There Was Something about Mary: Mary Pickford’s Perfect ‘Little American’

Anke Brouwers (University of Antwerp – Fund for Scientific Research)

During the silent feature film era (c. 1914-1928), Mary Pickford was the most famous movie star in the world. Dubbed ‘Our Mary,’ ‘Little Mary,’ and ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ Pickford’s public persona was that of the child-woman, a young girl on the verge of adulthood who represented and defended America’s most cherished ideals: equality, lib- erty, morality, and patriotism. The star’s persona was a consciously self-made image and celebrated the Protestant ideal of self-sufficiency and individualism, but it was equally an image shaped and polished by the movie-going audience and therefore also democratic at heart. Pickford’s public self offered a figure of consensus, neutralizing the ambiguities inherent in the American experiment (individual/community; freedom/restriction; nature/ culture), and proof of the possibility of a straightforward and wholesome ‘Americanness.’ If we consider Lévi-Strauss’ notion of the reconciliatory function of myths, it is no sur- prise to find how Pickford’s self-image was mythologized and became in many ways the guiding light in America’s search for self-definition.

1. ‘Be an American!’

In 1919 Mary Pickford appeared in a promotional film for the buying of war stamps to help pay for the costs of World War I. Mary is in her little girl costume, in a white frock and with her golden curls beautifully coiffed, as she is writing on a blackboard the words: ‘Be an American, help Uncle Sam pay for the war. The fighting is over but the paying aint.’ Mary’s attention is called by someone off-screen and she sheepishly adds ‘not’ to her message. She is again prompted to change the message and she now replaces ‘ain’t’ by ‘is.’ The image dissolves and now we see Mary writing: ‘Buy war saving stamp!’ The apparent authority figure off-screen again calls her attention and she dutifully adds a little ‘s.’ Mary then smiles sweetly to the camera, and makes a polite little bow. In 1919, after the smash successes of Tess of the Storm Country (1914), The Poor Little Rich Girl (1916), and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Pickford was a power- ful star. She was about to found her own studio, United Artists, with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and David W. Griffith, to ensure greater control (and winnings) over her films. Despite her apparent problems with grammar and her obedient smiles, Pickford was an extremely intelligent business woman, unques- tionably the most powerful woman in Hollywood and, contrary to appearances, a seasoned player in the industry. Nevertheless, the sweet girl in this short piece of war propaganda was the living example of what American soldiers had been fighting for. The choice of 308 Anke Brouwers

Pickford as token ‘little American’ was quite deliberate and revealing of her status and fame. The Pickford character was, as film historian Kevin Brownlow describes it, ‘the ideal American girl’: she was ‘extremely attractive, warm- hearted, generous, funny – but independent and fiery – tempered when the occasion demands.’1 I would add to the description Pickford’s peculiar and contradictory mix of both innocence and budding sexuality, of gentleness and firmness, of fragility and competence, of naiveté and precocity, of girlishness and tomboyish-ness, of something typically American and a more universal appeal, all in all a little old-fashioned but a modern girl nonetheless. These seeming incompatible traits had formed in Mary Pickford, the star in both pub- lic and private life, a quite logical and non-paradoxical self. This conception of Mary Pickford was not new. As early as 1916 a pro- motional poster for Paramount had appeared in which Mary Pickford’s most famous roles were depicted in small photographs. The poster reveals that Pickford was not at all limited to playing the part of a little girl but, more sig- nificantly, that she was extremely versatile and able to play a Dutch, Japanese, or Italian girl; a young girl, an adolescent, or a grown woman; a poor harlot, a peasant, or poor little rich girl, and despite this ontological diversity still be ap- pointed the straightforward title of ‘America’s Sweetheart.’2 Indeed, Pickford was in many ways the complete package: multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, at home in all kinds of homes, whether they be rich or poor, and it was exactly this di- versity, this ease with which she occupied radically different selves that made her the more ‘American’ for it. For this paper I will look into what exactly constituted the ‘Americanness’ of ‘America’s Sweetheart’ – Pickford was an immigrant Canadian – and at- tempt to explain what made her so beloved. (In the rest of the world Mary was conveniently dubbed ‘Sweetheart of the World,’ but Pickford’s extreme patri- otism would not let us forget that she was America’s first.) I have suggested above, paradoxically perhaps, that it was Pickford’s diversity, her ‘in between- ness’ that made her more easily understood as being essentially American. As an actress it was part of Pickford’s profession to create new selves for each new role, and to keep those aspects or traits that suited her. This project of perfection made her an active partaker of that Franklinesque personal quest to become a representative American, to become, in D. H. Lawrence’s more skeptical phrasing, that ‘dummy American.’3 In this ongoing selection of po-

1 Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By (London: Colombus Books, 1989), p.11. 2 The films advertised were: The Foundling (1915), Rags (1915), Madame Butterfly (1915), Hul- da from Holland (1916), Poor Little Peppina (1916), Hearts Adrift (1914) A Good Little Devil (1914), Tess of the Storm Country (1912), all Famous Players Productions. 3 D. H. Lawrence, Studies in American Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978), p.15.