Life and Lillian Gish

It had all come about naturally enough. When it became known that Lillian Gish was closing her contract with the United Artists, proposals arrived plentifully. The distinguished Russian manager, director, author, Dantchenko, wrote that he had begun a story with her especially in mind; Basil Rathbone sent a manuscript and wrote: “I need not say how happy I should be to do a play with you, a privilege denied me even in my very own play, ‘The Swan.’” A cable from Germany stated that a motion picture company had been formed of those who believed in Reinhardt, and that Jannings and all the best of Germany’s artists had signed; that the first picture was to be “La Vie Parisienne,” by Offenbach—three versions to be made, French, English and German, Lillian to have the position of production manager.

But then came an opportunity such as she had hoped for: One day, George Jean Nathan spoke to her of the actress Ruth Gordon, of how much Lillian would like her.

“Couldn’t you arrange a meeting?” she asked.

He could, and did. He asked them both to tea, at the Colony Restaurant.

Lillian was not disappointed in Ruth Gordon. They had one love in common: France. They talked a great deal about that pleasant land, its beauties, its castles, its wines—especially its wines—one of which in particular, they both loved, Clos Veugeot. Ruth Gordon said:

“And I know a man who has the same taste: Jed Harris, the theatrical producer.”

Someone proposed: “We must try to get a bottle. The first one of us who finds it, to give a dinner, and invite Mr. Harris.”

Said Lillian, remembering:

“But of course no one could get a bottle of Clos Veugeot, any more. One day, Ruth telephoned that she had a bottle of Rhine wine, and that Mr. Harris loved that, too. So we had a small dinner in her apartment, with Rhine wine and strawberry ice-cream. For the first time, I heard Jed Harris talk. I thought I had never heard anyone like him. It seemed to me that he knew the theatre as no one I had ever met. Later, when I went with Ruth to get my hat, I said: ‘Ruth, he’s wonderful! I’d work for such a man for nothing.’ Ruth agreed. She had worked for him in ‘Serena Blandish,’ and told me how fine he had been.

“A few weeks later, George Nathan called up to say that Jed Harris had a part for me: ‘That’s splendid,’ I said, ‘but do you think I could do it?’

“‘Of course. It’s Helena, in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”’

“I said I would read it over at once, and see if I could do it. I adored Chekhov, and had a volume of his plays, but it didn’t contain ‘Vanya.’ I was very excited. For ten years—from the time of working with Victor Maurel, I had hoped to get back to the stage.”

She ran out to a bookshop, and presently was back, deep in the play. She thought Helena a hard part—wondered if she could do it. Her stage work lay far behind her—really counted for little, though for more, perhaps, than she realized.

This was at the end of February, or early in March. Almost immediately, they went into rehearsal. Jed Harris had selected a well-nigh perfect cast. With Walter Connolly in the title rôle, the tired, tearful, disillusioned Vanya; with Osgood Perkins, as Astroff, the hard-riding, hard-drinking, disillusioned doctor; with Eugene Powers, as Serebrakoff, the ailing, fat-headed, city professor; with Lillian, as Helena, his young, beautiful, disillusioned wife; with Joanna Roos, as Sonia, his unhappy, love-lorn daughter; with Kate Mayhew, as Nurse Marina; with Isabel Irving, Eduardo Ciannelli, and Harold Johnsrud—one must travel far to find a group of players better suited to a Chekhov play, or one more congenial to work with. Ruth Gordon was not in the cast, but she came to Lillian’s apartment and worked with her. So did Mr. Harris. They believed in her, and encouraged her to believe in herself.

Going back to the stage had its difficulties. For one thing, it had been seventeen years since she had appeared before an audience, and then had never played a leading part. The audience did not matter so much—she had never been audience conscious. But the rehearsing. In the pictures, the scene was shot, the film developed, and put on the screen for judgment, all within a brief time. If unsatisfactory, it could be made over, and over again. Furthermore, it could be “edited.” Now, it was all quite different. You could not see how well, or how badly, you had done a thing; you only knew what the director told you.

She had moments of misgiving. Perhaps it would have been better, certainly safer, to remain in the pictures—even the talking pictures that had offended her as incongruous. They were new, crude—Arliss in his “Disraeli” had taken a long step towards something that, in the end, might mean, if not perfection, at least something as near it as the silent film had reached. Oh, well....

