And Right After This Message, Miss Lillian Gish – By Jon Krampner (The New York Times – 1999)

And Right After This Message, Miss Lillian Gish – By Jon Krampner (The New York Times – 1999)

The New York Times – 1999

TELEVISION/RADIO; And Right After This Message, Miss Lillian Gish

By Jon Krampner
Oct. 10, 1999
MOVIEGOERS remember Horton Foote’s ”Trip to Bountiful” as a 1985 film starring Geraldine Page, who won the best actress Oscar for it. But there is an earlier version, a 1953 live television drama starring Lillian Gish, which has been sitting in the film collection at the Museum of Modern Art for 44 years.
The play, which also stars Eileen Heckart, John Beal and Eva Marie Saint, was an episode of NBC’s ”Goodyear TV Playhouse.” And this week (Thursday at 3 P.M. and Friday at 6:30 P.M.) the museum plans to screen a video copy of the one-hour kinescope (a film made of the images on a television monitor during broadcast), complete with original commercials.
It’s an annual ritual for the Modern to show one of Lillian Gish’s works on her birthday (Oct. 14). But what makes this occasion unusual (other than the fact that it’s only the seventh birthday since Gish died) is that the museum is presenting a television show rather than a feature film.
”The idea was to show something outside of what we’ve traditionally shown, which is her silent work,” says Steven Higgins, curator of MOMA’s film and video department. In the recent past, the museum has shown ”Orphans of the Storm” (1922), ”Hearts of the World” (1918) and ”Way Down East” (1920).

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