67 Fun Facts About Mary Pickford

What nickname, tied to the ingenue persona she defined on screen, is Mary Pickford best known by?

America's Sweetheart was also called the Queen of the Movies; she is credited with having defined the ingénue type in cinema.

In which city was Mary Pickford born in 1892?

Mary Pickford was born in Toronto, Ontario, on 8 April 1892; her University Avenue birthplace later became part of the Hospital for Sick Children site.

What was Mary Pickford's birth name?

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto on 8 April 1892; her younger siblings Lottie and Jack Smith also acted under the Pickford name.

Her early stage career ended with the starring role of Little Eva in a production of which play?

Little Eva is the saintly child in Uncle Tom's Cabin; Pickford starred in the role with a Toronto stock company after debuting aged seven in The Silver King.

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

David Belasco cast her in The Warrens of Virginia in 1907 and renamed her Mary Pickford, keeping her middle name and taking the surname from her family.

On 19 April 1909 D. W. Griffith screen-tested her for which film, whose role went to someone else?

Pickford screen-tested for Pippa Passes (1909), adapted from Robert Browning's poem; the role went to another actress, but Griffith hired her and had her filming the next day.

Which studio did she join under Griffith in 1909, appearing in 51 of its films that year?

Biograph, where D. W. Griffith directed, put her in 51 films in 1909; it did not credit actors, so exhibitors advertised her simply as the Girl with the Golden Curls.

Griffith agreed to pay the newcomer how much a day, double the studio's usual rate?

Pickford held out for $10 a day, twice Biograph's standard $5, and Griffith also guaranteed her $40 a week.

Which sisters did she introduce to Griffith in 1912, launching two major silent careers?

Pickford introduced Lillian and Dorothy Gish to Griffith at Biograph in 1912; the Gish and Smith families had met years earlier while touring in small stage companies.

Her last short for Griffith, The New York Hat (1912), was written by which future author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?

Anita Loos, later the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), wrote The New York Hat; Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish were also in the cast.

Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, which she joined full-time in 1913, evolved into which studio?

Famous Players merged with Jesse L. Lasky's company in 1916 and eventually took the Paramount Pictures name; Zukor's first film with her, A Good Little Devil, was shelved for eleven months.

Which 1914 film was the first to put her name above the title on cinema marquees?

Hearts Adrift (1914), in which she played a castaway, was so popular that her name went above the title and Zukor granted the first of her well-publicised pay raises.

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

Tess of the Storm Country (1914) made her, in historian Kevin Brownlow's words, the most popular actress in America; she remade it in 1922.

Her June 1916 contract with Zukor gave her full production control and a record salary of how much a week?

The June 1916 deal paid $10,000 a week plus half her films' profits, guaranteed at $1.04 million, making her the first actress with a million-dollar contract.

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 her contract expired in 1918, Zukor offered her how much simply to leave the movie business?

Zukor offered $250,000 for her to quit films in 1918; she declined and signed with First National Pictures on her own terms instead.

Which company did Mary Pickford co-found in 1919 with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith?

United Artists (1919) was purely a distributor, unlike the studios, so its founders Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks and Griffith kept control of their own productions.

Which 1920 film was her first release through United Artists?

Pollyanna (1920), from Eleanor H. Porter's novel about a relentlessly cheerful orphan, was her first United Artists release and grossed around $1.1 million.

Pickford was one of how many founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?

Pickford was one of the 36 founders of the Academy in 1927; the Academy later named its Vine Street film archive the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study.

Which screenwriter, her close friend, adapted The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and became the first writer to win two Oscars?

Frances Marion adapted The Poor Little Rich Girl and later won writing Oscars for The Big House and The Champ; her friendship with Pickford is the subject of Melanie Benjamin's 2018 novel The Girls in the Picture.

In Stella Maris (1918) she played two roles: the title character and what?

Her second role was Unity Blake, a plain, abused orphan servant, a startling contrast to the beautiful title character and to Pickford's usual image.

In Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921) she played the boy Cedric and which other character?

Pickford played both Cedric and his mother, known as Dearest, using double-exposure trick photography; her brother Jack Pickford co-directed with Alfred E. Green.

Which German director did she bring to Hollywood in 1922 to direct her in Rosita?

Ernst Lubitsch, brought from Germany in 1922, directed Rosita (1923), a success Pickford nonetheless came to dislike; he stayed in Hollywood and later made Trouble in Paradise and Ninotchka.

In Sparrows (1926) she leads orphans out of a 'baby farm' beside a swamp infested with what?

