The Birth of the Movies
| "The Birth of the Movies" | |
|---|---|
| Philco Television Playhouse episode | |
| Directed by | Delbert Mann |
| Written by | Robert Alan Aurthur H.R. Hays |
| Based on | memoirs of Lilian Gish |
| Original air date | April 22, 1951 |
The Birth of the Movies is a 1951 episode of the TV series The Philco Television Playhouse. [1][2]
Premise
[edit]The early days of Lilian Gish in the movies.
Cast
[edit]- Lillian Gish as Narrator
- Jean Pearson as Young Lillian Gish
- John Newland as D.W. Griffith
- Paul Mann as Billy Bitzer
- Bruce Gordon as Burton
- Robert F. Simon as Merril
- Ben Lackland as Pickett
- Brandon Peters as Billings
- Gordon Peters as Crawford
- Richard Abbott as West
Reception
[edit]Gish's biographer wrote the script "did little justice to D. W. Griffith. Less a biography than a hagiography, the script is a stultifying, moralizing, reductive, and inaccurate portrait of one of cinema's seminal figures."[3] Variety wrote "the Philco scripters painted their story in black and white tones exclusively... Miss Gish... went too far overboard. Besides overlooking completely the contributions of other film pioneers, there was no excuse for the castigating treatment given the latter-day Hollywood toppers... The program won't help cement relations between the film and TV industries."[4]
The Daily News wrote "its facts, and its heart, are in the right place."[5]
The Council of Motion Picture Organizations complained to NBC about the play's depiction of Hollywood.[6]
References
[edit]- ^ "TV fans can't go to post". The Cincinnati Enquirer. 22 April 1951. p. 53.
- ^ "Ezra Goodmann". Daily News. 24 April 1951. p. 18.
- ^ Affron, Charles (2001). Lillian Gish : her legend, her life. p. 311.
- ^ Variety 25 April 1951, republished in Affron p 311
- ^ "Ezra Goodman". Daily News. 1 May 1951. p. 17.
- ^ "NBC lashes back at pix criticism of Griffith program". Variety. 2 May 1951. p. 2. Retrieved 6 March 2025.