Director Gish (Photoplay Vol. XVII March 1920 No.4)

Director Gish

when Lillian bossed Dorothy around the “lot.”

“This comedy is no laughing matter,” admonishes Director Gish to Comedienne Gish.

Photoplay Vol. XVII March 1920 No.4

JUST before D. W. Griffith went to Cuba to film scenes for a new picture, he handed a script to Lillian Gish. “Here’s Dorothy’s new picture,” he said. “You can go ahead and direct it.” Lillian—that fair, frail persecuted child of pictures—bad never directed before. The Griffith studios at Mamaroneck were in a state of incompletion ; the props were new, and the lights were bad — sometimes work was possible only for fifteen minutes a day. But Lillian finished her first picture a five reel Dorothy Gish comedy—action from start to finish—in twenty-five days. She really directed; bossed the studio hands and the electricians; designed and arranged the sets; consulted with the cameramen and put the players through their paces. Her intensely feminine viewpoint stood her in good stead ; like Lois Weber she sees many intimate things in the direction that a man would overlook. “I felt,” she said, “just as if I were playing with dolls again. It was fun to make the puppets move the way I wanted them to.”