Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 191. Mary Pickford - America's Sweetheart

Transcript

191. Mary Pickford - America's Sweetheart · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: The history podcast that is not your history class with me,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: your host, Katie Charlewood, history harlote and reader of books.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I want to apologize for my voice. It is not
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: fully back, which is part of the reason why there's
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: been a delay in getting this first episode out for
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the Hollywood History Month. Is that is reason number two.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Because I lost my voice at a Murdercy Wrote festival,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: because of course that's when all the wildest parties happen,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and so that that was an amazing, wonderful, fantastic thing.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: It's so much fun. I am looking forward to next
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: year like the job with Jessica is just a core
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: memory in my life now I have I don't know
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the last time I felt such unadulterated joy. So I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: lost my voice. But also, as many of you know,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I handwrite all of my notes for my podcast episodes,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and in my haste of packing, I'm trying to be organized.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I was trying to be organized, and somehow I managed
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: to lose my passport three times, like the morning of
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: me traveling, and so I'm pulling my house apart. My
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: mom came to my house after I left and cleaned
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it because I was. I just left everything everywhere. She
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: was like, like, I left the place in just such
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: disarray that my mom came up and was like, you know,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: if you ever need help getting organized, I can help you.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm grown up, mom, I can
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: do it. I could not do it, so I marriaged
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: to leave behind like my book with the podcast episode
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: written in it, I left it behind me. I remembered
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: my laptop, I remembered everything else. I did also remember
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the passport, but I was. I was everywhere. My friend
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Zahara and I we were in Zihr, not Zahar, because
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: she was like, oh, you know, like the desert, and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: so obviously, in an American accent, it's Sahara, and in
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: my accent it's Sahara because that's how it's pronounced. And
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So like Zihara and I, we
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: were up in Mendocino. We were in Santa Rosa. Really good.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Oh it was enchiladas, No was cheladas. It was burrito
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: moly burritos. It was really good, really good. We ate
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: in some amazing places. We were in Vegas. We were
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and we were in goodness. I was in so many places.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: There will be a video coming out of all of
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: my travels because I was just everywhere. But yeah, so
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: two reasons. One I forgot the book and I also
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: lost my voice, so that made a bit of it
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: difficulty trying to get things recorded. And every day was
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: so busy. Like La was amazing because we get there.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Because what happened was Sarah Hester Ross. She's usually in Vegas,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: but she was on tour and I was like, Okay,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I need to go see her live because I have to.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: And it turned out she was going to be performing
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: in LA when I was in La, and I was
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: like yes, so booked her. Then, as it turned out,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the Netflix as a Joke Fest was happening, and so
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: we had planned lots of stuff for during the day.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I went to the labraryd Tarpets. Oh, I'm so happy,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: but we like all this stuff planned, and then the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: evening we had no plans and so we ended up
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: just booking a bunch of comedy shows. We went to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Trivial Comedy. Brennan Scannell was just so funny, so funny.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping to catch him at Fringe this year. Sarah
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Hester Ross is all going to be at Fringe, so
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: book your damn tickets. She's amazing, okay, and if you
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: don't think she's amazing, you're incorrect. That's just facts, okay.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But yeah, everything was amazing, And I'm probably gonna do
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: a gibber jabber episode where I talk about all of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the amazing, fantabulous stuff that happened on my travels because
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: things are happening, because I mean, I say it was
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a full holiday, but there's some things where business related
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and so information will be coming out soon but I
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: can't talk about it. But anyway, with that, I know
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie, quite your jibbl jabble
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: in fact me and fact you. I will, but first
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: we've got to get our source on. Our sources are
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Mary Pickford, Rediscovered by Kevin Brownlow, Sunshine and Shadow and
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Autobiography by Mary Pickford, Mary Pickford, Canada's Silence, Syl America's
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Sweetheart by Peggy Diamond Levy, The Genius of the System,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era by Thomas Shatz. Screening
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Out the Past, The Birth of mass culture and the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Motion Picture Industry by Larry May. The Talkies American Cinemas
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Transition to Sound nineteen twenty six to nineteen thirty one
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: by Donald Crafton. And of course we have our old
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: favorites biography dot com and History dot com. iOS it
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: incomfortably good. Then let's begin. Mary Pickford was born Gladys
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Louise Smith on the eighth of April eighteen ninety two
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: on two one one University Avenue, Toronto, Canada, to John
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Charles Smith, the son of English immigrants, and Charlotte Hennessy,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: who was an Irish immigrant. Gladys was the first of
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: three children born to the couple. She would have a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: younger sister, Charlotte known as Lottie, and a brother, John
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Charles Junior, also known as Jack. Gladys's mother, Charlotte, being
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: from Ireland, was unsurprisingly Catholic, but to appease her Methodist husband,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the children were baptized in the Methodist faith. This wasn't
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: exactly the most stable of childhood's. Say, John Charles Senior
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: had money troubles. His family had money that ran out
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: by the time it came to his generation. Basically, loads
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and loads of kids, generation after generation, money just kind
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: of disappeared, I think disappeared it was spent. They spent
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the money and they didn't earn enough back. So John
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Charles Senior didn't have an occupation. He had plenty. He
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: bounced around from job to job, stage hand, store clerk, bartender,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and of course a couple of underhand dealings here and there.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: He was also fond of a drink and tended to
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: spend most of his wages in the pub. So he
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: was in so much debt that in the middle of
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the night the family would often have to abscond to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: avoid the unholy trinity of bailiffs, deck collectors and landlords. Now,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: with three young children, this is a tough life. Charlotte Hennessy,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: now she wasn't fond of a drink. In fact, she
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: was a pioneer, which is basically an Irish version of
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a teetotaler. So she just didn't drink, and she was
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: also very vocal about her disapproval of the devil drink.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: So so she's looking after the kids. Well, he's out
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: drinking all of his wages one day, John Charles, and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: you're just scarpels. He just buck us off, leaving Charlotte
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: to offend for herself and their three young children. So
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: she does what any woman in her situation would do.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: She tells everyone she's a widow and starts earning money.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Being a single parent in this
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: time is fine as long as your spouse is deceased.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So she ends up taking on sewing work and even
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: sends the children away to live with relatives for a while.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Will she gets everything settled. So at one point as well,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: her mother, Grandma Hennessy, moves into Now I'm not sure
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: if this is before or after the son in law's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: swift exit, but she's there and she's helping out. So
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: not only is she doing sewing work, by the way,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: she's a seems dress, but she's also renting out the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: good bedroom to single female lodgers. So she's like just
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: kind of the money where she can. And when she's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: doing that, she's bunking in beside the kids. Now, John
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Charles Senior left when the kids were young, and this
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: is how you know, like just how young they were,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: because when Gladys is five years old, he is brought
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: back into their life, only to actually die. This time,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: he had been working as a purser on the steamship Niagara.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: When something goes wrong and he gets hitting the head
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: with a sort of metal pulley. It's a workplace accident,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: and they send him to his last known address and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: there he stays until he dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: So he is under Charlotte's care for six months, and yeah,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: then he dies. Now Charlotte doesn't actually have to pretend
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to be a widow anymore. That being said, the family
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: had been living hand to mouth for quite a while
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: and now well now they had to bury him and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: that isn't free. So yeah, Charlotte goes to work in
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a factory and tries to send the girls to school. Unfortunately,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: glad it's caught everything going diphtheria, pneumonia, consumption right, Like
