Lillian Diana Gish www.lilliangish1893.com

Frohman Amusement Corporation to State Right Lillian Gish Specials (Moving Picture World, 1920) Moving Picture World – December 18, 1920 In the Independent Field Frohman Amusement Corporation to State Right Lillian Gish Specials The Frohman Amusement Corporation announces that the productions made by it and in which Lillian Gish is to star will be distributed under franchises to be awarded to state rights buyers. There will be either four or five during 1921 and the same number during 1922. The first, which will be ready for release about February 15, has the working title of “World Shadows” but the final has not yet been decided upon. Five franchises have already been awarded but the holders will not be announced until the entire United States has been disposed of. “We have received numerous inquiries from independent buyers and national distributing organizations regarding our plan of distribution, and were flattered by offers from two of the national organizations,” ...

America’s First Women Directors – Anthony Slide – Boston /London 1996 The Silent Feminists America’s First Women Directors Anthony Slide – Boston /London 1996 The concept of women as directors began in France in 1896, when Leon Gaumont permitted his secretary Alice Guy to direct La Fee aux Choux, arguably the first fictional film. In France, between 1896 and 1907, Alice Guy directed some 400 films. Subsequently, she married Englishman Herbert Blache, and the couple came to the United States, where Madame Blache directed or supervised the production of a further 354 films. In terms of quantity, it is doubtful any other director approached her output. In 1912, she became the first woman to build her own studios and the first American director of either sex to handle such an undertaking. Had it not been for an over-ambitious husband and the need to care for a young daughter, Alice Guy Blache might have continued directing well into the sound era, but she was forced into retire...

Lillian Gish ‘Lobbies’ for Old Newsreels (The New York Times – 1979) The New York Times – 1979 Lillian Gish ‘Lobbies’ for Old Newsreels June 20, 1979 WASHINGTON, June 19 (UPI) — Lillian Gish, whose film career spans almost the entire history of movies, urged Congress today to preserve the historic newsreels now deteriorating in vaults. Old Newsreels “It’s powerful history, and we should preserve the living record of it,” Miss Gish told a House Government Operations subcommittee. The threat to old newsreel footage was demonstrated last Dec. 7 when a fire at a National Archives storage facility in Suitland, Md., destroyed 12.6 million of the 28 million feet of newsreel’ film that had been donated by Universal Studios. A 1977 fire destroyed a smaller amount of film. George Stevens, retiring director of the American Film Institute, estimated it would cost between $15 million and $30 million to recopy surviving newsreel footage on modern film that will not deteriorate....

Where She Danced – By Elizabeth Kendall – 1979 Where She Danced By Elizabeth Kendall – 1979 Though it be as perfect in outline and ornament as classic taste can make it, as simple and serviceable as the most energetic worker can desire, a costume has not business to exist, is, indeed, an embodied crime, if it deforms or weakens or tortures the body it pretends to serve. For that should be sacred: it is Gods handiwork. He made it as he wished it to be; capable, by wonderful mechanisms, of swift and easy motion; shaped in contours which artists despair of reproducing; and so responsive to our will, so varied in its capacities, so lightly moved from place to place by its own powers, that in its perfect state the soul which inhabits it is almost unconscious of its existence, and knows it only as a source of help and pleasure. —from Dress Reform, EDITED BY ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON, Boston, 1874 Diane of The Follies – Lillian Gish Hollywood American theater of those days was anyt...