Customer Reviews

Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Charles Affron's biography of Lillian Gish is well researched. He has consulted various documents which were unavailable prior to Gish's death and thus, in many ways, provides a more detailed picture than that provided hitherto. His book is clearly concerned to debunk some of the myths surrounding Gish's life. He spends a great deal of time showing that Gish presented an idealized picture of her life and that many of the autobiographical incidents she related were untrue. This is fine up to a point. It is good to know the truth and it is not as if Gish hid anything really serious. Hers were the white lies of someone in a business concerned with the presentation of images. If she lied about her age, how many other actors have done likewise? Where Affron's revisionism becomes more serious however, is in his criticism of Gish's silent pictures. Unfortunately his late twentieth century perspective continually informs his judgement and he can be rather sneering of her work especially her films with D.W. Griffith. Calling Way Down East a parody of melodrama shows that Affron does not particularly care for it as a film. The problem is that what makes Gish an important figure is her silent pictures and especially her acting for Griffith. If Affron is correct in his criticism of Gish for trying to keep alive the memory of Griffith, then it should be asked why he should wish to keep alive the memory of Gish by writing this biography.

The difficulty that Affron has as a biographer is that Gish's last truly important starring role was in The Wind (1928) yet she lived until 1993. His account of what she did in the interim is somewhat dull. For the most part it consists of descriptions of long forgotten theatrical productions and small film parts. He does not really capture what she did on a day-to-day basis. When he does move beyond her acting it is merely to criticise her politics. Affron seems to object that she was a Republican and was friends with Eisenhower and the Reagans. This merely betrays that Affron has allowed his own politics to unfairly cloud his judgement of Gish's life.

This is really the worst feature of Affron's book. His politically correct sensibility makes him ill suited to write about someone who grew up in a different age. Criticising silent films for not conforming to the attitudes of late twentieth-century academia is like criticising Henry VIII for spousal abuse and equally pointless. Lillian Gish was the greatest actress of the silent era, but Affron's book, though informative, misses something about her, for he is stuck in his own time.

If you have been (like me) dissatisfied with having only Gish's autobiography, The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, as a source of information on her life, then buy this book.
But be warned.
While there is much more information about Gish than was ever available before her death, the author Charles Affron belongs to that new school of biography in which the writer turns snide and bitchy toward his subject. Affron did not make the effort necessary to understand the world in which Gish was born and raised - an era so far from our own in its values that it is another world. Not having this insight, Affron loses patience with Gish and begins to snipe about her "victorian values." He does not even understanding that she was a part of the American EDWARDIAN era and her values display the emphasis on art and beauty and education that was so much a part of that time.
If the world surged into the partying 20s and on and on, moving further from what shaped Lillian Gish, this is not a reason to pick at her personally. A good biographer would explain how she struggled to maintain good values as she saw them.
The upshot is that the author's bias renders the facts so tainted with his dislike that in the end his shallow view spoils all. What is the use of a book that you have to wrestle with in order to discern unbiased information?
I found this book ultimately disappointing, very disappointing. But if you have a Gish collection and want access to its facts about her, then buy it secondhand.

Excellent, well-written and well-researched, by someone who is enough of a film scholar to be able to weigh Gish's individual performances (see also his excellent "Star Acting").

No scandals here-she didn't really have any. A half-hearted affair or two and one lawsuit. The real emphasis is on her career and friendships, and her self-creation of the Lillian Gish Mythology. A lot I didn't know, and one of those books you just don't want to end. Not enough photos, perhaps-but I never think there's enough photos.

This book is fantastic! I have always thought that Miss Gish was a great performer and one of the most beautiful actresses ever, but it turns out she was a pretty smart cookie (except in the romance department) and lead a very interesting life.

Book reviewer Richard Schickel has given this book a bad review. He is all hot and bothered in that Gish was not very truthful about her life (like umpteen other famous movie stars) and he apparently doesn't like her "proper", chaste, Victorian-era image. The author, Charles Affron, had access to many of her personal papers, including may personal letters that she wrote. While Affron may knock her off her pedestal a little bit, it is only because she was a real person who sometimes made mistakes.

Gish fibbed about all kinds of things like her birthdate, her engagement, and the cause of her mother's stroke. The famed "happy" ending of THE WIND was actually in Francis Marion's script, not a late addition forced by the studio like Gish claimed so much later. She chose to "forget" or not mention all kind of things like her personal relationship with D.W. Griffith (which was probably not sexual anyway) and the fact that she didn't always get along with her sister Dorothy.

