1. MARY PICKFORD HERSELF
a. Where and when was she born?
Mary was born on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Canada. Her given
name was Gladys Louise Smith.
b. Where and when did she die?
Mary died at Santa Monica Hospital in Santa Monica, California
on May 29th, 1979. She had suffered a stroke on May 25th,
and fell into a coma on May 27th. She was 87 years of age
when she died.
c. What were her major accomplishments?
Mary Pickford was perhaps the first superstar the movies ever
produced. Before Charlie Chaplin and before her husband Douglas
Fairbanks, Mary Pickford was known to fans the world over
for her tough, sentimental, and warmly comic style, and for
dramas about brave young women facing a difficult world. More
than just a pretty face, Mary Pickford was also one of the
founders of Hollywood: an important producer, writer and director,
she controlled her career and her films as few actresses or
actors have since. She became a celebrated public figure and
later in life devoted herself to business pursuits including
film and real estate, and established numerous charity efforts
(most notably the Motion Picture Home and the Mary Pickford
Foundation).
d. Who were her family members?
1. Mary’s immediate family included mother Charlotte,
younger sister Lottie and younger brother Jack. The father
of the household, John Charles Smith, died when Mary was about
six of a blood clot suffered when a ship-board pulley struck
him. She also had a grandmother, Catherine Hennessey, who
disapproved of the theater. As an inside joke, Mary sometimes
credited screenplays she herself had written to “Catherine
Hennessey.”
2.
Mary Pickford was married three times:
Her first husband, Owen Moore, was a handsome actor she met
working for D.W. Griffith at Biograph. She married Moore on
January 7, 1911, and divorced him (thanks to the easy divorce
statutes in Nevada) in February of 1920.
Douglas Fairbanks was her second husband, and although their
marriage was not her last or her longest, it gave Hollywood
its first royal couple. On March 28, 1920 they married and
moved into what would soon become known as Pickfair. Their
celebrated marriage coincided with the peaks of their two
careers, but it eventually ended in a divorce, which was finalized
January 10, 1936.
Charles “Buddy” Rogers, her co-star in My
Best Girl, was Mary’s third and final husband.
They married on June 24, 1937 and remained married until her
death in 1979. Buddy survived her, remarried himself to Beverley
Ricono, and died April 21, 1999.
3. Mary and Buddy Rogers adopted two children, Roxanne and
Ronnie. Ronnie is still alive, but neither of them had much
to do with their mother’s work, film or charitable.
e. What was Pickfair?
If Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were the first king
and queen of Hollywood, Pickfair was their castle. A hunting
lodge on the (then) outskirts of Beverly Hills on Summit Drive,
it was a grand house that played host to visiting royalty
from all fields of human endeavor. Lavishly appointed by its
famous occupants, it sported stables and a large pool, a western-style
bar straight out of a cowboy movie and china that had once
been a gift from Napolean to Josephine. The address was (and
is) 1143 Summit Drive, although the house is no longer connected
to Pickford or Fairbanks. It was purchased by Los Angeles
Lakers owner Jerry Buss after Mary’s death, and then
sold in 1988 to Meshulam Riklis and Pia Zadora. The couple
tore down and renovated large sections of the original building,
leaving a mansion that few today recognize as Pickfair. Recently
(in January of 2003) the house was put on the market at over
$39 million dollars.
Pickfair Lodge was a home built on a corner of the Pickfair
grounds by Buddy Rogers after the death of Mary Pickford.
This small but beautiful mansion housed many of Mary’s
keepsakes until 2003, when it too went on the market. Some
of its features recalled the original Pickfair, including
a western bar that Buddy had fashioned from the old Pickfair
bomb shelter, which was on the Pickfair Lodge section of the
property.
f. Where did the name “Mary Pickford”
come from?
Young Gladys Smith seized a chance to work with David Belasco
in 1907, but her theatrical mentor (easily one of the most
powerful men in American theater at the time) advised her
to change her name. In her autobiography, she tells of how
Belasco first chose “Pickford” from among the
family names that she recited, and then advised her to use
Mary (from “Marie,” one of the names she was baptized
with) for her first name. She sent home to Toronto a telegraph
that she claims read, “GLADYS SMITH NOW MARY PICKFORD
ENGAGED BY DAVID BELASCO TO APPEAR ON BROADWAY THIS FALL.”
g. Why was she known
as “America’s Sweetheart”?
B.P. Schulberg, a staffer for Famous Players who would one-day
rule movie empires of his own, christened Mary with this nickname.
