Pickford, Mary

Pickford, Mary (1893-1979), professional name of Gladys Smith. American actress and film producer. The child of a theatrical mother, Pickford acted from the age of four in touring companies, and in 1909 entered films at Biograph, where she played many varied leading roles for D. W. Griffith.

From 1910 Pickford moved from company to company, in search of greater prominence and more money, and in 1912 she returned to the stage to play the lead in Belasco's A Good Little Devil. This role provided the inspiration for many of Pickford's subsequent screen characters, with its mixture of tomboyish pranks and semiadult femininity. In 1913 she returned to motion pictures with Adolf Zukor's Famous Players company, which was already producing feature-length films. In the next few years she rapidly increased her popularity, salary, and power, until in 1916 Famous Players gave her her own production company, and a salary of $10,000 a week. From this point onwards, Mary Pickford was producer with complete control over her films, and chose the very best people to work with her. In this way, she was the industry leader responsible for bringing the final polish to the forms of standard cinema, in films such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917) and Stella Maris (1918).

Pickford's immense success and popularity as “America's Sweetheart” led her to collaborate with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith, in forming their own jointly owned film company, United Artists, in 1919. She also married Fairbanks in the same year. Through the 1920s her films continued to be immensely successful, until she essayed a very contemporary “jazz baby” part in Coquette in 1929. After a few more adult roles, including a film of The Taming of the Shrew with Douglas Fairbanks, the loss of public response caused her to retire in 1934. She remained active as a partowner and director of United Artists until its sale in 1953.