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that's tuberculosis by the way. And also two things I
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: want to say, these diseases should not be making a comeback.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: But also I just want to talk about consumption chic
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: for a second sidebar. See, the thing about consumption is
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that it makes you really thin and pale, and like
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: people would pretend to cough into bloody handkerchiefs because it
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: became very trendy to look like you were dying, which
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: is not dissimilar to the current trend, the current trend
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: of like the skin and bones, Like people are out
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: here looking like skeleton on a bad day. What is
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that about? Sorry, I'm was my voice. I can't really
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: complain too loudly, but like, no, let's not have that happening.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't appreciate that at all. I think
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: we should, you know, have healthy people. And I'm not
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: saying that as someone who is about husky, right, I'm cuddling,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I'm soft, That's who I am. But like, no, let's
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: let's not. Let's not have people starve themselves because they
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: think that's what humans should look like. Like, you have
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: organs in your body, guys, it's fine to have them.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: But yeah, Gladys is catching every bloody thing going again. Tuberculosis, pneumonia,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: diphtheria like these are the diseases that cause a lot
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of death and typically areas of poverty, like the Ward.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: The area they lived was called the Ward. These were
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: big killers, and Gladys may have missed a lot of school,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: but at least she was alive, and this lack of
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a steady education, though, meant that she hadn't quite learned
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: to read or write. Now the family may have been struggling,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: but Charlotte made sure that her eldest daughter was seen
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: by a doctor, probably because they were so often quarantined.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: But still Grandma Catherine Hennessy was so concerned for the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: kids and grabbing the opportunity, got a priest to baptize
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the children just in case. Because remember how they were Methodists.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: She's like, no, no, no, no, we're claiming these they're
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Catholic now, like if they die, we want to make
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: sure they go to the right heaven and not the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: pits of hell. But anyway, Irish Catholics everybody. But back
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: to doctors. There's this one doctor, doctor Smith relation, and
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: he wants to adopt Gladys. He and his wife had
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: no children of their own, and so they think that
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: this is their opportunity. And at first Charlotte refuses, but
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: then she thinks that this could be something for Gladys,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: a healthy, wealthy home. But she doesn't want to make
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: the decision for her, and so she takes Gladys over
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to meet doctor and missus Smith again no relation, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: they are like a bit over zealous, shall we say,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Like they already have this room done up for her.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: It's like freshly painted, it's got toys, like they think
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: they've got this in the bag, because, of course, what
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: impover's child would not want to go live with this
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: wealthy family and have all of their needs met, especially
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a child who has been living in poverty and often
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: went to bed hungry. They tell this seven year old
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Gladys that if she becomes their daughter, she'll have her
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: own room, she'll get a real life pony, she'll have
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: meat at every meal, and she'll have pie for dessert
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: and even ice cream, like, she'll have a full belly
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: and have lots of treats. And now this is a
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: seven year old girl, and she's only partly taking this in,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and on the way home, she's so excited. She's telling
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: her mother how she'll make your grandma gets the biggest
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: slice of pie at dinner, and how she'll let her
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: brother and sister take turns on her pony, and she'll
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: share all her toys, and how everyone's going to have
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: their own room. And that's the thing, right. Charlotte has
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: to nip this in the bud because it's clear that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Gladys does not fully grasp the situation, and so her
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: mother tells her that if she agrees to be adopted
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: by the Smiths, then she will be their daughter and
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: not hers anymore, and that if she goes to live
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: with them, they will be her family now, not her.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And this seven year old girl is faced with the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: choice of a good life, a full belly every single night,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: away from the disease of the ward, but it meant
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: saying goodbye to her mother forever. And while she is
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: not having that, like many young'ins, she has a lot
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: of attitude, and she stomps her feet and tells her
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: mother that she's not going anywhere, She's going to stay
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: with her. Like it reminds me a little bit like
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: in my head of Heidi, the book Hidi. I know
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I've read the book, but I don't remember reading the book.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: But I know I have read it because I know
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I did. But there's sidebar. There's this scene in the movie,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and I think Shirley Temple plays Hidie. I could be wrong,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: but there's a scene where she's like, I don't want
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: to go with you, I want to stay with grandfather,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, this is what it reminds me of.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: It's just that absolutely not this little kids just going
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: eh I'm staying here. And like, for Charlotte, this is
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a double edge blade because she loves her daughter and
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: she knows that she cannot give her this life. This
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: is a chance for her and you know, but she
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: wants her to have and make an informed decision about it,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and like, this is really really tough. But here's her
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: daughter going absolutely not, I will stay in the ward
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: with you, thank you very much. I love that she
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: just blankly refuses. She doesn't want to be adopted. She
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: wants to stay with her mother. Now, Charlotte, at this point,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: she's definitely struggling. She's trying to make ends meet, and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: she's renting out rooms as you know. Now again typically
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: this was to single women. But when Gladys is eight,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a room is rented out way married couple, mister and
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Missus Murphy. The husband was the stage manager at the Princess,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: a local theater, and there was a show, this Silver King,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and it needed a couple more kids of it. So
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Gladyson Lottie eight and six respectively got to work Earnie
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: ed Dallas for each performance. That's over two hundred dollars
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: per child in today's money. So they do that and
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: when the show returns like because shows would go on
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: to her and so they would be a principal cast
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: that would travel round and then if they needed extras
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: for scenes, they would just like hire local kids because
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: it was easier, especially for non speaking parts. So when
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: it goes on tour and it comes back to Toronto,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: she goes back hoping to get more work. The absolute
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: self confident of an eight year old, right, she says
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to the company that she wants the main part now now,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And just to clarify, this is a speaking role, right,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: This is where she has to learn a script, but
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Gladys cannot read. She's a literate, right, she gets it.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: She gets the role, and then when she's nine, she
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: gets the part of Little Eva in Uncle Tom's cabin.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Now she's touring. Gladys and Lottie are going around Canada
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and the US, sleeping on trains, eating moldy food, and
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: having a chaperone who didn't actually do much chaperoning. Gladys
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: changes her middle name to Melbourne because she thinks it
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: sounds better than Louise, So she's now Gladys Melbourne Smith.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: She's nine years old and she's like, I need a
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: better name. I'm just going to change it. So Gladys
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: wanted to improve as an actress, and she worked at it,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and eventually all three of the Smith children were acting.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: And so they continue doing this for a while. And
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: when I say a while, by the time Gladys is
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: fifteen years old, she's in New Yuck City and she's like,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I think couch surfing at this point, and she decides
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that she needs to up her game and that she
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: has to be on Broadway. So she tries to pitch
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: herself to David Belasco, the King of Broadway. He's a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: writer and a producer, and she tries all this stuff,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: showing up at his office, sending letters, even sending pictures
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: of herself like headshots with all these different expressions. Right,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: she's playing yes instead of checkers. And so she finds
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: an actress friend of Belasco. This actress was doing a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: show with a theater that Claras had worked out before.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So she gets a doorman to sneak her in backstage,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and a crew member introddress her to the actress's maid,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: who gets her to provide an introduction to Belasco's assistant. Right,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: so she's like, you speak to you, speak to you,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: speak to you to get me in right, and it works.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: So Gladys is petite, she's young, and she's pretty, and
