Lillian Gish

American actress Lillian Gish (1893-1993) was 'The First Lady of the Silent Screen'. During the 1910s, she was one of director D.W. Griffith's greatest stars. She appeared in his features such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Orphans of the Storm (1921). After 13 years with Griffith, she moved to MGM where her first picture was La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926). In the 1940s, after a long interval, she returned to the screen in a handful of films and received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). Again a decade later she was marvellous in the classic Film Noir The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Her last film was The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987) in which she shared the lead with Bette Davis.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3545/2, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists.


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 170. Caption: The Gish sisters (Lilian and Dorothy Gish).


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 236.


German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 844/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Apeda (Alexander W. Dreyfoos), New York / British-American-Films A.G. Bafag.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/1. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert.


Spanish postcard by EFB, no. A-62.

An exquisitely fragile, ethereal beauty

Lillian Diana Gish was born in 1893 in Springfield, Ohio. Her restless father James Lee Gish was an alcoholic who was rarely at home and left the family to more or less to fend for themselves. Mary Robinson McConnell a.k.a. Mary Gish, her mother, had entered into acting in local productions to make money to support the family. As soon as Lillian and her sister Dorothy were old enough, they joined her.

Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared in melodramas before stage audiences with great success. To supplement their income, the two sisters also posed for pictures and paintings. In 1912, their former neighbour girl and child actress Mary Pickford introduced the sisters to film director David Wark Griffith and helped get them contracts with Biograph Studios.

Griffith cast them in the short silent films An Unseen Enemy (D.W. Griffith, 1912), followed by The One She Loved (D.W. Griffith, 1912) and My Baby (D.W. Griffith, 1912). Griffith saw Lillian as an exquisitely fragile, ethereal beauty, and in 1912, she would make 12 films for him.

With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she quickly became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford. With her doll-like looks and small frame, she portrayed innocent, virginal characters who were victimised by a cruel world.

In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in D.W. Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915). It was the highest-grossing film of the silent era. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (D.W. Griffith, 1916). Other famous Griffith productions in which Gish starred were Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (D.W. Griffith, 1919), Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920), and Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith, 1921), opposite her sister Dorothy.


British postcard by Cinema Art, London. Photo: Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess in Way Down East (David Wark Griffith, 1920).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 844/2. Photo: British-American Film A.-G. (Bafag), Berlin. Lillian Gish in The White Sister (Henry King 1923), shot in Italy.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1034/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Phoebus Film. Lillian Gish in the American period piece Romola (Henry King, 1924), shot on location in Italy, and set in Renaissance Florence.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1313/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Loew Metro Goldwyn.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/2. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert and Renée Adorée.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/4. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with Roy D'Arcy.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1885/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Parufamet. Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926).

The first lady of American cinema

By the early 1920s, Lillian Gish was known as 'The First Lady of the American cinema', according to Wikipedia. Lillian even tried her hand at film directing with Remodeling Her Husband (Lillian Gish, 1920), when D.W. Griffith took his unit on location. The film, starring her sister Dorothy Gish, is now considered lost.

Then, she could make two films entirely in Italy. In the excellent The White Sister (Henry King, 1923), she played a young woman who becomes a nun when she believes her sweetheart (Ronald Colman) has been killed, but things get complicated when he returns alive. Henry King directed her and Colman also in the costume drama Romola (Henry King, 1924), in which also her sister Dorothy co-starred.

D.W. Griffith’s career seemed on its way down. After 13 years with him, Lillian moved to MGM. Her new contract gave her control over the type of picture, the director, the supporting lead and the cameraman.

1926 became her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert, and The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926). Gish's favourite film of her MGM career, The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928), was a commercial failure but is now recognised as one of the most distinguished works of the silent period.

As the decade wound to a close, ‘talkies’ were replacing silent films, and Gish began to appear for the radio and in acclaimed stage productions. In 1933, she appeared in one sound film, His Double Life (Arthur Hopkins, 1933) with Roland Young, and then didn't make another film for ten years. She appeared in stage roles as varied as Ophelia in Guthrie McClintic's 1936 production of 'Hamlet', with John Gielgud, and Marguerite in a limited run of 'La Dame aux Camélias'.

