Lillian Gish Filmography

The Whales of August

Actors: Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Price, Ann Sothern, Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: A once-in-a-lifetime cast of veterans performs David Berry's play about Libby Strong (Bette Davis) and Sarah Webber (Lillian Gish), widowed sisters vacationing on a Philadelphia island for their 60th consecutive summer. Libby is blind and embittered, while Sarah is healthy, supportive, and almost Read More

Sweet Liberty

Actors: Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bob Hoskins, Lise Hilboldt

Synopsis: Alan Alda wrote, directed, and starred in this satirical film about the corruption of the film industry's approach to history. Alda plays Michael Burgess, a college professor who has written a historical novel about the American Revolution. The book has been turned into a script, and a Hollywood Read More

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Actors: Sam Williams, Patrick Day, Frederic Forrest

Synopsis: 1985's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the only filmed version of the Mark Twain classic to cover every episode in the original novel and not merely such familiar vignettes as the "King and the Duke" business. Presented in four parts, Finn opens in 1844, with young Huck (Patrick Day) Read More

Hambone and Hillie

Actors: Lillian Gish, Timothy Bottoms, Candy Clark, O.J. Simpson, Robert Walker, Jr.

Synopsis: It is doubtful that while acting in D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation back in 1914, Lillian Gish ever dreamed that seven decades later she'd be co-starring with a cute dog in something called Hambone and Hillie. It all begins at a busy airport, where octogenarian Hillie (Gish) is accidentally Read More

Lillian Gish

Actors: Lillian Gish, Jeanne Moreau

Synopsis: Interviewed in her charming New York apartment at the age of 88, the indomitable Lillian Gish (her last name an Anglicized version of Guiche), comes across as the knowledgeable, talented, and beguiling woman of her many publicity releases. Gish recounts how she and her sister Dorothy first Read More

Sparrow

Hobson's Choice

Synopsis: This third film version of Harold Brighthouse's play Hobson's Choice moves the locale from turn-of-century London to 1914 New Orleans. Horatio Hobson (Jack Warden) is the boozy, tyrannical owner of a shoe store. Hobson's daughter Maggie (Sharon Gless) falls in love with humble shoe clerk Will Read More

Thin Ice

Actors: Kate Jackson, Gerard Prendergast, Louise Latham

Synopsis: This drama examines the illicit love affair between a high-school teacher and one of her students. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

A Wedding

Actors: Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Mia Farrow, Lillian Gish, Amy Stryker, Howard Duff, Geraldine Chaplin, Dennis Christopher

Synopsis: Robert Altman's over-frenetic satire on American marriage rituals and hypocrisy concerns the upper-crust marriage between Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker). As the film begins, a senile bishop forgets the lines to the wedding ceremony and Nettie Sloan (the groom's Read More

Twin Detectives

Synopsis: In this mystery, twin gumshoes team up to expose a band of bogus spiritualists involved in murder . ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Langlois

Actors: Lillian Gish, Ingrid Bergman, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret, Catherine Deneuve

Synopsis: This documentary follows noted film archivist Henri Langlois as he returns to Paris. Over 60,000 prints exist in his Paris museum, with 15,000 in the United States and 6,000 in Russia. Ingrid Bergman, Lillian Gish, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret, Catherine Denueve, Francois Truffaut, and Viva all Read More

The Comedians

Actors: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, Paul Ford

Synopsis: The humorous title of this story taken from the novel by Graham Greene gives the viewer the wrong impression. The story concerns the residents of a once-posh hotel in Haiti and the fate of the country's people under the despotic dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) is the Read More

Warning Shot

Actors: David Janssen, Ed Begley, Sr., Keenan Wynn, Sam Wanamaker, Lillian Gish

Synopsis: LAPD detective Sgt. Tom Valens (David Janssen) is a ten-year veteran of the force who has had more than his share of hard luck lately -- his marriage is a wreck, and he hasn't fully recovered from a serious wound suffered in the line of duty a year ago. He and his partner, Sgt. Ed Musso (Keenan Wynn Read More

Follow Me, Boys!

