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Silent Screen Legend Mary Pickford Feted With Portage, Music Box Screenings

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 23, 2013 3:00PM

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Mary Pickford in Sparrows, screening April 6 at noon at the Music Box Theatre.

Mary Pickford is one of the seminal figures in American cinema. Director D.W. Griffith was so taken by her screen test he offered her a salary of $10 a day — a figure unheard of a century ago. As the Silent Era moved into full swing, Pickford’s curly hair, natural beauty and captivating screen presence resonated with audiences, who couldn’t get enough of the plucky heroines she portrayed, and her celebrity worldwide (she was called "America's Sweetheart") was matched only by Charlie Chaplin.

Pickford and her husband Douglas Fairbanks, along with Chaplin and Griffith, formed United Artists in 1919, allowing them the creative freedom to produce their own films outside of the Hollywood studio structure of the time. Pickford was also one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but, like many silent stars, found her career on the wane once sound was added to motion pictures. She retired from acting but continued to produce movies into the 1940s.

Perhaps Pickford’s greatest contribution to American cinema was getting the studios to change how they approached producing films. Before Pickford, the preferred approach of studios was to re-create plays and film them. Pickford, who learned from Griffith that acting in movies was simpler than onstage, changed that with her popularity in nickelodeons and studios responded by producing films suited to the strengths of the actors.

Pickford’s life is the subject of Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies by author and historian Christel Schmidt and published by University of Kentucky Press and the Library of Congress. Schmidt is an expert on Pickford and has been awarded two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her research on Pickford.

To celebrate the release of the book, Schmidt will be in Chicago April 3-6 for screenings of two of Pickford’s most popular films. Schmidt will host a screening of Pickford’s 1924 film Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall at 7:30 p.m. on April 3 at the Portage Theater. The film will be presented as a restored 35 mm print from Cinematheque Royale and Schmidt will sign copies of her book.

On April 6 at noon, Schmidt will host a screening at the Music Box Theatre of Pickford’s Sparrows, arguably among the best films in Pickford’s oeuvre, and will sign copies of her book, as well.