Mary Pickford

Actress

• Born: April 8, 1892
• Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Died: May 28, 1979
• Place of death: Santa Monica, California

Canadian-born American actor

Early in the history of the film industry, Pickford established herself as the first name box-office draw, and hence the first star, of American cinema. While the attraction of her name and image shaped the economics of motion pictures for decades, Pickford also became an early role model for independent women who took charge of their own destinies.

Areas of achievement Theater and entertainment, film

Early Life

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Canada. Poverty and early widowhood led Pickford’s mother, Charlotte Hennessey Smith, to place her children on the stage. In 1898, at the age of six, Pickford appeared in The Silver King at Toronto’s Princess Theatre. Her early success on the stage, and her mother’s example, soon made the little girl the principal source of income for her family, a burden, she wrote later, that she felt keenly at an early age. This sense of fiscal responsibility led to an early maturity in which the young performer fought aggressively for salary increments and contract rights.

Pickford’s theater career began in earnest when she appeared with the Valentine Stock Company’s production of The Little Red Schoolhouse in April of 1901; her performance earned for her a part in the touring version of that play, which went on the road in November of 1901. During the next four years, Pickford went on tour usually accompanied by her mother Charlotte with several plays. Touring companies in those days followed a hard schedule, frequently playing one night and then moving on, staying in cheap hotels. Pickford endured, however, even though she never had time for more than six months of formal education, because even as a child she was determined to keep her family out of poverty. She educated herself on the road and somehow learned to read.

Sometimes her success led to parts for her mother or her brother and sister, Jack and Lottie, but it was Pickford’s ability and determination that enabled the family to stay together. Devoted to her career, Pickford worked hard, observing the work of established performers whenever possible. By the age of about twelve, she decided that she would try to become a “success” by the age of twenty.

Life’s Work

In fact, Pickford did not need to wait that long. Although she was suffering from exhaustion in 1907, a successful audition with David Belasco, a famous Broadway producer, brought her a part in The Warrens of Virginia. Belasco also urged Pickford to find a more appealing stage name. In those days, a part with Belasco was a sign that an actress had “arrived,” and this association was to be a launching pad for the Belasco actress now known as Mary Pickford.

In 1909, when Pickford found herself temporarily out of work, her mother urged her to talk to the director D. W. Griffith, who had begun making “flickers” for Biograph studios in New York. Although Pickford was reluctant stage actors considered work in films to be a sign of failure she was not only able to find work with Griffith at a salary higher than that she had earned with Belasco but also able to dictate her own terms to Griffith, who was more than pleased to have a Belasco veteran in his company. Pickford’s determination at age sixteen to have some control over her work was to be a hallmark of the rest of her career.

Griffith did not allow his players to be known by name, fearing that prominence would lead them to demand more money, but Pickford, known to audiences as “Little Mary” (the name of one of her screen characters) or “The Girl with the Golden Curls,” soon became popular anyway. Her fame during this period came partially from her appearances in child roles, which, because of her slight physical stature and youthful looks, she was able to play until well into her thirties.

In 1911, Pickford left Biograph for IMP pictures, but she returned in 1912; shortly thereafter, she left to join Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players, where she established herself as the industry’s first individual box-office draw, or “star.” Pickford demanded and got from Zukor the unprecedented salary of five hundred dollars a week; moreover, her growing popularity led to a series of raises, and by 1916 she was earning ten thousand dollars a week plus bonuses. In 1917, Zukor created Artcraft Pictures Corporation, a division of Famous Players-Lasky, to produce Mary Pickford films exclusively. By now, Pickford was making feature-length films (as opposed to shorts) that were commercial as well as artistic successes; Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) was the first of these films.

Poor Little Rich Girl was one of many period melodramas that appealed to the values of middle and working classes, but it was also distinguished by the cinematographic art of director Maurice Tourneur, who was breaking new ground with lighting, camera angles, and dream sequences. The film’s ultimate success, however, was equally the result of Pickford’s comedic scenes (such as a mudfight), which relieved the film’s otherwise somber tone and which Pickford inserted over director Tourneur’s objections.

Pickford’s control over this film is another hallmark of her career. When she began her next film for Zukor, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), she demanded and got Marshall Neiland as director and Frances Marion as writer. In 1918, Mary Pickford obtained the rights to scripts for Pollyanna and Daddy Long-Legs and demanded complete control, with Famous Players-Lasky functioning solely as distributor. When Zukor balked, Pickford signed with First National, which formed its own division, Mary Pickford Co., which had complete control over production.

Two years later, Pickford and her husband Douglas Fairbanks joined with Griffith and Charlie Chaplin to form United Artists Corporation, a company that served as a distributor for independent producers, frequently the stars themselves, who were able to keep the profits from each picture, select or reject any role, and control publicity. By contrast, 1930’s stars who worked for large studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) or Twentieth Century-Fox worked under contracts that paid them a straight salary for a given number of pictures, with acting roles being chosen by the studio heads or their subordinates. During the early days of United Artists (UA), Pickford produced some of her most famous films: Pollyanna (1920), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), and Rosita (1923). A less-known but critically acclaimed UA production was Sparrows (1926), which was noted for its gothic texture and brooding cinematography. In all, Pickford acted in sixteen films for United Artists between 1920 and 1933; after her acting career ended, she produced several other films during the thirties and forties.

