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Lillian Gish
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"The First Lady of the Silent Screen," Lillian Gish was the movie industry's first true actress. A pioneer of fundamental film performing techniques, she was the first star to recognize the many crucial differences between acting for the stage and acting for the screen, and while her contemporaries painted their performances in broad, dramatic strokes, Gish delivered finely etched, nuanced turns carrying a stunning emotional impact. While by no means the biggest or most popular actress of the silent era, she was the most gifted, her seeming waiflike frailty masking unparalleled reserves of physical and spiritual strength. More than any other early star, she fought to earn film recognition as a true art form, and her achievements remain the standard against which those of all other actors are measured. Born Lillian de Guiche October 14, 1893, in Springfield, OH, Gish, her younger sister, Dorothy, and their mother, actress Mary Gish, soon relocated to New York. Beginning their acting careers not long after, the girls were in short time the family breadwinners.
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Lillian Gish (1893–1993) and Dorothy Gish (1898?–1968) were born in Ohio, made their theatrical debuts at a very early age and by 1902 had begun touring through the eastern U.S. and Canada. In 1912 they joined the production company of the pioneer American film director D. W. Griffith. The sisters appeared together in silent-film classics by Griffith, such as Hearts of the World (1917) and Orphans of the Storm (1921); Lillian appeared without her sister in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Way Down East (1920). Each of the actors made many more silent films; with the advent of talking pictures, they returned to the stage.
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Lillian Gish had very delicate facial features, her wide set eyes and tiny mouth could have easily been overwhelmed by her long, wavy tresses. Many ladies with small facial features find that too much hair simply takes over everything else.
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Actress Lillian Gish, often dubbed "First Lady of the Silent Screen," dies at age 97. Gish, born in 1896 in Springfield, Ohio, started acting on the stage at age five with her mother and sister Dorothy to help support the family. In 1912, an old family friend, Gladys Smith-who had changed her name to Mary Pickford-introduced the family to director D.W. Griffith, and the Gish sisters started working in their first film the same day. Lillian worked closely with Griffith until the early 1920s and became a silent-movie superstar. However, with the coming of sound, she returned to the stage and appeared in few movies until her comeback in 1978, in her early 80s.
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Lillian Gish virtually invented screen acting. Entering films at a time when most "serious" thespians regarded motion pictures as a rather base form of employment, Gish brought to her roles a sense of craft substantially different from that practiced by her theatrical colleagues. In time, her sensitive performances elevated not only her stature as an actress, but ... the reputation of movies as an art form. Both Lillian and her younger sister Dorothy were introduced to stage work at an early age. In 1912 the girls travelled to New York to pay a courtesy call on their friend Gladys Smith, who soon came to be more widely known as Mary Pickford. Smith was acting at the time in films for the Biograph Company.
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The actress Lillian Gish was born as Lillian de Guiche in Springfield, Ohio. Her sister was the actress Dorothy Gish. The father was an alcoholic and was most of the time absent, the family was on their own. The mother Mary Gish and her daughters began to act on stage to earn money for the living. This was the beginning of a successful theater career for the next 13 years.
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Lillian Gish