a million dollars per year and was the highest paid star in Hollywood.
It was money well spent, because she continued to have top hits at the box office. Some of her biggest successes came from a collaboration with her friend, writer Frances Marion. Together they made Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which gave her the “America’s Sweetheart” moniker, and one of her most famous roles, “The Poor Little Rich Girl” from 1917. Its plot was very melodramatic, with Mary playing a rich girl suffering at the hands of abusive servants. At one point they almost kill her with too much sleeping potion.
At the New York premiere, Mary sat next to Frances, trying to be incognito by wearing dark sunglasses and a hat. She watched in amazement as the audience reacted passionately to her movie, laughing, crying and cheering at all the right moments. When Mary removed her sunglasses to wipe away her own tears, she was instantly recognized by an usher, and a large crowd of crazed fans quickly gathered. They ripped fur from her coat and wanted snippets of her hair, and Mary had to be escorted out of the theater by police.
Though “Little Mary” had reached the pinnacle of Hollywood stardom, she didn’t quite have the full creative control she craved. Together with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., in 1919 Mary formed the United Artists Corporation (UA). This was the first star-driven production company, and it gave each of those actors the chance to produce five projects of their choice—offering financing and distribution independent from a movie studio. “The inmates have taken over the asylum!” exclaimed the president of another studio when he heard the news. But UA was successful, and continued to profit throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The company is still around today, and is now owned by MGM.
The news about the creation of UA also served as a handy distraction from gossip about two of its founders. Mary and Douglas Fairbanks had been friends for years, but it had turned into more. This was complicated, because they were both married when they first got together, albeit unhappily so. He filed for a divorce, and then so did she. And three and a half weeks later, Mary Pickford married Douglas Fairbanks.
There had been shock from moviegoers who disapproved of this scandalous relationship. But once they married, studio publicists managed to spin it, selling America on the idea that Mary and Douglas were Hollywood royalty. Fans became obsessed with this power couple (who were perhaps rather like the “Brangelina” of their time), with newspapers reporting on their every move. They lived in a mansion the press nicknamed “Pickfair,” where they wined and dined celebrities like Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. Mary and Douglas remained a source of fascination throughout their ten-year marriage, until Douglas fell in love again, this time with a British socialite.
Towards the end of the 1920s, Mary further cemented her place in film history by helping to set up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. She was one of only a few women among the thirty-six original members, and the founding of the Academy led to the introduction of the Oscars.
By this time, Mary Pickford was eager to shed her innocent persona. She cut off those famous ringlets, and in 1929 made her first sound movie, Coquette. “I wanted to be free of the shackles of curls and playing little girls,” said Mary, “and I thought that [sound] was one step toward it.” Coquette was made in the early days of talkies, where seamlessly capturing audio hadn’t yet been fully mastered. Giant microphones were hidden inside furniture, forcing the cast to stand awkwardly beside the pieces of furniture to deliver their lines. But Mary worked hard on her first speaking role, and it paid off. Her performance in Coquette won the second-ever Academy Award for Best Actress.
Though Mary successfully made the transition from silent to sound films, she never quite felt at ease in them. Her final appearance as a screen actress came in 1933, but throughout the next forty years she remained active in Hollywood. Mary worked behind the scenes as a producer, and mentored new female stars like Shirley Temple. In 1976, Mary was awarded an honorary Oscar for her overall contribution to film. Three years later, Mary Pickford passed away, at age eighty-seven.
My favorite images of Mary Pickford are the ones where she is posing with animals. There are quite a lot of them, including a famous picture where Mary is sitting with a cat on her shoulder.
On the surface, these photos show the sweet innocence that made her famous. But I like them because I know that underneath that calm smile, Mary Pickford was a badass. Her gutsy determination pulled her family out of poverty and empowered her to become the first movie star, the highest paid actor of her time, a pioneering independent producer, and a woman who stood up for her worth before any other woman in film.
A 1924 edition of Photoplay magazine summed her up the best: “No role she can play on the screen is as great as the role she plays in the motion picture industry. Mary Pickford the actress is completely overshadowed by Mary Pickford the individual.”
Margaret Booth: The First Film Editor
Outside of the film industry, very few people knew the name of film editor Margaret Booth. But in the industry, her name was revered, and a little feared.
Margaret’s career in Hollywood spanned seven decades. She was there at the birth of editing itself, when the process involved cutting film with scissors. She worked during the transitions of silent film to sound, from black and white to color, and from studio system to New Hollywood. She was the great woman behind the great men, working with D.W. Griffith, Louis B. Mayer, and Irving Thalberg. She was also the first person to be titled Film Editor.
All of this began after a family tragedy. Margaret Booth’s older brother Elmer was an actor who worked for D.W. Griffith and supported the entire family with his salary. One tragic day in 1915, Elmer was in a car with two other actors when they were hit by a train. Elmer died instantly. At his funeral, D.W. Griffith delivered a eulogy, and approached Margaret to offer her a job as a film joiner
to help pay the family bills.
D.W. Griffith was the director who revolutionized the art of cutting film. At the start of cinema, this process didn’t exist. Movies were one continuous shot with a single camera angle, and went straight into theaters as they were. The first cut movie was Edwin S. Porter’s
The Life Of An American Fireman in 1903, which added a simple close-up so the audience could easily see the fireman’s hand pulling an alarm.
But D.W. Griffith showed that film joining could be an important storytelling device. He realized that by cutting the film between different points of view, he could tell a larger narrative and shape the story. It was also a handy way to create tension, which he often did by cutting between hero and villain during an action scene.
The job of a film joiner or negative patcher was originally an entry-level position which didn’t require any prior skills. This opened the door to Margaret, who learned how to cut films in D.W.’s studio. It was a frustrating process—joiners squinted at negatives through a magnifying glass, trying to determine where to cut with scissors and where to rejoin with tape. They couldn’t watch the film as they were working on it, so their only way to see the print in action was to pull the negative quickly between their fingers. Margaret said, “Sometimes there’d be a tiny pinpoint on the negative, and then you knew you were right, but it was very tedious work. Close-ups of Lillian Gish would go on for miles, and they’d be very similar.”
The process became easier with the arrival of the first cutting machine in 1919, which had foot pedals to run the film and a spy-hole to view it through. It looked similar to a sewing machine, and perhaps because of that (and because it was a low-level job), there were many women working as film cutters.
