Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1921)

Photoplay Magazine It's Griffith's direction. Or it's a natural placidity easily photographed. Or it's a fragile prettiness. It's anything but Lillian Gish. She is never seen in a bathing-suit or a riding habit; so that the conclusion is that she never swims and never rides. She is only seen sitting serenely among flowers: a cool, collected little blossom herself. Ethereal, aloof, and very beautiful — but hardly human. You are entirely wrong. She swims and rides more accurately and joyously than many advertised athletes. But .Mr. Griffith, like the late Charles Prohman, and the present David Belasco, does not believe in much publicity for his players. They must speak, or, in the case of Miss Gish of Griffith's, act for themselves. So that, if you don't read what I am going to say, you will go right on believing Lillian Gish to be a very fair and beautiful Topsy. Topsy, you remember, (or do you?), was the dark diminutive principal in a certain American play, who just grew. Lillian is fair; and her beauty is spiritually satisfying and artistically amazing, but she is hardly a Topsy. People watch Lillian in her exquisite costume as Henriette in "The Two Orphans," performing, in her consummately quiet way, for an insert; and later they say to her: "Oh, Miss Gish — what fun you must have! Don't you just love your work?" Lillian will smile her inscrutable little smile. "Yes — I love it." And she does. But once she said to me: "How wonderful it would be to forget your work for a little while. Forget it — and follow spring around the world. "Acting is the most exacting work in the world. It takes all one's energy, absorbs ambition, and is intolerant of age. Lotta, the famous actress, now a little old lady, looked me up in 39 Boston while I was 'personally appearing' for 'Way Down East.' She said: 'My child, work hard now — and save your money. Then, when your public forgets you — in those long lean years when you are no longer young — you will have something to show for your work." She is one of the few celebrities who began when the movies did, who has very little today to show for her work. She has never, to use the patois, "cashed in" on her fame. As you and I rate good fortune, she is rich. But compared with the princely incomes of other screen stars, she is merely prosperous! She hasn't a mansion in Manhattan and another in Beverly Hills. She lives, very quietly, with her mother and her sister and her sister's husband in a house in New Rochelle, near New York. It isn't a palace; it's just a comfortable home. She has only one motor. Her own company, much to the surprise and sorrow of all the friends of the star, failed before it finished one picture. And yet — she has a dignity, a celebrity very much like Maude Adams, that cannot be expressed in money. She says herself, in her quaint, old-fashioned way, "Perhaps it is all for the best. Too much money does queer things to people. You can never tell what it is going to do to you." She is the best friend of Mary Pickford. Joseph Hergesheimer and Lillian Russell are two celebrities who, I strongly suspect, count her their favorite screen star. A European ambassador says she is the most interesting personage he has ever met, not excepting royalty and statesmen and singers. She is, more than any other actress, the favorite honor guest of women's clubs and colleges. She says she never knows what to say; but she has spoken to a roomful of alumnae of an eastern college for an hour — and left them wildly enthusiastic. And yet she wishes she had had a college education! She has been on the stage ever since she was six. And she has worked ever since, with vacations of (Continued on page 118) Lillian Gish as Henriette and Dorothy Gish as Louise in "The Two Orphans", X). W. Griffith s new photoplay. The Gish girls do the finest work of their careers. Frank Diem