It was in New Haven, on the evening of April 6 (1930), that the curtain went up on Lillian’s first night in “Uncle Vanya.” She was nervous, after all. The moment came when Helena enters, merely to drift voicelessly across the stage. There was a burst of applause from the audience—she was not prepared for that, and was almost as frightened as on that long-ago night of the explosion at Risingsun. She quickened her step, quickened it still more—was almost running, at the exit. Jed Harris still gives amusing imitations of this first entrance across the threshold of her new-old career.

Never mind—it was a success. The leading New Haven paper, which never before had given an editorial to a theatrical performance, gave one next morning, to “Vanya.” Professor William Lyon Phelps invited her to luncheon, and was full of enthusiasm. He had seen nothing, he declared, since Mary Anderson, to impress him so much as Lillian’s Helena. He wrote a letter to the “People’s Forum,” calling the public’s attention to the play.

All very gratifying: To Lillian, however, one of the most satisfactory features of her new venture was the absence of the money element—always, after the Griffith days, a foremost consideration. The word “salary” had never been mentioned between her and Mr. Harris. She did not even know what she was to have until she got her envelope at the end of the week.

It was a gray afternoon, in the little den which has become so much a part of our story, that Lillian recounted these things. She owed a heavy debt to Ruth Gordon, she insisted, and thought of Helena as “Ruth’s child.”

And just here came one of those coincidences which are always being popped into plays and stories. In another room, the telephone rang. A maid appeared at the door.

“Will you speak to Miss Gordon?” she said.

II

HELENA IN NEW YORK

The New Haven Register, after commenting on the “superb piece of staging done by Jed Harris, and the quite indescribable beauty and magic of Lillian Gish’s performance as Helena,” spoke of “Uncle Vanya” as “surely one of the few really great plays in existence … a richly polyphonic drama, in which one watches the drift and flow of human life as one listens to the different voices in a Bach fugue.”

True enough, though “Uncle Vanya” is hardly a play at all, but a succession of incidents with no more plot than a picture, which is precisely what it is—a tapestry of exquisite workmanship, a cartoon of human futility—in this case, on a Russian farm.

Mark Twain once wrote:

“God, who could have made every one of His children happy … yet never made a single happy one.”

Chekhov might have taken that as a text for any of his plays. In “Vanya,” no one of the characters is even passably happy, except Marina, the nurse, and Marina’s happiness lies in strong tea and hope in the hereafter. All the rest are actively unhappy, especially Vanya himself, who is hopelessly in love with Helena, wife of a querulous egotist twice her age—Helena being a little in love with “the Doctor,” who is drinking too much, himself heedless of the love of Sonia, who is too good for him, and breaking her heart for him, and is about the unhappiest of all. The late R. K. Munkittrick, of Puck, had a poem beginning: “All the house is full of sorrow, all the house is full of gloom”; the rest of it will not bear quotation, but in its entirety, it would make a typical Chekhovian chant. Chekhov’s houses all were full of sorrow—the pathetic gloom of thwarted human ambitions and desires, of blasted human ideals. Like any of us who happens to think about it, Chekhov did not at all know whether life was a tragedy or a comedy, so he called his plays comedies, and laughed them off on us, letting the tragedy take care of itself, and sink in, and add itself to our own, to make certain that we had our share. And in doing this, he created pictures of which, as the Register remarked, “one is forever thinking: ‘These things cannot have been written, they must have been lived.’” With the possible exception of “The Cherry Orchard,” “Uncle Vanya” is, I should think, the choicest of Chekhov’s tapestries, and the part of Helena, the subtlest example of his artistry.

