“Arsenic and Old Lace” 1969 – Entire film (TV capture)

 

“Arsenic and Old Lace” 1969 – Entire film (TV capture)

During one of her visits to Rapollo, Lillian was invited to co-star with her longtime friend, actress Helen Hayes, in a television production of Joseph Kesselring’s hit homicidal comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace. Lillian and Helen would be playing two sweet, elderly ladies, sisters, who murder lonely old men after extending an invitation to them to visit and sample their special elderberry wine. Helen Hayes jokingly told this author at their first meeting that she and Lillian had known each other forever.

As I grow older, I get forgetful too, but I haven’t reached that point yet. And neither had Lillian when it came to work. She’s sharp as a tack then, as I discovered when we appeared on TV together in Arsenic and Old Lace. It was a challenging production, shot live on a multilevel set that would have tested Edmund Hillary’s climbing ability. (Helen Hayes)

Back to Lillian Gish Home page

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

ART DECO FASHION – by Suzanne Lussier (2003)

Image
  ART DECO FASHION – by Suzanne Lussier (2003) ART DECO FASHION Suzanne Lussier BULFINCH PRESS AOL Time Warner Book Group Copyright © 2003 by The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum The term Art Deco was employed for the first time in 1968 by the author Bevis Hillier. It identifies an aesthetic in vogue between 1909 and 1939 which was adopted in architecture, the decorative arts, textiles and fashion; it also influenced the fine arts, film and photography. Art Deco displayed stylized motifs and shapes borrowed from national traditions, folk art and ancient cultures, and was strongly influenced by the art of the avant-garde. Art deco fashion_Tamara de Lempicka 1929 Art Deco emerged from a unique artistic conjunction. From 1905, avant-garde movements sprung up one after another throughout Europe: the Fauves and Cubists in Paris, the Futurists in Italy, the Constructivists in Russia. Meanwhile the Ballets Russes were founded in Russia by Sergei Diaghilev who, wanting to re
Read more