Today, The Grandma has been reading about UnitedArtist, the Americanproduction and distribution company, that was founded on a day like today in 1919.
United Artists Corporation (UA), was an American production anddistributioncompany.
Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studio was premised on allowing actors to control their own interests, rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.
UA was repeatedly bought, sold, and restructured over the ensuing century. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the studio in 1981 for a reported $350 million ($1 billion today).
On September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a controlling interest in entertainment companies One Three Media and Lightworkers Media, then merged them to revive United Artists' television production unit as United Artists Media Group (UAMG). However, on December 14 of the following year, MGM wholly acquired UAMG and folded it into MGM Television.
United Artists was briefly revived again in 2018 as United Artists Digital Studios, being launched along with the Stargate Origins web series and the Stargate Command streaming service. In December 2019 following the closure of Stargate Command, by early 2020 the original UA incarnation was folded, this time permanently, into MGM.
Mirror, the joint distribution venture between MGM and Annapurna Pictures, was subsequently rebranded as United Artists Releasing in early February 2019, in honor of its 100th anniversary, and currently the UA name lives on in that company.
In 1918, Charlie Chaplin could not get his parent company First National Pictures to increase his production budget despite being one of their top producers. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had their own contracts, with First National and Famous Players-Lasky respectively, but these were due to run out with no clear offers forthcoming. Sydney Chaplin, brother and business manager for Charlie, deduced something was going wrong, and contacted Pickford and Fairbanks. Together they hired a private detective, who discovered a plan to merge all production companies and to lock in exhibition companies to a series of five-year contracts.
Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith incorporated United Artists as a joint venture company on February 5, 1919.
Each held a 25 percent stake in the preferred shares and a 20 percent stake in the common shares of the joint venture, with the remaining 20 percent of common shares held by lawyer and advisor William Gibbs McAdoo. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier. Already Hollywood veterans, the four stars talked of forming their own company to better control their own work.
They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over actor salaries and creative decisions, a process that evolved into the studio system. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before anything was formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, apparently said, The inmates are taking over the asylum.
The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution company. Hiram Abrams was its first managing director, and the company established its headquarters at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York City.
The original terms called for each star to produce five pictures a year. By the time the company was operational in 1921, feature films were becoming more expensive and polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes (eight reels). The original goal was thus abandoned.
UA's first production, His Majesty, the American, written by and starring Fairbanks, was a success. Funding for movies was limited. Without selling stock to the public like other studios, all United had for finance was weekly prepayment installments from theater owners for upcoming movies. As a result, production was slow, and the company distributed an average of only five films a year in its first five years.
In 1941, Pickford, Chaplin, Disney, Orson Welles, Goldwyn, Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Wanger -many of whom were members of United Artists- formed the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP). Later members included Hunt Stromberg, William Cagney, Sol Lesser, and Hal Roach.
The Society aimed to advance the interests of independent producers in an industry controlled by the studio system. SIMPP fought to end ostensibly anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios -Loew's (MGM), Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros./First National-that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion pictures.
In 1942, SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. This was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors that alleged monopoly and restraint of trade.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the major Hollywood movie studios to sell their theater chains and to end certain anti-competitive practices. This court ruling ended the studio system.
By 1958, SIMPP achieved many of the goals that led to its creation, and the group ceased operations.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the studio in 1981 for a reported $350 million ($1 billion today).
Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to borrow Alice in Wonderland, the masterpiece written by Lewis Carroll.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,commonlyshortened to Alice in Wonderland, is an 1865 novel written by English author CharlesLutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
It tells of a young girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children.
It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre.Its narrative course, structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
She has reread this amazing book and she has watched animated musical fantasy-adventure adaptation film produced by Walt Disney Productions and premiered in London, England, on a day like today in 1951.
Before watching the film, The Grandma has studied her Ms. Excel course.
Alice in Wonderland is a 1951 American animated musical fantasy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the Alice books by Lewis Carroll.
