The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 21

section people Lillian Gish: 1st real film star is still with us The Scene 2 Ann Landers 4 Obituaries, 5 The Arts 6 i Tuesday, Feb. 27, 1979 if Bjmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmimmmmdmmmmmmmimmmm i m. If i i iVftJ' vir jr 4 X. i Art- Jv Interview ByBobWisehart JCiU ht-Klddtr News Service The sensation that comes upon meeting Lillian Gish is what you might feel if the quartet on Mount Rushmore started singing or the Statue of Liberty pulled down her arm to look at her wrist watch. She is history with a heartbeat; an artifact who lives and breathes.

To put it in perspective, you could make a pretty good case for Lillian Gish as the first real movie star, in part because she was the star of one of the first real movies, D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," in 1915. To sharpen that perspective, be reminded that Woodrow Wilson was that. "Considering my age, I suppose it was good practice." She is a tiny woman with the nervous habits suggestive of a bird new to captivity hands fluttering, eyes expressive, head turning this way and that.

Alert, but rambling. It's as though six decades of anecdotes are struggling to get out all at once, and little bits and pieces escape with no patl-cular pattern, like steam from a hot teakettle. Obviously, Miss Gish and her president in 1915. Ty Cobb won the American League batting champion- younger sister Dorothy (the de ship that year. The czar still ruled in umcn sisters or springneid, unio) didn't set out to be film actresses.

Russia. yt-' 4', if-fl 'Ttf -fo V'- Vf r'V I k'kV 1 ir lit 1 1 Li 1 "Young man, you make me sound as though I should be stuffed," she said, laughing at her little joke. "There have been critics who suggested I was, you know." Miss Gish it is impossible to imagine anyone calling her "Lillian" was in Philadelphia Sunday to accompany a screening of her 1926 film, "La Boheme," at the Jewish Broad and Pine Streets. To put it bluntly, the woman is no fossil. Born in 1896, she still is active, though she turns down most acting offers because she doesn't like the material.

She is currently seen in "A Wedding," the Robert Altman satire that featured her as the matriarch of a clan of old money forced into a marriage alliance with a pack of the vulgar new rich. "I did a bit of acting," she said in a recent interview. "Then I died and all my scenes for a week or so required that I lay in bed and play a corpse." A gentle smile, and another of her little jokes, and gently macabre at When they set out, there was no film. "In those days, there was no air conditioning," she said, "so the New York theaters would close for 12 weeks of summer and all of us would look for other work. "I had a childhood friend named Gladys Smith (who grew up to be Mary Pickford, marry Douglas Fairbanks and with Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin and D.W.

Griffith, found United Artists She had spent the previous summer making these little films for Mr. Griffith. "I visited darling Mary at the Biog-raph (Griffith's New York studio) and she said, 'Lillian, my girl, you won't believe what we're being paid; $275 a week, plus a "Well, $275 was a lot of money in those days, but I think I was more impressed with the car." Her eyes widened and her voice collapsed into a whisper. "I didn't know anyone who had their own car." Griffith noticed the Gish sisters (See GISH on 4-C) SKS mmmmmmmmmmmm iDiuijji mi jii -ill A'VStl 11 PH. The Bettmann Archive Inc.

Miss Gish (left) and her sister, Dorothy, all virginal innocence in the 1922 screen classic 'Orphans of the Storm' Lillian Gish, in her early years and last August Newsmakers Baryshnikov is hailed by the Chief Hess hospitalized Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, who will be 85 in April, was admitted to a West Berlin hospital for the second time in two months yesterday, a spokesman for the hospital said. He said that Hess was suffering from acute bronchitis. Hess was taken from Spandau jail to the British military hospital. He had spent five days in the hospital early in January with what was officially described as a blood vessel ailment. bines is used to desalinate sea water.

When the plant, which cost more than $500 million, is in full production it will yield 25 million gallons of fresh water daily, equal to Dubai's current needs. "One of man's oldest dreams has been to turn the desert green," the queen said. "I am very glad today to be able to pay my tribute to a bold and imaginative industrial venture." Then she pressed a button to start a cascade of water into a covered reservoir from the first of six desalination plants to go into operation. But his son, Wolf-Ruediger Hess, said at the time that his father had suffered a stroke that left him three-quarters blind. Smelter celebrated Britain's Queen Elizabeth pressed a red button yesterday to make the desert of Dubai bloom.

On a 19-day tour of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, the queen inaugurated an 'aluminum smelter in the Emirate of Dubai. The system is unique because waste heat from the smelter's tur according to a poll conducted for People magazine. However, those participating in the poll, conducted by Audits and Surveys do not think that Carter should be re-elected. They favor, instead, Sen. Edward M.

