PART THREE
I
ITALY
Life, always a serious matter to Lillian, became more so. Mrs. Gish underwent a major operation—was in grave danger. Lillian, at work on the set in Mamaroneck, was likely at any moment to be summoned to the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. When the patient was able to be moved, they brought her by ambulance to a house they had taken in New Rochelle. Later to an apartment on Park Avenue—three moves within a year, seeking comfort for the sufferer.
Spring was saddened by the death of Victor Maurel, who had done so much for her voice. His funeral services were held in New York. Lillian attended with his widow, Madame de Grésac, and there met Madame Calvé, who had been his pupil. In the carriage on the way to the grave, Madame Calvé told the others how she had been in Boston, knowing nothing of his danger. Suddenly she had felt that something was wrong with him. The feeling was so strong that she had taken the train for New York. He was dead when she arrived.
A few weeks after the funeral, Calvé asked Madame de Grésac and Lillian to come to her apartment, a beautiful place in the Hôtel des Artistes, on Central Park. She sang for them. Her voice was so enormous that it seemed as if it might burst the walls. She said that Victor Maurel’s training had made it what it was. She danced for them—the peasant dances—until the people downstairs sent up word that their chandeliers were about to come down. She was so eager to divert the little widow. Too eager for her own good: she danced so hard, that night, and so long, that next day she could not start on her tour.
Lillian was unsettled as to what she should do. Again, Griffith agreed with her that she should be making more money, and perhaps it did not seem to either of them that any picture they could do together would make enough for both. He was an extravagant producer, and her financial obligations had become very heavy. In March she wrote:
“My next picture, if all goes well, will be made by myself, so if it makes money I may get some of it.”
She had been negotiating with the Tiffany Company, considering an offer of $3,500.00 a week, to make four or five pictures a year, when her representative, Frederick Newman, was approached by the president of a new producing company, a meeting which marked the beginning of an episode wholly different from anything she had known.
Her old fellow-player, “Dick” Barthelmess, was already with the new company, and had produced “Tol’able David,” directed by Henry King, a success of which all his friends were proud. Lillian had not been much impressed by the Tiffany offer, mainly for the reason that they seemed to be doing circus pictures, and she did not fancy the idea of being cast for something with a slack-wire, or a trapeze, in it. She agreed with Newman to meet the chief official of the new company, and a few days later, lunching at the Ritz, the three discussed picture possibilities and terms. The new producer was a convincing talker. Lillian was favorably impressed, especially as he agreed to take Dorothy, who would play with Barthelmess in two pictures, with Lillian in two pictures, after which she would be given a contract of her own.
Lillian’s contract, which she signed that summer (1922), gave her $1,250.00 a week, and an added 15% after a certain amount had been earned. She thought this a highly satisfactory arrangement, as it made her returns depend largely upon the quality and success of the pictures. Recently, she said:
“All that summer I was looking for material for my first picture. We had two women read all the heap of things submitted. Whenever they found something they thought Dick or I might use, we read it. I nearly read my eyes out. One of the women, Lily Hayward, one day brought me Marion Crawford’s ‘White Sister.’ It struck me immediately as good picture material.
“Ever since my winter at the Ursuline School in St. Louis, I had thought of the nuns as earnest women, hard-working and kindly. My memory of them was an affectionate one—romantic. There had been a time when I fancied I might have a vocation for the veil. The cloister has appealed to so many who later became actresses. I have regretted, sometimes, that I did not follow that early inclination.
“There was another special reason why the book appealed to me as picture material: I saw a chance to get in a scene showing the ceremony of taking the veil—a scene not really in the book at all.”
She met with plenty of opposition. Everybody, it seemed, objected to the story, on the ground that it was a religious picture, “the one thing motion pictures would be wise to let alone”—everybody but Griffith, in whose studio she made some tests. Griffith thought it a beautiful story. Her producer also believed in it, because, as he said, he had faith in her judgment. Henry King, who had directed Barthelmess, was not enthusiastic, at first, but warmed to the prospect of a trip to Italy.
By October they were ready to go—all the players engaged except the leading man. James Abbe, a photographer, gave up a good business in New York to become their “still” man, and to assist in other ways. Abbe was valuable. One morning, quite excitedly, he called up Lillian, saying he believed he had found a man for the lead. His name, he said, was Ronald Colman, playing with Henry Miller and Ruth Chatterton, in “La Tendresse.”
They arranged to have a test made in Abbe’s studio, that same afternoon. Lillian went down; King directed the test. All privately agreed that Colman was what they wanted; next morning, when they saw the tests, they were sure of it. Colman declared himself willing to go, and everybody voted “Yes—if we can get him.” Henry Miller, when he learned the situation, generously agreed to release him from his part, which, though not the lead, was important. This was not only to oblige them, but to give Colman the opportunity he wanted. It was on Thursday morning that they saw the tests. On Saturday of the same week they sailed—twenty-four of them—on a Fabre Line steamer, bound for Naples.
“It was raining when we left Brooklyn,” Lillian remembers, “and very dismal and disheartening, especially as I was leaving Mother and Dorothy behind—Mother being still in the Catskills. Dorothy and Mary Pickford came with me to the ship—a great comfort.”
It was hardly a lazy voyage. Colman knew nothing about playing before the camera. Director King rehearsed him in his parts with Lillian, and with the whole company, as soon as they got their sea-legs. The Providence has a little after-deck, which the captain ordered enclosed in canvas for their use. It was a very busy place during several hours of every day. The Providence was a good ship, and the Southern route is nearly always delightful. It was never too cold to rehearse, and afterwards, one could sit drowsily in a deck chair and pretend to read, or lean over the side, looking at the bluest of blue water, or watching bits of skimming silver that were flying fish, and the big, black, graceful bodies that were porpoises. One never ought to cross by that friendless Northern route.
On the ship with them, by great good luck, was Monseigneur Bonzano, high prelate of the Church, then on his way to Rome to be made a Cardinal. Lillian quickly became acquainted with him. They put in much of their spare time discussing the picture she was to make—ways and means for its accomplishment. It was easy to realize that the churchman was won to the idea when he mentally associated the face before him with the part of the White Sister. And Lillian, regarding Bonzano, was infinitely impressed. His personality, his attainments, his human understanding, went far beyond anything she had ever known.
“I think he had the most beautiful face I have ever seen. He had traveled in many countries, and lived a long time in China. He spoke Chinese and any number of other languages and dialects. He had an understanding of all races. It was destiny that he should have been on that boat. Without him, we could hardly have made our picture. We were between the Church and the Fascisti. Through him, later, the doors of all Catholic Institutions were opened to us. When we stopped at Palermo, he took us through the great church where the mosaics are. He had us shown the treasure, and the jeweled robes. It was early November in Palermo, and very lovely. We landed at Naples.”
Italy! All the way to Rome, Lillian looked out the window. She was tired, but no matter. It was evening, there was a mist on the field—the vines trailing from tree to tree, Italian fashion, were like wonderful great spiderwebs. She would never forget that vision. It was eleven when they reached Rome.
Rooms had been engaged at two hotels, the Excelsior and the Majestic. Lillian and her companion, Mrs. Marie Kratsch, of Massillon, were at the former. Very tired, they went promptly to bed. Then it seemed that almost immediately they were awakened by an astonishing sound—the bells of Rome! Never in her life had she heard anything like that. Why, they were right in the room!
* * * * *
In Rome they found a small studio—sunlight, and four little Klieg lights, when they needed at least fifty, possibly a hundred. They ordered them from Germany, but did not sit down to wait for them. Lillian rehearsed the company while Director King looked for locations. Now and again she visited convents, forty or more, to decide what Order to use. She finally chose the Order of Lourdes.
“We also began building our sets.” [Lillian remembering.] “We used the Villa d’Esti, as the convent, and built all the interiors, the chapel, etc. We built the most beautiful interiors I had ever seen. Our library walls were of solid carved wood, so beautiful that we wanted to put walls around them, and live in them. I think no other moving picture sets were ever as beautiful as those we built in Rome and Florence. This had to be so, because they were to match up with a real hall or corridor. Construction was far cheaper than in America, but that was not all—oh, by no means! We got there a feeling that it is impossible to get here: the workmen had a love for what they were doing and expressed it in the carving, or whatever the work was.”
So many of the critics had likened her acting to that of Duse. Yet she had never seen Duse ... hardly expected to, now. She was to have her chance, however. Soon after her arrival in Rome, Duse was given an engagement at the Constanta Theatre.
“I gave a party for the occasion—Mr. King and his wife, Mrs. Kratsch and myself. The play was ‘Ghosts.’ You may remember Gordon Craig once designed scenery for it, especially for her. Isadora Duncan tells of it in her ‘Life.’ It saddened me to find the house not more than half filled. I was told that this was not unusual in Italy, where the young, fresh actress is always the favorite over one who has seen her best days. She fascinated me. I could not get enough of her. And then, at the end, a single white wreath, the flowers beginning to droop, was handed over the footlights. It was like a funeral offering.
“Every night while she was there, I saw her, and through a mutual friend we exchanged affectionate messages. I was to have called on her; but then I heard that she was ill, and I said they must not let me come. A year later, during her last visit to America—when she died in Pittsburgh—I saw her, in New York. It was in ‘The Lady from the Sea,’ and they gave her an opening night at the Metropolitan Opera House. It was a great triumph. It made up, I thought, for her neglect at home. I have never seen any theatre so packed as that was. Every seat, every standing-space ... Morris Gest had floored over the orchestra pit and placed chairs there.
“I was very busy, and did not know that I could attend. When I found I could get away, I telephoned to Mr. Gest and asked him if he could possibly get me in, anywhere—in the wings—anywhere. He said that he would take care of me, and when I got there I found that he had placed a chair in front, on the floor he had built over the orchestra, so I got to see her at that close range.
“Long after, in Pittsburgh, where I was playing in ‘Vanya,’ a newspaper woman, Mrs. Parry, told me that if anyone ever died of humiliation, Duse did ... her life had known so many heartbreaks. I have a very precious souvenir. When Duse died, the King of Italy sent a wreath of white roses, to be laid on her casket. John Regan, a ship-news reporter, one of my good friends, obtained a bud from it, put it into a small Italian box, of carved wood, with a little Botticelli reproduction, ‘The Three Graces,’ on the cover, and sent it to me. It is one of my priceless possessions. It always stays on a little table at the head of my bed.”
Lillian’s early weeks in Rome remain among her happiest memories. The little girl who once had been dragged through a sordid succession of one-night stands, with such interest as smoky towns and sodden fields could provide, was having her innings at last. They visited the Pincio, drove out the Appian way, and saw the Coliseum by moonlight. What a night it was! There was music all about—at one place, someone was playing a violin. Farther along, someone was singing.
And the churches—she tried to visit them all! There are said to be three hundred and sixty-five churches in Rome, and if one makes a wish on one’s first visit it is almost sure to be granted. She made wishes all over Rome, and left candles burning for her mother’s health.
* * * * *
It was not very long after their arrival that the grand ceremony, where Monseigneur Bonzano and others were made Cardinals, took place at the Vatican. All the players were asked to attend, and were much excited. They had to rise at five-thirty, to be there on time. The hour set for the ceremony was six-thirty—ladies to be in black, high-necked dresses, black veils over the head (not face), men in full evening dress, long coats, white ties.
The guards were costumed in the dress designed by Raphael, the ambassadors all in the most gorgeous array. Lillian thought them very handsome, chosen, no doubt, for their physical appearance. Two actors—Mr. Charles Lane, who played the part of Lillian’s father, and Mr. Barney Sherry—Monseigneur in the picture—were so distinguished looking, so imposing, with their white hair and fine faces and stately figures, that they were mistaken for ambassadors and ushered into the room where the ceremony took place. The Pope came in a golden chair, carried by twenty-four men, accompanied by the Sistine Choir, the gorgeous ambassadors, and the scarlet and ermine clad cardinals.
