Why is Lillian Gish so hated today?

I've genuinely never heard of her.

Birth of a Nation or The Klansman

She was there when they invented the close-up.

R3 = Bette Davis

She was in "Our American Cousin" the night Lincoln was shot.

Her appearance in " Birth of a Nation" didn't do it. It was her constant defense of DW Griffith. But she is excellent in " The Wind"- once of the all time greatest performances, and she is great in " Night of the Hunter"

She allegedly liked pussy.

Mary Martin was a dear friend.

She hit Nita Naldi in the head with a fondue pot.

Lillian Gash, you mean?

She molested me with a rolling pin!

Resentful whales? In August?

I sent her a request for an autograph in the '80s and I'm still waiting.

"That face! Such a tragic face!"

--her hilarious response when an interviewer brought up the mean things Bette Davis said about her on the set of "The Whales of August"

Her other really great prformances besides "The Wind" and "Night of the Hunter" (although they would seem weird to modern audiences, given the conventions of silent film acting):

"Broken Blossoms"

"Way Down East"

"The Scarlet Letter"

Republicunt

A Camille for the ages...

The rumors that she and her sister Dorothy were unusually close still linger.

Wasn't that via Kenneth Anger, r17?

Gish alienated Alan Alda and Michelle Pfeiffer on the set of "Sweet Liberty" by repeatedly recounting details of giving John Gilbert a rusty trombone between takes of shooting "La Boheme" in 1926.

Dame Edna

Because after brazenly repeatedly flashing her moneymaker at Mr. Griffith she had the nerve to start the #TheeToo movement.

She shouldn't have shit in Zasu Pitts' wig.

She called moi a “thoughtless little pig" at The Night of 100 Stars.

Dorothy has cornered the market on Gish love.

Too much teeth.

I don’t know her.

Dataloungers hate any young starlet. Mention Lillian and all you’ll get here is hissing that she’s no Florence Lawrence.

She's hated because she's one of Meghan's A-List friends.

She refused to acknowledge her bastard granddaughter Annabeth.

Because she always gave lip service to her head giving and cum guzzling skills, but whenever it got down to brass tacks, she'd barely put the tip in her mouth and ALWAYS spit the load out onto the floor as if it were battery acid.

She tried to steal John Gilbert from Garbo.

#RealHousewivesOfMGM

She was a cunt. There, I’ve said it.

The most vicious cunt in TinselTown!

The second female recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1984.

Bette Davis was the first.

OMG!

[quote] OLD HOLLYWOOD: This actress had one of the longest careers ever. She starred in what is considered by some to be the best movie ever made. She was also an Academy Award winner/nominee. The thing about our actress is she never got married. She also never really had that many relationships. Maybe one or two that might have happened when the whispers got louder. Oh yes there were whispers about something. Why would I write about something if there were no whispers. It seems that our actress did have a lover. A lifetime lover actually. Not so strange or whisper inducing right? Well, it is if your lover is also your sister.

No tits and a flat ass. But always shilling herself as a sex siren in soft core trash like “One Romantic Night.”

She voted for Trump.

Tell us more about the purported lesbianism and the supposed incest, please.

R37 Maybe start here.

Yes, R18. Of course it's bullshit but the OP wanted silly dish.

She was an acquired taste. She'd get drunk at parties and play dodgeball with Charles Laughton by fire ping pong balls out of her vagina. Some thought it vulgar.

She took a dump in Betty White’s dressing room.

Sources say that Lillian excoriated a waiter for not properly tempering her porridge with a feathered fan.

In her defense, the resultant tongue-burns affected her silent-screen dialog mouthing and delayed entry into talkies.

A recent investigation revealed that the waiter was a struggling actor who had applied a blowtorch to Lillian’s Farina in order to “be discovered.”

He plotted to come to her rescue when she cried out in pain by dousing her with a bucket of barley water.

After being fired, the waiter returned home to the Dakota Territory and perished in a wheat thresher accident.

She sounds like a HollyWEIRDO, Wokester OP! Probably went to Epstein's Pedo Island with Killery and Obummer!

She drained her fucking pasta

She was canceled for encouraging Kate Jackson's teacher to bang a teenage student in a mostly forgotten TV movie from the '80s.

[quote] She took a dump in Betty White’s dressing room.

She started that tradition. What an artist.

She talked Jennifer Grey into getting a nosebob

R28 The rest of whom are also dead or imaginary.

Brava!

She murdered William Desmond Taylor!!

