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Mary Pickford
Portrait photograph, 1918
Born	Gladys Louise Smith (1892-04-08)April 8, 1892 Toronto, Canada
Died	May 29, 1979(1979-05-29) (aged 87) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Cerebral hemorrhage
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Citizenship	Canadian-American
Occupations	Actress producer screenwriter
Years active	1900–1956
Spouse(s)	Owen Moore (1911-1920; divorced) Douglas Fairbanks (1920-1936; divorced) Buddy Rogers (1937-1979; her death)
Children	2
Relatives	Charlotte Hennessey (mother) Lottie Pickford (sister) Jack Pickford (brother)

Early life

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Charles Smith, was the son of English Methodist immigrants, and worked a variety of odd jobs. Her mother, Charlotte Hennessey, was of Irish Catholic descent and sometimes worked as a seamstress. Gladys had two younger siblings, Charlotte, called "Lottie" (born 1893), and John Charles, called "Jack" (born 1896). The children were not baptized, as their parents feared offending one another's relatives.

They lived with Charlotte's invalid mother, Catherine Faeley Hennessey, down the street from Charlotte's sister and brother-in-law, Lizzie and William Watson. The children were home-schooled by their mother, and Mary Pickford would later claim that she learned to read by watching the billboards and signs from the windows of trains she took while touring from 1901-1907.

Gladys was frequently ill. When she was four years old, Gladys contracted diphtheria, and the Smith household was placed under quarantine. A Catholic priest visited and baptized Gladys, and she was thus christened Gladys Marie Smith.

John Charles Smith was an alcoholic, and in 1895 he abandoned his family. Three years later, on February 11, 1898, he died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a workplace accident while working as a purser with Niagara Steamship. Without a father figure, Gladys took it upon herself to help raise her siblings, and her mother began taking in boarders to make ends meet. In 1899, one of their boarders, a theatrical stage manager, suggested that Gladys and Lottie could appear in a stock company production of The Silver King at Toronto's Princess Theatre. Charlotte was initially opposed to the idea, as theatre was considered a disreputable institution, but was convinced after being promised that the children would earn eight dollars a week.

Mary Pickford remembered in an interview in 1959:

"It was a matter of economics. None of my family on either side ever were in the theater, in fact they disapproved of it heartily. Grandma, being a very strict Methodist, of course, didn’t believe in the theater or dancing or anything like that. But when my father died I was four years of age, and mother was left with the three of us and her paralyzed mother, so she had five mouths to feed."

Career

Beginnings in theatre (1900-1909)

Gladys and Lottie made their stage debuts in The Silver King on January 8, 1900. Gladys, only seven years old, was given two small roles, one as a boy and the other as a girl. After that production closed, Gladys participated in a vaudeville variety show which featured a young Elsie Janis; they would remain lifelong friends. Gladys then became the official child actress for Toronto's Valentine Company, billed as "Baby Gladys Smith," after playing a larger role in their version of The Silver King. She subsequently appeared in many melodramas with the Valentine Company, including the starring role of Little Eva in their production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most popular plays in U.S. history, adapted from the 1852 novel by American writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In 1901, Gladys acted in the Valentine Company's production of At the Little Red Schoolhouse by Hal Reid. Jack and Lottie were also featured in small roles and Charlotte Hennessey worked as an understudy. Reid, impressed by the enthusiastic audience response, promised to cast the Smiths in a production that would tour in the U.S. that fall. But by the time the play was touring in September, now revised and re-titled In Convict Stripes, Gladys's role had been filled by another child actress, Lillian Gish. However, Lillian left the show when her chaperone became ill. The production sent a wire for "Gladys – only Gladys," but Charlotte insisted that they would have to find jobs for all four Smith family members.

By this time, theatre had become a family enterprise. For the next six years, the Smiths toured the United States by rail with traveling productions of third-rate plays, often living in New York City between engagements to be close to casting offices. One summer the Smiths shared a Manhattan apartment with the Gish family, consisting of Mary Gish and her daughters Lillian and Dorothy. Gladys and the Gish sisters often appeared in different productions of the same plays over the years.

