Want to know the best Lillian Gish movies? How about the worst Lillian Gish movies? Curious about Lillian Gish box office grosses or which Lillian Gish movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Lillian Gish movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.
Lillian Gish (1893-1993) was an American actress, who the American Film Institute ranked as one of the Top 50 Screen Legends of all time. Gish is ranked as the 17th best actress, right behind #16 Vivien Leigh and right before #18 Shirley Temple. One of our goals is to do a movie page on all 50 Screen Legends. After completing this page we have now written movie pages on 48 (or 96%) of those performers……leaving only 1 actress and 1 actor that still need movie pages.
Her IMDb page shows 112 acting credits from 1912-1987. This page will rank 31 Lillian Gish movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Every Gish feature film from 1920 to 1987 are included in the page. Her shorts and television appearances were not included on the page. Sadly, due to lack of box office information there about 8 movies from 1912 to 1919 that we were unable to include. The search will continue for those pages.
Lillian Gish Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Lillian Gish Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Lillian Gish movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Lillian Gish movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Lillian Gish movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Lillian Gish movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins each Lillian Gish movie received.
- Sort Lillian Gish movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Blue Link in Co-Star column will take you to that star’s UMR movie page
Possibly Interesting Facts About Lillian Gish
1. Lillian Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1893.
2. Lillian and her sister Dorothy have a combined 251 IMDb acting credits. 139 for Dorothy and 112 for Lillian.
3. Growing up Lillian Gish’s next door neighbor was Gladys Smith. You might know Gladys be her stage name….Mary Pickford.
4. Counting their short films…legendary director D.W. Griffith and Gish made over 40 movies together.
5. Lillian Gish was never married and never had any children.
6. While shooting 1920’s Way Down East, Lillian Gish was required to lie down on a slab of ice that was floating in a river for several hours in order to shoot a scene. While she did this, one of her hands was immersed in freezing cold water for hours, which permanently damaged the nerves in her wrist.
7. Lillian Gish left her entire estate, which was valued at several million dollars, to Helen Hayes. Hayes died 18 days after Gish.
8. Lillian Gish was nominated for one Oscar®…Best Supporting Actress in 1946’s Duel in the Sun and one Golden Globe®….Best Supporting Actress for 1967’s The Comedians.
9. Lillian Gish did receive a Honorary Oscar® in 1971…..”For superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures”.
10. Check out Lillian Gish’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
America Film Institutes’ Top 25 Screen Legend Actress and UMR’s Links That Rank All Of Their Movies.
Check out Steve’s Lillian Gish YouTube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Intolerance deserves the #1 position I will load you my cohen brothers version if you wish
Hey Jeffrey….I think it is safe to say that Intolerance has aged better than his The Birth of a Nation. Too bad he never saw Intolerance become the masterpiece it became…instead…it was the movie that destroyed him financially…and he never recovered. Always good to hear from one of WoC’s co-workers…thanks for checking out our website.
hello Bruce,
her name is a magic name of the american story movie
we just can say only think, a fantastic carriere and i think she was falling in love with the cinema and never stop that;
40 films with D W Griffith, i think it is a record anyway it is more than Dietrich and Sternberg..
sorry to miss this page in 2016
thank you
oh by the way , Bruce, if i remembered, you were working for a Carroll Baker page, but i did not find it…..
Hey Pierre…..I think this page does not really do justice to her awesome career. Her pinnacle (silent movies) are almost not represented here. She and Griffith made screen history. I have not done the Carroll Baker page…..but she is in the mix….lol. No problem you missing this page…as I always say….UMR is open all the time….lol.
Hi
So glad you done a page on the great Lillian Gish. I remember her winning the AFI in 1984. Her acceptance speech is very amusing and worth looking up online. Like most people, I’ve seen her mainly in supporting roles, such as The Night of The Hunter and The Unforgiven, where she was brilliant in both films.
It’s a pity The Whales of August was a flop at the box office because it was a very entertaining film. Her and Davis really worked well together, on screen at least.
As for her silent movies, I’ve only seen one, The Wind, which was truly fantastic. Silent movies now are so rarely shown that few people are sadly interested in them. And yet this woman, along with Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson were giants of the silent era.
It was interesting to read that when she died, she left all of her estate to Helen Hayes, they seemed to be very close over the years. And of course she died 18 days later. I wonder who she left it all to. Certainly not me, ha ha ha. There’s an old Irish saying, money goes to money. There’s probably a lot of truth in that.
Hey Chris. I will have to check out her speech….thanks for the heads up. Every time I watch The Night of the Hunter I am always amazed how quickly her character takes over the movie. I have not seen The Whales of August….I remember when it first came out….I was like….no way am I ever seeing that movie….now it is on my list of movies to watch. The Wind got the 2nd best reviews of her career….so I think you picked an excellent silent movie to watch. I have seen two of silent movies…Intolerance and Birth of a Nation….both are worth checking out…if only for the historic nature of both movies. I would give Intolerance the huge edge over Birth of a Nation….the spic size of Intolerance is impressive. I am sure James “Hawaii-Five O” MacArthur ended up with some of Gish’s money. That sounds like probate hell there. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Lillian Gish.
Nicely done Bruce, only Mary Pickford left on that chart.
Gish’s movie career spanned 75 years!! Whoa is that a record I wonder?