The 13th release of Disney's animated features, the film premiered in London on July 26, 1951, and in New York City on July 28, 1951. The film features the voices of Kathryn Beaumont as Alice, Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts, and Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter.
Walt Disney first attempted unsuccessfully to adapt Alice into an animated feature film during the 1930s. However, he finally revived the idea in the 1940s. The film was originally intended to be a live-action/animated film; however, Disney decided to make it an all-animated feature in 1946.
The film was considered a flop on its initial release, leading to Walt Disney showing it on television as one of the first episodes of his TV series Disneyland. It proved to be very successful on television, especially during the psychedelic era. It was eventually re-released in theaters which proved to be massively successful.
The film became even more successful through merchandising and subsequent home video releases. The theme song of the same name has since become a jazz standard. While the film was critically panned on its initial release, it has since been regarded as one of Disney's greatest animated classics, notably one of the biggest cult classics in the animation medium, as well as one of the best film adaptations of Alice.
Alice in Wonderland, 1951
A live-action adaptation of Carroll's works and animated film, Alice in Wonderland,directed by Tim Burton, was released in 2010.
Walt Disney was familiar with Lewis Carroll's Alicebooks, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and had read them as a school boy.
In 1923, he was a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker working at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, making the unsuccessful short cartoon series by the name of Newman Laugh-O-Grams. The last of Newman Laugh-O-Grams was called Alice's Wonderland, which was loosely inspired by the Alice books.
The short featured a live-action girl (Virginia Davis) interacting with an animated world. Faced with business problems, however, the Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt in July 1923, and the film was never released to the general public. However, Disney left for Hollywood and used the film to show to potential distributors. Margaret J. Winkler of Winkler Pictures agreed to distribute the Alice Comedies, and Disney partnered with his older brother Roy O. Disney and re-hired Kansas City co-workers including Ub Iwerks, Rudolph Ising, Friz Freleng, Carman Maxwell and Hugh Harman to form the Disney Brothers Studios, which was later re-branded Walt Disney Productions. The series began in 1924 before being retired in 1927.
In 1933, Disney considered making a feature-length animated-and-live-action version of Alice starring Mary Pickford. However, these plans were eventually scrapped in favor of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, mainly because Disney was put off by Paramount's 1933 live-action adaptation Alice in Wonderland. However, Disney did not completely abandon the idea of adapting Alice, and in 1936 he made the Mickey Mouse cartoon Thru the Mirror.
In 1938, after the enormous success of Snow White, Disney bought the film rights of Alice in Wonderland with Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, and officially registered the title with the Motion Picture Association of America. He then hired storyboard artist Al Perkins and art director David S. Hall to develop the story and concept art for the film.
A story reel was completed in 1939, but Disney was not pleased; he felt that Hall's drawings resembled Tenniel's drawings too closely, making them too difficult to animate, and that the overall tone of Perkins' script was too grotesque and dark. Realizing the amount of work needed for Alice in Wonderland, and with the economic devastation of World War II and the production demands of Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi, Disney shelved production on Alice in Wonderland shortly after the screening.
In fall 1945, shortly after the war ended, Disney revived Alice in Wonderland and hired British author Aldous Huxley to re-write the script. Huxley devised a story in which Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice, were misunderstood and persecuted following the book's publication.
In Huxley's story, stage actress Ellen Terry was sympathetic to both Carroll and Liddell, and Queen Victoria served as the deus ex machina, validating Carroll due to her appreciation for the book. Disney
considered child actress Margaret O'Brien for the title role. However,
he felt that Huxley's version was too literal an adaptation of Carroll's book.
Alice in Wonderland, 1951
Background artist Mary Blair submitted some concept drawings for Alice in Wonderland. Blair's paintings moved away from Tenniel's detailed illustrations by taking a modernist stance, using bold and unreal colors. Walt liked Blair's designs, and the script was re-written to focus on comedy, music, and the whimsical side of Carroll'sbooks.
