James Grissom: Both Tennessee [Williams] and [Elia] Kazan spoke of Lillian Gish not being of this world….
Peter Bogdanovich:…and they’re absolutely right, although given what Tennessee told me, I don’t think he meant it in a derogatory sense. I don’t know about Kazan. But Lillian Gish was not at all of this world, and I applaud her for escaping the surly bonds, so to speak.
James Grissom: She told me that her life had been saved by Swedenborg. [Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish Christian mystic and philosopher, who believed in spiritual realms, and Lillian Gish believed that the spiritual realm was as real and as near as the so-called reality in which we were moving about.]
Peter Bogdanovich: Well, among other things. She was devoted to a pure ‘mental climate.’ She ate natural foods with the same fervor that is given to Gloria Swanson. Wretched-looking food was on her plate but she was very generous in what she would offer to me. She didn’t make me eat her ghastly food.
James Grissom: She told Tennessee that blackstrap molasses would make him more masculine.
Peter Bogdanovich: Ha! Did it? She told me about the molasses and the wheat germ and fistfuls of vitamins, and hanging or reclining upside down. You see, her mind was daily purified and not of this world or her time, and she flipped herself upside down to shake off what gravity might be trying to do to her.
James Grissom: Whatever she did, it worked. She was extraordinarily kind to me.
Peter Bogdanovich: I agree. I owe her so much. If I ever feel discouraged, I recall her passion. This was a woman who was present at the creation of the motion picture, a gift, she reminded me, from God. Film was predicted in Scripture: the universal language. God had blessed the film, and God had blessed D.W. Griffith, and God had blessed her. She was very kind. She would show up for anyone, anywhere. She told me once that she would be judged by what she left behind—in films and in feelings.
James Grissom: What did she say to you about Robert Altman?
Peter Bogdanovich: How did you hear about that?
James Grissom: From Robert Altman. When he was talking to me about Barbara Baxley.
Peter Bogdanovich: I didn’t think that anecdote was in the water supply. Well, I heard or read that Lillian Gish was going to be working with Altman [in A Wedding], and I found that very exciting. I mean, the First Lady of Films working with a brilliant, independent director. A genius. Innovative. A meeting of two worlds, you know? And I went out, in New York, and as often happened, I saw Miss Lillian, as she liked to be called, and we embraced, and I told her how happy I was that she was going to be in an Altman film.
She grew very serious, very dark, and asked if she could speak to me. We were speaking, as I pointed out. In private, she told me. And so we snuck away to a corner, and I’m telling you, her eyes were misty. I couldn’t think of what I was about to hear. She told me that she loved Mr. Altman—she called all directors Mister; never used their first names—and she thought he was so talented, so wonderful. And? I waited.
“His language!” she said, clutching her heart, which was typical. Miss Lillian had never heard such language, and she told him he was poisoning the air and his talent. Apparently, Altman cleaned up his language for her sake, during his time with her, but we came to share a term from Miss Lillian. She scolded him and told him his air was carnal. “Carnality is just flying around!” People actually looked up to see if something was flying around. Just some shits and fucks, I guess, but Carnal Air became a phrase Altman and I used when greeting each other. We thought it might be a good name for a film company. Or an airline.
The above interview took place, by telephone, in 2015.