Mary Pickford Trivia
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64 free Mary Pickford trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mary Pickford was the most famous woman in the world for most of the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood's first millionaire and the most powerful woman ever to work there, and this Mary Pickford trivia quiz covers all of it. The early questions follow Gladys Smith from a Toronto boarding house to Broadway and David Belasco, the 1909 screen test with D. W. Griffith, $10 a day at Biograph and the exhibitors' sandwich boards that called her the Girl with the Golden Curls. Then come the business questions: the $10,000-a-week contract with Zukor, the refusal of block-booking, the founding of United Artists with Chaplin, Fairbanks and Griffith, the films from Tess of the Storm Country and Stella Maris to Pollyanna, Sparrows and Coquette, the bob that made the front page, and the Oscar for her first talkie. The personal side takes in Owen Moore, the marriage of the century to Douglas Fairbanks, Pickfair and its swimming pool, Buddy Rogers, the Liberty Bond drives, the Motion Picture Relief Fund and the reclusive final decades. Difficulty runs from easy to expert. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Pickford, her films and the people around her, and each question links to its source. Try our Silent Film and Charlie Chaplin quizzes next.
30 of 64 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01By what nickname was silent-film star Mary Pickford best known?
America's Sweetheart
America's Sweetheart is said to have been the 1914 coinage of a cinema owner; fans also knew her as 'Little Mary'.
Q 02In which city was Mary Pickford born?
Toronto
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.
Q 03What was Mary Pickford's birth name?
Gladys Louise Smith
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.
Q 04As a child in stock theatre, Mary Pickford starred as Little Eva in which play?
Uncle Tom's Cabin
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.
Q 05Which Broadway producer gave her the stage name Mary Pickford when he cast her in The Warrens of Virginia in 1907?
David Belasco
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.
Q 06Which 1909 Griffith short used newcomer Mary Pickford only as an extra?
Her First Biscuits
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.
Q 07Which studio did Mary Pickford join in 1909, making short films under director D. W. Griffith?
Biograph
Biograph kept its players' names off the screen, so cinemas advertised the unnamed newcomer with nicknames such as 'the Girl with the Curls'.
Q 08Which sisters did Mary Pickford introduce to D. W. Griffith in 1912, launching two major silent-film careers?
Lillian and Dorothy Gish
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.
Q 09Which future author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes wrote The New York Hat, Pickford's 1912 short for D. W. Griffith?
Anita Loos
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.
Q 10Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, which Pickford joined in 1913, grew into which major studio?
Paramount Pictures
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.
Q 11Billy Wilder considered Pickford for the reclusive former silent star in which 1950 film?
Sunset Boulevard
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.
Q 12Which 1914 hit, said to have sent Pickford's career into orbit, did she remake in 1922?
Tess of the Storm Country
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.
Q 13Pickford's 1916 contract with Adolph Zukor paid her a record salary of how much a week?
$10,000
Q 21In Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), Pickford played the boy Cedric and who else?
His mother
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.
Q 22Which German director did Pickford bring to Hollywood in 1922, where he directed her in Rosita?
Ernst Lubitsch
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.
Q 23In Sparrows (1926), Pickford leads children out of a 'baby farm' through a swamp infested with what?
Alligators
$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.
Q 14Which distribution practice did Pickford refuse to let Zukor apply to her films in 1916?
Block-booking
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.
Q 15When Pickford's contract ran out in 1918, Adolph Zukor offered her how much simply to quit making films?
$250,000
$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.
Q 16Which 1930s child star made new versions of Pickford hits such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Poor Little Rich Girl?
Shirley Temple
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.
Q 17Which 1920 film was Pickford's first release through United Artists?
Pollyanna
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.
Q 18Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were among the 36 founders, in 1927, of which Hollywood institution?
The Motion Picture Academy
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.
Q 19Which screenwriter, Pickford's close friend, adapted The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and later became the first writer with two Oscars?
Frances Marion
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.
Q 20In Stella Maris (1918), Pickford played both the title character and which other role?
An orphan servant
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.
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.
Q 24Pickford is often quoted as saying that adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on what?
The Venus de Milo
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.
Q 25What did Pickford do in 1928 that made the front page of The New York Times?
Cut her curls into a bob
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.
Q 26For which 1929 film, her first talkie, did Pickford win the Academy Award for Best Actress?
Coquette
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.
Q 27Pickford's Best Actress Oscar was only the second awarded: who had won the first?
Janet Gaynor
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.
Q 28Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks co-starred only once, in a 1929 talkie of which Shakespeare play?
The Taming of the Shrew
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.
Q 29In 1933 Pickford made a Technicolor screen test for which Disney live-action and animation project, later scrapped?
Alice in Wonderland
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.
Q 30What was the title of Pickford's final film as an actress, released in 1933?
Secrets
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.