Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 1, 1993 TAG: 9303010060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
LILLIAN GISH DIES AT 99
Lillian Gish, a fragile-looking but resilient actress whose career stretched from the silent era to the television age, has died at age 99.Gish, one of the last surviving stars of silent film, died in her sleep Saturday evening at her Manhattan home, said James Frasher, her manager for the last 25 years.
"She was film. Film started in 1893, and so did she," Frasher said.
Her film career spanned more than 100 films over 75 years, starting with one- and two-reelers in 1912 and ending with 1987's "The Whales of August." Even before that, she was a child stage actress.
"She was the best," said Mike Kaplan, who produced "The Whales of August."
"Her performance with Bette Davis in that film was the final great role of one of the greatest actresses ever to grace the screen," he said.
Gish was a favorite of director D.W. Griffith and charmed generations of moviegoers as the pure-hearted daughter in his 1915 Civil War epic "The Birth of a Nation" and as the battered waif in his 1919 "Broken Blossoms."
The large-eyed, porcelain-skinned actress often portrayed virginal, childlike young women she called "ga-ga babies." But even in those roles, she displayed an indomitable spirit, as in "Way Down East," when she refused a stand-in and clung to an ice floe as it swept toward a waterfall.
Gish showed the same dedication to her craft to the end of her life, working, traveling, fighting studios, battling for film preservation and scorning "talkies" in general and modern movies in particular.
"I have never approved of talkies," she once said. "It seemed to me that movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomime, but something wonderfully expressive."
Records of Clark County, Ohio, indicate she was born in Springfield on Oct. 14, 1893, although she insisted in a 1987 interview that she was only 88 years old.
Her father drifted away when she was a small child, and her mother, Mary, took her two daughters to New York City. Out of desperation, her mother went on the stage. Lillian and her sister, Dorothy, a year younger, soon followed - Lillian got her first role at the age of 5.