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Populär Culture Review
Rosher, who shot every Pickford picture from 1918 to 1925, took great
pains to erase evidence o f the star’s aging. For Little Annie Rooney, he
made her look twelve when she was really thirty-three. According to one
critic, in the 1920s, “A grown woman playing a little girl warmed hearts”
{Mary Pickford). Americans, it seemed, had a fixation with the past and
childhood.
Pickford’s long golden hair was her trademark, her most
distinguishing childhood feature, accounting for the nickname “Little
Mary, the girl with the curls.” According to Pickford biographer Eileen
W hitfield, “once an adult, a woman always, always, wore her hair up. In
public, M ary obeyed the custom. But onscreen, the tresses inevitably
came loose, forming a rampant Pre