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: she demands to see Bulasco like she's in the office right,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and she's screaming that she needs to see him, that
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: her life depends on seeing him. So again, she's teeny
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: tiny right in Belasco. He is so impressed by this
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: show of force. He agrees to meet her to her
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: show and they meet and they have a chat and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: he goes, ah, Gladys Melbourne Smith, I don't like it,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: and so he decides to change her name to Mary Pickford.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And so Mary Pickford is about to enter the scene.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Mary Pickford comes back to audition and thanks to a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: combination of Neves and the wrong material, she absolutely blows it.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: It's like the worst audition ever, like everything was just wrong.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: But Belasco he sees something in her and he asks
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: her if she wants to be an actress, and Mary
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Pickford is like, I am an actress. I want to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: be a good actress. So she gets some training and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: appears on Broadway for twenty five dollars a week. She
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: is frugal, right, She spends as little as she can
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and sends the rest home to her mum, Charlotte. So yeah,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: twenty five dollars is seven hundred dollars in today's money.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: But yeah, she's like a real penny pincher. She's really
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: really careful when it comes to money. Like she eats
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the basics, and by the basics, she's mainly eating bananas
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and milk, which I mean, honey, honey, please, that's I'm
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: gonna say, that's too much potassium, right, you know how
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: said bar You're not supposed to eat like is it
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: thirty seven bananas in a row or you'll just die
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of potassium poisoning, Like it's just too much banana. Like
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if there was like a mass
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: banana milkshake murdering situation, like it's out there somewhere. But yeah,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: like that's again, you need to eat more than just
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: bananas and milk. That's not a fully fleshed out diet.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: That's not good for you anyway. She's in the Warren
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of Virginia, which ran for eighteen months, which is pretty good.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But after that she needed work and her mother thought
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: that doing some motion pictures would help earn some cash
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: until the next show came around, and Mary, like a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: lot of actors of the era, she was embarrassed. To
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: her this was a step down from being a real actress,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: but it did pay five dollars a day. So while
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: let pride get in the way of, you know, not
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: being destitute. So she goes to biograph studios and ends
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: up in a meeting with d W. Griffith, who looks
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: up at her from the massive papers on his desks
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and goes, are you an actress? And she's like, yeah,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: on Broadway, just finished your run with Belasco himself name drop.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Next thing she knows, she's an abasement for a screen test. Now,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I want to make it clear that this is like
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: they're nineteen hundreds, So any aspiring actors out there, if
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: at any point the person making the film wants you
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: to go down to their basement, do not go down
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to their basement. Like this is a life skill that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I am providing to you. Do not go with strangers
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: into the basements. I feel like this is something I
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have to share, and yet it feels like something
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I definitely have to share. But yes, Mary Pickford is
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: in a basement filming a screen test. She's thrown into
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: like a pile of makeup and an old frock and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: told to act. Now, old time cameras were loud, the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: lights are hot as hell, and she's got no real
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: direction and yet again, like history is are beating itself here,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: she completely tanks it. But she does get work as
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: an extra and she's there eight hours and Griffith, well,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: he wants her back the next day, and she doesn't
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: want to do it, but she's young and she needed
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the money. But she just goes back and she's like,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: not for five bucks a day, I'll take ten. And
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: she wanted a twenty five dollars a week minimum, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Griffith like this man, he just appreciates our audacity. He's like, yeah, sure.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: And so she gets her first proper role as a
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: person who eats bad food and vomits. What is your
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: first role, puky girl? Food is in englass, like it's great,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: staphileocloccu is ourus lady like it's it's it's definitely, it's
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: definitely an endeavor. So at one point she's putting a
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: scene for a new picture with Owen Moore to confirm
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: she's fifteen and it's meant to be a romance scene
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and she's so awkward, which unsurprisingly, yeah, because she's fifteen,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: this scene does not go well. Anyway, it's fine. She's working,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and she ends up doing fifty one movies in nineteen
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: oh nine and another thirty five movies in nineteen ten.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: But she plans to be a great actress. And she
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: clocks that stage acting is very different visually than screen acting.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: And this is going to sound weird to anyone who's
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: seen a talkie. No, not a talkie, but I'm a
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: silent movie. Anyone who's seen a silent movie. And it's
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: going to sound like a strange statement, but you need
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to tone it down right. So basically she realized that, like,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: you know, expressions, they needed to be neater, and you
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: need it to be expressive without being cartoonish because you
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: would do like beg movements on stage because you have
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to be seen and heard at the back of the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: you know, theater. We're for here, it was a much
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: smaller situation. People are getting close ups of your face,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: and so your movements they need to be more precise,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: more definite, and so like she's really working on this,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and also she's now courting the guy from her terrible
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: romantic screen test earlier, Owen Moore, And yeah, yeah he's
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: older than she is, and Charlotte hate him, she really
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: really does hate him. And so when Griffith and the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: crew end up heading out west to film, well, she
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: is more than happy that he has left behind. So
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: like they end up heading out to California to film.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: This is shocking. I know what everybody left. Was it
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: anything to do with Thomas Edison being a duck? Maybe
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: it was? Maybe it absolutely fucking was. And I will
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: cover him at some point when I'm doing my series
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: on asshole men, but not to date, Like, but how
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: will you know how to choose Katie, I will just
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: pick an Era. So yeah, so Owen Moore, he does
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: try and join like everybody who's heading out west, Like
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: he shows up at the train station, but yeah, he's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: left behind because he thinks right that he's going to
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: show up and that herself is going to just like
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: stop her feet and make a big scene and demand
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: that she'll come with him and cry. But no, that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen, and so he's left at the train station. Well,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the rest of them go off to California to make movies. So,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: like many other film companies, Biograph headed to California, to
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Hollywood and basically Los Angeles. Now there was nowhere to
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: stay in Hollywood, so they'd filmed there during the day
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and then head back down to Sunset Boulevard, which was
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: like a dirt road at the time. Right, what's amazing
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: is like I finally saw Sunset Bulevard, like in real
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: life Sigber, I finally saw it, and it's I'm it
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: is what it is. But it's like imagining that that
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: was just one single dirt road where people stayed, and
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: now you've got like the Chateau Mament and just like
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: all of the things the Lave Factory on the Lave
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Factory and other places that I definitely remember and wasn't
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the entire situation. But yeah, it was originally
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: just this one road. But anyway, by now, I'm sure
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: you'll be aware that Mary can now read and write
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: like she worked so hard to be able to do this,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: and as an adult when you've lived years being functionally illiterate,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the fact that she can do this is fucking amazing.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And the fact that she was able to do this,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: and she worked to be able to do this is
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: very impressive and we should be in awe of her because,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: like the odds are not in her favor, but she
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: just keeps gaining at Loudy, like she just goes for
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: it all the time, and I love that for her. Yeah,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: so she's like she sees a gap and she's like,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I need to also make more money. And so while
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: she's acting, she's also pumping out screenplays for fifteen that
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: was fifteen. That was fifteen dollars a pop, right, So
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: she's earning for every screenplay. So she's it's basically writing
