Mr. Zukor established his “Famous Players” through the production of “Queen Elizabeth,” the first feature picture with a famous player, the player being no less a personage than the divine Sara Bernhardt. This was in 1912. So when Mary Pickford became a Famous Player, it caused considerable comment. However, she has become the most famous of all the Famous Players engaged by Mr. Zukor.
And as for Famous Players, long before Adolph Zukor’s day, they had been appearing before a movie camera. As far back as 1903 Joseph Jefferson played in his famous “Rip Van Winkle” for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. And Sara Bernhardt appeared as Camille, in the Eclair Company’s two-reel production of the Dumas play in 1911.
Mary Pickford did not reach the peak of fame and affluence without her “ifs.” When the first fall came, and little Mary had not connected up with a legitimate job, she said to me one day: “Miss Arvidson, we have just fifty dollars in the bank for all of us, and I’m worried to death. I want to get back on the stage. Of course, the pictures are regular, but if I had enough put away, I’d get out.”
Another day: “If I stay in the movies I know I will just be ruined for the stage—the acting is so different—and I never use my voice. Do you think it will hurt me if I stay in the pictures any longer?”
“Well, Mary,” I answered, “I cannot advise you. We all just have to take our chances.”
Good fortune it was for the movies, for her family and for her, that she stayed. In the beginning she encountered practically no competition. Not until dainty Marguerite Clark left the field of the legitimate in 1913 and appeared in her first charming photoplay “Wildflower” did Miss Pickford ever need to bother her little head over anything as improbable as a legitimate competitor in a field where she had reigned as queen undisputed and unchallenged.
It is often asked whether Mary Pickford is a good business woman. My opinion is that she’s a very good business woman. And I am told that she had a head for business as far back as the days of Patsy Poor. She must have an understudy and no one but sister Lottie was going to be that understudy. Lottie stayed the season even though no emergency where she could have officiated, presented itself.
I know Mary brought a business head with her to Biograph. Mr. Griffith had told her if she’d be a good sport about doing what little unpleasant stunts the stories might call for, he would raise her salary. The first came in “They Would Elope,” some two months after her initiation.
The scene called for the overturning of the canoe in which the elopers were escaping down the muddy Passaic. Not a second did Mary demur, but obediently flopped into the river. The scene over, wet and dirty, the boys fished her out and rushed her, wrapped in a warm blanket, to the waiting automobile.
It was the last scene of the day—we reserved the nasty ones for the finish. Mary’s place in the car was between my husband and myself. Hardly were we comfortably settled, hardly had the chauffeur time to put the car in “high,” before Mary with all the evidence of her good sportsmanship so plainly visible, naïvely looked up into her director’s face and sweetly reminded him of his promise. She got her raise. And I got the shock of my young life. That pretty little thing with yellow curls thinking of money like that!