He claims to have overheard a middle-aged couple talking about
her in front of a theater one day. The husband is supposed
to have said, “There she is, my little sweetheart,”
to which the wife replied, “She’s not just your
little sweetheart, she’s everybody’s sweetheart.”
Schulberg coined the nickname “America’s Sweetheart,”
and began to use it in film advertising for Mary’s pictures.
Interestingly, it is a moniker that like the phrase “It
Girl,” has been claimed by more modern stars like Julia
Roberts, and Canadians are quick to point out that before
she was America’s Sweetheart, she was Canada’s
Sweetheart.
h. Why was she known as “The Girl With The
Curls”?
Perhaps the most famous aspect of Mary Pickford’s image
was her thick, blonde ringlet curls. A common hairstyle of
the era, on this end of history they almost seem to belong
only to Mary Pickford. On occasion they were elements of the
stories Mary starred in, for example Little Lord Fauntleroy,
and other times they were dispensed with. Only some of them
were real: Mary Pickford carefully maintained extensions to
augment her natural curls. When she cut them off publicly,
the event was as much a cultural watershed as Elvis Presley’s
Army-induction haircut—more so. The curls were emblematic
of her virginal purity: audiences were said to gasp when they
were cut onscreen as part of a movie. Mary compared herself
to the biblical Samson, so certain was she that the loss of
her famous hair would somehow sap her strength with the public.
In 1928, three months after the death of her mother, she finally
took that chance and had a hairdresser cut them off. By cutting
off her curls, Mary made a public statement about her adulthood.
Mary reported that Douglas Fairbanks wept when he saw her
without her famous curls. Today, several of her curls still
exist in museum collections.
i. Why is she sometimes called the world’s
first movie superstar?
When Mary Pickford was making movies, they were beginning
to become an international phenomenon. She was the first actor
to benefit from that change, and for a while she was the most
recognized person in the world. Although political figures
like Kings and Queens and Presidents could be seen everywhere
on currency and stamps, only Little Mary Pickford could be
seen in a media that approached real life. The movies gave
a seeming intimacy and connection that even the greatest sculpture
or portrait could not match, and silent movies could easily
cross national boundaries, losing little when the language
changed. Within a few years others, notably her husband Douglas
Fairbanks and their friend Charlie Chaplin, matched her popularity
but the first to attract mobs internationally was Mary Pickford.
The whole phenomenon of fame and the movies was skewered hilariously
by the 1927 Russian film Potseluj Meri Pikford, also
known as A Kiss From Mary Pickford, which
used footage of Mary and Doug in Russia. The story centers
on fanatical Russian fans, including one who refuses to wash
his cheek after his idol Mary plants her famous lips on his
cheek. The resulting mass hysteria is now all too familiar
to our celebrity-crazed culture.
j. Was she a small person? What sized clothing/shoes
did she wear?
Mary Pickford was certainly small by modern standards: she
wore a size five or smaller shoe. She was slight, but her
head was slightly larger than average. On the many occasions
that she played children, she cast large actors and actresses
opposite her to aid in the illusion that she was a child.
k. What was important about her acting?
Although trained as an actor in the sentimental and even maudlin
stage style of the time, Mary Pickford possessed an uncanny
sense of the scale of acting for the screen. The two techniques
are essentially different, and Mary Pickford seems to have
understood that almost from the very beginning. Although there
is certainly an element of melodrama to what she does, everything
is pitched for the camera and not for the last seat in the
balcony. Mary was really the first of the great actors to
understand and play to the intimacy of the movie camera.
l. What other contributions did she make to Hollywood?
Aside from being film’s first international superstar,
Mary Pickford was an important Producer, Writer and Director.
She was one of the founders of United Artists studios, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Motion Picture
Home, and indeed of the film community we call “Hollywood.”
She is often credited with being the first American woman
to earn a million dollars in a year, and she was certainly
an important symbol of American womanhood both inside and
outside of Hollywood.
m. What contributions did she make to the world aside from
films?
Mary Pickford used her new-found fame as a film star as early
as 1917, when she and Fairbanks and Chaplin sold war bonds
throughout North America. For the most part, her charity focused
in later years on health care and issues related to aging,
but during WWII she again supported the war effort. She was
also important as a hostess and socialite: Pickfair was, for
a time, a noted destination for politicos, literary figures,
artists, and so on.
n. What was her relationship with Charlie Chaplin?
D.W. Griffith? The Gish sisters?