Tony Fontana at IMDb: “Lillian never forgot D.W. Griffith, even when everyone else in Hollywood did. She helped care for the ailing Griffith and his wife until Griffith died in 1948.”


Italian postcard, no. 22. Publicity still for The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926).


German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 1487/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Mayer / FaNaMet.


German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 1980/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Mayer / FaNaMet. Publicity still for Annie Laurie (John S. Robertson, 1927).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3533/1, 1928-1929. Photo: MGM. Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes in The Enemy (Fred Niblo, 1927).


German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 3545/1, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3822/1, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists. Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson in The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3931/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

A rural guardian angel protecting her charges from a murderous preacher

When Lillian Gish returned to the screen in 1943, she played in two big-budget Hollywood pictures, the war drama Commandos Strike at Dawn (John Farrow, 1942) and Top Man (Charles Lamont, 1943). Denny Jackson at IMDb: “Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them.”

She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role as Laura Belle McCanles in the Western Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). She now excelled playing wilful but conflicted women.

One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the Film Noir The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). She played a rural guardian angel protecting her charges from a murderous preacher played by Robert Mitchum. In 1969, she published her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me. A year later, she received a special Academy Award 'for superlative artistry and distinguished contributions to the progress of motion pictures'.

In her later years, Gish became a dedicated advocate for the appreciation and preservation of silent film. At the age of 93, she made what was to be her last film, The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987), in which Bette Davis and she starred as elderly sisters in Maine. It exposed her to a new generation of fans.

In 1993, Lillian Gish died at age 99 peacefully in her sleep in New York City. Her 75-year film career is almost unbeatable. Gish never married or had children. She left her entire estate, which was valued at several million dollars, to actress Helen Hayes, who died 18 days after Gish.


Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56487. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne. Lillian Gish and Henry B. Walthall in Birth of a Nation (David Wark Griffith, 1915), produced by D.W. Griffith Corporation.


American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no. JA13. Photo: James Abbe. Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms (David Wark Griffith, 1919).


Picture from an unknown magazine, stuck to cardboard card. Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish in Orphans of the Storm (David Wark Griffith, 1921).


Swiss postcard by News Productions, Baulmes, no. 55706. Photo: John Phillips / Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne. Caption: Actress and inveterate Traveller Lillian Gish blows a goodbye kiss to friends in Czechoslovakia as she leaves for the USA in 1938, shortly before Hitler occupies Prague.


Trailer Duel in the Sun (1946). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).


Trailer The Night of the Hunter (1955). Source: Criterion Collection (YouTube).


Trailer The Whales of August (1987). Source: mimzy84 (YouTube).

Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

La Bohème (1926)

In 1925, Lillian Gish moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after 13 years working with director David Wark Griffith on such classics as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Orphans of the Storm (1921). Her first MGM picture was La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926). Director Vidor came fresh from his brilliant success with The Big Parade (1925) and took his two leading actors, John Gilbert and Renee Adoree, with him to La Bohème. The story about a group of starving artists in 19th century Paris was not based on Giacomo Puccini's opera but on Henri Murger's novel La Vie de Bohème (Life in the Latin Quarter, 1851). La Bohème (1926) is a classic romantic tragedy, which relates more to fantasy and mythology than to a realistic situation. It is an agonising, bittersweet fairytale.


Lillian Gish (or Renée Adorée?) and John Gilbert. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/1. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


Lillian Gish, John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/2. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/4. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with Lillian Gish and Roy D'Arcy.

The rent is due, but the money is not there

The Quartier Latin of Paris, winter 1830. A group of carefree Bohemians try to survive, hoping to one day become famous. Rodolpho (John Gilbert) is a frustrated writer who lives and starves with his room mates, painter Marcel (Gino Corrado), musician Schaunard (George Hassell) and bookish  Colline, played by a young Edward Everett Horton. The rent is due, but the money is not there. An article here, a painting there and a monkey with a cup gives them enough money for the rent, but not for food.

Fortunately, the saucy Musette (Renée Adorée) from downstairs has enough food for everyone including Mimi (Lillian Gish) - the frail and beautiful seamstress from next door. She has been given notice by the landlord, but Rodolpho and his friends rescue her and vow to always share their good fortune with her. Rodolphe and Mimi fall in love and Mimi works endlessly to support Rodolphe who is writing his play with a new found passion. But the rich, idle aristocrat Vicomte Paul (Roy D'Arcy) also has his lusting eye on Mimi and uses her embroidery to get close to her.

