Saturdays with the Stars: Mary Pickford

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  To start our series, we're going to look at the woman who originated the title, an actress who was as powerful as any other during the 1910's & 1920's, and was one of the first movie stars to become a household name.  When silent pictures (and her storybook marriage) fell apart, though, she became the first actress to lose the title of "America's Sweetheart"...despite living another fifty years past her heyday.  This month's star is Mary Pickford.

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Marie Smith, the eldest daughter of Methodist immigrants.  Her alcoholic father died when Gladys was just six-years-old, and her mother, along with her siblings Lottie and Jack joined theater troupes, and by the time she was 15, Gladys was on Broadway in the hit play The Warrens of Virginia (during which time she became known by the stage-name Mary Pickford).  When the play closed, Gladys auditioned for DW Griffith, and he signed her to a contract of $40 a week (about $1300 a week in 2023 dollars), and she became a staple in his company, one of the most popular actors in Biograph films.  She eventually left Biograph for Famous Players-Lasky, and eventually Paramount, and in 1914 she became one of the first stars (after Florence Lawrence) to be billed with her stage name and not just "Biograph Girl."  By 1916, she was the biggest star in movies after Charlie Chaplin, and signed a $1 million contract (the equivalent to $20 million today) with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures, the first actress to get such an amount.

Pickford's career is too long to fit into one biography, and indeed, we'll talk about it throughout the month.  She was not just the biggest actress in the country for nearly a decade, but also founded a movie studio (United Artists), the Academy Awards, and was one-half of the first Hollywood super-couple with Douglas Fairbanks.  She was known as "America's Sweetheart" during much of the 1910's, and we're going to look at that era, but we're also going to talk about what happened after.  One of the recurring themes we're going to find with the actresses here is that while a few had storybook endings to match their sweet-as-pie persona on the big screen, many of them struggled to live up to that when the press moved on to a new actress, and perhaps no one suffered more from that than Mary Pickford, whose final decades were filled with sorrow & grief.