Mary Pickford - Parte 3: O AUGE DA "LITTLE MARY"

There was something about this beautiful, spunky girl that people loved. There was an honesty to her performances that was striking. She sensed from the beginning that, compared to the stage, acting for the camera required smaller, more subtle reaction and gesture, and she rarely forced a performance or chewed the scenery. Then there was the fact that she was quite simply drop- dead gorgeous. Fans published poems that went into raptures over her hair: those long tube-like locks that dangled around her incredibly beautiful face. “Little Mary,” who hardly seemed to have aged from 1909 to 1916, usually played poor girls, upstarts who expected and demanded fair treatment, girls of common birth who might marry wealth or family, but who would always be true to their roots. In her features, she rarely played a woman of royalty or an upper crust snoot. She was friendly and open and straightforward. People thought of her as their friend.

Zukor observed Mary on the set. He saw her confer with the scenarist, look over the shoulder of the cameraman, plan a scene with the director, give advice to other actors and fuss with her wardrobe. She seemed to have absorbed every aspect of the craft of making movies. He privately concluded that, had she gone into manufacturing, she might have become president of United States Steel.

Midway through 1916 Mary signed a new contract with Zukor that made her, in effect, his partner. Mary and her mother Charlotte conducted tough negotiations. Together, they functioned as a sort of “good cop/bad cop” team. Henceforth her pictures would be produced by the Pickford Film Corporation and released under a new company: Artcraft Pictures (under the Paramount corporate umbrella). Over the two-year span of the contract Mary stood to make, at minimum, one million dollars.

Mary was searching for a consistent production team: talented people whom she liked, who liked working with her. One of the first persons to fill the bill was a woman, Frances Marion, who wrote the scenarios for The Poor Little Rich Girl and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (both 1917). Frances would then go on to write seventeen films for Mary, one of which she directed. The two became the closest of friends.

For The Poor Little Rich Girl Pickford and Marion contrived a gimmick that would define Mary’s future. She had played adults, and she had portrayed playful young girls who blossomed into young women ready for love in the final reel. But in The Poor Little Rich Girl, twenty-four year-old Mary Pickford played a twelve year-old child for the duration of the film. Adult actors who appeared with her were cast for their height, and camera angles and a few tricks of perspective were used to maintain the illusion that Mary was child-sized. Enlivened by a variety of humorous bits improvised by Mary and Frances on the set, The Poor Little Rich Girl became a huge hit.

It was so successful, in fact, that before the year was out, Mary had repeated the stunt in not one, but two more hit films: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and A Little Princess. Though she spends most of the film as a child, Rebecca finishes her story as a grown woman. But in A Little Princess Mary once again played a child from first to last frame. The illusion was refined through extensive use of oversized sets and props. These successes cemented the public image of “Little Mary,” the perpetual child. It was an image she would briefly revel in, producing some of her best work, and yet ultimately it was an image that would constrain her.

Rebecca marks the debut of another of Pickford’s hand picked team. Not infrequently, Mary had battled with her directors. Now she wanted a friend. She picked frequent co-star, Marshall “Mickey” Neilan. In addition his acting, Neilan was an experienced director who had just directed two films featuring Mary’s brother, Jack. The Pickford/Neilan partnership would prove to contain just the right amount of spice.

“Mickey would dream up running gags long in advance,” Mary said, “and then at the psychological moment blast them at me.” Lucita Squire, a script girl, recalled “the banter, the mimicry, and the happy fellowship that went on behind the scenes.” She noticed that Mary always learned lines and spoke them, even though they wouldn’t be heard.

On screen the collaboration between Frances Marion, Mickey Neilan and Mary Pickford is a delight that effectively mirrors the good spirits that pervaded the set. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm became a classic.

The following year Pickford found the third collaborator who would contribute to much of her screen heritage, cinematographer Charles Rosher. She had built a professional family that would work together, not always without conflict, but always with spirit and good humor.

Big changes were coming to her private life, as well! Her marriage to actor Owen Moore had been a disaster from its secret start. In a sense it was still a secret. Interviews and articles about Mary never mentioned Owen. Most of her public had no idea that Mary Pickford was also Mrs. Owen Moore. Now to this secret there was added a much more sensational one. Mary had fallen in love. Mrs. Moore, a Catholic, was madly in love with another married man: Douglas Fairbanks.

Fairbanks had begun as a stage actor who specialized in stunts, macho heroics, and self-deprecating humor. Douglas had a wife, Beth, and a young son, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Charlotte and Mary feared that if the romance became public, Mary would be crucified in the press as a home-wrecker. Despite these concerns, plans for their respective divorces slowly went forward.