Only last October when Douglas and Mary came on to New York for the openings of their latest pictures I had dinner with the two.
“Mary,” said I when for a moment Fairbanks left us together, “you’re looking wonderful. It seems to me you are ten years younger than when I last saw you.”
“Yes,” replied she, “and it’s all due to Douglas. He’s as wonderful a husband as he is an actor. Always, always, his first thought is of me and you know what that means to me.”
I did know. I remembered the gallant battling little figure of Famous Players days, of how she had always protected others—her mother and her family—and I was touched by the thought that now this great gift of protecting love was hers.
When I first met Mary she was married to Owen Moore. Regarding this marriage, Mack Sennett has told me an interesting story.
“Mary and Moore were working together in the Biograph when Griffith and I were there,” said he, “and I don’t think they ever once thought of each other in any sentimental light—not until the rest of us put it into their heads. But you see it was this way: She was such a sweet-looking girl and he was such a sweet-looking boy—Owen Moore used to make you think of a kid whose mother had scrubbed his face and brushed his hair and got him all tidy for school—well, altogether they seemed to the rest of us so exactly suited that we got to teasing them about each other. We’d go up to Mary and say, ‘Why don’t you and Owen get more friendly?’ and then we’d go after Moore in the same way about her.”
It will be seen from this that Mary’s first marriage was not a case of spontaneous combustion. It represents only a girl and boy fancy and that stimulated much after the fashion that brought Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedict together.
One thing which always impressed me about this phase of Mary’s life was that, no matter what the differences which severed Owen and her, she always spoke of him with great kindness and affection. With him it was the same. I never heard Owen Moore say anything of his former wife which was not admiring. As to their differences, I have heard people say sometimes that all would have been well had it not been for Mrs. Pickford’s determined efforts to keep them apart. Even though this original assumption were true, I do not share the conclusion. I do not even ascribe the break to certain temperamental defects of Moore’s. To me it is explained by Sennett’s story, showing, as it does, that the match came through the prompting of others rather than through any irresistible attraction.
Undoubtedly Mary’s romance with Doug has been sustained by their solidarity of interest. He is as much immersed in pictures as she is. He has also the same capacity for hard and regular work. I heard several remark that when Doug and Mary got back from their famous visit to Europe he walked around the Fairbanks lot looking as happy as an American boy who has got back to baseball after a trying experience with musty churches and interminable art-galleries.
“Nothing like system—a regularised life!” he confided at intervals to those about him.