On Christmas Eve, she went with Mrs. Kratsch to Midnight Mass. That was beautiful, too, and very strange. So many things in the church. Some of the people had brought their dogs, or cats, even a goat. Two young people were making love. Leaving the glory of the great altar for the street, was to go to the other extreme. A little way along, was a stable. Looking in, they saw a mother leaning against a donkey, nursing her baby. It might have been the Manger at Bethlehem.
* * * * *
The lights came from Germany, but there was still trouble. All Rome could not supply enough “juice” to run them. Mamaroneck over again. Eventually an engine was brought from Civita Vecchia. They had expected to finish the “White Sister” in three months, at the longest. It would take double that time, or more.
II
“THE WHITE SISTER”
The story of “The White Sister” is not an unusual one. A beautiful young girl, defrauded of her fortune, pledges her love to a young army officer, who almost immediately goes to Africa, whence presently comes the news that he has been massacred with a detachment of his men. Broken-hearted, but clinging to hope, the bereaved girl becomes a lay sister in a Catholic institution—a hospital—and after long years of waiting, takes the vows of the Order, becomes a nun. Of course, at once, the soldier, who all these years has been a caged prisoner, returns, sees her, demands that the Church give her up, even kidnaps her, temporarily in the belief that she will require her freedom at the hands of the Pope. In the book, he gets her as a reward for unexampled bravery in a catastrophe. In the picture, he is even braver, but has to rely on Heaven for his reward, for Angela (Lillian) remains true to her vows, and in any case, Giovanni (Colman) does not survive the catastrophe.
The tragic ending was thought better for the picture, with something more spectacular than a mere explosion of a powder magazine for the catastrophe. Henry King was for a flood; Robert Haas, art director, for a volcanic eruption. In the end, they had both, also an earthquake—to start the flood. Of course, that meant changing the scene of the story. It was too costly, even for a motion picture magnate, to bring Vesuvius to Rome, so they moved Rome to Vesuvius—that is to say, they moved Angela’s convent to a town on the slopes above Naples, where the volcano would be handy. A laboratory, an important feature in the picture, they likewise built on the Vesuvian slope, but as Vesuvius could not be counted on to erupt on schedule, Haas built a miniature and dependable volcano in the studio.
“We worked very late,” Lillian remembers, “and I can still see Bob Haas, those nights when we were all tired out, sticking his head from the crater of his pet property, with some inane remark that would set us all off in a gale of wild laughter.
“During our stay in Naples, I was given a room in the Excelsior Hotel, with a window that looked out directly on Vesuvius. At that time of year, the sun seemed to rise from the crater. It was a room that Duse had once occupied.
“In Rome, our studio was on the outskirts. From my dressing-room, I could see the dome of St. Peter’s in the distance. We ate our luncheon in a little detached house, where the caretaker and his wife lived. The room was small, and all gathered round one table ... simple food, spaghetti, sardines, cheese, and always red wine with water. And then the Italian bread! A sandwich of Italian bread and sardines, with red Italian wine—nothing is better than that! We named our projection-room ‘The Catacombs,’ for it was a kind of cave, and had the same atmosphere. Our studio being small, we occupied every corner of it.”
Soon after the first of the year, they began “shooting” the picture. They had trouble at the start, getting extras, and workmen. Italians will not drop what they are doing and come to a stranger, even at double price. Finally, when they decided that the picture-makers were reliable—and sane—they came in droves, and remained.
One day, Count and Countess Carlo Frasso (she had been American) came out to see the work. It was where Giovanni is going to war: the lovers embrace, and Angela weeps. The Count and Countess expressed surprise that “Angela” shed real tears. They did not know that tears could be turned on in that way. She was invited to their palazzo, to dine. A duke of the royal house was there, a large, handsome man, to whom the ladies made beautiful curtsies, after the custom of the Court. The room was enormous, with many ambassadors in their splendid uniforms. Lillian was much impressed by the height and grace and physical beauty of the upper class Italians.
Through Cardinal Bonzano they secured the assistance of the Church. Priests even came to the studio, to supervise the scenes, to see that no mistakes were made in the appointments and ceremonies. The company was given an audience with the Pope, and Lillian saw him several times afterwards. All the things she wore in her part he blessed.
Lillian loved Rome, and tried to enter into the spirit of the people and the Church, for the sake of her part. She studied Italian, and little by little, learned to speak and understand, pretty well. She wanted to think and feel as Angela would think and feel ... to know Rome as Angela would have known it—its ancient monuments, its social aspects, its religious ceremonies, its feast days. Rome at Easter Time ... the Sancta Scala, where one ascends all the steps on one’s knees; Saint Paul’s on Good Friday, for the Gregorian Chants; Saint Peter’s on Easter Morning, where all the world goes by ... the spirit of the Church, of Rome, of Italy, were in these—and in the market places, the streets, the beggars ... everywhere.
Henry King got up his flood at Tivoli, near Rome. There is a fall there, and in some way the engineers held the water until the moment when the volcano and the earthquake were supposed to cause a dam to break and flood the little city that was on the slopes of Vesuvius.
The “eruption,” we made at the little town of Rocca di Papa, above Rome. They took up great airplane propellers to make the wind. Before an eruption, there comes a great hush—then wind with lightning, then the earthquake. The people of the village were engaged to be the panic-stricken crowd. They had no need of stage direction. When the big propellers started, they were frightened enough without being told. The wind those propellers made was terrific. The place became a bedlam of swirling dust and frantic people. Dust flew that had not been moved for five hundred years. A real eruption could hardly have frightened them worse.
“That day, and the next, were killing days for me.” Lillian remembered. “From eight-thirty in the morning, in the sun and dust, making scenes and bits that were a part of the great eruption; then back to the studio, and after a bath, make-up and costume, the great scene where Angela takes the veil. I should have been in perfect condition for that scene, and I was in about the worst possible. We kept at it steadily through the night, until nine-thirty next morning, twenty-five hours at a stretch, without sleep. Then I was allowed two hours and a half of rest. I slept some of it, but right away jumped into work again, and kept at it until eleven that night, when I was put into an automobile with Mrs. Kratsch and motored to Florence, stopping for a brief rest at Orvieto.
“At Florence I saw the studio, costumes, sets, etc., that had been partly arranged for, to be used in ‘Romola,’ which we were going to do the following winter. Nobody works harder than motion picture players—in the heat and glare of blazing lights, in all kinds of weather—twelve, fifteen, twenty-four hours on end.
“From Florence to Paris, and to Cherbourg. On the ship, I got into a cabinet bath, and then went to bed. I did not know when we sailed, and I slept the clock twice around without a break. I started with a terrible cold, but the bath and the rest cured it.
“We had begun ‘The White Sister’ in November, and it was now June. In New York King and I worked at the cutting, all through the summer, until the last of August, getting twelve reels ready for the big theatres. At the same time we were putting ‘Romola’ into shape to picture. King presently went back to Italy to begin work on it, while I remained to cut ‘The White Sister’ down to nine reels, for the road, a difficult and anxious job.”
* * * * *
“The White Sister” made its first appearance, “World’s Premiere,” at the 44th Street Theatre, New York City, Wednesday evening, September 5, 1923. There was a special souvenir program, tied with a blue cord, with Lillian’s picture on the outside and a message from Doug and Mary within.
The crowd poured in. Behind the curtain, on a soap box, Lillian and Dorothy anxiously waited the public verdict. Lillian wore a new ivory velvet dress, ordered for the occasion. She had been going to wear one of her old gowns, but Dorothy and the others had shamed her into buying a new one. She was certain to be called on, they said, and what a disgrace to appear at less than one’s best. So the new gown had been made on short notice, and now draped itself around the soap box, while the reels that told the story of Angela and Giovanni unwound, to lovely music, and their figures flickered silently across the screen. Two sisters, that twenty years before, night after night, had waited much in the same way to “go on” in their childish parts. Did they remember that? Probably not—they were too anxious, too expectant, and when presently the applause came roaring through to them, they hugged each other, for it seemed to mean success.
It was a long waiting, nearly two hours, but it was over at last, and there came a great final uproar, Lillian was summoned, and in the glory of her ivory velvet, appeared before the curtain, and when the deafening burst of greeting had subsided, made a brief speech, and the great first night was at an end.
She had arranged a small supper at her apartment in the Hotel Vanderbilt, just the family. A telegram from Mrs. Gish, by this time in California, had come:
“Mother wishes you all success possible in your new picture. I know that you will be sweet and dear in it.”
Her health was much better. She would go with them to Florence, for “Romola.” Probably the two years or more of Lillian’s Italian picture episode would not show another night as happy as that one.
“The White Sister” proved an undeniable success. Lillian’s ethereal presentation of her part would insure that, and even when some random critic raised his voice in timid protest as to the artistic structure of the edifice, his accents were drowned in the chorus of applause: The picture was unique. It had been made with the sanction and aid of the Church. The Vatican had fixed upon it its seal of approval. That settled that.
* * * * *
Now that seven years and a day have gone by, one seeing “The White Sister” again, as the writer of these chapters has seen it, rather recently—may, perhaps, speak of it with a steadier pulse. There could be no question as to Lillian’s part in it. At more than one moment in the sequence she rose to great heights, and at no time was her performance less than distinguished. At one instant—it is where she is prostrated by the shock of Giovanni’s reported death—the spasmodic twitching of her cheek—the result of long rehearsal—was hardly less than miraculous.
As a whole, however, she had done better work than in “The White Sister.” In “Broken Blossoms,” for instance—and she has done immeasurably better work since: in “La Bohême,” in “The Scarlet Letter,” in “Wind,” in her part of Helena in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” her stage play of 1930. Also, a good deal of her personality was lost in “The White Sister”—had become mere costume. Of all people, Lillian is the last to be standardized by uniform.
The picture itself was hardly a structural triumph. Briefly, its beginning and its middle seem not very logical, its ending hopelessly disproportionate. A volcanic eruption, an earthquake and a flood, for no better reason, when all is said, than to kill a poor soldier who had already spent five years shut up in a rabbit-hutch. Nothing he had done warranted his being drowned like a rat in a flooded ditch. If all of us who have been tempted to kidnap the woman we loved, in, or out of the Church, deserve drowning, then it’s high time to invite a return engagement of Noah’s flood. If Ronnie Colman—Giovanni, I mean—had, perforce, to renounce his heart’s desire, surely a simpler and less unbeautiful way than that might have been invented. A volcano, an earthquake and a flood—such a rumpus, only to bring death and redemption to one unhappy soldier! To have let him ride or sail out of the picture, going back to Africa, would have been infinitely less expensive, and even more heartbreaking, assuming that this was what the picture intended to be. At any rate, it caused the shedding of many tears. In Germany, it was immensely popular—in no other land are tears such a luxury.
It had been Lillian’s wish to dedicate the picture to the Sisters of the Ursuline Academy in St. Louis, her old school, and she hoped to go back there and run it for them, but was never able to carry out this purpose.
* * * * *
From the Director of Entertainments at Sing Sing Prison, Lillian received an invitation to appear before the prisoners, on the occasion of a showing—not of the new picture, but of “Broken Blossoms,” which, it appears, had strangely enough become their favorite picture—for five years had been voted as such.
She hesitated. She thought it could only be a sad occasion, but she could not refuse. A day was arranged, and she made the beautiful drive through the free air and sunshine, to a community where the outer scene was limited to prison walls. She was met by the Warden and one other official. Then they left her, and the prisoners were assembled. She found herself alone with them. At first, it was strange, uncanny, then delightful. All were so courteous and interested. After the picture was shown, she talked to them. She told them how the play was made. They regarded her with deep attention, hanging eagerly on every word. When she had finished, they gathered about her. One among them had been a friend of Thomas Burke, who wrote the story. By the time she was ready to go, she had forgotten they were prisoners, and at the door asked her escort:
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
He smiled a faint, sad smile.
