MARY PICKFORD HAPPENS ALONG
It was a bright May morning in 1909. When I came off the scene, I
noticed a little girl sitting quietly in a corner near the door. She
looked about fourteen. I afterwards learned she was nearing seventeen.
She wore a plain navy-blue serge suit, a blue-and-white striped lawn
shirtwaist, a rolled brim Tuscan straw sailor hat with a dark blue
ribbon bow. About her face, so fresh, so pretty, and so gentle, bobbed
a dozen or more short golden curls--such perfect little curls as I had
never seen.
A timid applicant usually hugged the background. Bold ones would press
forward to the camera and stand there, obtruding themselves, in the
hope that the director would see them, like their look, and engage them
for a day’s work.
But Mary Pickford tucked herself away in a niche, while she quietly
gave us “the once over.” The boss’s eagle eye had been roving her
way at intervals, the while he directed, for here was something
“different”--a maid so fair and an actress to boot! Pausing a moment in
his work, he came over to me and said, “Don’t you think she would be
good for Pippa?”
“Ideal,” I answered.
Before we closed shop that day, he had Mary make up--gave her a violin,
and told her to walk across the stage while playing it so that Billy
Bitzer could make a test.
Before she left the studio that day, every actor there had a “line” on
Mary. In the dressing-room, the word went around:
“There’s a cute kid outside; have you seen her?”
“No, where is she?”
“She’s been sitting out there in a corner by herself.”
“Guess I’ll take a look.”
“She’s cute all right; they’re taking a test.”
Something was impending. There was excitement and expectancy in the
air. America’s Sweetheart was soon to make her first screen appearance.
The test was O. K. and Mary was told to come to the studio on the
morrow. David promised her five dollars a day for her first picture,
and were her work good, he’d talk business with her. That satisfied
Mary.
As “Giannina,” the pretty daughter of Taddeo Ferrari, in “The Violin
Maker of Cremona” Mary Pickford made her motion picture début. She was
ideally suited to the part, and had good support from David Miles as
the cripple Filippo.
The studio bunch was all agog over the picture and the new girl, long
before the quiet word was passed to the regulars a few days later:
“Projection room, they’re going to run ‘The Violin Maker.’” After
the showing, Mr. Griffith had a serious conversation with Mary and
offered her twenty-five dollars a week for three days’ work. This Mary
accepted. She felt she might stay through the summer.
Her second picture was “The Lonely Villa,” the brain child of Mack
Sennett, gleaned from a newspaper--good old-fashioned melodrama. Mary
played a child of twelve with two younger sisters and a mother. They
were nice people, and wealthy. Miss Leonard, playing the mother, would
be beautifully arrayed in the brown-silk-and-velvet. But what could be
done for Mary? She had no clothes fit for the wealthy little aristocrat
she was to portray and there was nothing in the meager stock wardrobe
for her. “Oh, she’s so pretty,” I said to my husband, “can’t we dress
her up? She’ll just be darling in the right kind of clothes.” So he
parted with twenty dollars from the cash register and trusted me to
dispose of it at Best’s--then on Twenty-third Street--for a proper
wardrobe. Off I went on my joyful errand, and brought back to the
studio a smart pale blue linen frock, blue silk stockings to match, and
nifty patent leather pumps. What a dainty little miss she looked, her
fluffy curls a-bobbing, when she had donned the new pretties!
During the dreary waits between scenes, there being no private
dressing-rooms, actors would be falling all over each other, and they
could find seclusion only by digging themselves in behind old and
unused scenery. Owen Moore was especially apt in hiding himself. He had
an unfriendly way of disappearing. None of the herd instinct in him.
At times we had quite a job locating him. Cruising along the back drop
of a Coney Island Police Court, or perhaps a section of the Chinese
wall, we’d innocently stumble upon him. But we didn’t need to hunt
him the day that Mary Pickford was all dressed up in Best & Company’s
best. That day he never left the camera stand, and his face was all one
generous Irish smile. (How little we know when our troubles are going
to begin!)
Following “The Lonely Villa” came “The Way of Man” and then a series of
comedies in which Mary was teamed with Billy Quirk, “Sweet and Twenty,”
“They Would Elope,” “His Wife’s Visitors.”
