![]() The university pushed back, quoting Gish from a 1983 interview with a Bowling Green publication. This is a supreme ‘teachable moment’ if it can be handled with a more nuanced sense of history.” A university should be a bastion of free speech. ![]() Doing so makes her a scapegoat in a broader political debate. ![]() The letter calls the removal “unfortunate and unjust. “Her work in many films, such as Griffith’s own Intolerance (1916), a dazzling four-part overview of world history in which she plays the symbolic mother figure rocking the cradle of humanity and tolerance Griffith’s deeply moving 1919 interracial drama Broken Blossoms the 1955 masterpiece The Night of the Hunter, in which she plays a beatific protector of endangered children and the 1967 film of Graham Greene’s The Comedians, in which she challenges Haiti’s dreaded secret police and demonstrates her outspoken belief in universal brotherhood among races and nations.” But as even the university admits in its task force report on the theater’s name, Lillian was no racist,” the letter said. “ Griffith’s film takes an indefensible, racist approach to the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Gish shouldn’t be judged by one of many films made over a long career, the letter states. Both were Ohio natives, but not alumnae of the school. She shared billing with her sister on the theater name. After a study, it was agreed to change the name.īut this week, such stars as James Earl Jones, Helen Mirren, Martin Scorsese and several leading film scholars released an open letter calling for Bowling Green to retain Gish’s name on the theater. Students at Bowling Green requested the change. However, it is full of racist imagery and plot lines, and venerates the Ku Klux Klan, who ride in to save the day. It is considered a landmark of film history, with many firsts – first close-up, fade-outs, and the longest film made to that point. Gish starred in the 1915 silent film, which was adapted from a novel and play, The Clansman. Bowling Green State University has removed actress Lillian Gish’s name from a campus theater because of her part in D.W.
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