 (March 11, 1898 - June 4, 1968)
Born in Dayton, Ohio, she was the younger sister of actress Lillian
Gish. Dorothy's mother Mary began acting in order to support the
family after her husband left. When they were old enough, Dorothy
and Lillian were brought into their mother's act, and they also
modeled. In 1912 their childhood friend Mary Pickford introduced
them to director D.W. Griffith, and the sisters began acting at the
Biograph Studios.
Dorothy and Lillian both debuted in Griffith's An Unseen Enemy.
Dorothy would go on to star in over 100 short films and features,
many of them with Lillian.
Griffith did not use Dorothy in any of his earliest epics, but while
he spent months working on The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance,
Dorothy was featured in many feature-length films made under the
banner of Triangle and Mutual releases. They were directed by young
Griffith protégés such as Donald Crisp, James Kirkwood, and Christy
Cabanne. Elmer Clifton directed a series of seven Paramount-Artcraft
comedies with Dorothy that were so successful and popular that the
tremendous revenue they raked in helped to pay the cost of
Griffith’s expensive epics. These films were wildly popular with the
public and the critics. She excelled in pantomime and light comedy,
while her sister appeared in tragic roles. Dorothy became famous in
this long series of Griffith-supervised films for the Triangle-Fine
Arts and Paramount companies from 1918 through 1920, riotous
comedies that put her in the front ranks of film comediennes. Almost
all of these films have been “lost”, victims of the unbelievable
neglect of the studios that made them. |