“Only so far, Miss Gish, and no farther.”
Speaking of it, she said:
“I believe criminals are only mentally and morally ill. The State employs judges to send them to prison. Why not employ doctors, to diagnose and treat them?”
III
“ROMOLA”
Reports from “The White Sister” showed that it was going to make record runs—that returns from it would be very large. Catholics and Protestants alike approved it. Father Duffy, of the Fighting Irish 69th Regiment, of New York, wrote:
I wish to nominate “The White Sister” for a high place on the White List of dramatic performances.... It is religion struggling with human passions, as in real life, and gaining its victory after storm and stress.
Chicago society deserted the opera on the opening night of “The White Sister,” and similar reports came from elsewhere. Lillian’s personal tribute—her “fan” mail—assumed mountainous proportions: offers of engagements, protection, marriage, requests for loans ... what not?
Meantime, one must get on with the next picture. King was already in Italy, making a pirate ship scene. Lillian finished cutting down “The White Sister,” for road use, an arduous, delicate work, and with Mrs. Kratsch, sailed in November. Dorothy was to be in “Romola,” and with her mother had sailed a little earlier.
To Genoa, then Florence, where they put up at the Grand Hotel on the Arno, with an outlook on the Ponte Vecchio, all that the heart could desire, if the weather had only been a little more encouraging.
It began to rain, and it continued to rain—“about nineteen days out of twenty,” Dorothy said. Dorothy thought the rain not very wet rain—not at all like English and American rain—not so solid—light, like ether. But one evening, the rain stopped, and when they woke in the night, there was a strange silence. In the morning, there was another sound—also strange—strangely familiar. Dorothy looked over at Lillian.
“If we were in America, I should say they were shoveling snow.”
They hopped out of bed, and to the window. It _was_ shoveling, and it _was snow_. “Very unusual,” they were assured later. But then, winters in Southern Europe quite often are unusual. Even sunshiny ones.
* * * * *
The picture of “Romola” follows the main incidents of George Eliot’s novel. Lillian, of course, had the part of Romola, Dorothy that of Tessa, Ronald Colman that of Carlo Bucelline. To William H. Powell was assigned the part of Tito; Herbert Grimwood was given the part of Savonarola, and looked so much like him that when he walked along the streets of Florence, children would point him out. Altogether, the cast was a fine one.
They had expected to use a number of real scenes in Florence—the Duomo, the Piazza Signoria, etc., but found that modern innovations—telegraph wires and poles, street car tracks, and the like—made this impracticable. On their big lot in the outskirts of the city, they built an ancient Florence, a very beautiful Florence, of the days of Savonarola. They did use the Ponte Vecchio, the ancient bridge, though a second story had been added a generation later than the period of their picture. And they used the Arno in several scenes.
Rain or no rain, their lot became a busy place. They brought the “White Sister” equipment from Rome, and a small army of artisans and laborers began to work wonders. In a brief time, a quaint old street sprang up—along it shops of every sort, just as they might have been four hundred years before ... real shops, in which were made every variety of paraphernalia required for the picture: costumes, harness, basketry, hats, footwear, furniture—everything needed to restore the semblance of a dead generation. They even set up a little restaurant, and ate their luncheons there. Animals—dogs and cats—walked about, or slept in the sun. Flocks of pigeons were in the air, or on the house-tops. During the brief visit of the year before, they had asked that these be raised on the lot. It was all realistic, and lovely. Wood-carvers were at work on the rich interiors, some of them more beautiful, even, than those of “The White Sister”: a great church interior, and a banquet hall, for Romola’s wedding. At one side of the lot were small buildings, where the distinguished artist, Robert Haas, with his staff, worked at the drawings. For the great wedding feast, they could not get period glasses in Florence, so sent a man to Venice, and had them specially blown. Lillian remembers the banquet hall as very rich, exquisite in detail—the scene as a whole, one of peculiar distinction.
“We had for it a lot of titled people of Florence, who were eager to be in the picture. We had very little trouble to get anything we needed in the way of extras. In some of the scenes, we had hundreds of them.
“One thing we did not get so easily: For the wedding, we needed 15th Century priest robes. We heard of some up in the hills, but we could get them only on condition that we engage four detectives to guard them, two by day, two by night.
“We had to guard ourselves, for that matter. Florence has many Americans, and they have not much to do. If we had let in all who called, we should have had a perpetual sequence of social events, with very little work. We had many invitations, but could not accept them. I think we went out just once, for dinner. When we had a little time in the afternoon, we liked to go to Doni’s, for tea, or to shop a little, for linens and laces. Whatever of such things we have now, Mother bought that winter in Florence.
“Every night we literally prayed that the next day would dawn clear and bright, so that we might make up our lost time. But no! Maybe, as Dorothy said, the Italian ‘dispenser of weather,’ didn’t understand English.
“One cannot too highly praise the Italian workmen. Over and over, ours would work on a set that it might be the exact replica of a 15th Century design. Italian workmen are willing to be told, and possess an astonishing ambition to do a thing exactly as it should be done.”
They began “shooting” the scenes. They had no regular scenario. They worked, as it were, inspirationally. They did not know very exactly what they were going to do when they began a scene, and they were not quite sure what they had done when they finished it. The element of accident sometimes produces happy results, but it is unsafe to count on it. “Romola” developed into a kind of panorama—a succession of lovely pictures, without very definite climaxes.
They worked hard. For one thing, they were experimenting with a new film, the panchromatic, which had never been used for an entire picture, and they did their own developing. One of the chief beauties of “Romola” is the richness of its photography.
What with the weather and all, the making of “Romola” was hardly what the French call “gai.”
There were lighter moments: In the scene where Dorothy is supposed to drown in the Arno, she tried for an hour to sink in that greasy, unclean river. She couldn’t swim, so it had to be done in shallow water. She didn’t like to pop her head under, either, but they told her if she would fill her lungs with air and hold her breath, there would be no danger. She was plump, and her bones were small. Being filled with air made her still more buoyant. Also, she had on a little silk skirt that got air under it and ballooned on top of the water. Dorothy simply couldn’t drown. When she popped her head under, the little skirt stuck up in a point like the tail of a diving duck. Such an effect would never do for a picture like “Romola.” From their window in the Grand Hotel, Mrs. Gish and Lillian, watching through a glass, laughed hysterically at Dorothy’s efforts to drown. Dorothy finally struck: she could stand no more of the Arno water. The scene was finished one chilly day in America—in Long Island Sound. Dorothy had a cold at the time, and they thought she would contract pneumonia. But that was a poor guess. When she came out of the water, the cold was gone. Clean, salt water, Dorothy said.
In the picture, Dorothy, as Tessa, has a baby. They borrowed the cook’s baby, the youngest of nine, a fat, robust bambino, strapped to a board, Italian fashion; easy enough to carry, properly held, but not handy for cuddling. Juliana was her name, and as lovely as one of Raphael’s cherubs—lovely, even among Italian children, all of whom have little madonna faces, because for generations expectant mothers have knelt ardently before altars and wayside shrines. Lillian and Dorothy became fond of Juliana, took walks with her, carrying her, board and all—a burden which increased daily as Juliana got fatter and fatter. They wished Juliana would not grow quite so fast; there were scenes where they had to run with her. Italian babies are seldom warm, in winter. One day, Juliana broke out with a rash, which at first they thought was measles, but was only the result of the studio heat, heat from the great Klieg lights.
Lillian had a maid named Anna, a large, lovely soul, but a menace. If one got an ache or a pain, Anna came running with an enormous Italian pill, the size of those on the Medici coat-of-arms. After a day at the studio, in the strained “Romola” poses, Lillian once mentioned having a back-ache. Anna commanded her to undress and lie down. A very little later she came bringing a bath towel, and a flat-iron, the latter quite definitely warm. Then, turning the world’s darling face down, she spread the towel on her back and proceeded to iron her. It was drastic, but beneficial. The ironings became a part of the daily program. Anna decided that her mistress needed blood, and cooked for her apples in red wine. They were delicious.
“Romola” was finished near the end of May. The last scene was the burning of Savonarola, terribly realistic. Lillian got so near the fire that she was scorched. A few days later they saw the rushes and she was ready to go. The great Italian episode was over. It was unique, and remains so. Big companies do not go on foreign locations any more. They build Italy or any part of the universe on their lots in Hollywood.
Lillian in America found that she had been chosen by Sir James Barrie for the picture version of “Peter Pan.” No one could have been better suited to the part, and it greatly appealed to her. But there were complications. Regretfully she put it aside.
Pleasant things happened: Dimitri Dirujinski and Boris Lorski modeled busts of her; Nicolai Fechin did her portrait, as Romola. The last was given a special exhibition in the Grand Central Art Galleries, with a reception to Lillian and the artist under the patronage of Cecelia Beaux and New York’s social leaders. It was bought by the Chicago Art Institute and today hangs in the Goodman Theatre of that city.
* * * * *
“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.
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.
Footnote 2:
“Lillian Gish, An Interpretation”: Number Seven, University of Washington Chapbooks. Edited by Glenn Hughes (1927).
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.
When the camera stopped, she peeped around it, the tears still shining in her eyelashes.
“Was that all right, Mr. Vidor? Or shall we try it again?”
“Well, let’s try it this way, too, and see how it looks,” in Mr. Vidor’s soft, lazy Southern accent.
So Mimi is unhappy this way and that way and several other ways, until she receives her scanty loan and turns slowly and goes out of the door. That was all of Mimi, for that time.
When next we saw her, it was at a picnic in the woods of “Ville D’Avray” ... a place of orange groves at the foot of mountains that stretch up into the lofty snow fields.
In a grassy meadow, sheltered by oak trees, the picnic was spread. Miss Gish’s town car, with its shades drawn, was already parked at one side. Through the back window of an expensive coupé, a black head swathed in a towel indicated the transformation of John Gilbert into Rodolphe....
When Miss Gish stepped out of her car and began to work, it was like the arrival of a limpid, fragrant wood elf, so exquisite was her costume and so beautiful was she herself....
When I start to write of Mimi as I last saw her, I am reminded of the sensations I had as a child, when Mother used to tell me in vain that whatever I was reading was only a play or a story.... Thus I keep assuring myself that Miss Gish is a young lady who makes enough money to live on very comfortably, and that she has beauty, fame and adoring friends.
Yet there keeps recurring the picture of our last work in “La Bohême,” of the dying Mimi, struggling across Paris to Rodolphe. Her miserable clothes are in rags, and illness has carved deep hollows in her face. Clinging to the steps of a bus, fighting weakly through crowds, falling into the gutter and crawling on upon hands and knees, dragged holding to a chain behind a cart, slowly making her way, her long, pale-gold hair falling down over her shoulders and back.
Between shots you might have thought her still playing a bit in the picture, so unpretentious was her manner. If her skirt had to be dirty for a close shot, she did not hail a prop boy, but knelt on the cobblestones and made it grimy herself....
Toward the end of the sequence—scratched and bruised from her numerous falls and tumbles, her clothes ragged and mud-stained, her beautiful hair tangled and dusty, she waited so patiently for the lights to be arranged for each shot, now standing on the rough, sharp cobbles, now collapsed on the step. Sitting in the gutter, waiting for Mr. Vidor’s signal, she smoothed her apron—a tattered piece of black cotton—with a delicate gesture.
The preservation of an illusion through reality is always a feat, an illusion being of such a fragile, rarefied substance. Usually we learn to be satisfied with treasured remnants. Thus, it is with pride in my good fortune, and with gratitude to Lillian for being what she is, that I present to you an illusion, not only intact but even increased in value—Miss Gish!