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Vera Miles, Lillian Gish, Charlie Ruggles, Elliott Reid, Kurt Russell

Synopsis: Follow Me, Boys!, Disney's paean to the Boys Scouts of America, leaves no cliché unturned: we're even offered the old reliable "kid hanging over cliff by rope" bit. Corny, sentimental and obvious though it may be, the film is a delight to watch, especially whenever Fred MacMurray dominates the Read More

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Body in the Barn

Actors: Lillian Gish, Maggie McNamara, Peter Lind Hayes, Patricia Cutts, Kent Smith

Synopsis: There's no love lost between small-town busybody Bessie Carnby (Lillian Gish) and her neighbors Henry and Samantha Wilkins (Peter Lind Hayes, Patricia Cutts) -- nor does Bessie's daughter, Camilla (Maggie McNamara), make a secret of her dislike for the mousy Henry. Eventually, Bessie decides to Read More

The Great Chase

Synopsis: The art of the movie chase sequence hardly began with Bullitt or The French Connection -- no thriller of the silent era was complete without a hair-raising chase scene, and this compilation pulls together highlights from some of the great films of the early 20th century. Starting with The Great Read More

The Unforgiven

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, John Saxon, Charles Bickford, Lillian Gish

Synopsis: One of Hollywood's most famous and acclaimed directors, John Huston guides this western with an unerring hand -- the cast of notable stars is no drawback either. Setting up the story with a series of suspenseful scenes, Huston has a mysterious stranger on horseback come into a small community in Read More

Orders to Kill

Actors: Eddie Albert, Paul Massie, Lillian Gish, Irene Worth

Synopsis: The moral dilemma of a reluctant American spy is chronicled in this psychological drama. He becomes an agent after he, originally a pilot, is grounded during WW II. He is trained to assassinate a Paris lawyer suspected of colluding with the Nazis. During his rigorous training for the killing, the Read More

The Night of the Hunter

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chapin, Evelyn Varden, Peter Graves

Synopsis: Adapted by James Agee from a novel by Davis Grubb, The Night of the Hunter represented legendary actor Charles Laughton's only film directing effort. Combining stark realism with Germanic expressionism, the movie is a brilliant good-and-evil parable, with "good" represented by a couple of farm Read More

The Cobweb

Actors: Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame, Lillian Gish

Synopsis: William Gibson's novel The Cobweb was brought to the screen by MGM with an impressive, hand-picked cast. Richard Widmark plays the head of a posh psychiatric clinic. Widmark's wife Gloria Grahame jockeys for the honor of selecting new drapes for the hospital's library. One wouldn't think that such Read More

Portrait of Jennie

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Ethel Barrymore, David Wayne, Florence Bates, Lillian Gish, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: In Portrait of Jennie, Joseph Cotten plays an artist, Eben Adams, who is unable to bring any true feeling to his work. While painting in Central Park one morning, Eben makes the acquaintance of a schoolgirl named Jennie (Jennifer Jones), who prattles on about things that happened years ago. Read More

Duel in the Sun

Actors: Griff Barnett, Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Charles Bickford, Joseph Cotten, Sidney Blackmer, Lionel Barrymore, Harry Carey, Lillian Gish

Synopsis: In David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun, Jennifer Jones stars as half-breed Pearl Chavez, whom everyone has tagged as a "bad girl" foredoomed to an unhappy end. She is taken into the home of wealthy, greedy rancher McCanles (Lionel Barrymore) and his kindly wife Laura Belle (Lillian Gish), who'd Read More

Miss Susie Slagle's

Actors: Veronica Lake, Sonny Tufts, Joan Caulfield, Ray Collins, Billy De Wolfe, Bill Edwards

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Augusta Tucker, the provocatively titled Miss Susie Slagle's is actually a leisurely, sentimental story set in a turn-of-the-century boarding house. The title character, played by Lillian Gish, is the house's landlady, catering exclusively to young doctors and nurses in Read More

