70 Fun Facts About Mary Pickford

What nickname, tied to the ingenue persona she defined on screen, is Mary Pickford best known by?

She was also called the Queen of the Movies.

In which city was Mary Pickford born in 1892?

Her birthplace on University Avenue is now the site of the Hospital for Sick Children.

What was Mary Pickford's birth name?

Her younger siblings Lottie and Jack also acted under the Pickford name.

Her early stage career ended with the starring role of Little Eva in a production of which play?

She had made her debut aged seven playing both a girl and a boy in The Silver King.

Which Broadway producer gave her the stage name Mary Pickford when he cast her in The Warrens of Virginia in 1907?

He liked her middle name and found a new surname in her family tree.

The surname Pickford came from which of her relatives?

Belasco kept her middle name, Mary, as the first half of the new name.

On 19 April 1909 D. W. Griffith screen-tested her for which film, whose role went to someone else?

Griffith was taken with her anyway and she shot her first film the next day.

Which studio did she join under Griffith in 1909, appearing in 51 of its films that year?

Its actors were uncredited, so exhibitors advertised her simply as the Girl with the Golden Curls.

Griffith agreed to pay the newcomer how much a day, double the studio's usual rate?

That came with a guarantee of $40 a week.

Which sisters did she introduce to Griffith in 1912, launching two major silent careers?

The families had met while touring in third-rate stage companies years earlier.

Her last short for Griffith, The New York Hat (1912), was written by which future author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?

Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish were also in the cast.

Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, which she joined full-time in 1913, evolved into which studio?

Zukor's first film with her, a stiff record of the play A Good Little Devil, was shelved for eleven months.

Which 1914 film was the first to put her name above the title on cinema marquees?

Its success prompted the first of her many well-publicised pay raises.

Which 1914 hit, said to have sent her career into orbit, did she remake in 1922?

Kevin Brownlow credits it with making her the most popular actress in America.

Her June 1916 contract with Zukor gave her full production control and a record salary of how much a week?

With half the profits guaranteed at $1.04 million, she became the first actress with a million-dollar contract.

In 1916 she refused to let her films be sold under which practice, forcing exhibitors to take a studio's weak films to get its good ones?

Instead her films went out singly through a special unit called Artcraft.

When her contract expired in 1918, Zukor offered her how much simply to leave the movie business?

She declined and signed with First National on her own terms instead.

Which company did she co-found in 1919 with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith?

Unlike the studios it was purely a distributor, giving independent producers control of their work.

Which 1920 film, in which she played a relentlessly optimistic orphan, was her first release through the new company?

It grossed around $1.1 million.

Pickford was one of how many founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?

Founded in 1927; the Academy's film archive has been housed since 2002 in the Pickford Center on Vine Street.

Which screenwriter, her close friend, adapted The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and became the first writer to win two Oscars?

Their friendship is the subject of Melanie Benjamin's 2018 novel The Girls in the Picture.

In Stella Maris (1918) she played two roles: the title character and what?

The plain, limping Unity Blake was a startling contrast to her usual image.

In Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921) she played the boy Cedric and which other character?

Her brother Jack co-directed the film.

Which German director did she bring to Hollywood in 1922 to direct her in Rosita?

The film grossed over $1 million despite her later dislike of it.

In Sparrows (1926) she leads orphans out of a 'baby farm' beside a swamp infested with what?

She later claimed director William Beaudine made her carry a real baby across the water.

Pickford famously said that adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on what?

She underestimated talkies and her career faded quickly after they arrived.

What did Pickford do in 1928 that made the front page of The New York Times?

Her ringlets had become a symbol of female virtue and fans were shocked.

For which 1929 film, her first talkie, did she win the Academy Award for Best Actress?

She played a reckless Southern flirt, and the win was considered controversial.

Her Best Actress Oscar was which in the award's history?

Janet Gaynor had won the inaugural award the year before.

Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks co-starred in a 1929 version of which Shakespeare play, the first sound adaptation of it?

A legendary credit reading 'additional dialogue by Sam Taylor' appears never to have existed.

In 1933 she made a Technicolor screen test for which Disney live-action/animated project, later scrapped?

Only one Technicolor still from the test survives.

What was the title of her final film as an actress, released in 1933?

She retired after three costly failures but went on producing films for others.

Who was Pickford's first husband, an Irish-born actor she married in 1911?

His alcoholism and resentment of her fame wrecked the marriage.

How much did her first husband demand as a settlement before their 1920 divorce?

She agreed, then married Douglas Fairbanks 26 days later.

How was the 1920 wedding of Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks described at the time?

Fans rioted in London and Paris trying to reach the couple on their honeymoon.

What was the name of the Beverly Hills mansion she shared with Fairbanks?

Fairbanks bought it as a hunting lodge in 1919 for his bride-to-be.

Their estate was said to be the first private home in the Los Angeles area to have what?

The couple were famously photographed paddling a canoe in it.

Which humorist, as mayor of Beverly Hills in 1928, said his most important duty was directing people to Mary Pickford's house?

Foreign heads of state visiting the White House often asked to visit the house too.

Which actress bought the estate in 1988 with her husband Meshulam Riklis?