Gish's image (which was still close to her actual personality, even if some of the details were not true) really hurt her in the 1920's when the fan magazines turned against her and MGM didn't know what kind of vehicle would be right for her.

She seems to have been the only woman (or person) who could stand up to Griffith when it came to artistic decisions. She certainly was an artistic force to be reckoned with, and the loss of her lone direction credit REMODELING HER HUSBAND (1920) seems worse now that I have read the book.

The only disappointment for me was that Affron did not spend as much time analyzing her films as he should have. While other reviewers have complained that Affron unfairly criticizes Gish for being a Victorian and a Republican, I do not feel that his comments about BIRTH OF A NATION and her politics are unwarranted.

If you are interested in Lillian Gish, D.W. Griffith, and silent films in general, this book is highly recommended.

You shall learn within these pages of a life which encompassed more than a screen star presence, which overspilled into areas such as business and management, areas from which, during the early part of the last century, women were commonly barred. Miss Gish stormed the gates and bully for her. Despite the rather 'snide' tone taken by the author (was that necessary, Mr Affron?) I carried away from this reading a satisfactory amount of facts, and also a few interesting unresolveds and still-persistant myths, such as the alluded-to possible romance with her business partner, her sympathy for D. W. Griffith's controversial politics, and her practised innocence, which was anything but. Miss Gish enjoyed a long and a healthy career, to the end remaining well-respected. This in and of itself ought testify to her personality. I do agree with the one reviewer who complained of the lack of photos. I too never can have enough. Miss Gish was incredibly photogenic, and certainly several more stills of her in her pictures could have seen use.

One might get the impression the author likes a lot of Ms. Gish's work but feels he sees through her "simple facade", in terms of her beliefs and self-portrayal, and, if so, I think that reader would be correct. Mr. Affron gathers most of this book from earlier publications and the personal papers Lillian Gish left to the New York Public Library. However, it appears clear that he began with the usual anti-Griffith agenda, and, as is seen in Eileen Whitfield's Mary Pickford study, enjoys "demonstrating" the director's supposed racism and sexual perversities. When I finished the book the first time, my main thought ran like this: "Well, he did all he could to dig up dirt and came up almost empty. So he joined the current chorus in the popular attempt to tear down Mr. Griffith." One doesn't have to be a published academic to study these two wonderful artists for years, set politics aside, and seek to understand them honestly. Mr. Affron knew what he believed when he began, and it shows. The best part of this book is the filmography/listing of the subject's work, which I have found helpful.

I had mixed reactions to this book. On the plus side, it is well written and researched; it reads fluently and intelligently. On the minus side, it is largely restricted to an account and analysis of her professional life. I gather this is because there is very little that is known about Gish's private life. This is not the fault of the author, but it did make for some tedious reading from about the halfway point forward. I would have liked to get a better sense of who she was as a personality.

This is a very informative and exceedingly well-researched biography on one of the first ladies of the American cinema. Lillian Gish lived for just 8 months shy of one hundred years, from 1893 till 1993, and began acting in 1902, turning in her last role in 1987. She literally grew up with the movies, and got a chance to act on the stage, the big screen, and the small screen, touring with some great plays, starring in classic films and tv movies, and being directed by some seminal film directors. For the most part, she was a top-notch class act who lived her life free of major scandal, although, as Mr. Affron establishes, she was not without flaws either.

Like many other people in show business, Lillian lied about a good many things about her life, such as her age, the true cause of her mother's health problems, the true extent of her relationships with Charles H. Duell, Jr. and George Jean Nathan, and the fact that there was never any unhappy ending in the script of 'The Wind,' nor is there evidence that the so-called unhappy ending was the original ending they shot. However, it's made clear that she didn't lie about any of these things with malicious intent, and she never lied about or covered up anything really serious or scandalous. These were just the types of lies that most celebrities tell, to preserve a certain public image, or to reinvent themselves so their images are more in line with the images the public have cast them in. As for the other less than perfect aspects of Lillian's life, I didn't get at all what other people have mentioned, a snide, negative, haughty, or even outright mean tone Mr. Affron took towards his subject. It's not necessarily a personal attack to criticise someone for some admittedly embarrassing and questionable aspects of her life, such as her activism for the controversial right-wing group America First in the years leading up to WWII. As Mr. Affron points out, some of Lillian's views, such as those concerning the arts, stood in striking contrast to the views of most other Republicans. He also has a valid point in taking her to task for her at best questionable lifelong defence of 'Birth of a Nation,' pointing out how her paternalistic racial views, while clearly the product of her time, didn't really change over her life, and how it seems incomprehensible how she couldn't grasp why so many people felt the film was horrifically racist. He also points out how her defence of her mentor D.W. Griffith was so strong and knee-jerk that she even suggested that one of his lost films, which had somewhat more enlightened depictions of African-Americans, was lost on purpose because people didn't want the public to see he had been capable of making non-racist films as well. It's all good and well to stand by your mentor, the person who really discovered you and nurtured your talent, but it's not without merit to point out how sometimes her defence of Griffith was just embarrassing. I also didn't pick up on what other people have mentioned, that Mr. Affron was demeaning towards Lillian's silent films, in particular the melodramas she shot for Griffith. Again, this criticism isn't without merit; not everyone feels he was the greatest director who ever lived. There are also valid reasons to view some of his films as dated overwrought morality plays, regardless of who acted in them.

