Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies

Pickford and Fairbanks: A Modern Marriage

PICKFORD AND FAIRBANKS A Modern Marriage Christel Schmidt They were in love—beautifully, gloriously in love. And they were equals. Adela Rogers St. Johns, Photoplay, February 1927 64 Pickford and Fairbanks watch a scene being filmed on the set of Little Annie Rooney (1925). By the time Mary Pickford wed actor Douglas Fairbanks in March 1920, the marriage seemed almost preordained. Each was already an international superstar, adored by fans with the passionate intensity that early cinema inspired. Each had an onscreen persona that represented American optimism, energy, and youth. Each had amassed extraordinary wealth, power, and respect within the industry. And though their courtship was fraught with complications (at the time, both were married to other people), their eventual union seemed, to the public and to their friends, the ideal match of personal and professional equals. Just a generation earlier, middle-class men and women had usually wed for social and economic reasons, with each consigned to separate public and private realms. Breaking with that long tradition, Pickford and Fairbanks married for love and shared the domains of work and home equally.⁄ Theirs was an enlightened union, a type defined by sociologists in 1924 as “companionate marriage.” This marital model—which emerged during the Progressive Era (1890– 1930)—“rejected patriarchal family models and instead envisioned marriage as an equal partnership” built on friendship and mutual interest.¤ In this spirit, the media portrayed the couple’s bond as one of like-minded and sympathetic helpmates who had previously su∑ered domestic problems due to incompatible spouses. Now the pair had found true companionship and (perhaps more important for the actress) professional understanding. “It might have been di≈cult for many men to be the husband of Mary Pickford,” journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns observes. “Only a man who was a ‘king in his own right,’ as it were, would not have been overwhelmed” by it.‹With these words, the writer acknowledges the challenges of being married to a star actress and having to play second fiddle to her career. Although women were entering the workforce in record numbers at the turn of the twentieth century, many people still believed that wives belonged at home. And although, as historian Benjamin McArthur observes, nearly all famous actresses who married continued their careers, a belief in women’s subservience to men persisted, even within the performing arts.› As a columnist in Photoplay wrote on the subject of women’s employment after marriage, “Many men can stand no touch of equality in their wives.”fi Pickford’s first husband was just such a man. Pickford and Fairbanks 67 Snapshot of Pickford and Fairbanks in Switzerland in 1924. Opposite: The recently wed couple poses for photographers aboard the SS Lapland before setting sail on their European honeymoon in June 1920. The actress met actor Owen Moore in 1909 at Biograph, director D.W . Gri≈th’s film studio, where both were employed. When they married eighteen months later, Pickford’s career was on the rise, and throughout their eight years as husband and wife, it continued to ascend at an astonishing speed. In her memoir, Pickford acknowledges that her fame, as well as her role as the pair’s chief breadwinner, would have been hard for any man to bear. Still, Moore’s resentment of his wife was toxic—especially after she met the charming and energetic Fairbanks , a man who was not threatened by her achievements but actually loved and admired her for them. True, Fairbanks sometimes touted a conservative line on the subject of career wives, giving (as many performers did) a nod to the values of their mainstream audiences. And Fairbanks , born in theVictorian era, may have retained some shred of nineteenth-century beliefs about marriage. But he was also a modern man living in a new age, when married women in his profession not only worked but attained great success. And the actor was drawn to highly accomplished people. By all accounts, he had little if any professional jealousy and was genuinely pleased by the achievements of others. All this was reflected in his relationship with Pickford, a woman he considered a great artist and a savvy businesswoman. When Pickford and Fairbanks wed, they forged a progressive union that not only met but surpassed companionate marriage’s expectations of gender equality. In addition to domestic parity...