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Reel 05 ABOUT the time of the Columbia Ex- Position in Chicago, the World's Fair of 1893, a young man named James Lee Gish left his home in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, and went to Springfield, Ohio. He got a job as clerk in the wholesale grocery firm of S. B. Stiles t Co. Little is known today of this youth's antecedents. There is a vague tradition in the Gish circle that the rather odd name is a corruption of a French surname, de Guise; and an even dimmer legend that says the founder of the American family was a scion of the celebrated de Guise household, who fled to the land of promise to escape military service in France. This much is known: he was a slim, fair- haired, gray-eyed lad who professed the Episcopalian faith and who, according to his first-born, Lillian, Îhanded to her his slender figure, his facial ensemble, and perhaps her genius for the artistic. When James Lee Gish was about twenty-one years old, a few years later, he met an eighteen-year-old girl named :Mary Robinson McConnell, in Urbana, Ohio, a near-by village, where he collected accounts from his firm's customers. Very small and very blonde and very gentle, Mary McConnell presently discarded other suitors and married Gish. They rented a little house on Linden Avenue, in Springfield, lived there a year, and then moved to a modest dwelling on Scott Street. And there was born Lillian Diana. Thrift and a sense of new responsibilities bore their fruit: with their baby and their savings the young couple moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Gish opened a little candy store. The home: was at 36 East Third Street. A year or so later Dorothy Elizabeth was born. Presently Gish seems to have expanded a bit: he traveled about the Middle West with a carnival demonstrating hokey-pokey candy. Hokey-pokey candy is at once a name and a description--you remember the white-coated man who swung a huge rope of yellow taffy in marvelous arcs on a hook and sold it in paper bags for a nickel. The ancestry of Mary McConnell Gish is more susceptible to development than is that of her husband. Her grandfather was Samuel Robinson, an Ohio politician and a State Senator. Her great-grandmother was Emily Ward, a celebrated poetess of upper New York State; and, because of definitely acknowledged connections that go back to 1650, her daughter `Lillian is a member of the D. A. R. and is eligible to-the roster of the Colonial Dames.

Some time after the beginning of the present century the little family moved to Baltimore, where Gish founded a candy factory under the name of Gish & Meisner. Then: Gish died of pneumonia, and his body was taken back to Urbana by his widow for burial.

The mother and her infant daughters were left almost destitute. Mrs. Gish was manager for W. Z. Longquis' candy store in Springfield for a year, and saved her pennies.

As soon as she had carfare and a few dollars besides, she went to New York City and got a job' as an actress in a little stock company playing at Proctor's Theater on- Fourteenth Street.

Lillian Gish confesses to a treacherous and unsatisfactory memory. Dates and names and sequences seem to have found her granite to receive and wax to retain, so that when she pokes among the archives of`-recollection she finds only the disorder and confusion of unlabeled pigeonholes.

I think that this is due to the fact that she is so self-sufficient unto herself; that she lives so alone inside of her ego, finding the ordinary episodes of existence scarcely worthy of a niche in her mental filing cabinet.

The reel of her career seems to be an undeviating continuity toward primacy as a tragedienne, with occasional close-ups, few cutbacks, and fewer subtitles.

"I wish Dorothy were here to answer that" (or "to explain. this"), or "I don't remember about that. My mother could tell you, but she is ill and unable to speak."

These exclamations are as frequent in her discourse as are her reticences and concealmentÌs behind the skirts of modesty. Of one thing she is in no whit ashamed: the little family was dreadfully impoverished and schooling was something she never was to experience.

"MOTHER played ingenue parts in the Fourteenth Street Theater," she said, picking up the story of her life after I had told her the foregoing results of my re searches among the years before the family's arrival in New York City. "We had very little money, and the second thing mother asked the manager after her plea for a job I was for the address of s cheap boarding-house. "When we reached the place, a house on Thirty-ninth Street, three doors east of Eighth Avenue, I on the north side of the street, the landlady introduced us to a woman '' named Mrs. Gladys Smith, who was a character actress. " She had three children, Gladys, Lottie, and Jack, and they played child parts in melodramas. that - 'went out to the one-night and week stands throughout the Middle West and South. "Mrs. Smith and my mother became great friends, and we five children at once fell in love with each other. The two mothers pooled their nickels and fed us all at one table. " Mother got another job to help meet expenses. In the mornings she would go to Brooklyn, where she was a demonstrator in a candy store, using the knowledge she had gained from my father's shop. "Gladys would outwear a dress : and then I would get it. I would hand it to Lottie as soon as Gladys had a new one, and Lottie would hand hers on to Dorothy. As new dresses came down the line from Gladys, Dorothy would hand the tattered garment to Jack. I don't know what became of it after Jack Anished with it; "Mrs. Smith suggested that mother find work for Dorothy and me in child parts at the theater. Presently all seven of us were working; and, just as Gladys' dresses were given to me, so were the roles she played turned over to me. " Perhaps this is a good place to tell you that Glady Smith is rather more widely known today as Mary Pickford ! David Belasco named her that when her beauty and wonderful curls and extraordinary talents attracted the notice of managers of better shows. "There were many hardships in my childhood. I don't suppose I ever actually was hungry; but I was very frail and delicate and my life was often despaired of in our little group. " The rooms at our boarding house were small and dark and poorly furnished and eternally reeking of stale gas jets and mildewed plumbing " I used to wait on the fire escape, in a wilderness of ropes sagging with washing, trying to absorb a little sunshine into my-feeble body. Once in a great while we would take a street car to a near-by park for a little fresh air.

