement their income, the two sisters also posed for pictures and acted in melodramas of the time. In 1912, they met fellow child actress Mary Pickford, and she got them extra work with Biograph films.
Director D.W. Griffith was impressed by both sisters, especially the elder, with her exquisitely fragile, ethereal beauty. Over the next decade, she became one of Griffith's greatest stars. She appeared in features such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Orphans of the Storm (1921). With Griffith, she became the greatest screen heroine of the time and was known as "The First Lady of the Silent Screen". She even directed a film, Remodeling Her Husband (1920), which starred her sister.
After 13 years with Griffith, she went to MGM, where her first picture was La Bohème (1926). Her new contract gave her control over the type of picture, the director, the supporting lead and the cameraman. In the heady, jazzy late 1920s, her star began to wane and sound pictures became the rage with the viewing public. She resisted the new sound pictures, as she believed that silent pictures had a greater power and impact on audiences. And this was true in the beginning, as they did not worry about the microphone. She was released by MGM in 1928 and went back to the stage with great success, where she would continue, on and off, for the next half-century. She never forgot D.W. Griffith and helped care for the ailing former director and his wife. Griffith died in 1948.
In the 1940s she appeared in three big-budget films: Duel in the Sun (1946), Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946). In 1970, she received a special Academy Award 'for superlative artistry and distinguished contributions to the progress of motion pictures'. Her last film was The Whales of August (1987), in which she shared the lead with Bette Davis. Gish never married.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsJames Leigh de Guiche
- RelativesDorothy Gish(Sibling)
- Small frame
- Doll-like looks
- Early roles as innocent, virginal characters who are victimized by a cruel world
- Later often played willful but conflicted women
- She was taught how to shoot by notorious western outlaw Al J. Jennings, who was in one of her early films (after having served a long term in prison for train robbery). When John Huston and Burt Lancaster took her to the desert to teach her how to shoot for The Unforgiven (1960), they were astounded to discover she could shoot more accurately and faster than they did. She found that she liked shooting, and over the years had developed into an expert shot.
- Left her entire estate, which was valued at several million dollars, to Helen Hayes. Hayes died 18 days after Gish.
- She and Mary Pickford were childhood friends, but Mary tried to never be left alone with Lillian--remembering her mother's superstitious belief that "the good die young", Mary was in constant fear that Lillian would drop dead at any moment.
- While shooting Way Down East (1920) she was required to lie down on a slab of ice that was floating in a river for several hours in order to shoot a scene. While she did this, one of her hands was immersed in freezing cold water for hours, which permanently damaged the nerves in her wrist.
- After her amicable parting with D.W. Griffith she joined MGM in 1925, but was unceremoniously dumped when Greta Garbo emerged as a star. Considered a "sexless antique", she turned to radio and her first love, the theater. Ironically, MGM had Garbo on the set of The Scarlet Letter (1926) every day to watch Gish work as part of her apprenticeship.
- Lionel Barrymore first played my grandfather, later my father, and finally, he played my husband. If he'd lived, I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.
- I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive.
- Fans always write asking why I didn't smile more in films. I smiled in Annie Laurie (1927), but I can't recall that it helped much.
- Those little virgins, after five minutes you got sick of playing them--to make them more interesting was hard work.
- [1919] Marriage is a business. A woman cannot combine a career and marriage . . . I should not wish to unite the two.
- The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1956) - $10 .000
- The White Sister (1925) - $5,000 /week
- An Unseen Enemy (1912) - $20
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