Gladys Marie Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades.
58 Facts About Mary Pickford
2.
Mary Pickford is considered to be one of the most recognisable women in history.
3.
Mary Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting.
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Mary Pickford was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies".
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Mary Pickford is credited with having defined the type in cinema.
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Mary Pickford was awarded the second Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette.
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Mary Pickford received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976 in consideration of her contributions to American cinema.
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Mary Pickford was born Gladys Marie Smith in 1892 at 211 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.
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Charlotte was billed as "Lottie Mary Pickford" was born on 1893 and and John Charles Jr.
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Mary Pickford was at this time baptized as Gladys Marie Smith.
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Mary Pickford subsequently acted in many melodramas with Toronto's Valentine Stock Company, finally playing the major child role in its version of The Silver King.
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Mary Pickford capped her short career in Toronto with the starring role of Little Eva in the Valentine production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, adapted from the 1852 novel.
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Mary Pickford quickly grasped that movie acting was simpler than the stylized stage acting of the day.
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In January 1910, Mary Pickford traveled with a Biograph crew to Los Angeles.
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Mary Pickford added to her 1909 Biographs with films made in California.
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Unhappy with their creative standards, Mary Pickford returned to work with Griffith in 1912.
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Mary Pickford made her last Biograph picture, The New York Hat, in late 1912.
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Mary Pickford returned to Broadway in the David Belasco production of A Good Little Devil.
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Mary Pickford, who had always hoped to conquer the Broadway stage, discovered how deeply she missed film acting.
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Mary Pickford left the stage to join Zukor's roster of stars.
21.
Hearts Adrift was so popular that Mary Pickford asked for the first of her many publicized pay raises based on the profits and reviews.
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The film marked the first time Mary Pickford's name was featured above the title on movie marquees.
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Mary Pickford's appeal was summed up two years later by the February 1916 issue of Photoplay as "luminous tenderness in a steel band of gutter ferocity".
24.
On June 24,1916, Mary Pickford signed a new contract with Zukor that granted her full authority over production of the films in which she starred, and a record-breaking salary of $10,000 a week.
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Mary Pickford's fans were devoted to these "little girl" roles, but they were not typical of her career.
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Mary Pickford declined, and went to First National Pictures, which agreed to her terms.
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Mary Pickford underestimated the value of adding sound to movies, claiming that "adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo".
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Mary Pickford played a reckless socialite in Coquette, her first talkie, a role for which her famous ringlets were cut into a 1920s bob.
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Mary Pickford had already cut her hair in the wake of her mother's death in 1928.
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Mary Pickford's hair had become a symbol of female virtue, and when she cut it, the act made front-page news in The New York Times and other papers.
31.
Mary Pickford retired from film acting in 1933 following three costly failures with her last film appearance being Secrets.
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Mary Pickford appeared on stage in Chicago in 1934 in the play The Church Mouse and went on tour in 1935, starting in Seattle with the stage version of Coquette.
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Mary Pickford appeared in a season of radio plays for NBC in 1935 and CBS in 1936.
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Mary Pickford used her stature in the movie industry to promote a variety of causes.
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Mary Pickford was christened the US Navy's official "Little Sister"; the Army named two cannons after her and made her an honorary colonel.
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In 1932, Mary 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.
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An astute businesswoman, Mary Pickford became her own producer within three years of her start in features.
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Mary Pickford demanded these powers in 1916, when she was under contract to Zukor's Famous Players in Famous Plays.
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In 1916, Mary Pickford's films were distributed, singly, through a special distribution unit called Artcraft.
40.
The Mary Pickford Corporation was briefly Pickford's motion-picture production company.
41.
Chaplin left the company in 1955, and Mary Pickford followed suit in 1956, selling her remaining shares for $3 million.
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Mary Pickford had bought the rights to many of her early silent films with the intention of burning them on her death, but in 1970 she agreed to donate 50 of her Biograph films to the American Film Institute.
43.
Mary Pickford married Owen Moore, an Irish-born silent film actor, on January 7,1911.
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Mary Pickford became secretly involved in a relationship with Douglas Fairbanks.
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Around this time, Mary Pickford suffered from the flu during the 1918 flu pandemic.
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Mary Pickford divorced Moore on March 2,1920, after she agreed to his $100,000 demand for a settlement.
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Mary Pickford married Fairbanks just days later on March 28,1920, in what was described as the "marriage of the century" and they were referred to as the King and Queen of Hollywood.
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Mary Pickford continued to epitomize the virtuous but fiery girl next door.
49.
On June 24,1937, Mary Pickford married her third and last husband, actor and band leader Charles "Buddy" Rogers.
50.
Mary Pickford criticized their physical imperfections, including Ronnie's small stature and Roxanne's crooked teeth.
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Mary Pickford supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election, Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States presidential election and Ronald Reagan in his race for governor in 1966.
52.
Mary Pickford withdrew and gradually became a recluse, remaining almost entirely at Pickfair and allowing visits only from Lillian Gish, her stepson Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
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Mary Pickford had previously published Why Not Try God in 1934, an essay on spirituality and personal growth, My Rendevouz of Life, an essay on death and her belief in an afterlife and a novel in 1935, The Demi-Widow.
54.
Charles "Buddy" Rogers often gave guests tours of Pickfair, including views of a genuine western bar Mary Pickford had bought for Douglas Fairbanks, and a portrait of Mary Pickford in the drawing room.
55.
Mary Pickford believed that she had ceased to be a British subject when she married Fairbanks, an American citizen, in 1920.
56.
Toward the end of her life, Mary Pickford made arrangements with the Canadian Department of Citizenship to officially acquire Canadian citizenship because she wished to "die as a Canadian".
57.
On May 29,1979, Mary Pickford died at a Santa Monica, California, hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered the week before.
58.
Mary Pickford was interred in the Garden of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California.