Jackie “Butch” Jenkins was born in 1937 in Los Angeles. He came to prominence when he was cast as Mickey Rooney’s kid brother in the terrific “Human Comedy” in 1941. He starred with Margaret O’Brien in “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes” and his final film was “Big City” in 1948. He died in 2001 aged 63
.In 1970: “I have never regretted leaving the picture business and am very grateful to my mother for taking me away from it. I enjoyed the first few years of acting in movies but I certainly don’t miss it. In fact, when I’ve had offers to return a few times, I wasn’t even tempted. There may be a better way to live than on a lake with a couple of cows, a wife, and children but being a movie star is not one
Jenkins retired from acting at the age of eleven, after he developed a stutter,[4] and as an adult recalled his film career fondly and without regret. He did state, however, that he had not particularly enjoyed acting and had never expected to make a career of it.[citation needed]
Later described as a “businessman-outdoorsman”, Jenkins established a successful career away from Hollywood and lived for many years in Dallas, Texas, before moving to North Carolina in the late 1970s,[5] where he built a home “on the side of a steep mountain”, where he resided with his third wife, Gloria.[5]
Eugenie Leontovich was born in 1900 in Moscow. Her entire career though was in the U.S. Her frst film was “Four Sons” in 1940. Her best known role was as the Maharani in “The Rains of Ranchipur” in 1955. She died in 1993.
TCM Overview:
Eugenie Leontovich was born on March 21, 1900 in Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]. She was an actress, known for Homicidal (1961), The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and The World in His Arms (1952). She was married to Gregory Ratoff and Paul A. Sokolov. She died on April 3, 1993 in New York City, New York, USA.
Sally Forrest was born in 1928 in San Diego, California. Her first film was in 1946 in “Till the Clouds Roll By”. She went on to make “Dancing in the Dark”, “Mystery Street” and “While the City Sleeps” in 1956.
IMDB entry here:
Sally’s parents were both amateur ballroom dancers, so it was no surprise when Sally developed an interest in dancing. She entered dance classes by the first grade and was signed by MGM upon her graduation from high school. In 1945, she moved with her parents to Hollywood, where Sally worked on the dances used in the films Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) and The Kissing Bandit (1948). Soon unemployed, she worked in small roles until she teamed with Ida Lupino, who was producing and directing small films at the time, and Sally was cast in the lead role of Not Wanted (1949). The picture was a critical and commercial success, and Sally also received critical acclaim for her role. After appearing in a few more Lupino movies, including Never Fear (1949), Sally returned to MGM, where she was cast in movies with stars such as Boris Karloff and Red Skelton. When her husband, Milo O. Frank Jr., moved to New York, she went with him. There, she worked in summer stock and on Broadway in the stage play “The Seven Year Itch”. Sally appeared in only a couple of movies after that, but she again worked with Ida Lupino inWhile the City Sleeps (1956). She died in 2015.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
“Guardian” obituary:
Sally Forrest, who has died of cancer aged 86, was a pretty blonde movie ingénue who played “nice girls”, reserving her sexiness for her vivacious and versatile dancing. Moreover, had it not been for Ida Lupino, she would not have had the chance to demonstrate her acting skills. Lupino, one of the few female directors who were around in the 1950s, plucked Forrest from the obscurity of the chorus to star in three of her low budget dramas.
Born in San Diego, California, as Katherine Feeney, the daughter of ballroom dancers, Forrest started dancing at a young age. When the family moved to Los Angeles, MGM signed her as an assistant choreographer and dancer (often uncredited) in several musicals, including Easter Parade (1948) with Fred Astaire.
Lupino, who was producing and writing Not Wanted (1949), cast Forrest, who resembled her, in the lead as a young woman who has a baby out of wedlock, gives it up for adoption and then regrets it. A bold subject for the time, it postulates the primacy of motherhood. (It was to have been directed by Elmer Clifton, but he suffered a heart attack and died a short while into filming. Although Lupino completed the film, she allowed Clifton the director’s credit.)