Around this time, Disney considered making a live-action-and-animated version of Alice in Wonderland, similar to his short Alice Comedies, that would star Ginger Rogers and would utilize the recently developed sodium vapor process. Lisa Davis, who later voiced Anita Radcliffe in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Luana Patten were also considered for the role of Alice.
However, Disney soon realized that he could do justice to the book only by making an all-animated feature, and in 1946 work began on Alice in Wonderland. With the film tentatively scheduled for release in 1950, animation crews on Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella effectively competed against each other to see which film would finish first. By early 1948, Cinderella had progressed further than Alice in Wonderland.
Through various drafts of the script, many sequences that were present in Carroll's book drifted in and out of the story. However, Disney insisted that the scenes themselves keep close to those in the novel since most of its humor is in the writing.
One omitted scene from the 1939 treatment of the film occurred outside the Duchess' manor, where the Fish Footman is giving a message to the Frog Footman to take to the Duchess, saying that she is invited to play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. Alice overhears this and sneaks into the kitchen of the manor, where she finds the Duchess' Cook maniacally cooking and the Duchess nursing her baby. The cook is spraying pepper all over the room, causing the Duchess and Alice to sneeze and the baby to cry. After a quick conversation between Alice and the Duchess, the hot-tempered Cook starts throwing pots and pans at the noisy baby. Alice rescues the baby, but as she leaves the house the baby turns into a pig and runs away. The scene was scrapped for pacing reasons.
Another scene that was deleted from a later draft occurred in Tulgey Wood, where Alice
encountered what appeared to be a sinister-looking Jabberwock hiding in
the dark, before revealing himself as a comical-looking dragon-like
beast with bells and factory whistles on his head.
A song, Beware the Jabberwock,
was also written. However, the scene was scrapped in favor of The
Walrus and the Carpenter poem. Out of a desire to keep the Jabberwocky
poem in the film, it was made to replace an original song for the
Cheshire Cat, I'm Odd.
Alice in Wonderland, 1951
Another deleted scene in Tulgey Wood shows Alice consulting with The White Knight, who was meant to be somewhat a caricature of WaltDisney. Although Disney liked the scene, he felt it was better if Alice learned her lesson by herself, hence the song Very Good Advice. Other characters, such as The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon were discarded for pacing reasons.
In an effort to retain some of Carroll's imaginative poems, Disney commissioned top songwriters to compose songs built around them for use in the film. Over 30 potential songs were written, and many of them were included in the film -some for only a few seconds- the greatest number of songs of any Disney film.
In 1939, Frank Churchill was assigned to compose songs, and they were accompanied by a story reel featuring artwork from David S. Hall. Although none of his songs were used in the finished film, the melody for Lobster Quadrille was used for the song Never Smile at a Crocodile in Peter Pan.
When work on Alice resumed in 1946, Tin Pan Alley songwriters Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston began composing songs for it after working on Cinderella. However, the only song by the trio that made it into the film was The Unbirthday Song.
While he was composing songs in New York, Sammy Fain had heard that the Disney studios wanted him to compose songs for Alice in Wonderland. He also suggested lyricist Bob Hilliard as his collaborator. The two wrote two unused songs for the film, Beyond the Laughing Sky and I'm Odd. The music for the former song was kept but the lyrics were changed, and it later became the title song for Peter Pan, The Second Star to the Right. By April 1950, Cahn and Hilliard had finished composing songs for the film.
The title song, composed by Sammy Fain, has become a jazz standard, adapted by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck in 1952 and included on his 1957 Columbia album Dave Digs Disney.
The song, In a World of My Own, is included on the orange disc of Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic.
The film soundtrack was first released on LP record on July 28, 1951. The soundtrack was re-released on Audio CD by Walt Disney Records on February 3, 1998.
All tracks written by Sammy Fain, Bob Hilliard, Mack David, Al Hoffman, Jerry Livingston, Oliver Wallace, Ted Sears, Gene de Paul, and Don Raye.
Alice in Wonderland premiered at the Leicester Square Theatre in London on July 26, 1951.