It was difficult to find work for everyone in the Smith family, and they were frequently separated when only one or two of the children were cast in a production. Actors weren't paid well and had to spend most of their time on trains; the cast might leave for the station as soon as the curtain call was over and reach their next stop with just enough time to throw on their costumes. Barnstorming actors would travel almost every day, giving a single performance (a "one-night stand") of the touring production in each town they visited. By 1907, 15-year-old Gladys had decided that life on the road was too hard on her family, who remained just as poor as they had been six years ago. Gladys gave herself one more summer to land a role on Broadway, and planned to quit acting and become a clothes designer if she failed.

Gladys wanted to make her Broadway debut with a top producer, and her producer of choice was David Belasco. Gladys sent Belasco photos and letters and appeared for the open auditions his office held each Monday, but she was sent away with hundreds of others without being seen and told to return the following week. She decided to take a different route. Gladys had appeared at Brooklyn's Majestic Theatre in 1906, and Blanche Bates was appearing there in Belasco's play The Girl of the Golden West. The doorman at the theater remembered Gladys and let her backstage, where she was able to convince Bates's maid to talk to the actress and have her send Gladys to see Belasco. But when Gladys appeared at Belasco's office with Bates's endorsement, she was still stopped by the office boy. Gladys argued so insistently that Belasco's associate William Dean appeared and asked what the trouble was. Gladys replied, "My life depends on seeing Mr. Belasco!"

Several weeks later, Gladys was invited to meet Belasco after a performance of his current Broadway show, Rose of the Rancho. After meeting Gladys, he agreed to give her an audition the following evening. She landed the supporting role of Betty Warren in The Warrens of Virginia, written by William C. DeMille (his brother Cecil was also in the cast, playing Gladys's older brother). Belasco suggested that she should assume a stage name less mundane than Gladys Smith; they decided on Mary Pickford, taken from her middle name, Marie, and the name of her maternal grandfather, John Pickford Hennessey. As Mary's fame grew, her siblings would adopt the same last name.

Pickford held Belasco in high esteem, and promised him that she would always be willing to perform in his productions. The Warrens of Virginia closed on Broadway in 1908 and Pickford joined the touring production. After completing the tour in 1909, however, Pickford was again out of work.

Early motion picture career (1909-1914)

Though motion pictures were immensely popular with the public, theatrical actors considered film acting a last resort. Pickford's mother suggested that Pickford might apply for work at the Biograph Company. Pickford was insulted by the notion, but grudgingly visited the Biograph Company's brownstone studio on April 19, 1909. The Biograph Company had found success in its principal director D. W. Griffith, whose mastery and synthesis of the techniques developed by his predecessors (like Georges Méliès and Edwin S. Porter) quickly made him one of cinema's most important pioneers. Griffith screen-tested Pickford and was immediately interested in her. Though she found him "pompous and insufferable," he was intrigued by her naivete and tenacity. Most Biograph actors earned $5 a day, but after Pickford's single day in the studio, Griffith agreed to pay her $10 a day against a guarantee of $40 a week.

The next day, Pickford returned to the studio to appear in her first film, Her First Biscuits. Pickford was a background character; the film starred Florence Lawrence (film producers would not release actors' names with their pictures because they didn't want attention taken away from the studio's brand - fans began to call Lawrence "the Biograph Girl" as a result).

The films being made at this time were typically single reels (between fifteen to twenty minutes long) or split-reelers (with two films on one reel), and were shot on a very tight schedule over the course of one or two days. Studios were always eager for stories to film, so scenarios could come from anywhere, including the actors; Pickford wrote some stories herself, selling them to Griffith for $15 each. Though the story would be decided upon before hand, the action and inaudible dialogue was often improvised and filmed in one take. Intertitles were written after the film was edited to explain what couldn't be conveyed by the miming actors. At this rate, Biograph released two reels a week, which could contain two or three movies.

