such vast sums to “the Divine Sarah” and, to a lesser degree, Lillian Russell and Lillie Langtry, was to legitimize the movies for other stage actors. And those were one-time, one-film arrangements, in contrast to Mary’s annual salary, which broke records with each new contract.10
With Charlotte at her side, Mary renegotiated her agreement with Adolph Zukor in July of 1916 to include a $40,000 signing bonus, $10,000 a week, and a percentage of the profits. Zukor told her, “Mary, sweetheart, I don’t have to diet. Every time I talk over a new contract with you and your mother I lose ten pounds.”11
Mary found comfort in imbuing her relationship with Zukor with a father-daughter aura. When he merged his Famous Players company with Jesse Lasky and his brother-in-law Sam Goldfish, she resisted dealing with anyone but “Papa” Zukor. Goldfish in particular became her “bête noire” and she quickly informed “Papa” when Goldfish made disparaging remarks about him.12
Cecil B. DeMille had been Lasky’s leading director since the success of The Squaw Man in 1913 and with the merger he decided to take “an opportunity to help” Mary by directing her. Though Mary did not object to working with him, she announced she wanted Frances Marion to write the scenario.
“I put my foot down firmly,” DeMille said. He “respected” Frances, but adamantly refused to “divide responsibility with anyone else.” He too had an image to maintain and DeMille never had and never would allow “script approval or any other such major authority to anyone who works in any of my pictures.”13
In spite of her enormous salary, Mary did not have the right to choose her own director, but she could be as unswerving as DeMille. She stood her ground and insisted on hiring Frances. Zukor listened to his star’s arguments: The Poor Little Rich Girl, chosen as Mary’s next film, cast her as a youngster similar to the one Frances had created in The Foundling. In addition, Frances had had a solid year of writing experience since then.
Zukor knew that if the film was successful, everyone would make money and if not, he would have Mary where he wanted her—with tangible proof that he was the better judge of her career—and he gave in to Mary’s demand.
Frances’s mother arrived in New York for an extended visit, assuaging her guilt over paying so little attention to her family, and being with Mary and Charlotte again added to Frances’s contentment. When Maurice Tourneur was named the director, Mary and Frances looked forward to getting to work.14
The Poor Little Rich Girl was to be filmed in Fort Lee, so William Brady loaned Frances for the picture, knowing she would be close at hand. Tourneur and Frances had shared a good professional relationship at World, but now Frances was the sole writer as well as the star’s best friend; with the change in dynamics, differences in style and dispositions quickly emerged.
As Mary was putting on her makeup early one morning, she noticed that when one of her mirrors caught the morning sunlight, its reflection on her face made her look much younger. When she told Tourneur about her accidental discovery, she assumed he would be as thrilled as she was, but he was not interested in experimenting. Mary suggested a compromise.
“Take my close-up as you usually do, then would you get me a little spot, and put it on a soapbox or something, and direct it at my face? Then you can see it in the darkroom and choose.”
He couldn’t refuse her reasonable approach delivered with that backbone of iron, and Mary turned out to be right. The “baby spot” was used in The Poor Little Rich Girl and every film that followed.15
“Tourneur shouted at you, he’d blow up and scare everybody off the set, but that was his temperament,” remembered his assistant director Clarence Brown. “He wasn’t malicious, but he did use sarcasm.”
Tourneur was unused to having his authority questioned, but the indignities he was to suffer were only beginning. Frances’s adaptation was based on a rather serious melodrama of wealthy parents who give their only child everything but love, yet through what Brown called “the Pickford-Marion spontaneous combustion,” comedy scenes were added literally as the cameras were rolling.16
As the two women added bits of slapstick, Tourneur threw up his hands in resignation, but when Mary extended an impromptu mud fight to include Frances and some of the crew, it was too much for the sophisticated French director: “But my dear young ladies, it has nothing to do with the picture. It is not in the play and I do not find it in the script. Mais non; c’est une horreur.”17
The horror came for Frances and Mary after The Poor Little Rich Girl was privately screened for Zukor, Lasky, and bosses at Paramount. Not a single laugh came from the all-male group of executives. The women were solemnly informed that the film was “putrid” and the company “would rather face the loss and not release it rather than jeopardize Mary’s career.”18
Frances rushed back to the cutting room “groping blindly to sharpen the comedy,” but the pronouncement that they had created a disaster remained unchanged. She was devastated, convinced she had personally ruined Mary, and Minnie had never seen her daughter so distraught. Frances returned to World as head of the scenario department with her faith in her own abilities severely shaken.19
Mary was called before “Papa” Zukor and made to write a letter of apology to Cecil B. DeMille, meekly agreeing to work with him. It was not only DeMille’s growing reputation for total authority that depressed her; she had played her hand with Zukor and lost. She was still the highest-paid actress in the world, but her marriage was a sham and she had lost control of her career. The “marathon of work” that had been so rewarding suddenly looked like a prison. Mary, who had always clung tenaciously to her belief in herself, now signed the letter to DeMille, “Obediently yours, Mary Pickford.”
Alone in the hotel room she was again sharing with Owen that January of 1917, Mary felt “a deadening weight on my spirit” and thought “that snow covered pavement looked very enticing” from the ninth-story window. Something stopped her and she called her mother. As soon as Charlotte heard “Mama, I need you,” in a tone she had never heard before, she made Mary promise to do nothing and rushed out the door.
Charlotte immediately sent for the doctor, who declared, “Unless you get this young lady out of here and away from her husband, the least you can expect is a complete nervous breakdown—the very least.” Charlotte consulted Zukor, who agreed, but used Mary’s momentary collapse as a perfect opportunity to send her to California to start her film with DeMille. Within two weeks Mary was on the train, but not before Douglas Fairbanks had thrown her a farewell party at the Algonquin.20
In spite of having her entire family with her in California—Charlotte, Jack, Lottie, and Lottie’s baby, Gwynne, by her brief marriage to a car dealer named Alfred Rupp—Mary was petrified of DeMille and did not have a happy moment filming Romance of the Redwoods. As soon as it was completed, Mary used her two weeks off to come to New York, finding the ten days on the train a small price to pay for four days of fun and freedom with Frances. During her visit, with little of the usual advance publicity, The Poor Little Rich Girl opened at the Strand on Broadway.
Zukor was forced to release the film because it had been presold to theaters and there was no other Pickford film to replace it. Frances had no desire to relive her humiliation by watching it on the big screen, but Mary insisted on dressing incognito and seeing the film with an audience. From the opening scene on, their comedy blended with Tourneur’s unique dream sequences to inspire the packed house to laugh in all the right places. From the back balcony, it slowly occurred to Frances that the segments she had seen over and over in the editing room were being greeted as fresh and clever. Mary started to laugh and cry,
