Life and Lillian Gish

School ended … Dorothy came from Massillon. They lived with their St. Louis aunt, boarders, going each day across the river, to help. A narrow hall ran along one side of the shop, dividing it from a “Biograph” moving-picture place. They did not know the word Biograph. They thought it the name of a man—probably a rather kindly man, for his doorkeeper let them cross the hall and enter by a side door, free. They did it often, when trade was dull, and found the pictures good fun, though of course they would never act in anything like that—no real actresses would. When they grew up, they might go back on the stage, but never into the movies. And the Weaver who sits at the Loom of Circumstance smiled faintly, it may be, observing from his pattern that in exactly two years these young scorners were to be making pictures for that same “Mr. Biograph.”

There came a day when Lillian felt barely able to creep out of bed in the morning; when at the shop she could hardly hold up her head, or lift her feet. She had to drive herself to keep going. She knew that she was ill—but said nothing; her mother was too busy to bother with a sick child. Finally, one day when she crept home with Dorothy, to her aunt’s, she could go no further. She fell across the bed, unable to undress, even to take off her shoes. A doctor came. It was typhoid fever.

Disordered days … black, fantastic nights, a fire of unquenchable thirst … a river at which one lay down and drank and drank … and then the river ran dry … she was burning up, but this was torture … not a river but a tub—a bathtub of cool water. Oh, quiet and sleep … an awakening to a possession of terrible hunger—a feeble pleading for food … just a little....

Dorothy, unable to resist, brought her something from her own luncheon … but, then the fever again … relapse … semi-recovery … relapse again. Surely she could never live through this.

Somehow the frail constitution stood the test. Dorothy, permitted one day to enter the room, found Lillian with a wish-bone in her hand. Struck with terror, Dorothy started toward her, to take it away. But the patient, a staring little ghost, all eyes, put it to her lips. If Dorothy came closer, she would eat something, and surely die. Each time Dorothy started toward the bed, the bone went to Lillian’s lips. She hurried out to tell the others about it—and was told that Lillian was better—much better, this time—the wish-bone was just a bone—nothing on it, not a thing.

The convalescent noticed that her mother was with her a great deal, and vaguely wondered how she could be away from the store. One day they told her. The store was not there any more. Fire from the Biograph place had destroyed the building. There had been no insurance. Mary Gish was once more starting at the bottom. Worse. She had not enough to pay all the expense of Lillian’s illness. Somehow she was able to get the children to Massillon. Through connections she secured a place as manager of a confectionery-and-catering establishment—in Springfield, where she had begun; good enough salary,—long, long hours. The children were to remain at Massillon, with Aunt Emily, and go to school. Blessed Aunt Emily!

XV

SHAWNEE

But now from Shawnee, Oklahoma, came a letter from an uncle, Grant Gish, saying that his brother, James Gish, was in a sanitarium, in broken health. Lillian decided to go to him. This was near the end of October, 1910, when she had just turned fourteen. She went quite alone. To Nell, on arrival, she wrote:

My dear little sister:

I arrived safe yesterday morning and went to the hotel and slept until about ten o’clock & then I came right out here, and they are awfully nice to me, but Oh! dear how I wish I were home with you and we were reading “John Halifax”! I hope we will soon be able to finish that together....

I didn’t want to come, dear, but I thought it was my duty. It’s awfully hard to do your duty sometimes, and you know that I met with opposition on all sides but I have done what I think was right and I am glad that I did it....

With love love love

from Lillian.

201 N. Park St.

Shawnee, Okla.

How lightly she treats her arrival in Shawnee—not to distress Nell, or those who would inquire. It was really very different. Shawnee, twenty years ago, was rather unlike the thriving town it became later. It was two in the morning when Lillian got off on a desolate platform, and found nobody to welcome her. A light from across the street showed a lone cowboy, in chaps, and “ten-gallon hat,” curiously regarding her. It was exactly such a scene and situation as the pictures have used, time and again. She had never seen a cowboy before, and regretted that she saw this one. She does not remember whether she asked the way to the hotel, or whether it stood right there, facing the tracks. She does remember that it was an indifferent hotel, compared even with the hotels she had known on the road.

