Mary Pickford (April 8, 1892 - May 29,
1979) was a motion picture star, known as "America's Sweetheart" and "the girl with the curl."
She became one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood.
Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (for some reason, Pickford
always claimed "Marie" as her middle name). Her father, John Charles Smith, worked as a purser
on a steamship, but died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1898. Her mother, née Charlotte Hennessy,
began taking in boarders, and through one of these lodgers Gladys, aged seven, gained a part in
Toronto's Princess Theatre production of The Silver King as Baby Gladys Smith. She
subsequently played in many melodramas and became a popular child-actress in Canada.
Her mother took her to New York, looking for stardom, and she landed a leading role in a 1907
Broadway play, The Warrens of Virginia. The playwright, William C. DeMille, brother of Cecil
B. DeMille, also appeared in the cast. David Belasco, the producer of the play, insisted that
Gladys Smith assume the stage name Mary Pickford.
D. W. Griffith screen-tested and hired her for a part in a one-reel thriller, The Lonely Villa
in 1909. Pickford would go on to become Hollywood's biggest female star, the first female
actor to receive more than a million dollars per year (the first male actor who made a
million-dollar deal was Charlie Chaplin), and one of the few stars to prove successful in both
the silent-film era and the sound-film period. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress in
1929, but retired from films four years later, after a series of disappointing roles and the
public's inability to accept Pickford in roles that reflected her own age, rather than teenage
heroines.
Pickford married three times. She first married Owen Moore (1886 - 1939), an Irish-born
silent-film actor, on January 7, 1911. The couple had numerous marital problems, notably
Moore's alcoholism, and Pickford became secretly involved in a romantic relationship with
Douglas Fairbanks, an action-adventure film-star. The phrase "by the clock" became a secret
message of their love; as the couple was driving and Fairbanks was discussing the recent death
of his mother, the clock stopped.
Pickford finally divorced Moore in March 1920 and married Fairbanks on March 28 the same year.
Together they gained the status of "Hollywood Royalty" and their entertaining at their estate
Pickfair became famous. However, Pickford's second marriage also suffered with marital problems.
Her stressful business schedule and Fairbanks' extra-marital affair with another woman led to
a divorce in January 1936.
Pickford married her last husband, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers (1904 - 1999) - a fresh-faced actor
known as "America's Boy Friend" and later a bandleader - in 1937; they had two adopted children,
Roxanne and Ronald. They stayed together for over four decades until Pickford's death.
Mary Pickford
Partial chronology:
1909: discovered by David Wark Griffith at Biograph, worked for $5 a day
1910: I.M.P., $175 a week
1911: Majestic Film Corp.
1912: back to Biograph
1913: appeared (with Lillian Gish) in Belasco's Broadway production A Good Little Devil
1913: Famous Players, $20,000 a year
1915: worked for various companies, $1000 to $2000 a week
1916: founded "The Mary Pickford Corporation" as a part of Paramount Pictures, she earned about $10,000 a week. She became the first actress to produce her own films.
1917: starred in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Poor Little Rich Girl, among other films. She toured the United States of America with Fairbanks and others, supporting U.S. involvement in World War I and promoting Liberty Bonds.
1918: played two starring roles in Stella Maris, in performances that Adolph Zukor reluctantly judged her best yet. She earned $675,000 (about $10 million in 2005-terms) for three films with First National, plus 50% of all profits, plus a signing bonus of $50,000 and complete control over her films, ranging from script to the final cut.
1919: as a very astute business-person, she founded United Artists (UA) together with Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, William S. Hart, and her soon-to-be husband, Fairbanks. She became its first vice president in 1936.
1923: Pickford, wanting to work with a strong director, convinced Ernst Lubitsch to direct her next film. After considering alternatives, they settled on Rosita, with a performance which critics praised but her fans avoided (it lacked her 'little girl' image).
1927 United Artists, under Pickford's direction, opens their flagship Spanish Gothic movie theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Pickford became deeply involved in the design of the theatre, and two Anthony Heinsbergen murals in the auditorium feature her. Theatre architect Howard Crane opened two other UA theatres in the same year, in Chicago and Detroit. The Los Angeles theatre has become known as the University Cathedral of Dr. Eugene Scott.
1929: Pickford becomes the first major actress to star in a sound film, Coquette, a production that did well at the box office, earning $1.4 million. Her performance earned her an Oscar.
1933: Pickford stars in Secrets, a money-losing film which proved her last.
1937: Pickford founds Mary Pickford Cosmetics, a beauty company.
1941: Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Walter Wanger found the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers.
1949: Pickford and her husband form Pickford-Rogers-Boyd, a radio and television-production company.
1976: Pickford receives an Academy Honorary Award for a lifetime of achievements. The Academy sent a TV crew to her house to record her reaction to the award. Her frail appearance and her nearly unintelligible speech shocked the general public (which vaguely remembered Pickford from the movies she had made in her prime).
For the last 50-odd years of her life, Pickford suffered from alcoholism, which also afflicted her first husband and both of her parents. She died on May 29, 1979 and lies buried, along with her scandal-prone brother Jack Pickford, in the Pickford private family plot in the Garden of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Mary Pickford has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6280 Hollywood Boulevard.
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wiki/Mary_Pickford
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