Lillian Diana Gish www.lilliangish1893.com

  Miss Gish’s Stage Debut (Risingsun Ohio) Miss Gish made her stage debut in a melodrama called ”In Convict’s Stripes” in Rising Sun, Ohio. ”I was 5,” Lillian Gish said, ”and the only acting lesson I ever had was, ‘Speak loud and clear or else they’ll get another little girl!’ ” ”We had to do something to live in the summertime,” she recalled yesterday, ”because theaters closed down. No air conditioning.” Her mother and her younger sister, Dorothy, also turned to acting with various touring companies, and thus the family supported itself. Lillian Gish Gish made her acting debut, as Baby Lillian, with Huston in ‘The Convict’s Stripes’ in a barn-turned-theater in Rising Sun, Ohio. She was 5 at the time and the daughter of a struggling actress. You can safely say that about stage players, for their performances survive only in the memory. But Lillian Gish’s performances exist in films that have been subjected to scrutiny again and again. The verdict is always the same: Lillian Gish is...

  Lillian Gish in St. Louis Lillian Gish became a boarder in the Ursuline Academy at Saint Louis [in 1909-1910]. Here she found herself in surroundings altogether novel. At first she was unwilling to have either nuns or fellow boarders know that she had been on the stage. In fact, she was under the impression that the sisters would consider an actress, even a fifteen year old one, a very undesirable boarder and she had had all of the labels removed from her trunks before coming to the convent. Ursuline Academy at Saint Louis Lillian was not long in coming to love the convent and all it stood for. She reveled in the solitude, the shut-in-ness of the place. She became utterly devoted to the nuns, and was heard to say more than once that they were the most truly refined women she had ever met. Naturally spiritual, she was attracted by the convent routine, and more than once was heard to say that she would like to be a nun. Her teachers say she was always gracious and pleasant to her c...

  Miss Lillian Gish – Stageography Miss Lillian Gish – Stageography As per “Dorothy and Lillian Gish” by Lillian Gish Back to Lillian Gish Home page Back to Lillian Gish Home page Back to Lillian Gish Home page Back to Lillian Gish Home page In August 1948, Lillian acted in J.M.Barrie’s The Legend of Leonora. The play drew its inspiration from another Barrie play, What Every Woman Knows. “The complexity of a woman’s nature is beyond man’s simple powers of comprehension.” The story-line was simple: a bachelor, terrified of facing women, finds himself with seven different women. Each has her own personality; an unspeakable darling, a politician, a comedian, a coquette, a murderess, a mother and a clinging woman. When bachelor is asked to select the woman most suitable to his personality, he learns that all seven are actually the same woman, and she is a marriageable widow. (Stuart Oderman – Lillian Gish: A Life on Stage and Screen) Back to Lillian Gish Home page Back to Lillian Gish ...