Life and Lillian Gish

II

“THE WHITE SISTER”

The story of “The White Sister” is not an unusual one. A beautiful young girl, defrauded of her fortune, pledges her love to a young army officer, who almost immediately goes to Africa, whence presently comes the news that he has been massacred with a detachment of his men. Broken-hearted, but clinging to hope, the bereaved girl becomes a lay sister in a Catholic institution—a hospital—and after long years of waiting, takes the vows of the Order, becomes a nun. Of course, at once, the soldier, who all these years has been a caged prisoner, returns, sees her, demands that the Church give her up, even kidnaps her, temporarily in the belief that she will require her freedom at the hands of the Pope. In the book, he gets her as a reward for unexampled bravery in a catastrophe. In the picture, he is even braver, but has to rely on Heaven for his reward, for Angela (Lillian) remains true to her vows, and in any case, Giovanni (Colman) does not survive the catastrophe.

The tragic ending was thought better for the picture, with something more spectacular than a mere explosion of a powder magazine for the catastrophe. Henry King was for a flood; Robert Haas, art director, for a volcanic eruption. In the end, they had both, also an earthquake—to start the flood. Of course, that meant changing the scene of the story. It was too costly, even for a motion picture magnate, to bring Vesuvius to Rome, so they moved Rome to Vesuvius—that is to say, they moved Angela’s convent to a town on the slopes above Naples, where the volcano would be handy. A laboratory, an important feature in the picture, they likewise built on the Vesuvian slope, but as Vesuvius could not be counted on to erupt on schedule, Haas built a miniature and dependable volcano in the studio.

“We worked very late,” Lillian remembers, “and I can still see Bob Haas, those nights when we were all tired out, sticking his head from the crater of his pet property, with some inane remark that would set us all off in a gale of wild laughter.

“During our stay in Naples, I was given a room in the Excelsior Hotel, with a window that looked out directly on Vesuvius. At that time of year, the sun seemed to rise from the crater. It was a room that Duse had once occupied.

“In Rome, our studio was on the outskirts. From my dressing-room, I could see the dome of St. Peter’s in the distance. We ate our luncheon in a little detached house, where the caretaker and his wife lived. The room was small, and all gathered round one table … simple food, spaghetti, sardines, cheese, and always red wine with water. And then the Italian bread! A sandwich of Italian bread and sardines, with red Italian wine—nothing is better than that! We named our projection-room ‘The Catacombs,’ for it was a kind of cave, and had the same atmosphere. Our studio being small, we occupied every corner of it.”

Soon after the first of the year, they began “shooting” the picture. They had trouble at the start, getting extras, and workmen. Italians will not drop what they are doing and come to a stranger, even at double price. Finally, when they decided that the picture-makers were reliable—and sane—they came in droves, and remained.

One day, Count and Countess Carlo Frasso (she had been American) came out to see the work. It was where Giovanni is going to war: the lovers embrace, and Angela weeps. The Count and Countess expressed surprise that “Angela” shed real tears. They did not know that tears could be turned on in that way. She was invited to their palazzo, to dine. A duke of the royal house was there, a large, handsome man, to whom the ladies made beautiful curtsies, after the custom of the Court. The room was enormous, with many ambassadors in their splendid uniforms. Lillian was much impressed by the height and grace and physical beauty of the upper class Italians.

Through Cardinal Bonzano they secured the assistance of the Church. Priests even came to the studio, to supervise the scenes, to see that no mistakes were made in the appointments and ceremonies. The company was given an audience with the Pope, and Lillian saw him several times afterwards. All the things she wore in her part he blessed.

Lillian loved Rome, and tried to enter into the spirit of the people and the Church, for the sake of her part. She studied Italian, and little by little, learned to speak and understand, pretty well. She wanted to think and feel as Angela would think and feel … to know Rome as Angela would have known it—its ancient monuments, its social aspects, its religious ceremonies, its feast days. Rome at Easter Time … the Sancta Scala, where one ascends all the steps on one’s knees; Saint Paul’s on Good Friday, for the Gregorian Chants; Saint Peter’s on Easter Morning, where all the world goes by … the spirit of the Church, of Rome, of Italy, were in these—and in the market places, the streets, the beggars … everywhere.

