Ed. note: This is the first of a two-part series. Read part two here.
While I am not an authentic Pickford, I think it goes without saying that at this moment somewhere in Forest Lawn Glendale, Mary Pickford is spinning in her grave.
Sadly forgotten today, Mary Pickford was one of the biggest film stars ever. The fame she acquired during the 1910s and 1920s is incomparable today; one person has likened her fame to "Michael Jackson during 'Thriller'... but everyday. For 20 years straight." Almost every man, woman and child on this planet knew her name and had seen her films. As this was the silent film era, her fame held no language barriers. Though she's mainly known as "America's Sweetheart," the title was locally adapted everywhere you can imagine (eventually becoming "The World's Sweetheart."
Not only a wonderful comedienne and actress, Pickford was an astute business woman. She was also the creator of the Motion Picture Fund. In 1918, Pickford toured the country with her soon to be husband Douglas Fairbanks, and her frenemy Charlie Chaplin. The trio toured in support of War Bonds for World War One. After the tour, Pickford was flush with some excess money from the bonds she had bought, and it was at this point she was said to have considered creation of the Motion Picture Fund. Pickford, like many silent film stars, had come from extremely impoverished roots, only to work her way through vaudeville and eventually the motion picture ranks. Along the way she had surely seen the rise and fall of celebrity, both on stage and on film.
By 1919, her predecessor, Florence Lawrence, was all but passé. Injured on set, Lawrence suffered burns and possibly a mental breakdown. She retired for a few years before economic necessity forced her to try pictures again. But it was a new Hollywood, and Lawrence was outdated. She tried various endeavors, including a beauty shop in Fairfax, but nothing took.
In the 1930s, she returned to film as an extra along with her old rival Florence Turner and a slew of other 1910s stars who failed in the transition to features (including Flora Finch, who as a duo with John Bunny created the fat man/nagging wife routine on film. Their films were so popular they were called Bunnyfinches).
The Biograph Girl and The Vitagraph Girl, once both "Pickford famous" were now making $10 a day as extras. Lawrence could not handle the failure (and the pain caused by a chronic bone disease) and swallowed ant paste in 1938. She was 52. Her grave went unmarked for many years, though in 1991 Roddy McDowall bought her a simple stone that read, "The Biograph Girl/The First Movie Star."
Another contemporary, Mabel Normand, also had recently suffered. The gorgeous Mabel rose in the ranks just as Florence and Mary did. A comedienne through and through, Mabel made her fame with Keystone, which was run by her beau Mack Sennett.