Pickford played a leading role in her next film, The Violin Maker of Cremona, and would go on to play almost eighty roles for Biograph by 1910. Like all actors at Biograph, Pickford would play bit parts and leading roles; this kept the company of actors on their toes and kept anyone from becoming a star - and demanding star wages. Pickford played many different character types, including mothers, ingenues, slaves, Native Americans, and a prostitute. As Pickford said of her success at Biograph:

"I played scrubwomen and secretaries and women of all nationalities... I decided that if I could get into as many pictures as possible, I'd become known, and there would be a demand for my work."

Pickford enjoyed much success with the Biograph Company. Audiences noticed and identified Pickford within weeks of her first film appearance, and exhibitors capitalized on her popularity by advertising films starring "The Girl with the Golden Curls" or "Goldilocks." Soon, Biograph couldn't ignore her popularity, which granted her some influence at the studio. Jack and Lottie began performing in Biograph films. Griffith cast Pickford in lead roles and raised her salary to $100 a week, an exceptional amount for a seventeen-year-old actress.

Pickford met her future husband Owen Moore the day of her screen test at the Biograph studio. In January 1910, Griffith selected a group of actors and technicians to travel to Los Angeles (many other film companies wintered on the West Coast, escaping the weak light and short days that hindered winter shooting in the East). Pickford and Moore were among the group chosen to go, but when Moore asked for a raise, he was fired. On this trip, Griffith would direct the very first film made in Hollywood, In Old California. Pickford wrote a scenario during this time that would become May and December, but when Griffith rejected two others she had written, Pickford and her brother rented a pair of horses and rode to Essanay's Los Angeles location, selling the stories for $40.

That same month, Florence Lawrence left Biograph for Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP). Laemmle identified Lawrence by name, effectively creating the star system and the first movie star. When Lawrence left for IMP, Pickford inherited the title of "the Biograph Girl," but less than a year later, Lawrence left IMP for Lubin. Laemmle offered Pickford $175 a week, bit parts for Charlotte, Lottie, and Jack, and publicity using Pickford's name. Perhaps more importantly, Owen Moore had been signed with IMP for several months.

Pickford left Biograph for IMP in December 1910, and married Owen Moore in secret on January 7, 1911. IMP relocated to Cuba for three months to avoid lawsuits and intimidation from the Edison Trust, but the trip was demoralizing for Pickford; tensions between Moore and Pickford's mother were running high and IMP's films were of a much lower quality than Biograph's. Pickford left Cuba earlier then planned, and eventually Pickford decided to leave IMP for the Majestic Motion Picture Company, which was formed with her in mind and would pay her $225 a week. Laemmle sued Pickford for breach of contract, but she countered that Laemmle had broken his contract with her by forcing her to participate in an "affront to her art." Ultimately, the court decided in Pickford's favor only because she had been a minor when she signed with Laemmle.

Still dissatisfied with the quality of films being made with Majestic, Pickford returned to Biograph in January 1912 for $175 a week. She was happy to be working once again with first-class talent, and introduced her childhood friends Dorothy and Lillian Gish to Griffith that year, launching their motion picture careers. However, Griffith had found other actresses to take Pickford's place since her departure, and she felt she was only being offered parts that other actresses had rejected. The company was not as communal as it had been before, and Pickford found herself longing for something else.

According to David Belasco, "by this time, Mary Pickford was famous, and had become known throughout the land as 'The Queen of the Movies.'" In December 1912 he offered her a lead role on Broadway in the play A Good Little Devil. It was exactly the kind of opportunity that had eluded Pickford when she started acting in films almost four years earlier. Thrilled, she told Griffith about the offer. Pickford wrote in her memoir that the director "scrutinized my face with such a concerned look that all my triumph vanished in a flash. I suddenly realized how much I would miss my beloved Biograph and the guiding hand of this brilliant man." Together, they made one last film, The New York Hat, "one of the best short movies she'd ever made at Biograph."