Chaplin was a friend and a rival, although more a rival later
in life. Griffith was a father-figure and a mentor, although
Mary surpassed him as a film figure before the end of his
days. The Gish sisters were always friends of Mary’s:
some of the only people who had come up through the theater
and shared a common view of their craft.
o. Why did Mary Pickford stop acting?
She was fond of saying that she couldn’t or wouldn’t
compete with modern screen stars, but perhaps most importantly
Mary Pickford faced a challenge that hits actresses in film
particularly hard: aging and mortality. It’s no coincidence
that she stopped acting both when she turned 40 and when many
people close to her died.
p. Did she publish any books?
In addition to her autobiography Sunshine And Shadow,
Mary published two books of a spiritual/inspirational nature:
Why Not Try God and My Rendez-Vous
With Life, as well as the novel The Demi-Widow.
q. What are some good books about Mary Pickford?
The biographies by Scott Eyman, Mary Pickford: America’s
Sweetheart, and Eileen Whitfield, Pickford:
The Woman Who Made Hollywood, are generally available.
Famed film scholar Kevin Brownlow recently published a beautiful
book about Mary and her films called Mary Pickford
Rediscovered.
r. Are there any good films about Mary Pickford?
The most complete at this point is Mary Pickford:
A Life On Film, which along with many of Mary’s
films, is available from Milestone Films at www.milestonefilms.com
2.
MARY PICKFORD'S FILMS
a. Where can I find copies of Mary Pickford’s films?
Try Mary’s favorite distributor: Milestone!
www.milestonefilms.com
b. How come some of Mary’s films are lost?
A goodly percentage (somewhere well over 80%) of all films
made in the silent era are lost forever. Many were shot or
printed on unstable film stock like silver nitrate, and some
just fell victim to bad luck. Still, we’re hunting for
lost films all the time…and Mary’s history is
more complete than most!
c. What’s a good Mary Pickford film to see if you’ve
never seen one?
Hmm, that’s a tough one. Most people associate Mary
with sweet, child-like characters…but that’s only
part of her appeal. She often played young people, and often
they were tough, funny, and resourceful. Try Daddy-Long-Legs
or Sparrows if you want to see a classic
Pickford kid, Stella Maris or My
Best Girl if you’d like to see the drama and
comedy she was capable of when playing someone her own age.
d. Are all of Mary Pickford’s films about sweet little
girls?
Not at all—but that’s what many people seem to
recall. Eileen Whitfield, one of her biographers, makes a
persuasive case that we see Mary though the rose-colored lens
of Shirley Temple, who made super-sweet versions of several
of Mary’s films. Pickford heroines could be sweet, but
just as often they were tough and self-reliant. By the sound
era she was playing southern belles, tough frontierswomen,
and flappers…and in Taming Of The Shrew
she played Kate to Douglas Fairbanks’ Petrucchio.
e. Will there be more Mary Pickford films restored
and re-released in the future?
Yes…a new set of five is soon to be released. For exact
dates and more information, please visit our HOME
VIDEO RELEASES page.
3.
MARY PICKFORD COLLECTIBLES
a.
I have an autographed picture or other item—what is
it worth?
Many people write to the Pickford Library asking us what might
be the value of their signed photograph. If you send us a
JPEG or a Xerox of the image, we can probably tell you what
film it is from, or about when it was shot...but alas, we
are archivists, not appraisers! We can tell you one or two
things about autographs and photos that might be of help:
1. Mary quite often used a stamp on photos sent out to her
many fans. The stamp reads "Cordially, Mary Pickford."
If your photo says that, there is a good chance it's the stamp,
and therefore, less valuable. Only a real autograph expert
can tell you for sure. Try your local collectibles shop, or
check out a dealer's association like the Professional Autograph
Dealers Association www.padaweb.org
2. The condition of the photo, document or letter is important...but
you probably knew that already.
3. All sorts of items are sold for their autographs...checks,
letters, and so on. An item that is itself unique and related
directly to the celebrity is going to command a higher price.
Mary's signature on a first-day-of-issue postage stamp set
that relates to her is more valuable than her signature on
a check to the grocery store. I recently saw her autograph
on a stamp set featuring D.W. Griffith, the man who put her
in the movies. That's a great item. Likewise, a beautiful
and rare photo in and of itself adds to the value. A still
from a movie is less intriguing and less valuable.