Rodolpho does not know that he has been discharged from writing for the magazine Dog and Cat Fanciers. Mimi wants to get his play produced and Vicomte Paul offers to help, but there is a terrible fight when Rodolphe thinks that Mimi is faithless to him with the count. After the fight, he seeks out a doctor as she is sick, but she has left when Rodolphe returns and will stay away until his play is finished.

Rodolphe searches for Mimi for months. Out of his anguish, a new and greater play is born. This turns out to be a hit, but he is miserable without Mimi. Meanwhile, Mimi is toiling in the slums of Paris, but the hard work is too much for the frail woman. She collapses. The doctor tells her coworkers that she will not live out the night. She stumbles out into the street and eventually reaches her old apartment. Rodolphe is ecstatic to see her. Their friends, however, realise her condition. While he goes to fetch her pet bird, she tells Musette she is happy, before dying.

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Though John Gilbert hams it up, Lillian Gish's brilliant performance is a model of restraint and subtlety. For her final scene, the actress went to appalling lengths to convincingly simulate death, going without water for three days and training herself to breathe without discernible movement (even when seen today, the effect is startlingly real)."

Steffi van Essen at IMDb: "Gilbert is not nearly as fine an actor as his leading lady, but he is again very much the right type for his part – an idealist with intelligent eyes and a warm smile. Other faces to look out for here are the very entertaining French actress Renée Adorée, and a rare glimpse of a silent-era Edward Everett Horton, although sadly before his comic talent was fully realised."


Lillian Gish. Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F.), no. 199. Photo: Metro Goldwyn, Roma (MGM). Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: Metro Goldwyn (MGM), Roma, no. 287. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926). Although the postcard credits Lillian Gish, it's actually co-star Renée Adorée who is portrayed. (Thanks to Marlene Pilaete, for mentioning this).


Roy D'Arcy. Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, no. 291. Photo: Metro Goldwyn, Roma (MGM). Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie),  Steffi van Essen (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

50 years The Parade’s Gone By

The Giornate del Cinema Muto honours the 50 years of existence of The Parade’s Gone By. British film historian Kevin Brownlow’s classic oral history survey was first published in 1968. Not a history book in the usual sense, it describes early Hollywood primarily through the recollections of people who were there. As Lincoln Spector concludes in a post on his blog, Bayflicks: "The current access to silent films that we all enjoy is, to a large extent, the result of Brownlow’s life's work. And The Parade’s Gone By was the beginning." Six American silent films, which were discussed in Brownlow's study, will be presented in a special programme in Pordenone. To honour Giornate, Brownlow’s work and silent Hollywood, we selected a series of postcards on the stars and on one of the directors of these six films, plus some additional cards on early studios.


James Cruze. American postcard by Krauss Mfg. Co., New York. Photo: Thanhouser. Publicity still for the 23-episode serial The Million Dollar Mystery (Howard Hansel, 1914), produced by Thanhouser. See the flipside of the picture below.


American postcard by Krauss Mfg. Co., New York. Thanhouser. Retro of a postcard for James Cruze in the 23 episodes of the Thanhouser serial The Million Dollar Mystery (Howard Hansel, 1914), starring Cruze and Florence La Badie. The card says the actor will personally appear at the Crescent Theater on Saturday, May 22nd, "to tell about his experiences in the motion picture world and shake hands with all his admirers". The serial is presumably lost. This card refers to a screening on Saturday, 22 May 1915, while the serial had started in June 1914. The Crescent may refer to the Ithaca cinema, The Crescent, that opened in 1914. Its rival, the Star Cinema, had shown the serial in the Summer of 1914.

James Cruze

The oldest film shown in the programme is The Covered Wagon (James Cruze, 1923), starring J. Warren Kerrigan and Lois Wilson. James Cruze (1884-1942) was an American actor and director of the silent screen. At the age of 16, he played his first roles on the stage and in 1906, he became a member of the then-well-known Belasco troupe, with whom he performed regularly on Broadway. Already in 1908, he changed profession and participated in countless films of Lubin, from 1910, and from 1912 onwards at the Thanhouser film company, both East Coast companies. In 1915, Thanhouser dismissed Cruze despite the success of his serials The Million Dollar Mystery and Zudora (both 1914).

