Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish Purged by Bowling Green State University

July 17, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech Leave a Comment

Lillian Gish, among cinema’s early pioneers and one of our greatest actresses.

Lillian Gish was one of the most important actors in movie history.

She was there at the beginning of moving pictures working with D.W. Griffith, inventing the grammar of film, perfecting the new style of acting for the motion picture camera. She was Hollywood’s first great actress. Her film career lasted for 75 years from 1912 to her last film The Whales of August on 1987. She passed away in 1993 at the age of 99.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

November 18, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 7 Comments

Anna Lee in How Green was My Valley, 1939. Lee was among the most prominent female members of the John Ford stock company. Ford's pate name for her was Boniface, her middle name (joanna Boniface Winnifrith). Ford's feelings for Lee were cemented when she had a miscarriage while shooting How Green Was My Valley, brought on, it was believed, by collapsing during the scene where she learns her husband has died. She hadn't told Ford that she was pregnant, but he nevertheless, blamed himself. The result was that on every picture Lee worked on with him, Ford would assemble the cast and crew, then ask her if she was pregnant. ”No sir,” she would reply. “I just wanted to make sure.” —Source: Print the Legend, by Scott Eyman — Anna Lee in How Green was My Valley, 1941.
Lee was among the most prominent female members of the John Ford stock company. Ford’s pet name for her was Boniface, her middle name (Joanna Boniface Winnifrith). Ford’s feelings for Lee were cemented when she had a miscarriage while shooting How Green Was My Valley, brought on by collapsing during the scene where she learns her husband has died. She hadn’t told Ford that she was pregnant, but he nevertheless, blamed himself. The result was that on every picture Lee worked on with him, Ford would assemble the cast and crew, then ask her if she was pregnant.
”No sir,” she would reply.
“I just wanted to make sure.”
—Source: Print the Legend, by Scott Eyman

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions, Self-Portraits, Early Selfies

February 19, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 5 Comments

“Never get caught acting.” —Lillian Gish — “Never get caught acting.”
—Lillian Gish

Friday Photos: Till the Cows Come Home

January 16, 2015 by Robert J. Avrech 13 Comments

Buster Keaton with a cow. Not sure which film this is from, possibly Go West, but for some odd reason we have been coming across scores of pictures of Hollywood stars and cow. — Buster Keaton with a cow in “Go West” For some odd reason we have been coming across scores of pictures of Hollywood stars and cows.

I’ve just finished a long and depressing conversation with a close friend who attends Daf Yomi with yours truly. We were wondering (among other things) what has possessed Barack Hussein Obama to release five more ruthless Gitmo detainees?

All evidence, and common sense, suggests that these IslamoNazis will return to jihad and commit further rampages of murder, torture, rape, and plunder.

I suggested that Obama is a classic narcissist who will do what he wants regardless of the consequences. My friend asked, not unreasonably, if Obama does not heed his national security briefings? We went around and around the matter. But ultimately the question of Obama’s motivations are irrelevant. His actions are the only things that count. And this POTUS is guilty of dereliction of duty.

Okay. Got that out of the way.

Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s: Night of the Hunter

February 28, 2013 by Robert J. Avrech 30 Comments

We continue our survey of the twenty greatest movies of the 1950s.

For a complete listing of the greatest movies of the 20, 30s and 40s, click here.

13. Night of the Hunter, 1955

Night of the Hunter, more than any other movie I have ever seen, succeeds brilliantly in evoking the terrors of childhood.

Director Charles Laughton (Robert Mitchum is uncredited, but he directed the children) described it as “a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale.” Written by James Agee and Laughton, and based on a novel of the same name by Davis Grubb, Night of the Hunter is set in Depression-era West Virginia. Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powers, an ex-con who poses as a back-woods minister, marries widows for their money, and then murders them.

Mitchum’s Rev. Harry, silkily sinister with a voice like an oboe, has the word “love” tattooed on one set of knuckles, and “hate” on the other. Rarely has a film so elegantly and so chillingly announced its subject matter.