Henry King got up his flood at Tivoli, near Rome. There is a fall there, and in some way the engineers held the water until the moment when the volcano and the earthquake were supposed to cause a dam to break and flood the little city that was on the slopes of Vesuvius.

The “eruption,” we made at the little town of Rocca di Papa, above Rome. They took up great airplane propellers to make the wind. Before an eruption, there comes a great hush—then wind with lightning, then the earthquake. The people of the village were engaged to be the panic-stricken crowd. They had no need of stage direction. When the big propellers started, they were frightened enough without being told. The wind those propellers made was terrific. The place became a bedlam of swirling dust and frantic people. Dust flew that had not been moved for five hundred years. A real eruption could hardly have frightened them worse.

“That day, and the next, were killing days for me.” Lillian remembered. “From eight-thirty in the morning, in the sun and dust, making scenes and bits that were a part of the great eruption; then back to the studio, and after a bath, make-up and costume, the great scene where Angela takes the veil. I should have been in perfect condition for that scene, and I was in about the worst possible. We kept at it steadily through the night, until nine-thirty next morning, twenty-five hours at a stretch, without sleep. Then I was allowed two hours and a half of rest. I slept some of it, but right away jumped into work again, and kept at it until eleven that night, when I was put into an automobile with Mrs. Kratsch and motored to Florence, stopping for a brief rest at Orvieto.

“At Florence I saw the studio, costumes, sets, etc., that had been partly arranged for, to be used in ‘Romola,’ which we were going to do the following winter. Nobody works harder than motion picture players—in the heat and glare of blazing lights, in all kinds of weather—twelve, fifteen, twenty-four hours on end.

“From Florence to Paris, and to Cherbourg. On the ship, I got into a cabinet bath, and then went to bed. I did not know when we sailed, and I slept the clock twice around without a break. I started with a terrible cold, but the bath and the rest cured it.

“We had begun ‘The White Sister’ in November, and it was now June. In New York King and I worked at the cutting, all through the summer, until the last of August, getting twelve reels ready for the big theatres. At the same time we were putting ‘Romola’ into shape to picture. King presently went back to Italy to begin work on it, while I remained to cut ‘The White Sister’ down to nine reels, for the road, a difficult and anxious job.”

“The White Sister” made its first appearance, “World’s Premiere,” at the 44th Street Theatre, New York City, Wednesday evening, September 5, 1923. There was a special souvenir program, tied with a blue cord, with Lillian’s picture on the outside and a message from Doug and Mary within.

The crowd poured in. Behind the curtain, on a soap box, Lillian and Dorothy anxiously waited the public verdict. Lillian wore a new ivory velvet dress, ordered for the occasion. She had been going to wear one of her old gowns, but Dorothy and the others had shamed her into buying a new one. She was certain to be called on, they said, and what a disgrace to appear at less than one’s best. So the new gown had been made on short notice, and now draped itself around the soap box, while the reels that told the story of Angela and Giovanni unwound, to lovely music, and their figures flickered silently across the screen. Two sisters, that twenty years before, night after night, had waited much in the same way to “go on” in their childish parts. Did they remember that? Probably not—they were too anxious, too expectant, and when presently the applause came roaring through to them, they hugged each other, for it seemed to mean success.

It was a long waiting, nearly two hours, but it was over at last, and there came a great final uproar, Lillian was summoned, and in the glory of her ivory velvet, appeared before the curtain, and when the deafening burst of greeting had subsided, made a brief speech, and the great first night was at an end.

She had arranged a small supper at her apartment in the Hotel Vanderbilt, just the family. A telegram from Mrs. Gish, by this time in California, had come:

“Mother wishes you all success possible in your new picture. I know that you will be sweet and dear in it.”

Her health was much better. She would go with them to Florence, for “Romola.” Probably the two years or more of Lillian’s Italian picture episode would not show another night as happy as that one.