During the film's initial theatrical run, the film was released as a double feature with the True-Life Adventures documentary short, Nature's Half Acre. Following the film's initial lukewarm reception, it was never re-released theatrically in Disney's lifetime, instead being shown occasionally on television. Alice in Wonderland aired as the second episode of the Walt Disney's Disneyland television series on ABC on November 3, 1954, in a severely edited version cut down to less than an hour.
Beginning in 1971, the film was screened in several sold-out venues at college campuses, becoming the most rented film in some cities. Then, in 1974, Disney gave Alice in Wonderland its first theatrical re-release.
The company even promoted it as a film in tune with the psychedelic times, using radio commercials featuring the song White Rabbit performed by JeffersonAirplane. This release was so successful that it warranted a subsequent re-release in 1981. Its first UK re-release was on July 26, 1979.
After an intensive night celebrating Saint John, TheGrandma is exhausted. Today, she has decided to relax at home and enjoy with one of her passions, classic cinema.
TheGrandma has started to watch MaryPickford's films, masterpieces of cinema, performed by one of the greatest actresses of the cinema. The Grandma admires MaryPickford and all the great silentfilm actors of her age. Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Richard Barthelmess, William Haines, John Gilbert...
On a day like today, Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million-dollar contract, something amazing for a woman in this profession and in this age and The Grandma wants to homage her talking about her awesome career.
Mary Pickford is one of the greatest actresses of all times but she was also the founder of United Artists an independent cinema studio that helped actors and actresses to keep their jobs during the worst years of WWI and Post War.
Gladys Louise Smith (April 8, 1892-May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-born American film actress and producer. With a career spanning 50 years, she was a co-founder of both the Pickford–Fairbanks Studio, along with Douglas Fairbanks, and, later, the UnitedArtists film studio, with Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith, and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who present the yearly Oscar award ceremony.
Pickford was known in her prime as America's Sweetheart and the girl with the curls. She was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. Pickford was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname Queen of the Movies. She is credited as having defined the ingénue archetype in cinema.
Mary Pickford & Frances Marion
She was awarded the second ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound-film role in Coquette(1929) and also received an honorary Academy Award in 1976.
In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute ranked Pickford as 24th in its 1999 list of greatest female stars of classic Hollywood Cinema.
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in 1892 at 211 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. Her father, John Charles Smith, was the son of English Methodist immigrants, and worked a variety of odd jobs. Her mother, Charlotte Hennessey, was of Irish Catholic descent and worked for a time as a seamstress. She had two younger siblings, Charlotte -Lotti- and John Charles, who also became actors.
After being widowed in 1899, Charlotte Smith began taking in boarders, one of whom was a Mr. Murphy, the theatrical stage manager for Cummings Stock Company, who soon suggested that Gladys, then age seven, and Lotti, then age six, be given two small theatrical roles -Gladys portrayed a girl and a boy, while Lottie was cast in a silent part in the company's production of The Silver King at Toronto's Princess Theatre, destroyed by fire in 1915, rebuilt, demolished in 1931, while their mother played the organ.
Pickford subsequently acted in many melodramas with Toronto's Valentine Stock Company, finally playing the major child role in its version of The Silver King. She capped her short career in Toronto with the starring role of Little Eva in the Valentine production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, adapted from the 1852 novel.
By the early 1900s, theatre had become a family enterprise. Gladys, her mother and two younger siblings toured the United States by rail, performing in third-rate companies and plays. After six impoverished years, Pickford allowed one more summer to land a leading role on Broadway, planning to quit acting if she failed.
In 1906 Gladys, Lottie and Jack Smith supported singer Chauncey Olcott on Broadway in Edmund Burke. Gladys finally landed a supporting role in a 1907 Broadway play, The Warrens of Virginia. The play was written by William C. deMille, whose brother, Cecil, appeared in the cast. David Belasco, the producer of the play, insisted that Gladys Smith assume the stage name Mary Pickford. After completing the Broadway run and touring the play, however, Pickford was again out of work.