With her usual thoroughness, Lillian had prepared for the difficult rôle of Mimi, especially for the tragic end. Mimi’s illness was a malady of the lungs, brought on through exposure, hunger and unremitting toil. Before the great death scene, Lillian had gone to see a priest about getting a chance to study the progress of the disease. Most of the priests knew her, after “The White Sister,” and this one was especially kind. He took her to the County Hospital. All were proud and eager to help her. They told her the symptoms at the different stages. It was all rather terrible.
Both Miss Moir—Miss Gish’s secretary—and Mr. Vidor, in letters to the writer, have written of the result of this intense hospital study. Mr. Vidor’s picture follows:
Another episode I shall never forget: The death scene was scheduled for a certain morning, but because the set was incomplete, it was postponed till the following day. Miss Gish had not been told of this postponement, and had thought so much and concentrated so vigorously to make this scene realistic, that she arrived at the studio whiter than I had ever seen her and looking at least ten pounds thinner. She was unable to speak above a whisper; in fact, she talked very little. We tried to do other scenes, but Miss Gish had lived that death so continuously during the night before that I was unable to instill enough life into her to make any other scenes that day. This terrific concentration continued all that day and that night. Upon my arrival at the studio next morning I was informed there would be another delay until that afternoon on this particular set. Again we made quick plans to switch, but when I saw Miss Gish we cancelled them. One look at her and my fears began to rise. I began to think that if we didn’t hurry and take this death scene we should never be able to finish the picture, so thoroughly was she experiencing the tortures of a tubercular death.
That afternoon the set was complete and we hastened—with great solemnity, I may add—to photograph Mimi’s death. I was jammed between a camera and a slanting wall in a narrow attic corner. Mimi was carried in by her friends, the bohemians, and placed upon her little bed. After her friends had taken a last farewell, Rodolphe entered the scene, and with him close to her Mimi breathed her last. Rodolphe, played by John Gilbert, was supposed to remain in the scene a few moments and then leave. In the playing of the scene, however, some of the bohemians, and also Mr. Gilbert, were so impressed that they completely forgot what they were to do. I, myself, was in the same frame of mind.
I had noticed that when death overcame Mimi, Miss Gish had completely stopped breathing and the movement of her eyes and eyelids was absolutely suspended. This, even from the close view I had. The moments clicked but still Miss Gish had not moved, nor breathed. My mind immediately jumped to the great drama of this situation. To me, Miss Gish had actually died in the portrayal of a scene. I saw all the headlines in the newspapers of the following day. I saw all the drama and the hush that would fall throughout the studios when the news spread around.
The cameras ground on—the moments turned into minutes. Finally, after an untold length of time, the other actors left the scene and the cameras stopped. Everyone was breathless, fearful of what might have happened. Miss Gish could plainly hear that the cameras had stopped, and could now take breath and open her eyes. But this she did not do. Not daring to speak I fearfully walked over to where she lay and touched her gently on the arm. Her head turned slowly, and her lips formed a faint smile.
I think we all broke into tears of great joy.
To me this is the most realistic scene I have ever known to be enacted before a camera. I hope I shall never see a similar one quite so well done. The inside of her mouth was completely dry, and before she was able to speak again it was necessary to wet her lips which had stuck to her teeth from dryness. The next morning Miss Gish was as bright and cheery as ever, and we were able to go ahead with the rest of the picture.
One last word: personal contact with Lillian Gish did not destroy any of the idealism she created on the screen for me. To those who have known her only in that way, I promise there is no disappointment in meeting her face to face.
Miss Moir remembers that these final scenes of Mimi’s life lasted about a week, and that everyone was relieved when they were over. Lillian herself was so exhausted that her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she had hardly sufficient strength to walk. “Poor Renée Adorée was constantly coming back to her dressing room for a fresh supply of handkerchiefs. During the sequence where Mimi is dragging herself back to Rodolphe, to die—the bus, to the back of which she was clinging, suddenly lost a wheel, and it was only by a miracle that she escaped having both legs crushed under the heavy vehicle.”
* * * * *
It was near the end of December, 1925, that “La Bohême” was finished, and it was two months later, February 24, at the Embassy Theatre, New York, that it had its first showing. Lillian was not present. To this day, she has never seen “La Bohême” given with its musical accompaniment—not the original Puccini score, the cost of which was prohibitive, but a very lovely adaptation expressing something of the feeling and mood.
“La Bohême,” a picture of much sorrow and little brightness, was sympathetically received and left a deep and lasting impression. Except, possibly, in “Broken Blossoms,” Lillian had never appeared so effectively—in a picture so suited to her gifts.
It was a big night at the Embassy. Social New York was out in force, and all the picture people. The _Post_ next day said:
“Every movie player in New York, and there are many here just now, was ‘among those present,’ for the infrequent appearance of Lillian Gish on the screen takes on the importance of an event.... The Gish can do no wrong, in the opinion of many who subscribe to the art of motion pictures....”
Approval of Lillian’s Mimi, though wide, was not unanimous. Certain critics were inclined to hold her responsible for the departure from Murger’s original. There was hot debate among the fans. Lillian, already absorbed in another picture, gave slight attention to all this; much less than did the interviewers, one of whom found her “not particularly interested.” She merely asked absently: “Has someone been criticizing me?” Which, declared Miss Glass, the interviewer, was as astonishing as if she had looked at the Pacific Ocean and asked: “Is it wet?”
“Her manifest lack of resentment toward her critics confounded me.... She sat quietly toying with the folds of her dress, betraying no sign of annoyance or concern.”
In itself, the Mimi of Madame de Grésac was a classic rôle. Not again in her screen life would Lillian find a part more perfectly suited to her personality and special gifts. Her portrayal of it warranted Pola Negri’s verdict:
“Lillian Gish is supreme. That was my opinion when I first saw her. It is still my opinion when I have seen all the other stars. She is sublime in her genre.”
The New York première was not the picture’s first showing. There had been a preview at Santa Monica, and one secured by Lillian for the employees of the Beverley Hills Hotel, where she lived. These latter sent her a joint acknowledgment, signed: “Thankfully your admirers, more than a hundred strong.”
VI
“THE SCARLET LETTER”
Lillian had not found time to go to New York. Through no fault of hers, the production of “La Bohême” had been delayed, and there was not a moment to lose, now. “La Bohême” was finished on Saturday, and the first shots of “The Scarlet Letter” were made the following Monday. She had agreed to do as many as six pictures, and she had two years to do them in. She was very anxious to fulfill her part of the contract.
Her mother was with her. She had come out with her in May, but in September had gone back to London, where Dorothy was making “Nell Gwynn” for an English company. Now again she was back, vainly, unwisely trying to share herself with both daughters. In January, Lillian had taken Mrs. Pickford’s house at Santa Monica, directly on the beach. She believed it would be better for her mother—not always warm, but there was nearly always sunshine, and the air was good.
Every morning Lillian went into the sea. The water was cold, but by six she had put on her bathing suit, and plunged in. A dip, then out again, a race to the house, a cup of hot water that Nellie, the maid, had ready. Then quickly into a little roadster and away to the Culver City lot, a brisk twenty-minute drive. Nellie there prepared breakfast while her mistress was dressing and making up.
* * * * *
In her little corner of Beekman Terrace, the “den,” as she calls it, overlooking the East River where a procession of water traffic moves always up and down—stout, saucy tugs, with square-nosed barges or droopy, submissive schooners in tow; swift Sound steamers; smudgy freighters; private yachts—very romantic and expensive-looking; all the motley parade of the marine register—Lillian not so long ago told of the making of “The Scarlet Letter.” She said:
“It was while we were making ‘La Bohême’ that I worked with Frances Marion on the story. Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne appealed to me, and I thought the story had great picture possibilities. There was one objection: the Church would oppose it—the Protestant Church, especially the Methodist. ‘The Scarlet Letter’ was one of a list of proscribed books—forbidden for picture use. I took the matter up with Will Hays, and prominent members of the Clergy. Why should the Church prohibit a great classic, like that? When I told them how I proposed to present it, they gave their sanction. When they saw the picture, by and by, they recommended it.
“My idea was to present Hester as the victim of hard circumstance, swept off her feet by love. Of course, that was what she was, but her innate innocence must be apparent. I said:
“I believe in ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ if we can get the right man for Dimmesdale, the minister.” We considered several, but none would do.
“One day, Louis B. Mayer, business head of the Metro, said to me: ‘I think I have found the minister for your “Scarlet Letter.”’ Mayer had brought over Greta Garbo, and I had faith in him. Garbo had done a picture of ‘Gosta Berling’ in Sweden, with Lars Hansen, and the Metro had brought over a print of it. ‘Go into the projection room and have them run it for you,’ said Mayer. ‘If you like Hansen for the part, we’ll bring him over.’
“The moment Lars Hansen appeared on the screen, I knew he was the man we wanted. And I knew that we must have a Swedish director. The Swedish people are closer to what our Pilgrims were, or what we consider them to have been, than our present-day Americans. Irving Thalberg selected Victor Seastrom, a splendid choice. He got the spirit of the story exactly, and was himself a fine actor, the finest that ever directed me. I never worked with anyone I liked better than Seastrom. He was Scandinavian—thorough and prompt. If Mr. Seastrom said we would start at eight, or half-past, the camera was ready at that time, and so were we.
“His direction was a great education for me. In a sense, I went through the Swedish school of acting. I had got rather close to the Italian school in Italy, watching them at their theatres, and from being associated with those who were with us in ‘The White Sister’ and ‘Romola.’ The Italian school is one of elaboration; the Swedish is one of repression. Mr. Vidor’s method—of the American school, if there is such a thing—leaned to self-expression, which has its advantages.
“We had some of the people used in ‘La Bohême’—Karl Dane, for one, who, except for the brief scene where a scrap of my forbidden laundry creates a situation and finally flares out on a currant bush—furnished about all the comedy of that too sad picture. Henry B. Walthall, with whom I had played so often in the old Griffith days, was engaged to do Prynne, Hester’s husband. In the old days, he had been taller than I was. I was amazed now to find it the other way about. I had grown a good deal in the ten or eleven years since then. I suppose exercise, open air, health and proper food, had been responsible. Joyce Coad, my little girl in the play, was a sweet child, and a clever little actress. I became much attached to her.
“Work on ‘The Scarlet Letter’ went off smoothly until we were within two weeks of the end. Then, one day in April, I got a paralyzing cable from Dorothy in London. Dorothy had been over for a brief visit during the Winter, and Mother had presently followed her back to London. She had not wanted to go—not really. She had not been well for years. Commuting back and forth across six thousand miles, trying to be with both of us, had been too much for her. That last time she would not let me go to the train with her. Dorothy’s cable said that she was dying.
“I cabled and got the latest news of her; she had had a stroke. I said I would take the first ship I could get from New York.
“I found that by leaving Los Angeles in three days, I could catch the Majestic out of New York, which would put me in London the last day of April. It was the 15th that she had been struck down.
“At the studio, Seastrom said that by working day and night we could do the remaining two weeks on the picture in the three days I had left. I asked the company if they would stay with me through it, and every one said yes. They were all so fine.
“We didn’t waste a moment, and during those three days and nights there was very little sleep for anyone. I remember scarcely anything of the details, for of course I had Mother on my mind, too. When the last scene was shot, I made a rush for the train, without stopping to change from my costume. Mr. Mayer and Mr. Thalberg got special police on motorcycles to escort me and clear the way, so that I could work to the last moment and still get the train. Twelve days later I was in London.”
Characteristically, Lillian says nothing of that trip across land and sea. Miss Moir, less reticent, writes:
I shall always remember the kindness and sympathy shown her during those long wearisome days on the train ... the little Catholic girl at Albuquerque who somehow or other managed to find her way to our compartment and press into Lillian’s hand a little silver cross which she said had been specially blessed and would surely bring an answer to her prayers for her mother.