“The White Sister” proved an undeniable success. Lillian’s ethereal presentation of her part would insure that, and even when some random critic raised his voice in timid protest as to the artistic structure of the edifice, his accents were drowned in the chorus of applause: The picture was unique. It had been made with the sanction and aid of the Church. The Vatican had fixed upon it its seal of approval. That settled that.

Now that seven years and a day have gone by, one seeing “The White Sister” again, as the writer of these chapters has seen it, rather recently—may, perhaps, speak of it with a steadier pulse. There could be no question as to Lillian’s part in it. At more than one moment in the sequence she rose to great heights, and at no time was her performance less than distinguished. At one instant—it is where she is prostrated by the shock of Giovanni’s reported death—the spasmodic twitching of her cheek—the result of long rehearsal—was hardly less than miraculous.

As a whole, however, she had done better work than in “The White Sister.” In “Broken Blossoms,” for instance—and she has done immeasurably better work since: in “La Bohême,” in “The Scarlet Letter,” in “Wind,” in her part of Helena in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” her stage play of 1930. Also, a good deal of her personality was lost in “The White Sister”—had become mere costume. Of all people, Lillian is the last to be standardized by uniform.

The picture itself was hardly a structural triumph. Briefly, its beginning and its middle seem not very logical, its ending hopelessly disproportionate. A volcanic eruption, an earthquake and a flood, for no better reason, when all is said, than to kill a poor soldier who had already spent five years shut up in a rabbit-hutch. Nothing he had done warranted his being drowned like a rat in a flooded ditch. If all of us who have been tempted to kidnap the woman we loved, in, or out of the Church, deserve drowning, then it’s high time to invite a return engagement of Noah’s flood. If Ronnie Colman—Giovanni, I mean—had, perforce, to renounce his heart’s desire, surely a simpler and less unbeautiful way than that might have been invented. A volcano, an earthquake and a flood—such a rumpus, only to bring death and redemption to one unhappy soldier! To have let him ride or sail out of the picture, going back to Africa, would have been infinitely less expensive, and even more heartbreaking, assuming that this was what the picture intended to be. At any rate, it caused the shedding of many tears. In Germany, it was immensely popular—in no other land are tears such a luxury.

It had been Lillian’s wish to dedicate the picture to the Sisters of the Ursuline Academy in St. Louis, her old school, and she hoped to go back there and run it for them, but was never able to carry out this purpose.

From the Director of Entertainments at Sing Sing Prison, Lillian received an invitation to appear before the prisoners, on the occasion of a showing—not of the new picture, but of “Broken Blossoms,” which, it appears, had strangely enough become their favorite picture—for five years had been voted as such.

“THE WHITE SISTER”

She hesitated. She thought it could only be a sad occasion, but she could not refuse. A day was arranged, and she made the beautiful drive through the free air and sunshine, to a community where the outer scene was limited to prison walls. She was met by the Warden and one other official. Then they left her, and the prisoners were assembled. She found herself alone with them. At first, it was strange, uncanny, then delightful. All were so courteous and interested. After the picture was shown, she talked to them. She told them how the play was made. They regarded her with deep attention, hanging eagerly on every word. When she had finished, they gathered about her. One among them had been a friend of Thomas Burke, who wrote the story. By the time she was ready to go, she had forgotten they were prisoners, and at the door asked her escort:

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

He smiled a faint, sad smile.

“Only so far, Miss Gish, and no farther.”

Speaking of it, she said:

“I believe criminals are only mentally and morally ill. The State employs judges to send them to prison. Why not employ doctors, to diagnose and treat them?”

III

“ROMOLA”

Reports from “The White Sister” showed that it was going to make record runs—that returns from it would be very large. Catholics and Protestants alike approved it. Father Duffy, of the Fighting Irish 69th Regiment, of New York, wrote:

I wish to nominate “The White Sister” for a high place on the White List of dramatic performances.... It is religion struggling with human passions, as in real life, and gaining its victory after storm and stress.

Chicago society deserted the opera on the opening night of “The White Sister,” and similar reports came from elsewhere. Lillian’s personal tribute—her “fan” mail—assumed mountainous proportions: offers of engagements, protection, marriage, requests for loans … what not?

