Life and Lillian Gish

“Romola,” released through the Metro-Goldwyn Company, had two great premières: at the George M. Cohan Theatre, New York, on Monday, December 1st, 1924, and at the Sid Grauman Theatre, Hollywood, on the following Saturday. Lillian and Dorothy, with their mother, managed to attend both. The Los Angeles opening was so much more a part of the “picture” world that we shall skip to it, forthwith.

It was unique. Manager Grauman had stirred up all Los Angeles and Hollywood over the return of the Gish girls with a new picture.

They had anticipated no reception at the train. King was already in Los Angeles; he might be there … a few friends, maybe, not more. But when the train drew in, they noticed a great assembly of expectant people, most of them wearing badges—a rally of some sort, a convention. Lillian and Dorothy stepped to the train platform, and were greeted with a shower of rose-buds, thrown by gay little girls who had baskets of them; a vigorous and competent band struck up; a siren began to blow; everybody shouted and pushed forward; all those badges had on them the word GISH; all the battery of cameras that began to grind was turned on them; the rally was their rally—a welcome—welcome home to Los Angeles.

Producers and directors were there. Irving Thalberg, handsome, youthful-looking, pressed forward. Mrs. Gish, thinking him from the hotel, handed him her checks, and a moment later was apologizing. But he said it was all right—he was always being taken for his own office boy. John Gilbert was there, and Norma Shearer, and Eleanor Boardman, and ever so many more. A crowd of students from the Military Academy rallied around; also, a swarm of “bathing beauties” from the Ambassador, and a fire engine came clanging up, for the Fire and Police Departments had been called out. A news notice says:

A squad of motorcycle policemen and fast cars of the Fire Department, made an escort for the automobile provided for Lillian Gish, Dorothy and their mother, through the downtown district. Sirens and bells added to the noise of welcome.

Not much like the old days, when with Uncle High Herrick, they had landed with “Her First False Step” at a one-night stand.

They drove to the Ambassador Hotel. Mary Pickford had not been at the train, but they found her standing in the middle of their “flower embowered drawing-room”—never more beautiful in all her life, Lillian thought.

By and by, Mary, Lillian and Dorothy, motored out to the old Fine Arts Studio, where “The Birth of a Nation” and so many of Griffith’s other pictures, had been made. They found the old place hidden behind a brick building. “Intolerance” had been made there, and “Broken Blossoms.” Douglas Fairbanks and many others had begun, there, their film careers. They recalled these things as they looked about a little sadly, at what had once been their film home.

Manager Sid Grauman had gone to all the expense and trouble he could think of to make this a record occasion. “Romola” was following Douglas Fairbanks’ “Thief of Bagdad.” It must not fall short.

“A première without a parallel. A night of all nights. The most gala festivity Hollywood has ever known. An opening beside which other far-famed Egyptian premières will pale into insignificance.” These are a few bits of Manager Grauman’s rhetoric, and he added: “Every star, director and producer, will be there to pay homage to Lillian and Dorothy Gish.”

They were there. The broad entrance to the Egyptian was a blaze of light and gala dress parade. The crowds massed on both sides to see the greatest of filmland pass. Doug and Mary (who had already run “Romola” in their home theatre), Charlie, Jackie … never mind the list, they were all there. High above, the name of LILLIAN GISH blazed out in tall letters. When she arrived, and Dorothy, and their mother, their cars were fairly mobbed. Cameras were going, everybody had to pause a moment at the entrance for something special in that line. Manager Grauman was photographed between the two stars of the evening, properly set off and by no means obliterated, small man though he was, by the resplendent gowns.

After which, came the performance. Manager Grauman had fairly laid himself out on an introductory feature. There were ten numbers of it, each more astonishing than the preceding: “Italian Tarantella,” “Harlequin and Columbine,” “The Eighteen Dance Wonders,” but why go on? It was a gorgeous show all in itself.

After which, the beautiful processional effects of Romola’s story.

“ROMOLA”

There was no lack of enthusiasm in the audience. When the picture ended and the lights went on, and Lillian and Dorothy appeared before the curtain, the applause swelled to very great heights indeed. And when a speech was demanded, Lillian, in her quiet, casual way, said:

“Dear ladies and gentlemen, both Dorothy and I do so hope you have liked ‘Romola.’ If you have, then, dear, kind friends, you have made us very happy, very happy indeed … and you have made Mr. King, who directed ‘Romola,’ very happy, too.”

