Lillian Gish, Maker of Memories – By Kevin Brownlow (The New York Times 1997)
Lillian Gish, Maker of Memories – By Kevin Brownlow (The New York Times 1997) The New York Times 1997 Lillian Gish, Maker of Memories By Kevin Brownlow March 2, 1997 BY COMMON CONSENT the greatest actress of the silent era, Lillian Gish personified that remarkable epoch. Her integrity and dedication are among the proudest aspects of the period. There can be few actresses in film history with so many distinguished pictures to their credit: ”The Birth of a Nation,” ”Intolerance,” ”Hearts of the World,” ”Broken Blossoms,” ”Way Down East” and ”Orphans of the Storm,” all directed by the man she called the Father of Film, D. W. Griffith. When she left Griffith and became an independent producer, she contributed further classics — ”The White Sister” and ”Romola” — and while at MGM she made, with Victor Seastrom, ”The Scarlet Letter” and ”The Wind.” Hers was always the one voice to champion the cause of silent film and music, even into recent decades, when to articulate such