A Good Little Devil ran for several months and garnered rave reviews. Griffith and other Biograph players attended the premiere. But Pickford, who had always hoped to conquer the Broadway stage and had seen motion pictures as a temporary source of employment, discovered how deeply she missed film acting. After the play closed, she decided to work exclusively in film.

In 1912, Adolph Zukor had founded the Famous Players Film Company, which produced "Famous Players in Famous Plays." Features (films of an hour or more in length) were growing in popularity and the Edison Trust's monopoly only covered one-reelers. Zukor believed that he could find a new audience by recording theatrical stars in their latest productions and releasing them as feature films. A Good Little Devil was filmed with its Broadway cast in May 1913. An exact reproduction of the play, the actors recited every line of dialogue, resulting in a stiff film that Pickford later called "one of the worst [features] I ever made... it was deadly." Zukor seems to have agreed; he held the film back from distribution for a year.

Zukor and other producers flooded the market with feature films, altering public taste and making features the industry standard. Zukor further revolutionized the film industry by making deals to organize production, distribution, and exhibition within a single company, a company that would eventually become Paramount Pictures.

Zukor was very keen to exploit the audience's adoration for stars, and offered Pickford a one-year contract for three movies at a salary of $500 a week, more money than many Americans made in a year. Pickford's first three pictures for Famous Players were In the Bishop's Carriage, Caprice, and Hearts Adrift. All three of these film are lost.

International stardom (1914-1919)

Hearts Adrift, which told the story of two shipwreck survivors, was adapted by Pickford from a magazine story. The film marked the first time Pickford’s name was featured above the title on movie marquees. It was so popular that Pickford doubled her salary to $1,000 a week in her next contract.

In order to finance Pickford's next film, Zukor claimed that he had to borrow on his life insurance and hawk his wife's diamond necklace. Tess of the Storm Country, released five weeks after Hearts Adrift, saved Famous Players from bankruptcy. Biographer Kevin Brownlow observed that the film "sent her career into orbit and made her the most popular actress in America, if not the world". Tess of the Storm Country is Pickford's earliest surviving feature film. For the opening in San Francisco, David Grauman (father of Sid Grauman) advertised Mary Pickford as "America's Sweetheart," the nickname by which she would be known for years to come.

After Tess, Famous Players films were distributed through Paramount Pictures. Pickford released seven films in 1914 and eight in 1915, and managed to find work for Lottie and Jack as well as Owen Moore. During this time, Pickford played characters that fit what would become her trademark persona - virtuous young spitfires, defiant against oppression or poverty - like the title roles of Cinderella or Rags. But she also played adult variations of the persona in films like Behind the Scenes and A Girl of Yesterday.

Pickford's fame was unprecedented and she doubled her salary once more to $2,000 a week in 1915, but she was unhappy with the rapid pace of production and consequent quality of her films, as well as Paramount's strategy of packaging her films with inferior pictures in a process known as block booking. By 1916, Pickford was fielding offers from multiple studios, including a deal for one million dollars if she signed with Mutual Film. Pickford signed Hollywood's first million-dollar contract, a two-year agreement in which Zukor would pay her half a million dollars a year or half the net profits of her films, whichever amount was greater, along with a bonus of $300,000 and $10,000 a week for the four weeks spent negotiating the contract. Pickford also became the first actress to produce her own pictures, becoming Zukor's partner through a special division of Famous Players called the Pickford Film Corporation. The directors, cast, and advertising would all be subject to Pickford's approval, and she would retain final cut privileges on her films. She would make a maximum of six films a year, ensuring greater care in their making as well as creating higher demand for her films. These films would not be block booked, but would instead be distributed through a special division of Paramount Pictures called Artcraft.

Her third film under this new arrangement was The Poor Little Rich Girl, notable for being the first film in which Pickford, 24 years old, played a child (instead of an adolescent or young woman) for the entire picture. The Poor Little Rich Girl was first screened for Paramount executives. The screening was a disaster; the executives hated the film and worried that releasing it would be a mistake. As a result, Pickford was informed that Paramount's director general, Cecil B. DeMille, would have complete autonomy over her next two films. Though Pickford was unhappy with the experience, A Romance of the Redwoods and The Little American received excellent reviews and grossed more than any of DeMille's previous films.