... At Topeka, Kansas, when the train pulled in, we noticed that the platform was jammed from end to end with people. We supposed that they must have come to welcome someone and pulled down the blinds in the compartment to escape notice. Suddenly we heard raps on the window and calls for Miss Gish. The conductor appeared, smiling, to say that all these people had come to see Miss Gish, some of them had even driven a hundred miles for the purpose. Tired and heartsick as she was, Lillian went out on the platform of the train. The moment she appeared, a sudden silence fell on the crowd—they just stood and looked at her. Then a woman held up a baby and asked her to touch it “for luck.” That broke up the formality. They crowded round her, expressing their sympathy and good wishes, and they were still in the midst of it when the train pulled out leaving them cheering and waving.
We arrived in New York on the morning of the day the _Majestic_ sailed. When, late that night we went on board the boat, we found our stateroom filled with people all waiting to see Lillian.
One pleasant young man with an ingratiating smile, insisted upon bringing in his girl-friend to meet Lillian, who, tired as she was, still managed to smile at them.
In London, Lillian learned just what had happened: Dorothy had been out to a play, and had come in quietly and slipped into bed without turning on the light. Mrs. Gish slept in the other twin bed. Presently, Dorothy felt something touch her. She spoke softly, but got no answer. She felt the touch again, and again got no answer. The third time, she snapped on the light. Her mother could not speak—all her right side was helpless. Fortunately, Dorothy’s bed had been at her left.
With Lillian’s arrival Mrs. Gish improved. Only the day before she had not been expected to live. She seemed to recognize her—her eyes grew large. Every paper had displayed in headlines Lillian’s race across the world to her mother’s bedside, and the English are a kindly people. Noble and commoner alike came forward with offered help—all ranks knew and loved her. Cards, flowers, gifts, poured in.
What was to be done next? Lillian must return to California, or cancel her contract. What must she—what could she—do? Miss Moir tells what happened:
One night somebody suggested going to a famous little restaurant in the Tottenham Court Rd. district for dinner. So Dorothy, Lillian and I got into a taxi and drove to it, three very forlorn females.... It was over that dinner that Lillian came to what seemed at first her preposterous decision to take her mother back with her to California, but as usual, she carried her point, and within a week Mrs. Gish, with a good English doctor and nurse in attendance, Lillian and I, were all aboard the _Mauretania_ en route for New York.
Mrs. Gish bore the journey much better than we had expected and the days passed quickly. The morning we arrived at Quarantine Lillian and I were sitting up in bed eating breakfast when our stewardess rushed in looking quite alarmed, to warn us to bolt all the doors as our stateroom was shortly to be stormed by a mob of reporters.
Lillian herself told of the hectic overland journey:
“In New York I chartered a private car and took Mother to Hollywood. I was no longer so poor, and if ever there was a time when I was thankful for money it was then. Across the blazing southern desert we had tubs of ice, with fans going over them, night and day. The car was cool, and the change, or the thought that she was going back to California, which she always loved, was good for Mother. When we reached California, instead of being on her back, she was sitting up. But she could not speak—she knew all that we said to her, but she could not answer, and she could no longer read. We were told that this condition might last three to six months. That was five years ago. She has improved a great deal; she can walk a little, but most of her right side is helpless, and her words are very limited.
“At Santa Monica we lived in Mrs. Pickford’s house until September, then moved up to the beautiful Millbank place on the cliff, with a lovely garden, and all, away from the dampness and the sound of the waves, which made Mother nervous. On her birthday, September 16, she seemed suddenly to pick up, and we felt there was a chance for her to get well.
“She does not suffer, but must get very tired of always being obliged to sit, or lie down. But she is sweet and patient. The nurse and I read to her, and she enjoys working the picture puzzles, of which she has always a supply. She likes motion picture magazines. She cannot read them, but she loves the illustrations—many of them of people she knows. And always, if the name ‘Gish’ is on any printed page, she can find it.”
* * * * *
“The Scarlet Letter” had its première in August, 1926, at the Central Theatre, New York City. The evening _Sun_ next day, among other things, said:
Miss Gish, for the first time in the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the cinema palaces, plays a mature woman, a woman of depth, of feeling and wisdom and noble spirit.... She is not Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, but she is yours and mine, and she makes ‘The Scarlet Letter’ worth a visit.
The _Sun_ man’s notice was a fair sample of other printed opinions at home and abroad. Critics who were anxious to show that they were familiar with Hawthorne, sometimes worked themselves up over the departure from the original story, and sometimes “took it out” on Lillian and Lars Hansen, but generally they had only good things to say of the acting of these two, of little Joyce Coad and the others, and of Seastrom’s fine direction. Seastrom had created New England atmosphere on a Culver City lot, a fact not always suspected. Lillian had hoped that some of the scenes might really be made in New England, but Seastrom’s imagination had served as well—perhaps better. No fault was found here—indeed, very little anywhere. Critics who went prepared to do their worst, forgot all about it when they saw Lillian in her little Puritan cap, her expressive back in its little Puritan waist, and especially when she sat in the stocks, “for running and playing on ye Sabbath,” leaning feverishly out to drink from the cup of cold water brought her by the conscience-stricken minister. One hardened critic wrote:
I retire from the field with tears in my eyes and rage in my heart, as becomes a cynic betrayed and undone. To consider her critically is beyond my powers—she simply annihilates the instinct. Of this much I am quite sure: She is a great, a very great artist, and by far the most appealing and human little figure appearing on the screen today—and the loveliest.
Three or four years ago, in a big barn of a theatre in Southern France, the writer of these pages first saw “The Scarlet Letter” and went home in a daze, waking up now and then to damn his Puritan ancestors. In the seat next his, had sat a small, intense Frenchwoman, who, at one point, had said, tearfully, to her companion: “Regardez, Léontine, regardez son pauvre petit dos!” (Look, Leontine, look at her poor little back!) And just now I read a paragraph which said: “Lillian Gish can convey more pathos with her back than any other actress with all her features.”
I agree with that, and I am not going by my first impression. I have seen the picture again—very recently, with Lillian, in the New York Metro-Goldwyn projection room. Association had destroyed none of the illusion. The effect was the same—heightened.
We left the crash and glare of Ninth Avenue for the comparative seclusion of a cab. Lillian said, presently:
“I was too immature to play that part. She was a woman. I looked just like a child.”
“You looked young, certainly, but not too young for Hester—that Hester. Of course, the real Hester—supposing there ever was one—was not at all your Hester. She was less—more—what the others were.”
She assented, a little doubtfully. I stumbled on:
“If I might offer a humble opinion, you did not turn Lillian Gish into Hester Prynne; you turned Hester Prynne into something—well—something more exquisite.”
“Some of the critics didn’t think so; they said——”
“I know the things they said. I have those scrapbooks, where you carefully preserved all the worst ones. A critic—a young critic—does not think he is doing his duty unless he puts a little sting into what he writes. The cup he offers must have its drop of hemlock, even when he proffers it on bended knee.”
* * * * *
“La Bohême” and “The Scarlet Letter” were popular abroad. From Europe, from the farthest East, the letters came. Oriental young men, in exquisite calligraphy and quaint phrase, told her how she was adored, begged for a photograph, a written line. Some suggested pictures they hoped she would do—“Joan of Arc” among them.
VII
“THE FIRST LADY OF THE SCREEN”
During Lillian’s absence in England, a scenario for a new picture bad been prepared for her, based on the song of “Annie Laurie,” believed to have a wide human appeal. All the sets were ready, the costumes had only to be fitted. The day of her arrival, Lillian went to the studio, and next day began on the scenes. Lillian and Miss Moir agree that it was a fearfully hot summer, and that the velvet costumes for Annie weighed fifteen pounds each. Lillian did not care much for the story, and cared for it a good deal less when she learned that Bonnie Annie Laurie, for whom someone had been ready to lie down and die, had, in her later years, turned into an old gossip. Of course, in the picture, her lover is a member of another clan, and there is the usual treachery, with a great deal of confused fighting, and struggling through artificial snow which, in that deadly heat, just about blistered your fingers when you touched it. But Lillian was faithful, and did her sweltering best.
One Sunday, Miss Moir, thinking how much it would be appreciated by the company, “on location,” drove out there with several gallons of ice-cream. Unfortunately, that day, rehearsal broke up early. She met Lillian on the road, but two girls couldn’t eat all those gallons of cream, and for some reason the rest of the company failed to materialize. They tried to give the surplus away, to passersby, but when several had haughtily refused, they dropped the rest into a ditch.
“Annie Laurie,” first given at the Embassy Theatre, New York, May 10, 1927, appears to have been well received. As usual, the notices spoke of Lillian as “lovely,” and “winning,” and “charming,” but they lacked the enthusiasm of those written of Hester and Mimi, and they were doubtful of the picture itself.
The reason is clear enough: the tame, or partially tame, Scot of today, has commendable points; he knows about engines, and Greek, and often plays a fair game of _gowf_. But the range species of some centuries ago, was a good deal different—an unprepossessing, evil-smelling, hairy type, who had clans and feuds and delighted in running off his enemy’s cattle, or cannily luring him into a cave and smoking him to death, or, as in this instance, into a castle, to murder him in cold blood. That earlier Scot was hardly the thing to offer to a delicately-nurtured picture audience. Even Norman Kerry as Ian MacDonald, even Lillian as Annie Laurie, could not make him palatable.
* * * * *
Lillian, however, was riding on the top wave. An English company offered her the lead in “The Constant Nymph”; a great German company offered the part of Juliet: “Cannot tell you how delighted we should be, if the remotest possibility”; de la Falaise offered her the part of Joan of Arc, in a picture for which Pierre Champion, the great French authority on Joan, had prepared the scenario. To the last named, she replied that she had long been considering the part of Joan, and put the matter aside with real regret.
And many wanted to write of her. Whatever she did, or was about to do, was news. A magazine, _Liberty_, sent a gifted young man, Sidney Sutherland, all the way to the Coast to see her. He had expected to do one, possibly two, articles, but his editors asked for more, and under the general title of “Lillian the Incomparable” continued his chapters—“reels” as he not inaptly termed them—through nine weekly installments!
On any excuse, and with no excuse at all, other than what it presented, and stood for, periodicals carried her picture. _Vanity Fair_ published a full front-page portrait, by Steichen, nominating her “The First Lady of the Screen.”
Miss Moir says that she was always being approached by lovesick young men, anxious to find out all they possibly could about the object of their affections.
They wanted to know what she ate, what she read, what she did after studio hours, what she talked about. I did the best I tactfully could to gratify their curiosity, but I well remember the look of pained surprise which came over the face of one admirer when I told him that Lillian took a cold plunge every morning, exercised vigorously and did a really spirited Charleston. I suppose this was all contrary to his idea of what such a fragile, ethereal being should do.
Flowers were always arriving, enough to start a florist’s shop. And permanent gifts—anonymous ones, some of them, and of great value: a large, magnificent fire opal set with diamonds; an exquisite point lace shawl, so perfectly suited to her personality that the donor must have had taste as well as an opulent purse.
Photographers were always besieging her to pose for them, and painters. The latter rarely caught her personality. It was such an elusive thing. The quick camera was better at it. Frequently, too, she was caricatured, and it is only fair to say that most of the caricatures were among the best of the results—strikingly like her: “more like me than I was like myself,” she said.
She shared her success with those less fortunate—gave freely, money, advice to young aspirants, help to sister-players and would-be players—provided jobs for them. One day a girl with a face a good deal like her own, and the fairy name of Una Merkel, came to see her. Screen fans know Una Merkel very well today, but perhaps not many know that she is a poet. One Christmas, in appreciation of what Lillian had done for her, she wrote and had beautifully printed on a card of greeting, some verses, two of which follow:
TO LILLIAN GISH
If I could breathe on canvas white my dreams, I’d dip my fancy into tubes which held Life’s colors—pure, of sheerest loveliness, Then—I’d paint—you.