From the applause that followed, it was clear that there was no question as to the importance of the occasion—all the more so, had they known that, for Hollywood, at least, it was the last public appearance of these two together.

The critics did not know what to make of “Romola”—did not quite dare to say what they thought they felt. To William Powell, as Tito, nearly all gave praise; some regretted that Ronald Colman did not have a better part. Dorothy, as Tessa, had given a good account of herself, they said, and Charles Lane, as Baldassare. Of Lillian’s spirituality and acting there was no question, but there were those who thought the part of Romola unequal to her gifts.

As to the picture, one ventured to call it “top-heavy,” whatever he meant by that. One had courage enough to think it “a bit dull.” Another declared that it contained all the atmosphere and beauty of the Florence of Lorenzo de Medici. “Romola” was, in fact, exquisite tapestry, and the dramatic interest of tapestry is a mild one.

IV

ALSO, THE INTELLIGENTSIA

A brief lawsuit in which Lillian was involved at this time added greatly to her prestige. In October (1924), for what she felt to be just cause, she had broken off relations with her producers. Suit for breach of contract followed. At the trial, held in a small, crowded room of the Woolworth Building, the chief executive of the picture corporation testified to a number of remarkable things, among them that Miss Gish had engaged herself to marry him, all of which notably failed to convince Judge Julian W. Mack, who, on the second or third morning of the trial, rose and summarily dismissed the case against Lillian, and after a few well-chosen words to her accuser, held him “to bail in the sum of $10,000” (I quote the minutes) “to answer to the charge of perjury.” He was indicted, but Lillian, with no wish, as she said, to send anyone to prison, declined to appear against him, and the case was dismissed.

Lillian’s following was now enormous … of the whole world, for in no obscure corner of it was her face unfamiliar, or unwelcomed.

There was something almost magical about this universal homage. Men and women alike paid tribute. Reporters ransacked dictionaries for terms that would convey her elusive loveliness—likened it (one of them) to “the haunting sadness of an old Spanish song, heard as the light fades from the evening sky.”

What heaps of letters! And if, as has been said, she was wanting in sex-appeal, why all the marriage proposals? Why so much poetry? Just one young man wrote eleven little volumes of poetry—pretty good poetry, if there is such a thing, even if not entirely sane (what poetry is?)—and it was printed by hand with the utmost care and beauty.

Also, she was being discovered by the “intelligentsia,” whatever that word means. If, as appears, it has to do with intelligence, it would seem to apply to the great masses who had hailed her as an artist and raved over her, almost from the beginning. Never mind—she was now definitely recognized as an Artist—taken up by the elect, who in the long run, have something to say about Art, and affix the official stamp. And having discovered her, they proceeded to burn incense and chant orisons to her as their special saint and déesse, just as the others had been doing for a good ten years and more.

As early as 1921, Edward Wagenknecht, a young don of the Chicago University, met her, and straightway hailed her as the “artist’s artist.” Further he declared: “Words, especially prose, seem horribly wooden in discussing her.... Hers is a personality which can be adequately described only in terms of music, or poetry, which is a form of music. In her presence one wants instinctively to talk blank verse.” There was a great deal more to it which I should like to quote, for it was sincere, and trimly phrased. Mr. Wagenknecht has since written a whole chapbook on the subject of Miss Gish, a distinguished performance.2 My impression is that he was the advance guard of her later “discoverers.”

I don’t know when Joseph Hergesheimer first came under the Lillian spell, but probably about the time he used her as his model for “Cytherea,” which I regard as something less of a compliment than his article in the American Mercury, April, 1924. In this article, he is supposed to be talking to Lillian.

“No one,” I told her, “who has worked with you, has the slightest idea of what your charm really is. Two men, and not unsuccessfully, have written about it, about you … James Branch Cabell and myself. James thinks it is Helen of Troy; and if he is right, then you, too, are Helen. I mean that you have the quality which, in a Golden Age, would hold an army about the walls of a city for seven years.”

