Making a tribute to Mary Pickford, née Glady Marie Smith, a beautiful, iconic lady, an actress and a film producer who won several academy awards, became an entrepreneur, financially independent with a career in the film industry that lasted for decades.
*** Photograph: Pickford with one of her
favourite dog's named Zorro ...
Mary, apparently, started working in small theatrical acting roles at an early age of 6 years old, felt that it was her duty to help her mother, her younger brother and sister due to sudden demise of her father, the family dealt with constant financial struggles. It was years of working, discipline in improving her acting skills, even more so when she began short films. Pickford, developed her own unique acting style of sweet, adorable, innocent of which included her looks with her long hair, she earned a nickname of “The Biographed Blond” during times when actors and actress's names were not mentioned. She nicely, refused to put on heavy make up for the films thus she began her experimentations with her own make up in order to project herself more natural on movies from short slap stick films to silent pictures, managed to gain the love, attention and trust from her audiences, later earned another nickname of “The girl with the golden curls”. As her fame increased, Mary became the breadwinner of the family, a natural business lady who negotiated salaries, more control of her acting roles and contracts.
Mary continued, worked really hard and long hours increasing her fame and status.
She earned another nick name of "America's Sweetheart", a name she believed that had an enormous responsibility to maintain, such a high reputation.
Her fame gave her further access and opportunities with higher influential people. It was then, the first time she met Charles S. Chaplin and she was extremely amazed by his looks of "dark black hair, dark blue eyes, a refined look like a violinist". Pickford was quite young and greatly inspired by such genius.
In later years during a creation of a film, Mary met Douglas E. Fairbanks. It marked another challenge in in her life, they became friends, quite compatible and eventually inseparable as they fell in love. It has been stated that Douglas managed to naturally make her laugh, live the moment like a carefree child, a childhood of which Mary missed out. It was however a major problem as each of them were married to somebody else, furthermore, her high risk of losing her fans and also her Catholic religion would not approve of divorce and re-marry. Nevertheless, each decided to divorce their partners, Mary and Douglas married in March 1920. Their wedding celebration, honey moon, later vacations to Europe were extremely published in all sorts of media. The world tours were well received from the public and had an enormous success.
Mary and Douglas lived in a mansion and named it "Pickford House", they made further renovations, owned several pets, bought important collections of paintings, books, furniture, decorations, antiques and wanted the mansion to become a museum. They organised special dinners, extravagant events at the house with national and international famous guests. Apparently, there were also rumours that Pickford House was haunted and that Mary was greatly affected by it. The ghost(s) bothered her and quite often Mary had difficulties to sleep and living there, also their dogs were affected in different ways, nevertheless it seems that most likely the issue was eventually solved as Mary and Douglas stayed and kept the house.
In early 1928, the unfortunate demise of Mary's mother was quite painful and difficult to overcome. Pickford decided, to rebuild her life, become stronger and free, so much so that she was afraid once again going against her religion and her loyal fans like in previous years when she divorced and re-married. Still, she decided to take another drastic risk and cut her long hair to a rather short bob. It created a major scandal on all sorts of news and newspaper headlines like "Famous Golden Curls ... Mary Pickford cuts her hair" !!! She drastically lost more fans of which led to decrease of reputation and funds, she had to do an interview explaining her great loss, felt that she needed to become more mature thus she "cut her hair, kept the curls and no longer wanted to be a little girl". A few months later, Pickford was on the frontpage of September Magazine called Photoplay titled "Why Mary Pickford Bobed Her Hair". In April 1929, a film named "Coquette" was released with her new looks, it was Mary's first Talkie Picture where she played a sophisticated lady and was quite successful as she received Best Actress Academy Awards. Nevertheless, unfortunately most fans found difficult to accept her personal drastic choices and decisions.
On another note, a major international success was the decision of joining forces with Charles S. Chaplin, Douglas E. Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith to form a new company named "United Artists" in January 1929. It marked an important historical revolution in the film industry as it gave them complete control of their movies. For Mary however it was a real difficult challenge, worked even longer hours, found eventually too exhausting to be an Actress and a Producer and to manage further extra duties as most days ranged from 6.00 a.m to 11.00 p.m.
Furthermore, during times of Prohibition of alcohol era, in the late 1920's a cocktail was invented and named in her honor "Mary Pickford", most serve it in a classic cocktail glass chilled with no ice along with its famous ingredients of fresh pineapple juice, rum and a dash of grenadine. An international famous cocktail where it's original place and inventor has been highly debated.
Mary Pickford became the first Actress with the highest earnings, a philanthropist, also one of a founder of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and further honored as the “Queen of the Movies”…
“The past can not be changed. The future is yet in your power...
If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You can start over any moment you choose” Mary Pickford.
*** Below, part of Pickford's honeymoon and Europe Holidays, early 1920's ...
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*** Further below, rare interview of Pickford with Adolph Zukor, one of the founders of Paramount Pictures ...
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