Stars of the Silents – By EDWARD WAGENKNECHT (1987) PDF Download

 

Stars of the Silents – By EDWARD WAGENKNECHT (1987) PDF Download

  • Stars of the Silents
  • By EDWARD WAGENKNECHT
  • The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen, NJ., & London 1987
  • Copyright © 1987 by Edward Wagenknecht
  • Manufactured in the United States of America

Lillian Gish

I first met Lillian Gish at the Blackstone Hotel in December 1920, when she came to Chicago for the local opening of Way Down East at the Woods Theater. I did not meet Dorothy until January 1922, when both she and Lillian came for the opening of Orphans of the Storm and occupied the box just behind mine at the Great Northern Theater.

The meeting in Chicago referred to at the end of my discussion occurred, again at the Blackstone and later at the railroad station, when Lillian and her mother stopped off between trains when she was on her way to the Coast to take up her M-G-M contract. It is interesting to reflect that of the roles I mention in my penultimate paragraph as being naturals for her, Ophelia is the only one she ever had a chance to play. This was in the famous 1936 New York stage production, directed by Guthrie McClintic, in which John Gielgud was the Hamlet and Judith Anderson the Queen. As early as 1936 however, Edward Steichen had taken a marvelous portrait of her as Ophelia.

Edward Steichen – Lillian Gish as Ophelia, 1936
Lillian Gish as Ophelia, 1936, by Edward Steichen
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