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: directions more than anything else because obviously there's not dialogue.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: There's the intertitles, which is that sort of black card
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: with the white writing. There's that sometimes, though depending on
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: the movie, there would be a narrator who would narrate
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the story, so it all depends on how they're doing that.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: But a lot of the time she's just writing the story.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: And yeah, she's selling it and people are buying it,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: so good for her. Now, remember how earlier I said
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that Mary Pickford was frugal, Well, she is. She saves
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: her money and she comes back from California with twelve
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars and like, this is a lot of money.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of money for the time. I mean,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: she's I'd be happy if I'd save twelve hundred dollars now.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: But basically, her mum, Charlotte has to be convinced that
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the money wasn't from the prop room. She's like, what,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: because it's such a huge amount of money, you know.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: And Mary, she starts getting recognition, and by that I
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: mean people knew her face but not her name. She
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: was known as the Biograph girl or the girl with
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the curls, and she is raking in the dough and
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: ohen mooa that asshole. He's mad about being left behind
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: by Biograph, so he moves to independent Mulsion Picture Company,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and well, he wanted to be close to the star, right.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: The company poached Mary from Biograph, offering to not only
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: double her salary, but hire both her siblings, Lottie and Jack,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and have Moore as her own screen romance. She agrees
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and then marries Owen Moore in secret in nineteen eleven.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: She's like, seventeen, you know what I mean, Like, it's
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: not okay now, this whole thing was a bad move.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: And I mean all of it. Like I'm not even
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: talking about like a little bit. I mean the whole
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: damn thing. The company was outside the movie. Trust and
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: safety was not great between dodgy stunts and you know,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: things starting to break. Shit was not good, right, Oh
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's right. It gets worse. Owen, for all
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: of his charm and swagger, was a violent alcoholic, almost
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: as if Charlotte could sniff that shit out. So things
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: were bad, and after thirty five films, Mary wants to leave.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: She takes them to court to escape her contract and
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: give and goes to make five films with her shitty
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: husband for Majestic. She ends up separating from him and
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: ended up back on Broadway. But at this point she
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: misses the movies, right, and she's recognized. People recognize her
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: in the street, and it's She's one of the first
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: sort of really big moments of Paris social relationships. You know,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: it's that really big cultural connection where people connect with
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a famous person, where you start learning about them and
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: you see them in all these things, and you think
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: you know them and you feel that you have a
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: relationship with them. It's like it's a one sided relationship,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: parasocial relationships, and this is that sort of start of it,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that's the boom. And she is one of the first
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: people like because she was so careful in public her
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: persona that of the ingenu. She projected that and she
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: protected that image like in public she didn't smoke, drink
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: or even dance like. She wanted to protect this image
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: so much. And so after the plays run and her
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: return to Broadway and her and Griffith were at loggerheads,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: and so she ends up signing with Famous Plays. Moving
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: pictures at the time were like short. Initially they were
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: much shorter, but now they were feature length. And Mary,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: she's America's sweetheart, the ingenue, so innocent and young, and
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: they really really lent into that in Famous Players designing
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: sets to make her appear smaller. They had big chills
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and perspectives sidebar. Again, if you've ever watched The Lord
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of the Rings, I don't know if they have it
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: in the regular one, but in the extended edition they
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: have this documentary called Bigo Chills and Miniatures, and it
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: shows you how they use force perspective to make people
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: seem smaller if they have them in the same scene
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: or how they have like smaller scenes like designed for
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: one character to look larger, and how they have like
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: larger sets for a character to seem smaller. And they
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: did this back then. It was all part of forced perspective.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: It's really really interesting. Is someone who's watched probably hundreds
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: of hours of DAVD features from Lord of the Rings.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: It's really good. It's really good, and perspective is a
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: very interesting thing for me personally. But she is making money,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: like she is making money, and she goes from making
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: one thousand dollars a week to two thousand dollars a week.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And at this point she's moved Charlotte out to live
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: with her, right, she lives with Charlotte, and she brings
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: her out in public, right, so she's seen in public,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: not with her husband Owen, right, not with him, She's
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: seen with her mother, and that really sort of cements
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and solidifies this public persona of hers, of this ongeneue.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: But she's shrewd right and always paying attention, and she
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: is very aware that the studios are making big bucks,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: not the actress. And Mary is a massive star making
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: good money and her contract is almost up. She's offered
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: a million dollars, but she wants control. She demands either
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: half a million a year or have the profits on
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: all Mary Pickford movies. She gets her name above the title,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: she gets to choose her roles witch, director and finalcy
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: on the cast, and she wants to be a producer.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: She wants a private studio for her own division, Pickford
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Film Corporation, and they say yes, right. I think she
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: may be the first actress to have her name above
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: like the title. And Charlie Chaplin, Charlie motherfucking Chaplain. He
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: was again also going to be a topic at some point,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: but his studio was negotiating with her, offering her a
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: million when he was earning three hundred and fifty thousand,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and she turned it down and still made more money
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: than him, and he is pessed. He is so angry.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: He fucking hates her so much, like the two of
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: them did not go on. And she's like, Oh, you
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: think I'm being unfeminine by negotiating for my future, Well,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: that's a wee shame, that's the wise shame. She is
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: well aware of the acting for her will not last forever,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: and so she's being safe and secure. And she's still
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: quite young, and in her early twenties. And this is
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: when she meets actor Douglas Fairbanks when she's twenty three
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and he's married in nine years her senior. I mean
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: she's also married, separated but yeah, still legally married, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: her estranged husband Owen, is seen stalking the streets of
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles with a gun looking for Douglas Fairbanks. I mean,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's not the wisest option. And so Douglas Fairbanks,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: who is really good friends with the Charlie Chaplain and
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Mary Pickford als start hanging out together. They're seen together
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: in all these places, and everyone's like, oh, what a
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: fun little trio. Oh great, they're seeing each other. And
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: the thing is Douglas and Mary seeing each other. Those
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: two were together, and Charlie was there as a foil,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: just gonna be like, look, we're just good buds, the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: best of friends, just hanging out, which I'm sure he
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: was delighted by. But of course they are doing this,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, it probably would have been a bigger deal,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: but then World War One happened. See the thing about
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: war sometimes is that it can be a very good
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: income maker. So Mary is not only making propaganda movies
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, sorry patriotic movie shorts. But she's also selling
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: war bonds, and she even auctions off one of her
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: famous curls for the war effort. So she's again she
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: was known for years the girl with the curls. But
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: like a lot of those curls wear wigs. Do you
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: there vegs? Will you the vex? And she is very vegs.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: So yeah, she has varying vegs, and she has hair
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: pieces and all this kind of stuff. But she ends
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: up auctioning off one of her curls, whether or not
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: it was like a real curl from her head or
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: one of her wig curls hymns to say, but the
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: proceeds of that auction goes towards the war effort for
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the Allies. Now, after the war, she divorces Owen and Fairbanks.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: He gets divorced because his wife is like, I'm sick
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: of this shit. I'm not gonna deal with this anymore.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: You're clearly in a relationship with this woman. I'm divorcing you.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: So two big Hollywood divorces. Right, one would assume that