Forrest proved herself adept in the emotionally wrought role, the sort that had made Lupino’s name as an actor. In Never Fear (1949), Forrest was again put through the wringer as a promising dancer who finds out she has contracted polio. Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951), a surprisingly non-feminist picture, featured Forrest as a tennis champion driven on by her domineering mother (Claire Trevor), when all she wants is a home, a husband and a child. It was one of six films in which Forrest appeared in 1951, while decorating the covers of movie fan magazines, and marrying the agent Milo Frank. In Vengeance Valley, opposite Burt Lancaster, she again played an unwed mother, the father being the baddie Robert Walker.
She was the comedian Red Skelton’s sweetheart in Excuse My Dust in which, although set in 1895, Forrest performs an anachronistic swing dance number, Desire by the Docks. In The Strip (as in Sunset), she has another splendid dance routine, accompanied by Louis Armstrong in a nightclub, to the delight of Mickey Rooney. In The Strange Door, she was an endangered beauty in an old dark house inhabited by Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton.
Forrest then spent more than a year on Broadway as “The Girl” in George Axelrod’s play The Seven Year Itch (the role portrayed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 film), before returning to films in the Howard Hughes production Son of Sinbad (1955). In this Technicolor Arabian Nights bit of entertaining nonsense, Forrest, in an extremely scanty costume, as a member of a harem, does an exotic, erotic dance, her ponytail bobbing, before falling into the arms of Dale Robertsonin the title role. (The number was clipped by the censors in the US.)
Her final film, Fritz Lang’s film noir While the City Sleeps (1956), was one of her best. In this searing exposé of the media, Forrest plays the fiancee of a newspaperman (Dana Andrews), who happily acts as “bait” for a serial sex killer.
After a few guest-starring roles on tele-vision, such as Rawhide, Forrest retired until, in 1984, then in her 60s, she was seen tapping away in a production of the musical No, No Nanette in her hometown of San Diego.
Her husband died in 2004.
• Sally Forrest (Katherine Feeney), actor and dancer, born 28 May 1928; died 15 March 2015
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Martha Vickers was born in 1925 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her best known role is that of Karen Sternwood, the younger sister of Lauren Bacall in the classic film noir “The Big Sleep” in 1946. Other film sinclude “Ruthless”, “Daughters of the West” and in 1960 her final film “Four Fast Guns”. Martha Vickers died in 1971 aged 46.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Lovely, auburn-haired Martha Vickers (nee Martha MacVicar) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 28, 1925, the daughter of James S. and Frances MacVicar. After attending schools in various states – Florida, Texas and California – she and her family settled on the West Coast. A raving beauty, she broke into the entertainment field as a model for still photographer William Mortenson. This attracted the interest of David O. Selznick and she signed a starlet contract with him, but nothing came of it. Universal took over her contract where she was groomed in inauspicious bit parts such as her corpse/victim in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), and in such low-level entries as Captive Wild Woman (1943) and The Mummy’s Ghost (1944). In between assignments, Martha earned WWII pin-up exposure in such magazines as “Yank: The Army Weekly.”
RKO gave her some higher-level billing chances with Marine Raiders (1944) and The Falcon in Mexico (1944), but it was Warner Bros. that put her officially on the map. The enticing Martha earned celebrity status and a new stage moniker when she generated some real heat as Lauren Bacall‘s wild, thumb-sucking sister Carmen in the film noir classic The Big Sleep (1946), which also starred Humphrey Bogart, playing the teenage nymphet “bad girl” for all it was worth. This major success quickly led to other “B” roles and not necessarily all “bad girl” parts. Highly appealing as the second femme lead in the pleasant musical The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946), Martha looked radiant but was overlooked for bigger things. She continued on and disrupted the proceedings again in the atmospheric film noir The Man I Love (1947) with Ida Lupino and finally earned leading lady status in That Way with Women (1947) opposite Dane Clark.
