Actress Lillian Gish, often dubbed "First Lady of the Silent Screen," dies at age 97. Gish, born in 1896 in Springfield, Ohio, started acting on the stage at age five with her mother and sister Dorothy to help support the family. In 1912, an old family friend, Gladys Smith-who had changed her name to Mary Pickford-introduced the family to director D.W. Griffith, and the Gish sisters started working in their first film the same day. Lillian worked closely with Griffith until the early 1920s and became a silent-movie superstar. However, with the coming of sound, she returned to the stage and appeared in few movies until her comeback in 1978, in her early 80s. She was 91 when she made her last film appearance, in the critically acclaimed The Whales of August, which also featured Bette Davis.
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