The room they showed her was probably as good as any they had, which is the best that could be said for it. She was disheartened—frightened. She wished she had listened to those persons who had told her not to come. Old trouper that she was, she had never seen so poor a room, and she had never slept, in any room, alone. She was distinctly scared. She put a chair against the door, and did not take off her clothes. Then she heard a scampering or scratching, or something—rats, no doubt. Or somebody breaking in.

A single light hung by a string from the ceiling. She did not turn it out, and she did not get into bed. She got on it, on her knees, and said her prayers—several times—improving them, and inventing new ones. It was only when daylight came that she decided to risk a little sleep. It is easy to believe that she slept then till ten o’clock, as she wrote Nell.

Lillian thinks that her father was not in Shawnee itself (the town in that day could hardly have had a sanitarium), but that he was in Oklahoma City, some thirty-five miles distant. She did not go to see him; he came to see her—not more than once or twice. She has a mental picture of him in her uncle’s dooryard, talking to her as she sat on a horse. “Be careful, pet,” he said to her; “Don’t let that pony go too fast.” Pet had been his old name for her.

There must have been more than that, but that tricksy memory of hers let the rest go, and what it kept is perhaps sufficient. She had not seen him for years, but he looked as she had expected to find him. Apparently, his physical health was good enough; his trouble had become mental. He did not die until the following year, when she had returned to Ohio.

Lillian’s aunt and uncle persuaded her to stay in Shawnee and go to school. She could help her aunt with the housekeeping, for her board, and be company for her. Her uncle, a locomotive engineer, was away a good deal of the time.

Lillian thought well of the idea. She rather liked Shawnee, once she got used to it, especially the riding. Soon she got to know an Indian girl, who rode with her and had plenty of ponies. A wonderful girl—she rode as if she were a part of the horse. There were Indians, of course, everywhere—“civilized Indians,” whatever we may mean by that; also, cowboys and other romantic features. Then she found she could get a place in a doctor’s office—work after school and on holidays—answering the telephone and marking down appointments. For this she was to receive two dollars and a half a week—all clear.

The school part was the hardest. She had made a mistake in the beginning: When she was asked about her grade, some imp prompted her to promote herself. She was accepted at her own valuation, but keeping up to it nearly killed her. She could do it all but the mathematics. Advanced arithmetic was just a jungle of terrors, algebra an uncharted sea from which daily she must be rescued as she was going down for the third time. What with one thing and another, her punishment seemed almost more than she could bear....

Her face took on an added wistfulness; she became more than ever like a spirit. Gladys Fariss, her schoolmate, watching her come down the evening hillside, the sunset in her hair, could think only of Saint Cecilia....

Lillian, her memory blurred by her mental struggle, had no clear picture of Shawnee in later years. Fortunately, Gladys has preserved it for us.

Lillian Gish! How often have I dreamed of her—heard her musical voice from out the purple distances. What a joy to recall her in my classes of Shawnee High.

We were in the English class together. She especially enjoyed literature.... I sat and watched the door each day for Lillian’s coming from her previous class. Classmates, the teacher, the class work, have long since passed into oblivion, but photographed in my memory is the picture, framed by the doorway.

She had recently recovered from typhoid fever. Her hair was a golden halo, alive with newness, about her oval face. It was worn caught loosely back and with a black ribbon bow. At the Junior-Senior dance we sophomores were invited guests … Lillian dressed in filmy white was dancing … classically, romantically, as with enchanted feet, an ivory statuette, in a world of chiffon and moonlight.

She sang in the choir of the Episcopal Church. She was spiritual and philosophic, a dreamer, quiet and far-seeing. She was a listener, never outspoken. She was somewhat retiring, yet not abashed. She talked very little of her life. I never remember her mentioning the stage.

She loved the out-of-doors—the sunshine, which seemed to be a part of her.... Upon returning a borrowed book, I shall never forget her graciousness of manner and kindliness of words....

In the English class one day, we exchanged themes for a remembrance. This theme of hers has always been my most prized possession. It is a graphic and beautiful description of her mother, and incidentally somewhat of herself.

