How Mary Pickford became Hollywood’s first millionaire: “I got what no one else wanted”
When Hollywood began establishing itself as a serious industry that wasn’t simply a mere fad, Mary Pickford became its most recognisable star. Born in 1892, she appeared in theatre performances as a child before taking an interest in the burgeoning world of cinema, a revolutionary medium that soon proved to be an inventive new way to tell stories.
Pickford’s career in the theatre began after her mother rented out a room to the manager of the Cummings Stock Company of Toronto, who saw real potential in the young child on the stage. When she moved into cinema, however, she quickly made connections with big players in this new industry, making her debut in Her First Biscuits, a short film by D W Griffiths. Within the next few years, her star power rose, attracting praise from critics and audiences.
The actor signed with various companies over the years when she was just starting out, including Biograph and Independent Moving Picture Company of America. Yet, by 1919, she was part of a group, including Griffiths, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks, who founded United Artists. The company was created with the aim of giving these actors and filmmakers more creative license, and this only allowed Pickford to appear in even more movies, landing countless starring roles that established her as ‘America’s Sweetheart’.
Pickford was beloved by American audiences, and her penchant for young and often childlike characters gained her a dedicated fanbase. It took her a long time to finally play roles that were more age-appropriate as she got older, and Pickford continued to lean into characters that she was well-known for to ensure her legacy.
One of her most prominent early roles was in Poor Little Rich Girl, released in 1917. The film was directed by Maurice Tourneur, with Pickford, then 25, playing the 11-year-old protagonist, Gwendolyn. It was a quintessential Pickford role, playing a young girl with careless parents, leaving her lonely and unhappy despite the family’s riches.
A few years later, she starred in Pollyanna, another huge success for the actor, that yet again saw Pickford playing a character much younger than her (she was 27 playing a 12-year-old). With other movies like The Little Princess and Daddy-Long-Legs, which also allowed her to play similar archetypal roles, she truly became one of Hollywood’s first proper stars.
Not only that, Pickford became Hollywood’s first millionaire. She was one of the industry’s most prolific stars, something she established from the very beginning. For example, in her first year of film acting, she starred in a whopping 51 movies. By the mid-1910s, she had signed a contract that guaranteed her an income of over $1 million over the next two years, with the actor getting paid thousands every week and even receiving a large chunk of her movies’ earnings.
Pickford claimed that the reason for her success was her sheer determination, taking on a wide variety of roles to get her name out there and the money rolling in. “I played scrubwomen and secretaries and women of all nationalities,” she once said via The New York Times. “I got what no one else wanted and I took anything that came my way because I decided that if I could get into as many pictures as possible, I’d become known, and there would be a demand for my work.”
While many of her choices are very questionable to look back on—like playing an Asian character in Madame Butterfly or her frequent portrayal of children when she was nearly 30—at the time, these kinds of roles guaranteed her stardom.
