Born in Springfield, Ohio, Lillian Gish was called the 'First Lady of American Cinema', her film-acting career spanning 75 years, from 1912 in silent-film, through to her retirement in 1987 after filming The Whales of August. Beside her sister Dorothy, and her mother Mary, aka Mary Robinson McConnell, she debuted on-stage at the age of six, continuing with stage work for the next 13 years. In 1912 she met famed director D.W. Griffith who cast her in 12 film shorts that year, with another 25 over the next two years. Her earliest silent film appearances included An Unseen Enemy, Two Daughters of Eve, So Near, Yet So Far, and in 1915 she held the leading role in the highest-grossing film of the silent era, The Birth of a Nation. With the coming of talkies in the early 1930s, she returned to the stage, appearing only occasionally in film. Her final Broadway appearance, was in the 1975 A Musical Jubilee. She also began to appear on television in a number of distinguished dramatic presentations in the early 1950s.
Lillian Gish died of heart failure at the age of 99.