Top Man

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Lillian Gish, Richard Dix, Peggy Ryan

Synopsis: In this WW II musical, a young man suddenly finds himself in charge of his family when his father is called to war. To help the flagging spirits of local factory workers, the plucky lad, his siblings and his schoolmates put on a lively little show. With a little work, he even convinces Count Basie Read More

The Commandos Strike at Dawn

Actors: Paul Muni, Anna Lee, Lillian Gish, Cedric Hardwicke, Robert Coote, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Scripted by Irwin Shaw from a story by C. S. Forester (of "Captain Horatio Hornblower" fame), Commandos Strike at Dawn is a wartime morale-booster, largely set in coastal Norway. Paul Muni stars as Eric Toresen, an apolitical and basically pacifistic Norwegian fisherman who is galvanized into Read More

The Movies March On

Actors: Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, William S. Hart, Charles Chaplin, Ben Turpin

Synopsis: The Movies March On was Number 12, volume 9 of Louis de Rochemont's March of Time series. Narrated by the stentorian Westbrook Van Vorhees, this fascinating documentary manages to squeeze 40 years of filmmaking into a mere two reels. Beginning with the once scandalous The Kiss (1898), the film Read More

His Double Life

Actors: Lillian Gish, Roland Young, Lucy Beaumont, Charles Richman

Synopsis: His Double Life is a sweet, charming adaptation of the venerable Arnold Bennett play Buried Alive. Roland Young plays Priam Farrell, a famous and reclusive artist who is loath to return to London to accept a knighthood. Hoping to drop out of sight, Farrell trades identities with his recently Read More

One Romantic Night

Actors: Lillian Gish, Conrad Nagel, Marie Dressler, O.P. Heggie

Synopsis: The second of three versions of the Ferenc Molnar play The Swan, One Romantic Night represented the talkie debut of the great Lillian Gish. The star plays Alexandra, a mittel-European princess who falls in love with Dr. Hafler (Conrad Nagel), her brother's tutor. Alas, affairs of state demand that Read More

The Wind

Actors: Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming, Edward Earle

Synopsis: The Wind, Victor Sjostrom's final American film, is a western only in its locale: its symbolism-laden story of physical and spiritual repression, culminating in a violent, hysterical outburst, has more in common with the European or Scandanavian cinema than with the usual MGM product. Lillian Gish Read More

The Enemy

Actors: Lillian Gish, Ralph Forbes, Ralph Emerson, Frank Currier, George Fawcett

Synopsis: The Enemy was based on the rabidly anti-war play by Channing Pollock. Lillian Gish plays Pauli Amdt, the granddaughter of August Behrend (George Fawcett), a pacifistic Viennese schoolteacher. Pauli marries student Carl Behrend (Ralph Forbes), who almost immediately thereafter marches off to World Read More

Annie Laurie

Actors: Lillian Gish, Norman Kerry, Creighton Hale, Joseph Striker, Hobart Bosworth

Synopsis: In this lavishly produced MGM production, the ethereal Lillian Gish is a bit more earthy than normal, due in part to the selection of her co-star, he-man Norman Kerry. "Suggested by" the well-known song, the story involves two feuding Scottish clans, the MacDonalds and the Camerons. Annie Laurie Read More

The Scarlet Letter

Actors: Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Henry B. Walthall, Karl Dane, William H. Tooker

Synopsis: Based on the classic American novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, this silent period drama was put together by star Lillian Gish, who was forced by Louis B. Mayer to assure religious groups that the still-controversial material would not offend their sensibilities. Gish plays heroine Hester Prynne, who Read More

La Boheme

Actors: Lillian Gish, John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Edward Everett Horton, George Hassell, Roy D'Arcy

Synopsis: Amidst much fanfare, Lillian Gish was signed to a fabulous MGM contract in 1925 which not only assured her $400,000 per picture but also gave her complete control over her productions, including choice of co-stars and directors. For her inaugural MGM effort, Gish selected La Boheme, the theatrical Read More