Very much a part of the Hollywood dating scene, which included actor James Stewart and director Frederick De Cordova, Martha finally married producer A.C. Lyles in March of 1948, but the marriage was over within a couple of months. Post-war films included Love and Learn (1947), another film noir piece Ruthless (1948), and the melodrama Bad Boy(1949), which was Audie Murphy‘s first starring role. She ended the decade top-lining the “Poverty-Row” drama Alimony (1949). Surprisingly, Martha’s high-profiled second marriage in 1949 to film star Mickey Rooney (she was his third wife) did not advance her career. In fact, Martha was not seen in films at all during this period. Despite the couple having a son, Teddy Rooney, the next year (1950), Rooney had already hit the nadir of his career and had turned excessively to the bottle. Her marriage to Rooney would be short-lived as well.
Martha married a third time in 1954 to Chilean polo player-turned-actor Manuel Rojas, best known for his co-starring role in The Magnificent Matador (1955), and she finally returned to the screen in The Big Bluff (1955) co-starring with John Bromfield. The momentum, however, was gone and the movie did nothing to generate new interest. She did move, however, into TV and performed effectively in a number of dramatic showcases. She and Rojas had two children, Tina and Tessa. In 1960, Martha did her last filming with the western Four Fast Guns (1960) and after guesting on a couple of episodes of the TV series “The Rebel,” ended her career. Not much was heard from this sultry beauty until her death from cancer in 1971 at age 46 in Hollywood, California.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Four Fast Guns, poster, top from left: James Craig, Martha Vickers, Edgar Buchanan (bottom second from left), 1960. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Digital Camera
Lauren Hutton was one of the U.S. top models in the 1970’s and 80’s. She was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1943. She gave impressive performances on film in such movies as “The Gambler” with James Caan in 1974, “American Gigolo” with Richard Gere in 1980 and “Lassiter” with Tom Selleck in 1984. Her most recent film is “The Joneses”.
TCM Overview:
Supermodel-turned-actress who parlayed her looks into one of the major modeling careers of the 1970s and 80s. Hutton made her film debut in “Paper Lion” (1968) and won interesting notices for her performances in James Toback’s “The Gambler” (1974) opposite James Caan, and as the wealthy adulteress in “American Gigolo” (1980). Important roles in major films were relatively few, however, and her acting career slowly diminished during the 80s with most of her appearances being in minor European features or American films (“Lassiter” 1985, “Once Bitten” 1985, “Guilty as Charged” 1992) which fizzled at the box office. Hutton’s career blossomed anew in the 90s with a highly successful return to modeling, and acting offers following suit. Considerable media coverage as she approached age 50 highlighted her still exceptional, unashamedly middle-aged beauty, her love of world travel and anthropology, and her mature, mellow attitude towards the trappings of fame.
1995 was a banner year for Hutton: she was cast in the ensemble of the CBS soap “Central Park West” playing wealthy socialite Linda Fairchild and her late night talk show “Lauren Hutton and …” also debuted. The talk show was short-lived but Hutton continued to work steadily, appearing in film roles and in the occasional hosting gig. The actress, an avid motorcycle enthusiast, made headlines in October 2000 when at age 55 she was in a serious motorcycle accident while on a 100-mile ride near Las Vegas with bikers and fellow celebrities including Dennis Hopper and Jeremy Irons-who reportedly gave her a full face helmet just minutes before her crash-to celebrate a planned motorcycle exhibit at the Hermitage-Guggenheim museum. After losing control on a curve, she skidded about 100 feet and went airborne, ultimately suffering multiple leg and arm fractures, broken ribs, a punctured lung, cuts and bruises. The actress subsequently traveled down a long road of physical rehabilitation. Ever the survivor, Hutton endured and soon became the spokeswoman for her own signature brand of cosmetics, Lauren Hutton’s Good Stuff, sold via the Home Shopping Network.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Gloria deHavenGloria de HavenGloria deHavenGloria deHaven
Gloria DeHaven was born in 1925 in Los Angeles. She starred in movies with MGM including “Summer Stock” in 1950 with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly and “Three Little Words” with Fred Astaire. She died in 2016.
