It felt like a celebration for film scholars and buffs alike at the 2nd annual convention of the Society for Cinephiles because of the presence of the living film legend - Miss Lillian Gish.
The convention brings together numerous film historians, archivists, collectors, and fans dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of America's film heritage, especially the early silent films. The theme for the four-day film festival held at the Hyatt Regency in Mineapolis, was the artistic work of the late Dorothy Gish, film and stage actress par excellence, and also younger sister to Lillian.
Lillian and Dorothy were inseparable, devoted sisters. Gish joyfully greets any opportunity to praise Dorothy and her work, always insisting that "Dorothy was by far the more talented sister anyway." It was logical, therefore, that Gish had accepted the Society's invitation to attend the convention, introduce the films, comment on the early days of movies, and answer questions from her devoted admirers. This remarkable woman, now well into her ninety-first year, delayed the start of her 106th film - The Whales of August, with Bette Davis, to be released this fall - and headed instead for Minneapolis.
The Gish sisters were born in Ohio. When their father deserted the family, their mother, a sometime actress, took the girls to New York to look for work. The girls were only four and five when they first appeared on stage. They never went to school except erratically for brief periods. They never stopped working, going around the theater circuits of the nation. One evening in their early teens relaxing at a new art form, the flickers, Lillian and Dorothy were startled to recognize their stage friend, Gladys Smith. Had she fallen on hard times? They visited the film company's New York studio to talk with Gladys. There, at the home of the American Biograph Co., they found Gladys happy and making films. She had changed her name to Mary Pickford. She promptly introduced her friends to her director, David Wark Griffith. Impressed and smitten, D.W. hired the radiant Gish girls on the spot, casting them together almost immediately in their first film - An Unseen Enemy, a fifteen-minute one-reeler. The year was 1912; the rest, as they say, is film history.
Prolific Performer
Responding to the training of D.W. Griffith, Lillian Gish went on to act in numerous classic silent epics: The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Hearts of the World - with Dorothy (1918), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm - also with Dorothy (1922), La Boheme (1926), and The Wind (1928). She easily made the transition to talkies, appearing in One Romantic Night (1930), His Double Life (1933), Duel in the Sun (1947), Night of the Hunter (1955), The Comedians (1967), A Wedding (1979), and Sweet Liberty (1986). During much of the 1930s and 1940s, both Lillian and Dorothy alternated their film appearances with numerous successful stage tours. Radio and television work was in due time added to their busy lives.
Gish has been honored with the Philadelphia Art Alliance Award of Merit for her distinguished services to drama. In 1954, she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Rollins College in Florida. She received a second D.F.A. in 1966 from Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts. In 1971, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
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