I’d borrow of the Lily its perfume, Of day—the misty beauty of its dawn; Then of the world I’d take a tear—a smile, And I’d have—you.
VIII
“WIND”
There had appeared an anonymous novel (later acknowledged by Dorothy Scarborough), a tale of sickening horror, entitled “Wind.” It was the story of a young, refined Southern girl, who goes to Texas in an earlier day; is made desperate by the wind and blowing sand and hard human circumstance; marries a rough cowboy; is violated by a man she had met on the train; murders him and goes mad—a category of black disaster.
It was regarded as fine material for a picture, well-suited to motion photography, because of the wild, tireless wind—perfect symbol of motion, and of the fierce action of the story. A director, Clarence Brown, was highly enthusiastic over the possibilities of “Wind” on the screen, but a favorable decision might have been less quickly reached had all the conditions been foreseen. For making the picture was an experience nearly as desolating as the story. When the studio scenes were finished, a trek of wagons, trucks and motor busses, loaded with paraphernalia, an entire company of actors, a big crew of technical assistants, mechanics, etc., the whole accompanied by eighty mounted cowboys, invaded the blistering Mojave Desert, in the cause of art.
Mr. Brown, after all, was not to direct. He had been sent off to Alaska, on the “Trail of ’98,” and could not, it seemed, finish it. Victor Seastrom was given the direction of “Wind,” and again Lars Hansen was Lillian’s leading man. Satisfactory as far as it went. They had waited a long time on Brown—until they could wait no longer. Spring had come. The Mojave in midsummer was unthinkable. So that big procession one morning got in motion.
It was May, and it was hot. Arriving at Mojave, the men took up quarters in a train that had been shunted onto a disused siding—Lillian, Miss Moir and a few others in a flimsy little hotel, opposite the tracks, where engines switched and banged most of the night long. It was a Harvey hotel, which was the best that could be said for it; the food at least would be good. Cool enough at first, the weather presently became unbearably hot. Whereupon a new difficulty presented itself: Film coating melted from the celluloid. No developing could be done with the thermometer at 120 in the shade. They tried freezing the films, but this made them brittle, like thin glass. Finally, they packed them, frozen, and rushed them by special cars to the Metro laboratories, one hundred and forty miles away, to be carefully thawed out.
And the human misery of it! Miss Moir writes:
Quivering veils of heat lay over the desert, there was no shade anywhere, and a burning wind blew all day long, raising blisters on your face, taking every bit of skin off your lips. I shall never forget the appearance of the crew during that picture. To protect their faces from the sun they all wore a heavy blackish make-up while their cracked and swollen lips were covered with some sort of white stuff. Add to this goggles, and handkerchiefs tied round their necks, and you can imagine that most desperate looking gang to be seen anywhere on that desert. When the studio executives saw the first rushes they were so horrified at Lars Hansen’s unromantic appearance that they ordered the whole sequence to be done again and Lars Hansen to appear shaven and clean, as they argued that no girl could possibly entertain romantic thoughts for such a hairy ruffian.
The cowboys added interest and excitement to the adventure. Long, lean blasphemous individuals, reckless of everything, gambling the minute they were not needed for a scene.
To which Lillian adds:
“It was the very worst experience I ever went through. Temperature 120 in the shade. In the sun...? One man burned his hand quite badly opening the door of a motor. We had eight wind machines, and in the studio, to match up with the blowing sand outside (supposed to be blowing in the doors and windows), we used sulphur pots, the smoke giving the effect of sand blowing in. The sand itself was bad enough, but the pots were worse. I was burned all the time, and was in danger of having my eyes put out. The hardships of making ‘Way Down East’ were nothing to it. My hair was burned and nearly ruined by the sulphur smoke. I could not get it clean for months. Such an experience is not justified by any picture.”
Nature seems to have wearied of their evil-smelling feeble devices, and one day gave an example of what she could do herself. Miss Moir, graphically:
A few days before we finished the scenes up there it turned cold. Towards the end of the afternoon work was stopped by a terrific sandstorm. A howling wind, which soon assumed the proportions of a hurricane, tore down from the mountains sending the sand whirling in dense masses before it. The sky was black and everything was obscured by a veil through which we could dimly perceive the figures of the cowboys bent forward on their saddles, horse and rider braced against the oncoming fury, making for camp. There was an extraordinary beauty about the scene, as Lillian and I stood for a moment and watched it before getting into the car, and I could appreciate the feeling in her voice when she said “Oh, how I wish Mr. Griffith was here. How he would have loved to photograph that.”
All night long the storm raged while our shaky little hotel quivered to its foundations. As we lay in bed trying vainly to sleep, we could see the flimsy walls of the hotel bending before the onslaught, and in the morning the room was full of sand which had leaked in through every crevice of the ill-built structure.
This was exactly what they had come up there to produce, but apparently they made no use of it. One remembers Griffith waiting for the blizzard in New England, and echoes Lillian’s heartfelt utterance. The day had come when Nature’s effects were no longer in favor—were even resented, as an imitation; and one who has seen the picture must confess that those eight wind machines were not easily to be outdone.
The most depressing of Lillian’s films, “Wind,” is one of the best—beautiful in its sheer ferocity. Nemirovitch Dantchenko, distinguished manager, playwright and producer, of the Moscow Art Theatre, being then in Hollywood, after a preview of it, wrote as follows:
I want once more to tell you of my admiration of your genius. In that picture, the power and expressiveness of your portrayal begat real tragedy. A combination of the greatest sincerity, brilliance and unvarying charm, places you in the small circle of the first tragediennes of the world.... One feels your great experience and the ripeness of your genius.... It is quite possible that I shall write [of it] again to Russia, where you are the object of great interest and admiration by the people.
For some reason, “Wind” was not released until late in the year. When it finally appeared, the time for it was brief—the talking picture was ready to invade the land—but that story—a sad one—we shall come to a little later.
* * * * *
Lillian’s last silent picture, “The Enemy,” a war picture, laid in Vienna—not very startling—closed her two-year contract with the Metro company. She was to have made six pictures, but they were unable to give them to her. Both sides were satisfied, however, and parted on the pleasantest terms. Only too gladly, Lillian would have made another picture, had conditions been otherwise. The company on its part had no word of complaint, even paid her for one day extra time, something over a thousand dollars, a complete surprise, for she had taken no account of that day.
IX
GOOD-BYE, CALIFORNIA
On the whole, in spite of “Annie Laurie’s” burdensome velvets, in spite of Mojave’s sulphur blasts and blistering sands, it had been—or, but for her mother’s illness, might have been—a happy as well as a profitable two years. Mimi and Hester Prynne had been worth while. “Wind” had been an artistic triumph.
Miss Moir, very close to Lillian during all this period, has left a series of impressions and incidents not directly connected with her work:
I remember the first time I saw her at the Ambassador Hotel, New York, she struck me as a person of perfect poise and great charm of manner in which there was something almost childishly appealing. In many ways she is a paradox. She gives the impression of helplessness when she is really the most resourceful person I know. You think sometimes that she is weak and easily led, and then you suddenly come up against an inflexible will and an iron determination to do what she has set her mind on doing.
Then another picture comes into my mind as I often saw her at parties, sitting uncomfortably in the quietest corner she could find, talking generally to some elderly person until the time came to go home, where she always went as soon as possible.
Her hands are expressive of her whole personality, delicately modelled, yet with a look of latent strength and capability about them. She uses them beautifully.
She has no fidgety movements. She is one of the few women I know who have learned the art of perfect stillness.
She loves fortune tellers, though she doesn’t take them seriously and generally forgets what they have told her, five minutes after leaving them.
Our entire life in California on looking back, seems to have its centre in the room where poor Mrs. Gish sat, patient and speechless, looking forward to the moment when Lillian would get back from the studio. On her Birthday morning her room was so crowded with presents it looked like a giftshop. She was delighted with everything, and seemed to take a turn for the better from that day. Until then she had seemed to be losing interest in life—slipping away from us. Having once aroused her from this lethargy Lillian’s whole endeavor was spent on keeping her mother amused. She was constantly coming home with some lovely thing for her—a pretty bed-jacket, a taffeta quilt for her bed, an exquisite set of china for her breakfast tray.
Mr. Mencken came for dinner one Sunday night. I remember we were all a little bit worried about entertaining such a distinguished guest, but we needn’t have been because he seemed to enjoy everything with the zest of a schoolboy.
I have somewhat different memories of the night Mr. Hergesheimer came to dine. Dinner was set for 7:30; Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks arrived, but no Mr. Hergesheimer. Half an hour and then three-quarters of an hour went by—still he did not appear. Finally the telephone rang and a desperate voice called over the wire. It was Mr. Hergesheimer: somehow or other he had gone to the house which Lillian had rented the previous year, and had been unable sooner to locate her present abode. He arrived quite out of breath, an hour late, and considerably disturbed.
One of the pleasantest recollections I have of California is the evening Lillian and I went to a “bowl” concert just a week or so before coming East for good. It was a night of brilliant moonlight, unusually warm for that climate and perfect for a concert in the open air. I remember as we drove homeward after it was all over, that we talked of our years together in California, of all the drama and comedy we had shared there, and agreed that it hadn’t been such an unpleasant time after all.
Then, presently, they were off for New York; Lillian, her Mother; the nurse, Miss Davies; Miss Moir; John, the poll-parrot, which they had got twelve years before at Denishawn; two dogs; three canary-birds, and a bus-load of hand luggage.
As usual, Lillian had worked up to the last minute, had made one or more scenes of “The Enemy” the morning of her departure. Little she guessed, when she walked out of the studio, that those were the last scenes in silent pictures she would ever make, that all unsuspected, another beautiful craft was about to be relegated to that limbo of outworn things which holds the painted panorama and the wood engraving. During fifteen years, she had been a unique figure in an industry which she had watched grow, almost from infancy, to a mighty maturity, and which was now at the moment of dissolution. That Lillian did not see this is not surprising, but that the great producers, with ears supposedly close to the ground, their research departments always alert, should have taken so little account of the warning voices (literally that), is astonishing.
* * * * *
Of Lillian’s pictures, I believe there are three on which her screen fame rests. In many there are distinguished scenes: in “The White Sister,” for instance; in “Romola,” in “Wind,” and in “Way Down East.” But of those which were consistently good, I should name, in order, “Broken Blossoms,” “La Bohême” and “The Scarlet Letter” as those for which she will be longest remembered: and this because of their exquisite beauty and their suitability to her special gifts.
As to what Lillian did for the picture world, I am troubled by a lack of knowledge. There are moments when it would seem that very little has been done for it, by anybody. I suspect, however, that she did more than now appears. She had a wide following among the picture players, to whom, through example alone, she must have taught restraint, delicacy—in a word, good manners. In a hundred pages I could not say more, or wish to.
X
REINHARDT
Lillian, at the Drake Hotel, in New York was kept busy declining offers of engagements—ranging from vaudeville through matrimony and pictures to the so-called legitimate stage. Maurice Maeterlinck wrote to a friend:
I should be all the more happy to undertake the scenario you speak of, in that it concerns Lillian Gish, who is the great star of the cinema that, among all, I admire, for no other has so much talent, or is so natural, so sympathetic, so moving.[3]
Lillian concluded a contract with the United Artists for three pictures, to be directed by Max Reinhardt, foremost director and producer of Europe. The company had a contract with Reinhardt, and it was on their promise that he should direct her, that Lillian signed with them. Her plan had had its inception a year earlier, she said, during a visit of Reinhardt’s to Los Angeles.
“My connection with Reinhardt was this: In 1923-24, I had seen his stage production of ‘The Miracle,’ with Lady Diana Manners and Rosamond Pinchot. Morris Gest brought it over, and at the time had asked me to play the part of the nun. Reinhardt, who had seen something of mine—I suppose ‘The White Sister’—had suggested this. I could not do it because of my contract. I was then on the eve of returning to Italy, to make ‘Romola.’