TCM Overview:
Gloria DeHaven never made it to the front ranks of film stardom and none of her credits can be considered a major classic, but she was in her own modest way one of the signature perky soubrettes of the 1940s, a hometown sweetheart for many GIs. A good singer and a highly vivacious screen presence, her career has had its ups and downs, but TV and stage work and the very occasional film have nonetheless kept her busy for over half a century.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
Gloria DeHaven, who has died aged 91, was a cherished but minor member of a glittering roster that made the MGM musical into one of the glories of Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s. Attractive, with a pleasant singing voice, DeHaven remained the studio’s favourite ingenue for more than a decade, almost her entire screen career.
Besides being frequently called upon to play the star’s sister, DeHaven had the distinction of being the first woman to kiss Frank Sinatra on screen which, according to one critic, “sent thousands of bobbysoxers into swoons”. It happened in Step Lively (1944), where DeHaven played a showgirl who falls for Sinatra’s shy singer-playwright.
DeHaven could be said to have been born in the proverbial trunk (in Los Angeles) as her parents, Carter DeHaven and Flora Parker, were popular vaudevillians. Gloria paid homage to her mother by impersonating her in Three Little Words (1950), warbling Who’s Sorry Now? in an anachronistic style. Carter DeHaven also appeared in silent movies and assisted Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936), in which the 11-year-old Gloria appeared as an extra. She was an extra again in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and had a small speaking role in Susan and God, both in 1940.
Before singing on screen, DeHaven had made a name as a vocalist from the age of 14 with the Muzzy Marcellino, Bob Crosby and Jan Savitt big bands. In 1943, MGM signed DeHaven and June Allyson (another band singer), giving them a “speciality number” in the all-star Thousands Cheer, in which they sweetly sang In a Little Spanish Town in contrast to the stentorian rendering by the taller, deadpan Virginia O’Brien, whom they flanked.
In the same year, Allyson and DeHaven were together again as college kids in Best Foot Forward, with the latter having some of the wittiest lines. Variety thought she “grooves nicely in a supporting role”. Playing sisters, June and Gloria then took the title parts, with Van Johnson, in Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), though DeHaven had less to do than Allyson and ended up with dull Tom Drake. As producer George Murphy’s sister in Broadway Rhythm (1944), she sang Pretty Baby delightfully with the old-timer Charles Winninger. Arguably her best film was Rouben Mamoulian’s glowing Summer Holiday (1948) in which she played Mickey Rooney’s well-scrubbed girlfriend Muriel; they were charming together in the vibrant song- and-dance routine You Mustn’t Be Afraid to Fall in Love, and she launches the exuberant number The Stanley Steamer.
In Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby (1949), she finally got to play a wife and mother, leaving Donald O’Connor to babysit while she is studying at college. Almost four decades later, DeHaven and O’Connor, in the role of a dance host on a cruise ship, appeared together in Out to Sea (1997). The former soubrette plays the part of Vivian, an attractive 71-year-old widow and former book editor, who attracts the attention of Jack Lemmon.
DeHaven left MGM after playing farmer Judy Garland’s stagestruck sister in Summer Stock (1950), moving on to 20th Century Fox, where she was cast as June Haver’s sister in I’ll Get By (1950), and in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953), on a Pacific island, giving a spirited rendition of All of Me. At Universal, in So This Is Paris (1955), she was glamorous as an American in the city posing as a Frenchwoman and singing I Can’t Give You Anything But Love in French.
But with the demise of the classic Hollywood musical, DeHaven left films in 1955 for Broadway, where she and Ricardo Montalban, as Parisian dance-hall girl and sewer worker respectively, led a huge cast in Seventh Heaven, an ill-fated musical version (it ran for six performances) of the 1927 Janet Gaynor silent film classic. After retiring for a number of years, she guested in dozens of TV series and soap operas, but her return to films was rather inglorious, particularly in an ultra-cheap horror flick aptly titled Bog, made in 1978 but released in the US in 1984, though she showed some versatility in a double role.