Lots of facts here I didn’t know about this lady, never married? Must have been unusual those days. 40 films with D.W. Griffith!
I’ve seen just 7 of the 31 films you’ve listed. Favorites include Night of the Hunter, Duel in the Sun and Portrait of Jennie.
Intolerance ranked higher than Hunter and Duel on the UMR? Can’t be right, it was a big flop on release and even the critics turned their noses up at it.
Voted Up.
Hey Steve.
1. Yep I got Pickford and Keaton left. I actually have a decent amount of Pickford movies…but almost nothing on Keaton.
2. 8 decades of movies….Mickey Rooney had a longer career….1930s till 2010s…..appearing in a movie in 9 different decades.
3. Most of the 40 movies with D.W. were shorts…but their full length movies are all-time classics.
4. Tally count…..Flora 10, me 8 and you 7.
5. Sweet Liberty is a pretty funny movie….I like that Gish and Caine were in a movie together….that is good trivia for playing the Kevin Bacon game
6. Night of the Hunter is a classic….with Gish outshining Mitchum. She has the best role in Duel In The Sun.
7. As for Intolerance being first. Yes it was considered a flop when released. It was pretty much the Waterworld of the 1916. That being said ,Intolerance, like Waterworld (grossed over a quarter of billion in worldwide box office), actually was the biggest box office hit of 1916….it just did not earn enough to overcome the massive budget….and ruined Griffith financially. Back then critics were not impressed but over the years it has emerged as an all-time classic.
8. On IMDb Night of the Hunter got a 8.1 rating while Intolerance has a 8.0 rating. Duel of the Sun was one of the biggest hits of all-time….but not loved by many…The Transformers of 1946?
As always…thanks for your thoughts on Lillian Gish.
Hi, Bruce.
You must have been up very late when you published this. Congratulations for publishing this Lillian Gish page.
Regarding the movies you have listed:
The highest rated movie I have seen is Intolerance at number 1.
The highest rated movie I have not seen is Orphans in a Storm at number 4.
The lowest rated movie I have seen is The Comedians.
I thought that I had One Romantic Night recorded on PVR as that was the movie listed on TC, but instead the movie was The Swan. I haven’t seen it yet, only advanced the recording to the beginning of the movie. Is this the same movie under a different title?
I haven’t quite brought myself to watch Birth of a Nation. But most of the movies I have not seen have been due to lack of access.
Over the past year, I have increased my Lillian Gish total thanks largely to TCM.
The total number of Lillian Gish films I’ve seen on this list is 10.
My favourite of her films is Night of the Hunter.
I have not seen Duel in the Sun for quite some time. I did not know she was nominated for that movie. More of a guilty pleasure watching that movie than a great film. That was Selznick’s attempt to achieve the same success and acclaim that he got for Gone With the Wind. No………………
Last year I saw Lillian Gish appear in a serial episode of Robert Montgomery Presents called, I believe, “The Harvest.” It was part of a look at James Dean’s TV performances.
Lillian Gish is one of those performers where – regardless of the quality of the movie – she gives a great performance every time. Perhaps that is why she was not nominated more often.
Congratulations again on completing another AFI legend page.
Hey Flora.
1. Yep I was up late…and paying the price today.
2. Tally count…..you 10, me 8 and you 7…actually pretty close.
3. I saw Intolerance on April 14th 2014…wow 2 years ago. My review on that one. http://letterboxd.com/cogerson/film/intolerance/
4. I not only have not seen Orphans…until yesterday I had never even heard of it. It was a big hit though.
5. Birth of a Nation was a one and done movie for me.
6. Night of the Hunter is a classic….and a movie that gets better with each additional viewing.
7. Duel in the Sun was a massive hit….so Selznick came close to the box office glory of GWTW….but nowhere near the status of it.
8. Gish has lots of television appearances….I bet the Harvest would have been interesting.
Thanks for the AFI congrats….only two to go. Thinking I am going to have to do Buster Keaton a different way….as box office grosses are nowhere to be found.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Lillian Gish.
Buster Keaton was a legend for his pre-MGM days when he was his own producer.
The films that have box office are the ones he made after he became a member of the MGM factory and got lost among “more stars than there are in the heavens.” Those movies can be found like the Judy Garland-Van Johnson version movie In the Good Old Summertime or from his late career like A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.
Perhaps you can have two tables…one where you have box office information and a second where you have only two pieces of the formula – critics/audience rating and awards/nominations.
You can also talk about Buster Keaton in a similar way to your pages on Oscar shut outs, your father’s top five films and so on–where you list the movies in an order and then talk about trivia or why the movies were innovative for their day.
Remember that Keaton was so non-famous after getting lost in the MGM studio that when James Mason found the film The General in a closet while renovating Keaton’s home that Buster Keaton was actually listed in the phonebook.
Hey Flora. In some of the research I have done. His MGM movies made more money than his pre-MGM movies. Movies like The General actually flopped when released. I think you are right I am going to have two tables…pretty much like how I did Orson Welles. The James Mason/General seems like a great “Possibly Interesting Fact”. At this point I am thinking I will do the final two pretty soon…if only to get them done. Then I am actually thinking about putting all 50 in a self published book. Depends how much that would cost….but I think putting all 50 massive tables together would make an interesting read. Should be interesting….thanks for all the suggestions.