'Never Let the Camera Catch me Acting': Lillian Gish as Actress, Star, and Theorist*. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Berke, Annie
• Is Part Of: Historical journal of film, radio and television. Volume 36:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 175
• Page End: 189
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: Motion pictures -- History -- Periodicals; Broadcasting -- History -- Periodicals; 302.23409005
• DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2016.1167464
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0143-9685

Abstract

Abstract : 'There are no new stories … We see them on the screen or on the stage reflected through the personalities of men and women whom we have learned to love and respect.' So wrote Lillian Gish in an unpublished work on the role of stars in early cinema. While most know Gish as a silent film star, and some know her as an autobiographer and lecturer on the history of early cinema, very few regard her as a film theorist. In this paper, I analyze the theoretical dimension of Gish's manuscripts, essays, and lecture notes, many of which are unpublished and held in the New York Public Library's Lillian Gish Papers. In asserting the role of the actor or star as filmic author, Gish speaks directly to abstract questions of art, authorship, and cinema as a 'universal language.' Gish's work engages with the work of such early film theorists Vachel Lindsay, Hugo Munsterberg, and Rudolf Arnheim, as well as that of contemporary scholars of stardom and performance studies. I will conclude my argument by reading the 1927 filmThe Wind as the culmination of Gish's philosophies of acting on screen.