Cruze moved to Hollywood in the mid-1910s and began his career as a director in 1919, primarily for Paramount. He first became known through several comedies with Wallace Reid and Fatty Arbuckle in the lead roles. Most of his Arbuckle comedies were withdrawn and destroyed after 1921, at the height of the scandal around the silent film actor.

Cruze's best-known film is the Western The Covered Wagon (1923), depicting the migration of German emigrants to the West of North America and their conflicts with each other and with Indians. The film was carefully researched with a great eye for detail. It was one of the most commercially successful representatives of his genre from the early days of film and received several awards.

James Cruze's film Hollywood, also released in 1923, was the first film to cast a critical eye over the facade of the dream factory, relentlessly revealing the manipulation of the audience through partially fictitious stories about the stars of the screen. At the same time, the film was a tribute to Fatty Arbuckle and did not spare criticism of the behaviour of the producers towards the actor.

In 1925, Cruze used techniques from German Expressionism for work on Beggar on a Horseback and was able to convince the critics with a dense dramaturgy and, for the time, exciting new camera settings. His demise began the following year, as the Western Old Ironside, produced with high financial cost, flopped at the box office. It would take years before another lavishly produced Western came into the national cinemas. In the 1930s, James Cruze's career faltered. In 1938, he retired after some B-movies and in 1942, he died completely impoverished and largely forgotten.


J. Warren Kerrigan. British postcard.


Lois Wilson. French postcard in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series by A.N., Paris, no. 25. Photo: Paramount.

Jean Paige

The second film in the Parade’s Gone By homage is the Vitagraph production Captain Blood (David Smith, 1924), starring Jean Paige and J. Warren Kerrigan. Jean Paige (1895-1990) was a silent film actress whose whole career happened at the Vitagraph company. Eventually, she married its president.

Jean Paige was born Lucile Beatrice O'Hair in 1895 in Paris, Illinois and was raised on her father's farm there, developing a love for horses while living there. Paige made twenty-one films in a career which began in 1917 at the Vitagraph company and concluded there in 1924. Her first screen appearance came in two-reeler features based on O'Henry stories, starting with Blind Man's Holiday (Martin Justice, 1917).

She came to prominence in the Vitagraph film Too Many Crooks (Ralph Ince, 1919). As Charlotte Brown, she made a star part out of a bit part. Jean had never appeared on stage and had no experience in movies before becoming a Vitagraph leading woman.

Her role in Too Many Crooks led Vitagraph president Albert E. Smith to elevate her position at the film studio. Remarkable feature-length films at Vitagraph with Paige starring were, a.o. The Darkest Hour (Paul Scardon, 1919), Daring Hearts (Henry Houry, 1919), The Birth of a Soul (Edwin L. Hollywood, 1920), Black Beauty (David Smith, 1921), The Prodigal Judge (Edward José, 1922), and her final film, Captain Blood (uncredited: David Smith, Albert E. Smith, 1924).

Eventually, Paige married Smith himself in 1920 - she was his third wife. She stopped acting, and they stayed together until he died in 1958. In 1925, Vitagraph was sold to Warner Bros. In 1931, Smith bought the residential apartment building of Chateau Marmont and turned it into a hotel.


British postcard by Cinema Chat. Photo: Hill / Vitagraph. Jean Paige. 


Jane Paige, aka Jean Paige. French postcard by A.N., Paris in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 91. Photo: Film Vitagraph.


Alice Joyce. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1307/1. Photo: Loew-Metro-Goldwyn.

Alice Joyce

The stars of The Home Maker (King Baggot, 1925) were Alice Joyce and Clive Brook. The film was produced by King Baggot Productions and Universal. Alice Joyce (1890-1955) was an American screen actress who, at the peak of her career, was nicknamed the Madonna of the Screen. Born in Kansas City, Joyce began her career as a telephone operator. Through various modelling activities, she got her first role in the film.