Mary Pickford
On April 19, 1909, the Biograph Company director D. W. Griffith screen-tested her at the company's New York studio for a role in the nickelodeon film Pippa Passes. The role went to someone else but Griffith was immediately taken with Pickford.
She appeared in 51 films in 1909, almost one a week. In January 1910, Pickford travelled with a Biograph crew to Los Angeles. Many other film companies wintered on the West Coast, escaping the weak light and short days that hampered winter shooting in the East. Pickford added to her 1909 Biographs (Sweet and Twenty, They Would Elope, and To Save Her Soul, to name a few) with films made in California.
Actors were not listed in the credits in Griffith's company. Audiences noticed and identified Pickford within weeks of her first film appearance. Exhibitors, in turn, capitalized on her popularity by advertising on sandwich boards that a film featuring The Girl with the Golden Curls, Blondilocks, or The Biograph Girl was inside.
Pickford left Biograph in December 1910. The following year, she starred in films at Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP). Unhappy with their creative standards, Pickford returned to work with Griffith in 1912. That year, Pickford also introduced Dorothy Gish and Lillian Gish to Griffith, and each became major silent film stars, in comedy and tragedy, respectively. Pickford made her last Biograph picture, The New York Hat, in late 1912.
She returned to Broadway in the David Belasco production of A Good Little Devil (1912). In 1913, she decided to work exclusively in film.
Pickford left the stage to join Zukor's roster of stars. Zukor first filmed Pickford in a silent version of A Good Little Devil.
Pickford's work in material written for the camera by that time had attracted a strong following. Comedy-dramas, such as In the Bishop's Carriage (1913), Caprice (1913), and especially Hearts Adrift (1914), made her irresistible to moviegoers. Hearts Adrift was so popular that Pickford asked for the first of her many publicized pay raises based on the profits and reviews. The film marked the first time Pickford's name was featured above the title on movie marquees.
Mary Pickford & Charles Chaplin
Only Charlie Chaplin, who slightly surpassed Pickford'spopularity in 1916, had a similarly spellbinding pull with critics and the audience. Each enjoyed a level of fame far exceeding that of other actors.
Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Pickford was believed to be themost famous woman in the world, or, as a silent-film journalist described her, the best known woman who has ever lived, the woman who was known to more people and loved by more people than any other woman that has been in all history.
Pickford starred in 52 features throughout her career. On June 24, 1916, Pickford signed a new contract with Zukor that granted her full authority over production of the films in which she starred, and a record-breaking salary of $10,000 a week. In addition, Pickford's compensation was half of a film's profits, with a guarantee of $1,040,000 (US$ 18,130,000 in 2019).
In August 1918, Pickford's contract expired and, when refusing Zukor's terms for a renewal, she was offered $250,000 to leave the motion picture business. She declined, and went to First National Pictures, which agreed to her terms.
In 1919, Pickford, along with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks, formed the independent film production company United Artists. Through United Artists, Pickford continued to produce and perform in her own movies; she could also distribute them as she chose.
In 1920, Pickford's film Pollyanna grossed around $1,100,000. The following year, Pickford's film Little Lord Fauntleroy was also a success, and in 1923, Rosita grossed over $1,000,000 as well. During this period, she also made Little Annie Rooney (1925), another film in which Pickford played a child, Sparrows (1926), which blended the Dickensian with newly minted German expressionist style, and My Best Girl (1927), a romantic comedy featuring her future husband BuddyRogers.
Mary Pickford
The arrival of sound was her undoing. Pickford underestimatedthe value of adding sound to movies, claiming that adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
She played a reckless socialite in Coquette (1929), a role for which her famous ringlets were cut into a 1920s' bob. Pickford had already cut her hair in the wake of her mother's death in 1928. Fans were shocked at the transformation. Pickford's hair had become a symbol of female virtue, and when she cut it, the act made front-page news in The New York Times and other papers.