Hergesheimer was proposing a picture, in which, as he assured her, she would be “like the April moon, a thing for all young men to dream about forever … the fragrant April moon of men’s hopes … ‘No one, seeing you, will ever again be deeply interested in other girls.’ I recalled to her the legend of Diana—how a countryman, hearing Diana’s horn through the woods, lost in vague restlessness his familiar content. ‘You will be the clear and unforgettable silver horn.’”

It was in the guise of Jurgen that James Branch Cabell celebrated Lillian, wrote of her as Queen Helen, “the delight of gods and men, who regarded him with grave, kind eyes” … whom, long ago, Jurgen had loved, in “the garden between dawn and sunrise.”

Then, trembling, Jurgen raised toward his lips the hand of her who was the world’s darling.... “Oh, all my life was a foiled quest of you, Queen Helen, and an unsatiated hungering. And for a while I served my vision, honoring you with clean-handed deeds. Yes, certainly it should be graved upon my tomb, ‘Queen Helen ruled this earth while it stayed worthy.’ But that was very long ago.

“And so farewell to you, Queen Helen! Your beauty has been to me a robber that stripped my life of joy and sorrow, and I desire not ever to dream of your beauty any more.”

Cabell, builder of magic phrases! His words look like other words, but they assemble with a strange ardency, and they march to the pipes of Pan. I am taking Hergesheimer’s word for it that it was Lillian who inspired Cabell’s Helen, though I might have guessed that, anyway.

And then it happened that George Jean Nathan, hard-bitten dramatic critic, hater of movies, suddenly became Lillian-conscious and proceeded to do something about it—something rather special—in Vanity Fair. Wrote Nathan:

That she is one of the few real actresses that the films have brought forth, either here or abroad, is pretty well agreed upon by the majority of critics. But it seems to me that, though the fact is taken for granted, the reasons for her eminence have in but small and misty part been set into print.... The girl is superior to her medium, pathetically so.... The particular genius of Lillian Gish lies in making the definite charmingly indefinite. Her technique consists in thinking out a characterization directly and concretely and then executing it in terms of semi-vague suggestion.... The smile of the Gish girl is a bit of happiness trembling on a bed of death; the tears of the Gish girl … are the tears that old Johann Strauss wrote into the rosemary of his waltzes. The whole secret of the young woman’s remarkably effective acting rests, as I have observed, in her carefully devised and skillfully negotiated technique of playing always, as it were, behind a veil of silver chiffon.... She is always present, she always dominates the scene, yet one feels somehow that she is ever just out of sight around the corner. One never feels that one is seeing her entirely. There is ever something pleasantly, alluringly missing, as there is always in the case of women who are truly “acting artists.”

There was a good deal more in this strain. Widely quoted, it made quite a stir. Later—as much as a year, perhaps—Nathan being a bachelor (about the only one the intelligentsia could muster), it was reported from time to time that he was to be married to Miss Gish; then, that they were already married, privately, reports that have been recurrent, or intermittent, or something, ever since. But Nathan was a bachelor, apparently without much intention of becoming anything else, while Lillian was far too occupied for domesticity, the kind of domesticity she saw about her. She was satisfied with her circle as it stood—a circle which included individualities: rude-handed old Dreiser, for instance, and Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis, and Clarence Darrow. No Madame Récamier ever had a more loyal following, ever accepted it with such gratitude. And never a thing they said or did wrought a change in her, touched that vanity which is a mortal possession, but is hardly her possession, because, as I suspect, she is not altogether mortal, but a visitant—a dryad, likely enough, who has strayed in from the Old Time and is only puzzled a little, and saddened, maybe, by what she finds here.

V

“LA BOHÊME”

When in February (1925) the break with her producer had been rumored, telegrams with offers of engagements began to come.

Lillian was not at the moment in a position to consider a new arrangement. When the press announced the conclusion of her suit, all the offers came again, with others. Mary Pickford, as member of the United Artists, fervently believed that Lillian’s salvation lay with their company. “There is no question but this is where you should be,” she telegraphed. Offers came from both the Schencks, and from many others. By advice of her lawyers, Lillian finally accepted that of the Metro-Goldwyn Company, at a figure larger than she had hoped for. Her contract covered a period of two years, during which she was to make, if required, as many as six pictures, for the sum of $800,000. It further specified that she would not be required to attend anything in the way of publicity dinners, press teas, and the like. She could see interviewers in reasonable numbers, at her convenience. One day a flaming banner, stretching from the Metro offices across the street, announced that Lillian Gish had become a Metro-Goldwyn star.

