Lillian Gish
The cast member of Birth of a Nation who would enjoy the greatest stardom in the world of feature-length film which the movie created as part of its transformation of the cinema was Lillian Gish. A close collaborative relationship with director D.W. Griffith would result in a series of films that were huge hits at the time and remain influential examples of the silent film era including Intolerance and Way Down East. Gish, in fact, became one of the first movie stars, attaining a popularity so great that she was dubbed The First Lady of American Cinema. Her career would span the history of Hollywood film, finally concluding in 1987 with The Whales of August. Her legacy took a rather notorious turn when she became an outspoken supporter of the now discredited America First movement which vigorously campaigned to keep America free from involvement in World War II.
Raoul Walsh
The only other cast member to attain the kind of fame enjoyed by Gish was the actor cast as Pres. Lincoln’s assassin. Presenting a contrast to Gish's work, however, Walsh’s most significant contribution to cinema was behind the camera as as director. In fact, the part of Booth is so small that Walsh does not even receive on-screen credit, but he more than made up for that oversight by directing such classics as High Sierra, The Roaring Twenties, They Died with Their Boots On and White Heat.
Joseph Henabery
Elmo Lincoln is another actor who failed to make a huge impression upon audiences in Birth of a Nation. Three years later, however, Lincoln would go to claim for himself a small parcel of unprecedented Hollywood history when he became the first actor to play Tarzan on screen.
Mary Wynn
Mary Wynn is another uncredited cast member whose fame goes beyond the film. In Wynn’s case, her fame arrived by managing to outlast all other cast members. Upon her death at the age of 99 in 2001, she became the last surviving cast member of Birth of a Nation to succumb.
John Ford
Yet another future director was also cast in a small part in the film. In this case not just any director, but one of the few directors working at the same time as D.W. Griffith whose own career went on to eclipse his. John Ford remains the only four-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Director, responsible for movies more than capable of standing alongside Birth of a Nation as historically important viewing, including Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath.