Paramount hoped to withhold The Poor Little Rich Girl from release but were ultimately obliged to distribute it, since bookings with exhibitors had already been made. The film turned out to be the biggest hit of Pickford's career up to that time. She was released from her obligation to DeMille, and with newfound creative control, Pickford would make some of her best-remembered films, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Little Princess, Stella Maris, Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, M'Liss, and Johanna Enlists.

When the U.S. entered World War I, Pickford appeared in propaganda films, posed for pro-war posters, collected cigarettes to send to soldiers, and sent her photograph to decorate the trenches on the battlefield. Two cannons were named after her and she was made an honorary colonel of the 143rd California Field Artillery, whose soldiers were shipped to France wearing lockets containing her picture. Pickford also promoted the sale of Liberty Bonds, touring the country alongside Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Marie Dressler. Though Canadian-born, Pickford was a powerful symbol of Americana, and she raised more money than any of her fellow performers. Pickford auctioned one of her world-famous curls for fifteen thousand dollars in Chicago, and a speech in Pittsburg was reported to have raised five million dollars' worth of bonds.

As Pickford's contract with Zukor expired, First National Pictures offered her $675,000 for three pictures plus 50% of the profits, and also gave her total creative control over her pictures. Her first film distributed by First National was Daddy-Long-Legs. It was the first film which Pickford produced independently, and was her highest-grossing film up to that point.

United Artists (1919-1927)

As Pickford signed with First National, the film industry was verging on an oligopoly. Rumors were circulating that several companies would merge, leaving only a few large studios that could drive down stars' salaries and limit their creative control. In 1919, Pickford, along with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks, formed the independent film production company United Artists, which enabled them to have complete control over their pictures. Fairbanks had no contractual obligations to other companies, and released United Artists' first feature, His Majesty, the American. The second United Artists film was Griffith's Broken Blossoms. Both were successes for the company. Chaplin owed First National five short films, and would not release a film with United Artists until 1923. After fulfilling her obligation to First National, Pickford made Pollyanna with United Artists, another of Pickford's largest box office successes.

By this time, Pickford, approaching 30, was growing tired of playing her trademark waif character. But United Artists was a vulnerable company. Hollywood studios were now vertically integrated, not only producing films but forming chains of theaters. United Artists had to rent screens or find the rare venue that remained independent. United Artists' opposition to block-booking meant that films had to be sold individually, which required more paperwork and sales staff, and took longer to sell and longer to recoup their investments. Under-financed, the founders funded their productions personally, and filmmaking had become more expensive by the 1920s than they were in the 1910s.

Griffith made his films on the East Coast, and Fairbanks and Pickford worked side by side at the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios. While Fairbanks transitioned from light comedies to swashbuckling adventure films, Pickford continued a string of successes playing children and adolescents in Through the Back Door, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and a remake of Tess of the Storm Country.

Pickford hoped to take her persona in a new direction by playing an adult in her next film and hiring a popular German director, Ernst Lubitsch. Rosita was a hit with critics and at the box office, but ultimately, Pickford was unhappy with the film. After another disappointment, Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, Pickford "was quite ready to surrender to public demand and become a child again. My two adventures in adulthood had been costly and embarrassing... the public just refused to accept me in any role older than the gawky, fighting age of adolescent girlhood." She returned to the role of a young girl for her next two films, Little Annie Rooney and Sparrows, and then made My Best Girl, a romantic comedy in which she starred alongside her future husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers. These three films, all successful critically and commercially, would be her last silent films.

Griffith leaves United Artists to work at Paramount, Joseph Schenck comes to United Artsits. In 1924, UA was $500,000 in debt. Made Little Annie Rooney.