Though Mary Pickford affiliated with the movies for twenty-five dollars
weekly with the understanding that she would work three days a week and
play “parts” only, she was a good sport and would come in as an “extra”
in a scene if we needed her. So occasionally in a courtroom scene, or
a church wedding where the camera was set up to get the congregation
or spectators from the rear, Mary could attend with perfect safety as
the Pickford curls, from the back of her head, would never have been
recognized by the most enthusiastic fan of that day. Mr. Griffith would
not have his “Mary” a “super.”
Considering the stellar position she has held for years, and her
present-day affluence, many movie fans may think that Mary Pickford
was kissed by the fairies when she was born. Not so. Life’s hard
realities--the understanding of her little family’s struggles to make
both ends meet when she was even as young as Jackie Coogan at the time
of his first appearance with Charlie Chaplin in “The Kid”--that was her
fairy’s kiss--that and her mother’s great love for her.
Of course, such idolatry as Mrs. Smith gave her first-born might have
made of her a simpering silly, or worse. But Gladys Smith (as Mary
Pickford was born) was pretty--and she had talent and brains. So what
wonder if Mother Smith often sat all through the night at her child’s
bedside, not wanting to sleep, but only to worship her beautiful
daughter?
Mary told me her story in our early intimate days together in the
movies. With her little gang she was playing in the streets of Toronto
where she was born, perhaps playing “bean bag”--she was indeed young
enough for that.
[Illustration: From “Wark” to “work,” with only the difference of a
vowel.
(_See p. 185_)
]
[Illustration: Biograph’s one automobile (note D. W. G. on door), in
front of Old Redonda Hotel.
(_See p. 185_)
]
[Illustration: Annie Lee. From “Enoch Arden,” the first two-reel
picture.
(_See p. 195_)
]
[Illustration: Jeanie Macpherson, Frank Grandin, Linda Griffith and
Wilfred Lucas, in “Enoch Arden.”]
[Illustration: The vessel that was towed from San Pedro. From “Enoch
Arden.”]
[Illustration: The Norwegian’s shack, the scene of Enoch’s departure.
From “Enoch Arden.”]
In frock coat and silk hat an advance agent was looking over the
prospects for business in the town, and at the same time looking for a
few kids needed in his show. His eye caught pretty little Gladys Smith.
Would Mama let her play at the opera house?
“Let’s ask Mama.”
Mama, the young Mrs. Smith, consented. Seeing that, a very few years
afterwards, through an accident on the St. Lawrence River boat on which
her husband worked, Mama was suddenly left a young widow with three
tiny youngsters to support, her consent that day proved to be one of
those things just meant to be.
With the Valentine Stock Company in her home town when only five, Mary
played her first part, _Cissy_ in “The Silver King.” In 1902, Mary was
already a “star,” playing _Jessie_ in “The Fatal Wedding.” The season
of 1904 found Gladys Smith, then twelve years old, playing leading
parts, such as _Dolly_ in “The Child Wife,” a play written by Charles
Taylor, first husband to Laurette and the father of her two children.
The following season Gladys Smith created the part of _Freckles_ in
“The Gypsy Girl,” written by Hal Reid, father of the popular and much
loved Wallace Reid. Gladys Smith’s salary was then forty dollars per
week and she sent her mother, who was living in Brooklyn, fifteen
dollars weekly for her support. In 1906 the Smith family toured with
Chauncey Olcott in “Edmund Burke.” But it was as the little boy _Patsy
Poor_ in “New York Life” that Mary’s chance came for better things.
David Belasco had told Gladys he would give her a hearing. And so the
day came when on the dark and empty Stage of the Republic Theatre,
a chair her only “support,” Gladys did Patsy’s death scene for
Mr. Belasco and he thought so well of it that she was engaged for
Charlotte Walker’s younger sister _Betty_ in “The Warrens of Virginia.”
So “The Warrens of Virginia” with Gladys Smith, rechristened by Mr.
Belasco “Mary Pickford” (a family name) came and went. The magic wand
of Belasco had touched Mary, but magic wands mean little when one needs
to eat. “The Warrens of Virginia” finished its run, and Mary, her
seventeen years resting heavily upon her, was confronted with the long
idle summer and the nearly depleted family exchequer. So arrived the
day in the late spring, when from the weary round of agencies and with
faint hope of signing early for next season little Mary wandered to the
old Biograph studio at 11 East Fourteenth Street.