In 1989, she relaunched her career as a cabaret singer at the Rainbow & Stars in New York, where she sang songs from her Hollywood days and talked of her vaudevillian parents. She also appeared in a show called Palm Beach Follies.
DeHaven was married four times. Her first husband was John Payne, another star of the golden era of film musicals; her second the real estate developer, Martin Kimmel; and her third Richard Fincher, whom she divorced in 1963, remarried in 1965 and divorced again in 1969. She is survived by a son and daughter from her marriage to Payne and a son and daughter with Fincher.
• Gloria DeHaven, actor and singer, born 23 July 1925; died 30 July 2016
Kathleen Widdoes was one of the eight female stars of “The Group” in 1966 based on the novel by Mary McCarthy. She was born in 1939 in Delaware. Her other film credits include “Petula” with Julie Christie,”The Seagull” in 1968 and “The Mephisto Waltz” with Jacqueline Bisset. She was featured in the cult television series “Oz”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Quite distinctive with her dark hollow eyes, sharp ethnic looks and frizzy head of hair, veteran stage actress Kathleen Widdoes began her career enacting delicate but vibrant classical heroines. In later years, she gained significant visibility on TV, particularly as an emotive, but well-meaning and strong-minded presence on various daytime soapers.
Born on March 21, 1939, in Wilmington, Delaware, Kathleen is the daughter of Eugene Widdoes and his wife, Bernice Delapo. She attended high school there and made her professional stage debut as “Alma” in “Bus Stop” at age 18 at the Robin Hood Playhouse in Wilmington. She then toured Canada in the role of “Catherine” in “A View from the Bridge” and played roles in “Ondine” and “The Lark” on Canadian TV. Additionally, she studied mime at the Université au Théâtre des Nations in Paris, and attended the Sorbonne in Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship, where she completed her theatrical studies.
Moving to New York to pursue her career, Kathleen blossomed into one of the loveliest and most talented classical ingénues around, gaining valuable experience and acclaim on- and off-Broadway in such plays as “The World of Suzie Wong” (understudying France Nuyen), “The Three Sisters” (1959), “The Idiot” (1960) and “The Maids” (1963). Moreover, she earned glowing reviews in works of the Bard, most notably for Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival. Her early Shakespeare work included “Henry V” (1960), “Measure for Measure” (1960), “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1961), Richard II (1962) and “The Tempest” (1962).
TV audiences first caught sight of her talent in a regular role on the soapy medical dramaYoung Dr. Malone (1958) and, as “Emily Webb” in a prestigious production of Art Carney Special: Our Town (1959) which also starred Art Carney. The rest of the 1960s was predominantly theater-oriented; however, she did make an impressive film debut as one of The Group (1966), alongside fellow newcomers Candice Bergen, Joanna Pettet, Hal Holbrook and Joan Hackett, and appeared prominently in Petulia (1968) and Anton Chekhov‘s The Sea Gull (1968). The 1970s proved to be the pinnacle of Kathleen’s stage career capped by her Obie award-winning performance as “Polly Peacham” in “The Beggar’s Opera” in 1972 and a Tony nomination the following year for her vibrant “Beatrice” in “Much Ado About Nothing”, a role preserved for TV. Adding to her Bard stature that decade was her bravura work as “Desdemona”, “Juliet”, “Titania”, “Viola” and “Mariana”.
In 1978, Kathleen began showing up on daytime drama. She scored big points as youngRay Liotta‘s emotional and careworn Italian mom, “Rose Perini”, on Another World (1964) from 1978-1980, and also had a subsequent role on Ryan’s Hope (1975) before establishing herself with the role of benevolent advice-giver “Emma Snyder” in As the World Turns (1956), a role she has played since November of 1985, earning four daytime Emmy nominations in the process.
