Mary Pickford Turns 125

From: Boy Culture

Mary Pickford: April 8, 1892—May 29, 1979

 Mary Pickford — real name Gladys Louise Smith — was born 125 years ago today in Toronto.

She would go on to become one of the most important women, and indeed, one of the most important figures, period, in the history of film.

The first person to be dubbed “America's Sweetheart,” Pickford started her career treading the boards, including on Broadway (which wasn't such a tony gig back in 1906). After a screen test that took place 108 years ago on April 19, Pickford made her first film appearances, racking up dozens of credits in a matter of weeks.

By the mid-teens, Pickford was a bona fide star whose acting style was more subdued than usual in early film, although she oddly continued playing little girls well into her twenties.

In the 1910s

Her stature made Pickford the highest-paid woman in the movies, and the one with most control over her career, contractually.  She raked in $10,000 a week and took half of the profits of some of her biggest hits, making her a millionaire in short order.

Some of her biggest hits include Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921)

In 1919, Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (her husband), Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists, and continued appearing in million-grossing movies.

By 1929, when she won the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Actress, for her role in Coquette, Pickford had become the world's first Keri Russell — she'd lopped off her curly-cue hair in favor of a chic '20s bob, and the public hated it. Also detrimental to her career was the fact that Pickford did not respect sound in movies.

Pickford did make color screen tests, but rarely appeared in color — only a still from a 1933 Alice in Wonderland test (scrapped project) and a long 1930s The Black Pirate (1926) screen test exist outside of her only color project, Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove (1934):

Spending most of the rest of her life as a recluse married to pal Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Pickford — one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences — allowed cameras into her legendary Pickfair mansion to film her acceptance of an honorary Oscar in 1976, a few years before her death:

Pickford was not a perfect person, but the dreadful interloper Pia Zadora eventually owned Pickfair, and she and her husband secretly demolished it before consulting anyone. At the time, she lied, saying it had been in bad repair and was termite-infested. In 2012, the dumb-ass admitted on TV that they had destroyed the landmark because she believe it to have been haunted.