As to the picture, one ventured to call it “top-heavy,” whatever he meant by that. One had courage enough to think it “a bit dull.” Another declared that it contained all the atmosphere and beauty of the Florence of Lorenzo de Medici. “Romola” was, in fact, exquisite tapestry, and the dramatic interest of tapestry is a mild one.
IV
ALSO, THE INTELLIGENTSIA
A brief lawsuit in which Lillian was involved at this time added greatly to her prestige. In October (1924), for what she felt to be just cause, she had broken off relations with her producers. Suit for breach of contract followed. At the trial, held in a small, crowded room of the Woolworth Building, the chief executive of the picture corporation testified to a number of remarkable things, among them that Miss Gish had engaged herself to marry him, all of which notably failed to convince Judge Julian W. Mack, who, on the second or third morning of the trial, rose and summarily dismissed the case against Lillian, and after a few well-chosen words to her accuser, held him “to bail in the sum of $10,000” (I quote the minutes) “to answer to the charge of perjury.” He was indicted, but Lillian, with no wish, as she said, to send anyone to prison, declined to appear against him, and the case was dismissed.
Lillian’s following was now enormous … of the whole world, for in no obscure corner of it was her face unfamiliar, or unwelcomed.
There was something almost magical about this universal homage. Men and women alike paid tribute. Reporters ransacked dictionaries for terms that would convey her elusive loveliness—likened it (one of them) to “the haunting sadness of an old Spanish song, heard as the light fades from the evening sky.”
What heaps of letters! And if, as has been said, she was wanting in sex-appeal, why all the marriage proposals? Why so much poetry? Just one young man wrote eleven little volumes of poetry—pretty good poetry, if there is such a thing, even if not entirely sane (what poetry is?)—and it was printed by hand with the utmost care and beauty.
Also, she was being discovered by the “intelligentsia,” whatever that word means. If, as appears, it has to do with intelligence, it would seem to apply to the great masses who had hailed her as an artist and raved over her, almost from the beginning. Never mind—she was now definitely recognized as an Artist—taken up by the elect, who in the long run, have something to say about Art, and affix the official stamp. And having discovered her, they proceeded to burn incense and chant orisons to her as their special saint and déesse, just as the others had been doing for a good ten years and more.
As early as 1921, Edward Wagenknecht, a young don of the Chicago University, met her, and straightway hailed her as the “artist’s artist.” Further he declared: “Words, especially prose, seem horribly wooden in discussing her.... Hers is a personality which can be adequately described only in terms of music, or poetry, which is a form of music. In her presence one wants instinctively to talk blank verse.” There was a great deal more to it which I should like to quote, for it was sincere, and trimly phrased. Mr. Wagenknecht has since written a whole chapbook on the subject of Miss Gish, a distinguished performance.2 My impression is that he was the advance guard of her later “discoverers.”
I don’t know when Joseph Hergesheimer first came under the Lillian spell, but probably about the time he used her as his model for “Cytherea,” which I regard as something less of a compliment than his article in the American Mercury, April, 1924. In this article, he is supposed to be talking to Lillian.
“No one,” I told her, “who has worked with you, has the slightest idea of what your charm really is. Two men, and not unsuccessfully, have written about it, about you … James Branch Cabell and myself. James thinks it is Helen of Troy; and if he is right, then you, too, are Helen. I mean that you have the quality which, in a Golden Age, would hold an army about the walls of a city for seven years.”
Hergesheimer was proposing a picture, in which, as he assured her, she would be “like the April moon, a thing for all young men to dream about forever … the fragrant April moon of men’s hopes … ‘No one, seeing you, will ever again be deeply interested in other girls.’ I recalled to her the legend of Diana—how a countryman, hearing Diana’s horn through the woods, lost in vague restlessness his familiar content. ‘You will be the clear and unforgettable silver horn.’”
It was in the guise of Jurgen that James Branch Cabell celebrated Lillian, wrote of her as Queen Helen, “the delight of gods and men, who regarded him with grave, kind eyes” … whom, long ago, Jurgen had loved, in “the garden between dawn and sunrise.”