She realized that she must begin with something important. To extend her European audience, she hoped to do something with international appeal. In Paris, she had discussed with Madame de Grésac and the musical composer, Charpentier, the possibility of making a film from his opera, “Louise,” but the element of free love in it was an objection, and Charpentier declined to have it modified. The character of Mimi, in “La Bohême,” had long been in the back of Lillian’s mind—Mimi of the opera, rather than of Murger’s original. Madame de Grésac agreed that the part was peculiarly suited to Lillian, and was eager to join in preparing the script. In New York, now, they went over it all again, and presently were in California, at the Beverley Hills Hotel, hard at work on it. They had plenty of time. Production was to begin in June, but the director and some of the players wanted were not yet free.

Lillian, with time on her hands, an unusual circumstance, spent some of it at Pickfair, with Douglas and Mary. Once they went camping. They went down the shore to a place called Laguna, a sheltered spot on the beach, about three hours by motor from Los Angeles. It was very secluded—cliffs behind them; nobody in sight anywhere. They had to leave the cars and climb down a big cliff. Mrs. Pickford and little Mary (Mary’s niece) were along, and about ten others.

It could be hardly be called roughing it, though it was real camping. They had fourteen little tents, a real village—string-town on the sea. They had servants to look after them, and a dining tent, a sitting-room, a kitchen, and individual sleeping tents. The weather was perfect. They were there from Thursday until Monday, and were in the open every minute. They wore only bathing suits and bathrobes, and were in the sea a good half the time. The tide came up to the doors of the tents.

“One always has a good time where Douglas is,” Lillian said. “He is like a boy. I remember Princess Bibesco and Anthony Asquith once came to Hollywood and were invited by Douglas and Mary to make a party to climb the mountain behind Pickfair, and go down on the other side, for camp breakfast. We had to start very early. I drove from the Beverley Hills Hotel and it was still dark when I got to Pickfair. I dressed in Doug’s riding clothes to do the climbing. The Asquiths were to go on horseback, but Douglas made Mary and me walk.

“We were well up the mountain before daylight, and the going was terribly scratchy. I had never climbed a California mountain. I did not know they would scratch one up so. I was a sight when we got down on the other side, and very happy to get breakfast.”

Irving Thalberg, head supervisor of the Metro-Goldwyn, Lillian said, let her choose from the directors and people on their lots. After seeing a number of scenes from “The Big Parade,” then in production, she selected King Vidor, to direct, and asked to have John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. Roy d’Arcy and Edward Horton were also chosen, and Karl Dane. Vidor expected to finish “The Big Parade” very soon, but pictures have a way of not getting finished, and it was August before they were ready for rehearsal. Then she found that they did not rehearse any more—not in the old way she had learned from Griffith—not at all until they were ready to shoot the scene. Salaries had increased to a point where it was cheaper to make the scene, time and again, than to rehearse it for days in advance. Vidor said, however, that Lillian might do her scenes in the old way. She tried it, but found the others so unused to it that she gave it up.

King Vidor, in a recent letter to the author, tells of Lillian’s familiarity with this method:

One of the things that comes to my mind is the amazing ability she possessed of rehearsing a picture through without having any of the sets, properties, and sometimes actors, before her. The first time we tried this method of rehearsal, which was at her suggestion, we chose a secluded spot on a patch of bare lawn in the studio grounds. I asked Miss Gish to go ahead with the rehearsal and, to my amazement, she started through doors that did not exist, closing them behind her, picking up articles and using them, opening drawers, taking out things and putting others away, playing scenes with other members of the cast who were not there at the time, walking up and down stairways that did not exist, and even going out into the street and riding away in a bus, and playing scenes with people in carriages as they moved along. This showed a power of imagination that was almost mystifying. It reminded me of times when I had seen little girls playing at housekeeping, only in this case it was entirely useful and helpful in the making of the picture.

The story of “La Bohême” is almost universally known—the play and the opera have taken care of that. Lillian and Madame de Grésac stuck rather closely to the latter. Little Mimi, pauvre brodeuse, living alone in a cold, miserable place against the roof, meets and loves, and is beloved by, one of the bohemians, a writer, of the adjoining attic. To advance his fortunes, she gives her strength, her life, for him, wins success for him, is cast off because he believes her unfaithful, then at the end, when she knows that her death is near, drags herself back to him, to die. There is no more heartbreaking story, and no story better suited to Lillian’s gifts.

