64 Fun Facts About Mary Pickford

By what nickname was silent-film star Mary Pickford best known?

America's Sweetheart is said to have been the 1914 coinage of a cinema owner; fans also knew her as 'Little Mary'.

In which city was Mary Pickford born?

Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children now stands on the site of the University Avenue house where she was born, and a bust and plaque there honour her.

What was Mary Pickford's birth name?

Gladys Louise Smith was billed as 'Baby Gladys Smith' on her first playbills, sent on stage as a small child after her father's death left the family short of money.

As a child in stock theatre, Mary Pickford starred as Little Eva in which play?

Uncle Tom's Cabin gave her the prized role of Little Eva in 1901, and later that year the whole family left to tour the United States with travelling theatre companies.

Which Broadway producer gave her the stage name Mary Pickford when he cast her in The Warrens of Virginia in 1907?

David Belasco took Mary from Marie, the name she was baptised with, and Pickford from a grandparent's name; the rest of her family soon adopted the surname too.

Which 1909 Griffith short used newcomer Mary Pickford only as an extra?

Her First Biscuits put her on screen for only moments, but it came with a contract at $10 a day, and a leading role soon followed.

Which studio did Mary Pickford join in 1909, making short films under director D. W. Griffith?

Biograph kept its players' names off the screen, so cinemas advertised the unnamed newcomer with nicknames such as 'the Girl with the Curls'.

Which sisters did Mary Pickford introduce to D. W. Griffith in 1912, launching two major silent-film careers?

Lillian and Dorothy Gish, friends from her child-actor days, came looking for her after spotting her on screen, and she took them to meet Griffith.

Which future author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes wrote The New York Hat, Pickford's 1912 short for D. W. Griffith?

Anita Loos wrote The New York Hat years before her novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; it was among Pickford's final films for Griffith, as she left him that winter for a Broadway role.

Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, which Pickford joined in 1913, grew into which major studio?

Paramount Pictures grew out of Famous Players after its 1916 merger with Jesse Lasky's company; Zukor shelved his first Pickford feature, A Good Little Devil, for eleven months before releasing it.

Billy Wilder considered Pickford for the reclusive former silent star in which 1950 film?

Sunset Boulevard needed a real silent-era queen for its faded star Norma Desmond; Wilder approached Pickford about the part before it went to Gloria Swanson.

Which 1914 hit, said to have sent Pickford's career into orbit, did she remake in 1922?

Tess of the Storm Country caused a sensation in 1914, and Pickford used that success to bargain for a far bigger salary; eight years later she remade it as her own producer.

Pickford's 1916 contract with Adolph Zukor paid her a record salary of how much a week?

$10,000 a week came with half her films' profits and her own production unit, so from 1916 Pickford chose her own scripts, writers and directors.

Which distribution practice did Pickford refuse to let Zukor apply to her films in 1916?

Pickford refused block-booking, the bundling of weak films with strong ones, so her films went out singly through a special Famous Players unit called Artcraft.

When Pickford's contract ran out in 1918, Adolph Zukor offered her how much simply to quit making films?

$250,000 was Zukor's price for her retirement after the two failed to agree new terms; Pickford turned it down and signed with First National instead.

Which 1930s child star made new versions of Pickford hits such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Poor Little Rich Girl?

Shirley Temple inherited the roles two decades on, but her 1938 Rebecca kept little of the novel beyond its title and heroine: the plot follows a radio audition for a breakfast-cereal sponsor.

Which 1920 film was Pickford's first release through United Artists?

Pollyanna, produced by Pickford's own company, grossed about $1.1 million in 1920; with no studio above her, she now controlled both the making and the distribution of her films.

Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were among the 36 founders, in 1927, of which Hollywood institution?

The Motion Picture Academy, formally the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was Louis B. Mayer's idea for heading off unions; Pickford was one of only three women among its founders.

Which screenwriter, Pickford's close friend, adapted The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and later became the first writer with two Oscars?

Frances Marion joined Famous Players at Pickford's invitation and wrote hits for her including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Stella Maris; her Oscars came later, for The Big House and The Champ.

In Stella Maris (1918), Pickford played both the title character and which other role?

An orphan servant named Unity Blake was the other role: Pickford greased down her famous hair and slumped one shoulder, and Variety said viewers would look twice to be sure it was her.

In Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), Pickford played the boy Cedric and who else?

His mother, known as Dearest, shares scenes with Cedric through double exposures; Variety marvelled that Pickford 'meets herself many times' and even stands taller than herself.

Which German director did Pickford bring to Hollywood in 1922, where he directed her in Rosita?

Ernst Lubitsch and Pickford clashed throughout Rosita, his first American film, yet it was a hit; he stayed in Hollywood and went on to make Trouble in Paradise and Ninotchka.

In Sparrows (1926), Pickford leads children out of a 'baby farm' through a swamp infested with what?

Alligators fill the swamp in Sparrows; Pickford long claimed she carried a real baby past live ones, but cameraman Hal Mohr insisted the shot was a trick and none came anywhere near her.