“I did not meet Reinhardt until he was in California, with ‘The Miracle.’ With Rudolph Kommer and Karl von Mueller he came out to our Santa Monica house, for luncheon. Before luncheon we went to the studio and ran, I think, ‘Broken Blossoms.’ Then, in the afternoon, ‘La Bohême’ and ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ They seemed to please him. He spoke no English, and I spoke no German, at the time. Kommer served as interpreter. It was then that Reinhardt suggested that we might work together. He had never made a picture, but was eager to try. He had spent thirty-five years in the theatre, and was tired of it. He had theatres in Berlin and Vienna, the finest in Europe.”
From Kansas City, Reinhardt and Kommer telegraphed:
Once more we want to thank you for that most fascinating Sunday you gave us. We greet you as the supreme emotional actress of the screen and hope fervently that the near future will bring us in closer contact on the stage and on the screen. Please do not forget Salzburg when you come to Europe. We shall be waiting for you.
Salzburg was Reinhardt’s home, where in an ancient castle, Leopoldskron, he kept open house, for a horde of congenial guests. Reinhardt and Kommer had spoken of a picture they would prepare when she came to New York. Now, at the Drake Hotel, they started on a story for it. Reinhardt, meantime, had brought over a company and was producing “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Danton’s Todt.”
Reinhardt, Lillian said, talked to her about Theresa Neumann, the peasant miracle girl of Konnersreuth, who on every Friday except feast days went through the entire sufferings of Christ, the blood trickling from stigmata on her forehead, her hands and her feet. Nobody but those who have seen it will believe it, but her case is a very celebrated one, and has been studied by scientists of Germany and Austria, and of other countries. Reinhardt believed that a great miracle picture could be based on the case of Theresa Neumann, and Lillian agreed with him. She would come to Leopoldskron, and would go to see Theresa Neumann for herself. “I must do that, of course,” she said, “and familiarize myself with the lives of the peasantry of which she was one.”
“In April, Mother, Miss Davies and I sailed for Hamburg. We arrived at Cuxhaven early one morning. Mother had to be carried to the train and to a private car. Reinhardt was already over there. His secretary met us, and Mr. Melnitz, head of the United Artists in Germany.
“At Hamburg, we put Mother to bed for two hours. She had been up since half-past four. Nurse and I had not slept all night. We took train for Berlin, arriving at six in the evening. I had not realized that Germany is like America in the matter of news. I supposed we would go in quietly. Instead, we found the station literally jammed with people, all trying to get around us. It was terribly hard on poor Mother.”
There were a dozen or two camera-men, and when they found they couldn’t all take pictures of Lillian, they got around Mrs. Gish, who was in a big chair carried with poles. She could not tell them that she did not want her picture taken, and began to cry. When at last they got into an automobile, all the camera-men and reporters jumped into other cars and came racing behind, taking pictures all the way to the hotel. During the next few days, Lillian was too nervous to give more than a few interviews. Reinhardt comforted her by saying that no artist ever had come into Germany with such a reception from the press.
At Berlin Lillian consulted Professor Vogt, head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, supposed to know more than anyone else about cases like her mother’s. Professor Vogt said he could not do very much for Mrs. Gish, but warned Lillian that she herself was likely to be headed in the same direction. He advised that her mother be taken to Doctor Sinn’s Sanatorium at Neubabelsburg, advice promptly followed. Mrs. Gish remained there a year.
To Lillian, in Berlin, came this letter:
O smallest blonde:
You must not think of any other place but Leopoldskron! Max Reinhardt and we all would think that we had failed completely to please you. Besides, the hotels are now terribly over-crowded and you would be perfectly miserable there. So please, do overcome any inhibitions, and come to Leopoldskron! I am expecting your wire about train and hour.
We are just having Anthony Asquith and Elizabeth Bibesco here. This means that the whole castle is one flaming song _in gloriam Lilliane Gish_....
I do hope that Professor Vogt will entirely satisfy the expectations of your poor mother. My sincerest wishes and regards to her ... Schloss Kommer and Salzburg are sending you loving greetings. Au revoir! Yours ever,
R. K. Kommer
“I went to Salzburg,” Lillian said, “to Leopoldskron. Reinhardt and his secretary, Miss Adler, were on the train, and Kommer was at the station to meet us. Leopoldskron is a huge place, a little way out of Salzburg, built hundreds of years ago. I don’t know how many rooms it has, but only candles were used to light them. I was much impressed when we drove up to it, and when we got inside. There were ever so many guests, distinguished persons from everywhere. It is like a great hotel, and has three dining-rooms. Among the guests, was the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who had come to work on the story we had planned for our picture. Kommer got me a maid, Josephine, whom I afterwards brought to America.
“We worked three weeks on our story, that time; then I went to Paris for a fortnight, then to Mother at Neubabelsburg. Later I went to Leopoldskron for another three weeks, to meet Mr. Joe Schenck, who had come over to hear the story. Frances Marion was in Salzburg by that time. She said we had a wonderful theme. Schenck also liked it—said we should get back to Hollywood as quickly as possible, and make it. Possibly he suspected that something was likely to happen—something like an earthquake in the picture world. Off there in that corner of Austria, we never dreamed of it.
“I was anxious to see something of Austrian peasant life at close range. At Leopoldskron was the artist Feistauer. He himself was a peasant, and he asked me to pose for him. So we made a bargain. I agreed that if he and his wife would go with me, I would get a car, pay the expenses of the trip and he could take us to the part of the country he knew. If he would do this, I would pose for him. He was quite willing, and we arranged our party. There were five of us besides the chauffeur: Feistauer and his wife; von Hofmannsthal’s son Raymond; myself, and Josephine, my maid.
“It was a wonderful experience. I saw peasant life as I should never have seen it otherwise. We would stay a day and a night in a peasant house—huge houses they had, like those in the Schwartzwald, with their animals in one part of it. Their food was a coarse bread, milk and potatoes, placed on a kind of framework in the middle of the table. I was so impressed with it all—different from anything I had ever seen:—the great room below, the small chambers above. The combined living-room and kitchen was sometimes very beautiful. The great cooking-stoves so unlike any I had known. Beautiful, too, because primitive.
“We came one day to a house where a man walked out to meet us, carrying a child in his arms, leading another. I thought he had the most wonderful face I had ever seen, a perfect Christus. He was followed by some geese, two dogs and a baby lamb. He came up and greeted us with the word they use with strangers, ‘Christgott,’ and led us to the house. He apparently knew Feistauer, but his greeting to him was the same as to us. We sat down for a little; then he took Raymond and myself through the house. We were there perhaps an hour in all. When he had gone I said to Feistauer: ‘If you should ever wish to paint the Christus, I should think you would use that man. He is nearer my idea of the Christ than anyone I have ever seen.’ Feistauer said: ‘I have done so, often. He is my brother!’ Because Feistauer had given up the land to be a painter in town, he was, in a sense, an outcast, a stranger—no more than any other of our party.
“It was at the end of my second visit to Salzburg that I saw the miracle girl, Theresa Neumann—at Konnersreuth. I was on the way to see Mother again, and stopped off there. She was to be the subject of our picture, and it was very necessary that I see her. No one is allowed to do so without special permission. I had letters from the Archbishop of Regensburg. Josephine, my maid, went with me.
“I found poor, the very poorest, accommodations in the peasant village where Theresa Neumann lived. She is just a peasant girl herself, the eldest of eleven children, about thirty years old when I was there. Hundreds try to see her, but only members of the clergy, or those with special permits, can get near her on the days of the miracle. There is no charge of any sort, and her people are very poor, helped a little by the Church.
“It is the most amazing sight in the world. Her ecstasy begins about one o’clock Friday morning, and lasts until noon. The wounds, which are closed and black between times, open, and blood flows from them—from those on her hands and feet, from the spear-wound in her side, and the thorn-wounds on her forehead. Tears of blood drip from her eyes, run down her cheeks, and stain her white gown. I was within three feet of her, and saw all this. I don’t expect anyone to believe these things, but I saw them, exactly as I have said, and if it is trickery, it is beyond anything of the sort I have ever heard of. I asked her to pray for Mother, and I believe she did. Mother got better, so it may have helped.
“The miracle has been accounted for in many ways, both by skeptics and believers. The believer, a priest, who talked about it to me, called her a ‘child of grace,’ which may be as good an explanation as any, if one knew what it meant. Dozens of books have been written about her. Perhaps she is all mind, but that seems a poor explanation. It is claimed that she has not taken food or drink for a number of years. Incredible, of course, but no more so than the things I _saw_.”
Footnote 3:
“Je serais d’autant plus heureux d’entreprendre le scénario dont vous m’avez parlé, qu’il s’agit de Lillian Gish, qui est la grande vedette du cinéma que j’admire entre toutes, car aucune autre n’a autant de talent, n’est aussi naturelle, aussi sympathique, aussi émouvante.”
XI
THE SHADOW SPEAKS
Lillian left her mother in the sanatorium, where apparently she was improving, and with Josephine, her maid,—booked as a “fellow artist” (she was really that, for she would serve as model for Austrian peasant girls in the picture),—Lillian sailed on the _Île de France_, for New York. Reinhardt presently followed, with the play itself, which von Hofmannsthal had completed. Young von Hofmannsthal came as Reinhardt’s assistant. These two, with Lillian, and Josephine the “fellow artist,” descended upon Hollywood.
Alas, for the beautiful, silent picture play of “The Miracle Girl of Konnersreuth.” They were just a year too late!
* * * * *
For now it was that the long-unexpected-inevitable had happened: All in a brief summer and autumn—in a night, really—a change had come over the flicker of the photographic dream ... it SPOKE!
The film with a voice—a possibility for twenty years or more—hardly taken seriously except by the inventors—now, all at once, had arrived. Rather doubtfully at first—a crude thing, but of instant popularity. The writer of these pages remembers a fierce summer day in ’28, when he slipped into a jammed and darkened house on Broadway, and sat on the floor in a remote corner, fascinated, watching the moving phantoms, silent heretofore, as they shouted wildly at each other in the _mise en scène_ of a haunted house. After that, when he heard friends say: “It is just a novelty—it will not last,” he was not convinced. If he knew anything at all, he knew better than that. If they could do so much, they would presently do more. They did. The Warners put out Al Jolson in “The Singing Fool,” and the doom of the silent film was not only written, but sounded very loud. The play itself was hardly a classic—it didn’t need to be. Jolson’s speaking and singing voice was up to microphone requirements—sound and vision were synchronized. The record was miles beyond anything attempted before. The “Talkie” had come!
A huge shudder ran through the ranks of movie actors. Many of them did not even speak English. Many of them did it very badly—provincially, nasally, flatly, indistinctly, or with an impossible accent. Of those who spoke it well enough, not all had voices suited to the microphone—(“Mike,” as they irreverently named it)—they recorded poorly. Their voices had to be “placed.” Voice culture became a new Hollywood industry. Some, even, began learning to sing.
* * * * *
It was just at this point, late in 1928, that Lillian and Reinhardt reached Hollywood. The press heralded their coming, recounted the story of Reinhardt’s life, and distinguished work; how now with a new and marvelous story, written by von Hofmannsthal in the great castle of Leopoldskron, for the “first lady of the screen,” he was ready to enter and electrify the picture world.
Good publicity, but it fell on deaf ears. Jolson HAD MADE the “Jazz Singer”! Chaos ruled in the studios. A dozen producers who didn’t know whether they stood on their heads or their heels, shouted that it was all just a passing fad, but meantime were knocking together “sound stages” and engaging people who could talk prettily to “Mike,” or sing, or do anything that would make a convincing noise.