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: this would not end well for either party. However, America
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: is just like, oh it's America's boyfriend and America's sweetheart.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, they've found each other, yeah, for love. Surprisingly,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: both of them come out of this unscathed. Like when
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: she divorces Owen, he demands one hundred thousand dollars for
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: a settlement, which is like, like that's over one and
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: a half million dollars today, and she's like, find just
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: take it and go. Now, the two of them they
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: get married literally days after her divorce is finalized, right,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and that's what nineteen twenty And it's like days between
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: her divorce and him like like, oh my goodness. They
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: end up being referred to as the King and Queen
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: of Hollywood, and they end up like traveling to Europe
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: for their honeymoon and so like they get absolutely just
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: absolutely rioted by fans in like Paris and London, and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: when they do like return to Hollywood, it's just like
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: everyone's just like so excited. Now here's the thing. During
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: the First World War, there was a flu going about
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: and Mary ends up catching it, because of course she does,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and obviously she survived, but like just felt like I
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: throw that in there for you. And here's the thing
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: as well, is that it wasn't just like the fans
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: who loved her, like she was really loved by like
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: crew members. So the thing about the crew members is
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: that like she was really nice to like the cameramen
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and the stage hands and all these other people because
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: she was like, you know, they're the ones that are
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: gonna direct me. They're gonna let me know of like
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: the lighting guy's gonna be like there's a shadow, don't
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: go over there, because remember, like there's no sound, so
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: people can just like shout shit at her as well.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: And so she's doing all this and she's like genuinely
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: beloved by like all of these people. So the big
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: studio heads like they were meeting up because they were
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: trying to deal with and this is a direct quote
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: on the excessive pride and cast of actors. Basically, performers
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: were making so much money and the guys who around
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: the studios were like, we want more of it now,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and so they basically wanted to create effectively think of
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: it as an olegopoly, but for actors' wages. So what
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: they wanted to do was to keep actors sort of
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: fame and salaries low because they thought that with them
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: being so famous and so rich, it kind of gave
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: them too much pillar. And it got to the point
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: that because this stuff was happening that Mary Pickford would
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: bring a donation bucket on set, and so she would
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: be like, hey, we need this to help actors and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: actresses and people who needed, you know, extra money because
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: their wages are being held down and their parts are
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: being reduced. And she would like pay attention to who
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: donated and who didn't. So because she was in on
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: loads of money, she was like, she would donate and
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: other people would donate and be like a thing. Now
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: this was a very like informal thing, but eventually, like
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: she would end up establishing a formal fund to help actors,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: but not only actors. You're talking like unemployed members of
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: like the whole movie system, right, so camera men, lighting men,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: prop guys, like the whole shebang, you know, not only
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: those who couldn't find work, like stunt men, even who
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: had been injured, you know, and all of this, all
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: of this started like from like this donation bucket, and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: afterwards it would become like this official fund where people
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: would have to donate parts of their wages, of their salary,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: and like, at this point, she's still thinking of the
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: welfare of everyone around her and not just herself, and
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: she's working hard to protect everything as much as possible.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: And so at this point she's like, you know what,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sick of these money men. I'm sick of being
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: told what to do, and I'm sick of them thinking
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: that they can just control me. And so she says,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: fuck this for a game of soldiers, and along with
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and d W Griffith, who clearly
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: they've made up by now, they form a new studio
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: which becomes part of the Little Three United Artists, basically
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: where all the independent artists can come work. And it's
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: a really good studio. And so you have the highest
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: paid actors and the highest paid director in Hollywood, right,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: and they've just made this stand. So they've decided they're
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: going to set up, you know, United Artists. So this
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: is one of the Little Three. So there's the Big
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: five and the Little Three. So the Big five you're
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: talking Paramount Pictures, Metro, Golden Maya, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and then Arkaeo Radio Pictures. So then you would have
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the Little three, which would be United Artists, Universal and
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Columbia Pictures. Now, back in the day, a way that
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of actors got work was they started off
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: doing stunts, like I think even was it. Kurt Russell
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: started off doing stunts and that's how he ended up
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: getting like his work. I love Kurt Russell this, but
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: like Douglas Fairbanks, like he was known for doing his
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: own stunts, and he was like a swash buggler. And
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: he played Zorro in the Mask of Zorro and you're
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: thinking that's an awfully white man. Listen, Antonio Banderis is Spanish, okay,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and he's playing like Zoro two. I mean he's closer,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: but like still anyway, he was like super athletic, and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: he was just known for being like this very physical actor,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: this swashbuckling hero, like Errol Flynn before Erol Flynn. Erol
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Flynn also in Arsol, who we will talk about later,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: but Charlie Chaplin as well again also when Arshol, but
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: very good with his physical comedy, Buster Keaton as well,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: so like very very very clever now because they're so
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it all depends because the way that silent
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: movies were shot, the frames per second, it used to
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: be sort of slower and when the frames per second
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: like increased on sort of the projectors and whatnot is
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: the projector you know what I mean, And that's the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: name of the thing. And so spare up the actions
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and it made it look more cartoonish. Now this works
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: for things like Charlie Chaplin and his sort of physicality.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: When it came to serious actresses like Mary Pickford, she
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: really didn't appreciate that because it made her seem silly
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: and Johntay when she's you know, that's not what was
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: being portrayed. But AnyWho, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, the
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Queen and King of Hollywood, they they made a house.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: They go to a house in Beverly Hills, like and
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: they called it pick fair So it's like half a
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: her name, half of his name. But yeah, I mean
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: it's so it's so interesting because like they were two
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: of them, like because they were like America our couple.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Is that they were so very very consistent with their
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: public personas, like if they went out places, if they danced,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: they would only dance with each other. Like they were
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: very specific in the way that they acted, you know,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Like when it came to like dinners and stuff. They
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: would sit together, which is like, you're not supposed to
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: do that because etiquette dictates that, you know, certain people
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: sit here and you sit opposite and like it's a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: whole thing. But no, no, they demandaged to sit next
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: to each other, which is like, not what you did,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: but they did it. And so yeah, this sort of
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: very restrictive life for the two of them. It really
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: started getting to Mary. And she didn't drink in public,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: but she sure did drinking secret. And she would just
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: like go drinking in her mother's house on the ground.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: So they had this like big Beverly Hills house and
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: then another little house for her mum on the grind,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and so she would go down there and go drinking
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: and like the bottles would be labeled things like lesterine,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: like mouth wash or like ointment and it would just
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: be like gin like and so right, she's just I think,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: trying to have some control, even though what she's looking
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: for as control is not anymore. Now Mary would never
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: have any children of her own. Now there's a theory
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: that she had what was it, that she had a miscarriage,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: and then another that she had an abortion when she