In all that time, Kathleen has maintained a strong profile in the New York theater scene. Credits have included “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Neil Simon‘s “Brighton Beach Memoirs”, the revival of “You Can’t Take It With You” and “Hamlet” (twice playing “Gertrude”). She won a second Obie Award for “Tower of Evil” in 1990, and was awarded the Lucille Lortel Award for her outstanding participation in “Franny’s Way” (2002). More recently, she appeared in a revival of Noel Coward‘s “After the Ball” (2004), a musical version of Oscar Wilde‘s “Lady Windemere’s Fan”.
Along with her “As the World Turn” duties in New York, Kathleen has been seen on TV in episodes of Oz (1997) (recurring), and Law & Order (1990), among others. Divorced in 1972 from the late actor Richard Jordan, by whom she has a daughter Nina Jordan, she is currently married to second husband Jerry Senter. They live just outside of New York City.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Jocelyn LaGarde made only one film and she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. The film was “Hawaii” with Julie Andrews, Richard Harris and Max Von Sydow. She was born in Tahiti in 1924 and died there in 1979.
“Wikipedia” entry:
The film Hawaii was a big-budget drama based on the best-selling novel of the same name by James A. Michener that tells the story of 19th Century white missionaries bringing Christianity to the island natives. LaGarde was a Polynesian woman who fit perfectly the physical attributes of an important character in the film. Although she had never acted before, and could not speak English (speaking only in fluent Tahitian and French), she was hired by Mirisch Productions and given a coach to be phonetically trained to handle her character’s dialogue.
Lillian Gish was born in 1893 in Springfield, Ohio. She was a leading lady of the silent cinema and made many films with D.W. Griffith. In the 1940’s she retunred to films as a character actress and had an amazingly long career. Her film highligfhts include “Duel in the Sun” with Jennifer Jones in 1946, “Portrait of Jeannie” again with Jennifer Jones, “Night of the Hunter” with Robert Mitchum and “Whales of August” with Bette Davis which she made at the age of 94. She died in her 100th year.
TCM Overview:
Having pioneered screen acting from vaudeville entertainment into a form of artistic expression, actress Lillian Gish forged a new creative path at a time when more serious thespians regarded motion pictures as a rather base form of employment. Gish brought to her roles a sense of craft substantially different from that practiced by her theatrical colleagues. In time, her sensitive performances elevated not only her stature as an actress, but also the reputation of movies themselves. Her finest work came in the silent era, when she was dubbed The First Lady of the Silent Screen, thanks in large part to her many collaborations with director D.W. Griffith, which included “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), “Intolerance” (1916), “Broken Blossoms” (1919) and “Way Down East” (1920). In the 1920s, Gish was one of the most powerful performers in early Hollywood and signed a lucrative contract with MGM to star in more serious fare like “La Boheme” (1926), “The Scarlet Letter” (1926) and “The Wind” (1928); the latter of which marked what many considered to be her finest performance. With the advent of sound, Gish stepped away from the screen in favor of the Broadway stage, only to make intermittent supporting appearances in films like “Duel in the Sun” (1947), which earned the actress her only Oscar nomination. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she appeared on stage and television, as well as in film, suiting herself with a wide range of supporting roles. As her career wound down in the 1970s and 1980s, Gish pulled off one last great performance opposite an equally elderly Bette Davis in “The Whales of August” (1987), which helped stake her claim as being one of the greatest actresses of any era.
Born on Oct. 14, 1893 in Springfield, OH, Gish was raised by her father, James, a traveling salesman and her mother, Mary, a former actor and department store clerk. Before she ever really knew him, her alcoholic father abandoned the family and later died in 1912. Because her mother acted to support the family, Gish and her sister Dorothy were introduced to the stage at an early age. As a child, she made her stage debut in a tour of the play “In Convict Stripes” (1902) and was subsequently replaced by a young actress named Gladys Smith, who went on to become friend and early Hollywood star Mary Pickford. While acting, she continued with her education, attending several schools in Massillon, OH, from 1904-09, until settling in at the convent boarding school Ursuline Academy in East St. Louis, MO. In 1912, Gish moved with her mother and sister to New York City, where they were introduced by Pickford to director D.W. Griffith, who was so taken by both young actresses and their fragile beauty, that he brought them into the fold at the Biograph Company.