She refused to appear as a “wax-work” in “Sunset Blvd.”

That really chaffed La Swanson’s ass.

[Quote] From Wikipedia Gish became a vegetarian in her childhood as she could not bear the thought of killing animals. Her vegetarianism became well known in 1925 as she was seen nibbling on a raw carrot in federal court. Newspaper photographs of her caused a carrot-eating fad across the US.

BUNNIES DIED

[quote] She was a cunt. There, I’ve said it.

[quote] The most vicious cunt in TinselTown!—Mrs Alfred Steele

Turned you down, did she?

R45 speaks the truth.

^^I’d believe that more if Kate Jackson’s student was female.

Lillian Gish was so eager to push Kate into that thick teenage dick because she knew the lady gym teacher had more appeal to her granddaughter.

[quote] OLD HOLLYWOOD: This actress had one of the longest careers ever. She starred in what is considered by some to be the best movie ever made.

What would that film be? It certainly wouldn't be "Birth of a Nation" (which she DOES star in).

Is it supposed to be "Intolerance"? She's in it, and it's certainly considered by many to be the greatest film ever made (in terms of its overall achievement for the time); but she doesn't really star in it, or even really act in it--she's just the woman who rocks the baby's cradle in the linking "Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking" sections.

Greatest movie of all time - I think he was probably referring to "Sold for Marriage" (1916).

So the greatest movie that nobody has ever heard of. Great.

R56 - It does indeed refer to "Birth of a Nation." "Birth" has always been widely seen as both racist and a landmark piece of cinema - essentially inventing the Feature format. Beginning of the Roger Ebert article linked below:

"He achieved what no other known man has achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man."

These words by James Agee about D. W. Griffith are almost by definition the highest praise any film director has ever received from a great film critic. On the other hand, the equally distinguished critic Andrew Sarris wrote about Griffith's masterpiece: "Classic or not, 'Birth of a Nation' has long been one of the embarrassments of film scholarship. It can't be ignored...and yet it was regarded as outrageously racist even at a time when racism was hardly a household word."

It's just an "Old Hollywood" blind item from Entertainment Lawyer from years ago, which later showed up on his "blind items revealed" list to be Lillian and Dorthy Gish.

And whatever one thinks of Birth of A Nation, it's still on the AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies.

Well, it’s no “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles”.

Well, maybe we should think about it. Is the first great movie the best, because it's the most innovative, or is the best the one that can build on all the innovations before it and pull them together in the most skillful way?

Also, what exactly does it say about us that our first true masterpiece of film was a celebration of the Klan?

Why Wasn't Lillian Gish Cast to Play Dorothy on The Golden Girls?

Lillian killed William Desmond Taylor.

Just for fun.

D. W. Griffith used to wear Lillian and Dorothy's cunts like moccasins.

He said he liked his feet to be wayyyyy down east AND west.

Lillian was actually wonderful in Mystic Pizza. She stole the picture.

She was in a torrid incestuous relationship with her sister Dorothy.

Jealous

Is it rather telling that in a 1972 "Interview" magazine article, Anita Loos speaks very highly of Lillian Gish, and somehow, this thought leads into mentioning the power lesbians of old Hollywood?

[quote] O’BRIEN: What do you think of Women’s Liberation?

[quote] LOOS: The two most important executives I knew in the movies were Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, and they did much better business because of their golden curls and other executives. Mary stacked up the biggest fortune anyone ever made in films and Lillian Gish knew more about lighting and camera technique than any man I know. She did it for herself. I have been done in by both men and women. I don’t have any preference. But I’m afraid they’re giving the gag away. I think women can get a lot further by covering up and going underground than by waving a flag. There was a big group of very beautiful lesbians in Hollywood, quite a number of them. I got dragged to a cocktail party one day and they were all there, done up in chiffon and hats and being very elegant. And in walked Elsa Maxwell in a suit with cuffs and a necktie and one of them said, “Oh look at Elsa! Giving it all away!”

Lil had hair down to her waist, which she selfishly kept for herself rather than cutting half of it off to make wigs for children with cancer.

#Fact

all tits and pussy, frankly

Shocking, but true ... young Lillian and sister Dorothy used to curl each other's hair with magic wands!

Mary Pickford was way better

Is it true that she was actually born Lillian Gash?

Lillian and Shelley Winters switched trailers on the set of “The Night of the Hunter” and a sloshed Bob Mitchum late one evening entered Shelley’s trailer and wound up entering Lillian instead.

