Mary Pickford: The Little Girl Who Called
the Shots
In 1920, twenty-seven year old Mary Pickford played the title
role o f a child in two films, Pollyanna and Suds, both released by her
own production Company, United Artists. At the time, she was the most
famous actress in the world, affectionately dubbed “Am erica’s
Sweetheart,” not by a public relations firm but by her fans. She was the
highest-paid woman on earth, and she had already been married,
divorced, and married again, first to actor Owen Moore and then,
following a passionate extramarital affair, to the dashing swashbuckler
star, Douglas Fairbanks, with whom she lived at their fabulous Pickfair
mansion. Still, on screen she acted the child. The New York Times, in its
review o f Pollyanna, raised the issue o f Pickford’s little-girl persona,
saying, ‘“ Why doesn’t M ary Pickford grow up?’ The question is
answered at the Rivoli this week. It is evident that Miss Pickford doesn’t
grow up because she makes more people laugh and cry, can win her way
into more hearts, and even protesting heads, as a rampant, resilient little
girl than as anything eise. She can no more grow up than Peter Pan.
When she stops being a child on the screen, she’ll probably just stop . . .
But that time is a long way o f f ’ (quoted in Basinger 38). Although
Pickford played a variety o f mature roles in her long and distinguished
career, she is best known for her cheeky-without-being-treacly child or
adolescent performances in films such as Cinderella (1915), Little Pal
(1915), Rags (1915), The Poor Little Rieh Girl (1917), The Little
American (1917), Rebecca o f Sunnybrook Farm (1917), A Little Princess
(1917), M ’Liss (1918), Daddy Long Legs (1919), Heart O ’ the Hills
(1919), Pollyanna (1920), Suds (1920), Through the Back Door (1921),
Little Lord Fauntieroy (1921), Tess o f the Storm Country (1922), Little
Annie Rooney (1925), and Sparrows (1926). As Raymond Lee notes in
The Films o f Mary Pickford, she played “a child most o f her reel life”
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It seems curious today that the most powerful actress in the
world—beautiful, talented, sexy, and highly paid— would continue to
play child roles well into her thirties and that her audience would demand
that she do so. Certainly, one can attribute this to regressive gender roles
and attitudes in what Edward W agenknecht called “The Age o f
Innocence.” However, another explanation for the popularity o f