Such a freshly sweet and pretty little thing she was, that her chances
of not being engaged were meagre. Since that day when she first cast
her lot with the movies--that day in June, 1909, when the Pickford
releases so inauspiciously started, they have continued with only
one interruption. That was in January, 1913, when in David Belasco’s
production of “The Good Little Devil,” she co-starred with Ernest
Truex. What an exciting day at the studio it was when it was discovered
that Mr. Belasco was up in the projection room seeing some of Mary’s
pictures!
Mary’s return to the legitimate was a clever move. It made for
publicity and afterward served her, despite the shortness of the
engagement, as a qualification for becoming an Adolph Zukor-Famous
Player.
Mr. Zukor established his “Famous Players” through the production of
“Queen Elizabeth,” the first feature picture with a famous player, the
player being no less a personage than the divine Sara Bernhardt. This
was in 1912. So when Mary Pickford became a Famous Player, it caused
considerable comment. However, she has become the most famous of all
the Famous Players engaged by Mr. Zukor.
And as for Famous Players, long before Adolph Zukor’s day, they had
been appearing before a movie camera. As far back as 1903 Joseph
Jefferson played in his famous “Rip Van Winkle” for the American
Mutoscope and Biograph Company. And Sara Bernhardt appeared as
_Camille_, in the Eclair Company’s two-reel production of the Dumas
play in 1911.
Mary Pickford did not reach the peak of fame and affluence without her
“ifs.” When the first fall came, and little Mary had not connected up
with a legitimate job, she said to me one day: “Miss Arvidson, we have
just fifty dollars in the bank for all of us, and I’m worried to death.
I want to get back on the stage. Of course, the pictures are regular,
but if I had enough put away, I’d get out.”
Another day: “If I stay in the movies I know I will just be ruined for
the stage--the acting is so different--and I never use my voice. Do you
think it will hurt me if I stay in the pictures any longer?”
“Well, Mary,” I answered, “I cannot advise you. We all just have to
take our chances.”
Good fortune it was for the movies, for her family and for her,
that she stayed. In the beginning she encountered practically no
competition. Not until dainty Marguerite Clark left the field of
the legitimate in 1913 and appeared in her first charming photoplay
“Wildflower” did Miss Pickford ever need to bother her little head
over anything as improbable as a legitimate competitor in a field
where she had reigned as queen undisputed and unchallenged.
It is often asked whether Mary Pickford is a good business woman. My
opinion is that she’s a very good business woman. And I am told that
she had a head for business as far back as the days of _Patsy Poor_.
She must have an understudy and no one but sister Lottie was going to
be that understudy. Lottie stayed the season even though no emergency
where she could have officiated, presented itself.
I know Mary brought a business head with her to Biograph. Mr. Griffith
had told her if she’d be a good sport about doing what little
unpleasant stunts the stories might call for, he would raise her
salary. The first came in “They Would Elope,” some two months after her
initiation.
The scene called for the overturning of the canoe in which the elopers
were escaping down the muddy Passaic. Not a second did Mary demur, but
obediently flopped into the river. The scene over, wet and dirty, the
boys fished her out and rushed her, wrapped in a warm blanket, to the
waiting automobile.
It was the last scene of the day--we reserved the nasty ones for the
finish. Mary’s place in the car was between my husband and myself.
Hardly were we comfortably settled, hardly had the chauffeur time to
put the car in “high,” before Mary with all the evidence of her good
sportsmanship so plainly visible, naïvely looked up into her director’s
face and sweetly reminded him of his promise. She got her raise. And I
got the shock of my young life. That pretty little thing with yellow
curls thinking of money like that!
Later, when Carl Laemmle had bucked the General Film Company with the
organization of his independent company, the “Imp,” he enticed Mary
away from the Biograph by an offer of twenty-five dollars a week over
her then one hundred weekly salary. Mary was still under legal age, so
Owen Moore, to whom Mary had been secretly married, had to sign the
contract. He with several other “Biographers” had gone over to the
“Imp.” Mrs. Smith with Lottie and Jack still clung to the Biograph.
Mid anguished tears Mrs. Smith showed me the contract, and in a broken
voice said: “What’s to become of Mary at that awful ‘Imp’ with no one
to direct her? How could she have been influenced to leave Mr. Griffith
for only twenty-five dollars extra and not even consult her mother?
What good will the twenty-five dollars do with her career ruined?”
But the break did not hurt Mary. It helped her. She soon sued the
“Imp,” claiming that her artistic career was being ruined as she was
being forced to act with carpenters. That was the story according to
the dailies. Shortly afterward she was back at Biograph with another
twenty-five dollar weekly advance in her salary.