Of course, everyone still believed in the old silent pictures, but nobody wanted to start one. Those already begun were dropped. Gloria Swanson, at great loss, stopped a half-completed film.
Reinhardt and Lillian were dazed. Joe Schenck, who in Salzburg had bid them hurry home to make their picture, now repudiated it—told them to make a talkie of it. Reinhardt protested, then went into the desert—not to fast and pray, but to do what Schenck demanded.
No use. He had been working for a year on a silent picture. Now to make the shadows speak ... impossible. Even the desert ... even fasting and prayer ... even “The Miracle Girl,” could not accomplish it. He lingered through the winter, hoping that those who said the talkie was just a fad were right. Then....
Lillian sighed as she remembered these sorrowful things:
“Hollywood, always more or less mad, was really an asylum. Even Mary was doing a talkie, ‘Coquette’[4]; Chester Morris was doing another ‘Alibi.’ Nobody was doing our beautiful old silent pictures, any more. Everywhere you heard the hammering of workmen building sound stages. Then—with Spring—Reinhardt returned to his neglected theatres, to his castle at Salzburg. It had been a great loss to him. I was not responsible, for he had signed his contract with United Artists before I had, but I felt terrible over it. He never blamed me, or was anything but fine about it. I did not see him again until last Summer (1930), when I was in Paris. We spoke of the pity of it all—his coming at the wrong time, when it was too late—too late and too early. Another year, and he might have been in the mood for a talkie. He had really come on a sincere errand. Most of those who come, come just for the money in it. He had come for a finer purpose.”
Footnote 4:
Lillian herself was more or less responsible for “Coquette.” In a letter of Sept. 17, 1928, Mary wrote her: “I remember, dear, you were the first to tell me to do ‘Coquette.’ If it turns out well, it will be the second time in my career that you have helped me bridge a difficult place.” Lillian’s suggestion, however, had been, of course, for a silent picture.
XII
ON THE FLYING CARPET
Lillian looked out of the window of the den, on the boats passing up and down, perhaps reflecting a little on the uncertainty of human undertakings.
“I have one bright memory of that gloomy Spring,” she said presently. “One morning in March, while Reinhardt was in the desert, Douglas Fairbanks called me up, and asked:
“‘Are you game to do something?’
“‘What is it?’ I said.
“‘Never mind; are you game to do it?’
“‘Are you and Mary going to do it?’
“‘We are.’
“‘Well, then I will.’
“‘All right. We’re going on a plane to have a look at the war in Mexico. Will you go?’
“‘I should _think_ so. When do we start?’
“‘Right away, as soon as we can get ready.’
“I went up to Pickfair, to see Mary as to what we were to take. We met at the studio about eleven o’clock, drove to the Glendale Flying Field, and got into what seemed a very big, powerful plane. There were ten of us altogether: Doug and Mary; Doug’s brother, Robert, and his wife, Lurie; Mary’s niece (‘Little Mary’); two cousins, Verna and Sonny; myself, and the pilot and captain. There was plenty of room and we got off without any trouble.
“But it turned out that our motors were not powerful enough. We meant to cross the mountains by the San Bernardino Pass, but when we were over the low first range, we ran into a storm of wind and snow, and our engines would not lift the plane over the Pass. The snow got so thick that we could not see a thing in any direction—just a white, whirling mass. We were likely to run into the mountain-side, any moment. We rolled and billowed around, three times turning back, and trying it again. Then the captain, very white, came and shouted into Doug’s ear that it was madness to go on, that we had better turn back and follow down the Coast to Mexico. It was impossible, the captain said, to find the Pass.
“We turned back, and all were relieved. There had been no question as to the danger. Less than a year later, a big plane with a party was lost up there, dashed against the mountain-side.
“The weather was better as soon as we got away from the mountains, and along the Coast was fine. At Agua Caliente, Mexico, we ate dinner and spent the night.
“We telephoned for a larger plane, and a big Wasp came down. All got into it except Robert Fairbanks, who said he knew when he had had enough, and that the day before had satisfied him. We left about eleven o’clock. For some reason, we did not take much along in the way of food, and about three P. M. our crowd began to look rather poorly—hungry and seasick. Even Douglas shushed Mary when she started to tell her troubles. He had a greenish look, and not at all his usual high-hearted manner.
“We got to Phoenix, Arizona, about five, starved, and went to the beautiful hotel. They lodged us all in one bungalow, and immediately we called loudly for tea and sandwiches. We spent the night there, left around nine, next morning. We flew to Grand Canyon—not really to the Canyon, but to the nearest flying field, and drove to the Canyon by motor. There we took a long walk along the rim, and looked down on the Canyon in the evening light, one of the strangest and loveliest and most impressive sights in the world—really sublime.
“Next morning, we motored back to the plane and headed Westward. We got hungry, but there seemed no good place to stop for luncheon. All we could see were poor little Mexican or Indian villages, in the desert. Finally, we got to Las Vegas, and after luncheon flew homeward, over the mountains we had been unable to cross when we started, dropping down into the San Fernando Valley at sunset, as on a magical flying carpet. We had had four beautiful days. We did not see much of the war, though at one place in Mexico we saw smoke, and thought we heard the sound of distant firing. Douglas had believed it unwise to go any nearer. We might be taken for spies, and pursued—even brought down. After all, war was not what we really cared to see.”
XIII
“ONE ROMANTIC NIGHT”
It is difficult to realize the size of the catastrophe resulting from the sudden production of talking pictures, even of pictures with “sound effects,” as many of them were, at first. Some of them really talked—better, or worse, than others. No matter; every picture theatre in New York, and most of them on the road, were presently being “wired for sound.” All the millions (possibly billions) of dollars’ worth of silent pictures, shrunk in value at a ghastly rate. The Eastern Hemisphere, the only market for them presently, was comparatively unimportant. Hundreds of pictures were useless; picture players found themselves “out of a job.” Stars began to pale and disappear.
On the other hand, ill as was the wind, it dispensed benefits. Stage players out of employment found market for their trained speech. Their feet warmed the way to Hollywood. A good many were already there. As the months passed, the screen showed more of the old familiar faces. Broadway to the rescue. Even the great succumbed. George Arliss, master of diction, joined the procession, Ruth Chatterton—eventually, Lillian.
Not willingly. She still believed in the silent film. She had objected even to the lip movement, the simulated speech insisted upon by the directors. To her, the perfect picture must be pure pantomime—with music—appropriate music, as in “Broken Blossoms.” It would never be that, now. Beautiful Evelyn Hope was dead. There is no help for such things. Tears, idle tears. Since the beginning of time, grief has never repaired a single loss. One might as profitably wail over the sunken Atlantis.
She still had her contract with the United Artists, and by its terms must make at least one picture before she could cancel it. She had hoped to get out of it altogether; but while it did not mention talking pictures, she was advised to abide by the terms.
“It would involve me in a suit with the United Artists, and I had had suits enough. As it was, I barely avoided another: The company had agreed to let me do Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Strange Interlude,’ if I could get it for a reasonable sum—I could have it to take the place of the Reinhardt picture. I came East in April (1929), to see Mr. Madden, O’Neill’s agent. I could have it for $75,000. This suited Mr. Joe Schenck. It suited Mr. O’Neill. We had the papers drawn up. I was to sign them that morning, and it was only because I was protected by an angel that I didn’t do it. On that very day, a woman brought suit against O’Neill, for plagiarism. Had I signed that contract, I should have been involved in the suit. She was beaten, and had to pay costs, but the damage to O’Neill was more than that, in fees.
“Meantime, Dorothy had gone to Germany and brought Mother to London. Mother was tired of sanatoriums and hotels. She wanted a home, and I decided to have one. I joined them, and Dorothy and I went to Paris, to collect furniture for an apartment. I had most of it made, copies of old French pieces.
“I came home in August, and all through that month looked for a place to live. It was a terrible search in the heat. When I saw this apartment, with its outlook on the river, its quiet air and sunshine, I knew that it was what we wanted.
“My friend, Mr. Paul Chalfin, kindly looked after the decoration, and I started at once for California, to do the picture we had selected, ‘The Swan.’ This was during the latter part of September, 1929. The apartment would not be ready before November.”
In California, Lillian lived with Madame de Grésac, at Beverly Hills. There was just then a good deal of talk about kidnapping, and she was advised against living alone. Josephine, her Austrian maid, had remained in Los Angeles, but met her at the station, with flowers and tears.
Careful preparation for “The Swan” began. Lillian was admirably suited to the rôle, that of the fair Princess Alexandra, her voice quality and diction needed only slight adjustment. Melville Baker had written the script for “The Swan,” adapting it from his translation of the original play by Ferenc Molnar. She thought very well of it, and hoped for the best.
She wrote Reinhardt of her decision, and received a gracious reply. Both artistically and from the business point of view, it (“The Swan”) ought to be a success, he said, and added:
In spite of all those rather disagreeable experiences I had to go through in Hollywood, I have kept the time I spent there in most agreeable remembrance. To have been together with you, your undeviable artistic spirit, blossoming there like a rare lonely flower, and the pureness of your conviction, made me happy and will remain for me an unlosable experience for all time to come....
Making a picture now was a different matter from those very recent old days. Then, a set where action was in progress, was about the noisiest place on the lot. Stagehands and various bosses shouting to one another, the director shouting at the players—noise, noise, no end to it. Now, all was silence. Every sound, even the feeblest rustling, was recorded by the microphone. Except for the actors, their laughter, their breathing, the accessory beat of rain, or hail, the stillness was perfect. The sound stage was a padded cell.
“With the preparation and all,” Lillian said, “I worked about three months on ‘One Romantic Night,’ as they called the picture later. Mary Pickford has a bungalow on the lot, and lent it to me. I used it as a dressing-room, sometimes I slept there, when I had to be on the lot very early. I had Georgie, my dog, and Josephine. It would have been well enough, but they were building soundstages all about, which made a great deal of noise, all night long. It was a complete little house. Josephine cooked for me when we stayed there.
“I arrived in New York Christmas morning, with a wild turkey, which I got in Arizona. It had been brought to the train by some friends of a little girl who had done my hair out there. They had often sent turkeys to me, to California. It was all dressed, and all the way across the continent, cooks on the diners kept it in their refrigerators. They were very much interested.
“We had dinner in our new apartment, our first real home. Mother was delighted with it, and has seemed better and more contented ever since. Her pleasure in it makes us all so happy.”
“One Romantic Night” was a photographically beautiful picture, with a distinguished cast. Lillian, as Princess Alexandra; Rod La Roque, as the Prince (sent, against his will, to woo her); Marie Dressler, as her designing mother; Conrad Nagel, as a tutor, in love with Alexandra; O. P. Heggie—altogether a fine company.
Yet it has been called a poor picture, and Lillian today is not proud of her part in it. It was by no means a failure. Never had she looked more lovely. No longer a victim of tyranny, brutality and betrayal, but a Princess, as rare as any out of a fairy tale, with a palace and a rose garden and suitors, with a lilting, perfectly-timed voice, Lillian appeared to have come into her own. Her acting and beauty furnished no surprise, but her voice and laugh did; she had been silent, and sad, so many years. The audience followed her through a presentation, in itself seldom more than mildly exciting, and not always that. The tutor’s astronomy at times wearied, not only the Prince, but, unhappily, the audience. Marie Dressler’s broad comedy was highly amusing, but there were moments when one got the impression that the play was not only very light comedy, as apparently it was meant to be, but a good farce gone wrong.
Only, that fairy princess in the rose garden—on a terrace under the stars, or leaning from a balcony to her Prince, was not quite farce material. And the ending helped: the Prince and Princess, in a properly ordered elopement, in quite a royal car, swinging under the castle walls, out of the picture, into the night, to the notes of a marvelously musical klaxon, added a touch that brought the story back to the realm of pure romance, leaving a lovely impression.