Mary Pickford dominated the silent movie scene, making millions and sharing the screen with Charles Chaplin and William Hart, among others. But the advent of talkies was the beginning of its decline. Addictions sent his personal life into a spiral of decline.
Extremely tight golden curls, a sharp nose, tiny lips, and a pair of chameleon eyes: they could look joyful and hopeful, just like a defenseless girl's, melancholic and filled with sadness. It all made up the face of Mary Pickford, the first superstar to be born in silent Hollywood and retired when the sound came.
In her youth, she starred in hundreds of feature films that launched her to worldwide fame, rubbed shoulders with some of the most important film figures of the time, and co-founded United Artists, one of the most important companies in the American film industry today. but he withdrew in silence with the arrival of sound on the tapes.
"It's all in the eyes," Mary once confessed about her performance in silent movies. Where words were lacking, the 15-year-old actress had found a way to move with performances of sweet and often underprivileged girls. And the public, made up mostly of immigrants who did not speak the language, loved her for it.
Her fans wrote letters about her because of her big round eyes. “She came across as honest, unable to say anything she doesn't mean,” critics at the time wrote, according to the Archbridge Institute. They wanted her from her because of her innocence, because of the sweetness that illuminated her on the screen. But that, in reality, never existed.
The "Queen of Cinema" revolutionized the industry
Over the next few years, Mary jumped from one studio to another, and she married for the first time to actor Owen Moore. In 1912, Mary was already a superstar, they called her "The Queen of the Cinema", for her ability to interpret comedy and romance, and for the way, she expressed herself with a look before the camera.
In 1913, films like Bishop's Carriage and Caprice the same year catapulted her into the public eye as she had never been seen before. She became "America's Sweetheart": "Mary Pickford is the most famous woman who has ever lived, more recognized and loved than any other in history," reads the biography The Woman Who Made Hollywood.
Pickford began to have full control over her films and to receive half of her earnings. As a star, she befriended figures of the same caliber as herself, even meeting Charlie Chaplin, with whom she became close thanks to her second husband, Doug Fairbanks.
At the age of 24, Mary became a fierce negotiator and signed contracts that reached USD 500,000 a year. She kept up an impressive production rate working on one film, then another, and yet another. In 1918, she even innovated by playing two roles in the same film Stella Maris.
During World War I, Ella Mary supported American soldiers. She even auctioned off one of her prized locks for a million dollars to donate to the army and in 1918 she paid around $277,000 in taxes.
In 1919, Mary, Fairbanks, Chaplin, Griffith, and William S. Hart created United Artists, a distributorship to be owned and managed by actors and directors. Thus, the artists would have control over their work and would share the profits.
The Decline of silent cinema and Oblivion
After years of sharing fame and fortune with her second husband, Mary's reign came to a sad end thanks to the Great Depression and the advent of movie sound. Initially, Pickford dismissed it as a "fad."
“It's like putting red lipstick on the Venus de Milo,” she opined. But she was wrong. At the beginning of the 30s, the silent cinema was forgotten. Subsequently, Mary, still a star, took part in some productions with sound. Even her performance in the film Coquette earned her an Oscar.
But it didn't last long. The crisis that broke out in the country soon affected the filming studios. Many went bankrupt. And Mary, then also dealing with the death of her mother, Charlotte, and her crisis in her marriage to Doug Fairbanks, stopped filming.
During those years, Mary turned to alcoholism. Finally, in 1933, she divorced, although it was only made official two years later. Her star faded.
Mary saw her closest friends and family die. Her first husband, her second husband, her sister Lottie and her brother Jack, the people that she had worked with, that she had revolutionized the industry with. They all departed over the next few years.
She married for the third time with her last husband, Buddy Rogers. Together, they adopted two children and retired to live a life away from the box office. Over the next few years, Mary launched a makeup brand and wrote a few books.
In 1941, together with some characters such as Orson Welles, Walt Disney, and Samuel Goldwyn, she founded the Society of Independent Producers and she continued, although to a lesser extent, to be part of the cinema, until in 1956 she sold her part to United Artists. After that, Mary gradually disappeared from the public eye.
According to the biography The Woman Who Made Hollywood, beginning in 1963, what she had once been the "queen of the movies" spent in bed. With an alcoholism problem so strong that she atrophied her legs, preventing her from walking.
In 1976, she was recognized with an honorary Oscar. When she received it from “Pickfair” — the home she built next to Fairbanks and which once hosted important figures like Einstein and Amelia Earhart — she could only thank the Academy through tears.
On May 29, 1979, Mary passed away in Santa Monica from a stroke. With her died the first great movie star. One full of golden moments and others extremely dark.
