- She was taught how to shoot by notorious western outlaw Al J. Jennings, who was in one of her early films (after having served a long term in prison for train robbery). When John Huston and Burt Lancaster took her to the desert to teach her how to shoot for The Unforgiven (1960), they were astounded to discover she could shoot more accurately and faster than they did. She found that she liked shooting, and over the years had developed into an expert shot.
- Left her entire estate, which was valued at several million dollars, to Helen Hayes. Hayes died 18 days after Gish.
- She and Mary Pickford were childhood friends, but Mary tried to never be left alone with Lillian--remembering her mother's superstitious belief that "the good die young", Mary was in constant fear that Lillian would drop dead at any moment.
- While shooting Way Down East (1920) she was required to lie down on a slab of ice that was floating in a river for several hours in order to shoot a scene. While she did this, one of her hands was immersed in freezing cold water for hours, which permanently damaged the nerves in her wrist.
- After her amicable parting with D.W. Griffith she joined MGM in 1925, but was unceremoniously dumped when Greta Garbo emerged as a star. Considered a "sexless antique", she turned to radio and her first love, the theater. Ironically, MGM had Garbo on the set of The Scarlet Letter (1926) every day to watch Gish work as part of her apprenticeship.
- She maintained a very close relationship with her sister Dorothy Gish, as well as with Mary Pickford, for her entire life. She never married or had children.
- She and Dorothy Gish both started working for D.W. Griffith in the early days of American Mutoscope & Biograph. While it has been claimed that Griffith was immediately infatuated with Lillian, in their first film for him, An Unseen Enemy (1912), he thought they were twins. According to Lillian's autobiography, he had to tie different colored hair ribbons on the girls to tell them apart and give them direction: "Red, you hear a strange noise. Run to your sister. Blue, you're scared ,too. Look toward me, where the camera is".
- At her 1984 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony, John Houseman claimed that she and her sister Dorothy Gish were offered the chance to buy the Sunset Strip for $300. After considering the offer, they decided to spend the money for two dresses at the fashionable Bullock's department store instead.
- On 6/11/1976 the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Film Theater was dedicated on the Bowling Green State University campus in Bowling Green, OH.
- Every year on her birthdate, October 14, New York's Museum of Modern Art shows at least one of her films or television performances.
- John Gilbert was infatuated with her, and would mess up his "love scenes" with her in the filming of La Bohème (1926) on purpose, so he could keep kissing her.
- She was originally a member of the America First Committee, which advocated against US intervention in WWII. It was not an uncommon position to be against America joining the war, with polls showing that 40% of Americans agreed at one point, but eventually, Nazi brutality made anti-war sentiment a radical opinion--one most infamously associated with the fascist-sympathizing Charles A. Lindbergh. Gish was against any war due to her experience filming Hearts of the World (1918), a WWI propaganda film, with D.W. Griffith in wartime France, in which she saw the horrors the Great War had unleashed. On why she opposed American involvement in WWII, Gish said, "If I could save one American life and ruin my career in doing so, I would consider my career well lost." However, she resigned as a member of the committee several months before Pearl Harbor, and would later write a letter, "I made War Propaganda", in the periodical "Scribner's Commentator". After war was declared on Germany in December 1941, isolationism fell heavily out of favor with the dominant sentiment of the nation but Mary Pickford defended her: "This lady is as you and I are. She was merely against war".
- Her film career spanned 75 years. This was regarded as the longest acting career of any movie legend of the first 100 years of film. Her first film was An Unseen Enemy (1912) in 1912 and her last was The Whales of August (1987) in 1987.
- She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
- She was filmed for a scene in Woody Allen's Zelig (1983). She scolded legendary director of photography Gordon Willis on his lighting set-up and, while the crew watched aghast, gave Willis step-by-step instructions on how to relight the scene. Willis complied. The scene did not make it into the final version of the film.
- The debut album of the rock band The Smashing Pumpkins was named "Gish" after her.
- Related, on her mother's side, to US President Zachary Taylor.
- She held director D.W. Griffith in such high regard that, up until her death in 1993, she would always refer to him as "Mr. Griffith".
- In 1984 she received the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award.
- Interred beside her sister Dorothy Gish at Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in New York City.
- In her memoirs Gish recalled what craft service on location was like in the silent film days. Cast and crew got box lunches consisting of a cheese sandwich, a hard-boiled egg (if you were lucky), a piece of fruit, and a half-pint of milk. "I lived for so many years on those box lunches that to this day I cannot eat a sandwich", Gish said.
- She has never appeared in a film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
- She has appeared in seven films selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), The Wind (1928) and The Night of the Hunter (1955).
- Sister of Dorothy Gish , daughter of Mary Gish.
- Strongly denied The Birth of a Nation (1915) was racist until her death, despite ongoing complaints that it was a glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.
- In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked her #19 on its list of the 50 Greatest American Female Screen Legends.
- Awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1720 Vine St. on 2/8/60.
- She was of English, French and German heritage.
- She kept a supply of gold christening rings to send out every time she learned a newborn daughter had been named "Lillian" after her.
- She once autographed an 8mm copy of her film The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913) for a young filmmaker named Harry McDevitt.
- At the time of her death, she was less than 8 months away from becoming a centenarian.
- In May 2019, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Film Theater at Bowling Green State University, OH, was renamed "the BGSU Film Theater" in protest at Lillian's participation in The Birth of a Nation (1915) (though Dorothy was not involved in the movie, and the cinema kept its endowment and collection of Gish memorabilia).
- She met with Benito Mussolini, whom she greatly admired, during a visit to Italy.
- She and Eva Marie Saint starred in the original television and stage versions of "Trip To Bountiful" and had great respect for one another.
- Both sisters returned to the screen after each had won success on Broadway, Dorothy in 'Our Hearts Were Young and Gay' and Lillian in the title role of 'Miss Susie Slagle's'.
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