Broken Blossoms; Current Opinion – July 1919
Mr.Griffith Newest Movie Masterpiece
“Broken Blossoms”, the result of intensive Cultivation in the Field of the Films
A Limehouse Rose
In “Broken Blossoms” Lillian Gish is seen as little Lucy, the Dickensian daughter of a new Bill Sykes. The film is based upon Thomas Burke’s class of “Limehouse Nights” entitled “The Chink and the Child.”
Dying, she gives her
last little smile to
the world that has
been so unkind …
As a child, I was fascinated by the movies. Maybe I was ten years old when I saw Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith’s “Broken Blossoms” and I thought she was wonderful. Coming back home from the movie, I remember getting up on a chair looking at myself in the mirror above the fireplace trying with my fingers to make my mouth smile as she did when she was very sad. So moving the faith I had, I thought I would like to do the same thing and be an actress like she was. I didn’t go a lot to movies since we were living in the country. . . .But the one who had made the big impression on me was Lillian Gish in “Broken Blossoms.” Some years ago, I saw her when she made a grand appearance in North Hampton, New Hampshire where my daughter has a house. She was very pleasant, very intelligent and I think she was a wonderful person.
- From the interview with Annabella in “At the Center of the Frame: Leading Ladies of the Twenties and Thirties” by William M. Drew, Vestal Press, 1999 (Page 108):
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