Mary Pickford

Pickford had become an American citizen upon her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks in 1920. Towards the end of her life, she wished to “die as a Canadian” and was granted a dual Canadian-American citizenship.

After retiring from the screen, Pickford became an alcoholic, and gradually a recluse. She died at a Santa Monica hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered the week before.

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Marie Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Ontario, to Charlotte Hennessy and John Charles Smith who worked a variety of odd jobs. She had two younger siblings, actors Jack and Lottie Pickford.

Her alcoholic father left his family in 1895, and died three years later of a cerebral haemorrhage. Hennessy, who had worked as a seamstress throughout the separation, began taking in boarders.

One of the lodgers was a theatrical stage manager, and at his suggestion, Gladys was given two small roles, of a boy and a girl, in a production of “The Silver King”.

She acted in many melodramas with Toronto’s Valentine Company, finally playing a major child role in their version of, “The Silver King”, and starring as Little Eva in their production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

She finally landed a supporting role in a 1907 Broadway play, “The Warrens of Virginia”. The producer of the play insisted that Gladys Smith assume the stage name Mary Pickford.

She performed in her first film, “Her First Biscuits”, directed by D.W. Griffith. She signed with the Biograph Company at $10 per day in 1909, and also met her future husband, Owen Moore.

In January 1910, Pickford traveled with a Biograph crew to Los Angeles. Audiences began to identify her. Exhibitors advertised her film with captions reading, The Girl with the Golden Curls and Blondilocks.

She left Biograph, and spent 1911 starring in films at Carl Laemmle’s Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP) at $175 per week. Her first IMP short was, “Their First Misunderstanding”, with Owen Moore.

In “Tess of the Storm Country”, a 1914 drama, she played the role of Tessibel Skinner. The movie sent Pickford’s “career into orbit, and made her the most popular actress in America”.

In 1919, Pickford – along with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks – formed the independent film production company United Artists, and she continued to produce, perform in her own movies and distribute them.