Early years In 1901, the family moved to the United States to pursue theatre as a family enterprise. The family joined the travelling company of
The Fatal Wedding. 'Baby Gladys Smith' had the lead child role as the Little Mother, Lottie was her understudy, Jack had a small role, and Charlotte was a French maid. Gladys, her mother, and two younger siblings toured the United States by rail, performing in third-rate companies and plays. Life was one of poverty on Gladys' income, with Gladys helping her mother care for her younger siblings. Gladys learned to read and write through some school primers Charlotte bought, and received no formal schooling. On some tours, Charlotte and Jack would perform in one company, and Gladys and Lottie in another. Charlotte arranged for her daughters to be cared for by troupe members. It was during this time that the Smiths would become friends with another show family, Mary Gish and her two daughters
Lillian and
Dorothy. In 1905, she played the boy Freckles in
Hal Reid's
The Gypsy Girl on tour, and at the
Star Theatre on Broadway. In 1906, Gladys, Lottie, and Jack Smith supported singer
Chauncey Olcott on Broadway in
Edmund Burke. Living in New York City, Gladys pursued a role in productions by the successful Broadway producer
David Belasco. After pursuing Blasco at his office for months, Belasco relented and auditioned her for a child role in the 1907 Broadway play
The Warrens of Virginia. Blasco hired her for the part at per week, but was unhappy with her name for the stage. He liked her middle name and for a last name chose Gladys' maternal grandmother's last name Pickford and Mary Pickford became her permanent stage name. The play was written by
William C. deMille, whose brother,
Cecil, appeared in the cast. After completing its Broadway run, the play toured, including a stop in her hometown of Toronto. It played at the
Royal Alexandra Theatre in January 1909. In January 1910, Pickford traveled with a Biograph crew to Los Angeles. Many other film companies wintered on the
West Coast, escaping the weak light and short days that hampered winter shooting in the
East. Pickford added to her 1909 Biographs (
Sweet and Twenty,
They Would Elope, and
To Save Her Soul, to name a few) with films made in California. Actors were not listed in the credits in Griffith's company. Audiences noticed and identified Pickford within weeks of her first film appearance. Exhibitors, in turn, capitalized on her popularity by advertising on
sandwich boards that a film featuring "The Girl with the Golden Curls", "Blondilocks", or "The
Biograph Girl" was inside. Pickford left Biograph in December 1910. The following year, she starred in films at
Carl Laemmle's
Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP). IMP was absorbed into
Universal Pictures in 1912, along with Majestic. Unhappy with their creative standards, Pickford returned to work with Griffith in 1912. Some of her best performances were in his films, such as
Friends,
The Mender of Nets,
Just Like a Woman, and
The Female of the Species. That year, Pickford also introduced her friends Dorothy and Lillian Gish to Griffith, and each became a major silent film star, in comedy and tragedy, respectively. Pickford made her last Biograph picture,
The New York Hat, in late 1912. She returned to Broadway in the David Belasco production of
A Good Little Devil (1912). This was a major turning point in her career. Pickford, who had always hoped to conquer the Broadway stage, discovered how deeply she missed film acting. In 1913, she decided to work exclusively in film. The previous year,
Adolph Zukor had formed
Famous Players in Famous Plays. It was later known as
Famous Players–Lasky and then
Paramount Pictures, one of the first American feature film companies. Pickford left the stage to join Zukor's roster of stars. Zukor believed film's potential lay in recording theatrical players in replicas of their most famous stage roles and productions. Zukor first filmed Pickford in a silent version of
A Good Little Devil. The film, produced in 1913, showed the play's Broadway actors reciting every line of dialogue, resulting in a stiff film that Pickford later called "one of the worst [features] I ever made ... it was deadly". Zukor agreed; he held the film back from distribution for a year. Pickford's work in material written for the camera by that time had attracted a strong following. Comedy-dramas, such as ''
In the Bishop's Carriage (1913), Caprice (1913), and especially Hearts Adrift (1914), made her irresistible to moviegoers. Hearts Adrift'' was so popular that Pickford asked for the first of her many publicized pay raises based on the profits and reviews. The film marked the first time Pickford's name was featured above the title on movie marquees.