Then, trembling, Jurgen raised toward his lips the hand of her who was the world’s darling.... “Oh, all my life was a foiled quest of you, Queen Helen, and an unsatiated hungering. And for a while I served my vision, honoring you with clean-handed deeds. Yes, certainly it should be graved upon my tomb, ‘Queen Helen ruled this earth while it stayed worthy.’ But that was very long ago.
“And so farewell to you, Queen Helen! Your beauty has been to me a robber that stripped my life of joy and sorrow, and I desire not ever to dream of your beauty any more.”
Cabell, builder of magic phrases! His words look like other words, but they assemble with a strange ardency, and they march to the pipes of Pan. I am taking Hergesheimer’s word for it that it was Lillian who inspired Cabell’s Helen, though I might have guessed that, anyway.
And then it happened that George Jean Nathan, hard-bitten dramatic critic, hater of movies, suddenly became Lillian-conscious and proceeded to do something about it—something rather special—in Vanity Fair. Wrote Nathan:
That she is one of the few real actresses that the films have brought forth, either here or abroad, is pretty well agreed upon by the majority of critics. But it seems to me that, though the fact is taken for granted, the reasons for her eminence have in but small and misty part been set into print.... The girl is superior to her medium, pathetically so.... The particular genius of Lillian Gish lies in making the definite charmingly indefinite. Her technique consists in thinking out a characterization directly and concretely and then executing it in terms of semi-vague suggestion.... The smile of the Gish girl is a bit of happiness trembling on a bed of death; the tears of the Gish girl … are the tears that old Johann Strauss wrote into the rosemary of his waltzes. The whole secret of the young woman’s remarkably effective acting rests, as I have observed, in her carefully devised and skillfully negotiated technique of playing always, as it were, behind a veil of silver chiffon.... She is always present, she always dominates the scene, yet one feels somehow that she is ever just out of sight around the corner. One never feels that one is seeing her entirely. There is ever something pleasantly, alluringly missing, as there is always in the case of women who are truly “acting artists.”
There was a good deal more in this strain. Widely quoted, it made quite a stir. Later—as much as a year, perhaps—Nathan being a bachelor (about the only one the intelligentsia could muster), it was reported from time to time that he was to be married to Miss Gish; then, that they were already married, privately, reports that have been recurrent, or intermittent, or something, ever since. But Nathan was a bachelor, apparently without much intention of becoming anything else, while Lillian was far too occupied for domesticity, the kind of domesticity she saw about her. She was satisfied with her circle as it stood—a circle which included individualities: rude-handed old Dreiser, for instance, and Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis, and Clarence Darrow. No Madame Récamier ever had a more loyal following, ever accepted it with such gratitude. And never a thing they said or did wrought a change in her, touched that vanity which is a mortal possession, but is hardly her possession, because, as I suspect, she is not altogether mortal, but a visitant—a dryad, likely enough, who has strayed in from the Old Time and is only puzzled a little, and saddened, maybe, by what she finds here.
V
“LA BOHÊME”
When in February (1925) the break with her producer had been rumored, telegrams with offers of engagements began to come.
Lillian was not at the moment in a position to consider a new arrangement. When the press announced the conclusion of her suit, all the offers came again, with others. Mary Pickford, as member of the United Artists, fervently believed that Lillian’s salvation lay with their company. “There is no question but this is where you should be,” she telegraphed. Offers came from both the Schencks, and from many others. By advice of her lawyers, Lillian finally accepted that of the Metro-Goldwyn Company, at a figure larger than she had hoped for. Her contract covered a period of two years, during which she was to make, if required, as many as six pictures, for the sum of $800,000. It further specified that she would not be required to attend anything in the way of publicity dinners, press teas, and the like. She could see interviewers in reasonable numbers, at her convenience. One day a flaming banner, stretching from the Metro offices across the street, announced that Lillian Gish had become a Metro-Goldwyn star.
She realized that she must begin with something important. To extend her European audience, she hoped to do something with international appeal. In Paris, she had discussed with Madame de Grésac and the musical composer, Charpentier, the possibility of making a film from his opera, “Louise,” but the element of free love in it was an objection, and Charpentier declined to have it modified. The character of Mimi, in “La Bohême,” had long been in the back of Lillian’s mind—Mimi of the opera, rather than of Murger’s original. Madame de Grésac agreed that the part was peculiarly suited to Lillian, and was eager to join in preparing the script. In New York, now, they went over it all again, and presently were in California, at the Beverley Hills Hotel, hard at work on it. They had plenty of time. Production was to begin in June, but the director and some of the players wanted were not yet free.