4. I always find Ebay to be instructive. You can get a sense
of what dealers think the market will bear, and then you can
see the market in action. Make sure you don't base an estimate
on the asking price: If somebody wants $150 for an autographed
photo, that is not what it is worth. That photo is
worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Check
out the items that people are actually bidding on. I think
I've seen Mary autographs running anywhere from $10 to about
$100, depending on condition, item, rarity, and other various
factors. I'll bet a straightforward Mary Pickford autograph
would be worth something around $20.
5. In the end, the only real way to ascertain value is to
take the photo to a professional for appraisal...that and/or
selling the autograph! Like so many collectibles, the value
of your item is what the market will bear.
b. Can you give me information about Mary Pickford
dolls, spoons, paintings, etc?
Write to us and we’ll give you the benefit of our knowledge.
c. I think I have a piece of furniture, a photo, or
another collectible that I think the Institute might be interested
in, who should I talk to?
Please contact either John Flynn or Hugh Munro Neely. We do,
from time to time, purchase items for the collection.
d. Where can I buy Mary Pickford collectibles?
Ebay is a great place to start, and we also recommend conventions
such as the wonderful Cinecon, held every Labor Day weekend
in Hollywood.
4.
THE MARY PICKFORD LIBRARY
a. What is the Library? What does it contain?
The Pickford Library is not a lending library: it contains
about 3000 photos and other documents and video copies of
most of Mary’s films. It’s also staffed by people
who know a good deal about Mary’s career. Our job is
to help people who are interested in Mary’s legacy.
b. What services does the Library perform? Do
they cost anything?
We’re always available to answer questions and provide
assistance to researchers, filmmakers, students, and film
buffs. We can provide copies of images or films (with window
burn timecode) for research and/or publication. Prices vary,
but they are minimal depending on your needs/purposes, and
the nature of your organization.
c. Who are the staff members of the Library?
Currently the library staff includes Library Manager John
Flynn, Film Curator Hugh Munro Neely, and Curator of Photographs
Helen Demeestere.
d. Can I visit the Library?
We’re available by appointment, and generally we’re
available on a same-day basis. We’re at 9725 Culver
Blvd. in Culver City, CA. Phone us at 310-287-3702.
e. Does the Library loan out films or books or other objects?
Generally no, although we do arrange for screenings with organizations.
Still, we do have many resources available for our visitors.
5. THE MARY PICKFORD
FOUNDATION
a. What is the purpose of the Foundation?
The purpose of the Foundation is to carry forth Mary Pickford’s
legacy and generosity.
b. What has the Foundation done in the past?
Thru grants, the Foundation has supported thousands of institutes
and non-profits, and tens-of-thousands of individuals.
c. Who are the Directors of the Foundation?
The
current Board of Directors consists of, President Keith Lawrence,
Chairman Henry Stotsenberg, and Secretary Gary Shoffner. For
more information on these gentlemen, please refer to the BOARD OF DIRECTORS
page.
d. What does the Foundation fund? Will the Foundation
talk to me about funding my project?
As part of procedure, the Institute does not
accept unsolicited grant requests.
6. THE MARY PICKFORD INSTITUTE
a. What is the Institute, and how is it different
from the Foundation?
The Institute does not give money away, like the Foundation.
Rather, it is a learning facility and provides services to
the public and non-profits through education.
b. What sorts of programs is the Institute promoting?
The Institute is involved in a variety of programs, educating
a wide array of people, non-profits, and their interests.
Some of the documentary projects completed in 2004, range
from a children’s opera camp, Documenting Brundibar,
to the professional dancers’ experience with Answers
for Dancers, to the public service announcements produced
by the teens of an after-school literacy program, The
Story Project I and II.
The Institute is equally diverse and enthusiastic about the
projects lined up for the coming year. Please check back frequently
for updates.
For more information on these projects and others, please
visit our 2004 PROJECTS
and WHAT’S NEW IN 2005
pages.
c. Who is the staff of the Institute? Where is
it located?
The
Institute’s staff is a highly education team and consists
of President Keith Lawrence, the Institute Director Andi Hicks,
and the Project Manager Dianne Prutch.
The Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education is housed in
the historic Washington Building in downtown Culver City.
Charles E. Lindblade built this Beaux Arts style structure,
circa 1924, from a design by architects Orville Clark and
Arthur Scholz. For a time it was commonly known as "The
Flat Iron Building,” and could be glimpsed in some of
the early comedies filmed in Culver City by film luminaries
like Hal Roach and Laurel and Hardy. On May 28, 1991, it was
listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
For more information on the Institute’s staff and/or
the location, please refer to the WHO
WE ARE and CONTACTS
pages.
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