“The Face Most Familiar to Me

During the thirty-five winters that have passed over her dear head, she has learned to know life’s vicissitudes. Instead of hardening her, they have made her a patient, sympathetic, God-fearing woman, who seems to make the burdens of life easier for those around her. She is settled and reserved in manner, and she is to be distinguished by her low, soft voice which seems to go with her dignity of motherhood. She is of medium height and size. Her hair is of a golden brown, streaked with gray, and her large, steel-gray eyes seem to see into the depths of everything. Her nose and chin are slightly pointed and her lips are closed in a way that suggests a smile. Her short, quick, decisive step shows the magnanimity of her nature. It is my most sincere wish that I may grow to be a counterpart of her.

Lillian Gish.”

March 27, 1911

I entered a picture-show one afternoon, some years later, and while watching the film “The Mothering Heart,” Lillian appeared on the screen. I instantly recognized her. Waiting for the return of the first reel, with the listing of the cast, I was not mistaken—her name was there.

Instilled into Lillian’s soul were some of the finest of human qualities: loyalty, moral courage, patience. Hers was beauty of spirit, beauty of thought, beauty of perfection, Christ-like beauty of innocence, of sinlessness; she was unspoiled, unselfish, meek.

She was never too busy to help, never too sad to smile, never too weighed down with care to glimpse a higher vision. When I think of her, it is like stepping through darkness into the light, for I have never known a more patient, gentle and lovable character, nor a more highly intellectual girl. Someone has said of her: “Hers is the charm of a vanishing strain of music, the haunting lyric that will neither satisfy, nor let you be—the fragrance of the flowers that perfume dreams.”

In word portraiture, it would be hard to find a more exquisite picture than this school-girl memory of Lillian at fourteen.

One other bit of evidence remains out of that Shawnee school life: Lillian’s “Botany Notebook”—a thick little book, and probably one of the neatest school-girl documents in existence. Every other page of it is covered with her small, meticulous writing, descriptive of plant growth, and facing each, a page of very careful pen-drawings of the “parts”—leaves, petals, rootlets, many of them delicately, daintily tinted. She took pride in her botany book, a pride not altogether out-grown to this day. Botany had been an antidote for that poisonous arithmetic and algebra.

XVI

IT SOUNDS LIKE HEAVEN

Lillian’s school-days were over. Just when she left Shawnee is not certain. She thinks she did not wait for the end of the term. She had finished the last page of her Botany Book, and believed she could struggle along without any more mathematics. Her mother in Springfield was working very hard—she could help.

And so the days of childhood had slipped by, and were gone. If we have taken a good many pages to tell of them, it is because most of the romance of life lies in its beginnings.

Mrs. Gish was truly working hard, but happily. Her employer, his health damaged by over-work, had turned over his comfortable home for her use and left Springfield for an indefinite period. Lillian remembers that her mother had taken up the rugs and laid down papers for them to walk on. To Nell:

… A porch with a large swing (big enough for four), also a barn, and a touring car. They said we could use it if we could get someone to drive it, but Mother said we would do fifty dollars worth of damage to it the first time out.

If you were here I believe I could make you get fat, because Mother sends out a quart of cream every day and all the ice-cream we can eat!

Is she really writing about Springfield? It sounds like heaven. Nothing like that had ever happened to Lillian and Dorothy before. Ten cents’ worth of ice-cream, two kinds, chocolate and vanilla, to stir into “mashed potatoes” and spread on lady-fingers! Their entire luncheon! Had they really ever been as frugal as that?

The glory of having all the ice-cream one could eat dimmed a little. Lillian went into the store and the hours were long. To Nell she wrote:

I started this, this morning, but had to stop. You see dear I have to be here from seven in the morning until nine at night, and eleven on Saturday night....

Yes, I pray for you every night before I go to bed, and for Tom also.

And then, at the end of autumn, Nell and Tom were married. In December, Lillian wrote:

Dear Brother and Sister: I am so glad you are so happy. How beautiful to have your heart’s desire, and to know that you will always have it.... My hours are shorter, now, from nine to six. Then I take long walks and talk to myself. Sometimes I pretend that you, Nell, are with me, and we have our heart talks once more; then I wake up.... I am lonesome, or homesick.

