Lillian Gish and Max Reinhardt – A Miracle That Failed

Lillian Gish and Max Reinhardt – A Miracle That Failed

Excerpts from Picture Play Magazine March – July, 1929

Lillian In New Phase.

Lillian Gish’s career, suspended for more than a year, is to be resumed. She will be directed by Max Reinhardt, the famous European stage producer, in a picture called “The Miracle Girl.” Lillian has just returned to Hollywood after a many months’ absence. She has sojourned part of the time in New York, which she likes, and the rest in Europe, which she loves even more. As regards Hollywood, it does not occupy the leading spot in Lillian’s affections, but she confesses that it is, after all, about the best place to make pictures. And she has tried various other localities during her experience.

Lillian begins virtually a new stage of her professional life with the undertaking of “The Miracle Girl.” It will be her first film under her contract with United Artists. After many years, she will once again work on the same lot as Mary Pickford, as they did in the old Griffith Biograph days.

Max Reinhardt mit Lillian Gish im Hotel Esplanade in Berlin 1928
Max Reinhardt mit Lillian Gish im Hotel Esplanade in Berlin 1928

To … talk or not to talk?

Lillian Gish must feel a little like an animal trainer who returns from a trip to find that the gentle little lion that she reared as a cub has become a raging beast.” “But what is she going to do about it ?”

“I don’t know exactly. But you can count on it that she and Max Reinhardt working together won’t turn out one of these strange hybrids that are neither good stage technique, nor good movie. Lillian’s voice should be very interesting. She studied three or four years ago for the stage, and even before she went for vocal training, her voice had a soft, resonant quality that was touching.”

“Pictures change so fast,” I remarked, and even as I said it, I realized that we used to object strenuously, because they were always the same. Nevertheless, I am sorry the inventor of sound devices wasn’t strangled at birth. I long for the days of the good, old, silent drama, even though dialogue films have made it possible to film my pet murder stories.

Douglas Fairbanks, Max Reinhardt and Lillian Gish at train station - 1920s
Douglas Fairbanks, Max Reinhardt and Lillian Gish at train station – 1928

HOLLYWOOD simply can’t become highbrow.

Every time the film colony tries to soar to empyreal aesthetic heights, a constitutional ailment develops. Then some famous visitor’s feelings are hurt, and he goes home in a huff. The latest to take his departure in haste and disgust is Max Reinhardt, the famous German stage producer. Brought over here some six months ago to make a Lillian Gish starring picture, he never so much as shot a single scene.

Difficulties over story and contract, and uncertainty about talking pictures and other problems, reputedly came to the fore while he was preparing the production, and finally an agreement to disagree was reached between him and the studio executives. He sailed for Europe a few weeks ago. Reinhardt can console himself with the fact that others who came and saw, but did not wholly conquer, included at various times Maurice Maeterlinck, Sir Gilbert Parker, Michael Aden, William J. Locke, who just recently left, not to speak of numerous lights of the New York literary and show world. It would seem oftentimes that the picture realm likes to toy with great reputations, and that’s what occasionally gives Hollywood a name closely synonymous with Boobville.

Excerpts from Hollywood High Lights (Edwin and Elza Schallert), Over The Teacups, Picture Play Magazine March – July, 1929

The Movies Mr. Griffith and Me (03 1969) With Max Reinhardt in Salzburg Austria — with Lillian Gish.
Max Reinhardt mit Lillian Gish – Leopoldskron Salzburg 1928
Max Reinhardt, Lillian Gish and Douglas Fairbanks
Max Reinhardt, Lillian Gish and Douglas Fairbanks

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. ...
Read more

LEADING LADIES – 1976 (Electa Clark) PDF Download

Image
  LEADING LADIES – 1976 (Electa Clark) PDF Download “Humanity marches on into the new and glorious 20th century!” exults a daily paper in its first issue of 1901. “Come, oh century, child of hope!” begins a long poem on page one. Another column trills, “We are 20th century women … with the dower of privilege and responsibility which enriches women in this wonderful era!” Lillian Gish had a similar effect on millions who saw her in the movies. She was not only talented, she had a unique quality: pure, ethereal, elusive. As if she acted in whispers. As if in her hands, the definite blurred into the indefinite. It was drama critic George Jean Nathan who described her as being “behind a veil of silver chiffon.” He courted Lillian for years, but she eluded marriage. Horse drawn float declares National American Woman Suffrage Association’s support for Bristow-Mondell amendment 1920s Lillian Gish Actress ‘La Boheme’ Oversized DBW Photo by Kenneth Alexander Leading ladies an affectionate l...
Read more