Kennedy, The poll found Paul Newman to be the favorite movie actor and Barbra Streisand the favorite actress. ABC's Howard Cosell was voted the most boring man on television, while Farrah Fawcett-Majors was chosen the most boring woman on TV. Baryshnikov, noted for his soaring leaps, missed a chandelier in the White House East Room by inches. Baryshnikov and ballerinas Patricia McBride and Heather Watts performed four dances. All are members of the New York City Ballet, currently performing in Washington.

People pick favorites President Carter is the most trusted politician and former President Richard M. Nixon the least trusted, Mikhail Baryshnikov, hailed by President Carter as "perhaps the finest dancer in our lifetime," leaped and twirled his way around a White House stage Sunday in a command performance for the President and nearly 100 guests. Afterward, the President said, "A talent like his transcends national boundaries. He binds together the human spirit throughout the world." The small stage proved a slight problem. Some of the choreography had to be altered, and even then, A prodigy keeps young by just thinking Profile By Edward Schumacher Inquirer Stall Writer PRINCETON, N.J.

One of the curiosities about mathematicians, practitioners of the purest and most arcane of sciences, is that they share a critical trait with athletes: Both peak young. Many of the greatest mathematicians developed their most brilliant theories by iue lime ihey were in ineir us, wnen tneir minds were still clear and facile and able to grasp abstractions at the limits of man's conceptual ability. Einstein, a physicist, discovered his very abstract theory of general relativity, for example, when he was only 27. So, why isn't Charlie Fefferman worried? Fefferman, a Princeton University professor, is considered by his peers to be one of this century's greatest mathematicians, a man who has developed formulas so brilliant and so abstract that there is not, as yet, any practical use for some of them. And already he is an aging 29.

"You can never tell when you're doing mathematics that you've still got it," Fefferman, a slight, full-bearded man, said recently in an interview in his house here. "The question is something that you have to live with. You have to live with the constant tension. Every mathematician feels it" of others in the field who do good work." "Already, a 29-year-old prodigy is a little shopworn," he said. Most of Fefferman's work has been in three fields: the relation among complex variables, Fourier analysis (the study of vibrations) and partial differential equations (the relation between time and space).

One of his most significant breakthroughs was his development of a new formula that relieved the strictures of analyzing complex variables only in a two-dimensional sense. Fefferman's formula allows three-dimensional analysis of such questions as how to make an accurate flat map when the earth is round and how electrical charges in space will react to each other. For him, mathematics is like art and takes a special temperament, one he cannot describe. Considering that both fields deal heavily with the abstract, the comparison is probably apt. "After months, you look at a problem from a different point of view and suddenly it breaks apart and seems that it wasn't difficult at all," he said.

"There's something elegant about that, something awe-inspiring. You aren't creating. You're discovering what was there all the time, and that is much more beautiful than anything man can create." of the three years as its first Waterman Award winner. All he has had to do in return is what he likes most think. He has spent months at a time concentrating on just one problem.

For most of the day and well into the night, he paces, sits, fidgets and lies on his belly, lost in intense thought. During particularly frustrating periods, his wife, Julie, drags him to Aitman aepartment store in paramus, N.J., where, for reasons beyond both of them, some of his greatest inspirations have hit him and he begins scribbling formulas on brown paper bags. But if Fefferman is a genius, he is no eccentric. As a child, his parents protected him from publicity and encouraged him to socialize with children his own age, he said. Today, he is an open and warm man, and the center of attention in his life is his 2-month-old daughter.

He works mostly at home, in a comfortable ranch-style home. His wife, an outgoing person, said she "wouldn't know what it was like not having him around all the time." Fefferman. admits that the acclaim he has been receiving is "ego-gratifying," but he is, nonetheless, extremely modest. "I've made a contribution, but if I hadn't been around, someone else would probably do the work," he said. "There are a lot .41 But Fefferman figures he has an angle.

Although he is considered a true genius, he in fact reads little keeping his mind clear of others' thoughts but he thinks a lot. "Perhaps I'm extreme," he said. "Compared to other mathematicians, I probably know less than most." The approach apparently has worked. Fefferman's accomplishments in mathematics, the father of all sciences, have been astounding. Charles L.

Fefferman, the son of a federal government economist, was an honors student at the University of Maryland at age 12. At 22, he was a full professor at the University of Chicago, the youngest full professor in the history of any college, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Last year, in Helsinki, he became one of the first Americans and one of the youngest mathematicians to receive the Fields Medal, which is awarded only once every four years and is the most coveted international prize among mathematicians. Today, he is in his third year of a three-year leave of absence, courtesy of Congress, which is giving him $50,000 for each Charles L. Fefferman.