Meantime, one must get on with the next picture. King was already in Italy, making a pirate ship scene. Lillian finished cutting down “The White Sister,” for road use, an arduous, delicate work, and with Mrs. Kratsch, sailed in November. Dorothy was to be in “Romola,” and with her mother had sailed a little earlier.

To Genoa, then Florence, where they put up at the Grand Hotel on the Arno, with an outlook on the Ponte Vecchio, all that the heart could desire, if the weather had only been a little more encouraging.

It began to rain, and it continued to rain—“about nineteen days out of twenty,” Dorothy said. Dorothy thought the rain not very wet rain—not at all like English and American rain—not so solid—light, like ether. But one evening, the rain stopped, and when they woke in the night, there was a strange silence. In the morning, there was another sound—also strange—strangely familiar. Dorothy looked over at Lillian.

“If we were in America, I should say they were shoveling snow.”

They hopped out of bed, and to the window. It was shoveling, and it was snow. “Very unusual,” they were assured later. But then, winters in Southern Europe quite often are unusual. Even sunshiny ones.

The picture of “Romola” follows the main incidents of George Eliot’s novel. Lillian, of course, had the part of Romola, Dorothy that of Tessa, Ronald Colman that of Carlo Bucelline. To William H. Powell was assigned the part of Tito; Herbert Grimwood was given the part of Savonarola, and looked so much like him that when he walked along the streets of Florence, children would point him out. Altogether, the cast was a fine one.

They had expected to use a number of real scenes in Florence—the Duomo, the Piazza Signoria, etc., but found that modern innovations—telegraph wires and poles, street car tracks, and the like—made this impracticable. On their big lot in the outskirts of the city, they built an ancient Florence, a very beautiful Florence, of the days of Savonarola. They did use the Ponte Vecchio, the ancient bridge, though a second story had been added a generation later than the period of their picture. And they used the Arno in several scenes.

Rain or no rain, their lot became a busy place. They brought the “White Sister” equipment from Rome, and a small army of artisans and laborers began to work wonders. In a brief time, a quaint old street sprang up—along it shops of every sort, just as they might have been four hundred years before … real shops, in which were made every variety of paraphernalia required for the picture: costumes, harness, basketry, hats, footwear, furniture—everything needed to restore the semblance of a dead generation. They even set up a little restaurant, and ate their luncheons there. Animals—dogs and cats—walked about, or slept in the sun. Flocks of pigeons were in the air, or on the house-tops. During the brief visit of the year before, they had asked that these be raised on the lot. It was all realistic, and lovely. Wood-carvers were at work on the rich interiors, some of them more beautiful, even, than those of “The White Sister”: a great church interior, and a banquet hall, for Romola’s wedding. At one side of the lot were small buildings, where the distinguished artist, Robert Haas, with his staff, worked at the drawings. For the great wedding feast, they could not get period glasses in Florence, so sent a man to Venice, and had them specially blown. Lillian remembers the banquet hall as very rich, exquisite in detail—the scene as a whole, one of peculiar distinction.

“We had for it a lot of titled people of Florence, who were eager to be in the picture. We had very little trouble to get anything we needed in the way of extras. In some of the scenes, we had hundreds of them.

“One thing we did not get so easily: For the wedding, we needed 15th Century priest robes. We heard of some up in the hills, but we could get them only on condition that we engage four detectives to guard them, two by day, two by night.

“We had to guard ourselves, for that matter. Florence has many Americans, and they have not much to do. If we had let in all who called, we should have had a perpetual sequence of social events, with very little work. We had many invitations, but could not accept them. I think we went out just once, for dinner. When we had a little time in the afternoon, we liked to go to Doni’s, for tea, or to shop a little, for linens and laces. Whatever of such things we have now, Mother bought that winter in Florence.

“Every night we literally prayed that the next day would dawn clear and bright, so that we might make up our lost time. But no! Maybe, as Dorothy said, the Italian ‘dispenser of weather,’ didn’t understand English.

“One cannot too highly praise the Italian workmen. Over and over, ours would work on a set that it might be the exact replica of a 15th Century design. Italian workmen are willing to be told, and possess an astonishing ambition to do a thing exactly as it should be done.”

