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Lillian Gish
Age: 99 (passed away Feb. 27th, 1993)
Height: 5' 5 1/2"
Birth Place: Springfield, Ohio, USA
Born: Dec. 31st, 1969
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Lillian Gish's Main TV Roles
NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at
IMDB
BIOGRAPHY: Lillian Gish was born on October 14, 1893 in Springfield, Ohio. Her father James Lee Gish was an alcoholic who caroused around, was rarely at home and left the family to more or less to 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 all of 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. Actually, had she not made her way into films, Lillian quite possibly could have been one of the great stage actresses of all time. Ultimately, though, she found her way onto the big screen. In 1912 she met famed director D.W. Griffith. Impressed with what he saw, he immediately cast her in what was to be 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 wasn't making the large number of films that she was 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: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916). By the early 1920s her career was on its way down. As in 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 didn't appear at all on the screen in 1922, 1925 or 1929. However, 1926 was her busiest of the decade with roles in La boheme (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the decade wound to a close, "talkies" were replacing silent films. However, Lillian wasn't idle during her time away from the screen. She appeared in stage productions to acclaim of the public and critics alike. In 1933 she filmed His Double Life (1933), and then didn't make another film for ten years. When she did return in 1943, she played in two big-budget pictures, Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). It was as though she had never been away. Allthough these roles did not bring her the attention she had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She got 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 1955 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, Lillian died peacefully in her sleep in New York City. She was 99 years old.
TRIVIA:
- She was filmed for a scene in Woody Allen's film, "Zelig" (1983). She scolded legendary director of photography, Gordon Willis on his lighting set-up and, while the crew watched aghast, gave Willis step by step instructions on how to re-light the scene. Willis complied. The scene did not make it into the final version of the film.
- (1984) American Film Institute Life Achievement Award
- Was of French, English and German descent.
- Career spanned 75 years.
- Interred at Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, New York City, New York, USA.
- Every year on Gish's birthdate, October 14, New York's Museum of Modern Art shows at least one of her films or TV performances.
- She was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party and an active anti-communist. She went to her grave denying that _The Birth of a Nation (1915)_ (qv) was racist, despite ongoing protests that it was a glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. She was thrilled to be invited to the White House by President 'Warren G. Harding' (qv) following the premiere of _Orphans of the Storm (1921)_ (qv), and met with 'Benito Mussolini' (qv), whom she greatly admired, while filming _Romola (1924)_ (qv) in Italy. She was an ardent supporter of the America First Committee, which was opposed to the United States entering World War II, and refused to vote for either 'Franklin Delano Roosevelt' (qv) or 'Wendell Willkie' (qv) in 1940 because both "were more interested in other countries than in their own.".
- Gish was taught how to shoot by notorious outlaw 'Al J. Jennings' (qv), who was in one of her films. When 'John Huston (I)' (qv) and 'Burt Lancaster' (qv) took her to the desert to teach her how to shoot for _The Unforgiven (1960)_ (qv) they were astounded to discover she could shoot more accurately and faster than they. She found that she liked shooting and over the years had developed into an expert shot.
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