Lillian Gish’s first credit of record was in 1912, and her last in 1987, but she claimed to have been in a few short films as early as 1905, and there isn’t much reason to doubt this. Aside from both her sister and DW Griffith mentioning her earliest shorts, and lots of people who remembered seeing them, it wasn’t typical to display actors names until about 1910 or so, and until Griffith started archiving his films, it was usual to melt them down and reuse them for the silver nitrate, which is why few films from before the teens exist. Anyway, Gish had been on the stage since she was six years old, in 1899.
Sadly, one lost film is Lillian Gish’s only directorial effort, Remodeling Her Husband, starring her sister Dorothy, and from a screenplay by Dorothy Parker.
Truth in Television, actually. The blackface minstrel show as regular commercial stage entertainment had died out by 1910 (not because of any rising anti-racism, it just couldn’t compete with Vaudeville); but college and amateur and community-theater productions continued into the 1960s. Not surprising a “backyard musical” in the 1930s or '40s would have been of that form.
I liked him okay, but I know someone here in Bangkok who hated him with a passion. A Brit who is originally from Brunei and is a quarter Chinese. And he hated Mickey due to his performance as the buck-toothed Japanese Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This stuck in his craw more than anything else. He’s always going on about Hollywood’s record of using non-Asians in Asian roles. Charlie Chan, you name it, but his biggest gripe has always been Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Many times within his hearing, some of us would start commenting on Mickey Rooney’s masterful portrayal of a Japanese gentleman and how he was more Japanese than the Japanese. He used to get all pissed off when we did that until he realized we were just – dare I say it? – taking the Mickey out of him. Turns out several of us independently e-mailed him news of Mickey Rooney’s death.
You’re missing an important nuance. After the minstrel show died, blackface simply moved over to vaudeville. Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson performed in it through the 20’s, with Jolson - a strong supporter of was then called negro rights - starring in the movie, replacing George Jessel who had starred in the play.
Wikipedia has a page called List of entertainers who performed in blackface. Not only are there a huge number of vaudeville performers, but a surprising number of movie names well into the 1950s. Not only wasn’t there a stigma to it but even some modern commentators have claimed that the use of blackface in The Jazz Singer was a positive act. Some opposing claims are mentioned there as well.
As for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I’d say that writer George Axelrod did one of the best adaptation of a book to screen I’ve ever seen. He claims that director Blake Edwards wanted Rooney to play the part as he did and also accuses him of most of the other stuff in the film that feels out of place with the tone of the film like the party scene. It’s too bad that Rooney is more remembered for that role today than his real body of work.
Yeah, I’m well aware of the prolific Ms. Gish (herself an Honorary award recipient from the Academy).
I was referring to the Oscar stat in particular. It’s hard to think of many performers who even pass the 50-year mark on that stat, let alone 3/4 of a century.
Yes, I know; the minstrel show, with its full-length formula and its Interlocutor and Endmen, died out by 1910, but blackface short-acts survived on Broadway, I know the Al Jolson story.
Jazz Age minstrelsy was a slightly different phenomenon, however, and apparently not quite so resented by blacks – indeed, Al Jolson was famously the only white man welcome in the black nightclubs of Harlem. See this clip from Eddie Cantor – not so much an ill-natured satire on African-American culture as a tribute to it.