Formed Academy

Sound films (1927-1933)

The arrival of sound film completely changed the film industry. Silent filmmaking techniques and equipment were immediately obsolete; many filmmakers, intertitle writers, and musicians found that their careers had ended. Silent film stars, accustomed to expressing themselves through pantomime, often seemed stiff and unnatural speaking their lines, and lost the interest of film audiences. Pickford and Fairbanks were more fortunate than many of their colleagues because they had had some experience in theater.

Pickford was the first silent star to release a talking picture. In addition to making the transition from silent film to sound, Pickford cut her trademark ringlets into a fashionable bob, signaling her renunciation of childrens' roles. Pickford's hair had become a symbol of youthful feminine virtue, and when she cut it, the act made front-page news in The New York Times and other papers. Coquette became Mary's highest-grossing film and won her an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Pickford and Fairbanks co-starred in their next film, The Taming of The Shrew, the first sound film of a Shakespeare play. It opened to good reviews but was released just as the stock market crashed, and saw dismal returns at the box office. Pickford next attempted to film a remake of the 1924 silent film Secrets, re-titled Forever Yours, and chose one of her favorite collaborators, Marshall Neilan, to direct. But Pickford was unhappy with the film and canceled it mid-production at a loss of $300,000. Pickford asked Joseph Schenck to produce her next film, Kiki. For the first time since 1916, Pickford would not act as her own producer. Kiki grossed less than half its budget.

The Great Depression, as well as the introduction of sound film, was costly for small independent studios like United Artists. The company had some luck when they signed a distribution agreement with Walt Disney whose films were enormously profitable. However, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith hadn't released a hit in years, and Chaplin's films, though wildly successful, were only completed once every few years. The company stayed afloat thanks to Joe Schenck and Sam Goldwyn, who released fourty-four pictures between them from 1928 to 1932. In 1933, Schenck co-founded Twentieth Century Pictures with Darryl F. Zanuck, and that company's films would be distributed by United Artists. "In his one-year contract, Zanuck promised to supply at least three films. Instead, he made a dozen and the profits flowed." When Schenck and Zanuck proposed that Zanuck become a partner at UA, Pickford opposed, and Zanuck and Schenck left to merge Twentieth Century with Fox.

Gloria Swanson left?

Pickford's final film was Secrets, a second attempt to film the project previously titled Forever Yours, this time with Frank Borzage directing. Secrets lost money, though it was not as great a failure as Kiki had been.

In 1933, Pickford hoped to produce a version of Alice in Wonderland with Walt Disney in which she would star as a live-action Alice in an animated Wonderland. Pickford made a Technicolor screen test, but the project was discarded when Paramount released its own version of the book.

Career decline (1933-1956)

As her film career faded, Pickford hoped to return to Broadway, and she appeared in a playlet called The Church Mouse at the Paramount Theatre (in the days of movie palaces, the feature presentation would frequently be preceded by live entertainment). In 1935, she appeared in a stage version of Coquette in Seattle that garnered positive reviews, but plans for a tour of the play were cancelled.

In 1934, Pickford launched the Mary Pickford Stock Radio Company, broadcasting adaptations of stage and screen stories. After several months, the program was discontinued. In 1936, Mary hosted another radio show called Parties at Pickfair which was taken off the air after thirteen weeks.

Pickford wrote two self-help books, Why Not Try God? and My Rendezvous with Life, in 1934 and 1935, respectively, in which she wrote about her ideology and Christian Science. She also co-wrote a novel, The Demi-Widow, which was published in 1935.

In 1936, partnered with Jesse Lasky to produce two films for United Artists, One Rainy Afternoon and The Gay Desperado. Neither film was very successful.

In 1938, Pickford launched a short-lived company, Mary Pickford Cosmetics.

Mary Pickford continued to produce films for United Artists, including Sleep, My Love (1948, with Claudette Colbert) and Love Happy (1949), with the Marx Brothers). Chaplin left the company in 1955, and Pickford followed suit in 1956, selling her remaining shares for three million dollars.

Sunshine and Shadow

February 1956: Mary sells her shares in United Artists for $3 million, after Chaplin had sold his the year before, marking the departure of the last original founder from the company.

