The Wind (1928)

Last night my wife and I watched the 1928 silent The Wind on TCM. If it’s not the last important silent movie, it’s darned close—The Jazz Singer opened just a few weeks before The Wind did. It is a serious and even disturbing look at a woman who moves from Virginia to West Texas and slowly loses her mind under the privations of the harsh environment. Although it’s not on any of the commercial streaming services, it’s readily available online.

It stars Lillian Gish, one of the most beautiful women ever to appear in the movies, and a remarkably courageous and inventive actress. She’s the only person I know of to have appeared in movies in eight different decades.

It occurred to me that there’s a documentary crying out to be made about four different women: Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Ida Lupino, and Lucille Ball. Mary Pickford was the first woman to own her own motion picture studio (she, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks started United Artists). Lillian Gish did it all. Not only was she a foundational movie actress and one of the most affecting, she wrote, directed, and produced movies during the period in which the language of film was being invented. In addition to being a fine actress, as a director Ida Lupino put women on the map. Lucille Ball took charge of her own career, made a prophetic move to television, retained 80% ownership of the earliest episodes of her influential program I Love Lucy, and, with husband Desi Arnaz, founded what was to become the second largest production company in the U. S., Desilu.

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    It occurred to me that there’s a documentary crying out to be made about four different women: Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Ida Lupino, and Lucille Ball.

    Suggest it to Ken Burns.

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