They began “shooting” the scenes. They had no regular scenario. They worked, as it were, inspirationally. They did not know very exactly what they were going to do when they began a scene, and they were not quite sure what they had done when they finished it. The element of accident sometimes produces happy results, but it is unsafe to count on it. “Romola” developed into a kind of panorama—a succession of lovely pictures, without very definite climaxes.

They worked hard. For one thing, they were experimenting with a new film, the panchromatic, which had never been used for an entire picture, and they did their own developing. One of the chief beauties of “Romola” is the richness of its photography.

What with the weather and all, the making of “Romola” was hardly what the French call “gai.”

There were lighter moments: In the scene where Dorothy is supposed to drown in the Arno, she tried for an hour to sink in that greasy, unclean river. She couldn’t swim, so it had to be done in shallow water. She didn’t like to pop her head under, either, but they told her if she would fill her lungs with air and hold her breath, there would be no danger. She was plump, and her bones were small. Being filled with air made her still more buoyant. Also, she had on a little silk skirt that got air under it and ballooned on top of the water. Dorothy simply couldn’t drown. When she popped her head under, the little skirt stuck up in a point like the tail of a diving duck. Such an effect would never do for a picture like “Romola.” From their window in the Grand Hotel, Mrs. Gish and Lillian, watching through a glass, laughed hysterically at Dorothy’s efforts to drown. Dorothy finally struck: she could stand no more of the Arno water. The scene was finished one chilly day in America—in Long Island Sound. Dorothy had a cold at the time, and they thought she would contract pneumonia. But that was a poor guess. When she came out of the water, the cold was gone. Clean, salt water, Dorothy said.

In the picture, Dorothy, as Tessa, has a baby. They borrowed the cook’s baby, the youngest of nine, a fat, robust bambino, strapped to a board, Italian fashion; easy enough to carry, properly held, but not handy for cuddling. Juliana was her name, and as lovely as one of Raphael’s cherubs—lovely, even among Italian children, all of whom have little madonna faces, because for generations expectant mothers have knelt ardently before altars and wayside shrines. Lillian and Dorothy became fond of Juliana, took walks with her, carrying her, board and all—a burden which increased daily as Juliana got fatter and fatter. They wished Juliana would not grow quite so fast; there were scenes where they had to run with her. Italian babies are seldom warm, in winter. One day, Juliana broke out with a rash, which at first they thought was measles, but was only the result of the studio heat, heat from the great Klieg lights.

Lillian had a maid named Anna, a large, lovely soul, but a menace. If one got an ache or a pain, Anna came running with an enormous Italian pill, the size of those on the Medici coat-of-arms. After a day at the studio, in the strained “Romola” poses, Lillian once mentioned having a back-ache. Anna commanded her to undress and lie down. A very little later she came bringing a bath towel, and a flat-iron, the latter quite definitely warm. Then, turning the world’s darling face down, she spread the towel on her back and proceeded to iron her. It was drastic, but beneficial. The ironings became a part of the daily program. Anna decided that her mistress needed blood, and cooked for her apples in red wine. They were delicious.

“Romola” was finished near the end of May. The last scene was the burning of Savonarola, terribly realistic. Lillian got so near the fire that she was scorched. A few days later they saw the rushes and she was ready to go. The great Italian episode was over. It was unique, and remains so. Big companies do not go on foreign locations any more. They build Italy or any part of the universe on their lots in Hollywood.

Lillian in America found that she had been chosen by Sir James Barrie for the picture version of “Peter Pan.” No one could have been better suited to the part, and it greatly appealed to her. But there were complications. Regretfully she put it aside.

Pleasant things happened: Dimitri Dirujinski and Boris Lorski modeled busts of her; Nicolai Fechin did her portrait, as Romola. The last was given a special exhibition in the Grand Central Art Galleries, with a reception to Lillian and the artist under the patronage of Cecelia Beaux and New York’s social leaders. It was bought by the Chicago Art Institute and today hangs in the Goodman Theatre of that city.