Her second picture was “The Lonely Villa,” the brain child of Mack Sennett, gleaned from a newspaper—good old-fashioned melodrama. Mary played a child of twelve with two younger sisters and a mother. They were nice people, and wealthy. Miss Leonard, playing the mother, would be beautifully arrayed in the brown-silk-and-velvet. But what could be done for Mary? She had no clothes fit for the wealthy little aristocrat she was to portray and there was nothing in the meager stock wardrobe for her. “Oh, she’s so pretty,” I said to my husband, “can’t we dress her up? She’ll just be darling in the right kind of clothes.” So he parted with twenty dollars from the cash register and trusted me to dispose of it at Best’s—then on Twenty-third Street—for a proper wardrobe. Off I went on my joyful errand, and brought back to the studio a smart pale blue linen frock, blue silk stockings to match, and nifty patent leather pumps. What a dainty little miss she looked, her fluffy curls a-bobbing, when she had donned the new pretties!
During the dreary waits between scenes, there being no private dressing-rooms, actors would be falling all over each other, and they could find seclusion only by digging themselves in behind old and unused scenery. Owen Moore was especially apt in hiding himself. He had an unfriendly way of disappearing. None of the herd instinct in him. At times we had quite a job locating him. Cruising along the back drop of a Coney Island Police Court, or perhaps a section of the Chinese wall, we’d innocently stumble upon him. But we didn’t need to hunt him the day that Mary Pickford was all dressed up in Best & Company’s best. That day he never left the camera stand, and his face was all one generous Irish smile. (How little we know when our troubles are going to begin!)
Following “The Lonely Villa” came “The Way of Man” and then a series of comedies in which Mary was teamed with Billy Quirk, “Sweet and Twenty,” “They Would Elope,” “His Wife’s Visitors.”
Though Mary Pickford affiliated with the movies for twenty-five dollars weekly with the understanding that she would work three days a week and play “parts” only, she was a good sport and would come in as an “extra” in a scene if we needed her. So occasionally in a courtroom scene, or a church wedding where the camera was set up to get the congregation or spectators from the rear, Mary could attend with perfect safety as the Pickford curls, from the back of her head, would never have been recognized by the most enthusiastic fan of that day. Mr. Griffith would not have his “Mary” a “super.”
Considering the stellar position she has held for years, and her present-day affluence, many movie fans may think that Mary Pickford was kissed by the fairies when she was born. Not so. Life’s hard realities—the understanding of her little family’s struggles to make both ends meet when she was even as young as Jackie Coogan at the time of his first appearance with Charlie Chaplin in “The Kid”—that was her fairy’s kiss—that and her mother’s great love for her.
Of course, such idolatry as Mrs. Smith gave her first-born might have made of her a simpering silly, or worse. But Gladys Smith (as Mary Pickford was born) was pretty—and she had talent and brains. So what wonder if Mother Smith often sat all through the night at her child’s bedside, not wanting to sleep, but only to worship her beautiful daughter?
Mary told me her story in our early intimate days together in the movies. With her little gang she was playing in the streets of Toronto where she was born, perhaps playing “bean bag”—she was indeed young enough for that.
From “Wark” to “work,” with only the difference of a vowel.
(See [p. 185])