October 1965: The Cinémathèque Française holds a Mary Pickford retrospective

May, 1971: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art sponsors a worldwide celebration of Mary’s body of work, with simultaneous screenings of her films in cities across the globe.

March 29, 1976: Mary receives an honorary Oscar for her contribution to motion pictures. No longer making public appearances, she accepts the award from Pickfair.

Personal life

Public image

Little girl, long hair, false curls from French brothel.

Sold war bonds with Fairbanks and Chaplin.

Pickford used her stature in the movie industry to promote a variety of causes. Although her image depicted fragility and innocence, Pickford proved to be a worthy business women that took control of her career in a cut throat industry. During World War I, she promoted the sale of Liberty Bonds, making an intensive series of fund-raising speeches that kicked off in Washington, D.C., where she sold bonds alongside Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Theda Bara, and Marie Dressler. Five days later she spoke on Wall Street to an estimated 50,000 people. Though Canadian-born, she was a powerful symbol of Americana, kissing the American flag for cameras and auctioning one of her world-famous curls for $15,000. In a single speech in Chicago she sold an estimated five million dollars' worth of bonds. She was christened the U.S. Navy's official "Little Sister"; the Army named two cannons after her and made her an honorary colonel.

At the end of World War I, Pickford conceived of the Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization to help financially needy actors. Leftover funds from her work selling Liberty Bonds were put toward its creation, and in 1921, the Motion Picture Relief Fund (MPRF) was officially incorporated, with Joseph Schenck voted its first president and Pickford its vice president. In 1932, Pickford spearheaded the "Payroll Pledge Program", a payroll-deduction plan for studio workers who gave one half of one percent of their earnings to the MPRF. As a result, in 1940 the Fund was able to purchase land and build the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital, in Woodland Hills, California.

Why Not Try God? and My Rendezvous with Life

Her appeal was summed up two years later by the February 1916 issue of Photoplay as "luminous tenderness in a steel band of gutter ferocity". Only Charlie Chaplin, who reportedly slightly surpassed Pickford's popularity in 1916, had a similarly spellbinding pull with critics and the audience. Each enjoyed a level of fame far exceeding that of other actors. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Pickford was believed to be the most famous woman in the world, or, as a silent-film journalist described her, "the best known woman who has ever lived, the woman who was known to more people and loved by more people than any other woman that has been in all history."

Relationships

Owen Moore - alcoholic, possible abortion, jealous of success, rumors of affair with James Kirkwood.

Pickford was married three times. She married Owen Moore, an Irish-born silent film actor, on January 7, 1911. It is rumored she became pregnant by Moore in the early 1910s and had a miscarriage or an abortion. Some accounts suggest this resulted in her later inability to have children. The couple had numerous marital problems, notably Moore's alcoholism, insecurity about living in the shadow of Pickford's fame, and bouts of domestic violence. The couple lived apart for several years.

Going to Nevada, divorce from Moore, marrying Fairbanks 26 days later.

Pickford became secretly involved in a relationship with Douglas Fairbanks. They toured the US together in 1918 to promote Liberty Bond sales for the World War I effort. Around this time, Pickford also suffered from the flu during the 1918 flu pandemic, but survived. Pickford divorced Moore on March 2, 1920, and married Fairbanks on March 28 of the same year. They went to Europe for their honeymoon; fans in London and in Paris caused riots trying to get to the famous couple. The couple's triumphant return to Hollywood was witnessed by vast crowds who turned out to hail them at railway stations across the United States.

The Mark of Zorro (1920) and a series of other swashbucklers gave the popular Fairbanks a more romantic, heroic image. Pickford continued to epitomize the virtuous but fiery girl next door. Even at private parties, people instinctively stood up when Pickford entered a room; she and her husband were often referred to as "Hollywood royalty". Their international reputations were broad. Foreign heads of state and dignitaries who visited the White House often asked if they could also visit Pickfair, the couple's mansion in Beverly Hills.

