Mary Pickford

“ It was as Tess, beautiful, wild, impetuous, that Mary Pickford made her reputation as a motion picture actress. How love acts upon a temperament such as hers—a temperament that makes a woman an angel or an outcast, according to the character of the man she loves—is the theme of the story. ”

“ Would Lillian or Mae be chosen to play in the next big picture?
Mr. Griffith kept all the girls worried. All but Mary Pickford. She was the only one who dared demand. With Mother, Mary came up to the new studio to see what she could put over in the way of a job. She’d now a legitimate reason for making herself costly. In January, 1913, Miss Pickford made a second appearance on the dramatic stage229 under David Belasco’s wing. On her opening, the papers said that the success of Miss Pickford as the little blind princess was so marked that it practically precluded her return to the screen. ”

“ This sister, who was some years older than her celebrated relative, was almost as constant a phenomenon as was Mary Pickford’s mother. Indeed, many feminine luminaries of the screen possess one of these adhesive relatives. There is nearly always a mother or brother or sister or husband standing around back of the screens to see that justice is administered.
There was one time when Mary Pickford’s supremacy was seriously threatened by the success of this other Famous Players’ star. “Is Mary jealous of Marguerite?” I asked Mr. Zukor at this period. ”

“ All screen stars are not animated by devotion to work. Mary Pickford is. To it she has sacrificed pleasures,32 personal contacts, all sorts of extraneous interests.
Several years before I walked into the theatre which inspired me with my idea, Mary Pickford was working under Mr. Griffith in the Biograph Company, which, you will remember, was a unit in the trust. Then she was not a star. She was getting twenty-five dollars a week, and the most vivid reflection of those early days of hers is afforded by a woman who used to work with her. ”

“ If proof be demanded of this assertion we need only point to the wonderful manifestations of loyalty evoked in the last week by the advent of the Queen of the Film World and her admirable consort. The adoration of Mary Pickford has been compared with that of Mary Queen of Scots, and not without some show of reason, for the appeal which her acting, makes is always to the sense of chivalry which, in however sentimental a form, is characteristic of our race. ”

“ You developed what you called personalities—and after that, actresses.
Before The Birth of a Nation was begun Mary Pickford had already left Griffith. I have heard that he vowed to make Mae Marsh a greater actress—as if she weren’t one from the start, as if acting mattered, as if Mary Pickford ever could or needed to act. Remember that in The Avenging Conscience at least four people: Spottiswood Aiken, Henry Walthall, Blanche Sweet, and another I cannot identify—the second villain—played superbly without acting. ”

“ First of all, she did not have Mary Pickford’s absorbing passion for work. Secondly, she did not possess the other artiste’s capacity for portraying fundamental human emotion. Simple and direct and poignant, Mary goes to the heart much as does a Foster melody. Herein is the real success of a popularity so phenomenally sustained.
Previous to engaging Miss Ward and Miss Clark, the Lasky Company had secured the services of Blanche Sweet. The performance of this actress in Griffith’s “Judith and Bethulia” had lingered in my memory, and almost as soon as we organized I took Lasky to see that film. ”

“ David thought Mary had a good face for Indians on account of her high cheek bones, and usually cast her for the red-skinned maid or young squaw. A smear of brown grease paint over her fair face and a wig of coarse straight black hair made a picturesque little Indian girl of “our Mary.”
Curls and Mary Pickford were not yet synonymous. She played, besides Indians, many character parts with her hair smacked straight back; and she “did” young wives with her hair in a “bun” on the top of her head to make her look tall and married. When Mary wore curls, it meant an hour of labor at night. ”

“ There was no detail of film-production which she, this girl, still in her early twenties, had not grasped more thoroughly42 than any man to whom I ever talked. She knew pictures, not only from the standpoint of the studio, but from that of the box-office. Back of those lovely brown eyes, disguised by that lyric profile, is the mind of a captain of industry. In appearance so typically feminine, Mary Pickford gives to the romance of business all of a man’s response. ”