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: was married to Owen Moa. But here's the thing. She
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: could have had issues. She could have had, you know,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: endometriosis or probably says to go over syndrome, and we
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: don't know because we don't even know about women's health nowadays.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: But there's also the possibility that she had, that she
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: did have an abortion, and if she did, good for
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: fucking heart. Okay, because her life, her choice, you know.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: And even though she would never have any children of
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: her own. And Douglas Fairbanks, she had a son from
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: his previous marriage to the socialite, the first Missus Fairbanks,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: and they looked after Charlotte's daughter, not Charlotte's daughter, yes, Charlotte' daughter.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: So Lottie Mary Pickford's sister, her daughter Gwen would basically
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: live with Charlotte like Grandma Charlotte, and then would also
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: live and pick there with Mary and Douglas. So she
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: lived there and then she would go to boarding school,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: and so so she would look after Gwen. And that's
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: probably as close as maternal as she got because like Charlotte,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: like Grandma Charlotte, superhands on, mom, super into it, and
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Mary I think she got that far. But like she
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: made sure that this kid was cared for, was in
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: her care, you know, and she did I think her best.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: And this is like she's twenty nine at this point
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: when she's doing all this stuff. And at this point,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: I think, like more stars come on the screen Lake
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Clara Bow and so like her whole thing. Like and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: I said before about the reason people whin the transfer
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to like, you know, silent movies to talkies was that
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of people couldn't do the transition for a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: bunch of things, like the characters they played just fell
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: out of public you know, preference. And so you had
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Clara Bow who's just like all moves and she's just
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say I think it was it was just
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: kind of did it kicking about being a wild child
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and all arms and legs. And then so this character
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: all the ongeneu, which was Mary's sort of wholesome thing,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't that cool anymore. And also Mary's getting
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: older and so that kind of character doesn't really flow
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: as well with that perception. And so she'd been doing
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: like again, at one point, she was like thirty and
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: five maybees a year, like ten maybes a year whatever.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And at this point she moves down to like one
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: a year, so she does one like big acting project
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: per year, which is like enough for her. And like
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: each of her films they did, you know quite well.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: But like she's doing all this other stuff. I mean,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: she was writing scripts, she was doing these bits. She
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: has united artists. And also when Mary is thirty four
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: years old, the Chinese Theater, which is now known as
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: the Roman's Chinese Theater, it opened and Mary Pickford and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Douglas fair Banks were the very first people to put
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: their handprints and their signatures in the cement. Now, the
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: following year, Mary Pickford helped found the Academy of Motion
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Picture Arts and Sciences as in yes, the Academy, and
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: Douglas Fairbanks was its first president. Now, originally in the
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Academy there's only like thirty six members and only three
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of them were women. So you've got Mary Pickford and
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: then two screenwriters. Basically, the idea was to get cross
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: communications like between you know, the entire system, so lighting
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: people and like stage hand and you know, the scriptwriters
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: can talk to the prop people and the acting can
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: talk to the drink like it was a whole Schmorga's
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: board of communication. And then then Harmon Douglas Fairbanks create
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: the first college level course on the history of filmmaking
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: at the University of Southern California and so and they're
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: just doing all this stuff and eventually she ends up
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: making her very last silent movie, My Best Girl, and
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: she mix it with Buddy Rogers. Ah, it's like, I
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: think it's like one of the best movies like she's made.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: And it's this beautiful romantic comedy and it's done really
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: really well. If you watch it at the correct speed,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: it's like fabulous, Like and if you look at the
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: way she moves, like just watch the actors move properly
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in silent movies. It is a beautiful understanding of just
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: humans and the way they move and all that jazz. Now,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: this year that this came out, like for everything that
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: happens that's good, stuff happens that's bad. And this is
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: when Charlotte, her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. And yeah,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Mary ends up staying with her for months and that
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: one of the last things Charlotte says to her daughter
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: is that you must never think that you ever displeased
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: or upset me. You are the best daughter that any
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: mother has ever had. I'm sorry, I'm getting really emotional
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: about this, but like, like this is my person whose sidebar.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I put my daughter's clothes out for her in the morning.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: She's nine, and she's mean to me usually, and it's
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: like I just had her clothes setting out and next
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: thing I heard was thank you mommy, Like what, why
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: are you being nice to me? Why are you thanking me?
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: What is this? What have you done with my daughter?
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: But like she was just I don't know, she's been
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: really polite lately, but like to have her mother turn
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: around and just be like, I need you to understand
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: that you were great and you were a wonderful daughter
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: and that I love you, which is amazing because when
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: people are suffering, when they're ill, when they're in pain,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: it's far too easy for them to become painful, to
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: project everything that they are feeling out in the world.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm so glad that she got this. And Mary
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: was so distraught when her mother died that her husband
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: has to physically hold her back from throwing herself out
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: a window. And Mary like she goes into like this huge,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: this huge pool of grief, like she's weeping, she's suffering.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Her mother the only person who was ever there for
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: her whole life. The person who was always her biggest
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: supporter and who she loved so much, she's gone, and
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: this just it just shakes her to her core. And
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: so three months later, after all has happened, she just
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: goes and does what everybody does when something or every
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: woman does when something big happens in their life. We
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: cut her hair, right, and she gets and just chops
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: off like all her like long curls and gets a
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: bob right, and the public are incensed, right, They're like,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: she's basically killed herself. But like what she was doing
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: was killing off the image of the girl with the curls,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: you know that on Juno because she's bloody adult now
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and so she's finally going into like roles that she
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: can actually play, because like she's thirty three and she's
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: still playing like eleven and twelve year old on the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: screen and so she's like yeah, and so it's just gone.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: And so people were just like, oh, no, you've just straw, Like,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, she's what thirty six at this point, sot
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: back when she was thirty three, she was playing like
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: a child. And then well everything changed then because the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: talkies happened now with the jazz singer. It kind of
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: let people know that sound could happen. But also it
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: took a while for the talkies to actually get going,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: and so like she had gone from like the stage
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: to the screen and now she was going from like
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: movement to speaking. And so I remember how like in
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: the silent movie era, like the cameras were loud, kind
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: of like a machine gun that right, and the cranking
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: and whatnot, and then like people were shouting. You'd be
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: shout your directions. People were like loud, and then suddenly
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: there's microphones everywhere and you've got to be fucking quiet,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: and so like it's a whole technical issue, like it
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: just ah, it's like my favorite thing is like in
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: the Singing of the Rain, this Singing of the Rain,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: shut up and singing Singing in the Rain, Lina Lamon
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: is like she's trying to like talk, and she's moving
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: her body, she's moving her head, and they're like and
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: they've got a microphone in a in a plant and
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: she's and they're just like you need to move this way,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: and she's like, I can't make love to a bush.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: That's that's that seems like a you problem, Lena, No,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: sorry that sexual joke today, and so she's just like
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: she just catch it. But like you have to be