Lillian, with time on her hands, an unusual circumstance, spent some of it at Pickfair, with Douglas and Mary. Once they went camping. They went down the shore to a place called Laguna, a sheltered spot on the beach, about three hours by motor from Los Angeles. It was very secluded—cliffs behind them; nobody in sight anywhere. They had to leave the cars and climb down a big cliff. Mrs. Pickford and little Mary (Mary’s niece) were along, and about ten others.
It could be hardly be called roughing it, though it was real camping. They had fourteen little tents, a real village—string-town on the sea. They had servants to look after them, and a dining tent, a sitting-room, a kitchen, and individual sleeping tents. The weather was perfect. They were there from Thursday until Monday, and were in the open every minute. They wore only bathing suits and bathrobes, and were in the sea a good half the time. The tide came up to the doors of the tents.
“One always has a good time where Douglas is,” Lillian said. “He is like a boy. I remember Princess Bibesco and Anthony Asquith once came to Hollywood and were invited by Douglas and Mary to make a party to climb the mountain behind Pickfair, and go down on the other side, for camp breakfast. We had to start very early. I drove from the Beverley Hills Hotel and it was still dark when I got to Pickfair. I dressed in Doug’s riding clothes to do the climbing. The Asquiths were to go on horseback, but Douglas made Mary and me walk.
“We were well up the mountain before daylight, and the going was terribly scratchy. I had never climbed a California mountain. I did not know they would scratch one up so. I was a sight when we got down on the other side, and very happy to get breakfast.”
Irving Thalberg, head supervisor of the Metro-Goldwyn, Lillian said, let her choose from the directors and people on their lots. After seeing a number of scenes from “The Big Parade,” then in production, she selected King Vidor, to direct, and asked to have John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. Roy d’Arcy and Edward Horton were also chosen, and Karl Dane. Vidor expected to finish “The Big Parade” very soon, but pictures have a way of not getting finished, and it was August before they were ready for rehearsal. Then she found that they did not rehearse any more—not in the old way she had learned from Griffith—not at all until they were ready to shoot the scene. Salaries had increased to a point where it was cheaper to make the scene, time and again, than to rehearse it for days in advance. Vidor said, however, that Lillian might do her scenes in the old way. She tried it, but found the others so unused to it that she gave it up.
King Vidor, in a recent letter to the author, tells of Lillian’s familiarity with this method:
One of the things that comes to my mind is the amazing ability she possessed of rehearsing a picture through without having any of the sets, properties, and sometimes actors, before her. The first time we tried this method of rehearsal, which was at her suggestion, we chose a secluded spot on a patch of bare lawn in the studio grounds. I asked Miss Gish to go ahead with the rehearsal and, to my amazement, she started through doors that did not exist, closing them behind her, picking up articles and using them, opening drawers, taking out things and putting others away, playing scenes with other members of the cast who were not there at the time, walking up and down stairways that did not exist, and even going out into the street and riding away in a bus, and playing scenes with people in carriages as they moved along. This showed a power of imagination that was almost mystifying. It reminded me of times when I had seen little girls playing at housekeeping, only in this case it was entirely useful and helpful in the making of the picture.
The story of “La Bohême” is almost universally known—the play and the opera have taken care of that. Lillian and Madame de Grésac stuck rather closely to the latter. Little Mimi, pauvre brodeuse, living alone in a cold, miserable place against the roof, meets and loves, and is beloved by, one of the bohemians, a writer, of the adjoining attic. To advance his fortunes, she gives her strength, her life, for him, wins success for him, is cast off because he believes her unfaithful, then at the end, when she knows that her death is near, drags herself back to him, to die. There is no more heartbreaking story, and no story better suited to Lillian’s gifts.
The scenic designers had made small pasteboard sets, miniatures, to give the directors, electricians, camera-men, and all concerned, an idea of the possibilities of each scene. When Lillian looked at the miniature of Mimi’s attic, she said:
“But isn’t it rather large? Mimi lives in a very small corner under the roof.”
