Pickford, Mary 1892-1979

PICKFORD, MARY 1892-1979

Movie actress

America's Sweetheart

By the time she was voted the most popular actress in America by the readers of a fan magazine in 1917, Mary Pickford was famous for the juvenile heroines she had played in movies such as The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917). Despite her childlike appearance she was an astute business-woman amassing a fortune, the most powerful woman in the film industry.

Background

Pickford's business sense was born of necessity during childhood. The girl dubbed "America's Sweetheart" was a Canadian, born Gladys Louise Smith on 8 April 1892 in Toronto. Her father, who had held various low-paying jobs, died in 1898, leaving his wife and their three children under the age of six—Gladys, Lottie, and Jack—on the verge of poverty. At a friend's suggestion, Charlotte Smith took her daughters to audition for a show that was looking for child actors, and by 1900 all three Smith children were touring the United States with a theater stock company. In 1907 the famous producer-playwright David Belasco cast Gladys in William deMille's new play, The Warrens of Virginia, and that job supported her family for two years. When she took the part she changed her name to Mary Pickford. (Pickford was the maiden name of one of her great-grandmothers.)

The Movies

In 1909 Pickford met movie director D. W. Griffith, who offered her five dollars a day to appear in his pictures at Biograph. Pickford asked for twice that amount and got it. During the next two years she appeared in eighty-one Biograph films. In 1911 Pick-ford married fellow actor Owen Moore, who proved to be temperamental and an alcoholic. In late 1910 she had left Biograph for Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Pictures Company (IMP), where she made thirty-five films but was unhappy with the directing of Thomas Inee. IMP publicized her name, an unusual move at a time when film actors did not receive billing, and when she rejoined Biograph in 1912, she was no longer just another anonymous actress. Pickford left Biograph again the next year for a brief return to the stage, and then she signed with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players for $500 a week. During her first year with the company she starred in seven pictures, including two big hits, Hearts Adrift and Tess of the Storm Country, both released in 1914. By 1916 Pickford—still playing child roles—received five hundred fan letters a day, and police had to restrain crowds when she made appearances. In June of that year she negotiated a new contract for more than $1 million over the next two years plus approval of the directors, other stars, and editing of her movies, as well as a percentage of the profits. Under that contract she made some of her most popular films, including The Poor Little Rich Girl and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

A Great Love and a New Business

By the time she made these movies, Pickford had been involved in a love affair with actor Douglas Fairbanks for three years. Amid divorce negotiations with their respective spouses, Pick-ford signed a contract for even more money—$250,000 per picture—with First National, for which she made three films in 1919. In the same year she and Fairbanks joined with D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and other backers to form a new movie company, United Artists (UA). Pickford's first film for UA, Pollyanna (1920), earned more than $1 million at the box office. On 28 March 1920, two months after its release, Pickford and Fairbanks were married and moved into their new Beverly Hills mansion, Pickfair. During the 1920s Pickford starred in and produced a dozen more films for United Artists. The huge success of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921) and a 1922 remake of Tess of the Storm Country —along with Fairbanks's early UA movies, including The Three Musketeers (1921) and Robin Hood (1922)—helped offset the financial loss after Griffith left the company in 1924. In 1927 Pickford and Fairbanks helped to found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Two years later Pickford earned one of the new Academy Awards for her performance in Coquette (1929), her first talking picture.

Dark Days

After her mother died in 1928, Pickford began to turn to alcohol for comfort. Both Pickford and Fairbanks began having affairs and were finally divorced in 1936. The following year Pickford married Charles Buddy Rogers, with whom she had costarred in My Best Girl (1927), her last silent movie. She never got over Fairbanks and was devastated when he died of a heart attack in 1939. Pickford stopped acting in 1933 but produced films for UA and other companies through the 1940s. In that decade she considered but rejected roles in several movies (including the part of Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. [1950]). In 1955 she wrote a memoir, Sunshine and Shadow, but her alcoholism made an acting career impossible for the remaining years of her life. When she received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1976, Pickford, unable to leave Pickfair, had her acceptance speech filmed. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 29 May 1979, leaving $7 million to a charitable foundation.

Sources:

Tino Balio, United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976);

Scott Eyman, Mary Pickford: America's Sweetheart (New York: Fine, 1989);

Booton Herndon, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks: The Most Popular Couple the World Has Ever Known (New York: Norton, 1977);

Mary Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955).