Lillian Gish

"The Smith children and we met only during the blistering summer months. The blood-and thunder shows we worked in' went out on the road in September, played forty weeks, and wound up the season in March near New Yorks City. During the tours we were all separated: Mary and Lottie and Jack would be with three different companies; Dorothy stayed with mother at first, and later went out herself.

"Our mothers turned us children over to older members of our troupes for protection.

"In the summers we all would return to Manhattan. Mrs. Smith would save expenses by: going to Canada, where she had relatives who would keep her during the idle months.

"These relatives 'liked Lottie, but Mary was too wild and mischievous and Jack was too little. So the four of us children stayed in our horrible little rooms while mother worked full days in the Brooklyn confectionery.

REMEMBER how Mary hated to stay in the same house with me all day. I was so thin and quiet that Mrs. Smith used to whisper to my mother:

Lillian and Dorothy gish

"'Mary, you'll never in the world be able to bring Lillian up. She is to delicate; and besides, she. is too good to live. I do wish Gladys would be more like her.' "This terrified the future Mary Pickford. She seemed to think her mother meant I would just simply expire some day and be taken bodily up to heaven, and she was terrified at the prospect of being left alone with me! "I like to dwell on the thought that back in those days of desperate poverty and ceaseless work there began one of the few great friendship of my life--for I think Mary Pickford is the finest woman I have ever known, my most beloved friend. I shall talk more about her later. THEY were rather astonishing experiences, those early days in the melodrama road shows. The first play I remember going out with was In Convict's Stripes, and I made my debut as a child actress in a town with a rather propitious name, even if its population was less than five hundred souls--Rising Sun, Ohio. A Mrs. Niles, a character actress, was what might be called my chaperon.

" It was the usual old-time melodrama with the sensational climax, as always, in the third act. This took place in a stone quarry, and the villain planned to break somebodyÌs heart by setting me on a rock and blowing it up " We hadn't rehearsed this scene, but the idea seemed to be for me to hide back of the rock while a dummy of myself was seated on it to be blown up. Just as the blast was to go off, the hero would swing down on a rope from one side of the quarry, snatch me up, and swing to the top of the excavation opposite. "The dynamite went off prematurely. The dummy went one way, and I went the other, screaming because I had no idea what the explosion meant. The hero fell off the aide of the quarry, and the audience fell out of its chairs laughing .

"We took several bows, I weeping and sitting on the hero's shoulder, and the debut was regarded as highly successful.

"It was a gypsy life, a happy, .unworried, delightful period to look back upon, now that the sharp edge of our troubles has been blurred by the years.

"I remember very little about it: it is all like a dream that began every September and ended in the theatrical boarding-house with the Smiths in broiling New York City.

" Some patches of the picture stand out, though. I was . very small, not yet seven years of age, and the older troupers guarded me with the most affectionate care.

" They used to pack their wraps about me and I would curl up and sleep on any shelf or table that was handy. "The benches in the stations had iron arm rests every two feet apart, and I could slip under them and stretch full length and sleep. I remember how unhappy we all were when I grew so big I. could no longer fit under them.

" I remember once while we were jumping from one little Southern town to another it began to rain, and the old day coach leaked so that we all had to huddle under the few umbrellas we owned. Pullmans were out of the question, of course.

" Once I was late getting to the depot, and I ran as hard as I could down the street, carrying my little imitation-leather telescope bag. Just as I crossed a little bridge the strap broke and all my clothes fell into a creek.

"At the next town the opera- ' house manager mentioned it, and I was soon buried under a deluge of secondhand clothes given to me by charitable ladies. Among them was a. bedraggled white fur neckpiece, and I was soon strutting proudly around the streets with it.

"Then I stumbled and fell into a mud puddle and the fur was hopelessly soiled. My heart promptly ' broke again.

"One Christmas was spent in the caboose of a freight train, as only two passenger trains a week went to the hamlet we were to play in.

