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The mother of Hollywood
Allison Brophy Champion, abrophy(at)starexponent(dot)com, (540) 825-0771 ext. 101
Published: May 28, 2009
Illustrious silent screen actress Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was the most famous woman in the world in the early 20th century. Born in Toronto, she was the first “America’s Sweetheart,” an innovator in the film industry and an astute businesswoman.
She was as famous as Charlie Chaplin, says Pickford expert Christel Schmidt, a writer and editor at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Mary Pickford’s film debut, so the LOC is taking her show on the road with special screenings in Detroit, San Francisco, New York and, this weekend, Culpeper. Pickford made an estimated 205 movies during her 24-year career, retiring in 1933 after a brief try at talkies.
Her “Sparrows” from 1926 shows Sunday in the LOC Mount Pony Theater with a special introduction by Schmidt and live piano accompaniment by composer Andrew Simpson.
“Mary Pickford was incredibly popular,” said Schmidt, an editor for the 2007 book “Silent Movies: the Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture” by Peter Kobel and the LOC.
“But she was also really part of a movement to uplift cinema, to make movies of a higher quality. She saw film as an art form.”
In addition, Pickford saw film as a business and was very much in control of her destiny. In 1916, at a time when the average American was making $750 a year, Pickford was making half a million. That very year, Pickford reportedly told Adolph Zukor of Zukor’s Famous Players that she “couldn’t live on $10,000 a week,” according to “Silent Movies” — copies of which will be on sale at Sunday’s event in Culpeper.
In 1919, Pickford co-founded United Artists with Chaplin, Biograph’s D.W. Griffith and actor, producer, director and writer Douglas Fairbanks. She was involved in every aspect of motion pictures, said Schmidt, from wardrobe to art direction and advertising to writing, camera work and promotions.
“She wasn’t going to grab onto anyone’s kite strings, and she didn’t want to let anyone grab hers,” Schmidt said. “Today, if you compared her, Mary Pickford was Oprah and Madonna in one. She was beloved around the world and the master of her medium.”
Pickford’s movies were mostly comedies, Schmidt went on, or rather “dramadies” in that they incorporated dark, Dickensian themes. In “Sparrows,” she stars as the eldest child, a teenager, at a baby farm located in a swamp.
“Her films are about fighting for the underdog,” said Schmidt. “She almost always plays a character that is very poor or has some struggle.”
In “Stella Maris” — one of her best films, according to “Silent Movies” — Pickford portrays two characters: a sheltered, rich invalid and a poor orphan.
“We call her ‘the mother of Hollywood,’” Schmidt said.
Sunday’s screening of “Sparrows” — from a tinted restoration print — is the LOC’s second stop on the Mary Pickford tour, following a kickoff last month in Detroit.
But the Mary Pickford recognition doesn’t end there. Schmidt and the LOC are working on a book of essays about her, slated for release next year, with the University Press of Kentucky.
Schmidt is also heading a traveling exhibition of Mary Pickford memorabilia scheduled to open next fall in Los Angeles.