Romola

Synopsis: Filmed on location in Italy, where director Henry King ruled over a huge set that covered 17 acres, Romola stars Lillian Gish in the title role. The daughter of a 15th-century Florentine aesthete, Romola becomes the bride of the caddish Tito Melema (William Powell). Using all the underhanded Read More

The White Sister

Actors: Lillian Gish, Ronald Colman, Gail Kane, J. Barney Sherry, Charles Lane

Synopsis: Lillian Gish plays the girl whose travails begin when her father dies and her conniving sister cheats her out of her inheritance. Gish is deeply in love with handsome army officer Ronald Colman, but when war erupts, he is sent to the front. Soon after he is listed among the dead. In her despair Read More

Orphans of the Storm

Actors: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Losee, Katherine Emmett

Synopsis: Having turned the creaky old stage melodrama Way Down East into a money-spinning film, director D.W. Griffith set about to perform the same magic with the barnstorming theatrical piece The Two Orphans. Adolphe Philippe Dennery's play told the story of two orphaned girls, one blind, who are Read More

Remodeling Her Husband

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Gish, James Rennie, Marie Burke, Downing Clarke, Frank Kingdom

Synopsis: Lillian Gish tried her hand at film-directing in this gentle comedy of marital infidelity. Dorothy Gish is Janie, the young and perky bride of Jack (James Rennie). Jack loves Janie, but he can't keep his eye from straying. Janie tries to curtail Jack's flirtatiousness, but Jack wants to have one Read More

Way Down East

Actors: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh, Creighton Hale

Synopsis: "I'm not a bad businessman", filmmaker D.W. Griffith once protested, "Honestly I'm not!" Yet industryites were certain that Griffith had taken leave of his financial senses when he paid $175,000 for the screen rights to the old Lottie Blair Parker stage play Way Down East. Considered out of date Read More

The Greatest Question

Actors: George Nichols

Synopsis: As a child, Nellie Jarvis (Lillian Gish) witnessed a murder, but it only remains a shadowy memory. After the death of her parents, she is taken in by a poor but honest couple, the Hiltons (George Fawcett and (Eugenie Besserer). To help pay for her keep, she goes to work for a very nasty pair of Read More

Broken Blossoms

Actors: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp, Edward Peil Sr., Arthur Howard

Synopsis: Based on "The Chink and the Child", a story by Thomas Burke, Broken Blossoms is one of D.W. Griffith's most poetic films. Richard Barthelmess plays a young Chinese aristocrat who hopes to spread the gospel of his Eastern religion to the grimy corners of London's Limehouse district. Rapidly Read More

A Romance of Happy Valley

Synopsis: Since much of this film takes place in rural Kentucky, where director D.W. Griffith grew up, it no doubt has many autobiographical touches. Since the setting was so close to his heart, that may be why this simple and winsome picture is one of Griffith's most charming creations. With complete lack Read More

True Heart Susie

Actors: Lillian Gish, Loyola O'Connor, Robert Harron, Wilbur Higby, Clarine Seymour

Synopsis: True Heart Susie is one of D.W. Griffith's "pastoral" films, wherein plot takes second place to characterization and romance. Lillian Gish plays Susie May Trueheart, who so loves local boy William Jenkins (Robert Harron) that she secretly finances his education. Returning to his home town as a Read More

Hearts of the World

Actors: Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Dorothy Gish, George Fawcett, Erich Von Stroheim

Synopsis: On the heels of his masterpiece, Intolerance, which dramatized the futility of war born out of prejudice, director D.W. Griffith shifted gears for this film. Intolerance had proven a financial disaster for Griffith, so he signed with producer Adolph Zukor to release his next film. He came upon the Read More

The Greatest Thing in Life

Synopsis: In the sentimental world of filmmaker D.W. Griffith, the greatest thing in life is love. Obtaining it and understanding it, however, isn't so easy, as Jeanette Peret (Lillian Gish) learns. While working in her father's Greenwich Village cigar store, she meets an attractive but arrogant Southern Read More

