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Christened with the rich golden Juice of a California orange, the first Victoria Hupmobile in the west appeared In Los Angeles this week. Surrounded by the beautiful flowers and crystal watered swimming pool of their Denishawn home, the distinctive motor car is the property of the Aliases Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

It is an appealing story and the treatment is nothing if it is not delicate and artistic. Allan Dwan had a splendidly constructed scenario to work from and an intelligent cast to work with. The director himself rose to the occasion and the result is “An Innocent Magdalene,” a picture of rare charm. It is a picture which creates and sustains a real and artistic illusion. Roy Sumerville wrote the scenario from the story by Granville Warwick. Lillian Gish probably never had better opportunities and probably for that very reason never gave such an impressive characteri ation, and she along with Sam de Grasse and Spottiswoode Aitken and others in the cast compels admiration.

When asked how well she thought the Premiere would recreate original silent film viewing. Miss Gish described a similar screening of “Broken Blossoms” done recently in Southern California. A special color tinted print loaned by New York City’s Museum of Modern Art was shown (as will be at this Friday’s Premiere), and Miss Gish declared that she had “never known it (the film) to go better.-’’

Lillian Gish celebrated her 87th birthday in the French capital Friday. Here she waves to photographers as French culture minister Jack Lang waits to award her with the Arts and Letters commander medal during ceremonies Thursday at the French culture ministry.

“I always loved the stage. I always felt that I was part of it. I started acting when I was six, you know. “Pictures used to be something you could give your whole heart to in the silent days. And I liked that. We often worked hard, very hard, often never knowing if we would be paid until the pictures proved successful and sometimes not being paid when they were not. “But silent pictures were wonderful. There was so very much to expressing yourself in action alone . . . such a thrill when you knew you had told your story without words. I have seen some of the old silent pictures recently and you would be I surprised how well they stand up. “Words need an audience and when it came to the business of speaking lines again, I had to return to the stage. I have never regretted it.”

The only people who make good movies anymore are the Russians, because they understand the power of film. “They’re the only ones who take film seriously,” she explained. “Although we don’t always like their politics, they do understand the power of film.” Hollywood these days churns out movies that “technically have gone forward, but intellectually and spiritually have gone backwards.” she said. Miss Gish said she has little time for the realism of the 70s, the explicit sex, the dalliance with drugs and promiscuity, the exploitation and the morose downer concepts of the nuclear age.

“Ugliness disturbs me,” she commented, “and much of what is shown on the screen is ugly. Not only in exposure of the human body. I also mean the ugliness of violence. To me, violence is just as offensive as nudity. “Although I do not approve of censorship, I wish there were some way to impose taste on the people who make films. It’s not that I mind the portrayal of sex in movies, but sex should be beautiful, an expression of human love. But too often it is made to seem ugly.”

Cast by nature to give an illusion of belonging more to another world than this one, she puts a spiritual quality, an emotion and a tensity into the part which rises to breathtaking moments of artistry. Gish start in Biograph days is supremely fulfilled in Henry King’s production of “The White Sister.” Her popularity today is as sturdy as in the old days with the added advantage of having grown with each new performance. Her characterizations have matured and mellowed to a point of being sheer genius. No one has kept alive flame than Lillian Gish, no one has learned to burn finer.