“ Miss Farrar is, like Mary Pickford, a captain of industry. She has the same masculine grasp of business, the same masculine approach to work. The difference between them is construed not alone by the immeasurably greater cultural equipment of86 Miss Farrar but by many temperamental divergences. Whereas Mary Pickford’s manner and voice are always marked by the feminine, almost childlike appeal to which I have referred, the prima donna’s speech has a man’s directness of import. She picks her words for strength, as might a Jack London sea-captain or an Elizabethan soldier. ”

“ Mary Pickford, as I have related, rings up early every morning. But then she is a systematised human being who presents in temperament the opposite pole from Mabel Normand. The latter is a creature of impulse. She never calculates the moment ahead for fear that the moment itself might calculate something she liked better. When she works she works hard, but she can’t do it in step with the hour-hand. ”

“ Company, the silence and mystery that had surrounded her when with Biograph instantly vanished. She now received whole pages of advertising, for that was how the “Imp” would put the pictures over. One of her first Independent pictures was “The Dream” of which a reviewer said: “The picture got over on account of Miss Pickford. Our feelings were somewhat sentimental when we saw ‘Our Mary’ as a wife arrayed in evening gown and dining with swells. In other words, we have always considered Mary a child. It never occurred to us she might grow up and be a woman some day.” ”

“ Pickard, written during this London residence, she says, "Mr. Pickard is even more anxious than I to go home. Mary is the only contented one. She is happy all the time." There is so much that is sad in this record that, before we have done, the reader will be glad the little girl had at least a bright and sunny childhood to remember. ”

“ Mary Pickard was now alone. Every member of her own family had gone, and she had witnessed and smoothed the passage of every one. She had only entered mature life, but her twenty-five years of experience and change had been equal to double that period of common life. Already had she learned the great truth, which to many comes late, if at all,—
"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial."
Heretofore she had always had an object to live for,—some one dependent upon her affection and exertions, to whom it was happiness enough to minister. ”

“ She had usually sat between Jacob Bailey and Flora May, sat there with an inward protest. She shrank from contact with the imbecile girl: the instinctive shrinking of the healthy from the sick, the unconscious cruelty of the normal toward the abnormal. Hitherto she had given no sign of this, ashamed of an instinct that was yet too strong for her; conscious, too, under the skin of her mind, of the warmth of compassion, the tenderness of courtesy, with which Pippin always treated the poor girl. If she had been the First Lady of the Land, he could have shown her no more attention, Mary thought. ”

“ Weller received with wry faces a proposition involving the marriage of anybody in whom he took an interest; but, as Mr. Pickwick argued the point with him, and laid great stress on the fact that Mary was not a widow, he gradually became more tractable. Mr. Pickwick had great influence over him, and he had been much struck with Mary’s appearance ”

“ Pickard and his daughter were extreme. But we believe them to have been enough to test the power of character, and to throw a delicate and difficult duty upon a daughter, so young, and so connected with friends who were able and willing to help, but on whom she was not willing to lean. She preferred to lean upon herself, though not in unaided strength. Seldom do we find such evidence of early and entire reliance on a higher Power. She had made her election. With the deliberation and firmness of mature conviction, she had given herself to God, and was at peace. ”

“ Mrs. Bardell let lodgings to many conversable single gentlemen, with great profit, but never brought any more actions for breach of promise of marriage. Her attorneys, Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, continue in business, from which they realise a large income, and in which they are universally considered among the sharpest of the sharp.
Sam Weller kept his word, and remained unmarried, for two years. The old housekeeper dying at the end of that time, Mr. Pickwick promoted Mary to the situation, on condition of her marrying Mr. Weller at once, which she did without a murmur. ”