She was not very well, not equal to the long hours. That terrible ravage of typhoid had told on her. By the first of the year she was in Massillon again, always a haven in any stress. She busied herself with the housekeeping—added to her knowledge of cookery. “I must get dressed now, and make my bread down.”

Saint Cecilia making bread! And neat! Even for a saint; to her aunt it seemed that she spent most of her spare time pressing her clothes.

Also, there were parties:

I had the club Wednesday eve—the girls seemed to enjoy themselves and stayed until 10:30.

Which was verging on dissipation. There were dances, too. Especially the Masons’ Washington’s Birthday Ball, an incident of which is still remembered in Massillon. Aunt Emily writes:

Among the guests was a man, David Atwater by name. He must have been seventy-five, at least. During the evening, somebody suggested that he dance the minuet. He said he would be glad to do it, if they could find a partner for him. No one seemed to be able to dance it but Lillian.

We often speak of it. It was a lovely sight to see this old man, courtly and handsome, with gray hair, and the slender, beautiful young girl, with golden hair, perfect manner and bright, youthful apparel, dancing the stately minuet. We called it “Winter and Spring.”

Dorothy was at a girls’ boarding-school, in Alderson, West Virginia. Lillian to Nell, in May: “I expect to leave here the 20th for Springfield and then Mother and I will go to Alderson, then the three of us will proceed to Baltimore—thence to New York—then it depends upon the wind.”

“Upon the wind!” Again the Weaver who sits at the Loom of Circumstance may have been slightly amused—may have reflected that this being the year 1912, a tall, large-nosed man, in a moving-picture studio on Fourteenth Street, New York, would have something to say in the matter—apparently—would seem to direct, not only pictures, but numerous human destinies.

PART TWO

I

“MR. BIOGRAPH”

They brought Dorothy from Alderson to Baltimore, and visited their old friends, the Meixners. One day they dropped into a “movie.” The picture was “Lena and the Geese,” a Biograph film, and when Lena walked out on the screen, behold it was Gladys Smith! So Gladys had fallen. At first it was a shock, but later in the day they considered the idea of falling, too. Especially Dorothy. Gladys was probably getting well paid for her surrender.

They went to New York, presently, took rooms and set out to find a theatrical engagement. Their hearts were set on Belasco. They knew that William J. Dean—the same who, ten years earlier, had rehearsed little Dot so strenuously—was associated with Belasco. Dean was their white hope. They found him at the Belasco Theatre. He remembered them … who wouldn’t?

He took them into Mr. Belasco’s private office—a weird place, full of statuary, all in white summer dress—introduced them, and left them there.

Lillian and Dorothy were distinctly frightened. Each tried to propel the other in the direction of the great man. Belasco himself used to tell how each in turn got behind, to push the other forward, until they had backed halfway across the room.

When the interview finally began, he told them he was putting on a fairy play, called “The Good Little Devil,” and that Mary Pickford and Ernest Truex were engaged for the leading rôles. Neither name was familiar to them. Gladys Smith had become “Mary Pickford” the winter before, but they had lost sight of all the Smith family. Belasco said further that he needed one more fairy, and that he would engage Lillian for the part. It was a small part, but the best he had.

Lillian was delighted, Dorothy disappointed but not discouraged. They visited other managers, and some agencies. They decided to look up Gladys Smith, to see what could be done in that direction. Sure enough, the telephone book had it: “Biograph Co., 11 E. 14th St.”

“Hello, hello! Is this the Biograph Company?”

“That’s right. What’s wanted?”

“We’d like to speak to one of your actresses, Gladys Smith.”

“Sorry—no such person here.”

“But we saw her in a picture of yours, in Baltimore.”

“What picture?”

“‘Lena and the Geese.’”

“Oh, that was Mary Pickford.”

“Oh—oh, all right—can she come to the telephone?”

So that was who she was—Gladys … so much the better. Gladys, who was now Mary, came to the telephone, and after a brief period of wild greetings and inquiries, arranged to have them come to the studio.