“Ah, but this is in an old castle.”
“Why, yes, to be sure—only, there could hardly have been a castle in that locality, and even so, Mimi and her friends would not have been living in one. Just up under the roof of very old and rather poor houses.”
“But you see, you have been in big productions, with very fine sets. We don’t want to put you into anything small and poor-looking. The road exhibitors would not feel they were getting their money’s worth.”
“Romola’s” elaborate background had worked on their imagination. They gave up their old castle, though sadly. The matter of costumes offered another surprise: A very expensive designer from Paris had been engaged—French, of Russian origin—Lillian rejoiced in the thought that she would get just the right thing. But, oh dear, when she came to see them! Monsieur was a small, dainty man, and he seemed to have designed them for himself. Also, it appeared to be his idea that Mimi was a vamp. Phyllis Moir, Lillian’s secretary of that time, says that it was Lillian herself who, in the end, planned Mimi’s costumes. Of this, Lillian only said:
“Finally, the woman at the head of our wardrobe department took some of the costumes I had—things I had picked up, here and there—and together we got what I wanted. Mimi’s picnic costume was the only new one. Our little designer was deeply offended. I was impossible to work with, he said.
“All on the Metro lot were so kind to me. Little Norma Shearer dressed next door, and helped me in many ways. Marion Davies was another who was considerate and kind. They had been there several years before I came, and were a great comfort. After ‘Bohême’ was produced, Marion Davies wrote me a very beautiful letter.”
In Picture Play, Margaret Reid, an extra in “La Bohême,” has written a luminous article, from which I am going to quote, trusting in her good heart to forgive me:
Miss Gish arrived on the same day that the elaborate dressing-room suite designed for her was rushed to completion.... After a polite but systematic search of the studio I discovered her on the lawn, talking to one of the heads. She wore a severely plain white coat and a close hat of plain rose felt, and carried a heavy black book in her arms. No make-up, not even powder, marred the healthy, translucent, perfect complexion....
Lillian thinks that the first scene of “La Bohême” was made in Mimi’s attic, which is doubtless correct, for Miss Reid speaks of something having been done before she was called—before various of the ladies and gentlemen were instructed to come out and be fitted for attire of the year 1830.
I happened to be among the fortunate, and was soon gowned in a lovely costume of hideous brown serge and a gray flannel cape. The keepers of the M-G-M wardrobe are the nicest wardrobe women in Hollywood, but even their elastic patience is tried on days when the picture and scene require a mediocre costuming of extras. Their sympathetic ears are deafened with cries of:
“But, Mother Coulter, I can’t wear this—why, it’s awful! Can’t I at least have a pretty cape to cover up this horror?” “Mrs. Piper, you wouldn’t make me actually wear such an ugly dress!” Each feels that anything less than the very best is not her type.
But today we were Parisiens of precarious means, offering up the old wedding ring and Grandfather’s stick-pin in a dingy little pawnshop in the Latin Quarter.... The magician, Sartov, Miss Gish’s special camera-man, sat on his high stool by the camera, pulling placidly at his meerschaum pipe. The last touches were being applied to the dreary little set.... Miss Gish was called, and we made our first acquaintance with Mimi. Such a sad and thread-bare little Mimi … faint shadows hollowed her cheeks, and her eyes were haggard with fatigue and hunger. In her arms was clasped a poor bundle which she timidly offered up. The coin thrust at her was too small, and with tears in her eyes and quivering lips, she tenderly placed her shabby, moth-eaten little muff on the counter. The orchestra breathed faintly one of Mimi’s gentle laments—oh, the pitiful little Mimi! I fumbled blindly for a handkerchief, feeling I couldn’t stand it any longer without doing something about it—anything to allay the misery of that wistful face.
When the camera stopped, she peeped around it, the tears still shining in her eyelashes.
“Was that all right, Mr. Vidor? Or shall we try it again?”
“Well, let’s try it this way, too, and see how it looks,” in Mr. Vidor’s soft, lazy Southern accent.
So Mimi is unhappy this way and that way and several other ways, until she receives her scanty loan and turns slowly and goes out of the door. That was all of Mimi, for that time.
