Mary Pickford: The Little Girl
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If time seemed to define Pickford off-screen, it played an even
more important role in her on-screen image. Pickford tum ed back time
by playing the child, and in order to do so skillfully and convincingly,
she had to act and appear the part. Physically, she had the right look.
Biographer Eileen W hitfield paints her as one “whose face seemed to
move from round good humor to unsettling beauty. Her hazel eyes held a
melancholy sweetness. Her bones were fine, her build small. Her back
fairly dripped with springing curls. She stood up proudly on size-five
shoes; the longest finger on her hand was two and a half inches. Yet she
spoke with the aim o f a torpedo” (Whitfield 75). Pickford intemalized a
child’s movements, once revealing her process to Vogue magazine:
“relax the brow and comers o f the mouth, point toes inward, loosen legs”
(W hitfield 154). In the role o f Gwen in Poor Little Rieh Girl, Pickford
embraces childlike movements as she pulls back and slams on the brakes
while holding an adult’s hand as she goes down the stairs, clutches her
teddy bear by its leg, skips flat-footed, and dances dreamily as though
there is nothing eise in the world to occupy her mind (W hitfield 154).
She changes emotions on a dime, going ffom tears to anger to boredom
to joy, just like a child whose unbridled feelings know no restraint
(Whitfield 155). Pickford attributes her ability to her own lost childhood
as she worked to Support her family. “That phase o f my life,” she
recalled, “was unlived”; [my childhood] was “walled up inside o f me . . .
I had to express it” (Whitfield 154-155). Pickford radiated energy, spunk,
and tendemess, drawing people to her and enabling them to relive their
own childhoods or see in her their own children or grandchildren.
Pickford realized that her most loyal fans loved her child roles
best so she continued to play them, developing new ways o f appearing
youthful. To appear smaller, she offen acted with tall co-stars and large
props, such as fumiture fashioned two-thirds larger than normal
(Whitfield 155). She even pioneered new ways o f stopping the effects of
time on her face. One moming while putting on her makeup Pickford
saw that when one o f her mirrors caught the moming sunlight, its
reflection on her face made her look much younger, and she convinced
her Poor Little Rieh Girl director, Maurice Toumeuer, to experiment
(Beauchamp 67). Toumeuer balked at first, until Pickford persuaded him
to “Take my close-up as you usually do, then would you get me a little
spot, and put it on a soapbox or something, and direct it at my face? Then
you can see it in the darkroom and choose” (Beauchamp 68). Toumeuer
saw that Pickford was right, and the baby-spot technique became a
mainstay in Poor Little Rieh Girl and all her films that followed. Charles