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 But it was a new Hollywood, and Lawrence was outdated.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. Mabel is credited with helping discover someone even modern audiences still know: Charlie Chaplin. And while his discovery and signing are occasionally in dispute, the fact that Mabel not only helped write, act and direct his earliest shorts, is not. When Chaplin became wildly popular, she became known as "the female Chaplin."
By 1915, her life looked like it would be a Pickford fairytale too, until she caught actress Mae Busch carousing around with her fiancé. Busch threw a vase at Mabel's head, causing her a severe head injury which would be treated with either cocaine or morphine (both legal at the time). In addition to the inevitable addiction (an affliction that would catch Wallace Reid and Alma Rubens in future years), Mabel came down with tuberculosis. Though she had been poised for a great features career, she was visibly ill by the time the Fund was officially created. She would die from tuberculosis in 1930 in a sanatorium. She was 37.
Maybe these stories inspired Mary, maybe they didn't. But she rallied her sympathetic actors and studio heads and in 1921 the Motion Picture Fund was officially created. The hospital itself would be a few decades away; as was the payroll deduction program (also a Pickford idea).
While art and strife will always go hand in hand, Mary had no way of knowing how important her creation would be. And while we need the fund and hospital more than ever in these modern times; we needed them just as badly in the past. If we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it.
Many people assume all silent stars had funny voices or accents, and not a one made it in "talkies." While there are a variety of reasons many stars failed to transition; the general assumption is not true. Many silent stars were growing old, had been waning in popularity, or were done in by vicious studio heads eager to replace an ego. Many stars actually made a few moderately successful talkies before the final ax fell. But when it fell it fell hard; especially as talkies took on right about the time the stock market crashed.
In 1927 a star with an accent could count on their nest egg. By 1929, they could have lost it all in the stock market crash. Not only would they be battling the natural highs and lows of fame as well as talkies… but now the Great Depression had arrived.
(to be continued in Part 2)