70 free Mary Pickford trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mary Pickford was the most famous woman in the world for most of the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood's first millionaire and the most powerful woman ever to work there, and this Mary Pickford trivia quiz covers all of it. The early questions follow Gladys Smith from a Toronto boarding house to Broadway and David Belasco, the 1909 screen test with D. W. Griffith, $10 a day at Biograph and the exhibitors' sandwich boards that called her the Girl with the Golden Curls. Then come the business questions: the $10,000-a-week contract with Zukor, the refusal of block-booking, the founding of United Artists with Chaplin, Fairbanks and Griffith, the films from Tess of the Storm Country and Stella Maris to Pollyanna, Sparrows and Coquette, the bob that made the front page, and the Oscar for her first talkie. The personal side takes in Owen Moore, the marriage of the century to Douglas Fairbanks, Pickfair and its swimming pool, Buddy Rogers, the Liberty Bond drives, the Motion Picture Relief Fund and the reclusive final decades. Difficulty runs from easy to expert. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on Pickford, her films and the people around her, and each question links to its source. Try our Silent Film and Charlie Chaplin quizzes next.
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Q 01What nickname, tied to the ingenue persona she defined on screen, is Mary Pickford best known by?
America's Sweetheart
She was also called the Queen of the Movies.
Q 02In which city was Mary Pickford born in 1892?
Toronto
Her birthplace on University Avenue is now the site of the Hospital for Sick Children.
Q 03What was Mary Pickford's birth name?
Gladys Louise Smith
Her younger siblings Lottie and Jack also acted under the Pickford name.
Q 04Her early stage career ended with the starring role of Little Eva in a production of which play?
Uncle Tom's Cabin
She had made her debut aged seven playing both a girl and a boy in The Silver King.
Q 05Which Broadway producer gave her the stage name Mary Pickford when he cast her in The Warrens of Virginia in 1907?
David Belasco
He liked her middle name and found a new surname in her family tree.
Q 06The surname Pickford came from which of her relatives?
Her maternal grandmother
Belasco kept her middle name, Mary, as the first half of the new name.
Q 07On 19 April 1909 D. W. Griffith screen-tested her for which film, whose role went to someone else?
Pippa Passes
Griffith was taken with her anyway and she shot her first film the next day.
Q 08Which studio did she join under Griffith in 1909, appearing in 51 of its films that year?
Biograph
Its actors were uncredited, so exhibitors advertised her simply as the Girl with the Golden Curls.
Q 09Griffith agreed to pay the newcomer how much a day, double the studio's usual rate?
$10
That came with a guarantee of $40 a week.
Q 10Which sisters did she introduce to Griffith in 1912, launching two major silent careers?
Lillian and Dorothy Gish
The families had met while touring in third-rate stage companies years earlier.
Q 11Her last short for Griffith, The New York Hat (1912), was written by which future author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?
Anita Loos
Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish were also in the cast.
Q 12Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, which she joined full-time in 1913, evolved into which studio?
Paramount Pictures
Zukor's first film with her, a stiff record of the play A Good Little Devil, was shelved for eleven months.
Q 13Which 1914 film was the first to put her name above the title on cinema marquees?
Hearts Adrift
Its success prompted the first of her many well-publicised pay raises.
Q 21Which screenwriter, her close friend, adapted The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and became the first writer to win two Oscars?
Frances Marion
Their friendship is the subject of Melanie Benjamin's 2018 novel The Girls in the Picture.
Q 22In Stella Maris (1918) she played two roles: the title character and what?
An orphan servant
The plain, limping Unity Blake was a startling contrast to her usual image.
Q 23In Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921) she played the boy Cedric and which other character?
His mother
Her brother Jack co-directed the film.
Q 14Which 1914 hit, said to have sent her career into orbit, did she remake in 1922?
Tess of the Storm Country
Kevin Brownlow credits it with making her the most popular actress in America.
Q 15Her June 1916 contract with Zukor gave her full production control and a record salary of how much a week?
$10,000
With half the profits guaranteed at $1.04 million, she became the first actress with a million-dollar contract.
Q 16In 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?
Block-booking
Instead her films went out singly through a special unit called Artcraft.
Q 17When her contract expired in 1918, Zukor offered her how much simply to leave the movie business?
$250,000
She declined and signed with First National on her own terms instead.
Q 18Which company did she co-found in 1919 with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith?
United Artists
Unlike the studios it was purely a distributor, giving independent producers control of their work.
Q 19Which 1920 film, in which she played a relentlessly optimistic orphan, was her first release through the new company?
Pollyanna
It grossed around $1.1 million.
Q 20Pickford was one of how many founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?
36
Founded in 1927; the Academy's film archive has been housed since 2002 in the Pickford Center on Vine Street.
Q 24Which German director did she bring to Hollywood in 1922 to direct her in Rosita?
Ernst Lubitsch
The film grossed over $1 million despite her later dislike of it.
Q 25In Sparrows (1926) she leads orphans out of a 'baby farm' beside a swamp infested with what?
Alligators
She later claimed director William Beaudine made her carry a real baby across the water.
Q 26Pickford famously said that adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on what?
The Venus de Milo
She underestimated talkies and her career faded quickly after they arrived.
Q 27What did Pickford do in 1928 that made the front page of The New York Times?
Cut her curls into a bob
Her ringlets had become a symbol of female virtue and fans were shocked.
Q 28For which 1929 film, her first talkie, did she win the Academy Award for Best Actress?
Coquette
She played a reckless Southern flirt, and the win was considered controversial.
Q 29Her Best Actress Oscar was which in the award's history?
The second
Janet Gaynor had won the inaugural award the year before.
Q 30Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks co-starred in a 1929 version of which Shakespeare play, the first sound adaptation of it?
The Taming of the Shrew
A legendary credit reading 'additional dialogue by Sam Taylor' appears never to have existed.