Background
Dorothy Gish was born on 11 March 1898 in Dayton, Ohio, United States.
Dorothy Gish was born on 11 March 1898 in Dayton, Ohio, United States.
The two sisters appeared in countless Biograph moxies—Dorothy was in more than thirty in 1914 alone—vying for roles with Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, and others, but not with each other. If there was rivalry or jealousy between them— which Lillian steadfastly denied—it was never apparent. Each had her territory, and it’s hard to imagine Dorothy in Enoch Arden or Lillian in Old Heidelberg, both made in 1915 with Wallace Reid as leading man. Nor would Lillian have seemed at home in Atta Boy’s Lasi Race (1916) or Out of Luck (1918)—when you look at stills of Dorothy making faces and posturing in that one or in her Western satire Nugget Nell (1919), you can understand why Paramount offered her a million dollars for a series of five-reel comedies. (She turned them down, saying, “At mv age all that money would ruin my character.”)
By this time Dorothy was a real star: in 1919 in I'll Get Him Yet (Elmer Clifton), the him being Richard Barthelmess, whom she convinced Griffith to hire; and in Remodeling Her Husband (1920), the only film Lillian directed; and Flying Pat (F. Richard Jones), also in 1920, the latter two with James Bennie, whom she was to marry, to the bewilderment of Lillian and Mother Gish, who didn't believe in men. Although the sisters had appeared in many films together, including Griffith’s World War I Hearts of the World (1918), their indelible joint appearance was as the sisters in the 1921 Orphans of the Shnin, their final Griffith film. Dorothy is the blind Louise, separated from Lillian’s Henriette in the turmoil of the French Revolution. In its most famous scene, when Lillian hears Dorothy’s voice out in the street but can’t get to her, it’s easv to be over-whelmed bv Lillian’s extraordinary projection of emotion, but Dorothy actually is her match, her somewhat more stolid face transported with hope and despair. At the end, when all is harmony (and Louises sight has been restored), there’s a flicker of roguishness in Dorothv that is all hers.
She went on to a series of successful films: The Bright Shawl (23, John S. Robertson), in which she’s a Cuban dancer who dies in the arms of Barthelmess (the supporting cast included William Powell, Mary Astor, Edward G. Robinson, and Jetta Goudal); with Lillian in Romola (24, Henry King); an Irish colleen in the 1925 The Beautiful City (Kenneth S. Webb), again with Barthelmess and Powell; a big hit in the 1926 British-made Nell Gwynne, followed by several other films made there by Herbert Wilcox, including Tip Toes with Will Rogers and Madame Pompadour with Antonio Moreno, both in 1927. Then, as sound came in, it was back to the theatre, first in a play called Young Love directed by George Cukor. For the rest of her life, she was on the stage, appearing in only four movies after 1930: Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (44, Lewis Allen); Centennial Summer (46, Otto Preminger); The Whistle at Eaton Falls (51, Robert Siodmak); and The Cardinal (63, Preminger). Her biggest stage hit was as Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee, opposite Louis Calhern, w ho became another alcoholic man in her life; and like Lillian, she played Mother in Life with Father out of town for more than a year. The sisters’ last performance together was in the touring company of The Chalk Garden in 1956.
From the start, Lillian Gish, the older of the sisters, insisted that it was Dorothv who had the real talent, because Dorothv could do comedy. (“I’m as funny as a barrel of dead babies,” said Lillian.) And it’s true that from the start they were cast that way: Lillian in tragedv, drama, melodrama; Dorothy as the cutup and charmer she w as in real life. Of course, there were exceptions—Lillian played sophisticates (Diane of the Follies, 1916) and Dorothv could be Serious (as a nun, for instance, in the 1915 Her Mother's Daughter). But on the whole, their film personas matched their real-life temperaments.
Actually, it was Dorothy who first set foot on stage, as Little Willie in East Lynne; she was four years old. Both sisters were to barnstorm in melodrama throughout their childhoods, until in 1912 they went down to the Biograph studio to look up their old pal Gladys Smith, who turned out to be Mary Pickford. Griffith instantly put them in a one-reeler. An Unseen Enemy, described as the terrible experience of two young girls in a lonesome villa. Also in this suspense film was young Bobby Harron, with whom Dorothy would fall in love, and who would die young, probably a suicide, to the anguish of the Griffith family.
Whether or not she had the talent of her more famous sister, it’s clear that Dorothy had the happier nature, and the more normal life; she liked men, she liked a good drink, she liked a good party, she liked a good time. Her career was a satisfying one, but it wasn’t everything.