Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies

America's Sweetheart

AMERICA’S SWEETHEART 89 Photo by Marceau, 1913. AMERICA’S SWEETHEART EdwardWagenknecht I I t must be very di≈cult for people today to realize what Mary Pickford meant to America when she really was America’s Sweetheart—not only the undisputed queen of the movies but also, by all accounts, the most famous woman in America. The “America’s Sweetheart” tag, invented by “Pop” Grauman, was sedulously cultivated by her press agents, and her career was intelligently geared and self-directed toward the success she had deliberately set for herself as a goal.Yet none of this would have su≈ced without an enthusiastic public response, and nobody who lived through the years of her fame can doubt that that response was spontaneous, enthusiastic, and impassioned—the kind that cannot be manufactured or bought.⁄ In 1926 Dorothy Gish came back from England with the shocking news that a London schoolgirl, asked what “M.P.” stood for, had replied, “Mary Pickford.” (Actually, it stands for Member of Parliament .) More shocking—and more touching—was the story of the congressman’s daughter who came home from Sunday school one day and said, “Mamma, they asked us today who we wanted to be like.” “And?” queried her mother. “Oh,” sighed the child, “I told them the Lord, but I meant Mary Pickford.” We all idealized Mary in those days. Reading Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans in school, I came across Dunois’s great tribute to Joan of Arc: If e’er truth desires Embodiment in form that’s visible, Then it must wear her features as its own. If purity of heart, faith, innocence, Dwells anywhere on earth,—upon her lips, Within her placid eyes, there it must dwell!¤ I am willing to give the reader three guesses of whom I was immediately reminded. Nor was this a wholly idiosyncratic reaction. “There is a radiance about her,” Gerald D. McDonald wrote in his review of her memoir Sunshine and Shadow, “and audiences never doubted that even without the make-believe she was kind, noble and true.”‹ James Card added, “There is something heavenly about Mary Pickford. It is a quality, we must admit, most uncommon in motion pictures.”› This is an edited version of “America’s Sweetheart,” chapter 3 in EdwardWagenknecht’s Movies in the Age of Innocence, 2nd ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). EdwardWagenknecht 90 Nobody has ever questioned Pickford’s great skill and knowledge in all matters relating to motion picture technique, but there is a tendency among those who do not know her films well to identify her exclusively with the portrayal of children and young girls. If this were true, I should not think it necessary to apologize for it in any terms of abjectness. Most actors specialize in one thing or another; to all intents and purposes, Charlie Chaplin has played only one character, but those who disparage Pickford have not thought it necessary to remain blind to his great achievements. If you are going to specialize, it seems to me that children and young girls a∑ord a very good field. I can think of highly regarded actresses who have specialized in prostitutes, and I do not believe that prostitutes are more important than young girls or that they are more varied in their motivations or more di≈cult to portray. “A woman of moral depravity,” said stage actress Julia Marlowe, “o∑ers the modern playwright greater scope than a good woman because her life is full of incidents that are dramatic.” But, she added, rightly, “it takes a greater artist to make a good woman interesting than to make a base woman sympathetic and thrilling.”fi As a matter of fact, it was not until after the beginning of the feature era that Pickford became definitely associated with ingénue roles, and it was not until The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) that she appeared throughout a feature film as a child. Nevertheless, Pickford’s children and girls were not undi∑erentiated; of course, there was a kind of familial relationship between them, but is this not also true of the types favored by certain other actresses? Gwen in The Poor Little Rich Girl, for example, is a very di∑erent girl from either Rebecca or Pollyanna—more helpless and less resourceful and considerably more wistful. She also gives the impression of being considerably younger. Her movements, her reactions are...