The late twenties and early thirties were a difficult time for Pickford. Her marriage to Fairbanks was becoming shaky, and the advent of sound pictures, or “talkies,” threatened many actors whose careers were built in the silent era. Pickford’s first talkie, Coquette (1929), was a commercial success that won her the first Academy Award for Best Actress, but it was a critical failure that even horrified Pickford herself, who did not like what the new sound technology did to her voice. The only film Pickford and Fairbanks did together, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (1929), was a failure with the critics and at the box office, as were Pickford’s remaining talkies. Although the Depression probably played a part in the commercial failure of these films, Pickford, always insecure even at the height of her success, halted production before her last film, Secrets, was completed. The film was never released, and Pickford, only forty-two in 1933, never acted again. She was disheartened by her commercial failures, as well as by the death of her mother whose business sense had helped to build Pickford’s wealth and the impending collapse of her marriage to Fairbanks.

In 1936, she and Fairbanks were divorced, and Pickford married Buddy Rogers, her former leading man who had remained devoted to her. Rogers and Pickford adopted two children, and she was able finally to play in real life the mother role she had played in films such as Sparrows. Although she continued to produce films, with indifferent success, Pickford gradually retired from public life, secluding herself at Pickfair, the estate she and Fairbanks had once shared, as she grew older. In 1956, she and Chaplin, the surviving founders, relinquished control of United Artists. In 1977, a few years before her death, Pickford was given a Life Achievement Academy Award, but even this did not draw her out of seclusion, and the award ceremony had to be filmed at Pickfair.

Significance

Pickford’s contributions to the film industry are manifold. Her curly-headed “Little Mary” character became the prototype for child stars of later years; Shirley Temple was only the first in a long line that includes recent roles on television situation comedies. In all of her roles, moreover, Pickford’s acting style created an important bridge between the silent and sound period; critics have noticed that Pickford could convey emotions in the silent films with subtle gestures and facial expressions, unlike the exaggerated styles of many silent actors.

Pickford’s greatest contribution to the film industry was her popular appeal. The rise of stars such as Pickford and Chaplin, with whom audiences could identify, led to the growth of the film industry from a curiosity featuring short films to a serious art form with feature-length productions. Her independence paved the way for United Artists, which she cofounded, and which provided opportunities for creative producers such as Alexander Korda, David O. Selznick, and Samuel Goldwyn.

For women, moreover, Pickford was a trailblazer. Although she probably never considered herself a feminist (she was very conservative politically and socially), her life and work nevertheless provided a valuable role model for women. On the screen, her interpretation often gave her heroines a kind of plucky independence despite the overlay of middle-class conventionality that her audiences demanded. In an era when Victorian mores still predominated, she emerged as one of the few financially independent women of her era, one who had earned her fortune through hard work and gritty determination. For the time in which she flourished, that was a considerable achievement.

Bibliography

Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Although the focus of this treatment is on the history of United Artists after Pickford and Chaplin sold their interest, it still offers a good, if brief, perspective on the early years.

Eyman, Scott. Mary Pickford: America’s Sweetheart. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1990. A thorough treatment of Pickford’s life, with a critical discussion of her major films and her artistic contributions. More than forty photographs illustrate Pickford’s life from childhood to old age. Probably the best treatment of Pickford’s life and work, this book has few competitors.

Gillis, Anna Maria. “America’s Savvy Sweetheart: Mary Pickford.” Humanities 26, no. 1 (January/February, 2005): 30-35. A profile of Pickford, including information on her involvement with Biograph and United Artists studios.

Gomery, Douglas. The Hollywood Studio System. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Case histories of each of the five major studios (Twentieth Century-Fox, Paramount, MGM, RKO, Warner Bros.) are followed by an eight-page, concise history of United Artists (under “Specialized Studios”), with an account of the founders’ roles in its successes and failures.

Herndon, Boonton. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. An examination of Pickford and Fairbanks’s careers, emphasizing their married years. A good supplement to Eyman’s book.

Pickford, Mary. Sunshine and Shadow. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. Pickford’s autobiography, although subjective and not always entirely reliable, remains one of the principal sources of information on her life.

Schickel, Richard. D. W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984. A detailed biography of the director who brought Pickford to the screen as “Little Mary,” did much to shape her career, and later joined her as cofounder of United Artists. This book is valuable for its bibliography alone.

Tibbetts, John C. “Mary Pickford and the American ’Growing Girl.’” Journal of Popular Film and Television 29, no. 20 (Summer, 2001): 50. Discusses the impact of the film “The Poor Little Rich Girl” on Pickford’s life and career and how the film popularized the image of the growing girl in American popular culture.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: 1909-1929: Pickford Reigns as “America’s Sweetheart”; 1923: The Ten Commandments Advances American Film Spectacle.