Mary Pickford - Parte 6: OS TALKIES E O FIM DA MULHER QUE FEZ HOLLYWOOD

In early 1929 Mary appeared in her first talkie, Coquette. A popular play the previous season on Broadway, Coquette was the tale of the downfall of a rich family, done in by jealousy, class snobbery, sex and murder. It was an intentional departure from the typical Pickford heroine. Mary’s version was significantly sanitized to suit the tastes of the newly minted “Production Code,” administered by the Hays office, which sought to control the content of American movies. Nonetheless, her performance was honored with the Academy Award in the first year that the award was given to an actress for a talking picture.

Mary’s second “talkie” was also released in 1929. The Taming of the Shrew is a wonderful, eminently watchable film. The New York Times put the film on its ten best list for the year. William Cameron Menzies, Fairbanks’ art director, lent his hand to the sets and for the first and last time Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks appeared in starring roles in the same film, which was a co-production of both Pickford’s and Fairbanks’ companies. Like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, they were made for the roles. Although their marriage was falling apart as shooting progressed, there is enough in Shrew to permit the viewer to understand something of both the attraction and the problems these two vibrant souls found in each other. The expensive production made money, but not the kind of money that was expected from the meeting of two of the biggest stars of the last two decades.

Mary Pickford completed two more films after Shrew, and neither was a success. After that, her heart fell out of it. She told her close friend Lillian Gish in 1931 that she would like to burn her old films, but she never did. Her last film, Secrets (1933), with Leslie Howard, is a fascinating and frequently compelling tale. It suffers principally from a difficult speech made late in the film by Mary’s character, forgiving her husband for an unforgivable string of infidelities. It is impossible not to see this for what it is: a desperate and public attempt to call back Douglas Fairbanks and tell him that all is forgiven. It was too late; Mary and Doug had split forever.

Mary Pickford was forty-one years old when she stopped acting in film. She was rich and famous, an owner of a major movie studio. But she was practically alone. Her marriage was headed for divorce, her mother had died, her younger brother Jack had died. She had her sister, who would die unexpectedly from a heart attack in 1936, and her niece, Gwynne, to whom Mary tried, with little success, to be a second mother.

But this was not the end. Though she would never again achieve the stunning success of the first decades of her career, Mary continued to reign as the godmother of Hollywood. She stayed active on the board of United Artists, and produced films, such as One Rainy Afternoon (1936) and Sleep, My Love (1948). She appeared on radio and wrote her autobiography, Sunshine and Shadow (1954). At Pickfair she remained, as she had been with Douglas Fairbanks, the most renowned hostess of Hollywood.

On June 24, 1937, Mary Pickford and Charles “Buddy” Rogers married at the home of Hope Loring, the writer who had introduced them ten years earlier. Mary’s new husband was twelve years her junior, but he had pursued her relentlessly for some time. Their partnership proved an enduring one, lasting more than 40 years until her death.

“Buddy,” as everyone called him, was a gentle and stunningly handsome leading man, who began his film career in 1926, and shot to fame the following year with leads in Wings and My Best Girl. He was a musician who had his own band, The California Cavaliers, and by 1937 he had settled into playing leads in modestly budgeted comedies and musicals. Buddy was easy-going and cheerful to all who knew him.

In 1943 Mary and Buddy adopted two children, Ronald and Roxanne. In time, Mary spent more and more time at home. For some while there still was talk of a return to the screen. She tested for the role of “Vinnie” in Life With Father (1947), and a few years later Billy Wilder approached her for the role of “Norma Desmond” in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Though she was fascinated by the script, Wilder and Pickford did not see eye-to-eye on the story. Rare among Hollywood stars, Pickford retained the copyright of many of her early features, and virtually all of her films beginning with the formation of United Artists. In 1945 she began to donate copies of her many productions to the Library of Congress, and later to the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. After her death, many of her papers and still photographs were given to the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While the preservation of her film legacy still requires major effort, much work has been done to preserve and restore her films. Significantly, due to her personal ownership and foresight, a larger percentage of Mary Pickford’s films have been saved than those of most other silent film stars.

In 1956 Mary ended her work as producer when she sold her shares in United Artists. She and Chaplin were then fifty-fifty owners of the Corporation, and they were the last of the original founders to leave the company. Instead of film work, Mary now turned her attention to charity.

In Paris in 1965, the Cinémathèque Française produced a lengthy retrospective, which included screenings of more than fifty Mary Pickford films. Mary traveled to France for the event, which pleased her tremendously. In spite of this, however, she gradually began to lock herself away like a recluse, spending days at a time in her bedroom at Pickfair. Ill health, and a weakness for alcohol contributed to this seclusion. It had been the bane of practically all of the Smith/Pickford family.

Fewer and few people were admitted into her world. Close friends and family who continued to visit included Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (who looked upon Mary as a second mother), Lillian Gish, Frances Marion, as well as Colleen Moore, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Lottie’s daughter Gwynne and her family as well as adopted daughter Roxann

At the suggestion of her lawyer and accountant, the Mary Pickford Foundation (originally the Mary Pickford Charitable Trust) was established in 1956, in order to create an enduring charitable organization that could address Mary’s concerns on a continuing basis. Finally, in 1976, Mary was given an Honorary second “Oscar” by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The presentation was filmed in advance at Pickfair, and inserted into the live broadcast. It would be Mary’s last public appearance. She died on May 29, 1979 aged 87.

Mary Pickford was an actress and a producer of talent and vision. If, at her death, she was primarily remembered as a woman who played sweet little girls like Pollyanna, then even a casual investigation of her legacy proves this to be a woefully inadequate assessment. As an actress, her work defined film acting. As a producer, she set standards for quality that placed her films among the best of the era. As a woman of the film industry she helped shape that industry through precedent-setting contracts and by founding the Academy as well as through the formation of charitable institutions such as the Motion Picture and Television Fund. In many ways she truly was, as author Eileen Whitfield called her in her 1997 biography: “The Woman Who Made Hollywood.”