Lillian gish biography timeline example

In honor of Women’s History Month, today’s post features Lillian Diana Gish, a native Ohioan whose career as an actress, director and writer spanned most of the 20th century, from around 1899 through 1987. She was born in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893, to Mary Robinson McConnell and James Leigh Gish. Her family soon moved to Dayton, where her sister, Dorothy Elizabeth (also an actress, director and writer), was born in 1898.Eventually theymoved to Baltimore, Maryland, and then to New York City. In order to support herself and her two daughters after James Gish left the family, Mary Gish joined an acting troupe known as Proctor’s Stock Company. Soon Lillian and Dorothy joined the groupas there was a need for child actresses and their wages could helpsupport the family.

Gish’s acting debut brought her back to Ohio where she performed in the play In Convict’s Stripes inRisingsun, a small community in northwest Ohio. After the performance season, her family temporarily moved to Massillon, Ohio, for the summer. Theylivedwith Gish’s aunt (her mother’s sister) until returning to New York and the theater. The Gish sisters certainly had an unconventional childhood, at times living apart from their mother and each other. Theystill wentto church when they could (theywere baptized in Cleveland), and their mother did her best to educate them while on the road. In her autobiography, Gishrecalls, “We had our lessons in our dressing rooms, stations, rented rooms. If we were all together, Mother would arrange the most interesting outings that combined lessons with sightseeing. […] Mother always carried a history book under her arm so that she could read to us and answer our questions” (p. 1).

In 1912, Gish’s career moved from the stage to the cinema. Her first movie role was in An Unseen Enemy, a film directed by D.W. Griffith, with whom Gishwould work multiple times over the course of her career

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    • Lillian Gish

    by Mark Garrett Cooper

    In 1920, Lillian Gish both delivered a landmark performance in D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East and directed her sister Dorothy in Remodelling Her Husband. This was her sole director credit in a career as a screen actor that began with An Unseen Enemy in 1912 and ended with The Whales of August in 1987. Personal correspondence examined by biographer Charles Affron shows that Gish lobbied Griffith for the opportunity to direct and approached the task with enthusiasm. In 1920, in Motion Picture Magazine, however, Gish offered the following assessment of her experience: “There are people born to rule and there are people born to be subservient. I am of the latter order. I just love to be subservient, to be told what to do” (102). One might imagine that she discovered a merely personal kink. In a Photoplay interview that same year, however, she extended her opinion to encompass all women and in doing so slighted Lois Weber, one of Hollywood’s most productive directors. “I am not strong enough” to direct, Gish told Photoplay, “I doubt if any woman is. I understand now why Lois Weber was always ill after a picture” (29). What should historical criticism do with such evidence?

    Lillian (left) and Dorothy Gish. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

    By far the most common approach has been to argue that Gish did not really mean what the press quotes her as saying. Alley Acker, for instance, urges us not to be fooled by Gish’s “Victorian modesty” and goes on to provide evidence of her authority on the set (62). Similarly, Affron argues that Gish’s assertions of subservience were partly self-serving. Self-effacement contributed to her star persona as “D.W. Griffith’s virginal, ethereal muse” (15). Gish cultivated this image throughout her career, and Affron finds it exemplified by the oft-repeated story of her masochistic performance in Way Down East’s 1920 ice floe rescue. A different Gish surfaces in an interview

    Lillian Gish

    American actress (1893–1993)

    Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American actress. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent filmshorts, to 1987. Gish was dubbed the "First Lady of the Screen" by Vanity Fair in 1927 and is credited with pioneering fundamental film performance techniques. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gish as the 17th-greatest female movie star of classical Hollywood cinema.

    Having acted on stage with her sister as a child, Gish was a prominent film star from 1912 into the 1920s, being particularly associated with the films of director D. W. Griffith. This included her leading role in the highest-grossing film of the silent era, Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Her other major films and performances from the silent era included Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), La Bohème (1926), and The Wind (1928).

    At the dawn of the sound era, she returned to the stage and appeared in film occasionally, with leading roles in the Western Duel in the Sun (1946) and the thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Duel in the Sun. Gish also had major supporting roles in Portrait of Jennie (1948), A Wedding (1978), and Sweet Liberty (1986).

    She also did considerable television work from the early 1950s into the 1980s, and retired after playing opposite Bette Davis and Vincent Price in the 1987 film The Whales of August. During her later years, Gish became a dedicated advocate for the appreciation and preservation of silent film. Despite being better known for her film work, she was also accomplished on stage, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972. In 1971, she was awarded an Academy Honorary Award for her career achievements. S

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    • Lillian Gish was one of the most influential and famous actors in Hollywood’s history. Her first film was in 1912 and a career spanning seventy-five years followed. Gish’s partnership with pioneering director D. W. Griffith is regarded as one of the greatest collaborative relationships of all time. Some of their films include Way Down East (1920), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919) and the controversial, and highest grossing film of the silent era, The Birth of a Nation (1915). Not only having a successful acting career, Gish was also a writer, director and producer. She received an honorary Academy Award in 1971. As the years passed, the media dubbed Gish “The First Lady of American Cinema.”

    Lillian Diana Gish was born on the 14 of October, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father left when she was young. Running low on money and with nowhere else to turn, Gish’s mother, Mary, and her daughters joined a group of traveling actors. Gish and her sister, Dorothy, made their stage debuts in 1902. They proved to be extremely popular in melodramas, making $10 a week for their efforts. (No figures in this article have been adjusted for inflation.) The three women travelled all over America, taking any roles they could and saving every cent possible. It was during this period Gish met future silent screen legend Mary Pickford and the two became lifelong friends.

    In 1912, Gish and Dorothy appeared before a camera for the first time in An Unseen Enemy. Pickford had previously introduced Griffith to the sisters and he decided to give them a go. On set, Griffith thought the two women were twins and found it hard to distinguish them apart at a distance. He gave them different coloured hair ribbons; blue for Gish and red for Dorothy. Griffith very much enjoyed working with the two, especially Gish. He cast them often in his one- and two-reel shorts. Gish appeared in near forty silent shorts between 1912 and 1914. She receiv