The Great Love

Synopsis: This war-time D.W. Griffith film was literally filler -- some of the footage was left over from around the time he shot Hearts of the World. According to reports of the day (the film apparently no longer exists), its modest story and simple approach was a comedown from the director's other, far Read More

Intolerance

Actors: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Miriam Cooper, Walter Long, Tully Marshall, Alfred Paget

Synopsis: Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives Read More

An Innocent Magdalene

Synopsis: One might be inclined to dismiss the title of this film as a contradiction in terms -- but with Lillian Gish in the lead, how could the heroine be anything else but innocent? Based on a story by D.W. Griffith, writing pseudonymously as "Granville Warwick," the story concerns a Kentucky belle named Read More

Daphne and the Pirate

Synopsis: Lillian Gish shows almost as much spunk in this picture as her hoydenish sister Dorothy Gish usually did. Daphne La Tour (Gish), is the daughter of a destitute French nobleman in the early 18th century. Because he is the favorite at the king's court, Philip de Mornay (Elliot Dexter) can probably Read More

Sold for Marriage

Synopsis: Marfa (Lillian Gish), a Russian peasant girl, is in love with Jan (Frank Bennett). However, her uncle and aunt (A.D. Sears and Pearl Elmore) want her to marry an older, wealthy man. Colonel Griegoff (Walter Long) wants her, but Marfa will have nothing to do with him. When he tries to have his way Read More

Lost House

Synopsis: Wallace Reid and Dorothy Gish were already screen favorites when they starred on this "Mutual Masterpicture." Dosia Dale (Gish) is a young heiress from Kentucky whose uncle (F.A. Turner) has squandered her fortune. As she comes of age, the uncle realizes that he must get rid of her so he has her Read More

Enoch Arden

Actors: Alfred Paget

Synopsis: This adaptation of the Tennyson poem is graced with the presence of silent luminary Lillian Gish as Annie Lee. Three children -- Philip Ray, Annie Lee and an orphan, Enoch Arden, grow up together, and when they reach adulthood (with handsome Wallace Reid as Philip and a miscast Alfred Paget as Read More

The Birth of a Nation

Actors: Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Ralph Lewis

Synopsis: The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the Read More

The Lily and the Rose

Synopsis: In one of her autobiographies, Lillian Gish reprinted in toto the studio synopsis of the D.W. Griffith production The Lily and the Rose, then commented wryly "Now that's what I call a plot!" Wilfred Lucas plays a virile man-about-town who weds "The Lily" (Gish), only to cast her Read More

The Escape

Actors: Donald Crisp, Robert Harron, Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh

Synopsis: Paul Armstrong's venerable stage melodrama The Escape was first brought to the screen by D.W. Griffith in 1914. In true "blood will tell" fashion, the unfortunate children of a criminal family are doomed to live outside the law themselves. Petty crook Jim Joyce (Fred A. Turner) is the father of Read More

Home, Sweet Home

Actors: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Home Sweet Home has been referred to by its leading lady Lillian Gish as "the first all-star film." Indeed, virtually every member of director D.W.Griffith's celebrated stock company appears in this three-part, five-reel biographical drama. Based on the life of John Howard Payne, composer of the Read More

The Battle of the Sexes

Actors: Donald Crisp, Robert Harron, Lillian Gish, Mary Alden, Owen Moore

Synopsis: Filmed in a fast five days, The Battle of the Sexes was D. W. Griffith's first production after breaking loose from his Biograph contract. Adapted from Daniel Carson Goodman's play The Single Standard, the film stars Lillian Gish as a proper young lady who is shocked by her father's infidelities. Read More

The Sisters

Judith of Bethulia

Actors: Blanche Sweet, Henry B. Walthall, Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish

Synopsis: Conservative Biograph Studios, having galloped to prominence on the coattails of their star director D.W. Griffith, refused to allow Griffith to make any film longer than two reels. Ignoring this edict, Griffith permitted his Biblical epic Judith of Bethulia to stretch to four reels; Biograph's Read More

A Modest Hero

The Mothering Heart