Life magazine had once called it a gathering place only slightly less important than the White House.

Fairbanks left Pickford for which British socialite, a romance that became public in 1934?

They divorced in January 1936, and his son claimed both long regretted the split.

Charles "Buddy" Rogers, whom she married in 1937, had been publicised in the late 1920s under what nickname?

He was 12 years her junior and had co-starred with her in My Best Girl.

Buddy Rogers's best-remembered role was in which 1927 film, the first ever Best Picture winner?

He starred opposite Clara Bow.

What were the names of the two children Pickford and Rogers adopted?

Both later said their mother was too self-absorbed to give real maternal love.

During World War I she auctioned one of her famous curls for how much to sell Liberty Bonds?

In a single Chicago speech she sold an estimated five million dollars' worth of bonds.

Pickford conceived which charity, incorporated in 1921 to help needy actors, seeding it with leftover Liberty Bond funds?

Her 1932 Payroll Pledge Program had studio workers give half of one percent of their pay to it.

What had Pickford intended to do with the early films whose rights she had bought up?

She relented in 1970 and gave 50 of her early shorts to the American Film Institute.

Pickford finally sold her remaining shares in the company she co-founded in 1956 for how much?

Chaplin had left the year before; the two had been partners for decades.

What was the title of the memoir Pickford published in 1955?

The other titles were her 1934 essay on spirituality and her 1935 novel.

Which candidate did the staunchly Republican Pickford support in the 1964 presidential election?

She also backed Dewey in 1944 and Reagan for governor in 1966.

Towards the end of her life Pickford arranged to formally acquire which citizenship, saying she wished to "die" as one?

She had never taken out US naturalisation papers, travelling on British and later Canadian passports.

Sid Grauman claimed Pickford was the first star to do what at his Chinese Theatre?

The theatre's official history credits Norma Talmadge with the accident that started the tradition.

The Mary Pickford cocktail was created in her name during Prohibition on a trip to which country?

It is credited to a bartender at the Hotel Nacional in Havana.

Pickford appears as a character in which of Herge's comic albums?

She was also on a postage stamp in 2006 and a Google Doodle in 2017.

Pickford's brother Jack was married to which Ziegfeld girl, who died in Paris in 1920?

Mary hired Jack to co-direct Little Lord Fauntleroy partly to lift his depression afterwards.

Where was Pickford buried after her death in Santa Monica in May 1979?

She died of complications from a cerebral haemorrhage suffered the week before.

Which studio boss said 'The inmates are taking over the asylum' when the stars formed UA?

Cowboy star William S. Hart had been part of the planning but bowed out before the 1919 incorporation.

What was United Artists' first production, written by and starring Douglas Fairbanks?

With no public stock sale, the company relied on weekly prepayments from exhibitors to fund its films.

Which two lawyers-turned-producers asked Pickford and Chaplin in 1951 to let them run UA?

They created the first studio without a studio lot, acting as bankers to independent producers; Chaplin sold his share to them in 1955 for $1.1 million.

Which Los Angeles sports owner bought the empty Pickfair estate after Pickford's death in 1979?

He preserved much of its charm before Pia Zadora bought it in 1988 and controversially demolished it.

What reason did Pia Zadora give in 2012 for demolishing Pickfair, replacing the termite story?

She told Celebrity Ghost Stories the ghost was a woman who died at Pickfair while having an affair with the elder Fairbanks.

Who introduced and narrated the televised handover of Pickford's 1976 honorary Oscar?

The award was handed over in the mansion's formal living room, giving the public a rare look inside.

Which architect remodelled Pickfair in a mock Tudor style over five years in the 1920s?

The house had been a hunting lodge at 1143 Summit Drive when Fairbanks bought it for Pickford in 1919.

How much did Chaplin receive for his 25% share of United Artists when he sold out in 1955?

Movie attendance had hit its lowest level since 1923; Pickford sold her stake a year later for $3 million.

Which modest 1955 United Artists film won both the Palme d'Or and the Best Picture Oscar?

Arthur Krim said 12 Angry Men was later being shown on television somewhere in the world 24 hours a day.

How much did United Artists put up to back Dr. No and launch the James Bond franchise in 1963?

The two expatriate producers were Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli; Saltzman sold UA his 50% of Danjaq in 1975.

Which corporation bought 98% of United Artists' stock in 1967?

The studio's logo gained the parent's striped T emblem and the tagline 'Entertainment from Transamerica Corporation'.

Which 1975 film, rejected by many studios, became UA's highest grosser of the era?

It grossed $163 million; Michael Douglas called UA 'like your last choice in those days'. Rocky and Annie Hall then gave the studio three straight Best Picture winners.

Which Michael Cimino film vastly overran its budget and wrecked UA's standing with its parent?

It cost $44 million; president Andy Albeck resigned over the overrun, and Transamerica put UA up for sale in 1980.

Whose Tracinda Corp., which already owned MGM, bought United Artists in 1981?

MGM paid a reported $350 million; after Turner's 1986 purchase and resale, the original UA legally ceased to exist.

Which four hits made 1979 United Artists' most successful year?

Transamerica had installed Andy Albeck as president; a year later Heaven's Gate undid it all.