When next we saw her, it was at a picnic in the woods of “Ville D’Avray” … a place of orange groves at the foot of mountains that stretch up into the lofty snow fields.
In a grassy meadow, sheltered by oak trees, the picnic was spread. Miss Gish’s town car, with its shades drawn, was already parked at one side. Through the back window of an expensive coupé, a black head swathed in a towel indicated the transformation of John Gilbert into Rodolphe....
When Miss Gish stepped out of her car and began to work, it was like the arrival of a limpid, fragrant wood elf, so exquisite was her costume and so beautiful was she herself....
When I start to write of Mimi as I last saw her, I am reminded of the sensations I had as a child, when Mother used to tell me in vain that whatever I was reading was only a play or a story.... Thus I keep assuring myself that Miss Gish is a young lady who makes enough money to live on very comfortably, and that she has beauty, fame and adoring friends.
Yet there keeps recurring the picture of our last work in “La Bohême,” of the dying Mimi, struggling across Paris to Rodolphe. Her miserable clothes are in rags, and illness has carved deep hollows in her face. Clinging to the steps of a bus, fighting weakly through crowds, falling into the gutter and crawling on upon hands and knees, dragged holding to a chain behind a cart, slowly making her way, her long, pale-gold hair falling down over her shoulders and back.
Between shots you might have thought her still playing a bit in the picture, so unpretentious was her manner. If her skirt had to be dirty for a close shot, she did not hail a prop boy, but knelt on the cobblestones and made it grimy herself....
Toward the end of the sequence—scratched and bruised from her numerous falls and tumbles, her clothes ragged and mud-stained, her beautiful hair tangled and dusty, she waited so patiently for the lights to be arranged for each shot, now standing on the rough, sharp cobbles, now collapsed on the step. Sitting in the gutter, waiting for Mr. Vidor’s signal, she smoothed her apron—a tattered piece of black cotton—with a delicate gesture.
The preservation of an illusion through reality is always a feat, an illusion being of such a fragile, rarefied substance. Usually we learn to be satisfied with treasured remnants. Thus, it is with pride in my good fortune, and with gratitude to Lillian for being what she is, that I present to you an illusion, not only intact but even increased in value—Miss Gish!
With her usual thoroughness, Lillian had prepared for the difficult rôle of Mimi, especially for the tragic end. Mimi’s illness was a malady of the lungs, brought on through exposure, hunger and unremitting toil. Before the great death scene, Lillian had gone to see a priest about getting a chance to study the progress of the disease. Most of the priests knew her, after “The White Sister,” and this one was especially kind. He took her to the County Hospital. All were proud and eager to help her. They told her the symptoms at the different stages. It was all rather terrible.
Both Miss Moir—Miss Gish’s secretary—and Mr. Vidor, in letters to the writer, have written of the result of this intense hospital study. Mr. Vidor’s picture follows:
Another episode I shall never forget: The death scene was scheduled for a certain morning, but because the set was incomplete, it was postponed till the following day. Miss Gish had not been told of this postponement, and had thought so much and concentrated so vigorously to make this scene realistic, that she arrived at the studio whiter than I had ever seen her and looking at least ten pounds thinner. She was unable to speak above a whisper; in fact, she talked very little. We tried to do other scenes, but Miss Gish had lived that death so continuously during the night before that I was unable to instill enough life into her to make any other scenes that day. This terrific concentration continued all that day and that night. Upon my arrival at the studio next morning I was informed there would be another delay until that afternoon on this particular set. Again we made quick plans to switch, but when I saw Miss Gish we cancelled them. One look at her and my fears began to rise. I began to think that if we didn’t hurry and take this death scene we should never be able to finish the picture, so thoroughly was she experiencing the tortures of a tubercular death.
“LA BOHÊME” Mimi at the pawnshop
That afternoon the set was complete and we hastened—with great solemnity, I may add—to photograph Mimi’s death. I was jammed between a camera and a slanting wall in a narrow attic corner. Mimi was carried in by her friends, the bohemians, and placed upon her little bed. After her friends had taken a last farewell, Rodolphe entered the scene, and with him close to her Mimi breathed her last. Rodolphe, played by John Gilbert, was supposed to remain in the scene a few moments and then leave. In the playing of the scene, however, some of the bohemians, and also Mr. Gilbert, were so impressed that they completely forgot what they were to do. I, myself, was in the same frame of mind.