“ Mary Pickard, still a school-girl, saw for the first time the individual with whom, twelve years after, her fortunes were to be connected for life, but with whom, during that interval, she had no intercourse. Henry Ware, then a theological student at Cambridge, was on a visit to Hingham, his native town, and passed an evening at Miss Cushing's. Mary does not appear to have had any conversation with him, but simply saw and heard him, and wrote to her friend in Boston a frank account of the opinion she formed of him. ”

“ Pickwick’s figure as he rises in astonishment. It may be noted what a graceful type of womanhood then prevailed, the face being thrown out by “bands” of hair and ringlets, the large spreading bonnets and white veils. Mary wears an enormous bonnet or hat like her mistress.
“Mr. Sawyer’s Mode of Travelling.” The amazing spirit and movement of this picture cannot be too much praised. The chaise seems whirling along, so that the coach, meeting it, seems embarrassed and striving to get out of the way. The Irish family, struggling to keep up with the chaise, is inimitable. ”

“ I infer that she thought Mary Pickard had been a very bad girl.
Her mother's name was Lovell,—Mary Lovell,—granddaughter of "Master Lovell," long known as a classical teacher in colonial Boston, and daughter of James Lovell, an active Revolutionist, a prominent member of the Continental Congress and, from the end of the war to his death, Naval officer in the Boston Custom House. Mr. Lovell had eight sons, one of whom was a successful London merchant, and one daughter, who remained with her parents until at twenty-five she married Mr. ”

“ Mary turned in her bed, and a sigh that was almost a sob broke from her. She hated wicked people—yes, she hated them; and weak people, too, people who made others suffer just because they were too feeble to deny themselves the drink that was poison—
"I hate them!" said Mary aloud. Then she thought of Pippin, and blushed again. Pippin did not hate wicked or weak people. He seemed to love them. How was it? Mary, cool, kind, a little aloof, did not understand it. ”

“ THEY DIE SO SOON"
My Soldier longed to take me away at once from the scenes where so much suffering had come to me and the next morning I summoned all my strength for the trial awaiting me. I went to Mary's room and found her dressed, with the exception of her gloves, ready to go out. Her trunks, marked and strapped, were being taken down-stairs. Upon the bed were my dress and wrap, bonnet and veil and gloves of mourning, all laid out by her careful hand.
"Come," she said, "let me help you off with your wrapper. You have not much time; I was just coming for you. ”

“ She's as hard as a rock—Mary. Always was. She won't die."
We led her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day. M'Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no one visible in the house or the gardens; and the front door stood open.
Miss Mary rose from beside her sister, stepped forth first, and entered the hall.
"Come, Bessie," she cried.
"I daren't. Oh, I daren't."
"Come!" Her voice had altered. I felt Baxter start. "There's nothing to be afraid of." ”

“ You must be patient, Pippin. A young woman's feelings are very sensitive, as you said yourself yesterday. Mary is very much upset, and she probably feels—she is a very sensible girl, and a very intelligent one"—"You bet she's all that!" Pippin murmured—"probably feels that as you are connected with all this excitement and emotion, it is better for her not to see you just now. Start along with your wheel, and Mary and I will follow by rail. Mr. Bailey can meet us at Cyrus Centre—it's a four-mile drive, you say? We'll be there as soon as you, Pippin, or before. ”

“ Mary was feeling of late that there were many old times in her life, and that she had lived a long while. She had been quite a traveller, had seen and known a variety of people, but nobody—outside her [44] own family—that is, no grown person,—was so dear to her as this excellent young lady, who was known among strangers as “the homely Miss Pike.” Mary had attended her school at Hilltop with Milly Allen, and afterward Miss Pike had been a governess in Dr. Gray’s family, and still later had spent a winter with the Grays at Washington. ”

“ Few women, in our community, and with "troops of friends," have been more thrown upon themselves at an early age, or have led a more truly single life until life's meridian, than did Mary Pickard. But the moment she became Mary Ware she lived for another,—as unreservedly and devotedly as woman ever did. Principle and affection alone would have prompted this, as a pleasure; the circumstances in which she was placed, from first to last, made it a duty, and still a delight. ”