Pickford is often quoted as saying that adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on what?

The Venus de Milo stood, in her comparison, for an art already complete; yet Pickford made four talkies herself before retiring from the screen in 1933.

What did Pickford do in 1928 that made the front page of The New York Times?

Cut her curls into a bob: at a New York salon in June 1928 Pickford shed the ringlets that tied her to little-girl roles, so that she could play a grown woman in her first talkie.

For which 1929 film, her first talkie, did Pickford win the Academy Award for Best Actress?

Coquette cast Pickford as a reckless Southern flirt; her win stirred controversy because she had campaigned hard among the small board of judges, reportedly inviting them to tea at her home.

Pickford's Best Actress Oscar was only the second awarded: who had won the first?

Janet Gaynor won the first award for three films at once, something a later rule change barred; Pickford's came the following year for a single talkie.

Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks co-starred only once, in a 1929 talkie of which Shakespeare play?

The Taming of the Shrew paired the couple as Katherine and Petruchio; despite the novelty of seeing Hollywood's most famous marriage on screen, it did poorly at the box office.

In 1933 Pickford made a Technicolor screen test for which Disney live-action and animation project, later scrapped?

Alice in Wonderland would have put the 41-year-old Pickford among cartoon characters; Walt Disney's plan lapsed after a rival studio released its own all-star Alice that same year.

What was the title of Pickford's final film as an actress, released in 1933?

Secrets opened in March 1933, the week President Roosevelt shut the nation's banks, so audiences had little cash for tickets; Pickford never acted on screen again, though she kept producing.

Who was Pickford's first husband, an Irish-born actor she married in 1911?

Owen Moore married Pickford at a Jersey City courthouse in January 1911, and she hid the ring from her family for months; his drinking and his resentment of her success soured the marriage.

In which state did Pickford obtain her 1920 divorce from her first husband, on grounds of desertion?

Nevada granted the decree in the small town of Minden on 2 March 1920, and she married Douglas Fairbanks 26 days later.

On their 1920 honeymoon, Pickford and Fairbanks were mobbed by fans in which two cities?

London and Paris turned out in such crowds that the newlyweds were mobbed wherever they went; the welcome ended their fear that divorcing to marry each other would wreck their careers.

Crowds mobbed Pickford and Fairbanks in 1926 in which country, where their visit inspired the comedy A Kiss from Mary Pickford?

The Soviet Union idolised the pair: Sergei Komarov filmed their Moscow visit and built a 1927 comedy around it, in which a kiss from Pickford turns a humble ticket-taker into a celebrity.

The swimming pool at Pickfair was so large that Pickford and Fairbanks were photographed crossing it in what?

A canoe carried the couple across the pool in famous publicity photographs; the pool, ringed by a sandy beach, was part of the five-year remodelling that turned a hunting lodge into a mansion.

Which actress bought Pickfair in 1988 and then tore down most of the house?

Pia Zadora and her husband Meshulam Riklis blamed termites, razed the mansion and built a Venetian-style palazzo in its place, though the wrought-iron gates still read Pickfair.

Douglas Fairbanks's affair with which British socialite ended his marriage to Pickford?

Sylvia, Lady Ashley, a former chorus girl, married Fairbanks in March 1936, two months after his divorce from Pickford; widowed in 1939, she went on to marry Clark Gable.

Buddy Rogers, whom Pickford married in 1937, was promoted in the late 1920s under what nickname?

America's Boyfriend was how his studio sold the fresh-faced young actor; he later led his own dance band and stayed married to Pickford until her death in 1979.

Buddy Rogers, Pickford's third husband, starred in which 1927 film, the first to win Best Picture?

Wings sent Rogers up for real: no pilot when cast, he took flying lessons during the shoot so the cameras could film him in the cockpit, and the film won the first Best Picture award.

The Mary Pickford Theater, a small cinema named in her honour, is inside which national institution?

The Library of Congress theater, in its James Madison Building, was organised in her honour by her widower Buddy Rogers; it holds free screenings of classic films.

Pickford's 1918 cross-country rail tour, on which she sold a lock of her curls, promoted what?

Liberty Bonds were the cause: Treasury Secretary William McAdoo recruited film stars to sell them, the stars drew enormous crowds, and a year later McAdoo was general counsel to their new company.

Which charity for needy film workers did Pickford help found in 1921, serving as its first vice-president?

The Motion Picture Relief Fund grew from Pickford's idea; in 1932 she launched its Payroll Pledge, under which studio workers gave half of one percent of their pay to colleagues in need.

What had Pickford intended to do with the early films whose rights she had bought up?

Burn them on her death was the plan, but a friend and fellow silent star talked her out of it; in 1970 Pickford instead gave 50 of her early shorts to the American Film Institute.

Pickford was the last United Artists founder to sell her shares, a year after which partner sold his?

