Lillian was in a position to make a new start. She made it with Griffith, who was having troubles of his own getting a group of players together for a production suited to his Mamaroneck studio. He wanted to do “Faust,” but Lillian prevailed upon him to do “The Two Orphans,” which would give Dorothy a good part, as Louise, the blind sister. Griffith agreed, and rehearsing for the new picture was soon under way. Lillian’s salary was now a thousand dollars a week. The bark of the wolf, which had become noticeable, died away.

“Orphans of the Storm,” as it was finally called, began as a rather close picture version of Kate Klaxton’s old play. Two sisters set out for Paris by stage-coach, to obtain cure for the blind Louise. One of them, beautiful Henriette, is kidnapped on arrival, by a dissolute rouÉ, the other is picked up by the terrible Madame Frouchard and compelled to beg in the streets. In the picture, the rescue and reunion of the sisters is brought about through a handsome young aristocrat who, under revolutionary ban, is sentenced to death on the guillotine. Henriette (Lillian) herself is involved, and narrowly escapes—being on the scaffold with her head under the knife at the moment of rescue. The revolutionary feature was a Griffith addition to the original play.

Griffith spent great sums on the settings of this picture. He was never one to be sparing in such matters while his money held out, with the result that he was likely to be brought up with a round turn, at the end. For the guillotine scene, he required a great number of extras, and he could not afford to assemble them more than once. One morning he called up all the weather bureaus, and even an old man who had the rheumatism, to find out if it was going to rain. All said that it would not, and he got out the big crowd for the guillotine episode, as big as he could afford. And it didn’t rain, but it was cloudy. Never mind, he would make the picture anyway. He could not assemble that crowd again.

Interesting things happened during the making of the picture. Harry Carr recalls that a certain actor, fresh from Broadway, with the tricks not unfamiliar there, had the habit of easing back from the camera in his scenes with Lillian, so that she would have to turn her face to speak to him. She did not complain, but “Whitey,” head electrician, came to Carr, pale with anger:

“You tell that kike,” he said, “that the next time he does that, us boys will drop a dome light on his bean. Lots of accidents happen in studios, and one is about to happen now.”

Carr passed along the information, with the result that the offender made no more mistakes—was almost afraid to leave his dressing-room. According to Carr, Frances Marion, the distinguished scenario writer, once said: “There is plenty of real chivalry in motion picture studios, but it’s all to be found among the juice-gangs.” Carr adds:

Griffith had a way of rehearsing plays until everybody wished himself dead—chairs for horses—tables for thrones, etc. He rehearsed with anybody who happened to be around. Kate Bruce was rehearsed weeks on end, for a part that she very much wanted, but which Griffith, with his dread of the irrevocable, had never really assured her she could play. Lillian at last cornered him, just before the picture actually began. He reluctantly said that he supposed “Brucie” would get the part. “Then please let me tell her,” pleaded Lillian. “All right,” assented D. W., and Lillian ran to her like a little girl. Brucie was sitting in a chair on the set. Lillian almost picked up her frail little body. I don’t know what they said, but they stood there, crying in each other’s arms. They both realized that it would probably be Brucie’s last big part.

When Lillian got a new part, she flung herself into it completely. She wanted to know what such a girl would eat; what she would do on her holidays; what colors she would like. Making “Orphans of the Storm,” Lillian turned herself into French. She read French books, and did everything to avoid talking, even to us, who might drag her out of the picture.

“Orphans of the Storm” was finished in time to open in Boston about the end of the year 1921. Lillian and Dorothy accompanied Griffith to the first showing; also, to other first showings in the larger cities—as far South as New Orleans, as far West as Minneapolis and St. Paul. Everywhere they were fÊted and entertained; in New Orleans the railway station was crowded when they arrived; the news correspondent says that a procession with a “real, honest-to-goodness brass band led the way to the City Hall, where the Mayor of New Orleans gave Lillian and Dorothy Gish a warm welcome and the freedom of the city.”

Perhaps there were not brass bands everywhere, but always a crowd, always entertainment, always a reception on the stage after the picture, with demands for a speech, which Lillian had to make. In Washington, they were given a special luncheon by President and Mrs. Harding, with great boxes of flowers which, with Griffith standing between them, Lillian and Dorothy were obliged to hold while they were being photographed. The papers spoke of the “democracy of these two celebrities, who were so cheerfully willing to meet in a ‘closeup,’ in the lobbies, after their appearance on the stage, proving the bigness of their characters.” True enough, but there was another side to it: Lillian to Nell:

We have been going around the country on the “Orphans” tour. It is all so nerve-racking. I would rather do anything else, but if it helps Mr. Griffith, of course I could not refuse, and I suppose it is a good experience. You can’t be a hermit all your life, though I do not enjoy crawling out of my shell.... I was never made for this life—if they would only let me go by unnoticed.

She could not hope for that. They had her back in Boston, to ornament the hundredth showing, and the celebration was greater than ever. Miss Crabtree, once the adorable “Lotta,” was there. Lillian went into a stage box to see her. The little old lady, darling of a former generation, kissed her affectionately, and taking her hands, sat stroking them. Presently she said, softly: “Take care of your beauty, dearest—it goes so soon—so very, very soon.”

In an interview, Lillian expressed a belief that colleges might give moving-picture courses, thereby improving the standards of both acting and morals in productions of the future. This was seized upon by the Harvard Dramatic Club, and she was urged to speak at the Harvard Union. She had spoken briefly at a number of churches, during her travels, and presently we find her addressing an audience of several thousand, at the Chelsea Methodist Episcopal Church, in 178th Street, New York. The burden of her purpose, as to the pictures, she conveyed in these words:

“The industry needs the development that the people of the church and the educators can give it. We players are doing our very best to get rid of all objectionable elements, but we want outside help.

“The time is coming when educational pictures will fill library shelves, exactly as books do now, and the universities should anticipate library educational advance. This is a great reason why cinema courses should be given in colleges.”

She did not write her speeches. She carried in her head a few main points, and spoke extemporaneously. Her clear, trained voice, reached every part of the great edifice—a treat for those who heard her. One of them, a woman, wrote:

If I were a poet, I suppose I might make a lovely poem about you; or I might, were I a painter, try to put on my canvas something so glorious that it would speak to everyone of what an inspiration and delight you are; but I am nobody at all—nobody except your sincere admirer.

And it was another woman who wrote of “Orphans of the Storm”:

I cannot get over your acting: I never feel the reality of a character so keenly as when you portray it. And there is no raving. Why, I have watched you play emotional scenes in which you scarcely moved a finger, and still, as someone said: “Your silence is as golden as the voice of Bernhardt.”

Which brings us back to the picture itself.

It was a beautiful and successful production. Some of the sets were especially fine: The garden picture, for instance, with its setting of palace and fountain and richly costumed guests, its magnificent outer gates.

The court scene, the sinister tribunal of the Revolution, was terribly realistic; the ghastly guillotine climax was quite as horrible as it was intended to be, with only the usual fault of such picture episodes, that the suspense was too prolonged—prolonged to a point where the horror evaporated.

The finest scene in the picture is where Dorothy, as the blind Louise, is singing in the street, while Lillian, in a room above, absorbed in the narration of Louise’s mother, hears and gradually recognizes her sister’s voice, and then is unable to reach her. The awakening recognition, gradual, tender, startled, in Lillian’s face, compares with the best of her screen work.

The old stage-coach in which Lillian and Dorothy drove to Paris ... whatever became of it? It was too good to go the way of old properties. “Orphans of the Storm” was worthy of Griffith and of Lillian. It seems fitting that their long association should finally end in this distinguished and happy way.