Mary Pickford

@Producer, Birthday and Family

Mary Pickford was a Canadian-American motion picture actress and one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Apr 8, 1892

AmericanCanadianFilm & Theater PersonalitiesActressesT V & Movie ProducersAries Celebrities
Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: April 8, 1892
  • Died on: May 29, 1979
  • Nationality: Canadian, American
  • Famous: Movie Producers, Producer, Screenwriter, T V, Film & Theater Personalities, Actresses, T V & Movie Producers
  • Spouses: Charles Rogers (1937–1979), Douglas Fairbanks (1920–1936), Owen Moore (1911–1920)
  • Siblings: Jack Pickford, Lottie Pickford
  • Known as: Gladys Louise Smith

Mary Pickford born at

Toronto

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Birth Place

She married thrice to Owen Moore, Douglas Fairbanks, and in 1937, to her last husband, actor and band leader, Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers. They adopted two children: Roxanne and Ronald Charles.

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Personal Life

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.

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Personal Life

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.

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Personal Life

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.

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Childhood & Early Life

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.

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Childhood & Early Life

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”.

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Childhood & Early Life

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”.

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Career & Later Life

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.

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Career & Later Life

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.

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Career & Later Life

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.

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Career & Later Life

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.

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Career & Later Life

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”.

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Major Works

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.

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Major Works