Miss Gish Star of an Exciting Drama in N.Y. – By John Chapman (New York News Drama Critic) 1953

 

Miss Gish Star of an Exciting Drama in N.Y. – By John Chapman (New York News Drama Critic) 1953

Chicago Daily Tribune – Thursday, November 5th, 1953 Part 4 – Page 12

Miss Gish Star of an Exciting Drama in N.Y.

By John Chapman (New York News Drama Critic)

New York, Nov. 4 – Because if its unexpectedness it is surprising, and because of its excellence it is exciting to see sweet little Lillian Gish giving a big performance. But a big performance it is at Henry Miller’s theater, where Lillian Gish and an astonishing actress named Jo Van Fleet opened last evening in Horton Foote’s playlet, “The Trip to Bountiful.”

This piece is a sentimental sketch about an old lady who escapes from her son and daughter-in-law and flees to her girlhood home in Bountiful. The place is in Texas, so you pronounce it Bayountiful – because it is in the sayowth and evvebody in the play is suthin.

Lillian Gish - The Trip To Bountiful (1953)
Lillian Gish – The Trip To Bountiful (1953)

Author Foote is unabashed and unashamed as he pulls out the tremolo stops for his composition. Miss Gish is set upon and nagged beyond endurance. She has a couple of heart attacks and when she gets back home to Bountiful after 20 years she finds the old homestead a rotten ruin. But having had her little trip, she is happy once again and is willing to return peaceably to the insufferable nagging of her daughter-in-law, Miss Van Fleet.

As well as being unabashed and unashamed, Author Foote is admirably skillful as he sets forth his play. He has a fine sense of humor, a true eye for character, and a good ear for talk. In spite of its sentimentality and its tenuous story, “The Trip to Bountiful” is good theater.

Gene Lyons and Lillian Gish - The Trip To Bountiful 1953
Gene Lyons and Lillian Gish – The Trip To Bountiful 1953

The two main actresses make it good theater. Miss Gish, who flirted with playing an old lady a few seasons ago in “The Curious Savage,” goes at the job this time with all the will and skill of a really good player. In voice, in accent, and in make-up she is a pathetic little soul who lives under the domination of a hellion daughter-in-law and yearns for escape to the old homestead.

Miss Van Fleet, as the daughter-in-law, gives the saltiest, funniest, and most artful feminine characterization of the season. She is a shrill, nervous, cruel, and empty headed woman who has a mouse for a husband and another mouse for a mother-in-law, and she resents both. Last night’s first audience cheered both women before the play was over – something that doesn’t happen much any more.

trip to bountiful

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