LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Richard Barthelmess: Lillian Gish
built 202 days ago
The presence of Richard Barthelmess adds a poetic quality to this romantic melodrama. Tony Gillardi (Barthelmess) is a flower vendor on New York's East Side. His brother, Carlo (Frank Puglia), is the favorite of their mother (Florence Auer), but in reality, he is a weak-willed youth who is under the control of Nick Di Silva (William Powell), a gangster who runs a Chinese theater as a cover for his operations. Di Silva and Carlo rob an Automat, but Tony convinces his brother that the money should be returned. Tony takes the money to the Automat himself, but is arrested for the crime and sent to prison. When he is released, he wants to get Di Silva but is dissuaded by his sweetheart, Molly O'Connor (Dorothy Gish, who is wasted in this role).
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Richard Barthelmess besuchte das Trinity College in Hartford und spielte nebenher Theater. Seine Neigung zur Schauspielerei hatte er von seiner Mutter Carolyn Harris geerbt, die ebenfalls Schauspielerin in Amateur-Theateraufführungen war. 1916 bekam Barthelmess das Angebot in dem Film Gloria's Romance eine Rolle zu übernehmen. Nachdem ihm eine Freundin der Familie Zutritt zum Filmgeschäft verschafft hatte, unterschrieb er 1918 einen Vertrag bei David Wark Griffiths First National Studios und spielte mit Lillian Gish 1919 in Broken Blossoms (dt. Gebrochene Blüten), einem Drama, das mittlerweile als Meisterwerk Griffith' gilt.
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Richard "Dick" Semler Barthelmess (May 9, 1895 – August 17, 1963) was a silent film star and the first nominee of the Academy Award for Best Actor. The son of an actress, Barthelmess began acting in college, doing amateur productions. Convinced by a family friend, actress Alla Nazimova, to try acting professionally, he made his first film appearance in 1916 in the serial Gloria's Romance as an extra. His next role, in War Brides opposite Alla Nazimova, attracted the attention of legendary director D. W. Griffith, who offered him several important roles, finally casting him opposite Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920).
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Gentle ideologist Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) migrates to England hoping to sow the seeds of Buddhism's pacifist canons. Instead, he ends up as an opium addict in London's seedy Limehouse district. Enter ethereal waif Lucy (Lillian Gish), who collapses at Huan's door thanks to another battering by her drunkard, pugilist father (Donald Crisp). As Huan nurses Lucy back to health, a tacit romance blooms … with tragic results.
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Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) leaves his native China to spread the word of the Buddha in the western world. His optimism fades as he is faced with the brutal reality of London’s gritty inner-city. However, his mission is realized in his devotion to the “broken blossom” Lucy Burrows (Lillian Gish), the beautiful but unwanted and abused daughter of boxer Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp).
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Richard Barthelmess gives a sensitive portrayal of a Chinese man who travels to England to spread the pacifist teachings of the East. Instead, the dispirited Huan ends up as an opium addict in London’s seedy Limehouse district. A young Lillian Gish illuminates the screen she playing a fifteen-year-old street urchin who longs to escape her miserable existence. Emotionally scarred by the torment and neglect of her abusive father (Donald Crisp), she collapses in the shop of the lonely and disillusioned "yellow man." As he tenderly nurses her back to health, an unspoken romance flowers between them, awakening in each of them feelings of love they thought themselves forever denied.
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Lillian Gish