The swamp in Sparrows is full of alligators; Pickford later claimed director William Beaudine made her carry a real baby across the water above them.

Pickford famously said that adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on what?

Pickford said adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo; she underestimated talkies and her career faded within a few years of their arrival.

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

In June 1928 Pickford cut her famous ringlets into a bob; the curls had become a symbol of female virtue, and shocked fans read about it on the front page of The New York Times.

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

Coquette (1929), her first talkie, won Pickford the Best Actress Oscar as a reckless Southern flirt; the award was widely seen as a tribute to her stature rather than the performance.

Her Best Actress Oscar was which in the award's history?

Pickford's was the second Best Actress Oscar ever given; Janet Gaynor had won the inaugural award at the first ceremony in May 1929.

Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks co-starred in a 1929 version of which Shakespeare play, the first sound adaptation of it?

The Taming of the Shrew (1929) paired Pickford and Fairbanks in the first Shakespeare talkie; the legendary credit 'additional dialogue by Sam Taylor' appears never to have existed.

In 1933 she made a Technicolor screen test for which Disney live-action/animated project, later scrapped?

Pickford tested for Walt Disney's planned live-action/animated Alice in Wonderland; the project was dropped after Paramount released its own all-star Alice in 1933, and only one Technicolor still survives.

What was the title of her final film as an actress, released in 1933?

Secrets (1933), a Frank Borzage remake of a Norma Talmadge silent, was Pickford's last film as an actress; it lost money and she retired from the screen but kept producing.

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

Owen Moore, an Irish-born Biograph co-star, married Pickford secretly in January 1911; his alcoholism and resentment of her fame wrecked the marriage.

How much did her first husband demand as a settlement before their 1920 divorce?

Owen Moore demanded and received $100,000; Pickford obtained a Nevada divorce on 2 March 1920 and married Douglas Fairbanks 26 days later.

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

On their 1920 European honeymoon, crowds rioted in London and Paris trying to reach the couple; in London Fairbanks had to hoist Pickford onto his shoulders to get her through the crush.

What was the name of the Beverly Hills mansion she shared with Fairbanks?

Pickfair, a blend of their surnames, began as a hunting lodge Fairbanks bought in 1919 and had remodelled for his bride-to-be.

Their estate was said to be the first private home in the Los Angeles area to have what?

Pickfair's in-ground swimming pool, complete with a sandy beach, was claimed as the first at a private home in the Los Angeles area; the couple were famously photographed paddling a canoe in it.

Which humorist, as mayor of Beverly Hills in 1928, said his most important duty was directing people to Mary Pickford's house?

Will Rogers, honorary mayor of Beverly Hills from 1926, joked that directing folks to Pickfair was his main duty; foreign heads of state visiting the White House often asked to see the house too.

Which actress bought the estate in 1988 with her husband Meshulam Riklis?

Pia Zadora and her husband Meshulam Riklis bought Pickfair in 1988 and later razed most of the house, which Life magazine had once called a gathering place only slightly less important than the White House.

Fairbanks left Pickford for which British socialite, a romance that became public in 1934?

Sylvia, Lady Ashley, a former chorus girl then married to Lord Ashley, became Fairbanks's companion; Pickford divorced him in January 1936 and he married Ashley that March.

Charles "Buddy" Rogers, whom she married in 1937, had been publicised in the late 1920s under what nickname?

Buddy Rogers was promoted as America's Boyfriend; 12 years her junior, he had co-starred with Pickford in My Best Girl (1927) and married her in 1937.

Buddy Rogers's best-remembered role was in which 1927 film, the first ever Best Picture winner?

Wings (1927), the aviation epic in which Rogers starred with Clara Bow and Richard Arlen, won Outstanding Picture at the first Academy Awards.

What were the names of the two children Pickford and Rogers adopted?

Pickford and Rogers adopted Ronald in 1943 and Roxanne in 1944; both later described her as too self-absorbed to give them real maternal love.

During World War I she auctioned one of her famous curls for how much to sell Liberty Bonds?

One of her curls fetched $15,000 at a Liberty Bond auction; in a single Chicago speech she sold an estimated five million dollars' worth of bonds.

Pickford conceived which charity, incorporated in 1921 to help needy actors, seeding it with leftover Liberty Bond funds?

The Motion Picture Relief Fund, incorporated in 1921, grew from Pickford's idea and leftover Liberty Bond drive money; her 1932 Payroll Pledge Program had studio workers give half of one percent of their pay to it.

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

She relented in 1970 and gave 50 of her early shorts to the American Film Institute.