"The company got a little Christmas tree for me, and when we climbed into the caboose after' the performance it was all lighted with candles and loaded with candy and nuts. It was so lovely and sweet of them to think of a lonely little girl that way!

"Another Christmas was spent in Detroit. There was an alley back of the theater and across it was a little automobile factory.

" The manager of our troupe got the night watchman there to open a door and let him put up a Christmas tree in an empty room where we would be out of the cold.

IN one of our plays I made my 'entrance in a nightgown, One Christmas Eve they had a little tree all fixed up, and when I stepped on to the stage I forgot my lines and ran to the table where they had placed it. I cried so that the show had to stop for a minute or two. "They were darling friends, those poor mimes of the traveling melodramas; one might hunt far and long before finding such un-selfishness, such gentleness, such honor. "I remember a Catholic lady looked after me one season, and she would take me to five-o'clock mass every Sunday. All I recall about the services were the candles and the incense and my friend kneeling and murmuring beside me. "My first wages were ten dollars a week. Of this I sent mother seven dollars. I could sleep with one of the women of the company and thus have to pay only a quarter or half a dollar a night for a bed. "Of course, most of our nights were' spent in day coaches between ' towns. Out of the three dollars I kept for myself I bought all my clothes, although these were usually made-over dresses given to me by my elders. But I always reserved one nickel a week for the satisfaction of my most consuming childish passion-an orange sucker, the forerunner of today's lollipops, I guess.

Lillian and Dorothy Gish

"I loved to sit in the dark theater for two hours before the curtain went up, sucking my candied orange until only the stick was left in my hand. I liked licorice, too, and often was torn between my twin appetites.

" In The Little Red Schoolhouse a .22-caliber pistol was fired by the villain in the third act. It went off suddenly one night, and the bullet embedded itself in my leg;.

"That almost stopped the performance, but we won much applause when a doctor came on the stage from the audience and bound up the wound.

"It was a trivial thing, but the towns people crowded around our hotel that night and stood in the street until the doctor went to a window and announced that he had removed the bullet; Mother read about the accident in a New York paper, and sent a dozen telegrams to the manager and me before she was satisfied that I would live. " Sometimes the show would need two children, and that made us very happy, because Dorothy could travel with me. At such times a place would be found for mother in the cast, and then everything was perfect.

"In one play Dorothy came on in the third act in a little nightgown. The leading man and woman were in the midst of a love scene, when suddenly Dorothy saw the Slowing fireplace and decided she was cold. She strolled on before she got her cue, and then the audience broke up the touching scene by laughing.

"The hero and his sweetheart turned and saw Dorothy sitting on the burning logs and watching them, her chin cupped in her palms. The logs were lighted by an electric globe covered with red tissue paper.

"In a thriller called Her first False Step there were two lions, Teddy and Jenny. In the famous third act the villain thrust me in their den, and then the hero, disguised as a lion tamer, staged a thrilling rescue. One night the lions were roaring and racing around as they were supposed to, when I stumbled and fell in front of them. They leaped over me, of course, but several women in the audience became hysterical and fainted. The Gerry Society stopped that part of the performance.

"I never had minded being hurled among the lions, but when they put Dorothy in there I was frantic until she was rescued.

" Jenny became the mother of a baby cub, and we would put it in the most prominent show window in town, surrounded by placards announcing our show.

"Once the cub ate thirty-five dow, and our profits for the performance were all devoured too. Jenny, I heard later, tore her trainer's arm off.

"I cannot remember all the titles of the plays I went out with. Duty's' Call and Mabel Pennock's version of East Lynne are clear, because in the former I was given a brand-new dress for my own-no trivial thing in my early career --and because Dorothy was out on the road somewhere that season in Rebecca Warren's idea of how East Lynne ought to be done.

Mary McConnell Gish

I NOTICE in many references to my early days in the newspapers of today a statement that I was born in Massillon, Ohio. This is wrong. I was born in Springfield; but mother had a sister named Emily Ward, after my great-great grandmother, who lived in Massillon, and some times we spent our summer holidays there. " Not long ago the editor of a Massillon paper wrote an editorial demanding that the voters of that little town elect me as mayor, saying that I had made the town famous, and that if Beverly Hills could elect an Oklahoman like Will Rogers as its mayor, Massillon ought to follow suit by voting me into office. I've never heard anymore about it. " The years slipped past rapidly. I think 'I first went on -the stage in 1902.- I went into the pictures in the summer of 1913. "Nothing in the intervening years stands out anymore clearly than two incidents involving David Belaeco and Sarah Bernhardt. "I don't know exactly when it was, but I remember that Mary Pickford was becoming famous under Mr. BelaecoÌs direction, and Dorothy and I decided to ask him for a job in his forthcoming production-of The Good Little Devil, which Mary was to star. "'We went to his office, and while we waited that torrid summer morning, we start close together, holding hands tightly, almost panic stricken by the ghostly furniture in its linen hot-weather coverings and by the thought of meeting-the great Belasco. " Finally the snowy-headed master of the speaking stage was bending over us and listening to our stammered story. He gave me a job: because of my slight figure and fair curls I became Morganie, a fairy, swinging about the stage on a wire suspended from the ceiling.

