Way Down East (1920)

Lillian Gish lies on a drifting slab of ice, filmed on the real river around White River Junction, Vermont, for D. W. Griffith's Way Down East. There is no studio tank here. Trailing her hair and hand in the freezing water was Gish's own idea, and accounts of the shoot describe her frostbitten fingers. Melodrama on paper, the rescue on the floes is still one of the most harrowing sequences a star ever played, and this photo shows exactly how exposed she was.