Lillian was entering a period of super-effort and success. Effort, especially—at first. The indefatigable and relentless Griffith kept them going, night and day. Hardly had he launched one war picture till he made another. He had much war film left, and he built another story around it. Two, in fact, though the second came somewhat later. While in England, Queen Alexandra and a number of titled women had lent themselves to the cause, by posing in arranged groups before the Griffith cameras. In “The Great Love,” these films were used. “The Romance of a Happy Valley,” and “True Heart Suzie” followed, idyllic countryside pictures, with Lillian in tender comedy parts.

Griffith no longer directed her—not really. “I gave her an outline of what I hoped to accomplish, and let her work it out her own way. When she got it, she had something of her own. Of course, she was imitated. A dozen actresses would copy whatever she did. They even got themselves up to look like her. She had to change her methods.”

What a joy to work for Griffith! At night, in bed, you thought out your part, and mentally rehearsed it—over and over. Then, next day, you tried it, and when at last it was “shot,” you eagerly looked, a day or two later, for the “rushes,” to see what you had done. Sometimes it was pretty bad—not at all what you had expected. Never mind, that was the advantage of playing for the pictures: you could see yourself, and correct your mistakes. You could do it over and over—Griffith was never stingy with film. He nearly always made twenty times what he used. He would let you try, and keep trying, until both you and he were satisfied. He knew that you had studied the lights, and angles, and groupings—that you had something definite in mind. Often, he consulted you—sometimes let you direct a scene.

It was during the summer of 1912 that Lillian had begun work with Griffith, at the old Biograph studio on Fourteenth Street. Now, almost exactly seven years later, she arrived at what may be called the crest of her film career. Not suddenly: she had been climbing steadily, working like a road-builder, almost from the first day. Now she had reached the top, that was all.

In an article for the Ladies’ Home Journal (Sept., 1925) she said:

When anyone asks me to pick out from the many I have been in, the picture I like best, I answer without much hesitation, and without much thought, “Broken Blossoms.” I say this not because the picture was an artistic picture, which it was. I say this not because it was a compelling or tragic story with no clearing-away, no laying of tracks, no getting ready for the tragedy—it was exactly all this; but because the picture was quickly and smoothly accomplished. It took only eighteen days to film.

She does not say that it was her most notable characterization, and in the broader sense, it may not rank with some of her later work: with Mimi, for instance, in “La BohÊme”; with Hester Prynne, in “The Scarlet Letter.” Nevertheless, it is the film rÔle for which she will be longest remembered, the part that for artistic conception and delineation and sheer beauty has not been surpassed, either by herself, or by any other. To this day, the magazines reproduce flashes from the now immortal closet scene of “Broken Blossoms,” as the “highest example of screen realism.”

“Broken Blossoms,” a poetic tragedy of the Chinese slums of London, was a film adaptation of “The Chink and the Child,” from Thomas Burke’s collection entitled “Limehouse Nights.” Griffith and Lillian recognized its possibilities, and what she could make of the part of the “Child.” She at first thought the part too young for her, but agreed to try it.

The story is that of a brutal father, a pugilist, who beats and browbeats his twelve-year-old daughter until she has become a terrified, trembling little creature, a stunted human semblance, with a pathetically lovely face. A young Chinese, drift of the quarter, out of pity and adoration for her loveliness, one day gives her shelter, when, after a beating, she staggers into his poor shop. The ending involves the tragic death of all of them, the final scene being one of exquisite art. This is Griffith’s version, but the character of Lucy Burrows is the same in both. This bit is from Burke’s story:

... always in her step and in her look was expectation of dread things; ... yet for all the starved face and transfixed air, there was a lurking beauty about her, a something that called you in the soft curve of her cheek, that cried for kisses and was fed with blows, and in the splendid mournfulness that grew in eyes and lips.

In the world of drama, there are rÔles which the competent artist “creates”—well, or less well—and makes his own; there are rÔles—oh, rarely enough—which are his from the beginning, created for him: “Disraeli,” for George Arliss—“The Music Master,” for David Warfield. I have told my story very badly if the reader does not recognize that for Lillian Gish, the character of Lucy Burrows offered such a part: a part such as would not come to her during more than another ten years, and then, not for the screen.

To a young man named Richard Barthelmess, lately a graduate of Columbia College, Griffith gave the part of the “Chinaman,” because he was rather small, very good-looking, with a face that could make up “Chinese.” To Donald Crisp, an Englishman (he had been General Grant in “The Birth of a Nation”), he gave the part of Battling Burrows. Crisp was a realistic person, and had a face that in full war-paint was a thing to put fear into the stoutest heart.

Lillian was just over the influenza—not equal to the strenuous Griffith rehearsing. Carol Dempster, who had been a dancer in “Intolerance,” rehearsed the part under his direction. Lillian rehearsed with Barthelmess, earning his gratitude.

“It was my first important picture,” Barthelmess said recently, “and I was anxious to do it well. Lillian had had six or seven years’ experience, and she was the soul of patience.” Reflectively, he added: “Lillian, Dorothy, and Mary Pickford are the three finest technicians of the screen. I learned more from Lillian than from any other person, except Griffith.”

The labor of production began. Lillian had been promised that she could work short hours, with nine hours each night for sleep. But of course, Griffith could not stick to that. He could not keep away from the studio; nor could the others.

It was during this strenuous period that Lillian evolved what Griffith calls “the one original bit of business that has been introduced into the art of screen acting.” In his ghastly preparation for beating Lucy, Battling Burrows pauses, and commands her to smile. Griffith and Lillian had discussed how this could be done most effectively. Then, in the midst of the scene, Lillian had an inspiration: Lifting her hand, she spread her fingers and pushed up the corners of her mouth. The effect was tremendous. “Do that again!” shouted Griffith, and they repeated the scene until they got that heart-wringing bit of technique to suit them. Griffith couldn’t get over it.

Another classic bit is where the cringing Lucy, to arrest her father’s hand, looks up in an agony of pleading terror:

“Daddy, your shoes are dusty!” And flings herself forward to clean them.

The closet scene was the climax—the terrible moment where Lucy’s father is breaking in, to kill her. Nobody could rehearse that for her. For three days and nights, she rehearsed it almost without sleep. Small wonder, then, that the hysterical terror of the child’s face was scarcely acting at all, but reality. It is said that when the scene was “shot,” there was an assemblage of silent, listening people outside the studio, awe-struck by Lillian’s screams. Griffith, throughout the scene, sat staring, saying not a word. Her face, during the final assault and struggle, became a veritable whirling medley of terror, its flashing glimpses of agony beyond anything ever shown before or since on the screen. When it was ended, Griffith was as white as paper.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?” he asked, shakily.

“What impressed us all,” writes Harry Carr (he had become Griffith’s assistant), “was that all her reactions were those of a child. Her wild terror in the closet scene—the finest example of emotional hysteria in the history of the screen—was the terror of a child.” Carr further remembers that she had been to several hospitals, to study hysteria, and to inquire how one would be likely to die, from beating.

Griffith was not quite sure what to do with “Broken Blossoms.” He believed it a great artistic success, but it was unusual, tragic: It might win great and instant approval; it might be an utter failure. Harry Carr and Arthur Ryal, the latter a well-known press agent, urged him to take it to New York. Griffith agreed, and took everybody with him. Morris Gest, who saw it at a private showing, “went quite mad” over it: “Greatest picture the world has ever seen—charge what you please for it. You can pack the house at any cost.” They agreed that two and three dollars would be the proper figure.