"But, important as this is in my career, I don't remember much about the Part, but I do remember the great kindness of Mr. Belaeco. Once he wanted Mrs. Pickford to take me' out in the country because of my health, and offered to pay all the expenses.

"Some years before this, when I must have been about ten, I was given a role in a play with the incomparable Bernhardt. It was in some theater on Forty-second street, New York, I think, although I recall little else about it.

"I did a little dance, and was kidnapped by somebody in the cast. Why, or what became of me, I donÌt remember But one day the Titian-haired queen of the stage spoke to me. She ran her thin fingers through my yellow tresses, ruffling them, and speaking so lightly and so rapidly in French as she commented on them that I thought her voice like nothing in the world so much as a brook singing gloriously as it tumbled among the little rocks.

" She was, in truth, the spirit of France, if ever a woman told in her person and her soul the story of a nation.

"When she had pinched my ear and passed on and out of my baby life, an excited French maid told me that Madame Sarah had commanded her to press my little costume carefully every night. IN April of 1913 mother and 'Dorothy and I held a momentous conference. Our work was ended for the summer, and while we could afford quarters a little better than of yore, we talked about the best steps for us to take, as we now were growing girls equipped to contemplate seriously what the future held for us.

"The Smiths, now the Pickfords, were well on their way to fame and wealth and had moved completely out of our circle. ÏIn talking about them, I remember we were very sad because we heard that Mary had left the stage and gone into the movies. This, to me, represented a terrible demotion. They must be dreadfully poor, I thought, to have hunted employment in so foolish a profession as the films.

"Indeed, I knew several actors and actresses who had crept anonymously into jobs before the camera, their anonymity being assumed because of their shame and because they feared to displease the chieftains of the speaking stage, who were fighting the new arts bitterly.

" As for Dorothy an( me, we determined no' to forgo our opportunity to act on Broadway that historic thoroughfare representing the top most pinnacle of all earthly ambition. "We faced the future cheerfully. I had worked successfully for David Belasco; good parts were sure to come our way; we had passed the age when the hobgoblin of the Gerry Society, with which our elders had frightened us into good behavior would annoy us; and we had a few dollars saved out of our humble salaries. " If we could get better roles we would earn enough money to keep mother from having to work: she was to keep house for us, and we were to become great actresses. "Then, one day, we decided to go down to Fourteenth Street where our old friend Gladys Smith had sold herself into ignominious slavery under the name of Mary Pickford. and was working in a company called the Biograph, for a director named David Wark Griffith. "The three of us got into a street car and found the place, No. 11 East Fourteenth Street. We climbed the steps .outside, and walked down a hall; and there was Gladys just coming out. " We fell into each other's arms and talked about the changes the years had brought. "'What are you darlings doing?' Mary asked. 'Wait here a moment,' she went on without waiting for an answer: She ran into a room, and came out in a few minutes with a tall, slender man with a great nose and transfixing gray eyes.

James Lee Gish

"'This is Mr. Griffith,' Mary introduced us. 'And these are my dearest friends, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and their mother. They've been on the stage for years and years, and you must give them a job as soon as possible, Mr. Griffith. ÎHe talked to us. for a while. After a bit he told us to come back in a few days and go to work.

"Then he explained about our wages. We were to get five' dollars apiece for working from nine in the morning until six; two and one-half dollars if we worked from six until nine; and two and one half dollars if we worked after that.

"We accepted, of course, because Mary had whispered to us that if we could work for Mr. Griffith we'd be the luckiest girls in New York City. I have often thought since that she was right.

As usual I don't remember the name of that first picture I worked in. Sometimes the early pictures showed an audience in a theater watching a play. Dorothy and I were part of such an audience.

" I do remember the purple lights and the strange emphasis given to those pioneering make-up experiments, and the weird ideas prevalent in the studio as to what wordless acting was. And I remember quite vividly the pleasant shock we experienced when at the end of the week we were given our checks. We got more money than we had ever made in a similar period.

"WelI, as long as this new profession continued we would stay with it, we made up our minds.

"So we resolved to make a bold bid: we bolstered up each other's courage by descending on Mr. Griffith in a body--two frightened young girls and a worried mother -to ask him for a permanent position with the group of actors and actresses he was taking out to a town called Hollywood, where he was to make pictures in the famous sunlight of southern California."

Last modified on: Thursday, October 30, 1997.