Certainly, no rôle could have been better suited to Lillian. Helena’s beauty, her elusive, eerie personality, her mild, impersonal attitude toward much of what went on about her—it was as if the part had been created for her, or she for the part. It is the advent of Helena, and her gouty, insufferable husband, Serebrakoff, that is the catastrophe of the play—a calamity, in Astroff’s phrase, as definite as the ruin wrought by a herd of elephants—and misses being complete only because Vanya’s attempt to shoot Serebrakoff hurries them away. There is no special reason why sympathy should be with Helena, except that she is beautiful, and indifferent, and only passively to blame for the trouble she causes, and for the fact that she is bound for life to the bewhiskered Serebrakoff. Perhaps that is enough; perhaps the fact that Lillian played the part had something to do with it. The scene between the two, which opens the second act, is one of the high spots in the play. The contrast between Lillian in a canary-colored dressing-gown, her splendid hair loose, and her trumpery husband, reveals an entire epic, as tragical as any in the human story; and wherever the blame may lie interests the audience not at all, the chief desire being that the whining old human disaster may pass away as promptly as possible—overnight—leaving the lovely Helena and the doctor, or somebody, to live happy ever after.

It was at the Cort Theatre, on the evening of April 15, that “Uncle Vanya” opened in New York City.

It was the event of the Spring season. A first-night audience in New York is a different matter from one in New Haven. New Haven being a university town, a Chekhov first-night audience would be largely intellectual, with a good sprinkling of picture fans who had “adored Lillian on the screen.” In New York, there would be all the typical first-nighters, who get a thrill out of any first night, and especially where it is the first appearance of a comely lady, famous in a different, even if kindred, field. Also, there would be the professionals of stage and screen, each with a very special interest; and all the Chekhovians, some of them doubtful and critical, resolved not to be carried off their feet by any trick of beauty and spotlight, but to stand firm for art only; after these, an army of fans, who all the years had longed to see Lillian perform in the flesh, and, of course, there would be intellectuals, too—and critics—on the whole, I submit, except for the fans, a rather hard-boiled audience, one calculated to put fear into the troubled heart....

But then the curtain went up … on a Russian garden scene, and presently, across the stage, floated a vision of loveliness, and all the fans broke loose. And all the Chekhovians, and first-nighters, and professionals, and critics of high and low degree, forgot they were hard-boiled, and broke loose, too, and pounded their hands together long after the vision had passed, as if they hoped it might return, if only to bow.

The Times next morning spoke of “the storminess of the greeting at her entrance,” and Charles Darnton, in his afternoon column, had this to say of it, and of the play as a whole:

The applause that greeted her at her appearance not only followed her every step of the way but into the wings. Even then it kept up warmly, strongly, insistently. For a moment I was seized with the sickening fear she might pop into view again, like a grand opera singer after an aria, to bow to the tribute. Evidently, the audience expected no less of her. But it might just as well have expected to call back the Ghost in “Hamlet.”

The event had its peculiar phase. Walter Connolly was playing the principal character, and playing it finely, whereas Lillian Gish was appearing in a minor rôle, or what would have been a minor rôle in the hands of an ordinary actress. Yet throughout the whole performance interest centered in Miss Gish.

This is said with every consideration for Mr. Connolly. He could not help himself. He was as powerless, and blameless, in the matter as though he had been playing with Duse. But I couldn’t help wondering how he felt about it. Not that I suspected him of professional jealousy. It was just that the gods, or Jed Harris, had set down an artist touched by genius, and there was nothing to be done about it. When Miss Gish again appeared, this time to stay and let us hear as well as see her, when the presence of her filled the stage like light flooding through a window into a room, she was so luminous that the others, including Mr. Connolly, faded into the background. Never before had I seen quite the same thing done in quite the same way.

Certainly, she is not a pushing person. Instead of crowding into the limelight, she seems always to be withdrawing from it. Yet wherever she goes her own radiance follows her and lights her up. Try as you may, you cannot get her out of your eye. Just what this rare thing is I hesitate to say. But a first-nighter did say to me, “She is sublime.”

Whatever it may be, it is there in the eyes, the face, the hair, the voice, the form of Lillian Gish.

True enough, but it was a qualification that in future would make it difficult for her to get a part in any play having more than one major rôle.

Mr. Darnton says that he was assured by Mr. Harris that bringing Lillian Gish back to the stage was the finest thing he had been able to do in the theatre, adding: “I am convinced that her performance is one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen.”