I had noticed that when death overcame Mimi, Miss Gish had completely stopped breathing and the movement of her eyes and eyelids was absolutely suspended. This, even from the close view I had. The moments clicked but still Miss Gish had not moved, nor breathed. My mind immediately jumped to the great drama of this situation. To me, Miss Gish had actually died in the portrayal of a scene. I saw all the headlines in the newspapers of the following day. I saw all the drama and the hush that would fall throughout the studios when the news spread around.
The cameras ground on—the moments turned into minutes. Finally, after an untold length of time, the other actors left the scene and the cameras stopped. Everyone was breathless, fearful of what might have happened. Miss Gish could plainly hear that the cameras had stopped, and could now take breath and open her eyes. But this she did not do. Not daring to speak I fearfully walked over to where she lay and touched her gently on the arm. Her head turned slowly, and her lips formed a faint smile.
I think we all broke into tears of great joy.
To me this is the most realistic scene I have ever known to be enacted before a camera. I hope I shall never see a similar one quite so well done. The inside of her mouth was completely dry, and before she was able to speak again it was necessary to wet her lips which had stuck to her teeth from dryness. The next morning Miss Gish was as bright and cheery as ever, and we were able to go ahead with the rest of the picture.
One last word: personal contact with Lillian Gish did not destroy any of the idealism she created on the screen for me. To those who have known her only in that way, I promise there is no disappointment in meeting her face to face.
Miss Moir remembers that these final scenes of Mimi’s life lasted about a week, and that everyone was relieved when they were over. Lillian herself was so exhausted that her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she had hardly sufficient strength to walk. “Poor Renée Adorée was constantly coming back to her dressing room for a fresh supply of handkerchiefs. During the sequence where Mimi is dragging herself back to Rodolphe, to die—the bus, to the back of which she was clinging, suddenly lost a wheel, and it was only by a miracle that she escaped having both legs crushed under the heavy vehicle.”
It was near the end of December, 1925, that “La Bohême” was finished, and it was two months later, February 24, at the Embassy Theatre, New York, that it had its first showing. Lillian was not present. To this day, she has never seen “La Bohême” given with its musical accompaniment—not the original Puccini score, the cost of which was prohibitive, but a very lovely adaptation expressing something of the feeling and mood.
“La Bohême,” a picture of much sorrow and little brightness, was sympathetically received and left a deep and lasting impression. Except, possibly, in “Broken Blossoms,” Lillian had never appeared so effectively—in a picture so suited to her gifts.
It was a big night at the Embassy. Social New York was out in force, and all the picture people. The Post next day said:
“Every movie player in New York, and there are many here just now, was ‘among those present,’ for the infrequent appearance of Lillian Gish on the screen takes on the importance of an event.... The Gish can do no wrong, in the opinion of many who subscribe to the art of motion pictures....”
Approval of Lillian’s Mimi, though wide, was not unanimous. Certain critics were inclined to hold her responsible for the departure from Murger’s original. There was hot debate among the fans. Lillian, already absorbed in another picture, gave slight attention to all this; much less than did the interviewers, one of whom found her “not particularly interested.” She merely asked absently: “Has someone been criticizing me?” Which, declared Miss Glass, the interviewer, was as astonishing as if she had looked at the Pacific Ocean and asked: “Is it wet?”
“Her manifest lack of resentment toward her critics confounded me.... She sat quietly toying with the folds of her dress, betraying no sign of annoyance or concern.”
In itself, the Mimi of Madame de Grésac was a classic rôle. Not again in her screen life would Lillian find a part more perfectly suited to her personality and special gifts. Her portrayal of it warranted Pola Negri’s verdict:
“Lillian Gish is supreme. That was my opinion when I first saw her. It is still my opinion when I have seen all the other stars. She is sublime in her genre.”
The New York première was not the picture’s first showing. There had been a preview at Santa Monica, and one secured by Lillian for the employees of the Beverley Hills Hotel, where she lived. These latter sent her a joint acknowledgment, signed: “Thankfully your admirers, more than a hundred strong.”