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: like standing really still or sometimes in a sound of box.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: There was just all of these issues and then you
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: would have to do like reshoots and retakes if somebody
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: like coughed or sneezed or moved their foot a little
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: bit in the microphone picked it up and like and
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just you know, it wasn't just like accents
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, not having a good voice like that
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't the main issue. It was all the other stuff
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: and how quickly you could adapt to it. And so
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of the old film stars they just couldn't
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: like do the transition because they couldn't you know, move
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: the same way and do this. And Mary did not
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: like the sound of her own voice, and she just
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: didn't really want to do it right. And her mother
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: had always said that she was too hard on herself
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: in like straight away she's like, I can't do this
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: because because she wasn't able to do it like first goal,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: like she just felt like she couldn't do it. And
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, like here's the thing, here's the thing.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: The first audition she did was bad, second audition she
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: did was bad, and yet she ended up being a start.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: And if she'd just taken that same like third time
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: such term, she would have been fine. Right, But she's
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: doing her first talkie. She's thirty seven, she's in Coquette,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: and like, she ends up just being so stressed that
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: she ends up just firing like a bunch of tech guys,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: just like out of just being so stressed. And it
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: did well in the box office, and it did win
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: her quote her second EVA Academy Award for Best Actress.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Now it doesn't become the Oscars by the way till
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: like nineteen thirty nine, but yeah, so we're quite away
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: from that now. This award was more like thanks for
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: doing stuff. And so, yeah, first Academy Award for an
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Actress in a movie with sound. So she had one
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: as a silent film star and now one as a
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: talkie film start. And so she has three more talkies
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: and they're kind of fine, and then she decides that
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: she's done. She's like Mary wanted to stop doing it
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: before she was like told to stop doing it. And
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: so one of the last movies that she ever makes
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: is with Douglas Fairbanks and it's the Taming of the Shrew. Now,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: their marriage at this point is kind of not doing
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: well because he's also a piece of shit and a philanderer.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: But right she's it, like not fond of this because
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: like the whole point is that they think this is
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: going to get the two of them back on track
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: with a marriage, but she cannot deal with his bullshit
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: because his work ethic is lacking, shall we say, he
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: didn't memorize his lines, he would come in late, and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: he didn't take it as seriously as she did. And
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. Like she is super like determined when
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: she does things, and he's just like not doing well
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: with his career, and so he ends up buggering off
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: to like Europe, starts shagging people all over and they
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: end up separating. Was at the same year, I think
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: as Mary Pickford's last movie, sort of Secrets Now, she quietly,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: very quietly divorces Douglas Fairbanks on the grounds of absenting
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: himself from their home and her society with a lack
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: of consideration for her feelings. So like she like files
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: for divorce and then he's like, oh no, please don't leave. Me,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: and he's like groveling a big and she's like I'm done,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: which is fair, and so like basically there's a year,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: like it's sort of a separation is for a year,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: and then at the end of that year, like the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: divorce is final, and so he's begging and groveling and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: he keeps coming back and asking her to like not
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: divorce him, and then like even the day before like
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the deadline, he's like please and she's like no, and
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: so like, yeah, and after this, like she wasn't quite
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: the same after this divorce, you know, and she like
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: filmed her last movie and yeah, at this point as well,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Disney like was considering her to be the first live
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: action Alice in Wonderland and that's she's forty one, Like
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: that's not happening anyway. The project ends up being like scrapped,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: and she just kind of doesn't. Yeah, she's kind of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: embarrassed by the whole thing. And yeah, so she just
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: wasn't super keen on it at this point. That being said,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: she was still like writing for movies and producing and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: she was just kind of doing things, which is good
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: because Douglas Fairbanks wasn't doing anything. So she writes a
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: novel because she's trying other stuff, which is good. It's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: good to just try things and you don't have to
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: be good at everything. So she writes this novel called
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: The Demi Window, and it's like fine. I think. She
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: writes textbooks for Christian science, which is okay, and so
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: she tries to write, or she does write, I suppose
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: a self help book called I Say tries to write
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: because it was ghost written, so it's like, why not
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: try God? Anyway it was it was, it's not it's
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: not great, and so yeah, so she just kept drinking. Actually,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: she also has a radio show evenings it Picked Fair
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: and it was like all about like food and drink
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: and decorating the house and like it's the depression girl
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Read the Room. Yeah, basically it lasts what thirteen episodes
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: before it's like hey no. So when she's forty five,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: she ends up marrying none other then former co star
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Buddy Rogers, right, remember from her film My Best Girl
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: her like her last silent movie, and so like he
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: was like kind of like so into her, and she
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: was like I married And now she's like, okay, we're
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: gonna do this, and so people start calling him America's boyfriend,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: Like that's what happens after like the Silent movie and
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: basically like it's all good. You know. She just was
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: a bit nervous before they got married, Like she wasn't
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think super into getting married. I think she
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: kind of did it because she felt like she should.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Like he was thirty three, she's forty something. And he's like,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: I really like her. I've always wanted to marry her.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: And she's like that it's nice, and he adores her
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: and he's nice and he just like really likes her.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: And like because obviously Mary Pickford is such a big deal,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: like sometimes they would just call him mister Pickford and
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: she's like that's cool. Whereas when Owen Moore was called
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: mister Pickford, he was like, let me beat my wife.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: And so he moved into Pickfair. And she's writing a
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: column for the New York Journal, right, and it's about
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: New York Like why her Okay, she's okay, And she's
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: talking about current events, you know, she's talking about crime.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: This's interviews with like you know, the Kennedy family. And yeah,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: so you would never guess who actually visit. It's her
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: and Pickfair the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, right, Wallace
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Simpson and the Nazi king, and so there's just so
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: much going on. I think at one point she even
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: tries to like diversify and make like a makeup company.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: Take that, Kylie, and so Jenna not Minogue. We like
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Kylie Minogue. You know, you can like Killy Jenner too.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I know enough about her
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: to actually care about her. I just thought it was funny.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: And also she lied about being like a millionaire. Anyway,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: So World War two is coming, and it comes, and
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: Buddy Rogers volunteers and he's a pilot in the Navy.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: And while he's out doing that, she adopts two kids. Right,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: she just goes to an orphanage, adopts a six year
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: old boy, and then not even a full year, she
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: then adopts this infant, this little girl and names her
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Roxy like he's on duty with the navy. And she
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: didn't tell them that they had a six year old
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: boy and a baby now, and so I'm not sure
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: that that's that's the best idea. And they're older now,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: like she's what fifty one at that point, and yeah,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: kids need a lot more than just being in a house.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: But yeah, he's just like cool. I guess that's fine,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: and he's like really good. Out of all of her husbands,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: he's probably the best. I say, probably he was the best.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: And like she's getting mean, right, so she's drinking again,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: and sometimes she would call him Douglas. Now whether or
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: not that was deliberate or whether that was because she
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: wanted to upset him hymns to say, but like she
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: would like straight up scream at him at parties. Like