If there was any dissenting voice as to Lillian’s triumph, I have been unable to discover it. But I think there was none. She had everything demanded by the part: the personality, the subtle understanding, the years of training which had equipped her for its perfect interpretation. Percy Hammond, of the Herald Tribune, wrote:

“In future when I am told that association with the films is a destructive influence, I shall cite Miss Gish’s appearance in ‘Uncle Vanya’ to prove the contention wrong.”

III

“THE PENALTY OF GREATNESS”

We have reached the point in this narrative where the writer’s personal association with Miss Gish began. Though long an ardent admirer of her work on the screen I had never seen her, never made any attempt to do so. Once, from France I had written urging her to make a picture of Joan of Arc. I know now that this was an old story to her; many had offered the same suggestion—the idea had been one of her own dreams. Engagements, one thing after another, had always interfered. I treasured the two friendly letters she wrote me about it, but the matter had gone no further. Now, three years later, back in America, the papers told me that Lillian Gish was appearing in person and in picture, in Broadway productions. “Vanya” was playing to capacity, and I do not like buying seats in advance—something is so liable to happen.

Then, one June day, I found myself on Broadway in front of the Rivoli, facing the announcement: LILLIAN GISH IN ONE ROMANTIC NIGHT. I learned that it was continuous, and that there were seats. A very little later, in the cool dimness, I sat watching Alexandra and Prince Albert and the others, and for the first time was hearing Lillian speak.

I thought her more pleasing than ever, and her clear, perfectly enunciated speech was a revelation. I had feared that it might be too loud, too low, provincial—in some way disappointing. It was none of these things; it was pure and sweet, and particularly intelligible; the microphone had recorded every syllable. I sat twice through the picture, suffering through several program features until it came again.

Once more outside, I was sorry I had not remained longer, for the sun was a hot glare. Sitting in Fairyland with Lillian was much more to my taste. I drifted down Broadway, and by chance (apparently), turned into 48th Street.

All at once I stopped: From a large frame on an easel, several Lillians looked out at me. A moment later, I realized that it was Wednesday, for a card at the top plainly stated MATINÉE TO-DAY. I was at the entrance to the Cort Theatre. Some people were going in. I wondered if I could get a seat. Midweek, mid-June, and a hot day—I would try.

A very little later, from a fairly good, even if fairly warm, angle, I watched the curtain go up on a Russian garden, where Kate Mayhew was pouring tea and Osgood Perkins, in semi-Russian dress—that is to say, tall boots—was marching up and down.

“Take a little tea, my son.”

And so the action starts, and presently Walter Connolly comes yawning in, the weariest, most lethargic, ill-kempt man the stage has shown this season. What a contrast it all is to the smart soigné picture around the corner! Voices outside, and Gene Powers, wearing long whiskers, enters.... Then—a beam of pure light, a radiance—floats, glides, drifts across the stage, to a long, and prolonged, salvo of applause … and then … it is not Kate Mayhew and Perkins any more, or Walter Connolly and sweet Joanna Roos, but Marina and Astroff and Uncle Vanya and Sonia, figures in a sad, amusing dream—a dream that is real—truth reflected as in a looking-glass, and one no longer minds the heat, or thinks of it, or of anything except the figures that drift in and out, and carry on the dream … especially the one figure, embodiment of the Chekhov spirit—that luminous being around which all the others revolve and bruise their wings. The lines of Astroff: “What does she think … who is she … what is inside her small blonde head? She drifts about here, mysterious, fascinating us.... She is like a firefly, that arrests our attention, but gives no warmth, nothing....” And by and by … hours, days, maybe—time no longer counts—the futile human dream draws to its futile human ending, and Sonia’s sweet voice is saying—to Uncle Vanya, bowed and heartbroken, like herself:

“You have never known what happiness was … but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait. We shall rest. Beyond the grave we shall say that we have suffered and wept, and God will have pity on us. And we shall be happy.... The wheat fields will be there, and the blue cornflowers … and the woods in Spring.” And to the low music of Telegin’s guitar, she adds: “And those who in this existence did not love us … they’ll love us … they’ll want us … we shall rest.”

The crowd flows out into the June sunshine, the dream with it … and all the way home. Poor Uncle Vanya and Sonia … one would like to comfort them … and, yes, poor Helena…!