While Griffith’s contributions to cinema have been well-documented, his association with Lillian Gish was one of those rare times when two visions combined to revolutionize an art form. Gish was a firm believer in art as a higher ideal; she did not consider acting to be a mere profession. She soon came to share her director’s opinion that film was a legitimate medium which inherently possessed more potential for artistic expression than the stage, and the pictures Griffith and Gish made together over nine years bore witness to that conviction. She made her film debut alongside Dorothy in Griffith’s silent short, “An Unseen Enemy” (1912), and went on to star in a number of the director’s early work including “The Painted Lady” (1912), “The Musketeers of Pig Alley” (1912) and “The Burglar’s Dilemma” (1912). Though she was working steadily in film, Gish found the time to return to the New York stage for “A Good Little Devil” (1913), which starred Mary Pickford and was directed by David Belasco.
Of course, Gish continued to work almost exclusively with Griffith, starring in a number of films that year including “The Unwelcome Guest” (1913), “The House of Darkness” (1913), and “The Mothering Heart” (1913), in which she played a pregnant wife deserted by her husband who loses her baby after giving birth. It was in challenging roles like “The Mothering Heart” that Gish was able master the art of restraint in her acting, particularly in close-ups, which became a hallmark of her technique. Unlike the arm-waving, eyelid-fluttering histrionics engaged in by other actresses – a method carried over from stage productions – Gish used small yet meaningful gestures to great effect. Meanwhile, she went to work with other directors like Christy Cabanne and Dell Henderson, starring in “During the Round-Up” (1913) and “A Modest Hero” (1913). But it was her continued work with Griffith that she best able to perfect her skills while helping the director elevate his craft with such memorable films as his groundbreaking epic “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), “Hearts of the World” (1917) and “Broken Blossoms” (1919). The last film featured her in a discomforting scene where she displayed a variety of emotions while getting beaten to death by her abusive father (Donald Crisp).
Gish made several more pictures with Griffith, most notably “Way Down East” (1920) and “Orphans of the Storm” (1921), the former of which featured her most lasting image: floating unconscious on ice while heading for a waterfall. In fact, this iconic scene was so dangerous to shoot that, until the day she died decades later, Gish’s right hand was impaired due to keeping it in the icy water for hours at a time to get the shot. At this point, she had earned a reputation for being able to wield great power and began taking more control of her career. She made two films for Inspiration Pictures before signing a five-picture deal with MGM in 1925. Because Gish’s star image was intimately linked to her capabilities as a serious actress, MGM placed her in a series of literary adaptations, including “La Boheme” (1926), in which she played the consumptive Mimi, and “The Scarlet Letter” (1926), where she was the adulterous Hester Prynne. Unfortunately, with her prestigious stature came rising production costs, which cut into the profit margins of her pictures. Gish’s best MGM film was “The Wind” (1928), a harrowing story of a genteel woman who is brutalized by a stranger in West Texas before shooting him and going mad. It was not only her last great performance in silent pictures, it would sadly also be her last successful starring role altogether.
By the end of the 1920s, a new type of modern heroine, exemplified by Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Clara Bow, was in vogue, Gish’s appeal was now regarded as somewhat prudish and dated. With the onset of talkies, she returned to Broadway to star alongside Osgood Perkins in a production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1930). After enjoying a stage triumph with “Camille” (1932), Gish made her last film for nearly a decade, “His Double Life” (1933), before concentrating solely on the stage. She returned to Broadway for a production of “Within the Gates” (1934), staged by Melvyn Douglas, before starring in “The Old Maid” (1936), Zoe Akins’ adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1925 novel, The Mother’s Recompense. Gish next played Ophelia in John Geilgud’s staging of “Hamlet” (1936), before making stops in Baltimore and Chicago on a tour of “Life with Father” (1940). Almost a decade removed from the screen, Gish returned to films with a supporting turn in the war movie “Commandos Strike at Dawn” (1942), starring Paul Muni and Anna Lee. Following roles in “Top Man” (1943) and “Miss Susie’s Slagle’s” (1946), Gish achieved screen prominence again with her supporting performance in the David O. Selznick-produced Western “Duel in the Sun” (1947), which earned the actress her only Academy Award nomination.