From 1910 on, she quickly rose to become one of the biggest stars of Kalem Studios and played mostly well-behaved ladies of the better society in melodramas, comedies and occasionally crime stories. After the merger of Kalem and Vitagraph in 1916, the popularity of Joyce increased. Until the 1920s, she specialised in naive women, but slowly, she also took on some mature roles. In 1924, she acted opposite Clive Brook in the British production The Passionate Adventure by Graham Cutts.

1925 was one of her most productive years. She played opposite Percy Marmont in Frank Borzage's Daddy's Gone A-Hunting. She was Stella's rival, Helen Morrison, in Henry King's Stella Dallas. And she was Clara Bow's mother in Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers, one of Joyce's greatest successes. In the latter, she is a woman who is denied any pleasure in life by her heartless husband and thoughtless daughter.

In 1925, Joyce also played opposite Clive Brook in King Baggot’s The Home Maker, about a man crippled after a failed suicide attempt. He switches roles with his wife, who climbs the corporate ladder at his old company. Both are happy with the new situation until the man discovers that his legs are getting better. In 1926, she played a princess opposite W.C. Fields in the comedy So's Your Old Man by Gregory La Cava. In 1927, Joyce signed a well-endowed contract with First National, where she received a few substantial film roles, as in The Squall (Alexander Korda, 1929), starring Myrna Loy.

Joyce made a smooth transition from silent film to sound film and, in 1930, co-starred with George Arliss in The Green Goddess, the remake of a film in which both stars had had a success in 1923. However, a lengthy heart disease (Louise Brooks claims that it was an alcohol problem) forced her into private life after 1930.


Pauline Frederick. British postcard by Lilywhite Ltd. Photo: Stoll Pictures.


Pauline Frederick. British postcard by Lilywhite Ltd. Photo: Goldwyn Pictures.

Pauline Frederick

Another film in the Parade’s Gone By homage is the Universal production Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown, 1925), starring Pauline Frederick. Pauline Frederick (1883-1938) was an American theatre and film actress. Frederick made a name for herself in the theatre and had already passed thirty when she became successful in Hollywood. In the period of silent film, she was one of the most powerful actresses in the film industry.

In 1914, Pauline Frederick was hired by Famous Players. She saw the film industry as a temporary getaway, but encouraged by the success of her first role in The Eternal City (Hugh Ford, Edwin S. Porter, 1915), she signed a contract. Although she had already passed 30, she became one of the biggest stars in the silent film period. She played mainly sophisticated or demanding, classy women and femme fatales. In 1919, Frederick signed a contract with Goldwyn Pictures. Critics agreed that she was assigned roles there that were more suitable for her. The budget of the films she worked on was larger, and the films were better received in terms of quality.

Although her career ran smoothly, her private life was a disaster. Her first husband was a violent alcoholic and drug addict who regularly mistreated his wife, so in 1919 she applied for a divorce. As a result of the relocation of Goldwyn, Frederick moved to California in 1920. That same year, she played in Madame X (Frank Lloyd, 1920), the movie she became most familiar with. Despite the success she enjoyed at Goldwyn, she left the studio for a contract with Robertson-Cole, where she received a fixed salary of $ 7,000 per week. It was a misstep in her career. Most films flopped, and reviewers spoke negatively about them. In 1922, her contract was terminated, and she returned to the stage.

In 1924 she was hired by the Vitagraph Company and achieved success in films such as Three Women (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924), with May McAvoy and Marie Prevost as the other women and Lew Cody as the man in the middle, and Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown, 1925), in which she is a successful businesswoman who marries her younger employee (Malcolm McGregor), though he is in love with her younger sister (Laura LaPlante). Frederick became a role model and style icon for older women.

Her career dwindled in the 1930s. The reason was not so much the new sound film (as Frederick had good diction) but rather the loss of prestige. Her private life was increasingly getting difficult, with unfortunate marriages and the death of her mother, but it was her asthma that killed her in 1938. Pauline Frederick was only 55.


Visitors at the Entrance to Universal City. American postcard by Van Ornum Colorprint Co, Los Angeles, no. 778. This postcard may refer to the opening of the Second Universal City on Lankershim Bd on 15 March 1915.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3533/1. Photo: MGM. Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes in The Enemy (Fred Niblo, 1927).

Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes were the stars in the MGM production The Enemy (Fred Niblo, 1927). The plot takes place in Austria during the First World War. Carl Behrend (Ralph Forbes) and Pauli Arndt (Lillian Gish) have just married. He is the son of a businessman (George Fawcett), and she is the daughter of a professor (Frank Currier).

When the First World War breaks out, Carl is drafted and called to the front. There, he has to endure major suffering. Life is hard for those left behind, too. Pauli is starving and despairs, even more so when her father is reviled for his pacifist opinions. She becomes a prostitute and loses her baby...

Handsome English actor Ralph Forbes (1904–1951) started his film career in the British cinema before he became a Hollywood star of the 1920s and 1930s. Later, he turned into a noted Broadway actor.

American actress Lillian Gish (1893-1993) was 'The First Lady of the Silent Screen'. During the 1910s, she was one of director D.W. Griffith's greatest stars. She appeared in such classic features as The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915), Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919), and Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith, 1921).

After 13 years with Griffith, she moved to MGM, where her first picture was La bohème (1926). In the 1940s, she again appeared in a handful of films and received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). Her last film was The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987), in which she shared the lead with Bette Davis.


The Metro studios. American postcard by California Postcard Co., Los Angeles. Photo: Glen G. Stone, Los Angeles. The caption at the flipside: "Showing the space-saving device of building a 'set' within a 'set', and further of setting up an 'exterior' within an 'interior'. A mining town street scene is in the course of construction within a palatial drawing-room; an interesting side-light on picture-making ingenuity."


Evelyn Brent. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4004/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Paramount.

Thomas Meighan

A final film in the Parade’s Gone By homage is another film by James Cruze, The Mating Call (James Cruze, 1928), a production by The Caddo Company and Paramount. The star was American stage and screen actor Thomas Meighan (1879-1936). Meighan began his acting career as a stage performer on Broadway between 1900 and 1912. Though he became a well-known film star from the late 1910s on, he remained devoted to the stage. This is also where he met his wife, Frances Ring.

From 1914 to 1928, Meighan contributed to nearly eighty silent films, mostly produced by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. In 1915, Famous Players gave Meighan a contract. In 1919, he had his breakthrough with The Miracle Man (George Loane Tucker, 1919), about con men who want to use a faith healer to collect money. The film co-starred Betty Compson and Lon Chaney.

Notably, Meighan appeared in seven films by William C. de Mille and five others by his brother Cecil B. DeMille. Three of these are among his best-known films: Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919), Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920) and Manslaughter (Cecil B. DeMille, 1922).

His female partners included Renée Adorée (two films), Louise Brooks (one film The City Gone Wild (James Cruze, 1927)), Billie Burke (five films), Gloria Swanson and Bebe Daniels (two films, Male and Female and Why Change Your Wife?), Pauline Frederick (five films), Leatrice Joy (three films in 1922, including Manslaughter), Lila Lee (eleven films, including Male and Female, their first ensemble), Mary Pickford (one film: M'liss (Marshall Neilan, 1918)), Blanche Sweet (five films), Norma Talmadge (three films), Virginia Valli (two films), and Lois Wilson (five films, including Manslaughter).

His final silent films were The Mating Call and Racket, both produced by Howard Hughes in 1928. The Mating Call deals with a soldier who returns home from World War I to find his secret marriage has been annulled and his wife (Evelyn Brent) has remarried. At Ellis Island, he finds a French woman to pose as his wife (Renée Adorée), but they gradually fall in love. Thomas Meighan's first sound feature film was Howard Bretherton's The Argyle Case, with HB Warner, Lila Lee, and Zasu Pitts, and released in 1929. Meighan only made five other talking movies, the last one being Peck's Bad Boy (Edward F. Cline, 1934) with Jackie Cooper. Two years later, in 1936, Thomas Meighan died prematurely of lung cancer. Meighan was involved in two Hollywood scandals: he was the only witness at the secret marriage of Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas, and he paid a large share of the bail to get Rudolph Valentino out of prison after the latter was accused of bigamy.


Thomas Meighan. French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 39. Photo: Apeda.


Thomas Meighan and his not-so-happy-looking children. French postcard by A.N. Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 21. Photo: Paramount.

Sources: Lincoln Spector (Bay Flicks), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 25 July 2025.