Another classic bit is where the cringing Lucy, to arrest her father’s hand, looks up in an agony of pleading terror:
“Daddy, your shoes are dusty!” And flings herself forward to clean them.
The closet scene was the climax—the terrible moment where Lucy’s father is breaking in, to kill her. Nobody could rehearse that for her. For three days and nights, she rehearsed it almost without sleep. Small wonder, then, that the hysterical terror of the child’s face was scarcely acting at all, but reality. It is said that when the scene was “shot,” there was an assemblage of silent, listening people outside the studio, awe-struck by Lillian’s screams. Griffith, throughout the scene, sat staring, saying not a word. Her face, during the final assault and struggle, became a veritable whirling medley of terror, its flashing glimpses of agony beyond anything ever shown before or since on the screen. When it was ended, Griffith was as white as paper.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?” he asked, shakily.
[Illustration: LILLIAN GISH AND RICHARD BARTHELMESS IN “BROKEN BLOSSOMS”]
“What impressed us all,” writes Harry Carr (he had become Griffith’s assistant), “was that all her reactions were those of a child. Her wild terror in the closet scene—the finest example of emotional hysteria in the history of the screen—was the terror of a child.” Carr further remembers that she had been to several hospitals, to study hysteria, and to inquire how one would be likely to die, from beating.
Griffith was not quite sure what to do with “Broken Blossoms.” He believed it a great artistic success, but it was unusual, tragic: It might win great and instant approval; it might be an utter failure. Harry Carr and Arthur Ryal, the latter a well-known press agent, urged him to take it to New York. Griffith agreed, and took everybody with him. Morris Gest, who saw it at a private showing, “went quite mad” over it: “Greatest picture the world has ever seen—charge what you please for it. You can pack the house at any cost.” They agreed that two and three dollars would be the proper figure.
“Broken Blossoms” was first shown as the initial offering of Griffith’s “repertory season” at the George M. Cohan Theatre, New York, May 13, 1919, before as distinguished an audience as had ever assembled in a Broadway theatre. There was not a hitch anywhere. The film was mechanically perfect; it was accompanied by special haunting music. The Chinese scenes showed an effect of pale blue lighting. Griffith, Lillian and Barthelmess were present. When the picture ended, its success assured, Morris Gest darted back stage, kicked over chairs, waved his arms, wept and laughed hysterically. The Sun, next evening, called it the “most artistic photoplay yet produced.” The Tribune said: “_It is the most beautiful_ motion picture we have ever seen, or ever expect to see. When it was over, we wanted to rush up to everyone we met and cry: ‘Oh, don’t miss it, don’t miss it!’” There was a great deal more in the same strain, echoed by every critic. The elder Schildkraut said of it: “I have seen every actress of Europe and America during the last half century. Lillian Gish’s scene in the closet, where she is hiding in terror from her brutal father, is the finest work I have ever witnessed.”