Lillian Diana Gish, First Lady of American Cinema 1893 –1993

Lillian Diana Gish was called the First Lady of American Cinema. She (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993) was an American actress of the screen and stage, as well as a director and writer whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 in silent film shorts to 1987. She is credited with pioneering fundamental film performing techniques.

Gish made her stage debut in 1902, at The Little Red School House in Rising Sun, Ohio. From 1903 to 1904, Lillian toured in Her First False Step, with her mother and sister Dorothy. The following year, she danced with a Sarah Bernhardt production in New York City.

After 10 years of acting on the stage, she made her film debut opposite Dorothy in Griffith's short film An Unseen Enemy (1912). Lillian starred in many of Griffith's most acclaimed films, including The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), and Orphans of the Storm (1921).

In 1925 Gish reluctantly ended her work with Griffith to take an offer from the recently formed MGM which gave her more creative control. MGM offered her a contract in 1926 for six films, for which she was offered 1 million dollars.

 Her debut in talkies was only moderately successful, largely due to the public's changing attitudes. She acted on the stage for the most part in the 1930s and early 1940s.

 Returning to movies, Gish was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1946 for Duel in the Sun.

Gish made numerous television appearances from the early 1950s into the late 1980s. In 1979, she was awarded the Women in film Crystal Award in Los Angeles.  In 1984, she received an American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming only the second female recipient (preceded by Bette Davis in 1977) and the only recipient who was a major figure in the silent era. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1720 Vine Street.

Her last film role was appearing in The Whales of August in 1987 at the age of 93, with Vincent Price, Bette Davis, and Ann Sothern, in which Davis and she starred as elderly sisters in Maine. Gish's performance was received glowingly, winning her the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress. At the Cannes festival Lillian won a 10-minute standing ovation from the audience.

Her final professional appearance was a cameo on the 1988 studio recording of Jerome Kern's Show Boat, starring Frederica von Stade and Jerry Hadley, in which she affectingly spoke the few lines of The Old Lady on the Levee in the final scene. The last words of her long career were, "Good night."