The in-depth content of this book really seems to fall off a little more than halfway through. Lillian didn't act in many movies or plays of note after 'The Wind' in 1928, so it often reads like little more than a recital of unmemorable plays, below-par films, and television specials and made-for-tv movies. There wasn't a lot of coverage of her non-acting life, her day-to-day personal life. Thus there were a lot of gaps between her post-1928 acting stints, and one gets the feeling that the book has become more of a career biography than a full in-depth biography of the whole person. It was great to learn about everything Lillian acted in after she largely disappeared from public view, but it's also as though her personal life got the short end of the stick. I also wished there could have been more pictures in the photo section, although I did like how every chapter had a photo at the beginning.

[...]
I accompanied a Lillian Gish movie marathon with Charles Affron's 2002 biography, Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life. Before deciding on this particular volume, I was a bit apprehensive about its accuracy given the rather lukewarm reviews it had gotten on Amazon. It seemed that the main criticism concerned the author's apparent antagonism toward much of Lillian's body of work. I was prepared for a heavy-handed assessment of some of the most famous films in the silent canon. What I read instead was an eloquent, level-headed look at not only the life of Gish, but also the history of the movies starting from its infancy as an art form (indeed, even before it was considered to be "art" at all).

Like many actresses, Lillian was known for shaving a few years off her birth date. She entered film at a time when an actresses's youth was perhaps her most important asset. Under the harsh lights of the early Biograph studios, Lillian knew it was in her best interest to not only appear as youthful as possible, but also make sure that those around her believed in this youth as well. The mythology of D. W. Griffith and the pioneering days of cinema were subjects that Lillian held close to her own personal mythology for the rest of her life. She seized every opportunity to educate an increasingly fickle public about Griffith (as she called him, the "father of film") and his revolutionary contributions to film. She maintained the luminous virginality of her public image to the very end. Gish never married, but she had several rumored engagements. One, to Charles Duell, her would-be producer and business manager in the early 1920s, ended in years of litigation. The publicity did little to damage her saintly reputation with the public, however. While Lillian cultivated an image of fragility, she was anything but. Physical health was very important to her (she lived to be 100), and her steely will bolstered her through an incredible career that lasted almost until her death.

Affron's examinations of Lillian's films reveals an author who believes completely in Gish's talents as not only an actress, but a grand tragedienne. What appear to be stinging commentaries on significant entries in her early work are actually fair assessments by a man who knows that Lillian's talent far outpaces her material. The little girl acts that she performs for Griffith are a particular point of criticism, but this is only because Lillian's talents would be much better served with roles that truly challenged her skills. Affron affords Gish ample praise for her inimitable performances in Broken Blossoms (1919), The White Sister (1923), La Boheme (1926), The Scarlet Letter (1926), and the masterful The Wind (1928). This book is not the product of a man who has tired of his muse; rather, it is an evaluation that has the benefit of hindsight and the tempered respect and admiration cultivated after spending years in the company of one such as Lillian Gish.

Before I read this book I knew almost nothing of Lillian Gish other than she was one of the top 25 female American Film Institute screen legends. This book provides ample information of both her personal life and her movie/stage career. Since the majority of her "significant" work was done predominantly in the silent era, I don't feel the need to read further on her because I think this book gave me all the information that I needed to know about her.

I'll agree with some of the other reviewers that the author's tone is at times quite judgmental (which is very apparent), and some more pictures in this biography would have been appreciated, but overall it was a good read.