"The Birth of the Movies" | |
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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]
The early days of Lilian Gish in the movies.
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]