Customer Reviews

Lillian Gish: A Life on Stage and Screen

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Generally, the best biographies are *not* written by people who were friends of their subjects. Oderman's book is no exception to this rule. A long-time friend of Lillian Gish's, Oderman lacks the critical distance that incisive biography requires. He interviewed many sources, but he seems to have accepted their statements more or less without question, and his analysis, both of Gish and of film, is sketchy and superficial. Stylistically, Oderman's prose suffers from repetition, awkward phrasing, and a disconcerting lack of transitions. If he plans to publish more works with McFarland Press, he might consider asking them to find better copy editors. Typos, apostrophe errors, and usage gaffes such as "did not phase her" abound throughout the text. The most valuable parts of the book are the many quotations from Gish herself and from her contemporaries.

This book is a very insightful study of a very great lady. I especially enjoyed the textbook format. But I would agree with one other reviewer that it was not proofread as well as it should have been. I had the great fortune to know Miss Gish, having been her and her sister Dorothy's neighbor in 1965 while she was at the Stratford theatre in Connecticut. I have personal photos which I would like to share with Mr. Oderman if he would e-mail me at JimFan630@aol.com . I am also fortunate to have several letters (typed with a full signature), a hand writted postcard and a personally written note sent after Dorothy's death. I would not part with them for the world! Miss Gish was a rare treasure and we will not see her like again. Thank you, Mr. Oderman!

"A Life on Stage and Screen" is an affectionate tribute to a woman the author clearly much admires. That said, it's still not the authoritative critical biography that Gish's status as an artist deserves. Oderman's writing is functional at best, and he provides little critical perspective on Gish's post-silent career, relying instead on a straightforward "and then she did this, and then that" approach. Even so, it's good at last to have some work in addition to her own memoir by which to gauge Miss Gish's life and works, and the author's personal touch does illumine what he presents as a rather sad off-screen/off-stage life.