Dinners at Pickfair included a number of notable guests. Charlie Chaplin, Fairbanks' best friend, was often present. Other guests included George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Elinor Glyn, Helen Keller, H. G. Wells, Lord Mountbatten, Fritz Kreisler, Amelia Earhart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Noël Coward, Max Reinhardt, Baron Nishi, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Austen Chamberlain, Sir Harry Lauder, and Meher Baba, among others. The public nature of Pickford's second marriage strained it to the breaking point. Both she and Fairbanks had little time off from producing and acting in their films. They were also constantly on display as America's unofficial ambassadors to the world, leading parades, cutting ribbons, and making speeches. When their film careers both began to founder at the end of the silent era, Fairbanks' restless nature prompted him to overseas travel (something which Pickford did not enjoy). When Fairbanks' romance with Sylvia, Lady Ashley became public in the early 1930s, he and Pickford separated. They divorced January 10, 1936. Fairbanks' son by his first wife, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., claimed his father and Pickford long regretted their inability to reconcile.

Took 7 trips around the world with Fairbanks, working no more than 6-9 months per year.

Fairbanks jealous (Valentino) - Apparently Marion and McAvoy knew Pickford was lonely

On June 24, 1937, Pickford married her third and last husband, actor and band leader Buddy Rogers. They adopted two children: Roxanne (born 1944, adopted 1944) and Ronald Charles (born 1937, adopted 1943, a.k.a. Ronnie Pickford Rogers). As a PBS American Experience documentary noted, Pickford's relationship with her children was tense. She criticized their physical imperfections, including Ronnie's small stature and Roxanne's crooked teeth. Both children later said their mother was too self-absorbed to provide real maternal love. In 2003, Ronnie recalled that "Things didn't work out that much, you know. But I'll never forget her. I think that she was a good woman."

Later years

After retiring from the screen, Pickford became an alcoholic, as her father had been. Her mother Charlotte died of breast cancer in March 1928. Her siblings, Lottie and Jack, both died of alcohol-related causes. These deaths, her divorce from Fairbanks, and the end of silent films left Pickford deeply depressed. Her relationship with her children, Roxanne and Ronald, was turbulent at best. Pickford withdrew and gradually became a recluse, remaining almost entirely at Pickfair and allowing visits only from Lillian Gish, her stepson Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and few other people. She appeared in court in 1959, in a matter pertaining to her co-ownership of North Carolina TV station WSJS-TV. The court date coincided with the date of her 67th birthday; under oath, when asked to give her age, Pickford replied, "I'm 21, going on 20".

In the mid-1960s, Pickford often received visitors only by telephone, speaking to them from her bedroom. Buddy Rogers often gave guests tours of Pickfair, including views of a genuine western bar Pickford had bought for Douglas Fairbanks, and a portrait of Pickford in the drawing room. A print of this image now hangs in the Library of Congress. In addition to her Oscar as best actress for Coquette (1929), Mary Pickford received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976 for lifetime achievement. The Academy sent a TV crew to her house to record her short statement of thanks – offering the public a very rare glimpse into Pickfair Manor.

Pickford had become an American citizen upon her marriage to Fairbanks in 1920. Toward the end of her life, Pickford made arrangements with the Department of Citizenship to regain her Canadian citizenship because she wished to "die as a Canadian". Her request was approved and she became a dual Canadian-American citizen.

Death

The tomb of actress Mary Pickford in the Garden of Memory, Forest Lawn Glendale.

On May 29, 1979, Pickford died at a Santa Monica hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered the week before. She was interred in the Garden of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California. Buried alongside her in the Pickford private family plot are her mother Charlotte, her siblings Lottie and Jack Pickford, and the family of Elizabeth Watson, Charlotte's sister, who had helped raise Pickford in Toronto.

Legacy

In an open letter to Mary Pickford published in the Chicago Tribune, Edward Wagenknecht wrote: "We who loved you were... much simpler people than the sophisticates who go to the movies nowadays, and you meant more to us than anybody can mean to them. We accepted you without question or analysis; we adored you in the honest simplicity of our hearts."