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: now she is spiraling, like she's strung as points she's
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: she has a disagreement with Helen Keller because she was
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: supposed to do this like fund for children deaf and
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: blind children, and there was also supposed to be like
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: so thing and it didn't happen, and then Helen Keller
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: pick came an issue. She ends up like kicking her
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: best friend out of her house, like things are just
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: not going well, but like but she's still like seeing
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: people and she still kept kind of doing things, like
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: she meets familiar Earhart, she meets like the Eisenhower's, Like
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: she just does like all this stuff, and like she
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: ends up selling her last like piece of Stock and
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: United Artists in nineteen fifty six. That's when she's sixty four,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: and that's like her last connection to like her and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: the movies, and so she starts focusing more on her
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: charity work, right, So she ends up working like serving
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: with like the Eisenhowers on the White House Conference on
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: Aging and her and Mamy like they're traveling across the
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: US selling saving bonds for a while. And when she's
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: sixty nine, so four years after this, she gets an
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Middlebury College for basically all
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: of her good work in her charity work, and a
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: year later she gets one from Emerson College in Boston,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: and basically they're talking about all of the good shit
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: she did, and so all the work she's done for
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: like all of her charity work, all the done work
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: she's done for agism, and all of the work she
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: did in the industry. So she was just like like
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: raising money for like ambulances during the World War and everything.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: Like she's doing all this stuff, and so the artist
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: really fun that she starts. You know, it's basically that
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: sort of charity that she creates where people, you know,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: certain actors, they would have to donate like one percent
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: of their salary to go towards like the unemployed actors,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: like your cameramen, your lighting dudes, all that shebang, and
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: so like she would also do like radio benefits. And
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: then right the emotion Picture Country Home. It basically you know,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: had a screening room Innute as well, and so it
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: was built as a for aging actors to live, and
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: it also had a hospital that was added to it.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: And Mary Pickford is the you know, the founder of
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: this and she was also she also helped create a
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: Jewish retirement home. And basically she admits to hers to state, well,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: to everybody, she admits that she did this, but basically
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: she made some incensitive remarks towards a Jewish actress and
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: basically it was, you know, she said something anti semitic
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: at one point, but then she was like, I need
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: to fix this shit because that wasn't cool. And so
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: she invests in ensuring that these Jewish people like who
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: have been in the entertainment industry, that they have the
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: appropriate care that they need. And so she wanted to
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: make sure that she was able to do this, and yeah,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: at least she did the fucking right thing. In the end,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: and I think that's important now. The very last time
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: that she's out in public was there was a Mary
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: Pickford like film retrospective and it was held in Paris,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: and the French government invited her over and she's seventy
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: three at this point, and they showed fifty of her
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: movies at the proper speed because like what had been
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: happening is it had been shown, and that sort of
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: quickened speed and it again she didn't appreciate that. And
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: then she saw her acting being appreciated as it was
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: meant to be shown, and nobody left. Everybody wantched her
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: do this. Everybody love and appreciated and enjoyed her work,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: and that meant and so much to her more than
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: anything else had. And this was an amazing thing for her.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: And after this, this is where she starts becoming withdrawn
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: basically for the next I think it's fifteen years, and
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: she just sort of pulls away, sort of hermits herself,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: and she went from being this huge star to being
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: forgotten effectively. And that's It's kind of one of the
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: reasons I wanted to do this month, because I know
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: I talk about like big horrible things quite a lot
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: of the time, and when it comes to women's history,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's too easy to forget people, because people
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: is what makes history. And when it comes to someone
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: like Mary Pickford, she did so much to create the industry.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: And I'm not creative, but like create the industry we
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: know today, even in how she was instrumental in so
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: much of it and it destroyed her. And I think
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: we should appreciate people for their art, especially when they
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: work to better themselves, and she really did with you know,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: she wanted to make sure that other people were cared for.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the most beautiful thing. And we
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: dismiss her, and we dismiss so many people, and we
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: act like art isn't important, when like, when people have
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to create, they do and we get to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: appreciate it and love it. And I think that it's
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: just gorgeous really. And over the years, you know, we
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: see all this stuff in the hold, Like I remember
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: I was in the Hollywood River Cemetery in Douglas, Fairbanks.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: It's this massive fucking marble. It just bothers me anyway.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: But when she's eighty four in nineteen seventy six, she
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: receives an honorary Oscar for her contribution to the moving
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: picture industry. And like it's interesting though, because like they
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: film her in her house and she's wearing this wig
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: and you can see her movements as she's still doing
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: that sort of very Mary Pickford moves and her speech
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: is a little sort of slurred, and it feels quite
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say predatory, but like it feels
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: very manipulative. And it caused a huge backlash because people
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: were like, how dare you do this those women, because
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: you know she's clearly you know, advanced in years and
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: that's that's how they are, and and like they're not
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: wrong because her mental health was declining so much and
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: she was not always lucid, Like Douglas Fairbanks Junior would
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: come visit her and she would think that she's talking
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: to his dad, you know, and she'd forget and she'd
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: be she'd forget she wasn't married Douglas scare Banks anymore,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: and she'd forget that she was married to Charles Buddy Rogers.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: And Buddy did his best to care for her at
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: this point, like he stayed married through all this, and
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: he does his best. He's got staff he's trying, and
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: he cared for her until the end. But then on
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: the twenty seventh of May nineteen seventy nine, she suffers
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: a stroke and is rushed in hospital. Two days later.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: She passes away on the twenty ninth of May nineteen
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: seventy nine as a result of complications from the stroke.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: She is interred in a locked section of Forest Lawn Cemetery.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Her mother, Charlotte, her sister Lottie, and her brother Jack
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: had been interred there previously. Now a lot of her
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: like a lot of her money, a lot of everything
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: that she had that she was a trust that was
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: set up for her niece Gwynn's kids, So like that
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: was there, and then a few things were you know,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: given to like the Smithsonian and stuff, and then a
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: lot of the other stuff was just sold, you know,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: And a lot of her work has just been destroyed
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: over the years, sometimes by you know, like the it
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: was old film was flammable, and so stuff will just
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: get destroyed by air and then sometimes by combusting. It's
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: a whole thing. But if you do get to watch
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: some of Mary Pickford's stuff, it's it's so good when
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: you actually see how she moves. It's not pantomime, it's
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: it's acting, but just without the words. But so ends
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: the story of Mary Pickford, and I do hope that
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: you'll get to see her stuff at some point. And yeah,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: I guess it's time for recommendations. So for watching Sparrows,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: watch the Sparrows. It's just you can. You can still
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: find it. The still clips, I think, so watch that.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: For reading. For reading, okay, the Seven Husbands of Evelyn,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: you go, just I just think it's a it's a
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: good little, good little trick for you. And for listening,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: you know what, I am still listening to House Tour
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: by Sabrina Carpenter. I think it's a pop I don't care.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: And with that, I'm going to beg you good evening.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Adios au Revoir of Weaz My Friends, Bye Bye,