Tess of the Storm Country was released five weeks later. Biographer Kevin Brownlow observed that the film "sent her career into orbit and made her the most popular actress in America, if not the world". Her appeal was summed up two years later by the February 1916 issue of
Photoplay as "luminous tenderness in a steel band of gutter ferocity". Only
Charlie Chaplin, who slightly surpassed Pickford's popularity in 1916, had a similarly spellbinding pull with critics and the audience. Each enjoyed a level of fame far exceeding that of other actors. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Pickford was believed to be the most famous woman in the world, or, as a silent-film journalist described her, "the best known woman who has ever lived, the woman who was known to more people and loved by more people than any other woman that has been in all history".
Stardom Pickford starred in 52 features throughout her career. On June 24, 1916, Pickford signed a new contract with Zukor that granted her full authority over the production of the films in which she starred, and a record-breaking salary of $10,000 a week. She also became vice-president of Pickford Film Corporation. In August 1918, Pickford's contract expired, and, when refusing Zukor's terms for a renewal, she was offered $250,000 to leave the motion picture business. She declined and went to
First National Pictures, which agreed to her terms. In 1919, Pickford, along with D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and
Douglas Fairbanks, formed the independent film production company
United Artists. Through United Artists, Pickford continued to produce and perform in her own movies; she could also distribute them as she chose. In 1920, Pickford's film
Pollyanna grossed around . The following year, Pickford's film
Little Lord Fauntleroy was also a success, and in 1923,
Rosita grossed over $1 million as well. a role for which her famous
ringlets were cut into a 1920s
bob. Pickford had already cut her hair in the wake of her mother's death in 1928. Fans were shocked at the transformation. Pickford's hair had become a symbol of female virtue, and when she cut it, the act made front-page news in
The New York Times and other papers.
Coquette was a success and won her an
Academy Award for Best Actress, although this was highly controversial. The public failed to respond to her in the more sophisticated roles. Like most movie stars of the silent era, Pickford found her career fading as talkies became more popular among audiences. Established Hollywood actors were panicked by the impending arrival of the talkies. On March 29, 1928,
The Dodge Brothers Hour was broadcast from Pickford's bungalow, featuring Fairbanks, Chaplin,
Norma Talmadge,
Gloria Swanson,
John Barrymore,
D. W. Griffith, and
Dolores del Río, among others. They spoke on the radio show to prove that they could meet the challenge of talking movies. A transition in Pickford's roles came when she was in her late thirties, no longer able to play the children, teenage spitfires, and feisty young women so adored by her fans, and not suited to the glamorous and vampish heroines of early sound. In 1933, she underwent a
Technicolor screen test for an animated/live-action film version of
Alice in Wonderland, but
Walt Disney discarded the project when Paramount Pictures released its own version of the book. Only one Technicolor
still of her screen test still exists. She retired from film acting in 1933 following three costly failures with her last film appearance being
Secrets. During
World War I, she promoted the sale of
liberty bonds, making an intensive series of fund-raising speeches, beginning in Washington, D.C., where she sold bonds alongside Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks,
Theda Bara, and
Marie Dressler. Five days later, she spoke on
Wall Street to an estimated 50,000 people. Though Canadian-born, she was a powerful symbol of
American culture, kissing the
American flag for cameras and auctioning one of her world-famous curls for $15,000. In a single speech in Chicago, she sold an estimated five million dollars' worth of bonds. She was christened the U.S. Navy's official "Little Sister"; the Army named two cannons after her and made her an honorary colonel. ,
Charlie Chaplin, and
D. W. Griffith, with whom Mary Pickford founded United Artists in 1919 In 1916, Pickford and
Constance Adams DeMille, wife of director Cecil B. DeMille, helped found the
Hollywood Studio Club, a dormitory for young women involved in the motion picture business. United Artists broke from this tradition. It was solely a distribution company, offering independent film producers access to its own screens as well as the rental of temporarily unbooked cinemas owned by other companies. In 1919, Pickford established The Mary Pickford Company, which was devoted exclusively to producing films distributed by United Artists. The film
Pollyanna was Mary's first film distributed by United Artists. Pickford and Fairbanks produced and shot their films after 1920 at the jointly owned Pickford-Fairbanks studio on
Santa Monica Boulevard. The producers who signed with UA were true independents, producing, creating, and controlling their work to an unprecedented degree. As a co-founder, producer, and star of her own films, Pickford became the most powerful woman ever to work in Hollywood. By 1930, her acting career had largely faded. She had purchased the rights to many of her early silent films with the intention of burning them on her death, but in 1970 she agreed to donate 50 of her Biograph films to the
American Film Institute. In 1976, she received an
Academy Honorary Award for her contribution to American film. == Personal life ==