The scenic designers had made small pasteboard sets, miniatures, to give the directors, electricians, camera-men, and all concerned, an idea of the possibilities of each scene. When Lillian looked at the miniature of Mimi’s attic, she said:

“But isn’t it rather large? Mimi lives in a very small corner under the roof.”

“Ah, but this is in an old castle.”

“Why, yes, to be sure—only, there could hardly have been a castle in that locality, and even so, Mimi and her friends would not have been living in one. Just up under the roof of very old and rather poor houses.”

“But you see, you have been in big productions, with very fine sets. We don’t want to put you into anything small and poor-looking. The road exhibitors would not feel they were getting their money’s worth.”

“Romola’s” elaborate background had worked on their imagination. They gave up their old castle, though sadly. The matter of costumes offered another surprise: A very expensive designer from Paris had been engaged—French, of Russian origin—Lillian rejoiced in the thought that she would get just the right thing. But, oh dear, when she came to see them! Monsieur was a small, dainty man, and he seemed to have designed them for himself. Also, it appeared to be his idea that Mimi was a vamp. Phyllis Moir, Lillian’s secretary of that time, says that it was Lillian herself who, in the end, planned Mimi’s costumes. Of this, Lillian only said:

“Finally, the woman at the head of our wardrobe department took some of the costumes I had—things I had picked up, here and there—and together we got what I wanted. Mimi’s picnic costume was the only new one. Our little designer was deeply offended. I was impossible to work with, he said.

“All on the Metro lot were so kind to me. Little Norma Shearer dressed next door, and helped me in many ways. Marion Davies was another who was considerate and kind. They had been there several years before I came, and were a great comfort. After ‘Bohême’ was produced, Marion Davies wrote me a very beautiful letter.”

In Picture Play, Margaret Reid, an extra in “La Bohême,” has written a luminous article, from which I am going to quote, trusting in her good heart to forgive me:

Miss Gish arrived on the same day that the elaborate dressing-room suite designed for her was rushed to completion.... After a polite but systematic search of the studio I discovered her on the lawn, talking to one of the heads. She wore a severely plain white coat and a close hat of plain rose felt, and carried a heavy black book in her arms. No make-up, not even powder, marred the healthy, translucent, perfect complexion....

Lillian thinks that the first scene of “La Bohême” was made in Mimi’s attic, which is doubtless correct, for Miss Reid speaks of something having been done before she was called—before various of the ladies and gentlemen were instructed to come out and be fitted for attire of the year 1830.

I happened to be among the fortunate, and was soon gowned in a lovely costume of hideous brown serge and a gray flannel cape. The keepers of the M-G-M wardrobe are the nicest wardrobe women in Hollywood, but even their elastic patience is tried on days when the picture and scene require a mediocre costuming of extras. Their sympathetic ears are deafened with cries of:

“But, Mother Coulter, I can’t wear this—why, it’s awful! Can’t I at least have a pretty cape to cover up this horror?” “Mrs. Piper, you wouldn’t make me actually wear such an ugly dress!” Each feels that anything less than the very best is not her type.

But today we were Parisiens of precarious means, offering up the old wedding ring and Grandfather’s stick-pin in a dingy little pawnshop in the Latin Quarter.... The magician, Sartov, Miss Gish’s special camera-man, sat on his high stool by the camera, pulling placidly at his meerschaum pipe. The last touches were being applied to the dreary little set.... Miss Gish was called, and we made our first acquaintance with Mimi. Such a sad and thread-bare little Mimi … faint shadows hollowed her cheeks, and her eyes were haggard with fatigue and hunger. In her arms was clasped a poor bundle which she timidly offered up. The coin thrust at her was too small, and with tears in her eyes and quivering lips, she tenderly placed her shabby, moth-eaten little muff on the counter. The orchestra breathed faintly one of Mimi’s gentle laments—oh, the pitiful little Mimi! I fumbled blindly for a handkerchief, feeling I couldn’t stand it any longer without doing something about it—anything to allay the misery of that wistful face.