This was on Wednesday, as I have said. I think it was on Sunday that I sent a note to Miss Gish, proposing to write of her. I had given up such work as too arduous, but it seemed to me that this might be a happy thing to do—the story of one who had begun humbly, and walked in beauty and humility to achievement, making the world better and lovelier for her coming.

I suppose it was a week later that I received a characteristically simple reply. She expressed willingness to cooperate in the proposed work, modestly adding: “—if I really deserve it. Whatever I could do in the way of help, I should do most conscientiously.”

One could rely upon that. Whatever she did was done in that way. She was on the eve of sailing for France, to visit Eugene O’Neill and his wife. She would return the last of August; then we could begin.

She returned as planned, but it was not until September 11, at her town home, Beekman Terrace, at the extreme end of 51st Street, New York City, that we had our first meeting. Arriving, I was shown into the living-room, a handsome apartment, one end lined with books. A few moments early, I stood looking out at the striking East River view, when she entered.

I had, of course, expected to see a beautiful woman—the woman I had known in the pictures, and on the stage. Yet when she appeared in the room—a slender figure, simply gowned in black, simply coiffed, without make-up—and stood in the drench of light reflected from the river, I confess I caught my breath a little.

I could not understand it. The actress in her home is so often disappointing. Her beauty is the beauty of her rôle—of her lines, her make-up, of the lights—she lays it aside with her part—leaves it in the dressing-room.

Yet it was all simple enough, later: Lillian Gish had never played the part of a character as lovely as herself … as her own spirit.

She led the way to the little room overlooking the river, the den with which we have become familiar—also a place of books. No word of an agreement, much less of a contract, was mentioned between us. In my letter I had suggested that the work be done without the idea of gain. If profit accrued it could be shared. I think neither of us remembered this—then, or afterwards.

I thought the speaking quality of her voice even more musical than when I had heard it in the play and the picture. When I mentioned this, she spoke of the training she had received from Maurel. What I found still more notable was her refinement of diction. Of Middle-West birth and early association, it seemed to me remarkable that she had been able to eliminate practically every trace of sectional usage—no easy matter, once it is ingrained. I noticed that she pronounced “been” rather in the English way, though not conspicuously so. It seemed to me that this woman, whose childhood and girlhood had largely been spent amid surroundings where purity of diction was indifferently regarded, spoke about the most satisfactory English I had ever heard.

I mentioned “Vanya”—her utter identification with the part of Helena; and I asked:

“When one has played many parts, is one ever uncertain as to one’s own personality?”

“N-no. The actor has a picture in his mind that he hopes to paint on the screen or present to the audience. I think he does not confuse it with his own personality. Of course, I speak only for myself.” And a little later: “I have always honestly tried to reach a high spot—perfection. Sometimes I seem—almost—to reach it. But then it was never a personal thing—a mood—a moment in the play.... Acting in itself is not an art—it is merely repeating lines and gestures, more or less in the manner of the director. But to give these things a special quality—to make them produce a particular mood in the mind of the hearer—to stir something deep down in the heart of the audience—something not measurable by any physical law—something fourth-dimensional—that is art, and may become a very great and sublime one.”

I think it was not altogether what she was saying; I think it was as much her manner, her look … her voice; but as I listened, the feeling grew upon me that she was not quite of the familiar world … I saw what Cabell had meant, and Hergesheimer.

“With your voice,” I said, “now that the pictures speak–”

Gently she dissented.

“I do not care for the talking pictures. They seem to me incongruous. Even the lip movements, to give the effect of speech, seemed to me all wrong. The silent film at its best was a beautiful thing, and lovely effects could be produced with it. To make the pictures speak seems to me a mistake. Oh, I’m sorry I made the ‘Romantic Night.’

“Charlie Chaplin’s picture,” she went on—“I want it to be a success. He is one of the few who can do what he likes. Mary can do that, too, and Douglas. None of the rest of us. Yes, the people want the talking pictures now, but maybe there will be a change. There should be music, of course. The pictures need music.

“Griffith, in his way, is an artist—too much of an artist ever to be rich. He has shown the others the way to fortune—he has not travelled it himself. Nothing satisfied him but the best—completeness. He did not regard cost. Sometimes in the cause of completeness, he overdid. In ‘Intolerance,’ for example.