How much did Pickford get for her United Artists shares when she sold them in 1956?

Pickford sold her United Artists stake in 1956 for $3 million; Chaplin had sold his holding the year before, ending the partnership the two had kept since 1919.

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

Sunshine and Shadow (1955) was Pickford's autobiography; Why Not Try God? was her 1934 essay on spirituality and The Demi-Widow her 1935 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.

Towards the end of her life Pickford arranged to formally acquire which citizenship, saying she wished to "die" as one?

Pickford, born in Toronto, arranged late in life to have her Canadian citizenship formally restored, saying she wanted to die a Canadian; she died in Santa Monica in 1979.

Sid Grauman claimed Pickford was the first star to do what at his Chinese Theatre?

Grauman said Pickford was the first to put her foot in wet concrete; the theatre's official history instead credits Norma Talmadge with the accident that started the hand-and-footprint tradition in 1927.

The Mary Pickford cocktail was created in her name during Prohibition on a trip to which country?

The Mary Pickford, a rum, pineapple juice, grenadine and maraschino cocktail, was created in Havana, Cuba, in the 1920s, when Americans went there to drink legally during Prohibition.

Pickford's brother Jack was married to which Ziegfeld girl, who died in Paris in 1920?

Olive Thomas, a Ziegfeld Follies star who married Jack Pickford in 1916, died in Paris in September 1920 after swallowing mercury bichloride; Mary then had Jack co-direct Little Lord Fauntleroy partly to lift his depression.

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

Pickford was buried in the family plot at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale; she died in a Santa Monica hospital of complications from a cerebral haemorrhage suffered the week before.

Which studio boss reportedly said 'The inmates are taking over the asylum' when Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks and Griffith formed United Artists?

Richard A. Rowland of Metro Pictures apparently said it on hearing of the scheme; cowboy star William S. Hart had been part of the planning but bowed out before the 1919 incorporation.

What was United Artists' first production, written by and starring Douglas Fairbanks?

His Majesty, the American (1919), written by and starring Fairbanks, was United Artists' first release; with no public stock sale, the company relied on weekly prepayments from exhibitors to fund its films.

Which two lawyers-turned-producers asked Pickford and Chaplin in 1951 to let them run UA?

Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin took over UA in 1951 and ran it as a studio without a lot, bankrolling independent producers; Chaplin sold them his share in 1955 for $1.1 million.

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

Jerry Buss, owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, bought the empty Pickfair in 1980 and kept much of its character during the eight years he owned it.

What was the first name of Pickford's mother, who managed her career?

Charlotte Hennessey Smith, widowed in 1898, put young Gladys on the Toronto stage and negotiated Mary's contracts until her own death in 1928.

Who introduced and narrated the televised handover of Pickford's 1976 honorary Oscar?

Gene Kelly, one of the 1976 ceremony's hosts, introduced the taped presentation of Pickford's honorary Oscar, filmed in Pickfair's formal living room and giving the public a rare look inside.

Which architect remodelled Pickfair in a mock Tudor style over five years in the 1920s?

Wallace Neff, architect to many Hollywood stars, turned the hunting lodge at 1143 Summit Drive into a mock-Tudor mansion for Fairbanks and Pickford during the 1920s.

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

Cecil B. DeMille directed Pickford twice in 1917, in A Romance of the Redwoods and The Little American, a wartime drama in which her character survives a liner torpedoed by a U-boat.

What was the name of the eldest orphan Pickford played in Sparrows (1926)?

Pickford played Molly, who mothers the younger children at Grimes's baby farm in Sparrows; the villainous Grimes was played by Gustav von Seyffertitz.

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

Marshall Neilan directed Pickford in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Stella Maris (1918) and Daddy-Long-Legs (1919), among the biggest hits of her Artcraft and First National years.

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

Pickford played Cho-Cho-San in Madame Butterfly (1915), directed by Sidney Olcott for Famous Players; it drew on John Luther Long's story and David Belasco's play rather than Puccini's opera.

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

Kate Douglas Wiggin's 1903 novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm gave Pickford one of her signature child roles in 1917; Shirley Temple filmed a loose remake in 1938.

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

Jack Pickford died at the American Hospital of Paris in January 1933, aged 36, after years of alcohol and drug abuse; he was buried in the family plot at Forest Lawn.

In which year did Douglas Fairbanks, Pickford's former husband, die?

Douglas Fairbanks died of a heart attack at his Santa Monica home on 12 December 1939, aged 56; Pickford, by then married to Buddy Rogers, had stayed on cordial terms with him.