Stiff Of the Week: Mary Pickford

"Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo"

Full Name:
Mary Pickford
Gladys Louise Smith

Claim To Fame:
Mary Pickford was an Academy Award-winning Canadian motion picture star, as well as a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Known as "America's Sweetheart," "Little Mary" and "the girl with the curls," she was one of the first Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and one of film's greatest pioneers. Her influence in the development of film acting was enormous. Because her international fame was triggered by moving images, she is a watershed figure in the history of modern celebrity. And as one of silent film's most important performers and producers, her contract demands were central to shaping the Hollywood industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time.

Pickford earned the right not only to act in her own movies, but to produce them and (through the creation of United Artists) control their distribution. She was also the first actress to receive more than a million dollars per year. Throughout her career, Pickford starred in 52 features. Occasionally, she played a child, in films like "The Poor Little Rich Girl," (1917) "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," (1917) and "Daddy Long-Legs."(1917) These "Little Girl" roles are superbly done, and some Pickford's fans were devoted to them. But the roles aren't typical of her career, nor did Pickford (as some people believe) appear exclusively as children in silent film.

The arrival of sound was her undoing. She played a reckless socialite in Coquette (1929), a role where she no longer had her famous curls, but rather a 1920s bob; Pickford had cut her hair in the wake of her mother's death in 1928, and her fans were shocked at the transformation. Pickford's hair had become a symbol of female virtue, and cutting it was front-page news in The New York Times and other papers. Unfortunately, though Coquette was a success and won her an Academy Award for Best Actress, the public failed to respond to these more sophisticated roles. Like most movie stars of the silent era, Pickford's career faded as talkies became more popular among audience. Her next film after Coquette, The Taming of The Shrew--which was also her husband Douglas Fairbanks' first sound film--was a disaster at the box office. By then in her forties, Pickford was unable to play the children, teenage spitfires and feisty young women so adored by her fans; nor could she play the soigne heroines of early sound.

She retired from acting in 1933, though she continued to produce films for others, including Sleep, My Love (1948), an update of Gaslight with Claudette Colbert.

She died of cerebral hemorrhage on May 29, 1979, at the age of 87, and was buried 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 Mary in Toronto.


D.O.B./D.O.D:
Birth: Apr. 9, 1892
Toronto
Ontario, Canada
Death: May 29, 1979
Cause of death: Cerebral hemorrhage
Burial:
Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
Glendale
Los Angeles County
California, USA
Plot: Garden of Memory, east wall, large white sarcophagus