Though she recaptured her onscreen acclaim, Gish instead opted to make another return to the stage, this time starring opposite famed actor and teacher Sanford Meisner in “Crime and Punishment” (1947). After co-starring opposite Jennifer Jones in “Portrait of Jennie” (1948), Gish made her television debut in the “Philco Television Playhouse” presentation of “The Late Christopher Bean” (NBC, 1949). During this time, Gish was comfortable going back and forth between stage and screen, starring in “The Autobiography of Grandma Moses” (CBS, 1952) and originating the role of Carrie Watts in Horton Foote’s teleplay for “The Trip to Bountiful” (NBC, 1953), which she reprised later that year on Broadway; both television special and stage production were directed by Vincent Donohue. After playing the maternal god-fearing Rachel Cooper in Charles Laughton’s thriller “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters, Gish toured with sister Dorothy in “The Chalk Garden” (1956) before appearing in Berlin for “Portrait of a Madonna” (1957), a one-act written by Tennessee Williams that the playwright wrote for her and served as a prototype for his most famous character, Blanche Du Bois. Williams’ one-act was actually part of a double bill for Gish, who also starred alongside Burgess Meredith in “The Wreck on the 5:25” (1957) by Thornton Wilder.
Gish made her directing debut with a stage production of “The Beggar’s Opera” (1958) and returned to the silver screen for a supporting turn in the John Huston Western “The Unforgiven” (1960), starring Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn. She next appeared in the award-winning Broadway production of Tad Mosel’s “All the Way Home” (1960), acted in a small screen version of “The Spiral Staircase” (NBC, 1961), and starred as Mrs. Moore in a Chicago staging of E.M. Forster’s novel “A Passage to India” (1963). Even into her seventies, Gish found new ways to break personal ground when she made her Broadway musical debut as the Russian Dowager Empress in “Anya” (1965), which was based on the Ingrid Bergman-Yul Brenner drama “Anastasia” (1956). Following a featured role in the Disney movie “Follow Me Boys!” (1966), she co-starred alongside Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in “The Comedians” (1967). She returned to Broadway the following year to co-star in “I Never Sang for My Father” (1968) before being featured in a Mike Nichols-directed version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1970), starring George C. Scott and Julie Christie.
Gish’s career wound down in the next decade, which began when she received an Honorary Academy Award in 1971 for her lifetime of achievement. A few years later, she delivered her final Broadway performance in “A Musical Jubilee” (1975) while hosting the series “The Silent Years” (PBS, 1975), which showcased films from the silent era. After appearing as a family matriarch who passes away in Robert Altman’s “A Wedding” (1978), she made appearances in television movies like “Thin Ice” (CBS, 1981) and “Hobson’s Choice” (CBS, 1983). Gish next starred in the ill-advised “Hambone and Hillie” (1984) before making her last television appearance, playing Mrs. Loftus in the four-part miniseries “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (PBS, 1985). The following year, she was cast as the aged mother of a history professor (Alan Alda) in the comedy “Sweet Liberty” (1986) and made her final film appearance opposite Bette Davis in “The Whales of August” (1987), in which both played a pair of aged sisters. Gish delivered one of the best performances of her long career, only to be disappointed when the Academy failed to nominate her for an Oscar. Meanwhile, she made her last professional appearance with a cameo in Jerome Kern’s “Showboat” (1988), where she delivered her last-ever line, “Good night, dear.” Settling into retirement, Gish eventually passed away from natural causes on Feb. 27, 1993 at 99 years old. She left her estate to old friend and actress, Helen Hayes, who died less than a month after Gish.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
