Old Movie Days Recalled – By Mary Middleton (Chicago Tribune – 1963)

 

Old Movie Days Recalled – By Mary Middleton (Chicago Tribune – 1963)

Chicago Tribune – Tuesday, January 8, 1963 Page 25

Old Movie Days Recalled

Lillian Gish Feted at Luncheon

By Mary Middleton

“Lillian Gish, she’s my dish!” chanted the parrot Mrs. Solomon B. Smith took to Mrs. Homer P. Hargrave’s luncheon for the actress yesterday. “I lived with a parrot for 20 years,” Miss Gish exclaimed. “We named it John – and it laid an egg!”

Lillian Gish and her parrot

Mrs. Smith’s parrot wasn’t real; it was a mechanical bird with a tape recorder in its base which also told listeners that Miss Gish is starring in “A Passage to India,” opening Friday in the Goodman theater. The play’s setting was inspiration for the curried chicken luncheon, for the Indian airlines ticket folders that were guests’ place cards, for the poster of the Taj Mahal which was hung in the little foyer of the Hargraves’ apartment, and for the Chinese fortune cookies that opened to reveal predictions of Miss Gish’s performance in Chicago.

Way Down East - filming the "Ice Floe Scene" (Lillian Gish)
Way Down East – filming the “Ice Floe Scene” (Lillian Gish)

Stars of the Silent Era

There were some reflections on the old days of movie making – after all, the hostess is the former Colleen Moore of silent movie fame and Miss Gish’s career spans most of this century and includes a role in the 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.”

Charming petite, and twinkling, Miss Gish related some of the dangers of movie making in the old days – “We wouldn’t have thought it fair to have doubles. Five people lost their lives when we made ‘Way Down East,’ it was so cold. But movies were more fun then,” Miss Gish went on. “Now it’s a business. Movies made more money then, too – ‘Birth of a Nation’ made more than 100 million dollars – and those films built all the big movie palaces in Hollywood.”

Colleen Moore and Lillian Gish '60s
Colleen Moore and Lillian Gish ’60s

Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) 08 Jan 1963, Tue Page 25 - N

Back to Lillian Gish Home page

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

D.W. Griffith – An American Life (By Richard Schickel – 1984)

Image
D.W. Griffith – An American Life (By Richard Schickel – 1984) D.W. Griffith – An American Life By Richard Schickel – 1984 Griffith! Before him, the movies were a nickelodeon novelty, after him, they were an international art form and a powerful, glamorous American industry He was the first to codify the rules and techniques of screen storytelling, the first to establish the conventions by which the unique capacities of the movies for both sweeping spectacle and profound intimacy could be employed in long, complex narratives, the first to assert the director’s claim to primary authorship of a film Above all, it was Griffith who imagined the future of his medium, and with his driving energy, his taste for the grandiose and his flair for publicity, propelled that medium toward that future—only to be crushed by the very forces he had unleashed. D.w. Griffith (1875-1948) Painting; D.w. Griffith (1875-1948) Art Print for sale His story is, in huge measure, the story of how the
Read more

Lillian Gish and Jeanne Moreau – Vanity Fair 1983

Image
Lillian Gish and Jeanne Moreau – Vanity Fair 1983 Vanity Fair – October 1983 Lillian Gish Jeanne Moreau This is a summit meeting: a queen paying homage to an empress. Of course, Lillian Gish, far right, is no truer a blueblood than any other homespun midwesterner. But wherever she goes now, she is treated like a monarch, acknowledging standing ovations in allAmerican palaces like Radio City Music Hall. Her admirers aren’t really applauding her 101 films (she has just completed the 102nd, about a sweet old lady and her sweet old dog). They may never have seen her slim but supernally intense performances in the D. W. Griffith masterpieces or in the Victor Sjostrom classics she made in the late ’20s at MGM. Lillian-Gish-Jeanne-Moreau 60s But they sense in her the grace, the purity, the wealth of symbolism that royalty sustains. Gish’s companion here, Jeanne Moreau, radiates a similar authority; what Gish was to the cinema of the ’20s, Moreau was to the cinema of the ’60s. “The
Read more