Coquette was a success and won her an Academy Award for Best Actress,although this was highly controversial. The public failed to respond to her in the more sophisticated roles. Like most movie stars of the silent era, Pickford found her career fading as talkies became more popular among audiences.
Her next film, The Taming of The Shrew, made with husband DouglasFairbanks, was not well received at the box office. Established Hollywood actors were panicked by the impending arrival of the talkies.
In 1933, she underwent a Technicolor screen test for an animated/live action film version of Alice in Wonderland, but Walt Disney discarded the project when Paramount released its own version of the book. Only one Technicolor still of her screen test still exists.
She retired from acting in 1933; her last acting film was released in 1934. She continued to produce for others, however, including Sleep, My Love (1948) with Claudette Colbert and Love Happy (1949), with the Marx Brothers.
Pickford used her stature in the movie industry to promote a variety of causes. Although her image depicted fragility and innocence, Pickford proved to be a worthy businesswoman who took control of her career in a cutthroat industry.
During World War I, she promoted the sale of Liberty Bonds, making an intensive series of fund-raising speeches that kicked off in Washington, D.C., where she sold bonds alongside Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Theda Bara, and Marie Dressler.
Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford & Charlie Chaplin
At the end of World War I, Pickford conceived of the Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization to help financially needy actors. In 1932, Pickford spearheaded the Payroll Pledge Program, a payroll-deduction plan for studio workers who gave one half of one percent of their earnings to the MPRF.
As a result, in 1940, the Fund was able to purchase land and build the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital, in Woodland Hills, California.
An astute businesswoman, Pickford became her own producer within three years of her start in features. In 1916, Pickford's films were distributed, singly, through a special distribution unit called Artcraft. The Mary Pickford Corporation was briefly Pickford's motion-picture production company.
In 1919, she increased her power by co-founding United Artists (UA) with Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and her soon-to-be husband, Douglas Fairbanks. Before UA's creation, Hollywood studios were vertically integrated, not only producing films but forming chains of theaters.
United Artists broke from this tradition. It was solely a distribution company, offering independent film producers access to its own screens as well as the rental of temporarily unbooked cinemas owned by other companies.
Pickford and Fairbanks produced and shot their films after 1920 at the jointly owned Pickford-Fairbanks studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. The producers who signed with UA were true independents, producing, creating and controlling their work to an unprecedented degree. As a co-founder, as well as the producer and star of her own films, Pickford became the most powerful woman who has ever worked in Hollywood.
By 1930, Pickford's acting career had largely faded. After retiring three years later, however, she continued to produce films for United Artists. She and Chaplin remained partners in the company for decades. Chaplin left the company in 1955, and Pickford followed suit in 1956, selling her remaining shares for three million dollars.
Mary Pickford
After retiring from the screen, Pickford became an alcoholic, as her father had been. Her mother Charlotte died of breast cancer in March 1928. Her siblings, Lottie and Jack, both died of alcohol-related causes. These deaths, her divorce from Fairbanks, and the end of silent films left Pickford deeply depressed. Her relationship with her adopted children, Roxanne and Ronald, was turbulent at best.
Pickford withdrew and gradually became a recluse, remaining almost entirely at Pickfair and allowing visits only from Lillian Gish, her stepson Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and few other people.
Pickford believed that she had ceased to be a British subject when she married an American citizen upon her marriage to Fairbanks in 1920. Thus, she never acquired Canadian citizenship when it was first created in 1947. However, Pickford held and traveled under a British/Canadian passport which she renewed regularly at the British/Canadian consulates in Los Angeles, and she did not take out papers for American citizenship. She also owned a house in Toronto, Canada. Toward the end of her life, Pickford made arrangements with the Canadian Department of Citizenship to officially acquire Canadian citizenship because she wished to die as a Canadian. Canadian authorities were not sure that she had ever lost her Canadian citizenship, given her passport status, but her request was approved and she officially became a Canadian citizen.
On May 29, 1979, Pickford died at a Santa Monica, California, hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered the week before. She was interred in the Garden of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California.
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