Lillian Gish, Great Star, Great Lady Quiz

Answer: "You get a living, you give a life."

Gish lived for the cinema, and the theater. When she wasn't making films, she was appearing on stage. DW Griffith may well have been thinking of Gish when he came up with this quote. It certainly sums up her life well.

The other quotes are from well-known actors: "Acting ... personal process" is from Sir Ian McKellan; "Stillness...." is from Morgan Freeman; and "You should ... not yourself" is from Dame Judi Dench.

Answer: the "closet" scene

Lillian Gish is playing a teenager who runs into a closet to get away from her abusive father, who bangs on the door, calling for her to come out so he can beat her. She runs around the closet frantically, like a wild animal in a cage, with tears streaming down her face.

It is difficult to watch, but extremely evocative and effecting. Even though it's a silent movie, many people who have seen this film report remembering this scene with all the sounds it would have had.

Answer: She directed it.

This was Gish's only effort as a director. It makes it all the more tragic that this combination of three major women's talent should be lost.

Answer: damage to the nerves in her wrist, because her hand dangled in the below-freezing water

The profession of stunt man was still in its infancy when this movie was made in 1920, and it probably wouldn't have occurred to anyone to use a person other than Gish in the ice floe scene, even though much of it was shot from a distance.

Lillian Gish commented on this injury often, but never really complained. The scene turned out beautifully, and that was what mattered to her. Even more shocking, for those who have scene the movie, is that she is rescued from the ice floe just before it goes over a waterfall, and there is no trick photography involved.

Answer: The studio system came along around the same time, and Gish would not join the studio system.

Gish bucked the studio system, and returned to the stage, where she had started her acting career. It is true that she was sad to see silent films go, but she could and did act with her voice, and had all along, doing summer stock during breaks from filming. The stage was where she kept her skills sharp during her semi-hiatus from films; albeit, the fact is, she was never gone, just preferring small roles and cameos and a picture every two or three years to three starring roles each year, had during the 19-teens, and 1920s.

When she returned to the screen as a star in "Night of the Hunter" in 1955, she was as great as ever.

Answer: target shooting with rifles

Years earlier, having served his sentence for train robbery, infamous western outlaw Al J. Jennings, appeared in one of Gish's films and taught her how to shoot. She liked shooting, and over the years had developed into an expert shot, shooting skeet and clay pigeons.

When Burt Lancaster and John Huston took her to teach her to shoot a rifle and a shotgun for the film "The Unforgiven" in 1959, they discovered she was already faster and more accurate with the weapons than they were.

Answer: No

She often said that it was hard work to make these types of characters interesting, and after five minutes, she got sick of playing them. She would take roles like Hester Prynne to fight the stereotype, but she couldn't help the way she looked.

She was conservative and discreet in her personal life, though, and consistently refused to allow studio executives to "arrange a scandal" for her just for the publicity.

As she aged, she found that studios were offering her more interesting roles, because the irony of a tough old woman appealed to audiences in the 50s, 60s and 70s. She enjoyed a new sense of freedom playing a wide variety of roles in movies such as "Night of the Hunter", "Orders to Kill", and "The Unforgiven". She also played a lot of comedy later in her career, something she had not done much of early on screen (but had done on stage), and she proved very funny.

She never did marry, and often said "I believe that marriage is a career in itself. I have preferred a stage career to a marriage career."

Answer: True

Lillian Gish's father, James Lee Gish was rarely home. Gish, her mother and her sisters entered into local acting productions to put food on the table. Lillian was six the first time she set foot on stage. To further supplement their incomes, the two sisters also posed for pictures and acted in melodramas of the time.

They began acting on the screen, after meeting fellow child-performer Mary Pickford in 1912, and soon were discovered by DW Griffith.

Answer: Murder, She Wrote

On "The Love Boat" she played Isaac's former school teacher. On "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" she carried an entire episode called "The Body in the Barn" and proved herself very spry for a woman who was nearly 70. She appeared on "The Defenders" twice, once as an elderly woman who robbed a bank, then escaped jail by simply walking out with a tour group.

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt vs. Wendell Willkie in 1940

She was especially opposed to the US entering the Second World War, which both candidates had promised to do, so she simply abstained from that race. She may still have voted in lower election that year.