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.
Just added Steve’s Lillian Gish YouTube video to this page. Our comments on his video are copied below.
Good video. One of the greats of the silent era. Liked the opening music. I have seen 10 of her movies…more than I would have guessed. Four of those reached the Top 5. The only one in the Top 5 I have not seen is #1 The Wind. Favorites would include #3 Night of the Hunter, #9 Duel In The Sun and Sweet Liberty…which did not make your rankings or I am going blind. Voted up and shared.
Hi Bruce, I can’t remember if I included Sweet Liberty. I did add a few modern movies, your tally 10, Flora has seen 8 and I’ve seen 7. I haven’t seen The Wind either.
Thanks for the vote, share and comment, always appreciated.
BEST STILLS/LOBBY CARDS IN STEVE’s GISH VIDEO
1/One Romantic Night
2/His Double Life
3/Top Man
4/two for The Comedians
5/1st one for The Cobweb – Widmark in his heyday
6/True Heart Susie
7/The Unforgiven
8/La Boehme
9/Whales of August
10/2 for Duel in the Sun
11/Orphans of the Storm – very iconic
12/Broken Blossoms
13/Birth of a Nation
14/Two for Night of the Hunter
15/two for Intolerance
16/two for The Wind
17/Annie Laurie
“Maxwelton braes are bonnie
Where early falls the dew
And ’twas there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true
Gave me her promise true
Which ne’er forgot will be
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I lay me doon and dee”
[William Douglas 1682-1748 Annie Laurie herself who was Douglas’ lover lived from 1682-1764]
I am great fan of Steve’s video profiles of silent era stars with their marvellous vintage old-world artwork and his Gish offering is no exception and is 98% rated by me for personal satisfaction. Best POSTERS
1/One Romantic Night
2/Judith of Bethulia
3/2nd one for The Comedians – daring and stunning!
4/Both for Hearts of the World
5/Annie Laurie
6/2nd one for The Cobweb
7/two for White Sister
8/two for The Unforgiven
9/The Scarlet Letter
10/two for La Boehme
11/stunning foreign language one for Duel in the Sun
12/the whole set for Way Down East
13/Broken Blossoms
14/2nd one for Portrait of Jennie
15/2 for Birth of a Nation
16/Intolerance
17/The Wind
18/1st one for Night of the Hunter
Lillian Gish lived until over 99 years of age and was just about 7 months short of being a Centurion. Her career on stage and screen and later television took in directing and writing as well as acting; and because she debuted as a child at the age of 9 and lived such a long life that career lasted a staggering 86 years -from 1902 until 1988 according to Wikipedia. She is actually considered a “pioneer” of the movies and indeed was dubbed the First Lady of American Cinema.
Great cinematic female Legends like Garbo, Shearer and Crawford had careers that started in the silent era; but they debuted far later on the screen than Gish did and are probably thought of today as largely talkies stars whereas Lillian though having made some talkies is usually referred to within the historical context of the silent screen as are Chaplin, Pickford and Buster Keaton. Nonetheless Steve’s video gives us ample spreads of both Lillian’s silent movies and her talkies.
Bruce above touches on Lillian’s ranking in the AFI’s renowned lists of the Greatest Screen Legends of All Time; and of those great stars who are today considered as predominately silent era Legends only Lillian along with Chaplin/Keaton/Pickford make the AFI lists.
Surprisingly [to me at least] Lillian’s 17th placing -as Bruce carefully notes- on the female list of 25 is higher than Pickford’s at 24th; and on the male 25 list Charlie and Buster are ranked respectively 10th and 21st.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and song lyrics, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
I would think that Lillian Gish’s later films like Night of the Hunter, Duel in the Sun and The Whales of August helped boost her ‘legendary actress’ status above Mary Pickford and the other silent screen heroines. The recognition factor was higher too.
The Wind is probably her best silent film, I haven’t seen it. But she did appear in two far more famous silent epics – Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
Five of Gish’s films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Way Down East, The Wind, Night of the Hunter, Intolerance and Birth of a Nation.
Four films scored 9 out of 10 – Orphans of the Storm, Broken Blossoms, Portrait of Jennie and The Whales of August. Eight more films scored 8 out of 10 which means 17 of the 28 films on the video scored 8 or more, that’s impressive.
“Lionel Barrymore first played my grandfather, later my father, and finally, he played my husband. If he’d lived, I’m sure I would have played his mother. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.”
Gish on receiving an honorary Academy Award in 1971 – “Oh, all the charming ghosts I feel around me who should share this! It was our privilege for a little while to serve that beautiful thing, the film, and we never doubted for a moment that it was the most powerful thing, the mind and heartbeat of our technical century.”
HI STEVE: As always I enjoyed your feedback; indeed speaking for myself I regard it as an invaluable part of your video ‘package’: it usually rounds things off nicely. Anyway here are my own thought on some of your points:
1/I think that your suggestions about why Lillian ultimately leapfrogged Little Myrna -sorry I meant Mary! – in the Legends rankings are very observant.
2/There is no doubt though that back in their day Mary was the bigger star. For example I’ve said before that Mary is the most-honored female ever in Quigley’s Top-10-stars annual polls with a total of 13 entries and the 4 nearest females to her in those polls gathering up 10 entries each.
3/Those 13 entries were consecutive from 1914-1926 inclusive and she was also below the Top 10 in Quigley’s Top-25-stars lists in the years 1912/1913/1927/1928. Lillian sadly in not mentioned at all in those 17 polls 1914-28 nor in any other one that Wikipedia has selected for coverage.
4/I enjoy most of your quotes but on this occasion I especially like Lillian’s humorous description of her range of family relationships to Lionel on screen and I love her quip “That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.”
5/Because of that quote the image springs into my mind of some other actress saying “At my age of one-month Archibald Alec Leach held me in his arms, rocked me and sang me a lullaby when he played my father in a movie; in a later film I was his sister; then I became his wife; and finally I landed the part of his mother; roles that we reprised in a sequel when at the end he helped carry my coffin on my final journey”
Anyway I hope you are sitting with your crash helmet on all-prepared for “crashing out” should the need arise! Take care to keep safe.
Good information Bob.
I thought The Birth of a Nation’s gross was completely unknown. Some people even say it’d be highest grossing movie of all time, adjusted for inflation. I found this: “In a 2015 Time article, Richard Corliss estimated the film had earned the equivalent of $1.8 billion adjusted for inflation”
Is that correct?
Hey BascoBal. Ah….the mystery of The Birth Of A Nation and it’s box office grosses. When it was originally released….box office tracking was very poor…if it existed at all. For a long time D.W. Griffith was the only source. It appears he over inflated the gross. For years…Variety listed the “rentals” of The Birth Of A Nation at $10 million. That would put the gross around $1.4 billion. However…Variety always put an asterick by the number. People that have studied this a lot more than me…think $10 million in “gross” is more accurate. In our calculations…we use $10 million for our domestic box office calculations…which puts The Birth of a Nation in 32nd place when looking at adjusted domestic box office rankings. In the end…..nobody is really sure how much it made….but everybody acknowledges it was a monster hit. Hope that explains it a little better. Thanks for stopping by.