Lillian and Dorothy, at the top of the outer step at 11 East 14th Street, found themselves in a wide hall, confronting a great circular heaven-climbing stairway that ascended to the unknown. A tall man with a large hooked nose was walking up and down, humming to himself. A boy took in their names, and presently Mary, brighter and prettier than ever under her new name, appeared and flung herself into their arms. The tall man continued walking up and down, and now added some words to the tune he was humming: “She’ll never bring them in—she’ll never bring them in,”—a suggestion to Mary, who declined to take any such hint.

“Mr. Griffith,” she said, “these are my friends, Lillian and Dorothy Gish. They were on the stage for years, in child parts, just as I was; I know you’ll have something for them, here.”

David Wark Griffith, director of the Biograph Company, stopped singing, shook hands and looked at them.

“Won’t you come in?” he said.

They found themselves in quite a large room, in a violet glare of Cooper-Hewitt lights—weird, ghastly lights, that made living persons look as if they were dead—had been dead for some time. At one end of the room a group of people had assembled.

“You can begin right away,” Mr. Griffith said, “as extras. We are arranging an ‘audience.’ You can be part of the audience.”

And so in that casual way, their motion picture career began.

They “sat in the audience,” and then sat in it again, and again and again, for it seemed that Mr. Biograph Griffith was not satisfied with just doing a thing once, and made you do it over and over until he was sure it could not be any better, even if he had to keep you at it most of the night.

Lillian and Dorothy got five dollars each, for that day, and felt very proud of it. Dorothy especially. She had a grown-up feeling. Five dollars a day—a real job. But, alas, early next morning Lillian took her to a department store, and when the saleslady appeared, said:

“Have you a suit that would fit this little girl?”

But of course Lillian was a good deal taller, and then she was “going on sixteen.”

That day they had their first parts as regulars. At the studio, Griffith said he would rehearse them a little. He took them upstairs, and chased them here and there about a room, firing off a revolver. It seemed unusual, but did not alarm them. They had been through too much rehearsing, for that. Griffith wanted to see how they reacted under fire. “All right,” he said when they came down, “but they don’t know what it’s all about.” The picture he was making was “The Unseen Enemy.” At the climax, two sisters are trying to telephone for the police, while burglars in the next room are firing at them through a stove-pipe hole.

Lillian and Dorothy must have given a good account of themselves, for they were at the studio daily, after that, absorbing a new technique. They had no parts to learn. Mr. Griffith stood by the camera man and told them what to do. Just what to do. Every minute. That was altogether a novelty. On the stage you had to learn your part before you began. If you forgot your lines, a prompter helped you out, but he didn’t tell you what to do … never shouted at you, like Mr. Griffith, who on the whole was kindly … even amusing. He tied red and blue hair-ribbons on them, to tell them apart, though the resemblance was not striking … a fleeting thing … momentary. Lillian was “blue,” Dorothy “red,” because he said she was the spunky one … would talk back. Anyway, it was easier to call out directions to “Blue” and “Red.” They got in three days on their first picture, and an extra night. Eighteen dollars apiece. That was riches. They lived in furnished rooms, at 424 Central Park, West.

DAVID WARK GRIFFITH

II

GRIFFITH’S GROUP OF PLAYERS

The “silent drama” had gone a good way by 1912, but had still a good way to go. There was not much yet in the way of “sets,” elaborate construction of scenic effects. Griffith had invented, or perfected, the “fade-out,” the “cut-back” and other devices still in common use, but he had built no castles or walled cities, no Bethulias or Babylons, had marshaled no battling armies. The Fourteenth Street studio was just a room, where one rigged up, as simply and inexpensively as possible, the hastily knocked together properties required at the moment. The costume wardrobe was notable for its scantiness—a collection to be picked over hopefully, and “made to do,” or supplemented from a costumer’s. Griffith had a curious old collector-man, always on the look-out for “good things,” which were not always convincing. Too often the players had the appearance of being “dressed up” in whatever they happened to have, which was precisely the fact. It did not matter. Neither the public nor the producers took the “movies” very seriously, as yet … nor would they, for a year or so to come. They were still a cheap form of entertainment; something to be seen for ten or fifteen cents—even in the nickelodeons. The French were doing it better, then. Some of their films, their farces especially, were very good—light, chic—they were miles ahead of us in costume, scenario, settings, everything, until it became a question of money … ah, there we had them. And then the War came.