Lillian Gish And The Wind Machine

Found this on Chained and Perfumed, Charlie Parker's featured blog of the month. That's Lillian Gish on the set of The Wind. To create the endless sandstorms that are central to the plot, Gish and director Victor Sjöström flew eight airplanes to the middle of the Mojave Desert and cranked their propellers up on high. Coupled with 120ºF temperatures that cooked metal surfaces and warped film stock, it was a pretty miserable experience.

Great movie though.

I've written about Lillian Gish before and I won't reiterate it all here except to say that she was the best actress of the Silent Era and though she most often played shy, virginal victims, she was actually one tough cookie who took complete control of her career in the early '20s and crafted some of the best movies of the age. As screenwriter Frances Marion put it, "She might look fragile, but physically and spiritually she was as fragile as a steel rod. Nobody could sway her from her self-appointed course. With a Botticelli face, she had the mind of a good Queen Bess, dictating her carefully thought-out policies and ruling justly, if firmly."

Hmm, now that I think about, Lillian Gish sounds a lot like Katie-Bar-The-Door. And you wonder why I like her so much ...