Whether true or not, she was famous for being a virgin. The thought that someone might prefer being a virgin is intolerable to the world at large, especially the gay world.

[quote]r72 Shocking, but true ... young Lillian and sister Dorothy used to curl each other's hair with magic wands!

Is that a type of vibrator??

In her will Lillian established the annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the largest artist's grants in the country if not the world. I think the monetary prize is $450,000 if I'm not mistaken. For years the prize was larger than the MacArthur "Genius grant", but that has gone way up in recent years to $800,000.

Lillian's sister Dorothy predeceased her in the 1960s and left a large portion of her estate to The Actor's Fund, the esteemed charitable organization serving everyone who works in the performing arts.

Say what you will about Miss Gish, she loved her work and those who toiled in her chosen field, putting her money where her mouth was.

She spit in my carvelanche.

[quote]r78 In her will Lillian established the annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the largest artist's grants in the country if not the world.

Lusty Lil’s “charity” was long ago exposed as a tax dodge to fund Republican candidates, with an aim of eventually taking over the world.

I read it on the internet.

[quote]Lusty Lil’s “charity” was long ago exposed as a tax dodge to fund Republican candidates, with an aim of eventually taking over the world.

Yeah, giving money to Spike Lee, Ava Duvernay, Robert Redford, Laurie Smith and Suzan-Lori Parks! All right wing ideologues!

She loved practical jokes. The 'upper decker' prank was her favorite.

Thank you, r81! It’s all so typically devious and underhanded of her.

ZaSu Pitts thought it was funny too, r82; and then she was Lillian's victim for it.

While Gish’s later career rose on Broadway and at MGM, that of her replacement with DW Griffith, Carol Dempster, languished - mocked by all.

Coincidence? Or the long arm of Lillian’s personal butt boy Louis B. Mayer?

It's that tiny mouth - the popular opposite of today's penchant for trout pout. That's what makes Lillian Gish such a figure of mockery and scorn today.

She could open it plenty wide for the right producer’s cock, though.

TRIVIA: Barbara Payton wrote in her book “I Am Not Ashamed” that even in her later years as a boozy street ho, Gish was very territorial about the block she deemed “hers” on the Strip. Gish even deliberately steered rough clients Payton’s way in attempts to scare her off her turf.

Because she was such a whore.

She put out for all of Hollywood in order to get where she got, and that catches up with a girl eventually.

Gish proved virtually unemployable in Hollywood when she was replaced in “Sextette” with Mae West, after just a week’s filming.

I don’t know what the problems on the set were exactly. It was an out of court settlement.

Those of us who knew her called her Lillian Gauche - you couldn't take her anywhere.

Lillian demanded Max Factor give her the highest quality lard greasepaint, leaving would-be starlets to inferior product from the musk glands of woolly beavers, which rendered the ancient rodents extinct.

Having grown up poor, surviving on flower bulbs, Gish had lilies that grew out of her chest.

And woe to the cinematographer who could not disguise them.

Because she thought she could play Mama Rose up to the very end.

It was actually Lillian's idea that you gotta get a gimmick.

Go wad your ass

What does that mean?

[quote] It was actually Lillian's idea that you gotta get a gimmick.

She used to play the trumpet, in a MOST PECULIAR way.

True Story: Tennessee Williams wrote the character of Blanche DuBois with Lillian Gish in mind. After reading an early draft of Streetcar, Gish claimed not to understand the material and passed on the opportunity. Years later she named it as one of her biggest regrets professionally.

That's really interesting R98 - my biggest confusion with Streetcar is "how old is Blanche?" Gish was 54 in 1947. So Williams conceived of a Blanche who would have been in her early 20's pre-WW I - which totally makes sense given her airs of gentility and general character traits.

There was a long discussion about this in one of the Streetcar threads, where I asked the question about the character's timeline - Blanch seemed middle aged, and the fall of Belle Reve seemed to take awhile, but Stella is only in her 20's - so how could they be sisters? Ultimately it's a drama that doesn't need to be realistic, and this is not a Streetcar thread, but that's a fascinating piece of information.

Tennessee Williams told many differing stories about his original vision for Blanche. I think he once even said he imagined Blanche as one of the Talmadge sisters (I forget which one.)

He wanted Pamela Brown to play Blanche in the debut production. Kazan wanted Mary Martin and Irene Mayer Selznick wanted Margaret Sullavan. Jessica Tandy was a compromise late in the casting process.