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Lillian Gish is a Actor, Director and Story American born on 14 october 1893 at Springfield (USA)

Lillian Gish

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Birth name Lillian Diana Gish
Nationality USA
Birth 14 october 1893 at Springfield (USA)
Death 27 february 1993 (at 99 years) at New York City (USA)
Awards Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres‎

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

She was a prominent film star of the 1910s and 1920s, particularly associated with the films of director D. W. Griffith, including her leading role in one of the highest-grossing films of the silent era, Griffith's seminal The Birth of a Nation (1915). Her sound-era film appearances were sporadic, but included well-known roles in the controversial western Duel in the Sun (1946) and the offbeat thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955). She did considerable television work from the early 1950s into the 1980s and closed her career playing, for the first time, opposite Bette Davis in the 1987 film The Whales of August. Gish is widely considered to be the greatest actress of the silent era, and one the greatest actresses in cinema history.

Biography

Gish never married or had children. The association between Gish and D. W. Griffith was so close that some suspected a romantic connection, an issue never acknowledged by Gish, although several of their associates were certain they were at least briefly involved. For the remainder of her life, she always referred to him as "Mr. Griffith".
Lillian Gish was the sister of actress Dorothy Gish.
Gish was a survivor of the 1918 flu pandemic.

She was involved with producer Charles Duell and drama critic and editor George Jean Nathan. In the 1920s, Gish's association with Duell was something of a tabloid scandal because he had sued her and made the details of their relationship public.

During the period of political turmoil in the US that lasted from the outbreak of WWII in Europe until the attack on Pearl Harbor, she maintained an outspoken noninterventionist stance. She was an active member of the America First Committee, an anti-intervention organization founded by retired General Robert E. Wood with aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh as its leading spokesman. She said she was blacklisted by the film and theater industries until she signed a contract in which she promised to cease her anti-interventionist activities and never disclose the fact that she had agreed to do so.

She maintained a very close relationship with her sister Dorothy, as well as with Mary Pickford, for her entire life. Another of her closest friends was actress Helen Hayes; Gish was the godmother of Hayes's son James MacArthur.