Charlie Chaplin sold out first; when Pickford followed for $3 million, the last of the four stars who had founded the company to escape studio control was gone.

What was the title of the memoir Pickford published in 1955?

Sunshine and Shadow judged her own work harshly in places: in it Pickford called Rosita, a hit, the worst picture she ever made; Why Not Try God was her faith booklet and The Demi-Widow her novel.

Which presidential candidate did Pickford publicly back in 1964?

Pickford, a lifelong Republican, backed Barry Goldwater in 1964; she had campaigned for Thomas Dewey in 1944 and supported Ronald Reagan's run for governor of California in 1966.

Late in life, Pickford applied to reclaim which citizenship, saying she wished to die holding it?

Canadian citizenship had seemed lost to her since her 1920 marriage to Fairbanks made her an American; her request was granted, and she died holding both nationalities.

In 1927 Pickford and Fairbanks became the first stars to leave hand and footprints outside which Hollywood cinema?

Grauman's Chinese Theatre took their prints on 30 April 1927, weeks before it opened; how the custom began is disputed, and Sid Grauman himself claimed he hit on it by stepping in wet cement.

The Mary Pickford, a Prohibition-era cocktail of rum and pineapple juice, was first mixed in which country?

Cuba's Havana bars, run by barmen who had left the US under Prohibition, produced the drink; the tale that Pickford was visiting when it was invented is a myth, as she made no trip there in the 1920s.

Pickford's brother Jack was married to which Ziegfeld Follies star, who died suddenly on a trip abroad in 1920?

Olive Thomas swallowed mercury bichloride on a second honeymoon and died five days later; the death was ruled accidental, but press speculation made it one of Hollywood's first great scandals.

Where was Pickford buried after her death in Santa Monica in May 1979?

Forest Lawn, Glendale holds the Pickford family plot, where her brother and sister had been laid years earlier; she joined the family she had supported on stage from the age of seven.

When Pickford and her partners founded United Artists, Metro's Richard Rowland reportedly said the inmates were taking over what?

The asylum quip, also quoted with 'lunatics' for 'inmates', mocked stars running their own company; United Artists outlasted Rowland's Metro, which was soon sold and later folded into MGM.

Love Happy (1949), a Marx Brothers comedy Pickford helped produce, gave an early walk-on to which future star?

Marilyn Monroe, then almost unknown, shares a brief scene with Groucho Marx; Pickford, who had quit acting in 1933, was by then working only behind the camera as a producer.

Which masked hero did Douglas Fairbanks first bring to the screen in 1920, the year he married Pickford?

Zorro turned Fairbanks from a light comedian into the screen's great swashbuckler; The Mark of Zorro was such a hit that costume adventures became his trademark for the rest of the decade.

Which Los Angeles sports owner bought Pickfair after Pickford's death in 1979?

Jerry Buss of the Lakers bought the house from her widower and looked after it for most of a decade, then sold it in 1988 to the buyers who pulled most of it down.

Who managed Pickford's early career and drove the hard bargains over her contracts with studio bosses?

Her mother, Charlotte, negotiated every contract so that Mary could stay the pleasant one in the room; she also invested her daughter's earnings and sat in on company board meetings.

In 1976 a film crew went to Pickfair so the reclusive Pickford could accept which award at home?

An honorary Oscar recognised her contribution to film; because she no longer appeared in public, the Academy taped the 83-year-old accepting it in her living room, a rare glimpse inside the house.

Which Pickford hit, about a student and her unseen benefactor, was later remade as a Fred Astaire musical?

Daddy-Long-Legs opens in a grim children's home, where Pickford's young Judy leads the others in a revolt against the prunes served at every meal.

Which director made The Little American (1917) with Pickford?

Cecil B. DeMille directed her in The Little American as the US entered World War I; 36 years later Pickford handed him his Oscar for The Greatest Show on Earth at the first televised ceremony.

Which Hollywood star married Pickford's stepson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in 1929?

Joan Crawford slipped away to New York to marry the 19-year-old Fairbanks Jr. in June 1929, making her stepdaughter-in-law to Hollywood's most famous couple; they divorced in 1933.

Which director made Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Stella Maris and Daddy-Long-Legs with Pickford?

Marshall Neilan had been her leading man in 1915 before Pickford, by then free to name her own director, picked him in 1917; drink later wrecked his career and their final project together.

In 1915 Pickford played the title role in a silent film of which tragic tale?

Madame Butterfly cast the golden-haired Pickford as the abandoned Japanese bride Cho-Cho-San, a tragic role far from her usual spitfires, in a 1915 feature directed by Sidney Olcott.

Pickford's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917) adapted a novel by which author?

Kate Douglas Wiggin, a pioneer of free kindergartens in San Francisco, helped turn her own novel into the stage play that Pickford's film drew on.

In which city did Pickford's brother Jack die in January 1933?

Paris was where Jack Pickford died at 36, his health wrecked by drink; in a grim echo, his first wife had died in the same city twelve years earlier.